The Shadows by Alex North

Hello everyone.  I hope you are all well.  It occurred to me that despite this being a housewife's blog, I've never actually given out any recipes.  Frankly, most of them it takes me a while to develop so I guard my secrets.  I'll include an easy, well-known recipe today but will put it at the bottom so you that don't speak "kitchen" can avoid it.

I've been reading up a storm and have many books to tell you about.  Today I want to talk about The Shadows by Alex North. If that author's name rings a bell you're not crazy.  Well, you very well may be a loon but you like books, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, awhile ago I received an advanced copy of The Whisper Man, by Alex North. When I opened the package the book came in, it started to sing a creepy song.  After such an unusual introduction to Mr. North and really enjoying The Whisper Man, I was very excited to read The Shadows.  The two books are very different. I viewed The Whisper Man as a true thriller. I always had that creepy "the call is coming from inside the house" feeling....you know like something is about to jump out of your closet at a moments notice. The Shadows is much more of a slow burn. The book has an elaborate story and the feeling is very dark and atmospheric.  Hubby repeatedly asked me if I liked it, I kept saying it was the "Eeyore" of settings in an Alex North kind of way....eerie and unsettling. Still you can't stop flipping pages.  It's about kids that were into lucid dreaming and the evil things those young men used it to accomplish.  Years have passed but now those acts, murders to be specific, are happening again. Is it somehow one of those young men now twenty-five years later or a copy cat? The story is unusual, creative and certainly enthralling.  The characters are interesting and well defined. In addition to a plot I obviously enjoyed, let me pause to take a moment to praise the writing. An interesting story could easily grab my attention without great writing, but in this case the reader is treated to both making the journey to the exciting end all the better.  A very unnerving novel, one you don't want to miss.

On to the recipe:

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Muffins

you need:
one boxed spice cake mix
one can of pumpkin, 15 ounces (plain pumpkin NOT pumpkin pie filling)
1 cup chocolate chips

Mix all together.  Fill muffin cups 3/4 full. Makes 14 muffins.

Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Additional thoughts:

You may think these won't mix together without some other kind of moisture but they do! 

I use paper muffin liners.

You can add more or less chocolate or change the variety. I usually use dark chocolate chips as it's bold flavor seems to stand up better to the spice and pumpkin.

I often throw in a couple handfuls of cinnamon chips, if I have them.  You could use cinnamon chips and no chocolate.

My sister loves these muffins without anything but cake mix and pumpkin and she puts them in mini muffin pans (adjust cooking time downward).

They would make great cupcakes. Leave out the chocolate chips and instead add a buttercream or cream cheese frosting.  You could even put a bit of cinnamon in the frosting to make it nice and fall-ish. 

Experiment with what your family likes, these are a great place to start and are very forgiving.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip muffins would be perfect while reading the disturbing and oh so good, The Shadows!

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

Hello everyone.

I hope you are well. Many of us are enjoying some "inside" time. If you can get a free moment from the craziness of a house full of kids,  perhaps you can grab a book. I'm sure your book stockpile exceeds your supply of toilet paper.  Maybe you could knock a few novels off your tbr.

When I read about the book Saint X I was interested. This story sounded like a thriller plucked from the newspaper headlines. This is not the case. This book certainly isn't a thriller and is barely a mystery. The point is to discover who killed a teenager at a vacation island location but the book ends up as a discussion of grief. If you want a thought provoking story about how people handle all kinds of loss, without getting terribly depressing then Saint X is for you. The writing is engrossing, and descriptive without repeating itself, the author moves the story along, not lingering too long on any topic. I really appreciated the writing style. This book was really good, my problem is with myself and not the book. I thought I was reading a thriller and kept expecting the story to race to a heart pounding conclusion, which it never did. Again, a strong, well written, interesting read but not a thriller or suspenseful mystery.

Take care!

The Whisper Man by Alex North

Hello everyone.

I hope you are having a great day. I started a new book today, that is always enjoyable. On the housewife side of life, our new dishwasher is finally installed. It took an Act of Congress but it is done. Of course, all the dishes are already clean so the plumber ran a quick rinse cycle to check his connections (yes, we had to hire a plumber.....see me shaking my head in disgust). We have yet to dirty enough dishes to actually run an entire wash cycle. I really hope it works and actually cleans, I would hate to start over. I can live without fancy vacations, gems, baubles and a mega yacht but I need a great working dishwasher, air conditioning and a dvr with plenty of space. Don't give me that look, you're reading this on a computer or fancy phone. We all have a skewed vision of "need" these days (but just for the record mine are real needs).

