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I’m Back, Baby!

It’s been a minute but I’m back! Feels good to just get some words down on the page no matter what they are. Still haven’t gotten back to traveling, and not much time for reading yet, but you gotta eat every day.

Things got crazy here with the launch of our new business in reptile breeding, Wild Roots Reptiles. (Check us out on IG and FB!) A house full of animals has been keeping us hopping. Also doing a bit of home reno and that hasn’t left us with much extra time. All my books are currently in boxes in the spare bedroom closet. I have managed to get a few audio books in but I just cant do reviews on audios. I had stopped menu planning too and going rogue is not working for me. Dinner ends up being hamburgers, taco, or “what do we have in the freezer?”. Gets old very quick.

I am a planner and it may sound boring but for me, a planned day keeps the anxiety away. So weekly menu planning is back and running and I’m loving it already! Started up last week and had some great dinners! That has surely been missed. The hubs is very thankful too.

Here’s my layout:

  • Meatless Monday
  • Taco Tuesday
  • Whatever Wednesday
  • Casserole Thursday
  • Freezer Friday
  • Soup/Salad Saturday
  • Slow Cooker Sunday

Every Sunday, while I am relaxing in bed watching football, I scour Pinterest for dinner ideas. Start with ones that I have all the ingredients for and then add to the grocery list things I need for ones later in the week. My imperfect shopping days are Monday and Tuesday with Thursday delivery day, so that usually works out that I can get everything I need there, with maybe just a quick trip to the supermarket if not. Freezer friday is hub’s choice, I leave that one up to him. He can either pick something out of the freezer or we can get take out. This also helps me mix up my proteins throughout the week so we aren’t having beef 3 days in row. And it is great on using up the food that I have in the fridge, keeping my food waste to a minimum. Which is really important to me, also why I use Imperfect Foods.

Last week’s menu:

  • Tomato and White Bean Soup
  • Gluten Free Hard Shell Tacos
  • Grilled Mahi with Lemon Rice and Salad
  • One Pot Cheeseburger Casserole
  • Take out from Sweet Lou’s Restaurant & Tap House (I had the Bleu Cheese and Mushroom Burger, so good!)
  • BLT Balsamic Chicken Avocado Salad
  • The Best Pot Roast with mashed potatoes and canned corn

They were all so good but these were definitely my top 3!

I finished up the menu for this week last night and here it is:

  • Crispy Jack Patties with fries
  • Brisket Tacos
  • Grilled steak with Oven Roasted Herb & Garlic Parmesean Potatoes and salad
  • Chicken Bacon Ranch Pasta Bake
  • ??? We will have to wait and see what he chooses.
  • French Onion Soup
  • Crock Pot Pork Chops & Gravy with mashed potatoes and brocolli.

Stay tuned thoughout the week for updates on how they turned out!

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Book Review – The Stowaway

The Stowaway

The Stowaway by James S. Murray

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Crime Thriller

“A far stronger smell blasted out of the dark space, immediately overwhelming and shocking Pam’s senses. It was putrid. Something rotten. Like a decomposing animal.”

“All passengers on board are accounted for. All crewmembers are accounted for. No one is missing, not a single person.” Hendricks shrugged. “So it seems we have a stowaway.”


Maria Fontana’s life changed the day she was selected for jury duty for the murder trial of Wyatt Butler. Charged with the murder and mutilation of eight children, he was labeled the worst serial killer in decades. When the jury couldn’t agree on conviction, the mistrial threw their lives into turmoil. The public and the victim’s family were furious, how could they have let this monster go?

Continue reading Book Review – The Stowawaysignature

🔸️🔸️Book Mail!🔸️🔸️

Happy Tuesday all! I was under the weather yesterday so I’m gonna pretend it didn’t happen. 😁
Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!
They are just never long enough for me. I managed to finish a book but did not manage to finish any of my backlog of reviews. Just keep swimming. 🐟

However I did receive this book mail that I am so excited for! Thank you St. Martin’s Press!

Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival
Tom Clavin
Nonfiction, Biography
Publication Date: 11/2/21

An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive.

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📚July TBR 📚

Happy Thursday all! Obviously this month has gotten away from away. 😀

This month I plan to focus on books that I have publishing this month.  IF (doubtful 🤣) I manage to get through these, I will work on my back list. 

  • Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen – Pub date:  7/1/21
  • Her Last Breath by Hilary Davidson – Pub date:  7/1/21
  • The Second Life of Mireille West by Amanda Skenandore- Pub date:  7/27/21
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🔸️🔸️Book Mail!🔸️🔸️

TGIF!  Oh I am so happy it’s Friday!  Definitely ready for the weekend!  Hopefully spend some quality time reading.

Book mail makes it even better!  Thank you so much St. Martin’s Press for this copy!

The Brightest Star in Paris
Diana Biller
Historical Romance
Publication Date:  10/12/21

Amelie St. James, prima ballerina of the Paris Opera Ballet and the people’s saint, has spent seven years pretending. In the devastating aftermath of the Siege of Paris, she made a decision to protect her sister: she became the bland, sweet, pious “St. Amie” the ballet needed to restore its scandalous reputation. But when her first love reappears, and the ghosts of her past come back to haunt her, all her hard-fought safety is threatened.

Dr. Benedict Moore has never forgotten the girl who helped him embrace life again after he almost lost his. Now, he’s back in Paris after twelve years for a conference. His goals are to recruit promising new scientists, and, maybe, to see Amelie again. When he discovers she’s in trouble, he’s desperate to help her—after all, he owes her.

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📚 Currently Reading 📚

Anchored Hearts
Priscilla Oliveras
Zebra Books
Contemporary Romance
Pub Date:  4/27/21

I started this book back in June for #dyrc21, Romance read.  Life got crazy and I took a little break for a bit but I’m back!
Totally enjoying this super cute Romance that is a perfect beach read.

Alejandro and Anamaria were high-school sweethearts, planning to travel the world together following Alejandro’s photography passion.  But once Anamaria’s father has a heart attack, she realizes she can’t leave her family behind and Alejandro goes on without her. 

Now he’s back, home to heal after an accident.  Anamaria has moved on, made a name for herself and has no intention of history repeating itself.  But their mothers have other plans.

Norbert says Hello!
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📚June TBR📚

Well I managed to eliminate one from the list last month, let’s see if I can do better this month.  It’s growing at a much faster rate than I am reading them 😆. 

▪︎Endings by Linda L. Richards – Pub date:  4/6/21
▪︎The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth – Pub date:  4/13/21
▪︎Anchored Hearts by Priscilla Oliveras – Pub date:  4/27/21
▪︎A Shepherd of Wolves by R.J. King – Pub date:  4/27/21
▪︎A Summer to Remember by Erika Montgomery – Pub date:  5/11/21
▪︎Beneath Devil’s Bridge by Loreth Anne White – Pub date:  6/1/21
▪︎The Puma Years by Laura Coleman – Pub date: 6/1/21
▪︎Choose Me by Tess Gerritsen – Pub date: 7/1/21
▪︎Her Last Breath by Hilary Davidson – Pub date: 7/1/21
▪︎The Second Life of Mireille West by Amanda Skenandore – Pub date: 7/27/21
▪︎These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant – Pub date:  10/26/21

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🏅Top Shelf Tuesday 🏅

Happy Tuesday everyone!

This week’s pick is:

No Man Left Behind (Iris Williams & Annette Toni)
R.G. Miller
Police Procedural, Thriller
Kindle
Published 7/24/2017

I received this book in 2018 as a Goodreads giveaway. The short blurb grabbed my attention immediately!

“He lurks in the abandon subway tunnel under New York City. An Ex-Marine who was left to die in the steaming jungles of Vietnam in 1975 by his commanding officer.
Homicide Detective Iris Williams had thought she seen it all until she and her partner and lover Detective Annette Toni are called in to investigate a horrific murder of an entire family. The case becomes a nightmare for the detectives as they crawl deeper and deeper into the mind of a man that the media is calling, THE PIGGYBACK KILLER.”

I found a spot for it right away in the reading challenge I was completing that year, the prompt: A book with a LGBTQ+ protagonist. This book really did have everything in it for me. I love the characters, Homicide Detectives Iris Williams and Annette Toni. Who doesn’t love a powerful, smart, beautiful lead woman?! How about two!? As a girl I wanted to become a homicide detective myself, actually full disclosure I wanted to work for the FBI in the BAU. Thanks Clarice Starling! 🤣 I was even enrolled at Saint Cloud State University with a major in Criminal Justice and a minor in Psychology; but life takes their own turns sometimes.

