In the small village of Kilbane, County Cork, Ireland, Naomi’s Bistro has always been a warm and welcoming spot to visit with neighbors, enjoy some brown bread and tea, and get the local gossip. Nowadays twenty-two-year-old Siobhán O’Sullivan runs the family bistro named for her mother, along with her five siblings, after the death of their parents in a car crash almost a year ago.
One morning, as they’re opening the bistro, they discover a man seated at a table, dressed in a suit as if for his own funeral, a pair of hot pink barber scissors protruding from his chest.
MY THOUGHTS: This was a fun introduction to what promises to be an even more fun series. So far there are 10 books in the series. This is a very authentic Irish book written with Irish tone, accents, and history. I loved the main character, Siobhan (shuh-vawn) O’Sullivan, and her five siblings. Together they are known as the O’Sullivan Six in their small town.
Siobhan is a headstrong, redhead who has had an extremely rough year. She has to find the killer because a family member is being blamed for the death of the man found at their bistro. Combine her determination with a bit of romance between her and the local garda (police) and you have the perfect combination for a mystery in my mind.
*Heads up to those who like their cozy mysteries squeaky clean: while it has many cozy mystery elements there is some swearing, including the big ones that somehow sound nicer when written/spelled in an Irish accent.
I’m looking forward to checking out the rest of the books in the series.
I’m so glad you are here and taking part in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up. I know I have met some very fun bloggers that way!
Hello, everyone! This has been a crazy week for me with some health concerns for me and some for my parents. We are all doing well at this point but I had absolutely no time to choose any posts to highlight this week. I will be back next week with highlights, though!
For now, here are our most clicked posts for this week, and, oh my word, we had a seven-way tie!
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
It is June and I should be excited because it is officially summer, but I am not a summer fan so I am not as excited about the arrival of June like others might be.
I will really not be excited when July arrives because July and August are two of our hottest months in our area of the world.
Despite not liking the hot weather of summer, I do have some summer activities I am looking forward to.
Before we get to June, though, I’ll look back on May, which was a somewhat stressful month with a lot of ups and downs.
School ended Thursday for the kids, but I will write about that in a separate post. I will mention here that I was more than excited for this school year to end, especially when it came to the eleventh grader, my son. Getting him to do schoolwork this year was like pulling teeth. He was never rude about it, but he just dragged his feet on every assignment I gave him. He was also attending classes at a local technical school so I know that added some stress to his schedule. He had senioritis early, I guess.
We had some nice visits at my parents during May and enjoyed watching green spread across the hillsides and fields as Spring came. It seemed like one day the trees were naked and brown and the next they were glowing a brilliant green.
The sight of the green made my heart full and light at the same time.
We haven’t been visiting the library as much lately but we did have a nice visit in May. The books we got that day have been renewed once since but we are ready to take them back.
I read The Strawberry Girl from that stack and Little Miss and I decided we didn’t want to read Ginger Pye right now so we will read that at another time.
There was also a book about reptiles that Little Miss enjoyed and a couple of books about horses as well. We still need to read the picture book on Van Gogh, which is full of beautiful pictures.
In April we went to a book sale at another library near us and I came home with a large stack of cozy mysteries and other genres.
I’ve read a couple of those cozies and plan to read more this summer.
I feel like May was not very exciting. It was mostly full of school and trying to push through to the end of that.
Looking ahead to this month, we will be meeting with our homeschool evaluator next week. Once that is over and we hand the evaluations into the school district, our school year is officially over. Yay! I’m looking forward to that, but in a way I will miss school. I like learning with the kids. Luckily learning new things is something we can do anytime of the year.
This week I ended up in the ER for some weird symptoms. In the end, things turned out well, but our family has been under a lot of stress so I am really hoping for some sort of break through and turn around this month.
That’s what I’m looking forward to most in June, besides some time with family, reading, and working on the third book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries – a turn around for the good in some way.
The day after I came back from the ER the wild roses and the peonies were blooming in our backyard and it gave me hope that that turn around will come soon.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Yesterday Little Miss had a friend over and it was a somewhat busy day of running through sprinklers, jumping on trampolines, and making snacks.
