The Earl Not Taken by A.S. Fenichel is $2.99 at Amazon! This is the first book in The Wallflowers of West Lane series and I like the cover for this one. Readers liked the heroine, but found the plot to be rather thing. Any thoughts from the Bitchery?
Left standing on the side while their contemporaries marry into society, four young ladies forge a bond to guard each other from a similar fate . . .
Finishing school failed to make a proper lady of Penelope Arrington. But as a Wallflower of West Lane, Poppy has a far more vital role—she and her three best friends have made a pact to protect each other from the clutches of dangerous, disreputable men. So when one of them is about to be married off to a duke sight unseen, Poppy makes it her mission to divine the prospective husband’s true character. If only she didn’t require the aid of London’s most unsuitable rake.
Rhys Draper, Earl of Marsden, has known the headstrong Poppy since she was a young girl naïve to the ways of men. To her eternal chagrin—and to his vague amusement—they have been at odds over the memory of embarrassing first encounter all these years. Now, with his services in need, Rhys sees a chance to finally clear the air between them. Instead, he is surprised by the heat of their feelings. If the two do not tread carefully, they may end up in a most agreeably compromising position . . .
The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah is $1.99! This fantasy novel was mentioned in a previous Hide Your Wallet. I’ve also seen it recommend in the comments a few times, like our Rec League for Book Club Suggestions.
Neither here nor there, but long ago…
Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land.
With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything—her enemy, her magic, even her own past—is not what it seems.
Island Queen by Vanessa Riley is $1.99! This is Riley’s first work of historical fiction as opposed to historical romance. It’s about Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free Black woman who achieved great wealth. Have you read it?
A remarkable, sweeping historical novel based on the incredible true life story of Dorothy Kirwan Thomas, a free woman of color who rose from slavery to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the colonial West Indies.
Born into slavery on the tiny Caribbean island of Montserrat, Doll bought her freedom—and that of her sister and her mother—from her Irish planter father and built a legacy of wealth and power as an entrepreneur, merchant, hotelier, and planter that extended from the marketplaces and sugar plantations of Dominica and Barbados to a glittering luxury hotel in Demerara on the South American continent.
Vanessa Riley’s novel brings Doll to vivid life as she rises above the harsh realities of slavery and colonialism by working the system and leveraging the competing attentions of the men in her life: a restless shipping merchant, Joseph Thomas; a wealthy planter hiding a secret, John Coseveldt Cells; and a roguish naval captain who will later become King William IV of England.
From the bustling port cities of the West Indies to the forbidding drawing rooms of London’s elite, Island Queen is a sweeping epic of an adventurer and a survivor who answered to no one but herself as she rose to power and autonomy against all odds, defying rigid eighteenth-century morality and the oppression of women as well as people of color. It is an unforgettable portrait of a true larger-than-life woman who made her mark on history.
The Scandalous Flirt by Olivia Drake is $1.99! This is part of the Cinderella Sisterhood series. Readers loved the enemies to lovers, but within the first few pages, there is a magical Romani beggar character and they do use the G slur. Not sure if the text has been updated since its release.
Scandal begins with just one kiss. . .
Aurora Paxton was once the belle of the ball, the most sought-after debutante of the season―until a scandalous mistake ruined her. Shunned by her family, Rory was banished to the country to live in disgrace. Now she’s been summoned back to London by her stepmother, who is being blackmailed by the least likely person Rory can imagine: Lucas Vale, Marquess of Dashell.
Lucas is someone Rory’s known for years―a man as devastatingly handsome as he is coldly disapproving of her. What in the world could he want from her or her family? Rory intends to find out as soon as she comes face to face with her old foe. What she never expects, however, is that the icy aristocrat has a soft spot for her―and a secret plan to redeem her status. Could it be that Lucas has been in love with Rory all along. . .and has finally found a way to win her heart?
turlough is the best and my latest sparkle deer arrived from her the other day, isn't it adorable!?
I do love this tradition, she's sent me multiple sparkle deer now, and I can't wait for this new one to meet the herd.
We did a craft fair in aid of Consett Cats on Saturday. It was held at a golf club which meant no passing footfall, add on the fact it was raining and well, we didn't do that well. At least we made enough to give a donation to the rescue and got to meet up with some of the fellow adopters we know, so all wasn't lost. And hey, we ended up with a £5 profit after the donation, so silver lining and all that.
