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Merry Christmas!!

Hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas and enjoying themselves!  My oldest daughter leaves to stay with family in England tonight (Christmas flights were pretty cheap) and so we are sort of rushing through our Christmas day.

Food today will be all appetizers – to accommodate the flurry of packing and last minute laundry.

  • Drunken Devils on Horseback
  • Quiche Lorraine
  • Chips and Dip
  • Spinach Artichoke Dip 
  • Pate
  • Cheese & Crackers
  • Fruit bowl
  • Endive with Creme Fraiche and Caviar

My daughters each bought me perfect presents, one bought me a Fitbit that I had been coveting and the other bought me a mug from Starbucks that entitles me to free drinks for all of January <3.  Awesome!

 

 

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Christmas Cooking

Getting ready for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day cooking. One daughter works both days and the other is leaving for Europe Christmas night so all the cooking (and eating) has to fit in around those schedules.

Christmas Eve (sit down dinner)

  • Ginger Ham from Nigella: recipe found here.
  • Mashed potatoes and country gravy
  • Sweet Potato Spoon Custard from Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine cookbook by the Darden Sisters. (My copy is so old and so well used it is actually in pieces and I have to keep it in a ziploc bag)
  • Oven roasted parsnips
  • Brussels and Chestnuts:  recipe from here.  (First time making this at the request of my daughter.  She had it in France and really liked it.)
  • Saveur retake on the green bean casserole: recipe found here. (a family favorite from the Saveur cookbook)
  • Fresh Pineapple
  • Parker Rolls (dough made in the bread machine)
  • Buttermilk Biscuits (trying Alton Brown’s this year)
  • Desserts:  Jack Daniels  Cake – adapted from Maida Heatter’s The Original Kentucky Whiskey Cake; Old-fashioned Coconut Cake from Maida Heatter; Jammy Tarts; Christmas cookies

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and time with their friends and family!

 

 

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Coming Clean by Sue Margolis

 

I have read other books by Sue Margolis and enjoyed them, so when I saw this one I picked it up.

This was a quick chick lit read for me.  What really stood out was the realistic portrayal of a marital breakup.  In most of these type books the divorce is predicated by some great betrayal, whether it be adultery, theft, or some other deceit, but in real life most people that I know who divorced were just cases like this, people growing apart over time.  The more “apart” people feel, the less inclined they are to forgive their partner’s bad habits or faults (which is basically what happened in the story). I have had more than one friend say that their marriage turned into just a “roommate” type relationship.  I also felt that the financial situation was more realistic than in the average chick lit/women’s fiction divorce story.

I admire the writing and the character development, but that being said there was something missing.  Perhaps the story was so close to real life that it seemed a little mundane?  Not really certain, however overall a good but not great read.

 

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Death Day Party by Paula Carter

 

I picked this up at my independent bookseller after reading the first in the series, Leading an Elegant Death.

This outing in the series didn’t work as well as the first book for me.  This book used a classic plot device, the isolated house in the country, a storm, a bridge to the house washed out, and from then on it “And Then There Were None” territory.  This book was written in 1999 but it came across as a much earlier time and yet it was obviously supposed to be set currently. Although I have read and enjoyed mysteries with this “isolated country house” plot device, it just didn’t ring quite true in this case.

I still enjoyed the protagonists, although Hillary is becoming progressively sillier.  I think that I would have enjoyed another mystery set in the town so that Hillary and Jane would interact more with recurring characters, rather than introduce an entirely new large cast of characters.

I will read the third and last book in the series if I come across it because I did enjoy the first book quite a bit.

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Murder on the Rocks by Allyson K. Abbott

 I just finished this first book in a new (to me) series this afternoon, waiting on doctor’s appointments.  I really enjoyed it!

The mystery was well developed.  I loved the bar theme (and the cocktail recipes).  The protagonist Mack Dalton was really interesting and strongly drawn.  There was a plethora of suspects that Mack, with the assistance of hunky cop Duncan, sorted through, confirming alibis and uncovering clues.  A big positive was that the sleuth is actively involved in the investigation, even though she is a suspect. In some cozies, the sleuth just sort of stumbles around and doesn’t seem to actively investigate.

There is also an interesting Al Capone connection thrown in the mix.  This was a very satisfying cozy and a good start to new series.  I will be on the look out for the next book in the series and some of the other books by this author.

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The Other Child by Charlotte Link

 

Saw this book mentioned on a blog and picked it up from my library.  The story has a diverse group of characters and a dual story line.  One story has to do with Gwen, a spinster, who lives an isolated existence and now has met a young man, who for some unfathomable reason has asked her to marry him.  The second story has to do with a horrific event which occurred during the war.

