audiobooks

The Final Target, The Keeper, Yesteryear, Buckeye—Audiobook Mini-Reviews -–#HistorialFiction #Suspense #TuesdayBookBlog

Four short reviews of audiobooks on one page; short, sweet, and that hopefully will pique your interest. (Links on individual covers are to Amazon.)

Quite the variety of genres in the books below as well as authors but all unique and recommendable! Give a peek into each.

Take a peek!

The Final Target by Nora Roberts
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Narrator: January LaVoy

Arden is a successful debut author being stalked by a wannabe. Or is it worse than that? Dustin is totally obsessed. Following an assault, he is sent away but absence only appears to make his heart angrier and more determined. He’ll find her wherever she went.

Arden is a strong, independent character and meets Gideon in her new location. They form a loving, relaxed relationship that doesn’t overpower the suspense dwelling in the background.

Including Dustin’s POV provides a sense of tension and desperation. Of course, he feels he is intellectually superior and has everything planned out. She’ll be his to do as he bids.

It’s a suspense thriller that’ll be hard for you to put down. Of course, I’ve long been a Nora Roberts fan. You too?

Suspense fans? Thriller fans? It doesn’t get much more thrillerish than this one. Totally recommended.

The Keeper by Tana French
Publisher: Penguin Audio
Narrator: Roger Clark

This is the third book in the Cal Hooper trilogy (read #2, The Hunter back in 2024 and The Searcher before that). If you read Tana French, you know her books can tend to get…lengthy. That is because she loves to write long-winded Guinness-driven discussions by the good ole boys in the local pub. I’ve said before, she might be a master of thrillers, but she is definitely a mistress of dialogue. I listen to the audiobooks to get that Irish flavor and obviously I can listen to it for quite some time.

As with the first and second, this tale is wholly atmospheric. You can live between these pages, lost in the characters. Even if you didn’t start with the first installment, these characters will grow on you. Well, maybe not everyone, but I learned to love them all and watched with interest the growth and maturity of Trey. Cal Hooper is the ex-Chicago PD detective well out of his element but thrust into the center of Ardnakelty business anyway.

This time, young, soon-to-be-engaged Rachel Holohan goes missing and turns up in the river. Dead.

The gossip runs rampant. The whole village in arms and divisive in theory. Deeply descriptive prose has you feeling the chill of the fog, the collision of sentiments. Such an immersive story and sad to see the end to this series. If you haven’t read it yet—yeah—it’s long but delightfully easy listening.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Rebecca Lowman

A debut novel that sparked a lot of controversy over whether it was meant to be a satire–or not. What you thought you were getting, you weren’t. I was interested in the premise, not really a new one, but definitely deceived.

Natalie has created a lifestyle and made herself a controversial influencer by adopting a “traditional” family, living the good life. But it’s a front and a front she detests. That includes the kids (all six of them), her husband, the whole scene, her eight million followers (particularly “the angry women.” If only they could see behind the scenes. That kitchen? A front. All those homecooked meals? Yeah, she has a cook, nanny for the kids, and the farm is not particularly idyllic either.

It’s okay if she doesn’t like anyone. The reader doesn’t like her either. She’s nasty and whiny.

So does she get her comeuppance when she wakes up in 1855 to an old farmhouse where the bathroom is a hike outside, the kids are dirty and she must (gasp!) care for them, her husband is exhausted and worn and never was exciting in bed. She has to cook on what? Wash clothes in a wash tub? Are you kidding?!!

Well, this could have been a real lesson in contradiction: a culturally, politically, morally flawed individual. She created this version of herself. Can’t she also change it? End it? Is she trapped in 1855, a victim of herself?

I found it a difficult and long audiobook, easily distractible. Maybe I’m just too tired or too short on time to dig for the deeper meanings. You may love it; it’s rather cerebral.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Michael Crouch

The novel spans several decades and generations and focuses on Cal Jenkins and Margaret Salt. The sympathy all goes to Cal, the empathy to Margaret. And yes, the novel a long one. I actually started this one once before and lost the loan before I could finish it. On a wait list, took a while to come back around.

WWII only highlighted Cal’s childhood deformity, denying him participation in the fight when all the others left. He marries Becky, who practices her gift as a spiritual medium, which annoys Cal and drives a wedge between them.

Margaret was abandoned to an orphanage and her early life consisted of foster placements until she got to an age where she struck out on her own and discovered how cruel the world really could be. She eventually marries a gay man who finds the love of his life. It isn’t her.

These two flawed main characters find each other in a novel of multiple themes, including love and loyalty. While it paints a transparent picture of post-war middle America, written in beautiful emotional prose, I found it incredibly sad. Four lifetimes, the sacrifice, and the loss.

