first a note: sorry about missing a couple of days last week. There was a family emergency, and I didn’t have the time or the words to blog. But things are better, family members are getting healthier, and I am hoping to do better this week.

just finished: The Rehearsals, about a couple reliving the day before their wedding over and over. It’s a rom com but it has a serious side to it too. As I finished it this morning, I had to wipe a few tears away. I started reading it quite a while back and set it aside, thinking I’d get back to it sooner. But I got there, and I’m so glad I took the trip. It’s a lot of fun to see these characters try to figure out what’s going on and how to make it stop.

currently reading: Last week was rough, and for my lunchtime reading I needed some true escapism. And then I remembered—I had an egalley for the third book in Anthony Horowitz’s Hawthorne series, A Line to Kill (out this October). I love these books. They are pure fun, a modern day Holmes and Watson, and I can’t wait to find out who killed the millionaire and how Anthony is almost going to ruin Hawthorne’s investigation. Maybe I went with this one because Horowitz also writes for the television series Midsomer Murders, and last week I reviewed Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village, so it was on my mind. I’m also listening to the latest Liane Moriarty, Apples Never Fall, about a mother who goes missing and her adult children are perplexed. I’m still trying to figure out what’s going on in this one, but I think I’ll get some good audio book time this week. I’m also reading When Sparks Fly, a friends-to-lovers rom com by Helena Hunting and Beasts and Beauty, a wildly inventive retelling of fairy tales from The School of Good and Evil’s Soman Chainani. If you have a kid who loves a dark fairy tale, put this one on your list.

up next: I got another Scholastic book in the mail, Barakah Beats, and I’m really looking forward to it. The thing about getting one of these Scholastic galleys in the mail is that it brings to mind those days in elementary school when we got to order books. We didn’t have book fairs—either they didn’t have them in my part of the country or I’m just a little too old to be in that generation—but we were sent home with order forms and got to buy some Scholastic books. The little kid in me still gets so happy to see a Scholastic book in the mail, and I so enjoy reading them. For this week, I’m reading their book Room to Dream, the third book in Kelly Yang’s Front Desk universe. In this one, Mia and her parents get to take a trip back to China to see family, and it’s fascinating and heart-warming to take this journey with them!