Today I am taking my time deciding what to do since I didn’t have a great night of sleep. Whatever I do I am grateful to have a nice, cool, and sunny day to do it in.
In my post yesterday I mentioned that I have started a YouTube Shorts channel and a paid Substack. Today I started thinking about how much of a bad idea that was. *snort laugh*. I hate social media. What was I thinking?!
So, they are there and I do plan to post some interesting stuff on Substack, but I do not plan to get obsessed with YouTube because I just don’t have time. I waste too much time on social media as it is.
What I/we’ve been Reading
Currently:
The Secret of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene
The Women of Wyntons by Donna Muma
The Real James Herriottby Jim Wight
Just Finished:
The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson (romantic comedy)
Up next:
The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
What We watched/are Watching
The kids have been making their way through all the Harry Potter films so I’ve been sort of watching with them even though I’m not that interested in Harry Potter. These last films are super depressing in parts with team members just dying left and right without much time to mourn them. My son says that is how the books were too.
Last night I watched Dead Reckoning with Humphrey Bogart and Lizabeth Scott with The Boy. We did not enjoy it.
Tonight The Husband and I are watching the season 4 premiere (finally) of The Chosen.
What I’m Writing
I am working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and on edits for Cassie. Still. Yes.
I am still listening to Around the World in 80 Days and I would love to finish it this week.
As for music, I am really enjoying Anne Wilson’s new album. Here is a sample of it:
Photos from Last Week
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
I am behind on collecting blog posts for this feature but I plan to work on this this summer because I have been reading some really interesting blog posts lately. Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
Our temps have remained mild this week which means I can still enjoy a warm cup of tea without making myself overheated. Today I am sipping peppermint tea with honey. Yes, I am a creature of habit.
Yesterday was one of the weirdest days I have had in a long time. It was one stressful thing after another and it didn’t let up all day. I won’t detail all of that stress here because some of it relates to private matters for others but I would literally hang up the phone and someone else would call with another situation. Thankfully none of it was at an emergency level and everyone is fine physically and no one is in the hospital. But, still, wow!
The other weird thing is that everyone I talked to was having a weird day too or my weirdness rubbed off on them. It was … to keep using the same word … weird.
By last night I was just sitting and staring at a type of emotional numbness from it all.
One good thing yesterday had going for it was that it was a beautiful day.
Little Miss and I traveled 20 minutes north to pick up our groceries and stopped by a couple of little libraries on the way back. Unfortunately, I only found two books and neither of them was very exciting. One is the autobiography of Michael J. Fox.
I was able to unload some of my books too, however.
The one little library is located along the Susquehanna River, on a river walk.
The other is an old British phone box and I’m really not sure where it came from but it is the makeshift library in the little town I went to school in. Their very old library was washed away in a flood several years ago. Little Miss wanted to pose in the little library so I snapped a photo of her.
Thankfully the weather is beautiful again today so hopefully I can perk up some.
Little Miss has a friend over and they have already had some fun jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline, sliding on the Slip N’ Slide, throwing water balloons, and just hanging out together.
The Boy helped my dad lift a headstone at the little cemetery down the road from Dad’s house and then helped a man who restores and cleans some headstones at another cemetery.
The Husband is, sadly, working.
Later I hope to be reading, which I tried to do a lot of this week. I didn’t even watch a lot of TV but I do hope to watch an old movie tonight because I miss old movies. I haven’t watched any in the last few months.
Thursday was our last day of homeschooling and I’m grateful for the break. I will probably start a few lessons in July but nothing too major until August.
The Boy’s technical school is out but he has a few English and History assignments to finish up for me. He will be a senior next year and Little Miss will be a fourth grader.
I haven’t yet told all of you that I’ve started a YouTube channel (just shorts for now) and a paid Substack – so I am telling you know now because I have to admit to all my regular readers that I have no idea what I am doing. I also have no specific goals for the channel or the paid Substack. You can also follow me for free on substack, which will be where I post my monthly writing update (which is free), and will soon be posting sneak peeks and other goodies for paid subscribers.
I will be sharing my main blogging here, however, because I feel like WordPress is my safe little haven where I’m just free to be weirdo me. Not that I won’t also be weird on Substack because I can’t get the weird out of me.
