Spell the Month in Books – February

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on the first Saturday of each month or maybe the third! This month I chose from books I read ten years ago. I read a lot that year because I was between jobs for the first two months of the year and it was an extremely snowy winter. The weekend of Valentine's Day, ten years ago, my brother was visiting with his family and I suggested my parents drive over and spend the night in case it snowed so much they were stranded at home. It was quite a slumber party with five adults and three children.  Somehow a coworker made it over with his toddler to decorate heart-shaped cupcakes!

F - Fabulous Year by Elisabeth Ogilvie (1958).  Ogilvie was known for her realistic fiction set in Maine for adults and younger readers.  I knew how hard life was for lobstermen by reading her books as a teen.  This one has a very familiar YA theme: Cass Philips is determined to be popular her senior year of high school but worries a clingy, uncool classmate will destroy her chances.  Don't you love this 50s cover?  Shouldn't he be carrying her books?

E - Echo Park by Michael Connelly (2006).  Harry Bosch is always haunted by the cases he wasn’t able to solve.  In this book, a serial killer has confessed to murdering a woman missing more than ten years but Harry is suspicious – he goes back to review the original investigation and finds a clue he should have pursued at the time.  Echo Park is another compelling book in this series. It’s not essential to read this series in order but I was careful to do so.

B - The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown (2013).  This is a fun and engrossing story about the University of Washington’s men’s crew comprised of working-class young men who came together to shock the world by winning the Gold Medal at the ’36 Olympics, defeating the German team rowing for Adolf Hitler.  

R - Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews (2013).  Although horribly violent, I loved this series about Dominika, recruited to become a “Sparrow,” a Russian operative trained as a seductress, and assigned to turn Nathaniel Nash, a first-tour CIA officer into an asset.   The two young intelligence officers try to use their tradecraft against each other but fall in love instead, and it is Dominika who becomes a double agent, making her life even more dangerous than before.  The author was a CIA agent himself and I enjoyed hearing him speak at Wellesley Books in 2015.  I heard the movie was awful, which is a pity.

U - Unwrapped by Katie Lane (2014). This has an embarrassingly lurid cover to go with its story but was fun: a runaway bride in snowy Colorado leaves the groom and starts driving, only to get stranded with a sexy stranger for a memorable night. She doesn’t expect to see him again but of course she does . . . in embarrassing circumstances.  There are a lot of books with this title is you ever need a U but you need to read it first!

A - The Art of Baking Blind by Sarah Vaughan (2014). Kathleen Eaden was a (fictional) cookbook writer and wife of a supermarket magnate, who published The Art of Baking, her guide to nurturing a family by creating the most exquisite pastries, biscuits and cakes. Now, five amateur bakers are competing to become the New Mrs. Eaden. This will appeal to those who love cooking show competitions.

R - The Rotary Club Murder Mystery by Graham Landrum (1993). I knew this book was a classic of its kind and it survived several moves before I finally read it. The special guest coming to a Rotary Club meeting is shot with his own gun in his chain-locked motel room, so it is considered a suicide until the members deduce murder and start investigating.  

Y - I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson (2014). It is hard to find a book beginning with Y that I haven’t used before. I gave a 5 to Nelson’s earlier book, The Sky is Everywhere, but found this one – about estranged twins – exhaustingly full of angst, heartbreak, and a lot of poor communication.

Have you read any of these?  E, B, and R would be my recommendations!