Sunday Post #7 | Santa Claus is Coming to Town

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted here @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and 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

This past week has definitely been the calm before the storm. I completed the food planning as I had hoped I would. I wanted to go maybe with something different for Christmas Eve dinner than what we always cook for holiday meals but ended up going with the traditional. I wish my daughters loved lasagna as much as my husband and I do, but, for some reason, they won’t eat it even though I’ve explained numerous times that it is no different than the cheese ravioli they devour regularly. I think a nice warm cheesy lasagna on Christmas Eve sounds divine.

Christmas Day we will have a big breakfast and then snack on crab dip, shrimp cocktail, maybe deviled eggs, cookies, and leftovers for the remainder of the day. I like snacking better than big meals.

I will start the cookie baking today! Yum!

3 of the 5 cats in residence while my daughters are home (they each have 1 and I have 3) LOVE the Christmas tree way too much. They no longer climb it but they enjoy crunching on the lights. Why? I always picture the cat from Christmas Vacation whenever I catch them.

What are you most looking forward to this week?

This is an interesting interview between a debut author whose first book I recently reviewed and loved-Karolina Dalca, Dark Eyes by M.R. Noble– and a BookTuber/podcaster, Drinking with Authors.

The Facebook NetGalley group I am part of gives great tips on Read Nows and Wish Grants…too good. It’s the reason for my bursting-at-the-seams NetGalley shelf. Irregardless, I couldn’t pass up this Wish Grant opportunity for Lisa Gardner’s new book, but, wow, I have a lot of books to read in the next month.

Description

Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman, a recovering alcoholic with more regrets than belongings. But she spends her life doing what no one else will–searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking.  A new case brings her to Mattapan, a Boston neighborhood with a rough reputation. She is searching for Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished from her high school months earlier. Resistance from the Boston PD and the victim’s wary family tells Frankie she’s on her own–and she soon learns she’s asking questions someone doesn’t want answered. But Frankie will stop at nothing to discover the truth, even if it means the next person to go missing could be her.

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The Night Hawks by Elly Griffiths doesn’t come out until June, and it is your standard request option book. I’ve read another in the series and enjoyed it, so I jumped at the chance to read this one. Luckily, I was approved this week.

Description

There’s nothing Ruth Galloway hates more than amateur archaeologists, but when a group of them stumble upon Bronze Age artifacts alongside a dead body, she finds herself thrust into their midst—and into the crosshairs of a string of murders circling ever closer.

Ruth is back as head of archaeology at the University of North Norfolk when a group of local metal detectorists—the so-called Night Hawks—uncovers Bronze Age artifacts on the beach, alongside a recently deceased body, just washed ashore. Not long after, the same detectorists uncover a murder-suicide—a scientist and his wife found at their farmhouse, long thought to be haunted by the Black Shuck, a humongous black dog, a harbinger of death. The further DCI Nelson probes into both cases, the more intertwined they become, and the closer they circle to David Brown, the new lecturer Ruth has recently hired, who seems always to turn up wherever Ruth goes.

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An email from NetGalley alerted me to this Mystery by Mary Kay Andrews being Read Now. It doesn’t come out until May so I can handle it ❤️. If it looks good, you should head over to NetGalley. It may still be Read Now.

Description

The New York Times bestselling author and Queen of the Beach Reads, delivers her next page-turner for the summer in The Newcomer.

IN TROUBLE AND ON THE RUN . . .

After she discovers her sister Tanya dead on the floor of her fashionable New York City townhouse, Letty Carnahan is certain she knows who did it: Tanya’s ex; sleazy real estate
entrepreneur Evan Wingfield. Even in the grip of grief and panic Letty heeds her late sister’s warnings: “If anything bad happens to me—it’s Evan. Promise me you’ll take Maya and run.
Promise me.” So Letty grabs her sister’s Mercedes and hits the road . . .

WITH A TRUNKFUL OF EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE . . .

. . . and her wailing four-year-old niece Maya. Letty is determined to out-run Evan and the law, but run to where? Tanya, a woman with a past shrouded in secrets, left behind a “go-bag” of cash
and a big honking diamond ring—but only one clue: a faded magazine story about a sleepy mom-and-pop motel in a Florida beach town with the improbable name of Treasure Island.
She sheds her old life and checks into an uncertain future at The Murmuring Surf Motel.

THE NO VACANCY SIGN IS FLASHING, & THE SHARKS ARE CIRCLING . . .

And that’s the good news. Because The Surf, as the regulars call it, is the winter home of a close-knit flock of retirees and snowbirds who regard this odd-duck newcomer with suspicion and
down-right hostility. As Letty settles into the motel’s former storage room, she tries to heal Maya’s heartache and unravel the key to her sister’s shady past, all while dodging the attention of the
owner’s dangerously attractive son Joe, who just happens to be a local police detective. Can Letty find romance as well as a room at the inn—or will Joe betray her secrets and put her behind bars?
With danger closing in, it’s a race to find the truth and and right the wrongs of the past.

In case you missed any of my posts last week, you can find them here:

• Tuesday: Book Review | The Last to See Her by Courtney Evan Tate (psychological thriller)
• Wednesday: WWW Wednesday
• Thursday: Book Review & Giveaway | The Runes of Destiny by Christina Courtenay (historical fiction with time travel)
• Friday: Book Blogger Hop: Do you have any bookish ornaments on your Christmas tree?

I’m taking a partial break for the next two weeks and just posting the scheduled book reviews – not my meme/discussion posts. All posts will resume the first full week in January. 😊

This week, the following reviews are scheduled:

• Tuesday: Book Review | Ten Rules for Faking It by Sophie Sullivan (RomCom ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
• Wednesday: Book Review | Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston (MG Fantasy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
• Thursday: Book Review | The Christmas Swap by Sandy Barker (holiday fiction ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

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And, the following week:

• Tuesday (12/29): Book Review | Wrong Alibi by Christina Dodd (Psychological Thriller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
• Wednesday (12/30): Book Review | Red House by Joss Stirling (Mystery ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
• Thursday (12/31): Book Review | Lore by Alexandra Bracken (Fantasy ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)

This week I watched more of the series I’ve been watching: His Dark Materials, Star Trek Discovery, and The Mandalorian. It was the last show for the season for The Mandalorian. The season finale was both ooh aah and sad. It opened up a bunch of questions about the fate of The Child (Grogu) but that will will be a discussion for another day. This week we will be watching a lot of Christmas classic claymation specials and Christmas movies.

What are your favorite Christmas movies and/or claymation specials/cartoons? (You will find mine in the clip below)

How was your week? Did you read or watch anything good?