#audiobookreviewer – Rosepoint Publishing

The Astral Library: A Novel by Kate Quinn #AudiobookReview #MagicalRealismFiction

in Magical Realism Fiction

Book Blurb:

From New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn comes a gorgeously written fantastical adventure which poses the question: Have you ever wished you could live inside a book? Welcome to the Astral Library, where books are not just objects, but doors to new worlds, new lives, and new futures. Beautifully performed by award winning narrator, Saskia Maarleveld.

Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives…inside their favorite books.

The Librarian takes a dazzled Alix under her wing, but before she can escape into the pages of her new life, a shadowy enemy emerges to threaten everyone the Astral Library has ever helped protect. Aided by a dashing costume-shop owner, Alix and the Librarian flee through the Regency drawing rooms of Jane Austen to the back alleys of Sherlock Holmes and the champagne-soaked parties of The Great Gatsby as danger draws inexorably closer. But who does their enemy really wish to destroy—Alix, the Librarian, or the Library itself? Includes a bonus conversation with Kate Quinn, Saskia Maarleveld, and Tessa Woodward (editor of The Astral Library).

My Review:

From the creative mind and the commanding master of her craft comes the author from a whole new direction no one saw coming. I devoured her 20^th Century books and looked for more—jumped on this one and noted Saskia Maarleveld as narrator. An absolute powerhouse of audiobooks. And a departure from anything I expected. Note to Self: Must read the book blurb in addition to author and narrator.

Stretching my chops as a reader into fantasy, a genre heaven knows I don’t often do.

But, hey, we’re talking Kate Quinn and I must admit it is an uncommon and unique experience. Written well, haven’t you put yourself in a book? FMC Alexandria “Alix” Watson has learned to do that. Within the Boston Public Library, she often escaped her fierce struggle for survival as a foster care kid. But this time, she also happens upon a hidden door that opens to another library, a librarian, and books. These books are different.

Alix is a great character, full of the feisty intelligence we are used to in a female protagonist from a Quinn novel. There are some strong support characters as well. Appreciated the fashion descriptions of the different periods; the sights and sounds all come alive under Quinn’s pen.

I loved escaping to Boston. Drank in the historic atmosphere, the buildings, the people, food and drink, then to be whisked away to London or…? Alix is not the only one who has found a refuge from tedious lives, however. Having made a choice to escape into the book of their choice, some may not have turned out to be the glorious and safe haven they expected.

The antagonist appears to be the library board, which is ready to change the rules, and it’s a fight Alix eagerly tackles. The storytelling blurred just a bit for me there. There is a modicum of romance and the character of the Astral librarian is a hoot. I loved the shout-out to the various authors of the classic novels. It’s a prose-filled exploration of simultaneous alternate lives.

Heavy into fantasy, metaphysical, and Quinn books, you’ll enjoy the departure of her famously popular historical fiction novels. I enjoyed it, but must admit it won’t be my favorite Quinn book.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Magical Realism Fiction, Fantasy Action & Adventure, #Literary Fiction
Publisher: William Morrow
Narrator: Kate Quinn, Saskia Maarleveld
Release Date: February 17, 2026

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Kate Quinn is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction. A native of southern California, she attended Boston University where she earned a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Classical Voice. She has written four novels in the Empress of Rome Saga, and two books in the Italian Renaissance, before turning to the 20th century with “The Alice Network”, “The Huntress,” “The Rose Code,” “The Diamond Eye,” and “The Briar Club.” She is also a co-author in several collaborative novels including “The Phoenix Crown” with Janie Chang and “Ribbons of Scarlet” with Stephanie Dray, Laura Kamoie, Eliza Knight, Sophie Perinot, and Heather Webb. “The Astral Library,” releasing in 2026, is her first foray into magical realism. Kate and her husband now live in Maryland with their two rescue dogs.

audiobooks — Graphic courtesy combination Canva and Freepik.com

Rosepoint Reviews – March Recap – April Weather is no Joke

Rosepoint Review Recap-March-Hello April!

Definitely going to be a wet and wild April with lingering thunderstorms from March—a crazy pattern with warm temps to 70s plunging 40 degrees in a few hours. Normally, I’d be starting seedlings, thinking garden, planning appropriate veggies and symbiotic flowers.

First goal: Take down that poor tree in front of our kitchen window that only had one viable limb left. The CE surprised me by getting a big jump on it before I was even dressed and by mid-afternoon we had it down, limbs in the garbage bin, area raked and swept. What a job! I’m hoping it will be a good spot for some water plants. I tried lotus flowers last year, but failed to provide sufficient sun. This may be too much sun. We’ll see.

