Colorways by Vicki Welsh

I don’t think I could have asked for better reading month! The one book that I didn’t really like, What Happened to the McCrays, wasn’t awful and I was entertained enough to finish it. The other 5 books were all very good and I can’t even pick a favorite. I think Shy Creatures was the biggest surprise.

How do you find your next book? I’ve been reading book blogs and have started following several book tube channels. I think I might have to stop for a while. It turns out that I’ve built a wish list of about 250 books and have at least 30 downloaded on my phone ready to read. It’s getting a little out of hand! I thought about going through the wish lists and trying to pare the total down to about 100 but that seems like a lot of time. Since the lists are electronic, I suppose it doesn’t really matter. It’s no different than having a phone full of photos that you never look at.

What do you think? What good books have you read this month? Obviously, I need more recommendations!

TLDR: Another good Davenport/Flowers investigation with the added twist of true crime podcasters helping.

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers are brought in to help  re-investigate a 20 year old unsolved murder. The sister of the victim has offered $5 million to anyone who can help solve the crime. Several true crime podcasters have shown up to try to get involved. Lucas and Virgil don’t have much hope with this one until one of the podcasters finds the murder weapon at the site where the body was found.

It’s a typical fast-paced Sandford novel. I admit that I still miss Richard Ferrone as the narrator for these books. Robert Petkoff is a very good narrator but he’s not the Lucas and Virgil that I’m accustomed to. I’ll eventually adjust.

TLDR: A raw and gritty novel about a distressed father’s desire to disrupt the drug trade that’s killing his son in Western North Carolina . 

I picked this book up on vacation to read in paper. I wouldn’t classify it as a beach read but it was a book that I didn’t want to put down. Raymond Mathis has already lost his wife and now his only son is a addict who is in debt to a drug dealer. Raymond is fed up and decides to tackle the local drug problem himself.

Denny Rattler has been carefully managing his addiction for years since a workplace accident got him hooked on painkillers. He knows when and what to steal to avoid getting caught until he makes a couple of inevitable bad decisions.

Meanwhile, the DEA has been tracking the drug trade in and around Cherokee for months and finally have a break but Raymond might ruin it for them. 

David Joy really puts you in the area and has richly developed characters. This book taught me that I need to be more open to books shorter than 10 hours. While I read this in paper, it’s about 7.5 hours in audio. Two and a half more hours would have added nothing to this story. I really enjoyed it and will read some of his other books. 

TLDR: A courtroom thriller that I couldn’t put down.

This is a sequel to Presumed Innocent that you might remember as a movie with Harrison Ford. Rusty Sabich is living a nice retired life after being absolved of his wife’s murder. His life is great with his partner, Bea, but it’s thrown into turmoil when Bea’s adopted son, Aaron, goes missing. 

Aaron is on probation for drug possession and isn’t supposed to be away from the house over night. Aaron eventually does turn up saying that he had been on a tumultuous camping trip with his girlfriend, Mae. The relationship is over. But now Mae is missing. Eventually Mae is found and Aaron is charged with murder.

Bea begs Rusty to return to court to represent Aaron. Rusty feels that he doesn’t even have a choice or that both choices are bad. Rusty’s not convinced that Aaron is innocent.

I had low expectations going into this book. It seemed kind of long for a courtroom drama. Once I got into it, I could not put it down. The audio narration was excellent too.

TLDR: Three generations of fashion designers with equally troubled relationships.The fashion history is interesting. The women were a little annoying.

Mitzah Bricard is a real woman who was the head of millinery for Dior after World War II. She is the basis for the first woman in this story and it starts with her in Paris in the 1920’s and her resistance work during WWII. In the book, Mitzah develops her own designer line of women’s clothes.

Astrid Bricard is Mitzah’s daughter and was raised by adoptive parents in the US. She’s also a talented designer in the 1970’s. She falls in love with Hawk Jones, another very talented designer. But the misogynist industry sees her as a muse, not a designer. She is never taken seriously.

Blythe Bricard is Astrid’s daughter who was abandoned soon after she was born after a disastrous event at the battle of Versailles fashion show in 1973. The Battle of Versailles was a real event and is very interesting to research.  Blythe is divorced from her fashion-designer husband.

This book is about Blythe learning about her relationships with her mother and grandmother and each woman’s struggles with love and their professions. It was good enough but a little predictable and a little long.

• Shy Creatures

TLDR: A nice hopefully story with uniquely interesting characters.

It’s the 1960’s in England and Helen Hansford is an unmarried art teacher at a mental hospital. She’s in her 30’s and is involved in an affair with a married doctor at the hospital.

One afternoon the hospital receives a call about a 37-year-old mute man named William Topping. His hair and beard hasn’t been cut in decades and no one knew that anyone but two old spinster sisters lived in the house. William hasn’t been out in decades.

Upon looking through the house Helen discovers that William is a very talented artist and she makes it her personal mission to bring him out of his shell. At the same time, she’s beginning to realize that she has to make some serious changes in her own life.

This book started a little slow for me but once William was introduced, the book picked up the pace and I was hooked.

TLDR: Formulaic and predictable story about the effects of grief on families and communities.

Last month I read another book by this author, We Are the Brennans. It was much better than this one. In this one we are introduced to Kyle and Casey McCray. They fell in love in high school and were deeply in love until tragedy hit. You don’t discover the tragedy until about a third way through the book but you can easily guess what happened. They split up and Kyle moved across the country to start a new life.

Then he gets a call that his father has had a stroke and he needs to come home to help him. His father lives across the street from his ex-wife in their former family home. He hasn’t been home in two and a half years. He hopes to lie low, help his Dad and to get out of town without causing Casey and problems. You can guess the rest.

Unfortunately, you can guess this whole book. I didn’t DNF it but I came close. Kyle is a sympathetic character and, while I had a lot of sympathy for Casey, she seems to do almost everything counter to her own best interests.

If you are going to try a book by this author, start with We Are The Brennans.