It’s Monday! What are you Reading?

Hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date #IMWAYR is a weekly meme to connect with fellow readers. It’s a place to meet up and share what you have been, and are about to be reading. It’s a great post to organise your upcoming week and an opportunity to visit other bloggers … and of course, add to your groaning TBR pile!

It’s a new week and as usual I have a bunch of different books on the go at once.

Here’s what I’m reading:

On my bedside table:

Southern Seducer by Jessica Peterson

My name’s Beau, and for the most part, I’ve led quite the charmed life. I left college to play pro ball and collected a few Super Bowl rings along the way. Now that I’ve retired at the ripe old age of thirty-six, I’m in my second career as CEO of a five-star resort in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Sounds great, right?

Well, I just did something real stupid, y’all.

Bel—that’s Annabel to the rest of you—my best friend since college, is struggling as a single mom. So of course I invited her to come stay at my family’s resort for some much needed R&R. But since I didn’t think it through, her visit is going to ruin everything.

How, you ask? Well, first of all, I’ve got a big, bad, ticking time bomb kind of a secret. Once she finds out what I’m hiding, I worry she’ll never look at me the same. Secondly, you remember the part about us being best friends? Well, I kinda maybe always thought there could be more to us. The naked kind of more.

So here’s my new gameplan. I’m going to keep her and that adorable baby Maisie at arm’s length while Bel gets back on her feet, and I will absolutely, under no circumstances, let her in on those naked thoughts of mine. That’s a fumble I can’t afford to make.

Until I do, in a moment of bonfire-and-bourbon induced weakness…

On audio:

The Eights by Joanna Miller

They knew they were changing history.
They didn’t know they would change each other.

Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight. They have come here from all walks of life, and they are thrown into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship.

Dora was never meant to go to university, but, after losing both her brother and her fiancé on the battlefield, has arrived in their place. Beatrice, politically-minded daughter of a famous suffragette, sees Oxford as a chance to make her own way – and her own friends – for the first time. Socialite Otto fills her room with extravagant luxuries but fears they won’t be enough to distract her from her memories of the war years. And quiet, clever, Marianne, the daughter of a village vicar, arrives bearing a secret she must hide from everyone – even The Eights – if she is to succeed.

But Oxford’s dreaming spires cast a dark in 1920, misogyny is still rife, influenza is still a threat, and the ghosts of the Great War are still very real indeed. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time, their friendship will become more important than ever.

The Eights is a captivating debut novel about sisterhood, self-determination, courage, and what it means to come of age in a world that is forever changed.

On my kindle app:

The Vanishing of Margaret Small

Meet Margaret Small: 75, plain spoken and a Cilla Black super fan. Shortly after the death of her idol, Margaret begins receiving sums of money in the post, signed simply ‘C’.

She is convinced it must be Cilla, but how can it be? To solve the mystery of her benefactor Margaret must go back in her memories almost 70 years, to the time when she was ‘vanished’ to a long-stay institution for children with learning disabilities.

An absorbing and page-turning mystery with a dual timeline, The Vanishing of Margaret Small takes readers into a fascinating past, and introduces an unforgettable literary heroine.Sometimes, enough is enough…

What are you reading this week?

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