(Today’s post is sponsored by word weird. We’ve all been weird or known someone who is weird. If you too would like to be weird, then visit this blog often and learn more about how you too can be weird.)
One thing I don’t really like paying attention to with all these social media sites is stats. Stats are very suffocating. I just want to have fun making videos or sharing about what books I’m reading or – yes – sharing about the books I’ve written. After doing a little analyzing and looking at stats this week I was reminded again that numbers don’t mean anything if connections are not made and relationships are not formed. I was also reminded I’d rather have the connections and relationships than the numbers, which is why I’m going to post only when I feel like it and not think I have to post all the time to “build a following.”
The only one who should be followed is Jesus and he doesn’t keep track of his stats in numbers but in hearts so I think I’ll just follow him and worry less about numbers on a screen.
Now that we are out of school, I don’t know what we are doing.
Nope. I don’t know what we are doing next week at all.
The week after this upcoming week we will be going to meet with the kid’s homeschool evaluator and then the rest of that week there is an art class being held by the local 4-H. There will be a horse and pony club meeting that Friday night as well.
So that week will be fairly busy.
I’m a hermit in the summer sometimes because I don’t handle the hot temps well. Or my body doesn’t at least.
I lock myself up in air conditioning as much as possible to avoid, well, fainting. Ha.
I do hope we can get to a couple outside events this summer – including a pool or two and maybe an aquarium that Little Miss has been asking to go to.
How was your week last week?
Are the temps warm or cool where you are?
What are you drinking these days? Warm or cool drinks or a mix of both like me?
I’m so glad you are here and taking part in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up. I know I have met some very fun bloggers that way!
This week we had a tie for the most clicked posts, both by Thrifting Wonderland.
This week we have had rain and I have actually enjoyed it. It has been nice and cool and great reading and writing weather. I hope the weather has been lovely where you are!
I highlighted three posts this week but there were so many good ones. Please remember you can always go back and read the posts from the previous week’s link-up, even if you can’t add links to that particular link. I liked so many posts this week it was truly hard to pick just these! I am not just saying that!
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago.
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
Today’s prompt was:Books I Was Super Excited to Get My Hands on but Still Haven’t Read.
So I have a lot of books I could probably put on this list but today I am going to share three books I grabbed up at used book sales but still haven’t started. I know – I am supposed to share ten but I didn’t have ten! I am so bad at the whole “top ten” theme but hopefully I’ll get better at it.
These books won’t be on the “popular” lists of today because this week I realized I don’t read popular books. I read books not many people have heard of, I think. I’m like a little old book lady stuck in a middle-aged lady’s body.
Anyhow, here are my three books:
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie.
This is the first book in the Grantchester Mysteries, which is the book series that the British TV show is based on. The series follows the vicar turned amateur sleuth, Sidney Chambers.
Originally, I wanted to read these books because I thought they were older mysteries but when I picked up this book I realized it had been written in 2012, making it much more modern than I expected. I also learned (well just today, if I am honest) that the books are a collection of short stories, somewhat like G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown Mysteries.
I still want to read the book(s), however. I will have to compare it with what I have already seen of the show, which isn’t much.
There are six books in this series with the fifth, the prequel having been written in 2019.
Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (2012)
Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night (2013)
Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (2014)
Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (2015)
Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation (2016)
Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love (2017)
The Road to Grantchester (2019)
The next book I snatched up at a library sale that I wanted to read was Let The Circle Be Unbroken by Mildred D. Taylor.
This is the sequel to Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, which I read as a kid. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry is a sequel to Song of the Trees and all are part of the Logan family saga.
I want to eventually read this entire series but before I start this particular book, I want to go back and reread Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry since it has been *mumble mumble* years since I first read it.
If you are not familiar with this series, here is a quick description of the first book:
Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family’s struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie’s story – Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.
And this one:
It is a frightening and turbulent time for the Logan family. First, their friend T. J. must go on trial for murder – and confront an all-white jury. Then, Cousin Suzella tries to pass for white, with humiliating consequences. And when Cassie’s neighbor Mrs. Lee Annie stands up for her right to vote, she and her family are driven from their home. Other neighbors are destroyed and shattered by the greed of landowners. But through it all, Cassie and the Logans stand together and stand proud – proving that courage, love, and understanding can defy even the deepest prejudice.