A literary hangover with these four characters, their decisions, obligations, strengths, and weaknesses in a look back during a historically turbulent time. You may enjoy the authenticity and the major events noted during the decades, but this one didn’t provide sufficient grief relief for me.

The first three of these books were released during the second quarter of this year all receiving acclaim. Buckeye achieved a Goodreads Choice Award as a Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Historical Fiction in 2025.

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

Audiobooks

Rosepoint Reviews – June Recap – July Heat and Firecrackers

June first ushered in a whole new lifestyle and schedule around here with the sudden emergency we experienced with the CE.

Notified that his Loop (cardiac implant) went off, he was sent to Emergency at our nearby hospital where he ended up with a whole new device. Unfortunately, he proved to be allergic to the wound adhesive and round two occurred one week later. He got his staples out two days before his birthday. Needless to say, I’ve taken a blog sabbatical. His estimated full recovery is expected to be eight weeks.

Now with the heat dome and temps at the century mark, the water garden isn’t looking too healthy and my mosquito fish (the Rosy Red Minnows) agreed it was too much for them. The Mystery snails are quite happy with each other, but it’s a struggle to keep that water temperature below 85^o F and that won’t work for them either, sad to say. We don’t usually experience these temps, so the whole thing must obviously be my fault.

The veggie garden doesn’t need a whole lot of attention except for some water. Going to the YMCA is out for the CE, although I might try to do one or two days a week, including book club next week and Bingo the next. One of our Navy buddies has passed away, a friendship of almost sixty years, so our son will be driving us to Texas. Yes, Texas in July. From the frying pan to the fire.

The CE and I did have six books we struggled to finish and I to post. The links on the titles are to our reviews that also include purchase information.

Rosepoint Reviews - June Recap

eBooks

Abigail Trench by Randy Overbeck (buddy read with the CE)
Mayhem in the Mountains by Jane Loeb Rubin

Ironwood by Michael Connelly
Still Alice by Lisa Genova (book club)
The Divorce by Freida McFadden
Lorne by Susan Morrison

Favorite Book of the Month

The CE loved Randy Overbeck’s book. It was unique and very timely as well as thought-provoking. I greatly enjoyed it as well and can recommend for our America250 celebration. The favorite book for June:

Favorite for June – Abigail Trench

My Reading Challenges page…I’ve been lucky to turn on the computer. My Goodreads count won’t be accurate anyway but opening page shows 75 books (eleven behind schedule). I think it’s obvious I’ll have to edit the goal. Also, I have several audiobooks finished but not posted.

To my readers and fellow bloggers, I appreciate every open and like, and thank you so much for taking the time to check out my posts and leave your comments.

A little light summer reading.

Seven Audiobooks – Stories to Hear Anywhere – #BookHaul – #TuesdayBookBlog

Impossible to Pause

Catching recommendations from Goodreads and good buddies, thought it might be time to share some of the wealth. Do you like historical fiction, literary fiction, police procedurals, or perhaps a memoir? Here are audiobooks in the queue from my library with an eye of what might look good to you also. (Book links are to Amazon-US.)

On My Audiobook Shelf

Just Finished:

Lorne by Susan Morrison (scheduled for my review on June 18 – Editors’ pick Best Biographies and Memoirs)

Currently listening to:

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (I also listed this in February then ran out of time. Editors’ pick Best Books of 2025)

Up Next:

The Keeper by Tana French (Editors’ pick Best Books of the Year So Far 2026)

Currently on library hold:

Wait time on these holds is anywhere from 2 weeks to 16 weeks and they represent a few different genres, including two of my favorites, historical and crime fiction.

Four audiobooks

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (Editors’ pick Best Books of the Year 2025 and a Reese’s Book Club pick.) 1^st in line
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke – 4 weeks (second try on this one, too)
Whistler by Ann Patchett – 6 weeks
The Final Target by Nora Roberts – 8 weeks

I’d be willing to bet you’ve read at least one of these! I can’t vouch for those on my hold list, but a wait of two months is down from four and I can’t wait to get into them. Which one have you already read or listened to? Did one of these catch your attention? So what did you think?

Grab those earbuds! — Graphic from Bitmoji

By Any Other Name: A Novel by Jodi Picoult #AudiobookReview #FictionSagas #TuesdayBookBlog

Editors’ pick Best Books of the Year 2024

Book Blurb:

Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is unlikely, in a theater world where the playing field isn’t level for women. As Melina wonders if she dares risk failure again, her best friend takes the decision out of her hands and submits the play to a festival under a male pseudonym.

