Hi everyone!
Welcome back.
I'm Di and today I'm bringing you my March Wrap Up.
March was very busy for me.
As you probably know, I was a co-host in the #MarchMysteryMadness Readathon with Elizabeth
and Troi.
So, we mainly focused on mystery reading in March.
Also, you may be wondering why I am standing in front of a rack of clothes.
It is because I became a LuLaRoe Independent Fashion Consultant in March.
It's kind of a part time job that I'm doing.
So just getting that off the ground and launched was pretty busy for me as well.
I launched at the end of March, so just getting everything ready and up and my first shopping
videos and stuff for my group was pretty hectic.
But that being said, I did manage to read 11 things in March, so I'm pretty proud of
myself.
I haven't read that much for three or four months I think.
But I think having the little discussions and Monday Meetups on Twitter really helped
motivate me to read and make me want to read.
So, I'll go through the novels that I read first and then I'll go through the manga that
I read at the end as usual.
The first book I read for #MarchMysteryMadness was Behind Closed Doors.
This is by B.A.
Paris.
I had gotten this one back in October I think, for signing up for the publisher's news letter.
So I did get this book for free.
Not for an honest review, but because I signed up for their newsletter.
I didn't get a chance to read it until March.
I kinda don't want to give you a synopsis for this book because it is a thriller, but
I will read to you what it says right here on the front, and I think that should give
you enough for you to decide whether or not you want to read it.
So it says "The perfect marriage or the perfect lie?".
I really think that's all you need to know going into this.
For me, the story was pretty predictable a lot of the time.
Grace, I think her name is...yes, Grace is the wife and she has a younger sister that
is a part of the story.
Her name is Millie, and she also has Down Syndrome.
I can't tell you if the representation for someone with Down Syndrome is done well, but
I can tell you that I thought Millie was exceptionally brilliant.
Especially more brilliant than her sister Grace.
There were times where I was wondering to myself why Grace herself never thought of
certain things Millie though of, and I thought that Grace was exceptionally naive a lot of
the time in this story.
I thought it was nice to see that Millie kinda one-up'd her sister several times in the story.
The ending, I kinda predicted but not in the way that it happened.
It was a good ending.
The story wrapped up very nicely.
I'm not sure how many stars I gave this.
I need to check my Goodreads.
One second.
Ok, I ended up giving this one 3 1/2 stars.
So that was Behind Closed Doors.
I think I was supposed to put this in for the #MarchMysteryMadness challenge as author
that is new to you, but I ended up logging it in as my thriller selection.
That could double for either one of those.
I can tell you right now that I did not complete all of the challenges.
That's not a priority for me when I go into readathons, so anyway, that was Behind Closed
Doors 3 1/2 stars.
Then not a part of #MarchMysteryMadness I read The Hobbit by J.R.R.
Tolkien.
I read this because, in April I am buddy reading The Fellowship of the Ring which is the first
book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I'm buddy reading that with my friend Lee from totallee.net You know I've buddy read
with her in the past.
Anyway, she had read The Hobbit last year and I was going to skip this one going into
our buddy read, but a lot of people in our Ravelry group, which is the crochet and Lee's
group (she kinda has her own group for her portrait panels) had recommended reading this
because it gives a lot more of the world and stuff like that.
Now, one of the reasons that I was probably going to skip this is because I have already
seen the movies.
I really really enjoy The Lord of the Rings movies and all three of The Hobbit movies
and I really enjoyed those as well.
And so, I kinda felt like I knew things going into it that I wouldn't need to read this.
I'm glad that I did end up picking this one up.
This one obviously follows Bilbo on his adventure when he finds the ring and his adventure with
this group of dwarves and the dragon.
It was interesting.
I did know a lot of things that was going to happen because I have already seen the
movie.
To my surprise....I did listen to some of this on audio through Kindle Unlimited...there
was a lot of singing that I wasn't prepared for.
I could've done without that.
I'm glad I read this.
I ended up giving it 3 stars.
I can tell you that I probably will not ever read it again, but I'm glad that I did get
through it once in my lifetime.
So, yeah 3 stars and I'll probably stick to the movies.
Then back to #MarchMysteryMadness I read Pretty Poison.
This is by Joyce and Jim Lavene.
This was one of #Book1CoziesClub 's picks that I just wasn't able to finish during the
month that we selected it.
Truthfully, this one took me a while to get through.
This one follows Peggy Lee and she is a widowed, I wouldn't say elderly, but I think in her
senior....early senior years.
She has a hobby of trying to cross breed new plants.
