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Lethal Prey

Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers join forces to track down a ruthless killer who will do whatever it takes to keep the past buried, in this latest thriller from #1 New York Times bestselling author John Sandford.

Things I loved about this book:

  • How the opening scene with the murder drew me right in
  • The alternating the POV between the investigators and the killer
  • How the killer’s backstory unfolds as the book progresses
  • The introduction of the true-crime bloggers, which makes for a fun addition given the pervasiveness of social media these days
  • That the deductions the investigators make seem plausible given the clues that have been uncovered and aren’t crazy leaps of intuition that don’t ring true
  • The collaboration between two great Sandford characters, Davenport and Flowers
  • The ending, which was a bit different and I really liked

I found Lethal Prey thoroughly entertaining and gave it 5 stars.

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Cozy Retreat

Cozy Retreat is a 500-piece puzzle from Ravensburger, and the artist is Nancy Wernersbach. It is one of their large format puzzles with oversized, easy-to-grip pieces, and it has a nice matte finish.

I have done a few other large format puzzles from Ravensburger and enjoyed them very much. This one has been on my wishlist for a while, and I’m glad I got it. It was a nice, relaxing puzzle to put together, very low difficulty and such an interesting image.

Here are some closeups:

I can definitely see myself revisiting this puzzle many times!

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Sunrise on the Reaping

I greatly enjoyed all of the earlier Hunger Games books by Suzanne Collins and was eager to read the newest entry, Sunrise on the Reaping. This book provides the backstory for Haymitch Abernathy and the fiftieth annual Hunger Games.

This was a quick read for me, mainly because I kept wanting to find out what the big twist or information unveiling would be.  I never really felt like I got what I was waiting for, however. Collins did a nice job of showing us what Haymitch was like as a teenager, but I didn’t really feel the plot had much to say for itself.  Also, I am not a big poetry fan, so I felt like the amount of poetry at the end was a bit of an overkill.

I’m not upset that I read it, but I thought Ballad was better as prequels go than Sunrise.

Have you read it?  Do you agree or disagree with my opinion?

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What I’m Reading – May 2025

What I’m Reading Now

Fiction – Plymouth Undercover by Pamela M. Kelley – Court Street Investigations #1

Nonfiction – The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis by Karen Swallow Prior

What I Recently Finished

Fiction

  • How to Get a (Love) Life by Rosie Blake
  • Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins – The Hunger Games #0.5
  • The Day Shelley Woodhouse Woke Up by Laura Pearson
  • Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin
  • Lethal Prey by John Sandford – Lucas Davenport #35; Virgil Flowers #16
  • Billy Straight by Jonathan Kellerman – Petra Connor #1
  • Twisted by Jonathan Kellerman – Petra Connor #2

Nonfiction

  • The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky

Short Stories

  • The Bookstore Sisters by Alice Hoffman – The Once Upon a Time Bookshop #1
  • The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman – The Once Upon a Time Bookshop #2
  • The Bookstore Keepers by Alice Hoffman – The Once Upon a Time Bookshop #3
  • The One That Got Away by Mike Gayle
  • The Sublet by Greer Hendricks
  • The Fall Risk by Abby Jimenez
  • The Tomorrow Box by Curtis Sittenfeld
  • Giraffe & Flamingo by Curtis Sittenfeld
  • Sebastian and the Troll by Fredrik Backman
  • The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin

What I Added to my TBR

Fiction

  • How to Find Your (First) Husband by Rosie Blake
  • The Gin O’Clock Club by Rosie Blake
  • Lessons at the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan – School by the Sea #3
  • Studies at the School by the Sea by Jenny Colgan – School by the Sea #4
  • Meet Me at the Seaside Cottages by Jenny Colgan
  • The Secret Christmas Library by Jenny Colgan
  • Betting on Good by Wendy Francis
  • Same Time Next Week by Milly Johnson
  • The Unlikely Pursuit of Mary Bennet by Lindz McLeod
  • The Many Futures of Maddy Hart by Laura Pearson
  • I Wanted You to Know by Laura Pearson
  • Missing Pieces by Laura Pearson
  • Nobody’s Wife by Laura Pearson
  • The Beforelife of Eliza Valentine by Laura Pearson
  • The Woman Who Met Herself by Laura Pearson
  • In the Woods by Tana French – Dublin Murder Squad #1
  • Storm Peak by John A. Flanagan – Jesse Parker Mystery #1
  • Avalanche Pass by John A. Flanagan – Jesse Parker Mystery #2

Nonfiction

  • How I Changed My Mind About Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science by Kathryn Applegate (Editor) and J.B. Stump (Editor)
  • The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins by Peter Enns
  • Autism Out Loud: Life with a Child on the Spectrum, from Diagnosis to Young Adulthood by Kate Swenson, Adrian Wood, and Carrie Cariello

Short Stories

  • The Bookstore Family by Alice Hoffman – The Once Upon a Bookshop #4

TBR Stats/Goal Updates

  • I currently have 160 books on my TBR. Of those, 17 are nonfiction and 143 are fiction.
  • I finished 5 more of my 25 in 2025 list, bringing that total to 18.
  • I have read 46 books so far this year (my goal is 75).
  • One of my goals was to read 2 nonfiction books each month. So far this year I have read 1 per month.

