Rosepoint Reviews – May Recap—Welcome June!

Rosepoint Reviews – May Recap

Rosepoint Reviews - May recap

Yes, May is when I spend more time outside than in, working on my gardens; cleaning up the fairy garden, flower bed, and adding soil and amendments to the vegetable garden, turning that over and getting the veggies in. The tomatoes love it and take off immediately. Same with beans and peas—still cool enough for them with the occasional 90-degree day. I put in marigolds as usual to ward off bugs and the bunnies ate them. This year I’ve tried to secure all my defenseless little seedlings (except marigolds I guess) against all manner of deer and bunnies. (I’ve done that before but redoubled the effort this year.) The deer are being scattered due to construction on the other side of the pond. (I haven’t seen the doe with the broken leg in a while.)

Welcome Spring! I fired up the BBQ with a chicken and potatoes and then sat down to eat. Wasn’t long before we had a raccoon trying to clean up the drippings. He was wearing a mask and had no sense of humor. The bandit was a big boy intent on an easy meal and wasn’t happy with the interruption or my broom. At least the possums are smaller and non-threatening.

I relied pretty heavily on the CE for his reviews, so much of my time spent otherwise. The man can read three books to my one. We did read or listen to eighteen books in May, most from NetGalley as I’m still working on that badge, now up to a count of 460 and my ratio continues to be 95%.

May reads and reviews

The Trouble with Secrets by Jean Grainger
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah (audiobook)
Somewhere in the South Pacific by John J Gobbell (a CE review)
Last Night with Tokyo Rose by Alexa Kang (a CE review)
Gambling with Murder by Lida Sideris
The Boys by Ron Howard and Clint Howard (audiobook)
Warrensburg by Fleury Sommers (a CE review)
Answering Liberty’s Call by Tracy Lawson
TV Netflix series Along for the Ride vs the audiobook
Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben (audiobook)
Playing with Fire by Mary Burton (a CE review)
The Physicists’ Daughter by Mary Anna Evans (a CE review)
The Doctor’s Daughter by Shari J Ryan
The Crystal Beads by Patricia Black Gould
Flat Broke with Two Goats by Jennifer McGaha (audiobook)
Tom Clancy Zero Hour by Don Bentley (a CE review)
The Last Saxon King by Andrew Varga
The Wylder Ghost and Blossom Cherry by Sharon Shipley

Reading Challenges

My challenges continue to be a problem keeping up. I’ll get them all caught up soon—spring planting push now mellow. My challenges for 2022 are all listed and linked in the widget column on the right. You can check out the progress of my challenges by clicking the Reading Challenges page but so far I’m at 45% of the Goodreads Challenge of 180 books at 81.

Spring Challenge

Speaking of challenges, that little Spring Challenge in the Kindle app is progressing, albeit not at full speed.

Have you checked yours out yet? It’s not something you joined, it joined you. Now it says I’m a Silver Reader—40 books. (A Gold Reader is achieved upon reading any 75 days during the Challenge.) Also notes I’ve earned eight of 16 achievements with 30 days remaining in the challenge. Actually, there are several I do not see ever achieving including a non-fiction. It’s been a while. Memoirs don’t count(?).

Book Club and Reading/Listening Update

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner is the new club pic. It had just started and I jumped the gun when I saw the audiobook. While it might not have been one I’d have chosen, it turned out to be quite compelling. Of course, it was published last year and achieved an “Amazon Best Book of 2021” designation—and a debut at that!

Soap Box

The NetGalley Shelf continues to be an exasperation. I thought short shelf life applied to food? The audiobooks are rift with blanks (guess I’m supposed to fill in whatever words I want?). I can’t afford to buy the books expired and I try very hard to fulfill the promise to review. Too new to be in the library. Ideas?

Have a rant you’d like to mention? Like the change in the Kindle app and mobi conversions?

June is a big birthday month around here (hubby and son on the same day). Welcome to my new followers and those who continue to read, like, share, and comment. What is this without you? Hope you saw something that piqued your interest above!

The Wylder Ghost and Blossom Cherry (The Wylder West) by Sharon Shipley – #BookReview – #TuesdayBookBlog

The Wylder Ghost and Blossom Cherry by Sharon Shipley

Book Blurb:

Ghostly gunslinger Zachariah is condemned to spend eternity in the room now inhabited by Blossom Cherry, an easygoing yet hot-blooded doxie. Their scrappy relationship endures though he taunts and aggravates her. He also exacts fitting vengeance on those clients who dare, to their eternal regret, mistreat his feisty roommate.
The attraction between the young prostitute and the outlaw intensifies to undeniable, unquenchable, unearthly desire until Zak becomes a passionate spectral lover. But Blossom’s uneasy past catches up with her by way of a Wanted poster and a bulldog Pinkerton agent.
Zach urges her to dig up his ill-gotten hoard and flee an unjust hanging, yet she won’t leave him to wander the room—or eternity—alone.