She also has her own florist shop and she teaches class a local university.
She stumbles upon the body of one of the citizens in their town lying face down dead in her
florist shop one morning.
She decides to take it upon herself to investigate, especially because one of the homeless men
that she knows really well, is being accused of the crime and she knows that he couldn't
possibly have done it.
Her son is a police officer.
Her husband was also a police officer, killed in the line of duty.
I kinda really liked the banter going on between Peggy, who is trying to do some amateur sleuthing,
and her son who is like "No Mom, just leave it to the authorities".
For a little bit, her son kinda got on my nerves because he was a little too much, you
know "Stop investigating" not in a nice way.
But after a while you could see how much he really cared about his mom and why he really
wanted her to just leave it up to the professionals.
This one included little bits of information on different types of flowers at the beginning
of each chapter which I really enjoyed.
I have a black thumb.
I kill any plant that I go near.
I can't keep any plants alive, so I don't know how much the gardening tips in this book
will help me, but it did make me interested in trying those out, especially planting bulbs
and things like that.
I had no idea who the culprit was going to be in this one.
I did enjoy this one.
I gave it 4 stars and I will be going on to the next one in this series when I am able
to find it.
I ended up logging this one in as my cozy mystery selection for the #MarchMysteryMadness
challenge.
Then I read Bubbles Unbound this is by Sarah Strohmeyer.
This is the first book in the Bubbles Yablonsky mystery series.
This was also a #Book1CoziesClub pick.
This one follows Bubbles Yablonsky who is a hair dresser and she's also a single mom.
She's kind of trying to find a career other than hair dressing after her divorce.
So she's been going to community college and she's pretty much taken every class that they
offer trying to find anything that she's good at.
So she's on her last set of classes at the community college and they basically tell
her, if this doesn't work out for you then I'm sorry but you have no other options.
This class is a reporting (journalism) class.
So she's trying to become a reporter.
Her teacher also works at a newspaper.
So one day he calls her and says "Hey all of my reporters are out doing other stories
and I really need you to cover this for me.
Do you think that' you're ready?".
And she jumps on it.
So she goes and does the story and coming home from grabbing the story she stumbles
upon a dead body.
Not far away from the body is a prominent person in their town.
So she runs with that story instead, with the prominent person possibly killing this
person that they stumbled upon and it gets her into all kinds of trouble.
In this one there are tips for beauty treatments such as masks or foot soaks or how to do a
pedicure.
There's even a makeup tutorial.
That being said, some of it is really, really dated.
I think you need to be over 40 in order to get some of the things that go on in here.
There's reference to some 80's hair bands I think and even I got lost when those bands
were mentioned.
I have no idea who they are.
The makeup tutorial also was very dated.
You're gonna get any highlighting or contouring in that one, but it was kinda funny to read
through it and see what they recommended as far as how to put on your makeup.
There was a really cool Kool-Aid hair dying tutorial in here that I think my daughter
might want to try out, but we haven't actually done it yet.
Yeah, this book was entertaining.
Bubbles is a very entertaining character.
I did kinda know who the culprit was about half way through the story I think.I think
the thing that bothered me the most about this story was not that it was dated in some
areas but Bubbles kinda falls for this guy in this book (as main characters do in cozies)
and thankfully no love triangle, however I don't understand her infatuation with him.
He's hardly in the story at all and to hear her be like "Oh swoon this guy, oh swoon this
guy" I just, I don't understand it.
That's probably the thing that got under my skin the most about this story.
That being said I will continue to the next one.
I ended up giving this one 3 stars.
I read other books...other books...I've read one other Sarah Strohmeyer book, not a cozy
mystery series but a stand alone.
I think....I can't remember which one it was at this point.
It was either The Sleeping Beauty Proposal or The Cinderella Pact or something like that.
It's one of those two.
One of them I've read, one of them I haven't and I still have on my shelf.
But I do like Sarah Strohmeyer's writing style which is why I had put this series on my To
Read list long long ago.
Yeah, I will be reading onto the next one, 3 stars, and I ended up logging this one in
for First in a Series or Sequel to a series challenge for the #MarchMysteryMadness challenges.
The next book I read was also not for #MarchMysteryMadness but it was The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco.
This came out on March 7th I believe.
I did receive an ARC from the publisher and NetGalley.
It was my first ARC through NetGalley so Thank You to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Fire for
allowing me the opportunity to review this.
This story follows Tea and she is a bone witch or an asha and her specialty is to bring back
people from the dead.
The term you're probably more familiar with is necromancer.
