Welcome to Litsy!

Books 65 and 66 I think? Bearskin is due back sooner so it jumps the queue. I started another but not sure we‘re vibing so I‘ll move on for now and see how they go. Hope everyone had a fruitful weekend full of books.

My #bookspinbingo for January. Numbers 1 -15 are books I bought last year that I wished I had read. 16 - 20 will be for Book of the Month and book club books that haven‘t arrived yet. 21 - 25 are the free spaces that I will use for library holds and impulse reads. @TheAromaofBooks

Southern thriller? Yes please!

Oops! Meant to post a review not blurb so do over...Slow to start, this debut eventually kicks into high gear & is impossible to put down. On the run from a past he hopes doesn‘t catch up to him, Rice Moore takes a job as caretaker of a forest preserve. When he discovers a bear carcass, he goes after the poachers but things are complicated & staying out of trouble is difficult. Land rights, hunting, the environment, secrets & more. A good read.

Saturday morning reading...with The Child tagging along. Searched high and low across all of Disney World for Baby Yoda and was super excited to find these socks. (Apparently there is also a car magnet I didn‘t find.) So fun and so nice to dive back into a good book.

I did manage to read a few chapters while on vacation but truly not as much as I hoped. That being said, this book has a great opening and I‘ve enjoyed what I‘ve read so far. Now to dive back in.

Now reading.

Had to put this one down. Sadly, the problem is it‘s neither fish nor fowl. I‘d hoped that it would be a noir, which is how it was billed; however, it aspires to be more pointed and as a result falls short in every regard.

An enjoyable, well written book.
It does have a somewhat lackluster ending...but that's o.k. with me, because sometimes things do actually end that way.

A bit violent (so trigger warning on that if it is an issue) but still an enjoyable thriller. Strong sense of place.

After six chapters I had to put this one down. I'll come back to it later on but right now I'm just not into it.

Ehh. It was ok. Lots of suspense built up but then kind of anticlimactic at the end. I was expecting 🌋. Didn't really get that. #audiobooks 🚨 trigger warning: graphic violence to animals and people and rape.

Bearskin is gorgeously written but understated. It‘s literary without sacrificing plot. It‘s bloody without being mindless. It contains a touch of the supernatural (maybe) and a touch of the surreal. It walks a fine line between the people and the place of the mountains of Virginia.

#CountryNoir

Full review at https://hillbillyhighways.wordpress.com/2019/04/17/country-noir-bearskin-james-m...

⭐️⭐️ ⭐️

This should have been in my wheelhouse - I love a good man vs nature story ( or in this case nature AND Narcos ) but this book was so plodding in its setup and character development. The Narcos sub-story, told in flashbacks had potential but I still don‘t feel I have the full picture ( is a prequel being written? ).
There are some lovely passages of nature writing here that I thought it might have worked better without the bad guys ?

Not quite what I expected, but I still enjoyed this suspenseful thriller. The author does a great job transporting the reader to the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia

1st book of 19. Drug trafficking, sniping, hunting, hiking, cartels and MCs, rural setting with beautiful descriptions. Action mystery. 4 stars

If a book don‘t remind you just a little of Robert Earl Keen‘s The Road Goes On Forever it ain‘t #CountryNoir.

Finally finished this book today. And it was ok, not my favorite book. Rice - the main character wasn‘t overly compelling to me. I didn‘t understand the weird hallucinations that happened to him. I did enjoy the setting and rice‘s love of the outdoors.

Thanks to encouragement from @julesG & @saresmoore, I'm jumping back in to the crochet game! Attempting my first hat. 🙄

Rice Moore takes a job at a remote forest preserve in Virginian Appalachia, where he thinks he can hide from the Mexican drug cartels he betrayed back in Arizona. There is a slow boiling tension throughout this book as Rice becomes embroiled with local bear parts smugglers. The writing is sharp with a strong sense of the landscape. Recommended.

I got 70% in and I was forcing myself to listen. The descriptive writing, especially relating to nature, is terrific, but I don‘t now if it was the narco trafficking element or what it was about the storyline but it just wasn‘t captivating me. Initially it did! I will definitely check out his next novel though.

Audio cleaning - awesome prose so far!

This book was just okay, there was some lovey writing but the story felt uneven to me. Part nature story, part revenge tale, part hallucinatory weirdness, part crime novel, it‘s like it couldn‘t figure out what it wanted to be. 👍🏼👍🏼 1/2

I like this book a lot.

It took me about 30 pages to really get the rhythm of this book, but it‘s slowly reeling me in and I have a feeling I‘m gonna have a hard time putting it down soon. #appalachia

I think I‘m going to bail on this one. It‘s got a very macho, rugged outdoorsy vibe. Maybe it‘s just not my thing.

Wow what a cover!!! Spending a few days in the Appalachian mountains.

Spent my evening culling my #library stack - ended up with just these two and The Passage trilogy, everything else goes back in the tote to be returned this week....when I pick up the 3 new holds on their way in!! 🤦🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️😂 #hopelessaddict

Rice is working as a caretaker for a preserve in Appalachia, hiding from the Sinoloa cartel. Bearskin follows his attempts to identify local bear poachers while remaining under the radar and flashes back to his cartel-related life. An engaging rural story of a man fighting for environmental justice and sometimes his life.

I wish I liked this better, it was good and kept me interested but somehow wished there was possibly more to it? However as I am writing this I wonder if reading it piecemeal while on vacation did it a disservice...

This is a quiet book. The atmospheric feeling I had while reading it was reminiscent of what I felt when reading The Road.

#bookmail is the best kind of mail!

Rice Moore has fled the cartel to a job as a caretaker at a remote nature preserve in Virginia. Bear poachers bring his present and past on a collision course. Excellent literary thriller with some incredible nature writing woven in.

Check out my latest #bookreview at LaceyDoesLit.com! #books #bookworm #bookblog #bookish #ARC #advancecopy #reading #reader

if you like grit lit this is for you. there‘s a lot going on in this novel but mcLaughlin never lets it get away from him. great debut! don‘t let this one get past you. merry friday y‘all.

Rainy day reading.

What a great thriller! Unexpectedly brutal and beautiful and so intense I found myself slowing down towards the end to make it last longer. Pick this one up when you get a chance. (June 12, 2018 pub date)