Wrapping Up 2024 – #Favoritebook #Challenges #Goodreads #eBooks #audiobooks

Once again I tried to streamline the process of picking out a favorite book from the previous year, by posting my monthly favorites.

More selective with Indie authors, we read and listened to more library books in 2024 than previous years and the books again include a wide range of genres from #cozyanimalmysteries to #historicalfiction. The big surprise when all tallied it out was that I failed both my #historicalfiction challenge as well as the #audiobook challenge which I had been confident in winning.
Links on titles are to my review which will include source and purchase information…

Jan –The Frozen River
Feb – The Wager
Mar –The Wrong Side of Goodbye
Apr –The Debt Collector
May – Your Forgotten Sons
Jun –Prevailing Wind
Jul – 12 Coffins and Lilac Ink (a tie-both 5 stars)
Aug –The Broken Truth
Sept – Darling Girls
Oct – The Johnstown Flood
Nov – Summit’s Edge
Dec – The Phoenix Crown

Not all these monthly favorites garnered five-star reviews from us. There is a good mix of genres among which are non-fiction, family drama, historical fiction, literary fiction, and and even a YA! Once again, it would appear that historical fiction is a strong favorite, so surely I’ve miscounted the category in the Challenges.

Of my favorites in 2024, I loved both Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth and The Wager by David Grann, both in audiobook format. Did you listen to either? The latter is breathtaking in description, brilliantly tension-building, emotional, and filled with the astonishing story of the shipwreck and survivors. So…

Favorite novel of 2024 – The Wager by David Grann, narrated by himself and Dion Graham

Let’s Start Over!

January finds me wrestling with the conversion of 2024 to 2025, new categories and an updated Challenge page. Out of the four main challenges I do every year, only two goals were successfully met. When I got everything caught up, disappointed to discover I was one short of meeting the Netgalley Challenge and experienced an epic fail with the Historical Fiction Challenge. I’ve signed up for those challenges again, posted the new logos with their links, and reset my challenges for 2025. Check out my Challenges page!

My (Goodreads) Year in Books

At about the same time, the release of all those great Goodreads stats is impossible to miss when they insist on sending them to you. I hope you got yours. I took note of the info; it was most interesting. Yes, there was a problem or two with the shortest book, as they show Battle Annie at 34 pages, also noted for the fewest shelved. Nope. (The most shelved was All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr, also on my favorites list and winner of the Pulitzer as well as a four-part mini-series on Netflix.) My longest, a David Baldacci book, The 6:20 Man at 593 pages. Our average book length was approximately 334 pages with an average rating of 4.1 stars.

The first of the year is always rather daunting for me, a struggle, especially wresting with the classic editor in WP that is still trying to force the block editor on me.

Have you looked over your Goodreads stats, set your new challenges? Ran a critical eye over what went wrong or right?

Do any of the above grab your interest? Read it already? How’s your #TBR?

Disagree with our reviews? I’d love to know and always welcome your comments!

Graphic courtesy Freepik.com

Half Moon Bay: A Novel by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman #AudiobookReview #ThrowbackThursday

Clay Edison #3

Book Blurb:

Clay Edison has his hands full. He’s got a new baby who won’t sleep. He’s working the graveyard shift. And he’s trying, for once, to mind his own business. Then comes the first call. Workers demolishing a local park have made a haunting discovery: the decades-old skeleton of a child. But whose? And how did it get there?

No sooner has Clay begun to investigate than he receives a second call – this one from a local businessman, wondering if the body could belong to his sister. She went missing 50 years ago, the man says. Or at least I think she did. It’s a little complicated.

And things only get stranger from there. Clay’s relentless search for answers will unearth a history of violence and secrets, revolution and betrayal. Because in this town, the past isn’t dead. It’s very much alive. And it can be murderous.

My Review:

I really like the way the authors suffuse the professional with the personal. So many times, we see a technician going about their business and wonder what their home life looks like: six kids, a spouse equally harried, and a mortgage whose interest rates keep climbing?

