currently reading: well, since this week is Valentine’s Day, I thought I would go with some rom coms. I’m reading for tomorrow The Valentine’s Hate, about childhood enemies who grow up and pretend to be dating. It’s actually pretty funny. I’m having a lot of fun with it. I’m also reading Take the Lead, about a dancing competition. The professional dancer is paired with a TV survivalist, and sparks fly (of course). But again, lots of fun. But for Tuesday, I’m reading Ruby Spencer’s Whisky Year. Honestly, I was going to let this one pass me by, based on the cover and the title. They’re both a little . . . meh. But the publicist reached out to me and sold it to me as foodie fiction, so I thought I’d give it a try. And it’s amazing! So ignore the cover, ignore the title (except to know what book to pick up) and just read the first few pages. I was hooked almost immediately. A burned-out food writer from Manhattan decides to sell everything and head somewhere else for a year to write a cookbook. What she finds is a small cottage in the Scottish Highlands, with delightful locals and tall tales and a lot of whisky to get her by. Honestly, they had me with Scotland, which is absolutely my happy place, but they also got to me with a smart, funny, self-deprecating, resourceful main character. I’m looking forward to spending more time with this one.

And speaking of Scotland, this week is the release of the new Hamish Macbeth, Death of a Traitor, which brings us to the second theme of the week: murder. Besides spending time in Scotland, I’m heading to Copenhagen for the latest Werner and Korner procedural from Katrine Engberg. I love these books, but they just keep getting darker. The murder in this one is particularly gruesome, and the chapters where they find the first half of the body and the medical examiner’s lab analysis of the body is rough. But thankfully, the story from there focuses on the people who may be involved, so even when the find the other half of the body (slight spoiler: the right half), it’s not as bad. But it is making me think of the Monty Python’s The Lumberjack Song (thanks, Korner).

up next: being happy that the Superbowl is over, so that people will stop talking about it and we can get back to what’s really important. Books. And soccer. And cake. And, of course, cats.