Book Review Thursday - 7/26 B

Another couple of good books read in the past week! And I'm in the middle of 2 more right now!

Ties that Bind is the latest in the Cobbled Court series by Marie Bostwick. Margot has just turned 40 and is woeful over the fact that she is still unmarried and childless at that age. She is also trying to reunite her sister and niece with her parents at Christmas. And then, her sister and niece are really late for dinner.

Phillippa Clarkson has just been hired as the temporary minister in the local church to stand in for the reverend recuperating from a heart attack. When she shows up, the community realizes that she is a she and not a he. She has to work extra hard to prove herself capable to the church since this is her first job ministering.

I really love this series! This book touches on all of the characters that are in the previous books - well, not a lot on Liza - so you get to catch up with everyone, in a sense. But the book can also be read without reading any of the other books.

There were some things that sort of stuck out at me as I was reading that I thought were quite obviously going to happen and they did. I don't want to give anything away, but I can say that having that instinct about how the story was going to turn out didn't put a damper on it one bit. Bostwick is a fantabulous writer and I highly recommend her stories! And you don't have to be a quilter to read them either.

I also read Darking Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay this week. This is the series that started the Dexter series on Showtime, but I have never watched any of that. I hadn't really read anything about the series until maybe a year ago just to see what the premise was and it was then that I added the book to my To Read list.

Dexter Morgan is a psychopath. He is a lab technician with the Miami Dade Police Department who specializes in blood spatter. He is by all accounts polite, handsome and intelligent and he is a monster. He has a "Dark passenger" who insists that Dexter dismember bodies. Dexter's adoptive father recognized traits in Dexter as a teenager and taught him social graces and how to fly under the radar.

Harry Morgan also taught Dexter that there were some people who needed to be stopped. And he taught him how to do it.

Dexter's adoptive sister, Dear Deborah, is a cop and working a prostitute beat where girls are winding up dead and dismembered. Deb asks Dexter to use his 'skills' to help her find the killer and get her a promotion. But Dexter wants to find the killer for a different reason - admiration.

This book was not at all what I expected. I think that the premise is genius - well, expect for the psychopath part of it. I think the book was well written and very interesting. I couldn't stop listening to it! The characters were not over done and the attention to detail was spot on when needed and sort of glossed over when necessary as well. If you like the Patricia Cornwell books, I would highly recommend this series.

Share what you are reading in the comments! I could always use more books to add to my list! lol

And now, I am off to get some things done around the house and the studio! Woo hoo!!