The two stories are intermingled and you are led to believe that one is related to the other.

My main issue with the book is that the second story is told through emailed documents – between the two participants in the event.  Why would they need to do that in such exacting detail?  They were there.  Made no sense to me.  I will say that the story of what happened during the war was absolutely heartbreaking.  I found it very depressing.

The current story had a disjointed feel and it was pretty obvious who the villain was relatively early on.

The Other Child had an interesting plot, the idea for the story was quite good.  It just suffered in the execution.

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The Christie Curse by Victoria Abbott

Just got around to reading this because the second book, The Sayers Swindle is out now.  I am so glad I did.  This was a very well done mystery with interesting characters and lots of twists and turns.  I loved the theme, book collecting, similar to the Dido Hoare mysteries that I like.

The main character, Jordan Bingham, is well crafted.  She is very realistic, not some simpering princess but not an unbelievable she-hulk either.  The other characters were fun and interesting, particularly her Uncles.  The book is well written and edited so that the pace flows along nicely and the ending ties up neatly and quickly.  I had figured out one of the villains, but it did not detract from my enjoyment of the book.

I am looking forward to the next one of these!

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Jamie Begley – The Last Rider’s Series

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Continuing with the theme of Motorcycle alpha males began last week with Reaper’s Property, I downloaded and read the Last Rider’s Series by Jamie Begley through my turkey coma.  Fun, steamy erotic romances with alpha male biker heros and various respectable good girl heroines thrown in for the ride.

As with any of this genre, you do need to practice some belief suspension, but the characters and the pace of the plot pull the reader along.  The characters are what really drive these books, flawed but you end of rooting for them.  The characters recur throughout the books so by the third one the reader feels they really got to know them well.

The only negative that I would say is that they needed a better editor.  There were some odd or just plain wrong word usages in the books, in fact one that made me snort with laughter, and some other things that a good editor would have corrected.

I am looking forward to the next book, the one that the series has been building up to, Shade’s story.

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Reaper’s Property by Joanna Wylde

This is a meme hosted by Midnight Book Girl to be found here

I have been marathon watching one of my favorite TV series this weekend, Sons of Anarchy.  So that inspired a search for Biker themed reading and I stumbled across Joanne Wylde’s Reaper’s Property.  The cover helped in part to suck me in 🙂

 

This is an adult romance – more plot and character than strictly erotica.  Alpha males and a light theme of reluctance is central to the story line.  I really enjoyed the world of the Reapers MC that Joanna Wylde created.  Her characters were interesting and the plot was well thought out. There were elements of danger and betrayal that added tension to the plot.  Much better quality than many adult romances that I have downloaded on my Kindle.

I found her take on women in the MC world and the different ways that this was delivered to the reader well done.   The reader sees it from an outsider’s, Maria’s, perspective, from long time Old Ladies and sweet butts points of view and from members themselves.  That part was particularly well done.

The romance had the prerequisite Happily Ever After ending that I look for when I’m buying a romance.  The couple was well matched and a pair that you will really root for throughout the story.

The next one in the series comes out in January and I already pre-ordered on my Kindle.

So a perfect book for Sundays in Bed.

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Rumour Has it by Jill Mansell and Getting Over It by Anna Maxted

  

I read these two over the weekend.  I picked up both them at my local independent bookshop, Booktrader of Hamilton.  

I loved everything about Rumour Has It.  From the characters (Tilly, among others, was awesome), to the interconnected plot lines, to the setting, it all made for a wonderful read with an all important (to me, for this kind of book anyway) Happily Ever After ending.  The characters that Jill Mansell created here are varied and well developed and make me care about what happens to them.  I have a hard time reading books where I don’t care what happens to the characters.  I need to make some connection and that definitely happens here.  Well written, both funny and heartbreaking, in all it is a very enjoyable read.

I picked up Anna Maxted’s Getting Over It because the cover looked interesting in part, but also because I am constantly admonishing my kids to “get over it” or “suck it up” so I connected to the title.  I struggled with this book, but I can’t entirely say why.  I will admit to skimming somewhere in the middle out of sheer  desperation.  I don’t really get the blurb on the cover – “Hilarious” -USA Today.  Hmmm, not so much, no.  

I think my major issue was that the main character seemed so self absorbed and completely in her own plane of existence.  I think this feeling really was emphasized due to the book being written in the first person, it seemed like the pages were inundated with “I”s. (really – open the book to a random page and count the number of  “I”s on that page and you will get into the double digits)   I get that she showed growth, sort of,  matured, sort of, got over it, sort of…  Anyway, not the book for me, but must have worked for many, many people because it was a National Bestseller (also on the cover) and an Independent Book Seller’s Book Sense Pick.  {{shrugs}}  Moving on..