In 1581, young Emilia Bassano is a ward of English aristocrats. Her lessons on languages, history, and writing have endowed her with a sharp wit and a gift for storytelling, but like most women of her day, she is allowed no voice of her own. Forced to become a mistress to the Lord Chamberlain, who oversees all theatre productions in England, Emilia sees firsthand how the words of playwrights can move an audience. She begins to form a plan to secretly bring a play of her own to the stage—by paying an actor named William Shakespeare to front her work.

Told in intertwining timelines, By Any Other Name, a sweeping tale of ambition, courage, and desire centers two women who are determined to create something beautiful despite the prejudices they face. Should a writer do whatever it takes to see her story live on . . . no matter the cost? This remarkable novel, rooted in primary historical sources, ensures the name Emilia Bassano will no longer be forgotten.

My Review:

Oh, the whispers! Did Shakespeare really write his volume of works? A controversy long ballied back and forth. Forced to read Shakespeare in high school, of course, the introduction to the master and most definitely the reason I failed to seek out further works.

In this overly long narrative (much like Shakespeare’s works), there is a split timeline, a device I usually enjoy. Emilia Bassano is a talented writer in the sixteenth century, although in a severely female-restricted era struggles to get her works noticed. Actually, I thought it unusual a woman back then was taught to read or write, but failing to find any success, compels Shakespeare to publish her works under his name.

The author has obviously researched the subject well and sets forth some very compelling arguments, positing Shakespeare as a publisher of various authors while using his name and position. The writers of the pieces, usually so thrilled to see their works in the public are happy to pay Shakespeare just to have it published.

Gees! She had me convinced her theories made a lot of sense!

Come Melina Green, a playwright who has just written a piece regarding her Elizabethan ancestor, Emilia, and we are thrust into contemporary times and still very much a male-dominated industry not wholly unlike that of Emilia’s.

By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult — By Any Other Name – UK cover

Not sure why, but I seem to find the story of the ancestor more persuasive than the descendant. Shakespeare is very well developed as a character. He oozes a superior male attitude, demonstrates the good old boy posture with his male buddies, and knows how to make money. You get to know Shakespeare and turns out he is a man like many others except he was credited with writing upwards of forty plays.

For me, the Melina chapters tended to slow the pace and let’s face it, this is a very long book. I felt Emilia was fleshed more fully, a real woman back then with a mind of her own and backbone to push her agenda. It was fun that Melina’s roommate, Andre, submitted her work, and he also proved an interesting, well-developed character.

Certainly enough food for thought, grist for the mill and all that. I enjoyed the concept and thought in a debate, the author could well hold her own. Readers who enjoy split timelines and well-researched literary fiction would find this an engaging read—or listen. Just look at the list of narrators! They definitely help to keep your attention. Now, if it just wasn’t quite so long.

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: Fiction Sagas, Family Saga Fiction, Literary Fiction
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrators: Billie Fulford-Brown, Laura Benanti, Jodi Picoult, Jayne Entwistle, Andrew Fallaize, Joe Jameson, John Lee, Nicholas Guy Smith, Simon Vance, Steve West
Release Date: August 20, 2024

Title Links:

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

The Author: Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, including Mad Honey, Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire.

Follow Jodi Picoult on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter: @jodipicoult

#TuesdayBookBlog

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.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger #AudiobookReview #ComingofAgeFiction

Best Mystery, Thriller and Suspense

Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Mystery & Thriller-2013

Book Blurb:

Award-winning author William Kent Krueger has gained an immense fan base for his Cork O’Connor series. In Ordinary Grace, Krueger looks back to 1961 to tell the story of Frank Drum, a boy on the cusp of manhood. A typical 13-year-old with a strong, loving family, Frank is devastated when a tragedy forces him to face the unthinkable – and to take on a maturity beyond his years.

My Review:

Krueger has found his chops and he’s using them again—or perhaps this is the one that started it, given Ordinary Grace was published in 2013. This Tender Land (set during the Depression) was published in 2019, The River We Remember in 2023 (Iron Lake in 2010. The latter is the only one whose main character is not a child and the start of a series.)

The characters are richly developed, become real, and easy to care about them all. The settings describe 50s or 60s landscapes, people, and morality. Frank, at thirteen, is growing up in an average household in an average small town, Minnesota. It’s so easy to visualize the area and feel the upper Midwest weather, almost like a cloak.

While his mother does not have a career, she is an accomplished musical director, musician. Frank has a younger brother, Jake, who has an unfortunate stutter and an older sister.

When eighteen-year-old Ariel is murdered, it spells the end of innocence as the boys knew it, and pretty much destroys their mother. Only their father, a local minister who lives the faith he preaches, manages to hold on and struggles with keeping his family together. The impact the death has on the little town is enormous and most have an unsubstantiated idea of who was responsible.