With my love of books, I'm obviously an avid book buyer. Sometimes, advanced copies show up at my door. They make it feel like Christmas morning and I am always very grateful. One day I opened a package from Celadon Books. I jumped a foot. As I was removing the contents it started singing. I am not joking, it literally started singing this creepy song that is impossible to get out of your head. I even did my tried and true method for ridding myself of a song, humming the theme from Gilligan's Island. Good old Gilligan and the Skipper too, usually work for me, but not this time. In the book Celadon sent, there is a children's song that warns of the villain in this thriller and that is the song emanating from the package. Of course, it was like one of those cards where you can record your own greeting for your grandma but let me assure you there was nothing grandmotherly about this song!

Now you want to know what the book was, huh? Well the wild, spooky PR came with The Whisper Man by Alex North. This thriller is the story of a father, Tom, and his son, Jake, who are trying to heal after the death of Tom's wife/Jake's mother. Jake has pulled away from his dad, becoming somewhat remote, often quietly drawing by himself instead of socializing or leaning on his dad for support. Tom decides they need to move out of the house where his wife died. Jake is all for it and finds a house he likes, pushing his dad to buy it, which Tom does. As the story proceeds, we find that the house, like the people in this story, has many secrets.

The Whisper Man, was serial killer of young children. This predator was called The Whisper Man because before being kidnapped then killed, the children heard someone whispering outside their bedroom window. Fortunately this evil man was caught and has been in prison for many years. Concerns mount when a local child goes missing and the police learn that he heard whispering outside his window. Is this the work of a copycat killer?  Now, as Tom tries to reclaim and rebuild his relationship with his beloved son, Jake begins hearing whispers outside his window.

This book is a fast read. It is very easy to get into with well-defined and likable characters. Full of unseen twists and turns this story is hard to put down. Thriller lovers, this is our bread and butter....warming of the roll not necessary. Let me put it this way, I was upstairs reading, toward the end I yelled "Oh my God" so loudly my husband came running up eighteen steps thinking something was wrong. Something was wrong, read this book to find out all about it.

The song:

A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson

Hello everyone.

Ever see the movie Young Frankenstein, by Mel Brooks? If you say no, I'll gasp loudly. What is wrong with you? In the movie, Gene Wilder playing Dr. Frankenstein, sends his assistant Igor (played by Marty Feldman) to get a brain. After the brain is "installed," and the monster starts behaving oddly, Dr. Frankenstein asks Igor what brain he brought him. Igor responds, "Abby somebody....Abby normal."  So the abnormal brain has just been put into the body of a huge and sometimes aggravated monster. Honestly, if you haven't seen it, you are missing out.

That brings up the term normal. What is normal? I would say it is average. Not too far off from center.  Do you want to be normal if normal is average?

I recently read A Nearly Normal Family by M.T. Edvardsson. This story is about a mother who is an attorney, a father who is a pastor and their daughter. They appear to be a normal family, until the daughter is accused of murder. The novel is divided into three sections, each told from one of the main character's perspectives, giving the reader more insight as the story progresses. Things you think you know in the beginning, and how things outwardly appear, turn out to not necessarily be true. On your way to discovering if the daughter is guilty or innocent  you realize how dysfunctional this normal family really is. The other major issue explored is what would a parent do for their child? What did these parents do, and the morality given one is a lawyer and the other a pastor.

This book is well written and nicely paced, but is definitely a slow burn. If you want an interesting mystery you'll like this, however, if you are after a heart pounding thriller this may not be for you.  A Nearly Normal Family will especially appeal to those that like a little legal procedure in their story.

If you decide to give this book a go, on the way to your reading chair remember to "walk this way." (From the movie, go watch it!)

Cape May by Chip Cheek

Hello everyone.

I live in the south, near the beach. I grew up in upstate New York. No, I don't have that accent, upstate people don't have the city accent. My parents loved the beach and were constantly pulling us out of school to go on beach vacations. I swore I was going to marry the pool boy at some sandy resort. Almost, my husband grew up four blocks off the ocean, renting bikes and at hotels, checking in tourists. Yes, he has a southern accent, just ask him to say theater...he stretches it into a four syllable word . It is odd living somewhere that people save up all year to come to on vacation. Weird and, during the summer, traffic filled. By the way, when you are a visitor you don't have to worry about hurricanes, the one drawback to living near the ocean.

When we were kids we could not tolerate a long car trip, or maybe truth be told it was our parents who couldn't tolerate it with us! (My sisters were total brats. I, of course, was an angel.) So we went to New Jersey to the beach. It was only six hours away. Now, for those of you who don't live on the east coast of the USA don't picture something awful. It's not all young men that say "yous guys" with open shirts and lots of jewelry or medical waste on the beach. Nope. We went to Cape May. It is a beautiful seaside town filled with old hotels and gobs of well kept Victorian homes. The next town north is the ever popular Wildwood, filled with original hotels from the 50's, perfectly maintained. Both towns are like stepping into movie sets. If you have not visited them, you are missing out.

