Valentine's Day....blah

   I guess I have come to realize in my older age that Valentine's Day is overrated. I never much cared for the holiday and then I got with someone who tried to make it special but in the end he turned out to be just like the rest of them. He got mad when I spent to much time with my family so we ended things, since then I have been single and I am okay with that. I can buy my own candy if I want it and I don't need a special ordained day to get roses, I mean if I only get them on one day a year then what is the point. I mean surprise me on a random Wednesday with daisy's. And in the end they just die, they don't last forever. I may sound cynical but I really am not I promise. I enjoy the day just because I get to see how happy Emmett and Bryson get when they have their party at school and have cards from their friends. Besides when you are on a diet you cant have all that candy anyways lol.

   I finally finished Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. OMG that took me forever to read but I was not disappointed at the end. We all know that she the author of Gone Girl and that was a fantastic book but Sharp Objects was her debut novel and it was worth the four days it took me to read it. Here's the jest of the story: It follows the story of a young reporter who has long ago left home and only returned once. When terror strikes her home town, she is forced to be the “girl with the In” and return home to catch the “big story” and “make it big” for her small Chicago Paper. What she doesn’t realize is that by returning home, she may be a little more involved in the very crimes she is reporting than she even knows, even before she gets home! Camille is fresh out of a rehab stay for depression and anxiety; she is a cutter but not just any cuts does she put on her body, she cuts words into herself.  When a story hits that two little girls have been murdered in her hometown, her boss wants her to go back and get the scoop. She has to deal with her mother who we learn never loved her when she was little, the fact that her younger sister died when she was little, she has a half sister who has an eerie grip on the town and is known as the "it girl". On top of all this she has to deal with a detective from out of town, trying to solve the murders. As the story progresses we learn more about the relationship that Camille's mother had with the two murdered girls. We also learn that the half sister has a relationship with the tow murdered girls as well. I guess to give anymore details would give the ending away but I was definitely blown away with the book and glad that I stuck it out and finished reading it past page 30.

  

Reading Funk!?!?

Not sure why but I feel that I am in a reading slump. I am currently trying to read Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn but I can't make myself read it, I don't know why but its not one that pulled me in from the beginning. I know that I have to finish it because I cant start it a book and then not finish it all the way through, I guess it's an OCD thing. It's so bad that I am going to have to renew my library books just so I can finish it and have time to read the next book in the Sookie Stackhouse series. Grrr it just makes me mad and I know that it shouldn't.
Okay so I just finished Before I Go To Sleep by S.J Watson. Christine wakes up every morning in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar man. And every morning that man must explain that he is Ben, he is her husband; she is forty-seven years old; and a terrible accident two decades earlier decimated her ability to form new memories. But it's the phone call from a neurologist named Dr. Nash that directs her to her hidden journal. For the past few weeks, Christine has been recording her activities and rereading past entries, learning the facts of her life as retold by the husband upon whom she is completely dependent. As the entries accumulate, Christine finds herself asking more and more questions-about what she missed and what Ben might not be telling her. It took me forever to read this book, I guess because it's slow to start and some what confusing when she would write in her journal it would flip back and forth between what was actually happening to the journal entries.  I started getting into it by part 3 and that's when everything starts to tie in together. I would say I was completely shocked by the twist that the author throws in there I never saw it coming. I have to say that I did not like the character that "Ben" her husband portrays. He just gave me the creeps; like he was deliberately trying to make her not remember the things that happened to her. I really liked Dr. Nash I think he wanted her to remember what happened to her as much as I did. I just found out that this was made into a movie and I am looking for it, so that I can watch it and compare it to the book like I do with every book that is made into a movie. It has Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman so it has to be good.
I have got my menu planned for next week since its my turn to cook. I am doing Grilled Chicken Alfredo with Garlic Toasty and Salad, Chicken Avocado Burritos, Pigs in a Blanket with Chips, the Breakfast Casserole (again it was so freaking good), One Pan Cilantro Chicken and Black Bean Rice, Little Smokies with Mac and Cheese and Ranch Potatoes, and Pepper Jack Chicken and Stuffing. I shouldn't be thinking about food; I am starving and I am stuck at work blah!  

Been awhile...

