What’s Up 2020: Week 2

Week 2 of 2020 has wrapped up and its been a fairly crazy time. A lot of it got affected by the fact that we had some bad weather hit Montreal and the lovely suburbs that I lived had power outage for 16 hours or something which of course, took a toll on the whole movie watching and gaming elements along with one other issue. With that said, it still is pretty balanced of late. I’m trying to start 2020 with a nice start of not procrastinating any writing so taking things a little slower to allow more time to do the write-ups.

READING

• Death in Smoke by Barbara Elle (Review)
• The Weighing of the Heart by Paul Tudor Owen

As with any power outage, my Kindle became my best friend, especially as the cell towers seemed to also be affected. I was able to catch up on some reading and finished up The Weighing of the Heart which will be reviewed in a blog tour coming up very soon. Both of these books that I finished was pretty good. I’d have to say that The Weighing of the Heart was good because of the Egyptian mythology angle as well as a quick concise story that helped keep the pacing really good.

PLAYING

Currently playing: Color Pieceout, Overcooked 2 (co-op mode)

I’ve been playing Color Pieceout for a while already but never really quite talked about it because its a mobile game. Mobile Game Roundups are hitting a little stand still over at Game Warp Blog which is mostly a writer’s block for specifically game reviews. Its coming up soon but I just need to get back into the groove of things. However, Color Pieceout is a fun little game. Its free and uses coins collected during the puzzles to unlock things which makes in-app purchases unnecessary. Its animation is similar to Professor Layton and blends Match-3 puzzles with mystery cases. So much fun!

WATCHING

• Brokeback Mountain (2007)
• Mamma Mia! (2008 rewatch, Review)
• Sinister (2012)
• The Marshes (2017)

I’m not going to lie that I started a few movies but just fell asleep so I’m not adding it in like Robocop, The Raid 2 and some other one that I can’t remember right now. However, these few are those that I did finish. We are getting back into horror, not that I took that big of a break from it in the first place. The highlight of this week goes to Brokeback Mountain which is part of the Movies and Tea season. Why it gets the highlight is simply because it surprised me how much I liked it. It shouldn’t because its Oscar fodder and it comes with its talent but I liked it a lot more than I expected that I would. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy Sinister which was a pretty tight fight between the one to highlight. Sinister did a lot of things right and had a sequence that I absolutely loved and had some clever twists to the story.

BINGING

• All I Want For Love Is You (2019)

Currently binging: The Circle, Who’s The Murderer 5, Ashes of Love

I took an unexpected turn and started watching All I Want For Love Is You, which wasn’t part of my list anywhere and just popped up on my feed and I was like, “Sure. Why not?” It turned out to be pretty fun overall. It had the whole teenage high school romance that went into university. There were some silly moments but it had some SERIOUS pacing issues. I’ll be getting the post done for this one and will talk more about it then. One the other hand, The Circle has one more week of their event to go before it ends. I honestly can’t wait to talk about it since there’s a lot to discuss about that and it’ll depend on how the final few episodes go. While I’ve started a new series via Netflix called Ashes of Love which was a big deal the year that it was released. I literally just started the first few episodes so hard to say how I feel about it so far.

That’s it for this What’s Up!
What have you been reading/watching/playing/binging?

Blog Tour: Death in Smoke by Barbara Elle (Review/Giveaway)

Death in Smoke (The Cape Mysteries #2)
By: Barbara Elle

Publication Date: December 5, 2019
Genre: Psychological Thriller

SYNOPSIS

*Each book in The Cape Mysteries can be read as a standalone novel*

A bloodied body buried in a snow bank on a remote island off Cape Cod.

A cold case in Kansas.

What’s the connection between two unrelated murders over a thousand miles away and decades apart?

In Death In Smoke, the thrilling sequel to Death In Vermilion, artist Leila Goodfriend unravels the truth about two brutal killings.

From Cuttyhunk Island to a Native American casino in Kansas, Leila tracks a trail of blood and revenge, littered with smoke screens and stone relics of a faded past.

Once again, Leila has to trust her instincts, which puts her at odds with Detective John Grace—a relationship of attraction that, in the end, reveals a tragic secret from her own past.

Despite the detective’s warnings, Leila puts her life at risk, obsessed with proving her friend’s innocence, at least of murder.

Death In Smoke, the new psychological thriller from acclaimed author Barbara Elle, takes readers on an inner and physical journey across clashing cultures and time, challenging assumptions about what is truth—what remains a mystery.

Add to Goodreads

REVIEW

Death in Smoke is the second book in the Cape Mysteries Series and yet, while the main sleuth carries forward from the previous book, this mystery is pretty much a standalone with only a little bit of reference to the previous book and it makes to effort to fill in those spaces for new readers (like myself). At least its the feeling that I got here which is always good to not feel like starting in the middle of a series is an intrusion and it stands alone as it promotes itself.

Psychological thrillers are always tricky business. Death in Smoke does a relatively good job. It starts off on a strong note in its set up its foundation with the discovery of the body and the well-described scenario and the forensic and detective work that follows. While the story does seem to a bit deliberate in some of its leads and the discoveries making it seem a bit predictable in certain plot progression, it does redeem itself in the second half when it shifts its scenario from the murders on an island, which is always an intriguing setting, to the link to another case in Kansas and brings in the Indigenous American elements. This brings in the unique angle for this mystery.

