By Tessa @TessaTalksBooks Posted on

Sunday Post 56 | Holiday Festivities

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

Virtual Cookie (Recipe) Exchange

hosted by Staci Troilo

Don’t you just love cookie swaps???

And, don’t you love any opportunity to make your favorite cookies???

On Thursday, you post your recipe and cookie photos on your site. Message Staci the link in advance so she can have a master page with links to all our posts.

It’s not quite as good as a real cookie exchange would be, but we can all end up with a bunch of new recipes to try. Bonus if you share a story or tradition with your post.

The link to Staci’s post is here. Please join us as I would love to discover lots of new tasty holiday treats.

The photo is linked to the registration page or you can use:
https://www.mystgalaxy.com/earnshaw121521

from NetGalley

Dee Ernst’s Lucy Checks In is a delightful work of romantic comedy about a disgraced hotel manager who travels to Rennes to rebuild a hotel and her own life in the process. Lucia Giannetti needs a fresh start. Once the hotel manager of a glamorous NYC hotel and intimately involved with the hotel’s owner, Lucy had her entire future planned out. But when the owner disappears, taking millions of dollars with him, Lucy’s life as she knows it falls apart. Two years later, forty-nine years old and unemployed, Lucy takes a job in Rennes, France to manage the Hotel Paradis. She pictures fur quilts and extravagant chandeliers, but what she finds is wildly different. Lucy is now in charge of turning the run-down, but charming hotel into a bustling tourist attraction. Between painting rooms, building a website, and getting to know Bing, the irritatingly attractive artist, Lucy finds an unexpected home. But can she succeed in bringing the Hotel Paradis to its former glory? Witty and heartfelt, Lucy Checks In is an inspiring and feel-good novel about reclaiming your life, finding love, and creating a home in places you never thought possible.
Part detective novel, part ghost story, Erin Kate Ryan’s brilliant debut asks a tantalizing question: What really happens when a girl goes missing? Mary Garrett has a gift for finding missing girls, a special kind of clairvoyance she calls “the sight.” Lured by a poster and the promise of a reward, she arrives at a small town in the Jim Crow South to discover that not one but three girls have vanished—two of whom are Black, and whose disappearances have gone uninvestigated outside their own community. She sets out to find them. As it turns out, Mary is herself a “missing girl.” In another life, she was a Bennington College sophomore named Paula Jean Welden, who disappeared one night in 1946. The case captivated the nation’s imagination, triggering front-page headlines, scores of dubious sightings, and a wave of speculation: Who was Paula Jean, really, and why had she disappeared? As Mary’s search for the three missing girls intensifies, so do the glimpses of Paula Jean’s other possible lives: She is a circus showgirl hiding from her past, a literary forger on the verge of being caught, a McCarthy-era informant in love with a woman she meets in a Communist cell. With the signals multiplying, the locals beginning to resent her presence, and threats coming from all sides, Mary wonders whether she can trust anyone—most of all herself. Both a captivating mystery and a powerful thought experiment, Quantum Girl Theory spins out a new way of seeing those who seem to disappear before our eyes.
Therese Anne Fowler’s It All Comes Down to This is a warm, keenly perceptive novel of sisterhood, heartbreak, home, and what it takes to remake a life at its halfway point, for fans of Ann Patchett and Emma Straub. Meet the Geller sisters: Beck, Claire, and Sophie, a trio of strong-minded women whose pragmatic, widowed mother, Marti, will be dying soon and taking her secrets with her. Marti has ensured that her modest estate is easy for her family to deal with once she’s gone––including a provision that the family’s summer cottage on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold, the proceeds split equally between the three girls. Beck, the eldest, is a freelance journalist whose marriage looks more like a sibling bond than a passionate partnership. In fact, her husband Paul is hiding a troubling truth about his love life. For Beck, the Maine cottage has been essential to her secret wish to write a novel––and to remake the terms of her relationship. Despite her accomplishments as a pediatric cardiologist, Claire, the middle daughter, has always felt like the Geller misfit. Recently divorced, Claire’s secret unrequited love for the wrong man is slowly destroying her, and she’s finding that her expertise on matters of the heart unfortunately doesn’t extend to her own. Youngest daughter Sophie appears to live an Instagram-ready life, filled with glamorous work and travel, celebrities, fashion, art, and sex. In reality, her existence is a cash-strapped house of cards that may crash at any moment. Enter C.J. Reynolds, an enigmatic southerner ex-con with his own hidden past, who complicates the situation. All is not what it seems, and everything is about to change.