Good news, someone has taken on running the monthly makers market in our town, and we've got our pre-Christmas spot back. So as of now, we've two more fairs to go before the end of the year, plus maybe one possibility at my nephew's school. Also, James is continuing on TikTok and getting a few orders that way, which is great but also, still surprising.
During the week we saw Now You See It, Now You Don't at the cinema and I enjoyed it so much. It was flashy, fun and had a twist I didn't see coming, which is always a plus.
Yesterday we went to the Odeon to see Christmas Karma at the early 11am showing. It was my first cinema Christmas film of the year, and I bought a Christmas Costa drink and intended to wallow in festive feelings. Sadly, that didn't fully happen, I was really enjoying the film until about halfway through when my MiL started to alternatively call James' then my phone. Obviously, they were on silent, but they were impossible to ignore and eventually James went out to see what was up, and it turns out a family friend of his family had died.
He was a really good friend of my MiL and FiL for a very long time, and James grew up with the guy's son, so the families have known each other forever. I always enjoyed talking to T when we met, so he'll be a miss.
Some Murphy news. Last week I finally managed to get a pee sample from him, got it to the vets, and on testing it had some glucose in it, so they were worried he could be diabetic and wanted a blood test doing. He had that done on Thursday, and the results were expected today. The head vet has just phoned, and his blood results were fine, so she was confused about what had happened, asking if I'd cleaned the tray with something new or anything like that. But as that was a no, said to bring in another sample between a fortnight and a month, and otherwise, just to keep an eye on things. Of course, now I'm worrying that Kevin had contaminated the sample, and he's diabetic despite him looking perfectly healthy. Cats, there's always something to worry about.
I figured some of you would be interested in Newbery books with Jewish themes, so I’ve made a list. (As usual, it’s entirely possible I’ve forgotten some, since I’ve been reading this books for nigh on thirty years.)
1931: Agnes Hewes’ Spice and the Devil’s Cave. A kindly older Jewish couple help matchmake our hero and heroine and also lend money to the king of Portugal for voyages of exploration. (The modern reader may have a low opinion of voyages of exploration, but in Hewes’ eyes these are very much a Good Thing.) The entire Jewish community gets kicked unjustly out of Portugal.
1941. Kate Seredy’s The Singing Tree features not only a kindly Jewish shopkeeper but an extended musing on how Hungary was formed when everyone - Hungarian landowners, Jewish shopkeepers, some third group that I’m forgetting right now - came together as one. This is a building block toward the book’s central theme: not only are all the people of Hungary one, but in fact all human beings on this earth are one, and therefore can’t we stop tormenting each other with the horrors of war? (A cri de coeur in 1941.)
Then a trifecta of short story collections, written in Yiddish by Isaac Bashevis Singer and then translated into English: Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1967), The Fearsome Inn (1968) (actually a short story made into a picture book), and When Schlemiel Went to Warsaw and Other Stories (1969). Stories of eastern European Jewish life, often very funny or with a supernatural twist.
Then in 1970, the Newbery committee followed this up with Sulamith Ish-kashor’s Our Eddie (Jewish life in the Lower East Side in the 1900s) AND Johanna Reiss’s hiding-from-the-Nazis memoir The Upstairs Room. Another Holocaust memoir followed in 1982: Aranka Siegal’s Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944.
2008: Laura Amy Schlitz’s Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village is a series of poetic monologues told by different members of a medieval village, including a Jewish child.
2017: In Adam Gidwitz’s The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog, the narration rotates between the three magical children, one of whom is Jewish. (I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to plug Gidwitz’s Max in the House of Spies and Max in the Land of Lies, even though they’re not Newbery books. Yet. Max in the Land of Lies is eligible for 2026! Just putting that out there, Newbery committee!
Most recently, Ruth Behar’s 2025 Across So Many Seas is a generational saga of a Sephardic Jewish family, based loosely on Behar’s own family history. The story begins in the 1400s when the family is forced to leave Spain, then continues in the 1900s when a daughter of the family emigrates to Cuba for an arranged marriage. (Behar based this section on her own grandmother’s story, which she recounts in the afterword. The real story seems much more romantic than the tale Behar told to tell instead, which is such a strange choice.) Her daughter becomes a brigadista teaching peasants how to read until she emigrates to the US, and then her daughter vacations in Spain which the family was forced to flee so many generations before.
