2020 Reading Challenge -50 Books 50 States

Book 31: New Mexico

I am very excited to read a new horror author I have never read before. Any book that King says scared the hell out him is worth a read to me!

Thank you to Gallery Books for this gifted copy!

Blurb:
An all-new epic tale of terror and redemption set in the hinterlands of midcentury New Mexico from the acclaimed author of “The Troop” which Stephen King raved scared the hell out of me and I couldn t put it down…old-school horror at its best.
From electrifying horror author Nick Cutter comes a haunting new novel, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” and Stephen King s “It,” in which a trio of mismatched mercenaries is hired by a young woman for a deceptively simple task: check in on her nephew, who may have been taken against his will to a remote New Mexico backwoods settlement called Little Heaven. Shortly after they arrive, things begin to turn ominous. Stirrings in the woods and over the treetops the brooding shape of a monolith known as the Black Rock casts its terrible pall. Paranoia and distrust grips the settlement. The escape routes are gradually cut off as events spiral towards madness. Hell or the closest thing to it invades Little Heaven. The remaining occupants are forced to take a stand and fight back, but whatever has cast its dark eye on Little Heaven is now marshaling its powers…and it wants them all.”

Book 30: New Jersey

Getting back to Stephanie Plum and Grandma Mazur! I love this series so much, it is so fun and entertaining. When you are in a reading slump or a book hangover, they are the perfect medicine. No matter what challenge I am participating in, I always find room to fit at least one of these in.

Blurb:
Stephanie Plum, the brassy babe in the powder blue Buick is back and she’s having a bad hair day — for the whole month of January. She’s been given the unpopular task of finding Mo Bedemier, Trenton’s most beloved citizen, arrested for carrying concealed, gone no-show for his court appearance.

And to make matters worse, she’s got Lula, a former hooker turned file clerk — now a wannabe bounty hunter — at her side, sticking like glue. Lula’s big and blonde and black and itching to get the chance to lock up a crook in the trunk of her car.

Morelli, the New Jersey vice cop with the slow-burning smile that undermines a girl’s strongest resolve is being polite. So what does this mean? Has he found a new love? Or is he manipulating Steph, using her in his police investigation, counting on her unmanageable curiosity and competitive Jersey attitude?

Once again, the entire One for the Money crew is in action, including Ranger and Grandma Mazur, searching for Mo, tripping down a trail littered with dead drug dealers, leading Stephanie to suspect Mo has traded his ice-cream scoop for a vigilante gun.

Cursed with a disastrous new hair color and an increasing sense that it’s really time to get a new job, Stephanie spirals and tumbles through Three to Get Deadly with all the wisecracks and pace her fans have come to

Book 29: New Hampshire

Blurb:
When Willow is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, her parents are devastated–she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. Every expectant parent will tell you that they don’t want a perfect baby, just a healthy one. Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe would have asked for a healthy baby, too, if they’d been given the choice. Instead, their lives are made up of sleepless nights, mounting bills, the pitying stares of “luckier” parents, and maybe worst of all, the what-ifs. What if their child had been born healthy? But it’s all worth it because Willow is, funny as it seems, perfect. She’s smart as a whip, on her way to being as pretty as her mother, kind, brave, and for a five-year-old an unexpectedly deep source of wisdom. Willow is Willow, in sickness and in health.

Everything changes, though, after a series of events forces Charlotte and her husband to confront the most serious what-ifs of all. What if Charlotte had known earlier of Willow’s illness? What if things could have been different? What if their beloved Willow had never been born? To do Willow justice, Charlotte must ask herself these questions and one more. What constitutes a valuable life?

My Year in Books

2020 was definitely not a normal year for any of us. It felt, at times, like we were living in one of the books we read, and not one we want to. But we made it through and are settling in to our new normal, whatever that may look like.
I, like so many, experienced an emotional tribulation that took a few months to overcome. In that time, I remembered that reading books was not a competition on how many I can get through in a month or a year but something that I love doing. I have a tendency to set goals and then obsess over them. I am working on breaking this unhealthy habit. I also don’t need to feel like I must write a blog post everyday. If I do, that’s awesome, if not, its not a big deal and people will not unfollow me because of it. There are so many other things that I enjoy doing as well and I don’t want to forget about those or spending time with the people that I love.

So, 2021 will be about having fun and doing what makes me happy every day.

2020 books completed:
36 Books
12,454 pages
My average rating – 3.9 🌟

5 🌟 Books:
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham
Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey
Strawberry Shortcake Murder by Joanne Fluke
Gilchrist by Christian Galacar
What Doesn’t Kill You by Iris Johansen
Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
Chasing Evil by Kylie Brant
Jamie Quinn Mystery Collection by Barbara Venkataraman
1st to Die by James Patterson
American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe New Year. Happy Reading! 😉

Book 28: Nevada

I haven’t read a sci-fi book in awhile. Sounds very interesting. 🤔

Blurb: The first great evolutionary leap took mankind to the moon.
The second is going to take us beyond the grave.

Kaufman Striker spent his whole life learning to be unfeeling; it took hanging himself to change that. Ten years ago, he thought he’d gotten away from being the town’s peculiar celebrity; thought he’d gotten away from his father’s warped ideas about self-mastery, but his dogmatic dear old dad has reached out from the past to continue his education with a letter encouraging Kaufman to take his own life.