In this case, Clay Edison is a new papa. The baby, as most, doesn’t sleep. Clay is working the graveyard shift so his wife can be home and she works days. It should work—doesn’t always.

Unfortunately, his call out is to the discovery of a very old skeleton—that of a small child. Whose? And how did it come to be buried in a park?

Clay might be the personification of a new dad, his baby girl Charlotte has a lot to teach him. The stark difference between his anxious self and his professional self is often laid bare by his self-talk, his first person POV.

The development of the characters in this series has been fun, and each new installment has brought growth and get-to-know-you sessions. I like Clay. He’s smart, dominating, and a strong personage around his peers, though he can be soft and sympathetic with the loved ones he must deal with in his professional capacity.

It doesn’t help that the park and the site of the skeleton is located in Berkeley, always a hotbed of political turmoil and protests. He may have a major development in the phone call from a man claiming that it may be his sister…but he can only supply a minimal amount of background to interest Clay further into the investigation.

The storyline wavers a bit with a couple of small branches off the main plot, but then I wouldn’t expect this would be Clay’s only case. It might create a slight lull in the pacing of the main plot, but there is always another tiny clue.

I’m not sure it would be classified as a slow-burn story as there is usually a lot going on and the characters, including Clay’s wife, Amy, supply a lot of lively dialogue. (I still haven’t warmed up to Amy though.) Of course, the flashbacks to the 60’s and 70’s drew me in. There are twists, divulged secrets, and evil doers as these things are never just simple straight forward…who is the skeleton.

Personally, I really enjoyed the novel and this series, one to go (Book 2), and just got it. I’ll recommend again. If you haven’t checked out this series yet and you found Alex Delaware a bit stodgy at times, you might find the collaboration between this father and son might be just what you were looking for.

I received a copy of this audiobook from my local library that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Crime Thrillers, Suspense, Mysteries
Publisher: Random House Audio
Narrator: Dennis Boutsikaris
ASIN: B0863359SD
Listening Length: 9 hrs 35 mins
Publication Date: July 21, 2020
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Authors:

Jonathan Kellerman

Jonathan Kellerman is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than three dozen bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, True Detectives, and The Murderer’s Daughter. With his wife, bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. With his son, bestselling novelist Jesse Kellerman, he co-authored The Golem of Hollywood and The Golem of Paris. He is also the author of two children’s books and numerous nonfiction works, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children and With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York.

Read more at:
http://www.jonathankellerman.com/

Jesse Kellerman

Jesse Kellerman has written dozens of plays and published seven novels, two of them cowritten with his father, Jonathan Kellerman. He has won numerous awards, including the Princess Grace Award for Playwriting (“Things Beyond Our Control”) and the Grand Prix des Lectrices de Elle (“The Genius”/”Les Visages”). His novel “Potboiler” was nominated for the Edgar Award for Best Novel. An essay, “Let My People Go to the Buffet,” was included in Penguin’s Best American Spiritual Writing (2011). His next book, Crime Scene, was also cowritten with Jonathan Kellerman and will be published in fall 2017. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and children.

The Narrator:

Dennis Boutsikaris

Dennis Boutsikaris was born December 21, 1952 in Newark, New Jersey, to a Greek American father and Jewish mother,^[1] and grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey.^[2] He took up acting while a student at Governor Livingston High School, because he felt he was too small to succeed in athletics.^[3] A graduate of Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, Boutsikaris toured the country with John Houseman’s The Acting Company doing classical theatre. Boutsikaris was married to actress Deborah Hedwall; they divorced in 2002.

He can be heard in over 160 audiobooks and has received eight Audie Awards and two Best Voices of the Year Awards from AudioFile Magazine.^[14] He was voted Best Narrator of the Year by Amazon for The Gene.

Find him at:
http://www.dennisboutsikaris.com *

*Thanks to Wikipedia for this info.

Graphic by Canva.com