Old tree on the left and after it's cleared. — Old tree on the left–tree is gone on the right.

Hail, same spot — Hail one day later, same spot.

March is birthday month for me and I was celebrated with a visit from our daughter, granddaughter, and great-grandkids. The little ones are so much bigger than last we saw them, the youngest still a baby. They got to have a tour of Chicago from our son who works there, a short and sweet visit, but so happy to see them all.

Of course, we also celebrate Reading Ireland Month in March and I participated once again, experiencing a recommendable movie, a wacky newly released series, as well as ebooks and audiobooks. We made our usual corned beef and cabbage (better this year), which also made delicious leftovers—the CE’s fav.

The CE and I read or listened to a total of ten books in March. As always, the major source of our books is the library (audiobooks and ebooks). (We also review books from NetGalley and author and publisher requests.) The links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

Rosepoint Reviews - March Recap

Singing Bones by S G Ullman (CE review-publisher request)
Countdown by Sara Driscoll
The Burning Soul by John Connolly (CE review)
Murder in an Irish Churchyard by Carlene O’Connor

Audiobooks

See How They Hide by Allison Brennan (mini-reviews)
My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney (mini-review)
Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare
The Compound by Aisling Rawle
To the Moon and Back by Karen Kingsbury
The Storied Life of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Favorite Book of the Month

Can I cheat just a bit and nominate a movie instead of a book? What if the movie was based on a book–written by Declan Power? The Siege of Jadotville was compelling and powerful.

Favorite for March – The Siege of Jadotville

My Reading Challenges page…March was just too busy to update. My Goodreads count is still off, but landing page shows 40 of a challenge of 175.

To all my dear readers and fellow bloggers, thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts and reviews. I’m trying to up my bloghopping and hope to see you soon.

To the Moon and Back: A Novel by Karen Kingsbury #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Baxter Family Collection

Book Blurb:

Brady Bradshaw was a child when the Oklahoma City bombing killed his mother. Every year, Brady visits the memorial site on the anniversary to remember her. Eleven years ago on that day, he met Jenna Phillips, who was also a child when her parents were killed in the attack. Brady and Jenna shared a deep heart connection and a single beautiful day together at the memorial. But after that, Brady never saw Jenna again. Every year when he returns, he leaves a note for her in hopes that he might find her again.

This year, Ashley Baxter Blake and her sister Kari Baxter Taylor and their families take a spring break trip that includes a visit to the site to see the memorial’s famous Survivor Tree. While there, Ashley spots a young man, alone and troubled. That man is Brady Bradshaw. A chance moment leads Ashley to help Brady find Jenna, the girl he can’t forget.

Ashley’s family is skeptical, but she pushes them to support her efforts to find the girl and bring them together. But will it work? Will her husband, Landon, understand her intentions? And is a shared heartache enough reason to fall in love?

My Review:

It would appear that I managed to come in well after Book 1 and may be the final book in this series. My first with the author and treading on romance as well as Christian romance. As you will know, I’m not big on romance.

Federal building following the Oklahoma City bombing — Photo courtesy Wikipedia*

This installment remembers the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, perpetrated by two anti-government extremists, who parked their rental truck laden with explosives in front of the nine-story federal building. An act of domestic terrorism, it destroyed more than a third of the building as well as damaging other buildings and destroying vehicles.

Jenna and Brady both lose their parents in the tragedy but serendipity puts them together at the site when they are 17. It’s Brady who leaves her a letter at the site every year since then, hoping to meet up again.

Ashley Baxter learns of the story when she meets Brady on a Spring Break with their children and feels she would be able to help find Jenna. Together Jenna and Brady shared a memorable day, the heartache, the loss, the memories, and their progress to overcome the disaster. They also shared numbers, but despite Brady’s return each year, has not been able to link up again. Perhaps they were meant to be together, maybe not, but it’s been ten years and Brady is about to give up.

The author writes with tender prose around the catastrophe, exploring the characters’ stories with her view on the position of God in such a nightmare. Who would have committed such an act? Why?

Ashley appears to be the protagonist, though there are other POVs, and Ashley is heavily bent on finding Jenna. The attention away from her hubby creates friction with him, but she’s pretty sure she is on God’s mission.

I loved the story of the Survivor Tree and the annual sapling giveaway—that’s a beautiful tribute—and an amazing tree. This is a story of love, redemption, and the journey to overcome monumental, life-changing loss with the power and support of God.