For today in Decoy, Nevada, death isn’t permanent.

In an underground military facility, a top-secret resurrection project has been sabotaged. Except scientific resurrection doesn’t account for everything. Not the bipedal coyotes that stalk the streets or the thousands of missing town’s people, nor Kaufman’s own subtle “enhancements.”

Part psychological thriller, part dystopian sci-fi, Posthuman is a suspense-horror novel that probes what would happen if science discovered proof of life after death — and then nudged evolution to take us there. With deep themes and a rich, intricate plot, Posthuman has enough twists, turns, and surprises that once you reach the last page, you’ll want to start reading it all over again.

Book 26: Montana

Living in northern Idaho, summer time here means wild fire season. And this year is no different, I am currently surrounded by fires, one is only about 5 miles from my house. We had a horrible wind storm on Monday which caused massive damage and downed powerlines. These powerlines caused a record 58 wild fires. Living in a constant state of alertness, to be prepared in the event of evacuation, smoke filling the air. Its a scary place to be right now.

A book about Smoke Jumpers seems fitting to read now.

🔥

Blurb: His name is Connor Ford and he falls like an angel of mercy from the sky, braving the flames to save the woman he loves but knows he cannot have. For Julia Bishop is the partner of his best friend and fellow “smoke jumper,” Ed Tully. Julia loves them both–until a fiery tragedy on Montana’s Snake Mountain forces her to choose between them, and burns a brand on all their hearts.

In the wake of the fire, Connor embarks on a harrowing journey to the edge of human experience, traveling the world’s worst wars and disasters to take photographs that find him fame but never happiness. Reckless of a life he no longer wants, again and again he dares death to take him, until another fateful day on another continent, he must walk through fire once more…

Book 24: Mississippi

I recently received this memoir and I am so looking forward to reading it. Thank you Ecco Books for sending me this copy.

Blurb: A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy.

At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

Book 23: Minnesota

🍓Hannah’s back with more receipes and murders! I am so excited! I love this series so much. It is so cute, light, and a breeze to read through. The reciepes add so much fun to the reading and I have even tried a few of them myself.

Goodreads: When the president of Hartland Flour chooses cozy Lake Eden, Minnesota, as the spot for their first annual Dessert Bake-Off, Hannah is thrilled to serve as the head judge. But when a fellow judge, Coach Boyd Watson, is found stone-cold dead, facedown in Hannah’s celebrated strawberry shortcake, Lake Eden’s sweet ride to fame turns very sour indeed.

Between perfecting her Cheddar Cheese Apple Pie and Chocolate Crunchies, Hannah’s snooping into the coach’s private life and not coming up short on suspects. And could Watson’s harsh criticism during the judging have given one of the contestants a license to kill? The stakes are rising faster than dough, and Hannah will have to be very careful, because somebody is cooking up a recipe for murder…with Hannah landing on the “necessary ingredients” list.

Book 22: Michigan

Goodreads: “I’m not an old-timer. I’m an other-timer,” declares a Vietnam-scarred vet who had found safe harbor after the war as a barkeep in a small northern Michigan town. Now plopped stool-side far from home – having traveled all day on a bus to witness a landmark moment – his outpouring of memories prompts a young bartender to complain, “What’s it to me? I wasn’t even born then.” Thirty years later, however, remembering the old vet recalling people from his past, the younger man sees himself see him see them, and realizes that all our way-back-when times are just a mirror reflecting a mirror, a fading column of reflected reflections … of stories. The old vet had been right when he claimed that, for a bartender, remembering is an occupational hazard. Was it also true that memories can be a way to forget.

I just started this book yesterday, made it 1/3 of the way and spent several hours saying out loud “WTF did I just read”. I wasn’t sure if maybe I was just having an off day so I had my hubby read a page and let me know if I am just struggling with a case of the dumb but when he responded with a WTF of his own, I had my answer. Thankfully this book is short or otherwise I am not so sure I would be able to get through it.

Book 21: Massachusetts

“Bag of Bones meets Stranger Things…”

Ooh, I love both of those…color me interested! Everything about this book sounds good and scary.

I received this book back in 2018 as a Goodreads Giveaway and I am finally able to get to it. This year I have been focusing on gifted books as priority so that I can finally read and review those that have been sitting on my shelf for far too long. A big thanks to Christian Galacar for this gifted copy!

“Two years after losing their infant son to a tragic accident, Peter Martell, a novelist with a peculiar knack for finding lost things, and his wife, Sylvia, are devastated to learn they may no longer be able to have children. In need of a fresh start, and compelled by strange dreams, the couple decide to rent a lake house in the idyllic town of Gilchrist, Massachusetts, a place where bad things might just happen for a reason. As bizarre events begin to unfold around them—a chance encounter with a gifted six-year-old boy, a series of violent deaths, and repeated sightings of a strange creature with a terrifying nature—Peter and Sylvia find themselves drawn into the chaos and soon discover that coming to Gilchrist may not have been their decision at all.”

“Set against a small New England town in the summer of 1966, Gilchrist is a sinister tale about the haunting origins of violence, evil, and the undying power of memory.”