Anyway… so I have a proclivity towards books with strong female detectives, special agents, or private investigators. I’m sure you have seen a trend. If you like those brutal, graphic murder thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs, like I do, then you will enjoy this one too.

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⚜⚜ eBook Mail ⚜⚜

Over the weekend my inbox received some new book mail!

Thank you to the tagged authors for these gifted copies!

Hart of Madness
by Lynne Kennedy
Pub date: 2/13/2019

New York City, 1902, Born into society, nineteen-year-old Ruby Hunt is accused of brutally killing her mother, father, and brother in their Central Park apartment. She is committed to a lunatic asylum at Hart Island for the rest of her life. Over a century later, a descendant of the Hunt family is murdered, and homicide detective Frank Mead is convinced there is a connection between the current death and that of her great aunt, Ruby. Thanks to the contents of a battered suitcase passed down from Ruby’s caretaker, old photograph, letters, and a diary lead Mead on a convoluted trail of greed, deception, and murder spanning two centuries.

Breakthrough
by Michael C. Grumley
Pub date:  3/6/2013

Deep in the Caribbean Sea, a nuclear submarine is forced to suddenly abort its mission under mysterious circumstances. Strange facts begin to emerge that lead naval investigator, John Clay, to a small group of marine biologists who are quietly on the verge of making history. Alison was sure she would never trust the military again. However, when an unknown group immediately becomes interested in her work, Alison realizes John Clay may be the only person she can trust. Together they must piece together a dangerous puzzle, and the most frightening piece, is the trembling in Antarctica.

One Among Us
by Paige Dearth
Pub date:  12/23/2014

Eleven- year-old Maggie Clarke is abducted from her loving family and thrust into the indescribably horrific and largely unknown underworld of human sex trafficking. In captivity, Maggie’s life turns into a nightmare most children couldn’t imagine. When Maggie isn’t being sold to clients, she focuses on caring for Seth, a young boy who was also abducted
With the help of Detective Rae Harker, the Clarkes’ frantically search for their daughter. Haunted by his own demons, Detective Harker vows to find Maggie–dead or alive

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W is for ….

W is for …. Whispering Wives and Wicked Witches

Lots of different wives on this self and a few witches and wizards. I have read about half this stack and loved them, the other half I can’t wait to read.

Some favorites:

The Woman in the Window
Anna Fox lives alone, a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors.
Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother and their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn’t, her world begins to crumble and its shocking secrets are laid bare. But what’s real and what’s all in her head?

Water for Elephants
When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.

The Wedding
Follow up to the The Notebook.
After thirty years of marriage, Wilson Lewis, son-in-law of Allie and Noah Calhoun (of The Notebook), is forced to admit that the romance has gone out of his marriage. Desperate to win back his wife, Jane’s, heart, he must figure out how to make her fall in love with him… again. Despite the shining example of Allie and Noah’s marriage, Wilson is himself a man unable to easily express his emotions. A successful estate attorney, he has provided well for his family, but now, with his daughter’s upcoming wedding, he is forced to face the fact that he and Jane have grown apart and he wonders if she even loves him anymore. Wilson is sure of one thing–his love for his wife has only deepened and intensified over the years. Now, with the memories of his in-laws’ magnificent fifty-year love affair as his guide, Wilson struggles to find his way back into the heart of the woman he adores.

Looking forward to:

The Wife Who Knew Too Much
Tabitha Girard had her heart broken years ago by Connor Ford. He was preppy and handsome. She was a pool girl at his country club. Their affair should have been a summer fling.
Years later, Connor comes back into Tabitha’s life—older, richer, and desperately unhappy. He married for money, a wealthy, neurotic, controlling woman whom he never loved. He has always loved Tabitha.
When Connor’s wife Nina takes her own life, he’s free. He can finally be with Tabitha. Nina’s home, Windswept, can be theirs. It seems to be a perfect ending to a fairy tale romance that began so many years ago. But then, Tabitha finds a diary. “I’m writing this to raise an alarm in the event of my untimely death,” it begins. “If I die unexpectedly, it was foul play, and Connor was behind it. Connor—and her.”

The Water Cure
The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men. But when their father, the only man they’ve ever seen, disappears, they retreat further inward until the day three strange men wash ashore. Over the span of one blistering hot week, a psychological cat-and-mouse game plays out. Sexual tensions and sibling rivalries flare as the sisters confront the amorphous threat the strangers represent. Can they survive the men?

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