Edited to add: landofnowhere pointed out that I forgot Lois Lowry's Number the Stars, which is both embarrassing and inexplicable because I read that approximately 500 times as a child, and have reread it at least twice as an adult.
And also E. L. Konigsburg's The View from Saturday, but that one is much less embarrassing, as I read that book once and remember nothing except the fact that I didn't understand any of it. (And also during the quiz bowl at the end, the judges would allow posh to count as an acronym, but not tip. Why did this stick with me? The human mind is a mystery.)
I’m luckily in a neighborhood where I can make a big circuit and visit 4-5 Little Free Libraries in about an hour’s walk. I’ve done two of those loops so far, and have gotten quite a few books! Some I’m planning on reading myself, and some I got just so move into other LFL later.
It’s a great area to walk around and explore, honestly. Even if I don’t find a book to take, it’s fun seeing the old buildings and the trees nearly bare of their leaves.
These are my logs for my 2 weeks so far in Denver!
New LFL visited
LFL #12071 – Denver, CO
LFL #12326 – Denver, CO
LFL #26248 “Leftin’s Little Free Library” – Denver, CO
LFL #49608 – Denver, CO
LFL #119643 “Nancy’s Book Nook” – Denver, CO
Also found a few unofficial/un-chartered LFL book swap spots: an interesting dollhouse style (shown below), a bookshelf found in front of a house, and a community book exchange in the laundry room at my sit.
I DVR’d and watched some more Hallmark Christmas movies since the last post; some were okay, but some were pretty good.
1. Believe in Christmas: This movie was cute, but I don’t have any interest in watching it again. I only DVR’d it because John Reardon and Megan Ory where in it. I liked the friendship between Beatrice and Emelia. I also thought it was neat that Kevin Hanchard (who plays Superintendent Joe Donovan on Hudson & Rex) was also in the movie. The ‘miscommunication’ bit is my least favorite of every Hallmark movie, especially when the miscommunication is brought on by something really stupid, but at least this one was resolved quickly. I did shake my head when Beatrice found the angel that had been missing for five years under a piece of furniture, as if the owners of a B&B haven’t vacuumed under that piece of furniture in five years. o_O
I did two loads of laundry, hand-washed dishes, ran a load in the dishwasher, went for a couple walks with Pip and the dogs, clipped Pip’s hair, cut up chicken for the dogs' meals, changed kitty litter, and showered.
I finally finished a book! It’s been so long since I’ve managed this feat. It feels like quite an accomplishment. I watched a Hallmark Christmas movie. I had the Bills game on background in the afternoon and Zoo Tampa in the evening. (The Bills game was nerve-wracking as the teams alternately scored, but exciting when it became clear that the Bills were going to pull out the win, lol!)
Temps started out at 48.7(F) and dropped to 38.5 over the next few hours. During the middle of the day temps hovered around 40 while the weather itself was volatile and weird: rain, hail, snow, sun, hail again, more snow, more sun, more snow and through it all windy like crazy! Each time the snow moved in again, Pip would say, here comes another wall of snow! Temps started dropping again mid-afternoon.
Mom Update:
I don't have much. Mom sounded good today. Sister S stopped in to see her. She didn’t have any issues with eating (that she told me about). She watched some Hallmark.
I was delighted when I saw this book was being released. I devoured book one in the series, Rules for Ruin, and ended that review with a note about how I was looking forward to the couple I guessed would be in the next book. I was delighted to be right!
Nell is one of the earliest cohorts at Miss Corvus’ school and when she was younger, she felt destined for great things. But a fall in her tween years left her with a permanent limp and a desire to only ever be a teacher at the school. In Rules for Ruin, she makes it clear the school is her world, but in The Marriage Method she takes her first step into the real world proper.
Miles is the editor-in-chief of The Courant, a London paper looking for a big story to improve their circulation numbers. He has deep suspicions about Miss Corvus’ school and Nell is dispatched to his offices in London to answer his questions without revealing anything of what actually happens at the school. The school believes in preparing girls for the real world which includes things like learning self-defence, how to pick locks and the like. If this were widely known, the school would be shut down in scandal.