Once again, in Kreuger’s story, there is a sympathetic Native American that is the accused, although he manages to disappear before they can apprehend him. Also, as in This Tender Land, the narrator is a pre-teen or early teen on the cusp of losing his innocence in people and the world.

Themes of discrimination, intolerance, heart-crushing circumstances. The plots between his books are eerily similar, multi-layered, and complex. The author also examines love and faith, the latter of which plays a heavy part in the storytelling.

The twist at the end caught me by surprise—never really a person of interest—nor one I gave thought to. It’s tragic and forever.

Still, how would I rate this one, compared to the three others I’ve read by the same author? This one holds the interest, it’s engaging, and you must know who and why.

I can recommend this one. But I prefer This Tender Land.

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 point Five Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Coming of Age Fiction, Literary Fiction
Publisher: Recorded Books
ASIN: B00BPA1T8G
Listening Length: 10 hrs 59 mins
Narrator: Rich Orlow
Publication Date: March 26, 2013
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)

Title Links: Amazon-US
Amazon-UK
Barnes & Noble
Kobo

The Author: Raised in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, William Kent Krueger briefly attended Stanford University—before being kicked out for radical activities. After that, he logged timber, worked construction, tried his hand at freelance journalism, and eventually ended up researching child development at the University of Minnesota. He currently makes his living as a full-time author. He’s been married for over 40 years to a marvelous woman who is a retired attorney. He makes his home in St. Paul, a city he dearly loves.

Krueger writes a mystery series set in the north woods of Minnesota. His protagonist is Cork O’Connor, the former sheriff of Tamarack County and a man of mixed heritage—part Irish and part Ojibwe. His work has received a number of awards, including the Minnesota Book Award, the Loft-McKnight Fiction Award, the Anthony Award, the Barry Award, the Dilys Award, and the Friends of American Writers Prize. His last five novels were all New York Times bestsellers.

“Ordinary Grace,” his stand-alone novel published in 2013, received the Edgar Award, given by the Mystery Writers of America in recognition for the best novel published in that year. “Manitou Canyon,” number fifteen in his Cork O’Connor series, was released in September 2016. Visit his website at http://www.williamkentkrueger.com.

Read with a friend.

Our Souls at Night: A Novel by Kent Haruf #AudiobookReview #bookclub #TBT

Editors’ pick Best Literature and Fiction

Nominee for Readers’ Favorite Fiction (2015)

I attended the Y Book Club in our area yesterday for their September selection: Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf. This book club meets once a month and is very popular. I can see why—the moderator does a great job keeping us to script—and the group is active and friendly.

My Thoughts

An unusual book for the book club in that it’s under 200 pages long. Not so unusual is that it’s a rather sad literary peek at the state of love in aging seniors.

The loneliness in seniors is a theme rapidly becoming popular, although this was written back in 2015, released as I understand it, after the death of the author. This is an in-your-face confrontation with that popular theme, suffered by two who’ve survived the death of their spouses in rather unhappy marriages but now find their homes and lives rather lonely and empty.

Amazingly, it’s Addie Moore who surprises her neighbor, Louis Waters, with an unusual request. They live in a small town, so of course, they will know each other, their families, and history. It’s the solitude of the evening hours that propels Addie to make the proposal to Louis. Shocked, he is rather slow to agree, but does so. The first few nights are awkward.

Frankly, I struggled through the book though the narrator’s delivery was spot on conveying the misery of loss, solitude, and isolation. I loved their little adventures, and particularly when Addie’s grandson was introduced to the narrative, then was crushed by the conclusion, even with the little ray of connection offered at the end.

Book Club Thoughts

The Y Book Club is exclusively made up of women, most of them seniors, a few of them widows. It’s a novel that strikes to the heart of most and as always provided for lively discussion.

Once again, an emotional wallop, depressing, depending on who read and their own stories. It would appear seniors are either portrayed as having too much free fun, food, and adventure, or depressing scenes of the end of years. Ugh.

This was apparently a very successful author who solicited help from his wife for this, his final book, before he died young at age 71. Particularly the last quarter of the book appears to have her heavy contribution to the manuscript.

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

Book Club rating 3.5 stars

Book Details:

Genre: Literary Sagas, Romance Literary Fiction, Contemporary Literary Fiction
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 978-1101875902
ASIN: B00PP3DNDI
Print Length: 184 pages
Publication Date: May 26, 2015
Source: Local Library

Title Link(s):

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

Kent Haruf - author — Photo courtesy Goodreads

The Author: Haruf was born in Pueblo, Colorado, the son of a Methodist minister. He graduated with a BA from Nebraska Wesleyan University in 1965, where he would later teach, and earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1973.