It feels likes it been forever since I wrote a post, not sure if it really has been or its just me. I have been busy. I have been looking for recipes for not next week but the week afterwards when its my turn to cook. I feel like I am cooking the same things over and over again so I have been looking for new things.
I finished In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware. Lenora is invited to a hen night, which is the equivalent to a bachelorette party, of her friend that she has not seen in ten years after she just up and left her boarding school. She isn't sure why she was invited to the hen night and not the wedding but she decides to go anyways. I mean what should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn. But when night falls and they start playing games truth comes out and Lenora starts to remember things from her past that she has tried so hard to forget. Then they realize that they are not alone in the countryside. Lenora wakes up in the hospital not sure what happened but as she learns why she is there and what happened she realizes why she was invited in the first place.
 I wont be like the other people that read this book and write a bad review because in all honesty it was a good book. They said that it was a dead give away about who was the antagonist of the story false! I had totally picked the wrong killer in the end. I think that just goes to show you that you shouldn't listen to the reviews and read the book and make your own decision. I am excited to hear that it is going to be made into a movie soon, with Reese Witherspoon in the Directors Chair. EEEK!
Now I just finished Sister by Rosemund Lupton. When Bee gets a call from her mother, telling her that her younger sister,Tess is missing, she returns home to London. She is ready to yell at her sister for freaking out her mom and her when she finds out that the police have found a body. The body turns out to be Tess, they say that she committed suicide. But Bee doesn't believe that her sister would do that seeing as she was pregnant. With all the twist and turns that the author throws at you like, the story is told from two views; Bee is writing a letter to her dead sister and at the same time she is telling a detective the story of how she found out what happened to her sister. Bee uncovers the affair Tess was having with a married man and the pregnancy that resulted, and her difficultly with a stalker who may have crossed the line when Tess refused his advances. Tess was also participating in an experimental medical trial that might have gone very wrong.  As a determined Bee gives her statement to the lead investigator, her story reveals a predator who got away with murder--and an obsession that may cost Bee her own life. I won't lie this book took me much longer to read than normal. I couldn't really get into it. I mean the going back and forth between letter to dead sister to telling a detective what actually happened; but in the end you find out that the detective is just a figment of her imagination. I am going to give the author another try and read her book called Afterwards when I go to the library next time.
I also am starting to get things ready for Emmett and Bryson's Goody Bags for Valentine's Day Parties. I love getting to be able to things like this for them! Also I love the Dollar Tree they always have the cutest things for the bags!

Books that I read in 2017

Here is a list of the books that I read in 2017:

 

 January

1.  JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas with Don Davis
2.  Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight
3.  Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica Knoll
4.  Most Likely to Die by Lisa Jackson
5. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
6. How To Hang A Witch by Adriana Mathers
7. All The Missing Girls by Megan Miranda
8. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris
9. The Lost Girls by Heather Young
10. In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

 February

 

1. Sister by Rosemund Lupton
2. Before I Go To Sleep by S.J Watson
3. Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn
4. Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris
5. The Sleepwalker by Chris Bohjalian

 

March

 

1. In the Woods by Tana French
2. The May Queen Murders by Sarah Jude 
3. One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards 



April

 

1. The Night Sister by Jennifer MaMahon
2. The Cellar by Natasha Preston
3. The Cabin by Natasha Preston
4. The Dry by Jane Harper     











May

1. Still Missing by Chevy Stevens
2. The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain
3. The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda
4. Into the Water by Paula Hawkins
5. Gone Without a Trace by Mary Tojuessen

 

 

June

 

1. 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
2. The River at Night by Erica Ferencik
3. The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
4. The Girl Before by JP Delaney
5. That Night by Chevy Stevens
6. The Perfect Girl by Gilly Macmillan
7. The Highway by C.J Box

July



1. Behind Closed Doors by B.A Paris
2. Those Girls by Chevy Stevens
3. Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
4. Always Watching by Chevy Stevens    
5. The Winter People by Jennifer MaMahon
6. Almost Missed You by  Jessica Strawser
7. Joyland by Stephen King

August

1. Final Girls by Riley Sager
2. The Breakdown by B.A Paris
3. The Girls by Emma Cline
4. Heart Stopper by Joy Fielding
5. Lockwood and Co The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud
6. Life after Eli by Rebecca Rupp

 

September

 

1. The Lying Game by Ruth Ware
2. The Best Friend by Shalini Boland
3. The Game You Played by Anni Taylor
4. The Good Girl by Mary Kubica

 

October

 

1. Homecoming by Rob Aspinall
2. Stranger in the House by Shari Lapena
3. Bird Box by Josh Malerman
4. The Sixies by Kate White

November

 

1. The Pocket Wife by Susan Crawford
2. Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
3. The Parts I Remember by A.K Mills
4. The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner
5. The Woods by Harlan Coben