Miles has a penchant for saving stray cats and it is a stray cat that serves as Miles and Nell’s undoing. As with all of Miss Corvus’ girls, Nell wears a wire crinoline. The cat Miles is currently trying to tame gets tangled in the crinoline and the only way to free her is for Miles to expose her legs to the knee (gasp!) and untangle the cat. OF COURSE, as they are doing this, the reverend who is connected to the parish in which the school is based walks in on them with Miles’ assistant in tow. Ruin!
Incidentally, I found it difficult to believe that an animal could get tied up in a crinoline, but there is an author’s note at the end sharing that there are a number of newspaper articles from the time in which small animals became tangled in crinolines – a persistent problem, it seems!
Miles proposes marriage and Nell accepts. It’s not supposed to be a love match, but right from the start this couple are so gentle with each other. It’s absolute bliss to read. With each small reveal of her delicate underbelly, Miles meets her with kindness, support and gentleness. It’s exquisite. Similarly, as Nell gets to know Miles, she sees beyond the stern exterior to the loyal, caring man beneath. It gave me the warm fuzzies in the best way.
Our couple from Rules for Ruin makes a cameo appearance, as do a few other characters from previous Mimi Matthews books not in this series. It’s not enough to mean that you couldn’t read this as a standalone necessarily, but I would definitely recommend reading them in order. We also have a glimpse of the potential next couple in the series: a teacher at the school and a police inspector. I’m intrigued!
If the story were just a couple falling in love with each other by tender steps, it would still be good, but there are two intertwined mystery plots to solve which make it great. First, a girl travelling to Miss Corvus’ school disappears on her way there. Nell needs to find out what happened to her. Second, one of Miles’ reporters is missing and he needs to find him. Incidentally, the two stories intersect in a surprising, but plausible way. Miles and Nell engage in high-jinks to solve the two mysteries while being (sort of) sensible about involving the police. I found the plot around the missing newspaper reporter particularly compelling and there are some wonderfully tense moments as the truth is revealed.
In keeping with the series, this book features women with a feminist outlook operating in a decidedly patriarchal world. Nell speaks openly and frankly about how marriage is detrimental to women’s freedom. So yes, Miles and Nell are forced by circumstances to marry, but the foundation of that marriage is a partnership of equals.
If you’re looking for a book that has tender love at its core set in a good mystery with lashings of feminism in Victorian England, then this book will more than surpass your expectations. I wait with bated breath for the next book in the series.
I'm up early to call for a doctor's appointment at eight before a "job hunting course" at nine. The latter is something I've seen twice before and am expecting a fair amount of wasted time this week, but they do provide an individual coach to give advice and talk through options and that should help me, not only because of my executive dysfunction, but also because I'm genuinely torn about what to do next.
I don't know how much of the day I have to wait for a call back from the health center, though, so I will have to leave to take the call at some point.
Theme Prompt: #143 - nightmare (Amnesty 28) Title: to finally find it (resurrections, track A) Fandom:The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) - an AU in which Bowser is in the heroic role and the Mario Bros. are not, by way of a childhood swapping. Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (because of Bowser's potty mouth) + hesitant warning for Mario Movie Spoilers I Guess Word Count: 934 words Author's Note: Sorry Bowser, for the nightmare traumas. It's not exactly a companion piece to reminders, not what I intended lol, but ... the new Mario Movie trailer reminded me "oh maybe I should actually practice writing this guy full of the insecurities my main Bowser ignored", lol. (The Slay the Princess inspiration for this one + fun little note as to what Bowser actually tried to play later on in the drabble.) Summary: Bowser Rigassi is used to nightmares, that comes with the territory of being a freak of nature without anything of a past but his first name. But the nightmare he has this time is unusually hard-hitting..
The other week in therapy I tried to minimize something that happened while I was living with my family for those two months, and I caught myself doing it and went, “no, wait, actually, that’s bullshit. Why did I say that?”
And my therapist had to very visibly resist the urge to punch the air.
So, y'know, if you’re frustrated with me putting up with my family; you’re not the only ones lol.
Having gone through the “hey your dad has cancer and it is bad” call myself, it is amazing how thoroughly you realize that no matter how much damage they did to you and made you feel like shit and you ran out of their immediate reach for your own mental health (which has been amazing) it doesn’t kill the part of you that still cares about them in some way.
I too went back “home” for it and my father died about two months after doing so and I waited out the six months for estate and paperwork things to settle before I started looking for a way outta dodge (because for all that my father openly hated me apparently my mother has always been so much more hateful of me but kept a better facade about it and the emotional hit of my father’s illness meant she couldn’t keep it up and it was bad).
