I ♥ the premise of this meme {WWW Wednesdays} due to the dexterity it gives the reader! Smiles. Clearly subject to change on a weekly rotation, which may or may not lead to your ‘next’ read providing a bit of a paradoxical mystery to your readers!! Smiles. ♥ the brilliance of it’s concept!

This weekly meme was originally hosted by Should Be Reading who became A Daily Rhythm. Lovingly restored and continued by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Each week you participate, your keen to answer the following questions:

• What are you currently reading!?
• What did you recently finish reading!?
• What do you think you’ll read next!?

After which, your meant to click over to THIS WEEK’s WWWWednesdays to share your post’s link so that the rest of the bloggers who are participating can check out your lovely answers! Score! Perhaps even, find other bloggers who dig the same books as you do! I thought it would serve as a great self-check to know where I am and the progress I am hoping to have over the next week!

Join the Convo via: #WWWWednesdays

What are you currently reading!?

(Wednesday 9th September to Wednesday 16th September)

The books I am reading for review:

• My Mother’s Kitchen by Meera Ekkanath Klein
• Rescuing the Rancher by Claire McEwen
• Elizabeth Obstinate Headstrong Girl (anthology) audiobook by the Quill Collective
• The River Jewel (prequel The Letter series) by Kathleen Shoop

My Mother’s Kitchen is one of my #SatBookChat guests novels from this Summer which unfortunately was detained from being read and finished for review due to my increasing migraines from May-August. I went five months without them (Jan-May) and then, unfortunately they returnt with such a fierce hold I thought I’d never shake them until September arrived. I am hopeful for another long hiatus from having them gripping me in their vise! Towards that end, I am starting to re-queue the stories I was meant to be reviewing for #SatBookChat – this is the first one I wanted to finish and share from my Summer guests whilst I am also re-queuing all guests from 2020 I’ve fallen behind on finishing due to various postponements within my readerly life this year.

You’ll be seeing an uptick in #SatBookChat reviews from September to December as I believe I’ll have just enough to spread out throughout the last quarter of the year to conclude the year on a clean slate of being fully caught up with all guests and their stories. I also want to finish the archives for the chats and the rewind posts – threading through Jorie Loves A Story (back-posting) to reflect the day of each of the chats themselves. The full transcripts (archives) will be housed in the Moments of @SatBookChat.

Rescuing the Rancher is the fourth novel in one of my beloved Harlequin Heartwarming series Heroes of Shelter Creek which I’ve had the pleasure of discovering whilst hosting blog tours with Prism Book Tours. This time round, I noticed the author announcing via Twitter she was seeking book bloggers who wanted to read and review her fourth novel in the series – happily I made the cut and was able to request both the second and fourth novel for review!! Eek. I was beyond overjoyed as I had missed the second whilst I read the third! Harlequin Heartwarming is one of the few imprints who publishes series I can move forward and backwards within reading and never feel I’ve lost traction with both the stories and the characters; however, having said that – whenever I have the chance to back-read one of the series I’m invested into the characters’ lives is a chance I cannot pass up as I definitely want to see how everyone’s story evolved through the series!!

Ahead of writing this #WWWednesdays post you’ll notice that I finished reading the second novel After the Rodeo by Ms McEwen and how it became one of my favourite reads! I was attempting to finish reading Rescuing the Rancher this past weekend and week, however, with Mum’s medical emergency and other issues which came about – I must admit my focus was quite ‘off’. Plus, once the new week began – I’ve been consumed with wildfire news via streaming livestreams off YT or catching the news as it breaks on Twitter. My heart is with everyone in those evacuation zones as much as I quite literally either have personal friends, family friends or know authors I’ve loved reading in every affected Western state! It makes it soul crushing to know how widespread the devastation is whilst not knowing if someone you know personally is either evacuating or is in a zone of safety away from the fires. I need to read this book for the positive outcome it inspires to have in the ending – but at the moment, my heart has just felt ‘full’ with IRL fires.

I was able to listen to the Foreword by Tessa Dare and the first short story within the audiobook of Elizabeth: Obstinate Headstrong Girl as I blogged about my ruminations on behalf of those sections of the book for my blog tour stop on the 5th of September. Thankfully, I have the rest of September to fully enjoy the beautiful collection ahead of hosting the editor Christina Boyd during @SatBookChat on the 3rd of October! I cannot wait to dive back into this collection as I felt so wonderfully attached inside it due to the narration by Elizabeth Grace!

Kingdom Above the Cloud I’ve been attempting to read all Summer and something distracts me from starting the story! I previously hosted a book spotlight about the story ahead of #WyrdAndWonder Year 3 as I truly felt I was going to be reading it shortly after the spotlight ran – sadly if my migraines hadn’t returnt I might have accomplished that goal! I even put it on my shortlist of #mustreads for the Christian Reading Safari this year as I thought it might be a good time to read an INSPY Fantasy novel – however, in that regard, my readings were cut short by severe lightning storms and thus, it has shifted into September wherein I am not just recapturing the joy of my leftover #WyrdAndWonder TBR reads (will be announced next week) but I am also participating in #SelfPublishedFantasyMonth which I will disclose today as well. Ergo, this is one of the next books of Fantasy I want to be reading early this month.

