SEPTEMBER WRAP UP

The month of September started off with a bang, with 17 books read the first week, and wrapped up with 12 books closing out the last week. 

Monthly # of pages: 17,609

Books read this month:  53

Running total # of pages:  190,779

Running total of books read: 547

The screenshots below contain direct links to the books on Goodreads:

Ratings were as follows:

Watch Her Vanish 9/30 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Last Girls Alive 9/29 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Home for the Baby's Sake 9/26 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
First Date 9/26 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Ruthless Girl: An absolutely gripping, gritty crime thriller 9/24 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
No Fear: An absolutely addictive gritty crime thriller 9/25 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
How to Speak Cat: A Guide to Decoding Cat Language 9/23 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Alaskan Christmas Redemption 9/22 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Confessions on the 7:45 9/22 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Serpent's Tooth 9/19 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fearless 9/19 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Furthermore 9/21 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Buy a Bullet 9/21 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thursday's Bride 9/20 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
An Eye for an Eye 9/18 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Faithless in Death 9/19 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Shadows in Death 9/18 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Leverage in Death 9/15 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Connections in Death 9/16 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Vendetta in Death 9/16 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Golden in Death 9/16 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Dark in Death 9/14 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Birds That Stay 9/14 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Mexican Gothic 9/14 ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Under Violent Skies 9/14 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
High Five 9/13 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
A Spy in the Struggle 9/12 ⭐️⭐️
Little Bones 9/11 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ties That Tether 9/11 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Orphan X 9/10 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Secrets in Death 9/10 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Ex Boyfriend 9/9 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
What Became of Us: A heartbreaking and gripping emotional page-turner 9/9 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Christmas Witness Conspiracy 9/8 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Four to Score 9/8 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Into the Burning Dawn 9/8 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rogue Princess 9/7 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Witness 9/7 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Their Silent Graves 9/6 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
A Witness to Murder: An unputdownable cozy murder mystery 9/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
60-Second Brain Teasers Pencil-Free Puzzles: Short Head-Scratchers from the Easy to Near Impossible 9/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Mistress 9/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Great Alone 9/5 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Paradise Cove 9/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Love Scam 9/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Behind the Red Door 9/4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ultimate Betrayal 9/4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Before Nightfall 9/3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Lethal Temptation 9/3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Final Second 9/3 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
The Four Winds 9/2 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
60-Second Brain Teasers Crime Puzzles: Short Forensic Mysteries to Challenge Your Inner Amateur Detective 9/1 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars 9/1 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

My first week's reads are as follows:

My favorite books this week were The Great Alone and The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah. I also really enjoyed To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini. 

Moving on to the second week:

For this week, my favorite books were Ties that Tether by Jane Igharo and What Became of Us by Anna Mansell. 

My week three reads:

    

This was probably my best week of the month because I finally caught up with and finished J. D Robb's In Death series. I even read the latest book in the series, which won't be out until February 2021, Faithless in Death. I love this series and will be listening to it from the beginning starting in January. 

My last week went as follows:

Even though I read 12 books to close out the month, it was a difficult week for me. Actually, the fourth week was only 10 books and the last two above were for the last two days in September. My favorite book of this week was Ruthless Girl by Emma Tallon. It is the 7th book in a thrilling crime series. I also loved First Date by Sue Watson. Watch Her Vanish by Ellery Kane is the first book in a new series and I cannot wait to see what is next because I really loved this one.

Not only did I enjoy my reading this month, which admittedly was less than my average, I also completed a couple of jigsaw puzzles, a hobby I ignored for months.

I just began this puzzle and had a little help from my cat.

Lastly, I am getting back into adult coloring, and have done a few pictures.

To further inspire me to continue coloring, I even  made a video of all of my coloring supplies:

So that was the month of September. I am already looking forward to October, and have spent some time working on my TBR, which is as follows. (images are clickable to Goodreads)

TBR

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW - The Birds That Stay

Title:  The Birds That Stay

Author:  Ann Lambert

Series:   Russell and Leduc Mysteries #1
Publisher:  ECW Press Audio

Genre:   Mystery'Thrillers

Format:   Audiobook

Narrator:  Ann Lambert

Length:   9 hours, 16 minutes

Date of Publication:   September 30. 2020

My Rating:   4 Stars

DESCRIPTION:

In a small village in the Laurentians north of Montreal, a reclusive older woman is found strangled and frozen outside her home. Roméo Leduc, the enigmatic Chief Inspector for Homicide, is one day away from his first vacation in years, and reluctantly answers the call on the case. Roméo suspects a local biker gang is involved in what appears to be a robbery gone awry—or was the old woman a victim of a violent hate crime?

Marie Russell, a 58-year old writer and divorced mother of two, lives next door to the victim. Marie becomes an inadvertent detective when her mother, suffering from dementia, offers a startling clue that links the woman's murder to a terrible incident that happened on Marie's suburban Montreal street in the 1970's. Together, Marie and Roméo discover that the murder goes even further back, to another crime during the darkest days in Hungary at the end of WWII. As they combine wits to find the killer, they are forced to face demons from their own pasts as they confront a cast of characters from the Quebec of yesterday and today; where no one and nothing is really as it seems.

Link to purchase the book

MY THOUGHTS:

In this detective fiction novel we meet two protagonists, Chief Inspector of Homicide Roméo Leduc and Marie Russell, a divorced mother of two. The way the pair meet is that a woman was found murdered near her home and Marie was her neighbor. The victim was in her 80s and now Roméo  must try and find out why she was murdered and find her killer. In cozy mystery fashion, Marie becomes an amateur detective of sorts and ends up working with Roméo.

As the pair dig deep to try and find out why happened, they are shocked to find out that things reach far into the past, as far back as World War II. 

I loved the lyrical writing of this book, the wonderful description of the Laurentian Mountains in Montreal and the excellent character development in what ended up being quite an interesting mystery. While readers are seeing the investigative process, there is a side story going on and as the two converge, the book becomes quite thrilling. It is the backstory that brings out enough details that get behind the murder of the victim. In so doing, the story is delivered in multiple perspectives.

I got The Birds That Stay as an audiobook and it was narrated by the author, Ann Lambert. One thing I loved about this book and her narration of it was the French phrases and her perfect diction when using certain words and phrases. This made this good story even better and it served well to capture my interest from beginning to end.

While it is definitely business first between Roméo and Marie, I can definitely see the draw that they have for each other and look forward to future books in this series where this is explored. Also, they are both in their 50s and that in itself is great because most primary protagonists in books of this type are a decade or two younger. All in all The Birds That Stay is an excellent book and makes the perfect beginning to a new series.

Many thanks to ECW Press Audio and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ann Lambert has been writing and directing for the stage for thirty-five years. Several of her plays, including The Wall, Parallel Lines, Very Heaven, The Mary Project and Two Short Women have been performed in theatres in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia.

She has been a teacher of English literature at Dawson College for almost twenty-eight years in Montreal, Quebec, where she makes her home.