I enjoyed parts of the story, even if a romance, but got a little weary of the sermonizing as well as the struggle with hubby who it appeared backed down and apologized fairly quickly.

And Jenna and Brady. Really? I thought it stretched credulity a bit and the ending too Hallmarky (I even think I heard violins). I’m a fan of happy ever after. I’m sure you remember that. But this one pushed me into disbelief and I couldn’t buy it. Not sure I missed too much by coming in on this one when I did, but I’m thinking this is not a series for me.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Contemporary Christian Romance, Religious Romance, Christian Mystery & Suspense Romance
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Narrators: January LaVoy, Kirby Heyborne

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Karen Kingsbury, #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, is America’s favorite inspirational storyteller, with more than twenty-five million copies of her award-winning books in print. Her last dozen titles have topped bestseller lists and many of her novels are under development with Hallmark Films and as major motion pictures. Her Baxter Family books are being developed into a TV series slated for major network viewing sometime in the next year. Karen is also an adjunct professor of writing at Liberty University. In 2001 she and her husband, Don, adopted three boys from Haiti, doubling their family in a matter of months. Today the couple has joined the ranks of empty-nesters, living in Tennessee near five of their adult children.

Audiobooks with earphones and earbuds

*Wikipedia photo

The Compound: A Novel by Aisling Rawle #AudiobookReview #readingirelandmonth26 #TBT

GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, THE NEW YORKER, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, OPRAH DAILY, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY

Amazon Best Literature & Fiction

Winner for Readers’ Favorite Science Fiction (2025)

I am reviewing this audiobook for Reading Ireland Month. It is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. Please use the hashtags #readingirelandmonth26 or #begorrathon if you choose to participate.

Book Blurb:

Lily—a bored, beautiful twenty-something—wakes up on a remote desert compound, alongside nineteen other contestants competing on a massively popular reality show. To win, she must outlast her housemates to stay in the Compound the longest, while competing in challenges for luxury rewards like champagne and lipstick, plus communal necessities to outfit their new home, like food, appliances, and a front door.

Cameras are catching all her angles, good and bad, but Lily has no desire to leave: why would she, when the world outside is falling apart? As the competition intensifies, intimacy between the players deepens, and it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between desire and desperation. When the unseen producers raise the stakes, forcing contestants into upsetting, even dangerous situations, the line between playing the game and surviving it begins to blur. If Lily makes it to the end, she’ll receive prizes beyond her wildest dreams—but what will she have to do to win?

Addictive and prescient, The Compound is an explosive debut from a major new voice in fiction and will linger in your mind long after the game ends.

My Review:

Boy, can I pick’em. It’s the whole reality show thing and I’m not a fan. Don’t watch them. But Lily has decided to participate in a reality show, one she is familiar with, remembers some of the history, knows or can anticipate what to expect.

I missed that it was a blurred dystopian type world, perhaps sometime in the near distant future. That world outside is crappy. Lily is ready to escape—anywhere. And “anywhere” becomes a vague and obscure feature. She is one of twenty vying to become the last person standing, espousing the mantra “Nothing to lose. Everything to gain. Winner takes all.” She is pretty but vacuous.

The Compound - UK cover — The Compound – UK cover

The narrative captures the support characters through Lily’s eyes with her set of morals (or lack of them), ideologies, thirst, and competition. No one is viewed “what you see is what you get” as everyone might have ulterior motives. Who is next to stab you in the back and step over your body to climb the ladder?

From playing musical beds and graphic details to plotting the next exit candidate, this one left me cold, battling to get through, and tired of the language, the loss of humanity, and any real characters in which I could engage or invest. The call to Lily’s mum at the end did it for me. That’s just sad.

Well, mercy. Maybe you’re a fan of reality TV. This might work for you. Or dystopian? This might work for you. But not a book for me. Shouldn’t have chosen or failed to DNF. Cannot recommend.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Two point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Dystopian Fiction, Dystopian Science Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Lucy Boynton
Release Date: June 24, 2025

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Aisling Rawle was born in 1998 and raised in County Leitrim in the West of Ireland. She now lives in Dublin. The Compound is her first book.

March is #ReadingIrelandMonth

Thirst Trap: A Novel by Gráinne O’Hare #audiobookReview #ReadingIrelandMonth26

Reading Ireland Month 2026

Reading Ireland Month (The #Begorrathon) returned for the twelveth year in March and will be my eighth. It is hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. Please check out her page and you’ll find all kinds of suggestions for reading, listening, or music on her spotify list. (Of course, I always recommend my favorite Irish podcast, Marc Gunn’s Irish and Celtic Music Podcast.)

