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Last night I finished People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. It's the story of a guy and girl who meet in college, become best friends, but live in different cities so they only see each other once a year to go on vacation. It has a 4.2 rating on Good Reads so I was expecting big things! I really enjoyed it. As romantic comedy books go, it was enjoyable with likable characters and a good pace. But at the end of the day it was a rom-com that didn't change the world. I think I got a little fooled by the rating!

I just finished Murder at the Taffy Shop, the second of the Cozy Capers Book Group Mystery. It was a bit slow at times, but thankfully it picked up towards the end, and I always feel good when I figure out the guilty party in a cozy mystery before the book reveals it.

Now I've got eleven more cozy mysteries to read, all the first of a different series. I've begun with this one, themed after a bed and breakfast for book lovers.

This morning I finished How Lucky by Will Leitch. I LOVED it and highly recommend! I was drawn to it because it was compared to Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime which is one of my all time favorites. It earned the comparison. It’s the story of a man confined to a wheelchair who can’t speak. He thinks he witnesses a girls kidnapping, and the story unravels that mystery. It is absolutely wonderful.

I'm reading something totally different from anything else I think I've ever read.

As some of you know from prior postings, my childhood was worse than dysfunctional. To this day - and probably forever - I refer to the woman who gave birth to me as the Female Birth Vessel. By no stretch of anyone's imagination did she ever earn the descriptive name of "mother."

Even now, after 56+ years of marriage to a man who has been my Rock of Gibraltar, I struggle with flashbacks, and certain smells and even TV shows trigger me back to that little girl who had no one to love her or protect her. The last week has been really hard, and I even had nightmares about the FBV two nights in a row. I was spiraling downwards badly.

I ordered a book from Amazon which is a workbook for those who have something called Complex PTSD. I'd always suspected that my childhood had caused PTSD, but I felt like it was inappropriate for me to compare myself to police officers, soldiers, etc., who had suffered emotionally through their work and as a result struggled daily with anxiety, depression, etc.

Complex PTSD is different. It is a fairly new diagnosis for people like me who survived ongoing trauma (abuse, neglect, etc.) throughout childhood. It is sometimes called developmental trauma disorder. THAT phrase resonates with me.

Back to the workbook. It helps folks like me to make conscious decisions to be stronger and to learn better coping mechanisms. I've been through therapy several times in my life, and I feel like I've gone a long way towards being the person I was always meant to be. But I'm needing a "booster shot" of reminders as to how to keep getting there.

I'm only to page 17 and already feeling hopeful that this will be my booster shot. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Went on a bit of a cozy mystery binge without posting here, so I'll start off with the negatives. And the big negative was this here, Sprinkle with Murder, the first of the Cupcake Bakery Mystery series, where the owner of a Cupcake bakery solves mysteries with help from her best friend/business partner, her other best friend movie buff, all while trying to balance high school crushes despite being in her 30's of age, with this first book having to solve the murder of the guy best friend's fiance, a mean and nasty bridezilla..

And oh my gosh, this book was horrible! It was not just a boring mystery, because figuring out whodunit was simplicity itself, but by golly, I despised the characters in this book so much. The best friend/business partner is an obnoxious woman filled with anger management issues, the other best friend is a spineless pushover, and the two of them and the main character have this annoying habit of constantly spouting out movie quotes for each one to guess, even in rough situations that do not call for such a behavior. The main character's mother is a braindead idiot who insists to her daughter and everyone who'll listen that the daughter's in love with her best guy friend, to the point that she automatically assumes and continuously believes her daughter committed the murder because of jealousy, and honestly, almost the whole town automatically assumes the main character guilty. Not that I'd feel sorry for her, because this book had the worst main character I've read in any book in 20 years or so. She's an insipid, stupid, reckless, vapid mean girl from high school despite being a business owner in her 30's. She's also vindictive and extremely mean spirited, very judgmental of people based on looks alone, with her being disgusted by women who work as models, grossed out over an older man and a younger woman hugging one another in greeting despite it being strictly professional, as they're co-workers, and the fat-shaming; holy moly, there's a lot of fat-shaming by the main character, from referring to women in such ways as "walrus" and "bulbous-nosed toad", and upon seeing a chubby, bald man who was a friend of her deceased father, her instant reaction was to think "Ew". Worst part is that the author actually writes this in a way that she wants us to side with the main character. Yikes!

And from what I read of reviews from later books in this series, they actually get worst, with mediocre mysteries that a child could solve, to badly written romance and love triangles, to the characters being so unlikable that it becomes like a bad adult cartoon. If you like cozy mysteries, do yourselves a favor and avoid this garbage.

And for the last of the not-exactly-positive reviews (will post more positive ones later), this one, Lending a Paw, the first of the Bookmobile Cat Mystery series, where a librarian who drives the library's new bookmobile, and her cat who insists on tagging along, stumble across mysteries.

This is another book that I wouldn't call bad. Adequate, I'd say. The mystery is okay, the bookmobile concept is fun, especially with the cat tagging along as a mascot that people like seeing there despite the main character's doubts and hesitations, as her boss does hate the bookmobile and is apparently trying to find any excuse to shut it down; however, the fact that people actually lose interest in the bookmobile and the books in it when the cat's not present did feel over-the-top. The main character also comes across as a scatterbrained spaz a lot of the time, not unlikable, but not really engaging. Other than the bookmobile, nothing in this book really stood out for me. Shame, as it's a fun concept, but unless future books of the series really step up on the interesting and engaging stuff, I'll have to pass on continuing it.

There are two cozy mysteries about witches in my want-to-read list, hopefully neither of them are from this one you tried. I've never been into the romance genre, personally, so the romantic parts are the one thing I genuinely don't care about in cozy mysteries, so I appreciate ones that keep it to a minimum or just don't use it at all; the more a cozy focuses on romance, the less invested I feel on the story. It's a big reason I enjoy Murder She Wrote so much, as the main character's just not interested in finding a boyfriend.

I guess the reason I like cozy mysteries is because I need something more light-hearted in my life, plus I've always loved trying to solve mysteries, it's a big part of the fun of watching Murder She Wrote for me, trying to deduce the killer before the show reveals it.

As for my next one, moving into the positive reviews for me, it's this one here, about a pastry chef who moves to a small island community in Florida, trying to get a job at a hotel, but ends up working at a bakery, bonding with locals and trying to solve a mystery. I found myself really enjoying this book despite how long it is, to the point that a lot of it is essentially filler, but it has a likable cast, a nice setting, and when it actually got to trying to solve the mystery, it was an interesting one to try to solve. It had a few flaws, like no recipes a the end of it for what sounded like yummy food and treats in the story, a cast that's too large for just the first book in a series so some get little to no development or chances to shine, and the second most important character in the book is Hispanic and spoke Spanish often, but one can tell that the author knew no Spanish and used Google translate rather than trying to get help from someone fluent in Spanish. Still, minor grievances for me. I still personally enjoyed the book a lot.

I've had this book forever (like years) in my stash and just picked it up to read it: Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende. Such a beautiful story.......several parts were really hard and sad, but it just all came together in a beautiful ending. I found out that there is a sequel and I just ordered it. Hopefully it won't take me years to pick up!