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

 

Reading Challenges

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.

©2026 V Williams

March is #ReadingIrelandMonth

Flight Path by Suzanne C Carver #BookReview #TuesdayBookBlog #NetGalley

Flight Path by Suzanne C Carver

Book Blurb:

A plane crash. No survivors. Two widows left behind with everything to lose.

Eva was once a scrappy journalist, but motherhood and suburban life softened her edge-until her husband’s death forces her to investigate the biggest story of her life. Bank accounts drained. Documents forged. Her father’s name entangled in financial crimes. To save her family, she must expose the truth about the person she trusted most-her husband. Harper, a roller coaster designer, knows how to build a ride that keeps people safe, even when they’re hurtling into the unknown. But no blueprint could prepare her for the sudden drop after her husband’s death. No records. No family. No past. Harper, five months pregnant, must dismantle his secrets-before her child is born into a lie. The two women-strangers and opposites-should have nothing in common. But bound by suspicion, Eva and Harper are thrust together into a truth-seeking mission that will change them both. Because sometimes, the most dangerous lies are the ones we tell ourselves.

My Review:

Two very different women caught in the same tragedy when the plane their husbands are on goes down with no survivors.

Perhaps their names give away their personalities, the force of their lives, as Eva is a rather docile young mother of two and Harper is the no-nonsense, smart woman in the man’s world of roller coaster design—an engineer enjoying the use of her math skills. She is also somewhat of a nympho, promiscuous, unapologetic and loves exerting the power.

“Most women succeed within capitalistic parameters by developing their masculine side. They trade their intuition for their intellect, their sensitivity for hard exteriors, and their wisdom for data.”

Flight Path by Suzanne C CarverEva was a journalist, a path she followed with interest at times and then again, boredom. But when hubby goes down leaving what appears to be a forthcoming bankruptcy, she begins to dig into his history. Harper, perhaps exhibiting pregnancy brain, realizes she knows little of her guy and begins to dig, which yields nothing. So who was he really?

Eva and Harper discover each other and join forces to expose the stories behind the man each thought they knew.

And didn’t.

Yeah…married and clueless? The thing is, Harper is smarter than that, but she has her own agenda or perhaps didn’t care?

Mercy, but it could drag sometimes, jumping chapters and dates back and forth, but gaining little to add to the mystery. Still, disbelief began to grow. While I enjoyed the info going into the design, build, and execution of a roller coaster (you gotta admit that’s different), it was slow to the reveal. Suspicion, however, filled in the blanks and I’d pretty much solved it about two-thirds of the way through so that the denouement didn’t really come as much of a surprise.

Did either character really love their husband? Perhaps Eva did more so than Harper, or not love so much as to provide a comfortable living situation. Still, the two women worked well together to solve who they each knew as the father of their children.

A solid debut effort, interesting characters, but a mystery possibly too easily unraveled.

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

Rosepoint Rating: Three point Five Stars Three point Five Stars

 

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Book Details:

Genre: Financial Thrillers, Women’s Psychological Fiction, Psychological Fiction
Publisher: Manhattan Book Group
Publication Date: August 25, 2025 

Title Link(s):

Amazon-US  |  Amazon-UK   |   Barnes & Noble

 

Suzanne C Carver - authorThe Author: Suzanne C. Carver is a lifelong storyteller who wrote her first masterpiece at age seven in a turquoise spiral-bound notebook, featuring excessive exclamation points and more Heathers than necessary. She holds a B.A. from Occidental College and is a licensed massage therapist and Reiki Master. In addition to writing novels and blogging about truth and transformation, she works as an authenticity coach, helping women reclaim their truest selves.

She lives in Maine with her wife, daughters, a dog that is the center of their solar system, and a cat who steals AirPods. She can most often be found talking to strangers, dancing in her kitchen, expertly parallel parking, or off in the woods claiming to not have cell reception.

Her debut novel, Flight Path, was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “riveting…a domestic thriller with heart.”

©2026 V Williams