A Fright to the Death

 Book 79 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from August 13 - 15

A Fright to the Death

by Dawn Eastman

3 stars

After reading Pall in the Family, I decided to buy the other 3 books in the Family Fortune Mystery series and they were perfect paperbacks to take along on our trip.

This book, the third in the series, was a flip for me.  In the first two I liked the family dynamics more than the actual mysteries.  In this one, the dynamics were barely there and what was there was super annoying - I'm over Vi inserting herself everywhere.  The mystery was good though, other than a random genetic reveal at the end.

There's only one more book and I will be curious to see if that will feel intentional or the author stopped writing them for some reason.  I really wish Clyde would lean more into her "talents" instead of beating around the bush.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 79th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- Title starting with 'F' (I'm doing an A-Z title challenge)

- A book I purchased in 2026 (my goal is to read any books I buy within 6 months of purchasing them)

Be Careful What You Witch For

 Book 78 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from August 10 - 11

Be Careful What You Witch For

by Dawn Eastman

4 stars

After reading Pall in the Family, I decided to buy the other 3 books in the Family Fortune Mystery series and they were perfect paperbacks to take along on our trip.

This book, the second in the series, passed quickly and I enjoyed it.  Again, it was more for the family dynamics than the mystery plot but the mystery was decent too.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 78th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- A book I purchased in 2026 (my goal is to read any books I buy within 6 months of purchasing them)

History is All You Left Me

 Book 77 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from August 9 - 10

History is All You Left Me

by Adam Silvera

2 stars

I bought this at a book sale and didn't realize at the time I've had this on my TBR since 2017.  So the book has caught my eye at least twice.

During the first few chapters of the book the characters were absolutely fictional but I didn't care because they were so cute.  But as the book continued, I liked it less and by the end I wasn't invested.   

I think the scenes could play well visually in a teen movie though.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 77th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- A book I purchased in 2026 (my goal is to read any books I buy within 6 months of purchasing them)

- A book I own that is leaving my house for a new reader to find (my goal is to declutter and make progress on whittling down my shelves/boxes of books in my house)

Sweeter Voices Still

 Book 76 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from August 6 - 9

Sweeter Voices Still:

an LGBTQ Anthology from Middle America

3 stars

I liked the concept but not necessarily the execution.  My favorite essay was "Jell-O Salad" by Gabrielle Montesanti.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 76th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

The Irish in America

 Book 75 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from July 17 - August 6

The Irish in America

by Michael Coffey

2 stars

Very dry.  It was already hard to focus but the format made it worse.  There were inserts of texts and photos scattered throughout the book.  The inserts were usually vignettes of people or essays by someone and could be anywhere from 1-4 pages.  I understand why they were part of the book but the way they were inserted was a problem.  They weren't put it at text breaks of the chapter so I could be mid-sentence in a chapter, turn a page, have pages of unrelated text, and then back to finish the sentence and continue the chapter.  Switching back and forth and having things broken up made it even harder to concentrate.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 75th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- Title starting with 'I' (I'm doing an A-Z title challenge)

- A book I purchased in 2026 (my goal is to read any books I buy within 6 months of purchasing them)

- A book I own that is leaving my house for a new reader to find (my goal is to declutter and make progress on whittling down my shelves/boxes of books in my house)

Have No Shame

 Book 74 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read on July 30

Have No Shame

by Melissa Foster

2 stars

I read this book in a day.  It helped that the story was 187 pages long even though my paperback copy has 373 pages.  The author included 2 formats, one with Southern dialect and one without.  I read the one with Southern dialect as it seems that was the intended way of the author; in comparing a few pages, it seems the main difference was whether words ending in 'ing' had the full ending or an apostrophe (jumping vs jumpin').  Both versions had the 'n' word (appropriate for the story but something I was curious about when changing formats).

The fact that I read it in a day because I liked her writing style is what made it 2 stars vs. 1.  The story itself was too 'Pollyanna' for me.  The main character goes from never ever even questioning anything about race to being on the front line of the civil rights movement?  After one conversation she goes from being afraid to be in the same room as a black man to falling in love with one?  It was like the opposite of the "white savior" complex...she met a black person, they were nice, and she realized they're people too.  Ok...

I'm not going to complain about a happy ending but I will say this book is like a Hallmark version of race relations.  Also, I saw the pregnancy reveal coming a mile away but when the blood test came in with the gestational age I didn't think it was possible; that's a gap that wasn't explained.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 74th book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)

- A book I received for Christmas 2025 (my goal is to read all my Christmas 2025 books by the end of 2026)

- A book I own that is leaving my house for a new reader to find (my goal is to declutter and make progress on whittling down my shelves/boxes of books in my house)

And Now I Spill the Family Secrets

 Book 73 of my 2026 Reading Challenge

read from July 18 - 29

And Now I Spill the Family Secrets: An Illustrated Memoir

by Margaret Kimball

3 stars

I'm pretty neutral on this because life impacted how I read this.  I will say this book delves deeper into the question of how memoirs affects people around the author, which is always something I wonder about.

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Ways This Book Met my 2026 Reading Goals:

- 73rd book read in 2026 (my goal is 100)