just finished: I finally got a chance to listen to The Stranger at the Wedding by A.E. Gauntlett. Guys, this one is bananas! It’s about a woman named Annie, who fell for a guy on the train that she saw day after day. She was getting up her nerve to talk to him when he disappeared. She didn’t know what had happened to him. Until years later, when she bumped into him outside of a grief group, where she had been going over the loss of her younger sister. Meeting again, Annie’s feelings for him came rushing back, and they started dating. But he was still grieving the loss of his wife, so they struggled. But when all the pieces fall into place, it’s just insane. If you want a good twisty, dark thriller for your spooky season reading, you’ll want to take a look at this one.

currently reading: I’ve started reading The Knife Before Christmas, the latest Kate Carlisle Shannon Hammer mystery with a holiday theme. Shannon and her construction crew are hired to help add a Victorian-style carnival game midway for the holiday festivities at a local hotel that goes all out for Christmas. The hotel owners, the Garrisons, have a long history in the town and with Shannon and her father. I haven’t gotten in far enough to know who gets killed or why, but between the Garrisons’ grown children and their spouses, there are certainly a lot of possible victims and suspects. This one should be lots of holiday, murdery fun.

I’m also reading Hate Follow, about Whitney, an influencer mom of 4, and her relationship with her teenaged daughter Mia. Mia doesn’t want her life or her father’s death used as social media fodder, and when her mother doesn’t respect her boundaries, Mia sues her. I love the books with the tea on influencers and social media messes, so I am looking to get deeper into this story.

up next: Rivals by Jilly Cooper. Hachette imprint Forever was offering up a handful of copies of this to help promote the miniseries on Hulu (here in the states; if you’re not in the US, try Disney+). It’s about competitive television producers in the 1980s, and the book is classified a “bonkbuster,” which was a genre popular in the ‘80s. What I didn’t realize is that it’s also a brick, this paperback just over 700 pages, the audiobook over 27 hours. So I may not be able to get started until next weekend, but it should still be lots of fun. Read it, watch it, do both, whatever. Just don’t miss out on the fun.