Author: Trish

Into reading, decluttering, budgeting, and doing jigsaw puzzles!
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London Cafe

London Cafe is a 1000-piece puzzle from Pieces & Peace, and the artist is Miranda Sofroniou. This was my first experience with the Pieces & Peace brand, and I absolutely loved it! I was so happy to open the box and see grid cut pieces, which are my favorite, and the pieces had a great feel and fit.

The image was amazing as well. It was challenging but not frustrating, if you know what I mean. I definitely want to do more from this brand!

P.S. One of my friends on Facebook asked what grid cut was, and this is what I told him.

It means the pieces are cut in rows rather than random shapes and they have an assortment of in and outs. Ribbon cut is when the pieces are in rows but all of them have two ins and two outs. Ribbon cut puzzles are more likely to have false fits, where a piece seems to fit somewhere that it doesn’t actually go. With grid cut you can sort by shape (meaning the different arrangement of prongs) if you get stuck and then look for the shape you need to make it easier to find the piece you need. I did that for the floor in this puzzle.

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Every Time You Go Away

Every Time You Go Away by Beth Harbison

Willa Bennett’s husband Ben passed away three years ago while he was up at their beach house to do some work on it. She has not really been living her life since, including not being very present for her teenage son, Jamie. Now she is heading to the beach house to get it ready to sell, hoping it will help her to move on. Once she arrives, she is surprised to encounter her husband’s ghost.

When it turns out there is a lot of work to do before she can sell, she summons her son Jamie, her best friend Kristin, and Kristin’s daughter Kelsey to come for the summer. Even with their company, she continues to see Ben and is even able to talk with him, reminiscing about their life together and how she is dealing with being on her own.

I enjoyed this book so much. The writing was engaging and emotional, with well-developed, relatable characters. The touch of the supernatural was handled very well–I loved the interactions between Willa and Ben. For me, it was a satisfying story about moving through grief and finding healing.

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Two More Repeats for a Puzzle Challenge

I redid two more puzzles for a challenge I am doing in a Facebook group I belong to. These were the last two clues for the event, so this one is done now.

Clue #9 was an umbrella, so I redid Town Park, which is a 300-piece puzzle from Ceaco. It was illustrated by Olivia Gibbs and features patio umbrellas above the tables outside one of the shops.

Clue #10 was bathtub. For that one, I redid The Alchemist’s Home, which is a 1000-piece puzzle from eeBoo. The artist is Vasilisa Romanenko. Ironically, I had done a different puzzle with a house cross section that included a bathtub just before the ten-week challenge and had thought about holding onto it just in case, but then I decided to take it apart.

I really enjoyed this puzzle challenge and am looking forward to the next one!

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The Sandy Page Bookshop

The Sandy Page Bookshop by Hannah McKinnon

Leah is fresh out of a job and an engagement, so she moves back to her Cape Cod hometown. Once there, she impulsively decides to rent and renovate a historic home so that she can open a bookshop. A cast of characters forms around her, some of whom we get to know quite well as there are chapters told from their point of view. 

There’s Lucy, a teenager whose older sister has been severely injured in a car accident; Eudora, a widow who has become afraid to leave her home; and Luke, a local woodworker who knew Leah in high school. 

I enjoyed this book very much. The characters are likable and the bookstore is a charming setting. I would definitely recommend this when you are looking for a lighthearted, feel-good read.

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Mr. Swallowbark

Mr. Swallowbark is a 300-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, and the artist is Charles Wysocki. Between the thrift store one weekend and a puzzle swap the next, I ended up with two copies of this puzzle – oops!

This was so much fun to put together. I love the red barn, and I am especially fond of the row of brooms hanging on display.

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The Emma Project

The Emma Project by Sonali Dev – The Rajes #4

There was a lot to like about this book, which was the conclusion to The Rajes series by Sonali Dev. I liked how she used the theme from Emma but updated it for a modern audience with a plot about two people who do good works for society in different ways. I also liked the gender reversal of the Emma and Knightley characters, much like she did in the first book with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. And I was glad that Esha got some screen time, so to speak, although I find her whole situation to be quite odd.

If you are a fan of Austen adaptations, I would definitely recommend giving this whole series a try. I do think it’s best to read them in order because the cast of characters grows with each book, and it is helpful to know what has happened with the other characters in previous books.

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Balloons

Balloons is a 300-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and it is part of their Puzzle Moments line. Normally I would be wary of an image that had so many light areas, but it is not really a problem with such a small piece count.

I do like this image, but I didn’t think the quality was quite as good as the other Ravensburgers I have done.

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A Wrinkle in Time

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle – Time Quintet #1

A Wrinkle in Time, winner of the Newberry Medal in 1963, is the story of the adventures in space and time of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin O’Keefe (athlete, student, and one of the most popular boys in high school). They are in search of Meg’s father, a scientist who disappeared while engaged in secret work for the government on the tesseract problem.

I don’t know why I didn’t read this as a young girl; somehow I missed it. Reading it now for the first time, I wanted to love it, but I just didn’t. It seemed like a pale imitation of C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy (I loved the first two books of that series as a teenager), and it fell flat for me. I realize that may be an unpopular opinion, and I wouldn’t want to squelch anyone’s love for the book. I just didn’t connect with it.

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Simple Joys

Simple Joys is a 1000-piece puzzle from 1canoe2, and it was simply lovely. I have done one other puzzle from them back at Christmas time and was so impressed by the quality of both the puzzle and the image. There is something about this image that just speaks to me. I love the way it highlights each of these simple things, allowing us to see how beautiful ordinary things can be.

I have said this before, but I also love the feeling puzzling gives me. The act of doing a puzzle quiets the noise in my brain for a while, much the same way that reading a book does. I hope I will be able to enjoy this hobby for many years to come.

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Top Books from the First Half of 2025

I thought it would be fun to look back over the first six months of the year and see what books rose to the top for me.  

Here are my top ten fiction books for the first half of 2025:

  • Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
  • Ordinary Life: Stories by Elizabeth Berg
  • Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
  • Found in a Bookshop by Stephanie Butland
  • The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
  • More or Less Maddy by Lisa Genova
  • Forever, Interrupted by Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Bonded in Death by J.D. Robb
  • Lethal Prey by John Sandford
  • The Taste of Ginger by Mansi Shaw

And here are my top 5 nonfiction books:

  • Followers Under 40 by Rachel Gilmore and Kris Sledge
  • Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark? by Janet Kellogg Ray
  • The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby
  • How to Fight Racism by Jemar Tisby
  • God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines

Have you read any of these, and what did you think of them?