Use the hashtags #readingirelandmonth26 or #begorrathon26 if you plan to participate.

I’ve dug right in and started reading, listening, and viewing all things Irish with some success. I usually try for an ebook or two, an audiobook or two, and maybe a movie or series I can glean from our lone streaming service, Netflix. I previously posted a graphic of my initial list, but I’ve since refined it to note updates.

Today I’ll review Thirst Trap by Gráinne O’Hare

Book Blurb:

Sometimes friends hold you together.
Sometimes they’re why you’re falling apart.

Harley, Róise, and Maggie have been friends for ages. After meeting in primary school years ago, the women are still together, spending their nights on the sticky dancefloors of Belfast’s grungiest pubs. Each woman is navigating her own tangle of entry-level jobs, messy romantic entanglements, and late nights, but they always find their way back to each other, and to the ramshackle house they share. And amidst the familiar chaos, the three are still grieving their fourth housemate, whose room remains untouched, their last big fight hanging heavily over their heads.

The girls’ house has witnessed the highs and lows of their roaring twenties—raucous parties, surprising (and sometimes regrettable) hook-ups, and hellish hangovers. But as they approach thirty, their home begins to crumble around them and the fault lines in their group become harder to ignore. In the wreckage, they must decide if their friendship will survive into a new decade—or if growing up sometimes means letting go.

Brimming with heart and humor, Thirst Trap is an exuberant ode to friendship, to not having it all figured out, and to ordering just one more round before heading home.

My Review:

Okay. Well, that cover, if nothing else, might have been the hint that this book would not be for me and I ignored it.

Maggie, Harley, and Róise are pushing thirty, still share a house and a pet turtle. They had a fourth in their little clique, Lydia, who died in a car crash leaving lingering guilt and grief that now sits somewhere in the gut along with increasing alcohol intake and unsuccessful therapy session angst.

Each are educated and battling a number of little narcissistic quirks; Maggie with panic attacks, Harley the profound pessimist, and Róise, who loves her boss who in turn is clueless.

Thirst Trap by Grainne O'Hare — Thirst Trap cover – UK

It’s a dispassionate insight study of women at odds with facing a mature age and the folly of maintaining an immature stance on life. Too much booze, too many hangovers, unfulfilled love lives, lack of direction, and too few goals or the attainment of any.

Close friends whose friendship should have matured along with their age, but didn’t. They use Belfast’s nightlife as the glue that keeps them together until the reality of the loss of Lyndia’s death anniversary slaps them upside the head.

They have one life, not promised tomorrow, and what are they doing with it?

It’s a lot of tell, not show, but I gotta give it to the narrator, Susan Crothers, who kept the dialogue dynamic with realistic and appropriate voice inflection and kept me listening. Sarcasm, yes, but sarcasm has often been offered as a joke, but in veiled and targeted verbal irony. In this case, not humor, pushing barbed satire. And I didn’t find it that funny.

I realize my problem is probably a generational as well as cultural one with this novel. So, take my comments with a grain of salt and if young, swinging adult fiction is your vibe, go for it.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own.

Rosepoint Publishing: Three Stars

Book Details:

Genre: LGBTQ+, Coming of Age Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Susan Crothers
Release Date: November 4, 2025

Title Links:

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: Gráinne O’Hare is a writer from Belfast based in Newcastle upon Tyne. She received a Northern Debut Award for Fiction from New Writing North, and was awarded funding by the Arts Council for the development and completion of her first novel. Her short fiction has been published in the London Magazine, Extra Teeth, and Gutter. She has a PhD on eighteenth-century women’s life-writing from Newcastle University. [Photo courtesy Goodreads]

Reading Ireland Month

The Storied Life of A J Fikry: A Novel by Gabrielle Zevin #AudiobookReview #bookclub #TBT

Book Club at the Y - March

Editors’ pick Best Literature & Fiction

Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Fiction (2014)

Another one I would not have chosen on my own. I love the way this book club is introducing me to good contemporary literature with multi-layered characters in unusual and unique settings. This one on fictional Alice Island, which is a ferry ride from Maine. A movie followed in 2022 by the same name and filmed on Cape Cod.

