It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? a place to meet and share what you have been and are about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit, comment, and add to your groaning TBR pile! So welcome in everyone. This meme started on J Kaye’s blog and then was hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Sheila then passed it on to Kathryn at The Book Date.

Jen Vincent, Teach Mentor Texts, and Kellee of Unleashing Readers decided to give It’s Monday! a kid-lit focus. If you read and review books in children’s literature – picture books, chapter books, middle-grade novels, young adult novels, or anything in those genres – join them.

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Personal:

• It was hotter than hot out last week. I am so sick of this weather and can’t wait for the cooler air to come in.
• Miss R had two lessons last week. Her usual day and Thursday was a make-up lesson. Both days were super hot, and Miss R was a sweaty mess by the time she untacked, groomed, and turned her horse (well, one day, horses) out.
• Speaking of her lesson, Miss R fell off her horse on Thursday. She didn’t get hurt (a scrapped elbow and a couple of bruises) and didn’t cry. Instead, she was cracking up laughing. See, the fall was in slow motion. She gradually fell off Hershey and onto her side. Everyone was like, “What on earth happened.“
• Miss R had her first test on Friday. The test was naming the states around North Carolina. I’m waiting for Tuesday folders to come home to see how she did.
• We were supposed to go to our city’s Pride event this weekend, but they canceled it due to rain. We were all disappointed but can’t wait to go at the end of the month.
• We had an issue with one of Miss R’s frenemies doing ding-dong ditch repeatedly on Friday night. We have the Ring camera, so we know exactly who it was. Also, BK stood on the side of the house and yelled at her when she approached the front door. She hasn’t been back since.
• And lastly, Miss R’s Occulus broke Friday night. Since she uses it constantly (she plays Gorilla Tag), we got her another one on Saturday (an early birthday present).

Reading:

• I am at 63 books on NetGalley. Once I finish writing the reviews for the books I read over the weekend, it will be around 60.
• I caught up with my reading over the weekend. I read four books between Friday and Sunday (with staying up late on Sunday to finish a novella).
• As for reviews, I am behind 5. But I will knock out a few today and hopefully be caught up by tomorrow (keeping my fingers crossed). If I’m not, I will have to write on the weekends (which I try to avoid).
• I also plan to start reading my reading challenge books this coming weekend. Keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t get stuck on any of my ARCs (The Blue, Beautiful World, and Sandymancer were very trying for me to read)

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What I am Reading Now:

An ambitious screenwriter tries to solve her friend’s disappearance by recreating their fateful final girls’ trip in this riveting locked-room mystery from the author of All Dressed Up.
A remote winery. A missing friend. And a bunch of sour grapes.

It should have been the perfect spring break. Five girlfriends. A remote winery on the Oregon coast. An infinite supply of delicious wine at their manicured fingertips. But then their center—beautiful, magnetic Vanessa Morales—vanished without a trace.

Emily Fischer was perhaps the last person to see her alive. But now, years later, Emily spots Vanessa’s doppelganger at a local café. At the end of her rope working a lucrative yet mind-numbing gig on a network sitcom, Emily is inspired to finally tell the story that’s been percolating inside her for so long: Vanessa’s story. But first, she needs to know what really happened on that fateful night. So she puts a brilliant scheme into motion.

She gets the girls together for a reunion weekend at the scene of the crime under the guise of reconnecting. There’s Brittany, Vanessa’s cousin and the inheritor of the winery; Paige, a former athlete, bullish yet easily manipulated; and Lydia, the wallflower of the group.

One of them knows the truth. But what have they each been hiding? And how much can Emily trust anything she learns from them… or even her own memories of Vanessa’s last days?

Suspenseful, propulsive, and interspersed with scenes from Emily’s blockbuster screenplay, Scenes of the Crime is an unforgettable mystery that examines culpability, the shiny rearview mirror of Hollywood storytelling, and the pitfalls of female friendship.

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Books I plan on reading later this week:

In this thrilling contemporary fantasy novel, a father must uncover the secret magical underbelly of Los Angeles to find his daughter, who has seemingly disappeared into the fictional universe of her favorite fantasy series.

When Byron Kidd’s twelve-year-old daughter vanishes, the only clue left behind is a note claiming she’s taken off to explore the Hidden World, a magical land from a series of popular novels. She is not the only child to seek out this imaginary realm in recent years, and Byron—a cynical and hard-nosed reporter—is determined to discover the whereabouts of dozens of missing kids.

Byron secures a high-profile interview with Annabelle Tobin, the eccentric author of the books, and heads off to her palatial home in the Hollywood Hills. But the truth Byron discovers is more fantastical than he ever could have dreamed.

As he uncovers locations from the books that seem to be bleeding into the real world, he must shed his doubts and dive headfirst into the mystical secrets of Los Angeles if he ever hopes to reunite with his child. Soon Byron finds himself on his own epic journey—but if he’s not careful, he could be the next one to disappear…

Told through journal entries, transcripts, emails, and excerpts from Tobin’s novels, Dreambound is a spellbinding homage to Los Angeles and an immersive

The Circle is robbing the dreams of its citizens.

In Logan Kent’s world, disease, hunger, and war have all been resolved by the dreams of its citizens thanks to nanobots developed and implanted into everyone as newborns. At least, that’s how it seems…

Now The Circle wants Logan to join their fold and continue the utopia they’ve created. He has no reason to distrust his parents—high ranking members in The Circle—until he meets Reina, a girl from the exiled faction “Anyone,” who refuse to give up their free will.

Logan begins to question everything he knows and loves. Can the girl be trusted—especially when she’s a medicine thief skulking around Capitol City—or is it really true that peace can only be maintained beneath The Circle’s rule?

Fans of The Matrix, Inception, and The Giver have been dreaming of this series for a long time coming.