The third book I grabbed and wanted is Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour.
I grabbed this one because my mom and brother used to read Louis L’Amour when I was a kid and a blogger I follow reads him and was talking about his books. I thought this would be something different to try – out of my normal realm of genre reading.
L’Amour writes westerns and the only other books I’ve read that I would consider westerns are The Walt Longmire Mysteries by Craig Johnson.
So have you read any of these books or even heard of them? Let me know in the comments!
Apple Cider Slaying is the first book in the Cider Shop Mystery series by Julie Anne Lindsey and I can say right off the bat that I will read more in the series after reading this one.
The mystery starts with a murder in the apple barn of Winona “Winnie” Mae Montgomery and her Granny Smythe. The discovery of the body of Nadine Cooper, Granny’s nemesis, would have been unpleasant at any time but was especially unpleasant to find when Winona was in the middle of an interview with the bank’s loan officer while trying to secure a loan for her cider making business.
Winona has been helping Granny with her orchard for years and had hoped to expand the business. That will be hard to do, though, without some extra money. Getting that money won’t be easy when horrible things keep happening in front of the man who can give that money.
When the new sheriff, handsome Colton Wise, lists Granny as his number one suspect, Winnie knows she needs to clear Granny’s name. To clear her name she will have to do some investigating of her own because she thinks Sheriff Wise has made up his mind to prove Granny is guilty.
As if trying to keep the orchard afloat and start her own business, working at the local diner, and having her grandmother accused of murder isn’t enough, Winnie’s ex-boyfriend shows up back in town after dumping her the year before. Luckily, she has a best friend and people in her small community to lean on and support her and her grandmother.
There is a ton of humor in this book even in the midst of some very tense moments – especially between Winnie and Colton.
The one minor issue I had was that I would have liked the grandmother to be a little more flushed out – such as having even more of her personality and backstory showcased, but I think that will happen in future books. There was some of that in this first book, don’t get me wrong, but I loved her character so much so I want more. I am sure I will get that more in book two.
I loved Granny so much that I almost cried during one scene but I’m not going to spoil the reason for my emotion. You’ll have to read the book.
This series is on Kindle Unlimited or available for purchase in ebook, audiobook, or paperback.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The Secret of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene (Another fluff read by “Carolyn Keene” this week.)
The Fast Lane by Sharon Peterson (A romantic comedy – much needed, though there is some seriousness thrown in so I’m reading it sort of slowly.)
Just Finished:
Strawberry Girlby Lois Lenski
I almost abandoned this one because of how odd it was when I first started but then I had to find out what happened with the Slater family – who are so mean to the Boyler family. If you’re not familiar with this one it is about farming families in Florida in the early 20th century. Their accents are, I guess, very authentic. Or mocking. Not sure which, but I think they are meant to be authentic. (I know they are meant to be authentic. I’m teasing a bit here.)
It honestly had a lot of disturbing stuff in it so I don’t think this will be a book I’ll read over and over. The librarian at our local library said this one had sentimental meaning for her like the Little House books but I don’t remember neighbors poisoning the Ingalls’ mule like the neighbors in this book did. Yikes. It did have a good ending, but I would not call this a “cozy read.”
It was, however, an interesting one.
Abandoned: I planned to start a new book by author Maddie Day and then found out that she is a cozy mystery writer who pushes politics in her books. No thanks. I read to escape from all that – not to have it shoved at me in books that are meant to be fun. And, by the way, I don’t want politics even if it is politics I “agree with.”
Soon to be read:
The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of my Father by Jim Wight
The Deeds of the Deceitful by Ellery Adams and Tina Radcliffe
The Boy and I are reading Around the World in 80 Days Together.
Little Miss and I are reading Ginger Pye by Eleanor Estes.
The Husband is reading . .. oops. Forgot to ask him and he’s laying down for a nap. I’ll let you know next week.
What We watched/are Watching
It was a mixed bag of things on tap to watch this week. I watched an episode of Dick VanDyke, one of the old Carol Burnett Show, a couple of YouTube videos from Just A Few Acres Farm and I think that’s about it. I read and wrote more this week than watched things. What I’m Writing
I am still working on corrections to Cassie and on writing the third book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