My Thoughts

The loss of his wife has left A J Fikry in a spiraling downward trajectory to ruination. He owns a bookstore, which he now detests, is losing money, doesn’t eat properly or at all, and drinks to excess. He rejects the publisher’s sales rep and suffers the loss of a rare book apparently stolen that he’d counted on.

Then someone leaves a two-year-old in his store with a note begging him to take care of her.

I had a difficult time with this audiobook. Not because I couldn’t find the beauty in the prose or the lessons it serves, but I found it profoundly emotional sometimes to the point of being depressing. Nor did I feel the ending made it all okay. Yes, I understood the character’s rationale better, but it didn’t make it a happy ever after.

I found a deeper investment in the precocious child, the policeman, and Ismay, and wasn’t thrilled with the direction turned for A J. The twist did catch me by surprise, but, again, only seemed to me to be another sad point in the well-plotted novel.

Many thanks to our local well-stocked library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to and review this audiobook. The thoughts expressed here are my own as well as my interpretation of the consensus of the book club participants.

Book Club Thoughts

The publisher provides specific questions for discussion at the book club, ably kept on topic by the facilitator.

Discussions by the ladies found that most were delighted with the book and cited the short length as a positive. They thought the choice of the bookstore an excellent one made by the mother for a number of reasons. They enjoyed the character of the sales rep, Amelia Loman, while I thought it didn’t particularly sound like an obvious counterpart. The book club ladies were in agreement about the way the character of Ismay is written and got into a lively discussion when the twist is revealed. And…there again, they thought it was a satisfactory ending while I was left with what I thought was an unfulfilling conclusion.

Book Club Rating

It should be noted that this novel was also picked up as a major motion picture in 2022, starring Lucy Hale and Kunal Nayyar, and is now showing on Netflix. I was surprised by how much the movie borrowed from the book, particularly dialogue. There is a small plot omission but the addition of the time stamps helped since the narrative spans some sixteen years and wasn’t immediately obvious in the book. The acting was great and I was surprised that I found more emotion in the movie than the book. It’s a good adaptation and the small nuanced changes smoothed transitions.

Book Details:

Publisher: Highbridge Audio
Narrator: Scott Brick
Publication Date: April 1, 2014

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Amazon-UK | Kobo

The Author: GABRIELLE ZEVIN is the New York Times and internationally best-selling author of several critically acclaimed novels, including The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry and Young Jane Young. Her most recent novel is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a selection of the Tonight Show’s Fallon Book Club, the winner of the Goodreads Choice Award, a finalist for the Wingate Prize, and one of the best books of the year, according to the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Entertainment Weekly, the Atlantic, Amazon.com, Oprah Daily, Slate, NPR, and many others. The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is now a feature film with a screenplay by Zevin. Her novels have been translated into forty languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Two Audiobook Mini-Reviews – #audiobookreviews – #PoliceProcedural – #DomesticThrillers

Chosen and listened to prior to gathering titles for Reading Ireland Month, I read both of these authors before and thought I’d try again. I do enjoy both police procedurals and domestic thrillers. (Title links are to Amazon.)

See How They Hide by Allison Brennan

Publisher: Harlequin Audio
Narrator: Suzanne T. Fortin
Quinn & Costa #6

My Thoughts

I read Book 3 in the Quinn & Costa series, The Wrong Victim, which didn’t totally excite me, and then read two additional books in her other series, both of which I found much the same.

This installment discovers victims some distance apart, left in the same dispassionate position, covered with red poppies. The main characters of Kara Quinn and Matt Costa are okay, though I can’t seem to become thoroughly engaged with either or their interest in each other.

When they find Riley Pierce, it appears they will get the answers they seek and will be able to get to the bottom of it soon. But it’s not so easy and I was a little dismayed to discover it was another of the cult-type plots. You can check in but you can never leave.

Riley is sympathetic but doesn’t seem to get a lot of slack from Kara. The antagonist is truly despicable. I wrestled with the pace of the narrative, MCs I didn’t love and a story that feels a bit trite and overdone. The suspense is rather deluted and the setting tends to change location often.

A fan may enjoy this one, or find it a bit of a slog, but in my case, having sampled several of her series now, I’m not sure I’ll try another.

My Husband’s Wife: A Novel by Alice Feeney

Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrators: Bel Powley, Henry Rowley, Richard Armitage
Amazon Charts #11 this week

My Thoughts

Oh, yes, I’ve read Feeney before, too, the last one being Beautiful Ugly. I have to give it to Finney for coming up with some unusual plots. On the surface, this novel appears to be one of the old switcheroos we’ve read before, but this is Feeney. Maybe not.

