SplendeurCaisseBooks

  Like I Never Said by C.W. Farnsworth is now live in audio! Narrated by:  James Cavenaugh and Kasey Hayes A lot can happen on a two-week trip to the Canadian wilderness. Auden Harmon learns her parents’ marriage is officially over.  Expected . Accidentally gifts a five-hundred-dollar pen to a stranger.  Unexpected . Neither event wreaks havoc on her life quite like meeting Elliot Reid does. He has eyes the color of the cloudy sky. A slapshot the whole country has an unhealthy obsession with. The uncanny ability to say the exact right thing, right when she needs to hear it. They stay in touch after she leaves. Swap secrets. Become best friends. Tell each other everything. Well… almost  everything. It’s a thin line between love and hate. The line between love and friendship with a guy who makes mammoth-sized butterflies swarm your stomach? Practically transparent. But when he’s made it clear friendship is all he has to offer? You can  never  say it. Lis...

  A world of enchanted injustice needs a disenchanting woman in the newest fantasy series by the   Wall Street Journal   bestselling author of   The Paper Magician . The orphaned Elsie Camden learned as a girl that there were two kinds of wizards in the world: those who pay for the power to cast spells and those, like her, born with the ability to break them. But as an unlicensed magic user, her gift is a crime. Commissioned by an underground group known as the Cowls, Elsie uses her spellbreaking to push back against the aristocrats and help the common man. She always did love the tale of Robin Hood. Elite magic user Bacchus Kelsey is one elusive spell away from his mastership when he catches Elsie breaking an enchantment. To protect her secret, Elsie strikes a bargain. She’ll help Bacchus fix unruly spells around his estate if he doesn’t turn her in. Working together, Elsie’s trust in—and fondness for—the handsome stranger grows. So does her trepidation about the ri...

   We're halfway through the year, so it's time to check in on the Audiobook Challenge, as hosted by  Caffeinated Book Reviewer  and  That's What I'm Talking About .   Just a refresher on 2024 Achievement Levels. Will you increase or are you on track? Achievement Levels Newbie (I’ll give it a try) 1-5 Weekend Warrior (I’m getting the hang of this) 5-10 Stenographer (can listen while multitasking) 10-15 Socially Awkward (Don’t talk to me) 15-20 Binge Listener (Why read when someone can do it for you) 20-30 My Precious (I had my earbuds surgically implanted) 30+ Marathoner (Look Ma No Hands) 50+ Over-Achiever (Power Listener) 75+ The 100 Club (Audiobook Addict) 100+ I Can’t Hear You (earbuds always in) 125-150 Audibly Addicted (listening to all the books 24/7) 150+ My Goal for this year is Binge Listener. I've only finished 6 books so far and I'm working on my seventh. I don't plan on adjusting. I still have a few months to reach my goal. This is what I've...

  So I had to go back and check what goal I'd set for this year. And I did not reach that goal. I was aiming for my precious but I only made it to Socially Awkward.

  I didn't quite reach my goal for the year. It was disappointing. I read a total of 29 books. 11 ARCs 15 Kindle Unlimited 1 Audio 1 Freebook 1 DNF'd

  The captivating sequel to the Gothic-infused Belladonna, in which Signa and Death face a supernatural foe determined to tear them apart. A duke has been murdered. The lord of Thorn Grove has been framed. And Fate, the elusive brother of Death, has taken up residence in a sumptuous estate nearby. He's hellbent on revenge after Death took the life of the woman he loved many years ago...and now he's determined to have Signa for himself, no matter the cost. Signa and her cousin Blythe are certain that Fate can save Elijah Hawthorne from prison if they will entertain his presence. But the more time the girls spend with Fate, the more frightening their reality becomes as Signa exhibits dramatic new powers that link her to Fate's past. With mysteries and danger around every corner, the cousins must decide if they can trust one another as they navigate their futures in high society, unravel the murders that haunt their family, and play Fate's unexpected games—all with their d...

  I read 19 books in August. 13 ARCs 5 KU 1 Aud There were two covers I didn't screenshot.  I was doing well at the beginning of the month but as the month came to an end; my reading slowed down. I read every day but my speed was not what it usually is.  Hopefully this month my speed will get better. xo Alicia

  In this twisty new Victorian detective thriller from the author of The Darwin Affair , Inspector Charles Field hunts a serial killer with a sinister signature targeting Florence Nightingale’s nurses in Crimea and women in London. Who is stalking Florence Nightingale and her nurses? Is it the legendary Beast of the Crimean, or someone closer to home? In 1855, Britain and France are fighting to keep the Russians from snatching the Crimean Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire, and Nightingale, a wealthy young society woman, has made it her mission to improve the wretched conditions in the British military hospitals in Turkey—despite fierce objections from the male doctors around her. When young women start turning up dead, their mouths sewn shut with embroidered fabric roses, Inspector Charles Field (the real-life inspiration for Charles Dickens’s Inspector Bucket in Bleak House) is sent from England to find the killer among the doctors, military men, journalists, and others swarming T...

"Soon, but not yet, Nora will look up and she will see me, sitting at a distance.  In the wet grass, the imprints of Nora’s shoes will fill back slowly, and I won’t suspect that she is walking towards me.  After Nora meets me on the bench, it will be difficult to recall that in the beginning, when I first arrived at school, there were moments so plain and unconsumed that I felt I could watch them like a distant view. Like hills rolling away. Once she holds out her hand and asks, do you mind if I sit, it will be impossible for any other memory to exist without touching backwards or forwards over the view of her eyes looking down at me. The soft and penetrable skull of the world will suddenly harden and everything will be seen through the damp and willful light of our first meeting." Eighteen-year-old Natalie has just arrived at her first year of university in Toronto, leaving her remote, forested hometown for the big, impersonal city. Everyone she encounters seems to know exac...

  Miriam Blum has no choice but to face the past she thought she’d left behind when she inherits her great-aunt’s Christmas tree farm in this witty, glittering, heart-filled romcom. Thanks to her thriving art career, Miriam Blum finally has her decoupaged glitter ducks in a row—until devastating news forces her to a very unwanted family reunion. Her beloved great-aunt Cass has passed and left Miriam part-owner of Carrigan’s, her (ironically) Jewish-run Christmas tree farm. But Miriam’s plans to sit shiva, avoid her parents, then put Carrigan’s in her rearview mirror are spoiled when she learns the business is at risk of going under. To have any chance at turning things around, she’ll need to work with the farm’s grumpy manager—as long as the attraction sparking between them doesn’t set all their trees on fire first. Noelle Northwood wants Miriam Blum  gone —even if her ingenious ideas and sensitive soul keep showing Noelle there’s more to Cass’s niece than meets the eye. But s...

  Love is the trickiest spell of all.   Lucinda Caraway loves living in Freya Grove, the mystic seaside town where charms, hexes, and magical beings of all kinds are the norm. She spends her days teaching high school history and her nights reading tea leaves and tending to her conjure garden. It’s a good life . . . but she can’t stop wishing for more. Until one night, that wish turns into a spell, and suddenly Lucy can’t say no. Not to a public karaoke performance. Not to running a 10K. And, most alarmingly, not to her high school crush, Alexander Dwyer, who needs her help unjinxing his new house—which just happens to be right across the street from hers. Alex has spent the last ten years traveling the world on adventures Lucy has only ever dreamed of, and he’s planning to leave again as soon as his house is safe to sell. But until Lucy can unhex herself, she and Alex are stuck together. And with so much magic in the air, maybe the next spell Lucy casts will be the one that co...