Reading or Listening with Covid #BookReviews #SundayBlogShare

After managing to avoid any Covid infection or the many mutations of the original pandemic, I managed to catch what might be the KP3-1-1 variant. Who knows? Reading the symptoms, they all sound the same and I can verify it has kept me in bed for just over eight days with fever, chills, massive headache, body aches, abdominal pains, diarrhea, loss of appetite, and debilitating fatigue. I haven’t had a flu since…the early 90s.

Unfortunately, the CE came down with it the following Thursday, and thankful our son was staying with us to help, appears to be coming down with it now as well. Definitely, the hard way to lose those extra pounds I’d been working on and researching the calories I should be consuming to lose one pound per week at my age, at this point should have lost well over that. I don’t advise this method of weight loss.

Of course, I’ve never been one to just lay there miserable so I started in earnest trying to catch up on some reading and listening, and between long stretches of fevered slumber, either read until I got sleepy again or listened into catatonia.

I had to eventually DNF the following two books. Both sounded good, one an audiobook and the other from NetGalley. Absolutely loved the cover of The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club.

It’s about motorcycles?? YES, please!

Plus, it an [Amazon] Editors’ pick of the Best Books of the Year So Far 2024.

How can it miss?

I think I gave up at about 25%. Was it the narrator? No, think it was more the monotonous page after page of petty dialogue. How could I not love this book? I’ll provide the blurb—and let you make the decision.

The flu?

Or just not for me and you loved it.

Book Blurb:

It is the summer of 1919 and Constance Haverhill is without prospects. Now that all the men have returned from the front, she has been asked to give up her cottage and her job at the estate she helped run during the war. While she looks for a position as a bookkeeper or—horror—a governess, she’s sent as a lady’s companion to an old family friend who is convalescing at a seaside hotel. Despite having only weeks to find a permanent home, Constance is swept up in the social whirl of Hazelbourne-on-Sea after she rescues the local baronet’s daughter, Poppy Wirrall, from a social faux pas.

Poppy wears trousers, operates a taxi and delivery service to employ local women, and runs a ladies’ motorcycle club (to which she plans to add flying lessons). She and her friends enthusiastically welcome Constance into their circle. And then there is Harris, Poppy’s recalcitrant but handsome brother—a fighter pilot recently wounded in battle—who warms in Constance’s presence. But things are more complicated than they seem in this sunny pocket of English high society. As the country prepares to celebrate its hard-won peace, Constance and the women of the club are forced to confront the fact that the freedoms they gained during the war are being revoked.

Whip-smart and utterly transportive, The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is historical fiction of the highest order: an unforgettable coming-of-age story, a tender romance, and a portrait of a nation on the brink of change.

Book Details:

Genre: Friendship Fiction, Small Town & Rural Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
ASIN: B0CH3QR9WX
Listening Length: 15 hrs 20 mins
Narrator: Helen Simonson, Fiona Hardingham
Publication Date: May 7, 2024
Source: Local Library
Title Link(s): The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club [Amazon-US]
Amazon-UK

 

As with The Hazelbourne Ladies, I gave No Forgetting Providence: Obsessed Intentions (Book 2) just about 23% before I gave up. I was reading this one and must admit it put me right back to sleep every time I picked it up. The problem was the rereading to remember where I’d left off and finally decided I’d reread enough already.

Book Blurb:

World-famous archaeologist and confident cruise-ship captain Dr. Steven (DR) Ray arrives back in Wall Lake, Michigan, confident the assassination attempt on him and his passengers was a rogue event. Along with his girlfriend, he sets about healing and charting course toward a new future. Then she breaks their engagement the morning after he proposes. Now, he’s again navigating the murky waters of love.

But when the obsession to take down DR proves relentless, love’s the least of his problems. Soon, he and a friend from the cruise are scrambling for their lives as a powerful member of Circle and a hater of the POTUS wants them dead. And Providence-both the boat and his destiny-seems to haunt him as he sails deeper into their ugly plot.

Can DR and his friends survive the Chicago PD and several government agencies with orders to shoot to kill? What about the mercenaries paid to take them down? Find out in Obsessed Intentions Book 2-No Forgetting Providence.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and publisher through @NetGalley that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts and once again, wonder if it was the state of illness or the book was just boring. I just couldn’t get into it. If you enjoy some spirituality in the novels you read, you may very well enjoy.

Book Details:

Genre: Dramas & Plays, Religion & Spirituality
Publisher: Hightower Publications
ASIN: B0D4X5643T
Print Length: 356 pages
Publication Date: March 4, 2025
Source: Publisher and NetGalley
Title Link(s): No Forgetting Providence: Obsessed Intentions (Book 2) [Amazon] 

Maybe I shouldn’t have been reading or listening at all, but I did subsequently find several books that held my interest through sleeping/waking/coughing bouts. These reviews will be coming as the length of time actually sitting in a chair increases over the next week. So they say everyone’s experience is different: This is Day 9 and I’m finally eating some yogurt and soup. The CE is a few days behind me—we’re both seniors, but… Progress, huh?

©2024 V Williams