Eden comes home from a run sans purse, money, or ID and discovers her home, Spyglass, appears to be occupied by someone who looks like her but denied entry.

Her key won’t fit, her husband denies knowing her, her daughter does as well, and the wife looks like her. Sound familiar? That’s where it ends. A favorite character, Olivia Bird (Birdy) is in town on a related matter, gets in on the whole debacle and works to help clear the mystery.

Prepare for the twists.

It’s chaotic, building suspense, building drama, building unreliable narrators. Who do you trust? No one.

Feeney is an author who is hit or miss for me. The number of twists and disbelief this one creates just blows the whole thing out of the water. Contradictions, some nonsensical dialogue. The conclusion gets so nutsy for me I have to just shake my head and give it a “whatever.”

I greatly enjoyed the narrators who helped me hang in there until the end.

Many thanks to my local library for providing me with the opportunity to listen to these audiobooks. Any opinion expressed here is my own.

Rosepoint Reviews – February Recap – Starting in March, Longer Days, Irish Tales

Around here, March can’t decide whether lion or lamb, so one day will be sunny, warm and 62 degrees and the next cloudy, cold, windy and a high of 31 degrees Fahrenheit. The first week of March is forecasted for just that—snow by Monday, t-shirts by Friday. Nice we can enjoy so many activities indoors now with our participation in the YMCA. They’ve got an amazing facility as long as the weather allows us to get there. Pickleball? No…we used to play racquetball. (I loved racquetball but it got a bit rough.)

The Y started a six-week course in food preparation for seniors who face health issues and I started that, thinking I could always learn something new, especially in regard to the CEs cardiac issues. About the same time, the CE started working with our son again this year for the AARP tax program normally held on Saturdays at the library during tax season. This year on taxes on Friday has forced us to change our exercise schedule.

You might remember that in the January Recap, I mentioned the quest to find and understand the welcome uptick in visits and views. I spent quite a bit of time working on SEO, creating the SiteMap for the website, and following all the Google guides and site verification services I could find or implement. Apparently, there had been a problem in there that when finally cleaned up and properly executed resulted in an amazing, albeit temporary surge in traffic.

My freebie doesn’t allow for Google Analytics or the SEO tools granted an upgrade or Business Plan. Still, March bears a best yet stat of 39K for the month, one day with over 11K, and an average now of 1.4K views per day. I’m pretty happy with that and working hard to keep or even improve on that, just sorry it took so many years to finally get it. Us older folks have to learn everything the hard way!

I have no idea how those figures compare with your own blogs and I am hoping it might constitute an average. Please let me know, or perhaps there is still something I should be doing?

Rosepoint Recap

The CE and I read or listened to a total of twelve books in February. As always, the major source of our books is the library (audiobooks as well as ebooks). We also find books in NetGalley and enjoy author and publisher requests. The links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

Rosepoint Reviews - February Recap

June Baby by Shannon Garvey
Want to Know a Secret? By Freida McFadden (audiobook)
The Mediator by Robert Bailey (CE review)
Wanna Get Lucky? By Deborah Coonts
The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown (audiobook)
Hard Time by Logan Ryles (CE review)
Reverse by Steven F Havill (CE review)
Flight Path by Suzanne C Carver
Nightshade by Michael Connelly (audiobook)
Three Audiobooks Mini-Reviews:
Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley
The Wife and the Widow by Christian White
If You Ask Me by Betty White

Favorite Book of the Month

Another book I’d have never chosen but was the Y Book Club of the Month, The Boys in the Boat. Yes, I enjoyed Nightshade but for sheer heart-stopping tension, I have to give it to The Boys.

Favorite for February – The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

My Reading Challenges page…I’m still having problems with the Goodreads Challenge tally, one total noted on my Goodreads landing page and another in the widget. Therefore, it’s either 25 completed so far in a challenge of 175 or 19 according to the widget. Getting it fixed obviously won’t happen. Challenge page is all caught up.

What's Next?

Last month I was looking for romantic book suggestions and this month it’s St. Patty’s Day suggestions. In March, I’m reading Irish — moody atmospheric landscapes, wit and wisdom delivered with a dark sense of humor, layered families, and stories that resonate. I’ll be scouring 746 Books for ideas but will gladly entertain your selections as well. Would love to see your recommendations—drop me a quick comment, please!

To all my dear readers and fellow bloggers, my blogging buddies, I do so appreciate your visits and comments and appreciate each and every one of you.

March is #ReadingIrelandMonth