In this world, children at the age of 13 go through this ceremony that's called the Heartsglass
ceremony.
People wear glass hearts as a pendant and the heart is filled with smoke of different
colors, so normal people have red or pink smoke and then witches, depending on what
type of witch you are, have different color smoke.
You're not supposed to get your powers, if you have any, until this ceremony.
Tea's other sisters are all witches of different types so it's presumed that she going to have
some kind of ability.
In this world, there are these creatures called daeva.
From the description it kinda sounds like a more gruesome type of sphynx, so they're
creatures that have the heads of this and the body of that, but they're gruesome creatures.
Tea's older brother Fox is recruited to serve and he gets killed on one of the missions
to defeat a daeva.
So his body is brought back to their town and as they're doing the burial ceremony that's
when Tea's powers activate.
It's enough of a phenomenon that a really well known bone witch comes to her town to
collect Tea and she takes Tea with her to teach her how to be a bone witch.
In this world there aren't very many bone witches.
They're very rare and what they do is very important as they are really the ones that
get rid of the daeva.
This story really follows Tea as she learns how to become a bone witch and hone her abilities
and all of the training that she goes through.
This was a very slow story.
It was enjoyable.
I enjoyed reading it.
As soon as I read the first chapter I had questions in my head about how Tea got the
the situation that she's in.
The story does go back and forth between past and present, so we see Tea as she is today
and we see Tea as she is growing up, learning how to become this bone witch.
Several of the things in the story do remind me of perhaps what a geisha's training would
include.
I don't think the story is very Japanese in nature, which is part of the reason why I
am kinda confused about the story.
Lots of the terms weren't explained.
I'm still not sure what culture these words come from.
I perceive them as Chinese but I think the author is Filipino, so there's a little bit
of disconnect in my head as I read these things.
Also it wasn't until sixty something percent into the book that we're told that Tea's name
is pronounced Tay Ah, so for 63% of the book, I was pronouncing her name in my head as Tee,
because that's how it's spelled T-E-A.
We're not told it's Tay Ah until 63% into the book and so that was also kind of disjointing
to me.
I had a hard time with that, especially because every time I would read her name after that,
I would have to stop, go back, re-read it and say no, it's Tay Ah, not Tee.
So that kind of slowed down my progress through the book.
I think another problem I had with this is that, yeah ok, there were some exciting times
in this story but they were far and few between.There was nothing really keeping me wanting to come
back to the story.
Yeah it was a nice story to read.
I did enjoy it while I was reading it but there was nothing saying, hey you need to
go back to that book and find out what's going on.
That also made it a slower read for me.
I though for sure I'd have this book read by time it came out but it just didn't happen.
I did end up giving it 3 stars.
I will be continuing on to the second one in the series when it does come out because
at the very end of this book, things really started to pick up and I'm very curious to
see what happens.
Not only that I think because all of this back story has been done and explained and
now that you've got this foundation, the story should progress very nicely and at a faster
pace on the next installment.
So yeah, I ended up giving this one 3 stars.
And the final novel I read in March was Blueberry Muffin Murder by Joanne Fluke.
This is the third book in the Hannah Swensen series.
I last read book 2, which was Strawberry Shortcake Murder I think, a couple years ago.
So it's been a while since I've visited these characters.
The reason I picked this one up is because I needed another audiobook to listen to.
I like to listen to audiobooks in the morning while I'm getting ready for work.
This was available on OneClickDigital which is offered by my library.
That's why I decided to go ahead and borrow it.
This one follows Hannah as she investigates the death of a popular TV chef I guess you
call her?
This TV personality was found dead in Hannah's cookie shop and so Hannah is personally invested
in this investigation because her shop has been closed down, as it is the scene of a
crime.
Now, Hannah is in charge of baking a bunch of cakes and cookies for this Winter Festival
that her town is having and not being able to have access to her ovens or her shop or
anything like that is really debilitating to what she needs to get done.
So, of course as she always does, she goes ahead and gets herself into the investigation.
I enjoyed this one.
Again, this one did have a love triangle.
Still kinda irritated with love triangles.
I kinda feel Hannah likes one better than the other.
In this book particularly it was pretty obvious to me that she felt more towards one than
the other - like true feelings, not just like is attracted to.
Just her going back and forth between two guys is not interesting to me.
I want her to pick one and be done with it but I hear that's not going to happen for
a while, so....that's kind of putting me off this series.
I do enjoy reading all of the recipes.
I have yet to try making one of them myself, but the story, I thought, was interesting
enough.
I kinda put together who the culprit was towards the end, but I still found the story enjoyable.