Before becoming a writer, Haruf worked in a variety of places, including a chicken farm in Colorado, a construction site in Wyoming, a rehabilitation hospital in Denver, a hospital in Phoenix, a presidential library in Iowa, an alternative high school in Wisconsin, as an English teacher with the Peace Corps in Turkey, and colleges in Nebraska and Illinois. He lived with his wife, Cathy, in Salida, Colorado until his death in 2014. He had three daughters from his first marriage.

All of Haruf’s novels take place in the fictional town of Holt, in eastern Colorado. Holt is based on Yuma, Colorado, one of Haruf’s residences in the early 1980s. His first novel, The Tie That Binds (1984), received a Whiting Award and a special Hemingway Foundation/PEN citation. Where You Once Belonged followed in 1990. A number of his short stories have appeared in literary magazines.

Plainsong was published in 1999 and became a U.S. bestseller. Verlyn Klinkenborg called it “”a novel so foursquare, so delicate and lovely, that it has the power to exalt the reader.”” Plainsong won the Mountains & Plains Booksellers Award and the Maria Thomas Award in Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction.

Eventide, a sequel to Plainsong, was published in 2004. Library Journal described the writing as “”honest storytelling that is compelling and rings true.”” Jonathan Miles saw it as a “”repeat performance”” and “”too goodhearted.””

On November 30, 2014, Haruf died at his home in Salida, Colorado at the age of 71. He died of interstitial lung disease.

(Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia courtesy Amazon bio.)

Book Club meeting — AI generated graphic courtesy Gemini

Rosepoint Reviews – September Recap – Four #Audiobooks You’ll Love!

Rosepoint Reviews - September Recap

We got lucky with September weather, pretty temporate, comfortable, and enough heat to harken back lazy summer days. I really love September now, as after the kiddies go back to school and we are past Labor Day here in the US, families are home and prices on the road drop.

After we had all the cucumber juices (with cantaloupe juice) I could manage from our handy dandy juicer, and the yearly trial with dried or dehydrated cherry tomatoes (dried tomato candy), we started in on tomato juice from our neighbors garden. SOOO delish!

Then we had the opportunity to link up with our old Navy buddies and met them in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri (Osage Beach) at a lovely Airbnb along with our daughter who will shortly be celebrating a big birthday. Perfect location, the middle of everything, handy, beautifully decorated and the best screened in porch I’ve ever seen making for some delightful evenings of happy hour, chatting, and watching the sun go down.

Osage Beach MO, Airbnb boat dock — The pic of the sunset taken by our daughter, Shannon.

We checked out HAHA Tonka State Park, Stark Caverns, Bignell Dam, and rented a tritoon to do some fishing. The boat was fun—but there were no bites.

Last year came home with lots of trout—but that was in Arkansas. In Lake of the Ozarks—it’s bass.

Well, so I have a good reason why I flaked on posts in September. The tablet I bought to take with me so I could work on vacation is less than useless. Still, it was a great trip, got to be with our friends again and celebrate our daughter’s birthday.

We reviewed ten books in September—four of those in audiobook form, the CE contributing two and a half (?) He gave up half way into Mark Twain, an almost 1200 page biography. The source of the books is our library, NetGalley, author and publisher requests. As always, the links on titles are to our reviews that include purchase information.

#RosepointReviews,#SeptemberRecap,

Solid Gold Murder by Ellen Byron (audiobook)
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (CE review-DNF)
The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau by Kristin Harmel
News of the World by Paulette Jiles (audiobook-Book Club)
A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci (audiobook)
Peter Pulaski Must Pay by Jen Lancaster
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware (audiobook)
Ain’t Nobody’s Fool by Martha Ackmann (CE review-5 stars -biography)
The Tenth Trail Mark by Joe Looby (CE review-5 stars-NG)
Die Again by Tess Gerritsen

Favorite Book of the Month

Perhaps predictably, except for the Mark Twain book, the CE favored his two September reads with five stars. When asked which he’d choose for a September favorite, he said, “no question, The Tenth Trail Mark.” So there you have it:

Favorite for September – The Tenth Trail Mark

My Reading Challenges page…Vacation month. What can I say? Definitely more talking and sight-seeing than reading.

The Goodreads landing page shows 143 of a goal of 150 or 95%. I have three yet to post for books read in September. I suspect I’m doing okay in the audiobook challenge as well, not so sure about NetGalley.

I always appreciate your visits and comments. Keeps those likes and comments coming—and thank you for all of them!