This Week in Books (02-24-2021)

Hosted by Lipsy Lost and Found, my Wednesday post gives you a taste of what I’m reading this week. A similar meme is run by Taking on a World of Words.

| LAST BOOK I FINISHED READING |

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other “shepherds” who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them–and an ultraviolent militia threatens to exterminate them–the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart–or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world. 

[2021 is apparently turning into the year I tackle the door-stoppers. At a mere 780 pages, Wanderers kept me entertained for days. I think it could have been a bit shorter but all in all, a great dystopian adventure.]

| THE BOOK I’M CURRENTLY READING |

Frances Howard has beauty and a powerful family – and is the most unhappy creature in the world.

Anne Turner has wit and talent – but no stage on which to display them. Little stands between her and the abyss of destitution.

When these two very different women meet in the strangest of circumstances, a powerful friendship is sparked. Frankie sweeps Anne into a world of splendour that exceeds all she imagined: a Court whose foreign king is a stranger to his own subjects; where ancient families fight for power, and where the sovereign’s favourite may rise and rise – so long as he remains in favour.

With the marriage of their talents, Anne and Frankie enter this extravagant, savage hunting ground, seeking a little happiness for themselves. But as they gain notice, they also gain enemies; what began as a search for love and safety leads to desperate acts that could cost them everything.

[Enjoying, yet struggling with this one at the same time. Some pages have had me wanting to throw this novel through the window in a fit of rage but it also reminds me why I love historical fiction and why I should definitely be reading more of it.]

| WHAT I’M (PROBABLY) READING NEXT |

An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother’s recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept.

Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it’s beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous – as does her brother, Isaac.

And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin’s unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.

But no-one has realised yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they’re all in.

[One of those books you can’t stop hearing about, receiving 5 star reviews all over the place and then suddenly, slowly but surely, the ratings start to drop. Currently, the average Goodreads rating is 3.6 so it’ll be interesting to see which side of the fence I will land on.]


There you have it. What are you reading this week? Do let me know and I wish you lots of happy reading! xx

  13 comments for “This Week in Books (02-24-2021)

  1. February 24, 2021 at 11:04 am

    Really interesting about the rating for The Sanatorium! When I read the synopsis a while back I couldn’t help thinking that I’d read it before, so I’m really interested to see what you think of it.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. February 24, 2021 at 12:21 pm

    I devoured The Wanderers in a couple of days or so. I adored this book and it was my book of the year. The Sanatorium was a really good read as well, but I do think it is a bit of a marmite book. It’ll be interesting to see what you think of it xx

    Liked by 1 person

  3. February 24, 2021 at 6:26 pm

    I’ve been meaning to get a copy of Wanderers… It does sound good even though the size is a bit intimidating. xD I’ve been curious about The Sanatorium as well although I don’t have a copy yet. Fingers crossed you will enjoy it! xx

    Liked by 1 person

    • March 3, 2021 at 10:41 am

      Apologies for the late reply. Your comment ended up in my spam folder for some reason and I only just noticed. What’s up with that?! 😄

      The Sanatorium didn’t quite work for me. Felt a bit “been there, done that”. Lacked atmosphere, I thought. But I’m also in a place where crime fiction, and psychological thrillers especially, just aren’t doing it for me so it could just be me.

      Liked by 1 person

      • March 5, 2021 at 12:37 am

        Somehow my comments sometimes tend to do that haha. xD you make me so curious about The Sanatorium now though; psychological thrillers don’t seem to work for me all that well either (especially domestic thrillers), but there is something about it that does speak to me. Shame it didn’t bring anything refreshing to the story for you though.

        Liked by 1 person

  4. February 24, 2021 at 7:03 pm

    I hope you enjoy The Sanatorium, it’s really chilling!

    Liked by 1 person

    • February 27, 2021 at 10:46 am

      I unfortunately landed on the other side of the fence. 🙊

      Like

  5. February 26, 2021 at 12:14 am

    It’s odd how that happens with ratings! I guess publishers must be quite good at giving ARCs to the right readers for the book – and then the mean old general public starts reading them… 😉

    Liked by 1 person

    • February 27, 2021 at 10:47 am

      That must be it. And this mean old person pulled the rating down even further. 😏

      Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply to nickimags @ Secret Library Book Blog Cancel reply

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this:
https://noveldeelights.com/2021/02/24/this-week-in-books-02-24-2021/?replytocom=12419
noveldeelights.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-05
201935
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:6TZ7NI7WZGAXR5EN7MSJDXFJ73FMPY73
<urn:uuid:26c152c8-a20a-4aea-8288-14e74ee01d8f>
2022-01-19T03:46:07Z
192.0.78.24
text/html
sha1:TGBM76TEVHCXFVUJLEAZDCNGSE76FWRT
<urn:uuid:8c607e8b-a919-4d45-bd34-1a1d62663b9b>
https://noveldeelights.com/2021/02/24/this-week-in-books-02-24-2021/?replytocom=12419
response
<urn:uuid:a1fa0981-281c-40ac-a295-1c97ea2924c4>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-11
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/