I ended up giving this one 3 stars.
I will probably go on to the next one because I have collected almost all of them and I
do enjoy seeing all the recipes and hearing her talk about each type of cookie or in this
one especially, blueberry muffins.
So yeah, 3 stars.
Ok, so that's all of the novels I read during the month of March.
Now on to the manga.
I don't have these to show you because I had to return them to the library but I will put
a little picture here.
So, the first two volumes I read were Welcome to the Ballroom Volumes 1 & 2 by Tomo Takeuchi.
This one follows a high school student named Tatara Fujita and he is just not good at anything.
He is on his way home and he gets bullied by this group of other high school kids and
someone comes up to save him.
Turns out that this guy is the owner of this struggling dance studio.
He invites Tatara to come and take dance lessons.
At first Tatara's like yeah no, absolutely not.
But while he is at the studio, one of the girls from his school that he is attracted
to shows up, and it turns out she is a competitive ballroom dancer and is pretty darn good at
it.
So he kinda becomes interested in taking the lessons.
Turns out he kinda has a knack for it himself.
I really enjoyed these two volumes, but I do think that it would be more enjoyable as
an anime.
I believe it is coming out as an anime.
I think that's what my daughter told me, so I'm really curious to see what I think of
the episodes that cover these two volumes that I read are like.
Because of all of the dance movements, sometimes it was hard to figure out what he was doing
just by trying to read the movements and the way that the dancers were being drawn.
Nonetheless, I did enjoy the story line a lot and seeing Tatara kinda grow into becoming
a dancer.
So yeah, I ended up giving both of these volumes 4 stars and I will be continuing on with the
series and of course will be watching the anime when it is released.
The second manga I read was volume 13 of Bride of the Water God by Yun Mi Kyung.
You know that I have been reading this one for a while.
It is a Manhwa, so a Korean comic.
It follows Soah as she gets sacrificed to the Water God by her town as they had not
had rain.
So they think that by sacrificing Soah, they'll be able to get some rain.
Soah, instead of dying she becomes a welcomed member in the realm of the Water God.
So the story kind of follows her trials and tribulations being a human in a world full
of gods and her relationship with Haebek, the Water God.
Things kinda took a turn in this volume.
As of right now when I'm filming this, I have already read volumes 14 & 15.
So I'm probably just going to tell you the same thing because these three volumes stories
still connect in these volumes.
But I am still enjoying it a lot.
The artwork again, still beautiful.
I hear there's going to be a Korean drama adaptation coming out soon, so I'm really
excited for that.
I've already seen some of the announcements as to casting.
I'm not familiar with very many of the people that have been cast, but I am nonetheless
looking forward to seeing the Korean drama.
It has been a while since I have immersed myself in one.
Yeah, still enjoying this series a lot and I ended up giving volumes 13, 14, & 15 I might
as well tell you, all 4 stars as I have done with all of the other volumes in this series.
Then I read volumes 3 & 4 of Black Butler by Yana Toboso.
This follows Sebastian, who's the Black Butler and he's in charge of keeping the young Earl
Phantomhive or Ciel safe from people who are after him.
As I told you before, Ciel is an orphan and he has inherited this large estate.
Not only that but the corporation his family is in charge of.
Side note, he also does little jobs for the Queen, so he's kinda James Bondy, kinda not.
In these two volumes we're into a different story line from the prior two volumes.
I did enjoy these two volumes, not as much as the prior two volumes, but it's still enjoyable
for me.
Like I said, I have already watched the anime so I did already know what was going to happen.
I did fly through these two volumes.
I ended up giving both of these volumes 3 stars and will probably be continuing on since
my daughter has already reserved the next two volumes.
Since we'll have it in my house, I might as well read them right?
So that's everything that I ended up reading in March.
Let me know if you've read any of these or if you participated in #MarchMysteryMadness
I really enjoyed doing the Monday Meetups on Twitter and I think we're going to try
to make that a continuous thing like maybe every first Monday of the month or the last
Monday of the month.
But let me know if you might be interested in chatting with us about the mysteries that
you read.
I will link our Twitter page down in the description box below as well as our Goodreads group.
We do host the #Book1CoziesClub discussion threads in the Mystery Madness Goodreads group
when it's not March, so please come by and join us in those reads.
I'll also link my shopping group below in case you're interested in checking out what
LuLaRoe has to offer and what I am currently carrying in my inventory.
So yeah, that does it for me this month.
I hope you're all doing great, and until next time Take Care & Smi-Le Always.
Bye!
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