#TheMountainsWild – Rosepoint Publishing

Rosepoint Reviews – June Recap – Summer is a Perfect Time to Read!

Rosepoint Reviews-July Recap

June is usually a lovely month with Summer Reading Challenges being the perfect excuse for staying indoors and reading. While our temps were pretty mild in the upper Midwest, it can get muggy and staying indoors to read or write posts is a good alternative to working in the gardens. The veggie garden, oh so slow to take off this year, the flower garden not much better, and the fairy garden (my son refers to it as “the swamp”) just a wild mess as usual. Perhaps I’ve lost that fight and now the goal is to keep the weeds down.

June is also birthday month, our son being born on the CE’s birthday—double celebration. We took the opportunity to run to Indianapolis to catch the Indiana State Museum exhibit.

All to say, we enjoyed June, and still managed fourteen books between us. These are from NetGalley but more now from my local library both audiobooks and digital. (As always, links below are to my reviews that include purchase info.)

Rosepoint Reviews-June Recap

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain (audiobook)
The Water Tower by Amy Young (CE review)
Iwo, 26 Charlie by P T Deutermann (CE review)
The Mountains Wild by Sarah Stewart Taylor (audiobook)
Mainely Wicked by Matt Cost (CE review)
Need You by Blake Pierce
Overkill by Sandra Brown (read by both of us)
Hard Country by Reavis Z Wortham (CE review)
Before It’s Too Late by Sara Driscoll
Should the Tent Be Burning Like That? By Bill Heavey
The Final Frame by Harmony Reed (CE review)
A Sagebrush Soul by John Isaac Jones (5 star CE review)
The Caretaker by Ron Rash (5 stars)
The Swiss Nurse by Mario Escobar (audiobook)

These included historical fiction, literary fiction, psychological fiction, biographical fiction, crime thrillers, and mysteries.

Favorite Book of the Month

I loved The Caretaker (a new author to me and one I will follow) and gave it five stars, the CE gave five stars to the biographical fiction, A Sagebrush Soul. I’m sure it was great and he thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was totally captivated by The Caretaker. It haunted me and continued to resonate after I finished reading it.

Book of the Month for June—The Caretaker.

My Reading Challenges page… I have 73 books of a goal of 145 in Goodreads (one book ahead of schedule) and slipped a percent to 97% feedback ratio in NetGalley. As always, I’m struggling to keep up with the rest.

Summer is usually such a good time to finally get out and about! My heart goes out to the Canadians, however, with 259 uncontrolled wildfires (as of this writing) in a total of 503 active wildfires. I can’t even imagine all the personnel trying to fight that conflagration. The smoke has given us cloudy skies with dangerous levels of particulates in the air. As with all the yearly fires in California, however, I also worry about the coming winter and the devastation the lack of trees will produce. Let’s hope for a mild winter for our neighbors to the north.

Welcome to new subscribers and thank you, as always, to those who read and comment. I love hearing from you!

The Mountains Wild: A Mystery by Sarah Stewart Taylor- #Audiobook Review – #ThrowbackThursday

Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Book Blurb:

In a series debut for fans of Tana French and Kate Atkinson, set in Dublin and New York, homicide detective Maggie D’arcy finally tackles the case that changed the course of her life.

Twenty-three years ago, Maggie D’arcy’s family received a call from the Dublin police. Her cousin Erin has been missing for several days. Maggie herself spent weeks in Ireland, trying to track Erin’s movements, working beside the police. But it was to no avail: No trace of her was ever found.

The experience inspired Maggie to become a cop. Now, back on Long Island, more than 20 years have passed. Maggie is a detective and a divorced mother of a teenager. When the Gardaí call to say that Erin’s scarf has been found and another young woman has gone missing, Maggie returns to Ireland, awakening all the complicated feelings from the first trip. The despair and frustration of not knowing what happened to Erin. Her attraction to Erin’s coworker, now a professor, who never fully explained their relationship. And her determination to solve the case, once and for all.