If you’re on Goodreads, feel free to add me as a friend. I’m always looking for new recommendations!

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How to Get a (Love) Life

In How to Get a (Love) Life, Rosie Blake introduces us to Nicola Brown, a somewhat obsessive woman who lives a routine life without much excitement, or love. Her co-worker Caroline dares her to start putting herself out there and try to find love by Valentine’s Day.  Taking the dare, Nicola spends the next three months finding dates by a variety of methods, hoping to find the perfect guy for her.

This was a fun read with a lot of humor and wit. I liked the characters and enjoyed reading about all the disastrous dates Nicola went on in her quest to find love. This is the second book I have read from Blake, and I plan to read more.

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Hue Wormhole

Hue Wormhole is a beautiful puzzle by Wenjia Wang.  This is a 1000-piece, circular puzzle from Antelope Puzzles, and it was a lot of fun to put together. I have never done a circular puzzle this big and it actually ended up being too big for the puzzle board I was doing it on.  I had to carefully transfer it to foam board to get photos of it.

The colors in this puzzle are gorgeous, and the quality is impressive! The pieces were a nice thickness and fit together well. I started with the border and then worked my way from the outer green and blue up to the purple edge. The greens and orange went pretty well, but then I got a big bogged down in the reds. I kept working it and eventually got to the purples, which were a lot easier.

All in all, this was a joy to assemble and I highly recommend it!

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Billy Straight

I have been a fan of Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware series for a long time, and I recently looked through his body of work and found that he has written two books labeled as the Petra Connor series.  They are Billy Straight (1998) and Twisted (2004), and they are a spinoff of the Alex Delaware series.

In Billy Straight, the title character is a twelve year old runaway who witnesses a traumatic murder, a brutal stabbing.  He is not seen and runs away into the night. LAPD homicide detective Petra Connor is tasked with solving this murder.  The story switches between Billy’s reaction to what he has seen and Petra’s unfolding investigation, and as the plot unfolds, we learn more about Billy’s backstory as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  I was able to follow everything that was happening even though the perspective is changing in each chapter and could visualize the scenes easily.  I empathized with both Billy and Petra, and I appreciated the range of minor characters as well.

Do you enjoy detective novels?  Are there any that you recommend?

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My First Puzzle Swap

On Friday afternoon, I attended my very first puzzle swap! It was held by Susquehanna Township Parks and Recreation, and it was a lot of fun.

Each person who brought puzzles set them up on a table or on chairs around the room and then walked around the room checking out all the puzzles. Once you found a puzzle you liked, you would ask the person to see if there was a puzzle of yours they would like to trade for.

I took six puzzles but several people brought quite a few more than that, and it was fun to see all the different options. I ended up trading five of mine and donating the last one to the township summer camp program. The picture above shows the puzzles I came home with after the event.

It was a great event and it sounds like they might do it again, which I would really enjoy.

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Shoe Addicts Anonymous

In Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison, we meet four women who come together to swap designer shoes and become friends in the process.  Each of them has their own problems and their Tuesday night group turns out to be a safe place to share their issues and help each other overcome them.

This is a light, humorous read, a textbook example of chick lit. The characters hover on the edge of caricatures and the problems are all tidied up at the end in a way that is entertaining although not totally realistic.

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Puzzle Chess with Jenn

Last Friday night, our good friends Bill & Jenn came over and, while they were there, Jenn and I played two rounds of puzzle chess. We used two 100-piece puzzles I had on hand. It was a lot of fun! I did manage to win both rounds, but the first one was only by ten seconds!!

Here are our results. We started with 20 minutes on each of our clocks.

The first puzzle was Beautiful Wild Animals from a generic Amazon brand, MJPHDM. It was a surprisingly good quality. The pieces were sturdy and fairly thick, and it came with a nice, big poster.


The second puzzle was Cosmos, and it came from Ceaco. The quality was decent, but the pieces were thinner and there was no poster.

In case you are wondering how to play puzzle chess, here’s how it works. You pick a small puzzle (we used 100 pieces) and you build the border together and lay out all the other pieces. Then you start a chess clock, which you can get on your phone, and take turns putting one piece into the puzzle. Once you have placed your piece, you tap your clock to end your turn and start the other person’s time. Whoever has the most time left when the puzzle is done is the winner!