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.

Personal

I have had a whole lot of stuff happen since the last time I updated this post. From Christmas through the first week of Feburary has been super hectic. I will not talk about the smaller things that happened but highlight the larger things (the things that are the most important).

• In June, Miss B will compete in a national 2024 PowerPoint competition in Florida. At first, she thought it was a scam. It wasn’t until her teacher asked if she was going that she realized it was the real deal. The school (and the city) kinda went nuts for it because this was the first time anyone from the district competed and won (this was a statewide competition, and she was #1 in North Carolina). If she wins this, she goes to the world competition in Los Angeles in July. It has been a ride, let me tell you, and I can’t be any more proud of her than I am.
• Miss B also got her driver’s license. North Carolina has a weird rule where once you turn 18 and have a permit, you can just take the test (no hours needed). So, she waited, did that, and got it. Now to get Mr. Z to Drivers Ed….
• Speaking of Mr. Z, I feel for the kid. He has been sick on/off since before Christmas (he had flu type A pretty bad).
• Mr. Z kills it at his D&D club and the school’s eSports team. Both clubs started small and have expanded to many people (due to his recruiting).
• Miss R is doing well. She went almost a month without riding due to her instructor going to Scotland to be with her ill father and the weather (it rained a ton). Her instructor is back, and Miss R can’t wait for Wednesday.
• We had Miss B’s girlfriend move in about 2 weeks ago. Her mother is an addict, and the poor kid found her OD’ing on the bathroom floor. She refuses to move back into the house with her mother there (she lives with her grandmother). We offered, and she is staying here indefinitely.
• Yuki got spayed right after New Year’s. I forgot how hard it was to keep a female cat from jumping in a couple of days after the spay (super hard). But she healed well, and you can’t tell there is a scar. We got her tattooed and microchipped.
• Speaking of cats, Miss B’s girlfriend brought her kitten with her. It’s an orange tabby, and he is so derpy. We did have a scare with him last week. He fell off the cat tree and sprained his leg. It took four days of rest, along with anti-inflammatory and pain meds, to get him back to his old self. He must get his shots and neutered (per my rules).
• As for me, I am doing the same. Nothing new and exciting here. Oh wait, I did start playing Elder Scrolls Online again, but other than that, nada.

What I am Reading Now:

New York Times bestselling author B. A. Paris captivated psychological thriller readers everywhere with Behind Closed Doors. Now she invites you into another heart-pounding home full of secrets, in The Guest.

Some secrets never leave.

Iris and Gabriel seem to have it all: a beautiful home in the British countryside, a daughter happily working in Greece, and good friends Laure and Pierre from Paris, who they often vacation with. But when a young man has a tragic accident in a nearby quarry, Gabriel is the one to find him and hear his final words, leaving Gabriel with a guilty burden.

As Iris tries to help ease her husband’s trauma, they acquire an unexpected house guest. Laure has seemingly moved in after her husband’s revelation that he has had a child with another woman. Iris and Gabriel insist Laure stay as long as she needs. But Laure keeps wearing Iris’s clothes, following her every move, and asking her about the recent death of the young man.

Their only respite from the increasingly tense atmosphere in their own home comes from a couple new to town and expecting their first child. But with them comes their gardener, who has a checkered past.

With fractured relationships and secrets piling up around them, can Iris and Gabriel’s marriage survive?

Books I plan on reading later this week

In an exuberant post WWII New York City, a young woman is forced to reinvent her life and choose between the safe and the ethical, and the men who represent each…

Set in New York City in the heady aftermath of World War II, when the men were coming home, the women were exhaling in relief, and everyone was having babies, The Trouble with You is the story of Fanny Fabricant, whose rosy future is upended in a single instant. Educated for a career as a wife and mother, she is torn between her cousin Mimi, who is determined to keep her a “nice girl,” and her aunt Rose, who has a rebellious past of her own.

Forging a new life, she gets a job in radio serials. Then through her friendship with an actress who stars in and a man who writes the series, she comes face-to-face with the blacklist, which is wrecking lives.

Ultimately, Fanny must decide between playing it safe or doing what is right in this vivid evocation of a world that seems at once light-years away and strangely immediate.

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Little Liars Sara Shepard’s next adult novel follows a group of mothers living in a mysterious “mommune,” each of whom is running from something

When Lenna gets a call from her old friend Rhiannon, she is startled; Rhiannon disappeared years ago without a trace. But Lenna is even more startled to learn that Rhiannon has a son and that she lives off the grid with a group of women in a community called Halcyon. Rhiannon invites Lenna, a new mother herself, to join them. Why suffer the sleepless nights by yourself? It takes a village, after all.

Lenna decides to go and hopefully repair her relationship with Rhiannon, but as she drives into the desert and her cell service gets weaker, she becomes suspicious. Who are these women and why did Rhiannon invite her here? And that is before she learns about the community’s rules (no outside phone calls, no questions about people’s pasts) and the padlock on the gate that leads out to the main road. But Lenna has other concerns, secrets from her past she is terrified will come out. When a newcomer arrives in the community, Lenna’s worst fears are confirmed—she was brought here for a reason.

Nowhere Like Home tackles themes of complicated friendships and trauma but all with Sara Shepard’s expert twists that you don’t see coming.