When we were in Cape May, we rode bikes every morning on the boardwalk, got red shoestring licorice at Morrow's Nuthouse (not really for eating but for tying into knots then dipping into the sand driving my mother crazy), and learned to love steamed clams with my dad.  A few years ago, I returned with my husband to the same resort, he got us the same room my family had stayed in each year when I was a kid. I made a complete fool of myself breaking into tears in front of the desk clerk, my parents long passed and the place thick with memories. Guess what, I got my husband, the world's pickiest eater to eat steamed clams at Cape May. Amazing, huh? Okay, I'm boring, for me it was special and a little tribute to my dad.

I was so happy to receive an early copy of the book Cape May by Chip Cheek. I had heard you either love it or hate it. The people that didn't like it said they didn't care for it because it was filthy. It has some bad language and sex but I don't think it is filthy. Hell, 50 Shades describes and uses every sex toy known to man. Besides this is the story of two young people in 1957, from Georgia, who are on their honeymoon. They arrive in Cape May at the end of September finding much of it is closed for the season. (The same time of year I took hubby.) The story is about this couple really getting to know each other, losing some of their inhibitions, finding their way as newlyweds both physically and emotionally. After several days they notice one of the houses up the street is now occupied. As they interact with the people in that house the story shifts. It becomes a story of exploration and a warning. The events of those few weeks in Cape May end up shaping the rest of their lives.

When I first finished the book, I put it down not knowing what to think. Honestly, days later I keep thinking about the characters, what they did or didn't do. I think that is a sign of a good story. The writing was good, the story moved quickly and was well told. It is just a cautionary tale, but a good one. I don't know, I've gone from being unsure of my opinion to thinking this might be one of my favorites for the year. Guess I'm fickle, but I can't help it this book lingers!

 Enough book talk, I am going to book a room in Cape May, I need some clams.

The Silent Patient

Hello everyone.

I hope you are enjoying the winter weather and not too snow bound. Last time I was talking about the big storm that was coming and how my sister in upstate NY was due for something like eighteen inches. I admitted I was a little bit evil because I had a smirk on my face while writing about it. Hey, my family teases me about moving south when I complain about the humidity, fair is fair. Only I guess it isn't really. My sister slid while walking on the ice and really hurt her knees, like x-rays and Cortisone shots under both kneecaps hurt. Rrrrr, gives me the willies just thinking about it. Thankfully for her, she is much stronger than I am. Anyway, now I feel terrible, like a horrible rotten person. We were supposed to get a little ice and snow but had pouring rain and bad wind for a couple of hours, that was it. Just enough to make everything in our old house creak and groan, especially as the temperature dropped and the wood shrank. It was both creepy and annoying. I swore I heard dripping on the third floor, in the storage-rafters part. Of course I woke up hubby and sent him from bed to literally crawling all over to find no dripping. Phew, I would rather be wrong on that issue!

While all this "weather" was going on last weekend and we were hunkered down, I finished a book. I received an arc of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides from Celadon Books. It is available for pre-order and is released February 5, 2019. You all have busy lives so I'll cut to the chase, it was great, I loved it. See ya later!

Okay, just kidding. Figures huh, spend 45 minutes yammering on about the weather and family issues and one sentence about the book. Seriously, this is my favorite, a thriller. A husband and wife seem like everything is fine, one day she shoots him in the face several times, killing him. Then she never speaks again. Instead of jail she is in an institution. The story is told as a new doctor arrives and is very interested in this silent patient's case and is determined to help her. Now you mystery and thriller readers will agree that when you read a lot of these types of books you think you can beat the author, figure out the "who dun it" or the big twist. Sometimes we get it right, which is fine if you enjoy the story. Sometimes, however, the author shocks you and you, as the reader, are wrong. This story has an enormous twist, HUGE, as I am ashamed and delighted to tell you I didn't see it coming. I've been trying to get hubby to read it. I'm wondering if I missed signs, was this twist obvious? But I keep telling myself that I have read so many thrillers I would have seen it coming. Nope, boys and girls, you can cross the butler off your list in this one, he definitely didn't do it.  You've got to love when a book can make you gasp out loud and that is what this one did.

One more thing, I hate medical stuff so the title had me a little leery, but rest assured that is not an issue here at all. Also, know that this book is nicely paced and certainly keeps you turning pages before and after the "gasp". Get ready for February 5th, see if you figure it out!