Weekly Wrap Up #weekinreading

Hello Readers! I hope you all are well and had lovely week. Last week started really well with buddy reading Crooked Kingdom with Toni and then my brother’s birthday but by the end of the week my was soured and because of that I didn’t exactly read as much as I wanted to. I started 3 books, read one half other with only 5 chapters and one I’m reading with Toni. I guess I finally found my buddy reader. Hopefully we can find more books in common to read in future.

Last Week I Read

Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #2) by Leigh Bardugo

I’m officially Leigh Bardugo fan. This was fantastic sequel. Me and Toni both loved this book and we didn’t stop to discuss more and loved every twist and turns and characters were amazing. I loved the world and setting of Ketterdam. This was atmospheric, action packed, more intense and dangerous than breaking into Ice Court in Six of Crows.

Currently Reading

Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy with TJ Klune’s signature “quirk and charm” (PW) about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.

When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.

Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.

But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.

When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.

By turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, this absorbing tale of grief and hope is told with TJ Klune’s signature warmth, humor, and extraordinary empathy.

I’m 30% in the book and so far it wasn’t as poignant as I was expecting from what I have heard from reviews. Wallace, for now, sounds like a grown up teenager. He was around 35 or 40 and behaved like teenager booing around Ferryman’s house, making it difficult for other inhabitant of the house. I bet a teenage would make better ghost than him. I already like Hugo and Mei and also Nelson. What I liked most so far was representation of death. I haven’t come across any book that represented death in such amazing way as it was done here. I can’t wait to see where this is going.

Things Are Against Us by Lucy Ellmann

Things Are Against Us is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted author Lucy Ellmann. It is everything you might expect from such a fiery writer – which is to say, entirely unexpected. Bold, angry, despairing, and very, very funny, the essays cover everything from matriarchy to environmental catastrophe to Little House on the Prairie. Ellmann calls for a moratorium on air travel – ‘You’d think a global pandemic would be an opportunity to reconsider the whole crazy business.’ She rails against bras – ‘Men have managed to eroticise bras, but THEY DON’T HAVE TO WEAR THEM.’ She gives Agatha Christie a drubbing – ‘atrocious, but ideal for people with colds’. And pleads for sanity in a world that . . . well, a world that has spent four years in the company of Trump – ‘That big, fat loser of a president, that nasty, sick, terrible, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, goofball and all-round low-life . . .’

Things Are Against Us is electric. It’s vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

I started this in weekend and like I said I was in sour mood and this was slap to reality. It’s collection of essays, written during COVID, about feminism, patriarchal world, and all that women suffered and keep suffering because men and all things men did wrong and how we need matriarchy to save the world with all arguments and footnotes to explain it more with facts and reference text. I can feel the rage of author and definitely not something that could make my mood better.

I’m halfway through this and I will pick it up again once I finish Under the Whispering Door.

Well Played (Well Met #2) by Jen DeLuca

Stacey is jolted when her friends Simon and Emily get engaged. She knew she was putting her life on hold when she stayed in Willow Creek to care for her sick mother, but it’s been years now, and even though Stacey loves spending her summers pouring drinks and flirting with patrons at the local Renaissance Faire, she wants more out of life. Stacey vows to have her life figured out by the time her friends get hitched at Faire next summer. Maybe she’ll even find The One.

When Stacey imagined “The One,” it never occurred to her that her summertime Faire fling, Dex MacLean, might fit the bill. While Dex is easy on the eyes onstage with his band The Dueling Kilts, Stacey has never felt an emotional connection with him. So when she receives a tender email from the typically monosyllabic hunk, she’s not sure what to make of it.

Faire returns to Willow Creek, and Stacey comes face-to-face with the man with whom she’s exchanged hundreds of online messages over the past nine months. To Stacey’s shock, it isn’t Dex—she’s been falling in love with a man she barely knows.

Another laugh-out-loud romantic comedy featuring kilted musicians, Renaissance Faire tavern wenches, and an unlikely love story.

Now you see how difficult Things Are Against Us was! So, I needed something light to read along with it in weekends until Toni was ready to start Under The Whispering Door. And now that I have got Well Matched, it was high to start this.

I’m 5 chapters in the book and I already can see why readers said it was easy to predict who Stacy was talking to from very first chapter because of character description and that cover. There isn’t going to surprise but I still liked chat between them through emails and I’m enjoying to know more about Stacy.

Again I’ll continue this later this week once I finish Under The Whispering Door.

Links I enjoyed

A PARENT’S AND EDUCATOR’S GUIDE TO CHILDREN’S LITERATURE @ Pages Unbound

#Book Review #Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo @ readingtonic

Would You Rather Have a Male or Female Protagonist? @ Eternity Books

Thank you for reading! Let’s chat…

Have you read any of these books or added to TBR? What are you planning to read this week?

Blog | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | Pinterest | Goodreads

Sign up to receive email whenever I publish new post-

---

---