Time to wrap up the month! I’m chasing deadlines, so there hasn’t been a lot of time for reading, but I’ve read a few books. Let’s dive in, shall we!
Warning! Deep Water by A.L. Lester
This was part of the World Naked Gardening Day collaboration we did at the beginning of this month. I meant to read them all but time slipped away from me. I enjoyed Warning! Deep Water by A.L. Lester a lot. It’s a gentle tale set in a post-WWII time in a nursery.
It’s 1947. George is going through the motions, sowing seeds and tending plants and harvesting crops. The nursery went on without him perfectly well during the war and he spends a lot of time during the working day hiding from people and working on his own. In the evening he prowls round the place looking for odd jobs to do.
It’s been a long, cold winter and Peter doesn’t think he’ll ever get properly warm or clean again. Finding a place with heated greenhouses and plenty of nooks and crannies to kip in while he’s recovering from nasty flu was an enormous stroke of luck. He’s been here a few days now. The weather is beginning to warm up and he’s just realised there’s a huge reservoir of water in one of the greenhouses they use to water the plants. He’s become obsessed with getting in and having an all-over wash.
What will George do when he finds a scraggy ex-soldier bathing in his reservoir? What will Peter do? Is it time for them to both stop running from the past and settle down?
https://books2read.com/WarningDeepWater/
The Death of Digby Catch by Amy Spector
This is also part of the World Naked Gardening Day collaboration, but it’s completely different from Warning! Deep Water. The Death of Digby Catch is a contemporary mystery, and I loved the setting. Theo and August were great together.
It had been more than eighteen years since August Catch’s uncle Digby had disappeared to the Cape to mourn the death of his sister. So, when August arrives at Arachne’s Loom to collect his late uncle’s things, he wasn’t expecting to find stories of a man larger than life. Or the very real possibility that Digby’s death may not have been from natural causes.
Theo Webb has had few people in his life that he loved, and fewer still he could trust. But the estate groundskeeper, Digby Catch, had been one of them. Returning home for his funeral, he’s thrown together with Digby’s nephew, and the attraction is instant. But so is Theo’s certainty that things surrounding Digby’s death don’t add up and that at least one person isn’t telling the truth.
Discovering a killer is difficult when someone is desperate to keep more than just their identity a secret. And when all the clues point in one direction, even Theo isn’t sure what to think. The two of them must work together if they’re going to solve a murder, and not let the thing growing between them be a distraction.
But then, maybe a distraction is exactly what they need.
https://books2read.com/TheDeathOfDigbyCatch
The Sugared Game by K.J. Charles
This is the second book in The Will Darling Adventures series. I borrowed the first as an audiobook from the library at some point late last year. I listened to the audio version of The Sugared Game too, also from the library, and I’m not one who normally listens to audio, but it was great. I liked this better than the first in the series… or I liked Kim better in this one, at least.
It’s been two months since Will Darling saw Kim Secretan, and he doesn’t expect to see him again. What do a rough and ready soldier-turned-bookseller and a disgraced shady aristocrat have to do with each other anyway?
But when Will encounters a face from the past in a disreputable nightclub, Kim turns up, as shifty, unreliable, and irresistible as ever. And before Will knows it, he’s been dragged back into Kim’s shadowy world of secrets, criminal conspiracies, and underhand dealings.
This time, though, things are underhanded even by Kim standards. This time, the danger is too close to home. And if Will and Kim can’t find common ground against unseen enemies, they risk losing everything.
https://books2read.com/TheSugaredGame
Luckless by Cari Z.
Dragons! It was the reason I picked this one. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Cari Z so far and figured I needed some more dragons in my life. I have to admit, another factor weighing in was that it was short, and I didn’t feel like I had the attention span for something long right now. When I reached the end, I wished it had been a little longer, so that’s good!
Evan Luck is a dragon rider with no dragon. Five years ago, his dragon gave her life defending the monster-ridden remnants of Marble, and ever since, his ability to connect empathically to another dragon had been as broken as his heart. Now he spends his days dodging his disappointed mayor, crafting arrows, fighting off the not-as-legendary-as-they-should-be beasts that’ve overrun America, and just trying to get by in the city of Forge.
But when he meets newcomer Lee Caldwell, Evan thinks his lonely luck might be changing. Lee is the only person in the city who doesn’t blame Evan for his dragon’s death, and he welcomes Evan into his own little family. There’s more to Lee than meets the eye, though, and between his refusal to talk about himself, pressure from the mayor to split them up, and a monster attacking the city’s foundations, Evan isn’t sure he’ll live long enough to learn the truth.
But not learning the truth will almost certainly be fatal, both to Evan and Lee’s budding relationship, and to the entire city.
https://books2read.com/Luckless
Glitter by Ayla Starr
A reread. I was recommending friends to lovers stories and decided to reread it while I was at it. It’s only 2.8k, so it only takes a few minutes, but it’s worth the time. It’s free.
I kept tripping over my feet, tripping over my words, and eventually gave up talking all together. You continued to smile anyway.
https://books2read.com/Glitter
Channeling Morpheus by Jordan Castillo Price
I started rereading the Channeling Morpheus series by Jordan Castillo Price. So far, I’ve read Payback and Vertigo. Wild Bill. Sigh. LOL
The hunt is on.
Pretty young men and women like Michael’s best friend, Scary Mary, are disappearing from underground goth clubs all over Detroit. For over two years, Michael has been scouring the midwest for buried newspaper articles and obscure medical reports, and now he’s finally pinpointed the source of the problem. Too bad he can’t exactly go to the cops and tell them his friend was murdered by vampires. Since it’s his duty to start wiping out the scourge, he’s posing as bait—and he’s got a bag of sharpened hickory stakes to do the job.
Everything should go smoothly, given the amount of preparation that Michael has put into the hunt. He’s got a practiced repertoire of come-hither eyeliner looks and a full blister-pack of the date rape drug Rohypnol. But he didn’t count on Wild Bill showing up.
Wild Bill is a vision in spiked hair and scuffed black leather—exactly the type of guy Michael would have fallen for…if he’d ever had the chance. Unfortunately, with a vampire in his sights, Michael has no time for an actual date. Despite his best efforts, it seems there’s nothing Michael can do to shake Bill loose. Looks like they’re in for a wild, wild ride.
Long, dark hair. Dewy, khol-rimmed eyes. Ripe young lips just made for kissing.
Guys like that are dime a dozen.
Wild Bill likes a little edge on his playmates, and Michael’s got the whole package going on—plus a loaded gun in his leather jacket, and an unquenchable obsession with vampires.
Michael has managed to follow a breadcrumb trail Bill didn’t even know he was leaving, and the kid’s got a few new tricks up his sleeve. Hopefully the latest addition to his arsenal doesn’t include a wooden stake with Wild Bill’s name on it. But anything can happen in the dark.
Ofelia Grand 