Marian Krick

Hello everyone + Happy New Year! January is off to a good start. I recently finished reading Death Checked Out by Leah Dobrinska and I really enjoyed it' It's a cozy mystery set in the small town of Larkspur, Wisconsin. The main character is named Greta and she works at the local library with her two friends Iris and Josie. The three of them work together to solve a murder when Greta is accused of being involved in the crime.

I loved the small town setting and the characters were great. Officer McHenry seemed like a tough cookie at first but I like how he softened towards Greta (and her friends) by the end. You can read my full book review here if you're interested.

Now I'm reading The Golden Spoon, a mystery novel about the contestants on a baking competitions TV show called Bake Week. For the week, 6 contestants will be competing at a Vermont Manor to win The Golden Spoon. I think it's loosely based off The Great British Baking Show. My Mom really likes that show. I've never seen it but maybe I'll have to check out a couple of episodes after I'm done with this book.

It's interesting so far. I'm a couple of chapters in and the story is being told from different perspectives. All of the contestants have different backgrounds and different baking expertise. Some of them seem more competitive than others so if there's a murder going down, I'm sure there will be some prime suspects.

January TBR List

This month I'm working on reading some of my review copies from Netgalley. I'd really like to get to an 80% review rating on their site by the end of the year, so reading and reviewing is going to be a priority in 2023.

Here are the books I plan to finish this month.

1. The Golden Spoon by Jessa Maxwell (Current read, Book #2 of the year)
2. The First Date Prophecy by Kate & Danny Tamberelli
3. Charlotte Illes is not a Detective by Katie Siegel
4. How Can I Help You by Laura Sims

I was at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago and I couldn't resist buying each of my parents a book for Christmas. See what I got them below!

For my Mom...

Hooked by Sutton Foster

From the 2-time Tony Award-winner and the star of TV’s Younger, funny and intimate stories and reflections about how crafting has kept her sane while navigating the highs and lows of family, love, and show business (and how it can help you, too).

Whether she’s playing an “age-defying” book editor on television or dazzling audiences on the Broadway stage, Sutton Foster manages to make it all look easy. How? Crafting. From the moment she picked up a cross stitch needle to escape the bullying chorus girls in her early performing days, she was hooked. Cross stitching led to crocheting, crocheting led to collages, which led to drawing, and so much more. Channeling her emotions into her creations centered Sutton as she navigated the significant moments in her life and gave her tangible reminders of her experiences. Now, in this charming and poignant collection, Sutton shares those moments, including her fraught relationship with her agoraphobic mother;  a painful divorce splashed on the pages of the tabloids; her struggles with fertility; the thrills she found on the stage during hit plays like Thoroughly Modern Millie, Anything Goes, and Violet; her breakout TV role in Younger; and the joy of adopting her daughter, Emily. Accompanying the stories, Sutton has included crochet patterns, recipes, and so much more!

Witty and poignant, Hooked will leave readers entertained as well as inspire them to pick up their own cross stitch needles and paintbrushes. (from Amazon.com)

For My Dad...

Fleishman is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Toby Fleishman thought he knew what to expect when he and his wife of almost fifteen years separated: weekends and every other holiday with the kids, some residual bitterness, the occasional moment of tension in their co-parenting negotiations. He could not have predicted that one day, in the middle of his summer of sexual emancipation, Rachel would just drop their two children off at his place and simply not return. He had been working so hard to find equilibrium in his single life. The winds of his optimism, long dormant, had finally begun to pick up. Now this.

As Toby tries to figure out where Rachel went, all while juggling his patients at the hospital, his never-ending parental duties, and his new app-assisted sexual popularity, his tidy narrative of the spurned husband with the too-ambitious wife is his sole consolation. But if Toby ever wants to truly understand what happened to Rachel and what happened to his marriage, he is going to have to consider that he might not have seen things all that clearly in the first place.

A searing, utterly unvarnished debut, Fleishman Is in Trouble is an insightful, unsettling, often hilarious exploration of a culture trying to navigate the fault lines of an institution that has proven to be worthy of our great wariness and our great hope. (from Amazon.com)

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I hope that they like my choices! I picked my Mom's book because she is a knitter and a crafter. And I picked my Dad's book because he has been watching this show on Hulu, and he goes camping a lot so I thought he could take it with him.

xo Marian