A lyrical, deeply drawn portrait of a woman – and a country – over two decades – The Mountains Wild introduces a compelling new mystery series from a mesmerizing author.

A Macmillan Audio production from Minotaur Books

My Review:

This is a story told in a dual line 23 years apart. The storyline is told by Maggie, who in 2016 travels to Ireland after their call to her uncle regarding new information on the disappearance of her cousin Erin, missing since 1993.

Not like Maggie didn’t do this in 1993 when Erin first went missing, but this time she goes back with her experience as a mature and successful, well-known Long Island police detective. Things have certainly changed in their quaint Irish community and the descriptions of the countryside and people provide a colorful mind video.

Of course, having been to Ireland before, Maggie fondly remembers Connor, with whom she was not at the time destined to complete a romantic affair. This time, she’s left behind a daughter with her ex in the US in the hope of finally getting to the truth.

Turns out, the mystery is a slow burn while Maggie sifts through clues and in the meantime relates lovely little tidbits about the area and the people. Character-driven with obligatory twists. The switching of timelines, however, listening to the audiobook while multi-tasking can be confusing.

The reader/listener does get to know Maggie and really, she didn’t grab me. Nor, for that matter did Connor, and I was a bit appalled at her cavalier attitude toward her ex. Connor’s situation is a great deal more serious with his ex.

She is constantly mistaken for her cousin, which I thought stretched credibility. She is there as a civilian but tends more the detective than the relative. She discovers layers of coverup, backstory no one wanted.

Perhaps, in part, because I was listening, not reading, I missed a few of the loose threads tied in conclusion (although I must say, the narrator did a great job). It, as the rest of the low-key narrative, slipped in explanation for me and the episode ended. Maybe I missed something? I felt like it and wasn’t wholly satisfied.

I downloaded a copy of this audiobook from my local well-stocked library. These are my honest thoughts.

Book Details:

Genre: International Mystery & Crime, Police Procedural Mysteries
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
ASIN: B082VMB63Q
Listening Length: 10 hrs 49 mins
Narrator: Marisa Calin
Publication Date: June 23, 2020
Source: Local Library (Audiobook Selections)
Title Link: The Mountains Wild [Amazon]

Rosepoint Publishing: Three point Five Stars

The Author: Sarah Stewart Taylor grew up on Long Island and was educated at Middlebury College and Trinity College, Dublin. She lives with her husband and three children on a farm in Vermont where they raise sheep and grow blueberries.

Sarah is the author of the Sweeney St. George series and the Maggie D’arcy series. The first Maggie D’arcy mystery, THE MOUNTAINS WILD, was nominated for the Dashiell Hammett Prize and was on numerous Best of 2020 lists. The new Maggie D’arcy novel, A STOLEN CHILD, will be out on June 20, 2023. [Bio and photo – Goodreads]

Follow her at http://www.sarahstewarttaylor.com/

The Narrator: Marisa Calin grew up in Bath, England, trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York and is an Audie, Odyssey, Audiofile Earphones Award winning and SOVAS nominated audiobook narrator. She’s had an Audible Best Audiobook of the Year, an Apple Books Must-Listen audiobook of the month, starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and books on YALSA’s Amazing Audiobooks of the year list. You can listen to extracts of some of those books here.

She wrote, produced and appears in her first feature, A Million Happy Nows, with her company, Perfect Features, which went on to win nineteen awards on the festival circuit, including Best First Feature at Outfest. Find more at amillionhappynows.com.

Her debut Young Adult novel, Between You & Me, published in 2012 by Bloomsbury, was named a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2012, recieved a Kirkus star for “books of exceptional merit”, was selected for the American Library Associations’ 2013 Rainbow Book List of quality books with authentic LGBT content, and was chosen as a Kobo dazzling debut.

She lives in New York City. [Courtesy Marisa Calin website]

#ThrowbackThursday