Looking at the characters of Death in Smoke, the main sleuth is an artist called Leila who has unexpectedly been around for this and in this story, feels the urge to follow the leads and help solve it as she finds the body and therefore responsible to follow through (or at least it seems that way). There’s a nice little bit of what would probably be a link to the previous book in terms of the little love tangent it goes on but done in a classy way. All these elements build up on Leila’s character.

Overall, there are some small pacing issues where with Death in Smoke. However, the book is well-written with some vivid descriptions and a decent main character Leila leading the mystery. The mystery itself also is well structured with gradual layers that eventually build up to the finale. The ending isn’t hard to completely figure out but it does redeem itself also with finding a unique twist. Plus, the grand finale shares a little on the origins of dreamcatcher which a lot of people know about but never the art of it or the different elements and the meanings. I’m not sure if it was meant to end to give Leila some more depth in its ending or to give it a little informative moment for the readers but whichever the reason, the ending does add to the experience.

Score: 3.5/5

Available on Amazon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

In her stunning debut thriller, Death In Vermilion (The Cape Mysteries Book 1), acclaimed author Barbara Elle paints a clever and twisted picture of women and sisters, whose lives are entwined by a brutal murder in a Cape Cod town. Who can you trust?

Now, Death In Smoke (The Cape Mysteries Book 2) asks what’s the connection between a bloodied body buried in a snow bank on a remote island off the Cape and a cold case in Kansas? Can artist and amateur sleuth Leila Goodfriend solve this new mystery?

Barbara Elle fell in love with books and writing at a young age, honing her writing chops as a copywriter at major publishers and as a freelance journalist.

Growing up in Boston, but she became a New Yorker as an adult. Her writing draws on people and places she remembers, setting The Cape Mysteries on Cape Cod, a place of memories.

Barbara Elle continues collecting characters and plots, often travelling the world with her touring musician husband, the musical director for rock and roll icon Cyndi Lauper. In her travels, Barbara has explored Buddhist temples in Beijing, crypts in Vienna and Kabuki Theater in Tokyo.

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GIVEAWAY

Check it out here: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/0e7c6a8f129/?

Blog Tour organized by:

R&R Book Tours

What’s Up 2020: Week 1: The Start of a Decade!

2020 is finally here! As with a new year, I’ve spiced up the What’s Up banner for this year, giving it a little more depth.

The last few days of 2019 and the first few days of 2020 brought a lot of resting time and hang out with friends and such. With that, there is still some down time to get some little things done here and there. As with the beginning of the year, I do urge you to go check out last week’s announcement of 2020 plans for Tranquil Dreams in case you missed it. You can find it HERE.

READING

Currently reading: Death in Smoke

With a blog tour literally around the corner, I’m incredibly behind in reading and have been trying to catch up like a crazy person. A lot of this has to do with this Week 1 being all partying and not too much commuting so even less time to sit down and read. I’m working on getting myself a reading nook of sorts at home so that I can be away from any other distractions. However, standing at around the 30% mark as I write this weekly recap and only a mere few days that the review needs to go up, we’re looking at reading at every free moment that I have. Luckily, Death in Smoke is not too long and its been a decent read so far.

PLAYING

• The Room Three (2015)

Next up: Life is Strange 2
Still playing: Undercooked 2

I love playing The Room series games. I’ve previously played the first and second game and honestly had bought The Room Three on Android and then just didn’t find the same motivation to play it until it landed on PC. Something about these games make them so great to just sit down during the holidays to play. The puzzles are definitely elevated again with so many different layers and different rooms to work with. I only finished one ending but apparently that unlocks other endings (4 endings in total) so I may go back to check it out more. In the meantime, I’m workingont he review that will go up on Game Warp blog soon (hopefully).

WATCHING

• Geostorm (2017)
• Turbo Kid (2015)
• Hell Night (1981)
• Summer of ’84 (2018 rewatch, Review)
• The Big Sick (2017)

The husband got to do all the movie watching choices this week or the majority of it at least. I only ended up watching The Big Sick on my own as the rental was about to expire. Luckily, he picked some good ones. A lot of death and apocalypse to ring in the New Year’s for ourselves in terms of movie choices as Geostorm is a disaster film and a rather meh one then Turbo Kid is set in the future of the world as a wasteland and then an 80s slasher and then I ended up rewatching Summer of ’84 as the husband wanted to watch it after he loved Turbo Kid. I mean, its an obvious standout this week which came between Turbo Kid and The Big Sick, which both were pretty good.

BINGING

• Eternal Love (2017)

Currently watching: Who’s The Murderer 5, The Circle

Finally finished binging the entire 58 episodes of Eternal Love also known as Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did. In fact, I actually didn’t really feel like I was connecting with a lot of the characters until it hit me in the most subtle and crazy way in the last two episodes when something happened and I bawled my eyes out non-stop for 30 minutes or something. Good job, Eternal Love, good job. That’s all I have to say as I’m already working on the TV binge. The sequel is coming out sometime in Janaury so I”ll be watching that, of course especially since, the sequel follows the secondary couple here as the main couple who I loved a lot, probably more than the main two.

I guess, I should mention it that I started watching the 3 week event on Netflix called The Circle. I’m not quite sure what to make of it right now. Its supposed to be a social experiment and while I get what they are trying to do, I’m not quite sure if the purpose is well delivered with the event. I’m going to need to think about that one after I watch the next two weeks.

That’s it for this Week 1 of What’s Up 2020!
Its a new year and a new banner look!
What have you been kicking off the year reading/watching/playing/binging?