Curled Up With a Good Book and a Cup of Tea

Half-sisters Effia and Esi have never met nor do they know that the other one exists. They were born in different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana to the same mother, but after that their lives take two very different paths. Against the hopes of her father, Effia marries an Englishman and lives in the comforts of the Cape Coast Castle where her husband is involved in the slave trade. Their children are educated abroad and grow up to become involved in the administration of the British Empire in Africa. Esi is captured and sold into slavery, imprisoned in the dungeon of the Cape Coast Castle before she is shipped off to America. From Ghana to America, each generation that follows these women face very different circumstances and challenges in their lives but each remain intrinsically tied to the African continent. Homegoing , by Yaa Gyasi, is a masterpiece of a novel and is the debut novel that people will be talking about for years to come. It is only May but I am de...

When evil and darkness try to take over the world, there is one organization there to stop them - the Regional Office. Led by the mysterious Oyemi and her team of Oracles, their ultra-elite female assassins are protecting the globe from mayhem and destruction. But someone on the inside wants to bring it down. And now the Regional Office is under attack.   Rose is a young assassin who has been recruited by a defector from the Office to lead the attack. The Office's first line of defence is Sarah, a young woman who was taken in by the Office when her mother disappeared and who also happens to have a mechanical arm. Over the course of the attack, Rose and Sarah’s stories will collide and their worlds will never be the same. The Regional Office is Under Attack , by Manuel Gonzales, is a fun and unique novel that will have readers hooked from the very first page right to the last. Based on the description of this book it is something I didn’t think I would ever have any int...

Her whole life Kate O’Brian has been the odd girl out.  As the scholarship student at a succession of elite private schools, she’s had to prove she is worth her place all while keeping her past a secret. She’s book-smart and she’s street-smart and she can stand her ground no matter what life throws at her and no matter what she has to do. Now she is in her final year of high school and she’s attending yet another new school. But she has a plan. She will climb the social ladder and achieve her ultimate goal - a spot at Yale. She just needs to find the right “it” girl who she can use to her advantage. That girl is Olivia Sumner, a wealthy yet troubled teen. She is back at Waverly School to repeat her last year of high school after mysterious circumstances prevented her from finishing. She’s in desperate need of a best friend, and Kate may be the one for her. But when the handsome Mark Redkin joins Waverly as part of the administration, their world is turned upside down. Ma...

If you have ever thought of your family as dysfunctional, then you need to meet the Plumbs. Just a quick glance will make you feel much better about the people you call your relatives. On a cold afternoon in New York City, siblings Melody, Beatrice, and Jack have gathered together to confront their older brother. Leo has just left rehab after driving drunk and crashing his car with a nineteen-year-old waitress who is not his wife in the passenger seat. In order to minimize the fallout, their mother has used most of the money from “The Nest,” a joint trust fund the siblings were only months away from receiving.  The Nest was left to them by their deceased father to be a mid-life supplement but over the years all of the siblings have been counting on it to solve a number of their self-inflicted money problems. Melody, whose twin daughters are about to enter college, has a mortgage she never could afford. Jack, an antiques dealer, has been funding his shop by borrowing agai...

Vegans and vegetarians rejoice! Gone are the days of missing out and forgetting about delicious treats just because you follow a plant-based diet. The mother-daughter duo behind Kelly’s Bake Shoppe and Lettuce Love Café have a new cookbook with over 100 plant-based, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and peanut-free recipes. And meat-eaters take note - you won’t even realize there is anything missing from these sweet treats. Made With Love: More Than 100 Sweet and Savory Plant-Based Recipes for Every Moment in Life , by Kelly Childs and Erinn Weatherbie, is a beautiful cookbook packed full of delicious foods, easy recipes, and detailed information about vegan cooking and baking. This book is perfect for both the vegan and the meat-eater in your life. I adhere to a mostly plant-based diet but one thing that I tend not to do myself is baking. I leave that to the experts. But this book changed my mind on that. The recipes in this book are easy to follow as well as shop for, whi...

So April was a great month for me when it came to reading, but when it came to blogging, it wasn't great. Things were very busy for me balancing family and work (again, work in a bookshop, not complaining at all) so while I was getting a lot of reading done on the run, I was having a hard time just sitting down and that is where my blog became neglected. So I'm hoping to turn things around on that front in May. Here are the books I read in April with my GoodReads ratings: Eligible - Curtis Sittenfeld **** Beware That Girl - Teresa Toten **** Me Before You - JoJo Moyes ***** The Regional Office is Under Attack - Manuel Gonzales **** The Nest - Cynthia D'Aprix-Sweeney **** I Almost Forgot About You - Terry McMillan **** Making It Up As I Go Along - Marian Keyes *** Thoughts With one exception, every book I read this month was a 4 star read for me. It was just a month of good reads. My favourite was Eligible . I'm recommending this modern adaptation o...