Alaskan Dreams was delayed reaching me initially for the blog tour (wherein I hosted a spotlight) and had the unfortunate timing to be with me in May. As foresaid the migraines marched back into my life and took out a lot of hours of readerly joy – this is a story I cannot wait to dive into as I love the author’s collective works and this is a series I am enjoying bit by bit! Honestly – I never have a bad reading hour when I’m tucked into a Harlequin Heartwarming Contemporary Romance! These romances have given me back a lot of joy since my days of reviewing ChocLit.

#CFSRS20 leftovers & stories I’m finishing this week
& into the rest of the year:

[ as disclosed via my Announcement Post ]

→ Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish

A snippet of insight from my forthcoming review:

[ return on 20th September for my stop on the blog tour! ]

Hadley Beckett has this internal sunshine about herself wherein even when she’s stressed to the max – she’s still a champion of trying to focus on the small things and not allow others round her to tip her over the edge of her own sanity. That is of course until this Max fellow who comes off as quite the cad as he doesn’t give two figs about Hadley whilst displaying his ego as if he were the most important chef in the world. Mind you, they were involved with a cooking show sequencing a competition for the ‘Culinary Channel’ (which in my mind was either Food Network or Cooking Channel) but the entire time the cast and crew are attempting to film what needed to get in the bag that day, Max with his less than gracious ego kept butting heads and making filming adversely difficult for all involved!

Hadley was betwixt a rock and a hard place knowing how to tap dance round Max – he infuriated her and those round him by his antics but it was a bit more personal for Hadley! She had admired the man and appreciated his work ethic and the accomplishments he’d made – but in person? She couldn’t be any closer to being oil to his water! They simply locked horns like mountain goats and didn’t have a lot of common ground. To add further insult to her injury, the whole crew treated Max like he could do no wrong and that if you tried to stand up for yourself? You only came to the conclusion that you didn’t even have to be in the room anymore. I felt for Hadley – here she was trying to be professional and everyone is bending over backwards for the jerk in the chef’s hat!

What endeared me the most about how Turner wrote Hadley Beckett’s Next Dish is that if you needed a wicked respite from everyday life, this is a novel writ in a tone of narrative that not only makes you feel like you’re on a self-directed holiday but you can’t help but soak into her words, the twists of phrase she uses to illuminate the drama and to feel yourself relaxing into the story. If you are blessed to be able to hear this story in audiobook with the delightfully brilliant Aimee Lilly its a sweetened journey for you because Ms Lilly performs as if this were a one woman play bringing to life every nuanced moment of the story and giving you a narration that feels larger than life! I loved the intimacy of this performance – of how Lilly hugged so dearly close to the words of Turner and how in combination of each other, they built this beautifully sophisticated world ‘behind’ not only celebrity chefs and the cookery arts but behind how the path for any woman to find success in a field of men is one incredible Mt Everest to climb!

This has to be one of the best treasured discoveries of my readerly wanderings during the Christian Fiction Reading Safari this year as I was just not expecting the depth of comedic timing etching through the narrator’s performance nor the breadth of dramatic comedy oosing out of the writerly styling of Ms Turner! (big smiles)

I’ve had this on my shelf since I participated in a social takeover tour with a blog touring company I hosted a few times this Spring, 2020. The book was sent to me in order to take part in the social outreach by the publisher and thereby I was not obliged to post a review during that time window or thereafter. I wasn’t sure when I could get into the novel per se but I knew after having spent a few minutes looking over the plot and getting a vibe of the author’s style – I had a sneaky feeling she’d be one of my #mustread favourites for Contemporary INSPY!

How true my intuition proved!

I also had a suspicion I’d enjoy this one as a ‘book in hand, audiobook in ears’ kind of reading – which is why I pulled up the audiobook via Scribd. I made it through the first hour or so on Scribd before I had to put my membership on pause – happily I found my regional library has this audiobook via their CloudLibrary which is how I am resuming listening and reading the book! They happen to have a large repository of INSPY Lit on audiobook – so you might see me grabbing more than one of those to be listening to in the coming weeks and months.

The performance of the narrator is such a champion of authenticity of a character that you are truly rooted in her voice and the whole journey of Hadley Beckett just bursts alive in your ears! I cannot wait to finish my stay within this world and yet, part of me is remorseful of having to exit it! Oyy.

I was enjoying myself so dearly much when I saw the announcement for the blog tour I decided to withhold sharing my review and pushed it forward into September. I hadn’t foreplanned postponing finishing the story but you can credit the lightning storms for that unexpected shift!
Read More