I’m sorry this is something you’ve also experienced.
It’s honestly something I have been preparing myself for since early childhood (which sounds fucked up because it is) but yeah. You really never know how you’re going to react or feel until it happens, and although I understandrstand why people are very persistent that I cut them off entirely, there are reasons that are important to me that currently dictate that I remain low contact instead of no contact.
That may change. But I guess we’ll see.
I’m not going to tell anyone how to grieve, or what to do, but I do want to share from my experience:
People will tell you that you will automatically regret not resuming contact around the death, before or after, as if this is as inescapable as a law of physics.
It is not. You may regret keeping the people you cut out of your life away, but you very likely won’t - at least, no more and no differently than you did when they were not dying, or dead.
You probably will regret being back in contact, though, because the proximity of death doesn’t usually change people. They just become more themselves when they can’t maintain the masks they usually wear.
Deathbed reconciliation, deathbed apologies, these are great story elements, but they are mostly fantasy.
I promise you, I suffer from zero expectations of any sort of apology or reconciliation, deathbed or otherwise.
That’s a fantasy I purged myself of a long time ago. I’m simply doing what gives me closure. Again, that may change. We’ll just have to see.
The other week in therapy I tried to minimize something that happened while I was living with my family for those two months, and I caught myself doing it and went, “no, wait, actually, that’s bullshit. Why did I say that?”
And my therapist had to very visibly resist the urge to punch the air.
So, y'know, if you’re frustrated with me putting up with my family; you’re not the only ones lol.
Having gone through the “hey your dad has cancer and it is bad” call myself, it is amazing how thoroughly you realize that no matter how much damage they did to you and made you feel like shit and you ran out of their immediate reach for your own mental health (which has been amazing) it doesn’t kill the part of you that still cares about them in some way.
I too went back “home” for it and my father died about two months after doing so and I waited out the six months for estate and paperwork things to settle before I started looking for a way outta dodge (because for all that my father openly hated me apparently my mother has always been so much more hateful of me but kept a better facade about it and the emotional hit of my father’s illness meant she couldn’t keep it up and it was bad).
I’m sorry this is something you’ve also experienced.
It’s honestly something I have been preparing myself for since early childhood (which sounds fucked up because it is) but yeah. You really never know how you’re going to react or feel until it happens, and although I understandrstand why people are very persistent that I cut them off entirely, there are reasons that are important to me that currently dictate that I remain low contact instead of no contact.
Theme Prompt: #014 - Time of Need (Amnesty 28) Title: the princess and the dragon Fandom: Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time (ft. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story) Rating/Warnings: PG-13 (mmmmmostly because of injuries and Bowser's potty mouth) Word Count: 995 words Author's Note: I wrote most of this while listening to House M.D. lmao, I continue to appreciate that they slipped in what're considered childish stuff like House reading comics or referencing Pokemon or playing on a PSP he receives as a gift in one episode. It's unusually endearing to me haha. Anyways this is another continuation, this time to "a dance unfinished" (sidenote for some reason the ending fought with me, sowwy if it feels off) PATCH NOTES: Alas, once again I have fucked up and posted minus the title as well as screwing up something in the fandom bits. Again. Sorry! Summary: Fawful wakes up in a corrected timeline of sorts - his adventure in the future caught the attention of Peach and Bowser, both of whom end up discovering him in Peach's Castle.
Kind of a bleh week for blogging but enjoyable for living– relaxing and non-stressful, which is all that I want.
One thing of note: I realized I booked my flight from here to my next sit for the wrong day, but luckily I was able to cancel it and use the money towards a ticket for the correct day. I DID end up paying double what I originally did, which sucks, but at least I’ll get there on the right date now.
And it worked out okay anyway, money-wise, because the owner invited me to stay the night before she leaves, so I’ll save $100-something on a hotel! It all balances out in the end, really.
🐈 Curious orange kitty (codename Mr. B-Denver) has figured out how to open cabinets and got into the ones right above the fridge, which was hilarious! Luckily nothing important is up there. Overweight Siamese kitty (codename Ms. S-Denver) meanwhile has warmed up to me a lot and is now regularly sleeping next to me while I work on the computer. They not lap cats, which is kind of a bummer, but they do like to be in the same room as much as possible.
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