Do you ever find yourself distracted by plastic surgery? The plastic surgery that Brook Shields has had was a bit distracting to me in A Castle for Christmas but I enjoyed the story. I, particularly, loved the Scottish setting.

  • Monday, December 6: Book Review of A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw (5-stars) – psychological thriller
  • Tuesday, December 7: Blog Tour Book Review of The Girl of Dorcha Wood by Kristin Ward (3.5 stars rounded up to 4-stars) – YA Historical Fiction
  • Wednesday, December 8: WWW Wednesday
  • Thursday, December 9: Book Review of You’ll Be The Death of Me by Karen McManus (5-stars) – YA Thriller
  • Friday, December 10: Book Blogger Hop
  • Saturday, November 11: Under Lily’s Umbrella
  • Tuesday, December 14: Book Review of The Maid by Nita Prose (Psychological Thriller – 5 stars)
  • Wednesday, December 15: WWW Wednesday
  • Thursday, December 16: Book Review of When You Get A Chance by Emma Lord (YA RomCom – 5-stars)
  • Friday, December 17: Book Blogger Hop
  • Saturday, November 18: Under Lily’s Umbrella

How was your week – bookish or otherwise?

35 Replies to “Sunday Post 56 | Holiday Festivities”

    1. Lady Tessa says:

      Aren’t they? They take their own special planning too – which ones, how many, etc… You have to have everyone’s favorites on hand ❤️

      Like

      1. Lori says:

        I miss helping my mom make the sugar cookies. It was so much fun, plus I seem to be the only person who knows how much icing a sugar cookie needs! (Spoiler: It’s a lot of icing. A. Lot.) 😂

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Lady Tessa says:

      I’m going to post one that’s non-gluten free and how I change to make it gluten free.
      It looks like you have Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour 600 g available in the UK – I would try that or a blend that is primarily rice flour (rice flour tends to make a lighter end product.) It’s all experimenting ❤️❤️❤️

      Like

      1. CJR The Brit says:

        I do have rice flour and my son gets a prescription from the doctors for gluten free flour. Mine just all merged together so I think they were too moist!!!

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Lady Tessa says:

          Yeah, it sounds like it. Maybe too much butter or whatever liquid you used in the batter. Gluten-free cooking is not for the unadventurous, is it?

          Like

  9. D. Wallace Peach says:

    Those cookies look delish, Tessa. I love seeing all the books over here, and yes, Brook’s looking a little off, isn’t she? Hmmm. Now to check out some reviews. Happy Holidays!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Lady Tessa says:

      I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees that. I just kept staring at her trying to figure out exactly what the problem is. Lol.

      Liked by 1 person

  10. WendyW says:

    I also have Lucy Checks In. I hope we both enjoy it! I love cookies and baking cookies, but I don’t have anyone to eat them.

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Carla says:

    I have been baking for a week, so will have to pick one to showcase. I agree, I found Brooke Shields’ face a bit disconcerting, but I loved the movie as well. Enjoy your new books, Tessa.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Lady Tessa says:

      I just kept starting at her face marveling how it made her look so different at times and wondering exactly what she had done. Lol. I bet your house smells divine from all that holiday baking.

      Liked by 1 person

  13. Teri Polen says:

    We actually watched the Brooke Shields movie – hubby is a sucker for that type. I also enjoyed the setting, but the story not so much. I did like seeing Cary Elwes again – it’s been a while.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Lady Tessa says:

      The story kind of had weird pacing. It felt slow but it was also making big leaps in the plot at various points. Strange.

      Liked by 1 person

  14. Jonetta (Ejaygirl) | Blue Mood Café says:

    I watched A Castle for Christmas, too, and loved the Scottish setting. I couldn’t figure out what it was about Brooke Shields’ look but I kept looking for something as she looks so different from her earlier pictures. Never even thought of plastic surgery!

    Liked by 1 person

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