My Review:

And now for a completely off-the-wall diversion from my normal reads, and I’ll tell you upfront; this is different.

Yes, it’s a ghost story, but it does go a bit beyond that. This is one that you’ll need to just let your imagination soar, enjoy, go with it. Oh come on…have some fun.

Blossom Cherry has discovered her room isn’t completely uninhabited even when she isn’t entertaining one of her “evening clients.” Zachariah seems to have her room 24/7 whether she is alone or not. Blossom had arrived in Wylder, Wyoming in 1884 a scrappy girl, hungry and dirty, but already promising with attractive red-gold hair and green eyes, a mere scrap of a girl and looking into town saw the sign—Longhorn Saloon. Six years later she is a staple above the saloon and a favorite of the clientele of Madame Solange.

“Blushing all the way up from their big feet they’ve yet to grow into, up past sweet-pink-fanny cheeks, reddening their upright soldiers, and all the way up to scrubbed freckled noses.”

Zachariah may be a ghost, however, he is becoming a downright nuisance. He baits her, aggravates her, but there is no denying the attraction as it continues to grow with each manifestation. Zachariah was an outlaw just out having some fun when it was cut short. And this is where he’ll be—forever. Or maybe not…

I enjoyed the author’s style of writing, harking back to olde tyme words, slang, western flair.

“…didn’t have to spend a spit in the wind’s worth of jail time…”

The support characters are well-drawn and easy to see in their 1880s style dress (or undress as the case may be). But Zach isn’t the only one with a past and it’s about to catch up with Blossom.

So maybe the well-plotted and fun-paced storyline gets a little fanciful, slightly raunchy. It’s a ghost story. A treasure story. It’s already pushed reality. The epilogue sews it all up nice and neat. A break from the horror headlines we seem to confront almost daily now. A nice break, actually.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and publisher through @NetGalley that in no way influenced this review. These are my honest thoughts.

Rosepoint Rating: Four Stars

Book Details:

Genre: Ghost Fiction, Western Romance
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press Inc
ASIN: B09QSXDZ77
Print Length: 232 pages
Publication Date: April 18, 2022
Source: Publisher and NetGalley

Title Link(s):

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

The Author: I hale from a small town in Southern Indiana. As a former fashion illustrator, I use the same creative passion for writing both frightening and thrilling, with few tools beyond a blood-spattered laptop, feverish brain and a doorstop thesaurus.

The bonus? Fascinating research venturing far from my office chair: Big Bear California gold country, Africa’s hostile Great Karroo Desert, torrid Northern India, Bengali, the setting for Sary and the Maharajah’s Emeralds, Michigan’s harsh, unforgiving Upper Peninsula for ICY GRAVES, a small southern town for my Coming of Age/Thriller… ‘THE MONSTER FACTORY’…

New Books:

ICY GRAVES: A Serial Killer. An ice-bound lake house. Amazon eBook and print.

My children’s book:’DANFORTH THE DRAGON’ Amazon ebook and print.

‘THE MONSTER FACTORY’: Adult Coming Of Age Horror. https://www.amazon.com/Monster-Factory-Sharon-Shipley

BEAST IN THE MOON. An erotic Apocalyptic Sci-Fi. Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Beast-Moon-Sharon-Shipley

‘SARY AND THE MAHARAJAH’S EMERALDS’, joins ‘SARY’S GOLD’ and ‘SARY’S DIAMONDS ‘as a third adventure in my ‘Love, Lust and Peril Series. All on Amazon and http://www.thewildrosepress.com.

I’m also super excited Sary’s Gold is SHORTLISTED in the Western/Civil War/Prairie division of the Chanticleer International Book Review Contest, also capturing Grand Prize as feature script… where a young widow survives a brutal Deadwood-esque outpost, during the California Gold Rush. Published by http://www.thewildrosepress.com and Amazon.

SARY’S DIAMONDS, a lusty African adventure joins SARY’S F Diamonds. http://www.thewildrosepress.com and Amazon.

SARY and THE MAHARAJAH’S EMERALDS. 1910 torrid India, maharajah’s harems, passion and jewels beyond measure. Love my awesome cover by the very talented artist, Diana Carlisle.

[truncated—please check her author’s page for a complete listing of her works]

#TuesdayBookBlog