The Sunday Post #26 (Blogging Break Edition)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme"

Happy Sunday everyone!  It has been awhile since I last posted.  It has been pretty darn busy as of late and it isn't going to end any time soon.  Reality is starting to set in as my oldest gets ready to graduate from eighth grade in a little over a week.  I say this all the time it feels like, but I cannot believe that he is going into high school already.  He is lifting for high school football after school four days a week.  My daughter's softball is going strong as well.  We have tournaments about every other weekend.  She has improved so much this season - it has been a joy to watch!  The youngest is also very busy with his baseball season.  Soccer ended  for him which was a bit of a relief....so many practices and games with all of this going on!  I'm not complaining though as my husband and I love every minute of watching them play.  But this is why I am largely absent from the blogging world.  My weekends are filled and if they aren't I'm just playing catch up with everything.  I've toyed with shutting the blog down but I just can't do it.  Who else would I talk books with?  Maybe I will be a very spotty blogger for awhile but I will still be here.  I read all of your blogs even if I don't comment that often.  I am taking the rest of this month off.  I have a quiet Sunday planned for today and I'm going to work on scheduling some posts out for next month.  That seems to work best for me so I'm going to try working on June's posts and count this month as a loss.  It happens!

My reading has slowed down to a trickle.  I don't know what my deal is lately but I sure haven't been reading like I usually do.  I think I'm at least ten books behind on my Goodread's challenge.  I'm not stressing though- it is what it is at this point.  At least it means that I'm not as far behind on writing up reviews as I usually am.  So there is a positive!  I'm currently in the middle of three separate books:

Love & Death in Burgundy by Susan C. Shea is one that I've just barely begun.  I'm reading it mainly on my phone but it is my current kindle read.  The publicist emailed me about this one and I liked the sound of it so I couldn't resist downloading it.  It's too early to tell you much more than that other than I'm loving the French setting.

Midnight Rescue by Elle Kennedy is my current print read and a library book.  In the hopes of jump starting my reading, I decided that I would read whatever I wanted to in May.  No "must reads" or anything like that.  I've gotten this book from the library multiple times but finally decided to give it a try.  I'm about 3/4th's of the way through and just haven't sat down and finished it.  Which I really need to do already!  I'm enjoying it for the most part although the subject matter isn't always to read about.  Honestly, that is part of the reason why I still haven't finished as I'm a bit nervous for what is to come.

Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson is also a print read and one that I bought awhile back but am just now finally reading.  I'm about halfway through this one but kind of stalled out on it.  I plan to go back to it as it is good....I'm just being a really moody reader right now.  It happens and I didn't want to force myself to read as this just turns into a reading slump.

New Additions:

Apparently even when I'm not reading I'm quite capable of downloading books from NetGalley.  Sigh....I sure hope the next #COYER challenge is going to be starting up soon.  I'm definitely going to need it.  I'm really hoping that I can turn my reading troubles around pretty soon.  I find that I stress a lot more when I don't read as much.  I'm off to go work on my laundry piles to get this week started off right.  I hope that you are all having a wonderful weekend.  I'll see you in June!

Happy Reading!

Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen (thoughts)

Summary from Goodreads:

"Hannah Monroe's boyfriend, Matt, is gone. His belongings have disappeared from their house. Every call she ever made to him, every text she ever sent, every photo of him and any sign of him on social media have vanished. It's as though their last four years together never happened.

As Hannah struggles to get through the next few days, with humiliation and recriminations whirring through her head, she knows that she'll do whatever it takes to find him again and get answers. But as soon as her search starts, she realizes she is being led into a maze of madness and obsession. Step by suspenseful step, Hannah discovers her only way out is to come face to face with the shocking truth..."

My Thoughts:

This book was completely not what I expected it to be.  It is funny when you go into a book knowing next to nothing but still "think" that you have an idea of what is going to happen.  Obviously that isn't what happened here at all!  I don't know what I was really expecting other than a thriller.  What I got was a thriller but also an intense psychological reading experience.  There was always this feeling while I was reading this book that everything wasn't as it seemed.  As the reader, you don't know who or what you can trust.  That helped to make the book quite a page-turner for me!  I'm going to get into slightly spoiler-ly ground here so stop reading if you don't like possible spoilers and skip ahead to the next paragraph.  I found about halfway through the book that I didn't trust Hannah either.  I also didn't quite care for her either.  I don't think that we are really supposed to do either though.  That is the point of the book- that we don't know or what to believe when it comes to Hannah's missing boyfriend.  I would say that I figured out some of the mystery about 3/4ths of the way through the book.  Not everything though which is why I was unable to set the book down until the very end.  I cannot wait to see what other readers think about that ending.  It is one to discuss, that's for sure!  Actually, I think that there are a lot of different things that you could discuss about this book.  The author isn't afraid to make really unexpected choices when it comes to the story line.  It gives readers a lot of things to mull over and talk about!

Overall, I enjoyed my time reading this book as it was a unique reading experience.  It was different than many of the other thrillers I've read so far this year and I appreciated that.  I still stick with my statement previously that I'm a bit over all of these unlikeable main characters.  Ha!  I can't really complain much as this was too compelling of a read.  I love how willing this author was to take chances with this book.  I'm looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next!  I can easily recommend this one but especially to those readers who love suspenseful and thrilling reads.  A solid four star read for me (if I actually gave star ratings that is).

Bottom Line:  A thriller that kept me on my toes as I didn't know what to expect!

Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book courtesy of the publisher and NetGalley.