Monthly Archives: August 2019

Friday 56 – Small Town Hearts

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small town heartsThe Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from Small Town Hearts by Lillie Vale, recommended to me by Rachel Strolle on Twitter. It’s an adorable YA book about a summer tourist town on the coast of Maine.

Days passed, Thursday morning sneaking up on me in the blink of an eye. It was the summer of everything and nothing. Sleepy starts and sleepy ends.

No one was in a hurry to do anything because we all knew these were the last few days of summer when the town belonged to us, the people who had been here all along.

But soon, the mornings began with the peppering of hammer falls all over the town as local businesses started getting ready for the tourists. HELP WANTED signs went up, gift shop windows filled with new displays, and flowers bloomed in the streets.

Even Busy’s did our part with newly painted trims and soaped and shined windows overlooking boxes of geraniums and lavender. A faint smell of paint lingered, so we’d put on our fans on to clear the air.

Book Review: Queen of Ruin

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queen of ruinQueen of Ruin
by Tracy Banghart
Young Adult
325 pages
Published July 2019

This is the sequel to Grace and Fury, a book that surprised me with how much I actually really liked it. Picking up immediately where the first book left off, we’re thrust right back into the oppressive kingdom of Viridia and the women fighting for their freedom. I can’t say a whole lot about the plot in this second book without spoiling things, but the sisters find each other, split up, and find each other again, each collision shaking their beliefs and convictions, as well as those around them. The battles are bloody and visceral without being unnecessarily gory, the action kept the plot moving at a good pace, and the oppression was appropriately infuriating.

My only complaint would be that the overall plot was too easy – but these are short Young Adult books. You can’t give them too many obstacles to overcome or you’ll exceed your allotted pages, so I can give that a pass here.

Everything is wrapped up nicely by the end of the book; I appreciate that this was a duology and not a trilogy (though a trilogy would have allowed for more obstacles). I do enjoy the recent trend in YA towards duologies, though.

So – if you enjoyed Grace and Fury, this is a satisfactory conclusion. The first book was by far the stronger of the two, though.

From the cover of Queen of Ruin:

RESILIENCE
RESISTANCE
REVOLUTION

When the new, brutal Superior banishes Nomi from Bellaqua, she finds herself powerless and headed toward her all-but-certain death. Her only hope is to find her sister, Serina, on the prison island of Mount Ruin. But when Nomi arrives, it is not the island of conquered, broken women that she expected. It is an island in the grip of revolution, and Serina – polite, submissive Serina – is its leader.

Betrayal, grief, and violence have changed both sisters, and the women of Mount Ruin have their sights set on revenge beyond the confines of their island prison. They plan to sweep across the entire kingdom, issuing in a new ages of freedom for all. But first they’ll have to get rid of the new Superior, and only Nomi knows how.

Separated once again, this time by choice, Nomi and Serina must forge their own paths as they aim to tear down the world they know and build something better in its place. 

The stakes are higher and the battles bolder in Tracy Banghart’s unputdownable sequel to Grace and Fury.

Library Loot Wednesday

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Picked up three physical books from the library this week, and read three ebooks, because I read When A Scot Ties The Knot and went off on a Tessa Dare binge. More on that later this week!

The three physical books I pulled are Wilder Girls, Isle of Blood and Stone, and Small Town Hearts, which was recommended to me by Rachel Strolle on Twitter, when I sent her a gif from Booklyn 99 of Amy telling Jake “Babe, you’re being weird.” As that gif perfectly sums up my own relationship, I’m excited to read this one! When A Scot Ties The Knot was recc’d up that same thread on a book-related gif, which is why I snapped it up as an ebook.

I was hoping to get Wilder Girls in time to go to Barnes & Noble’s YA book club, but alas, that was not to be, as the book club met Thursday and the book came in Friday. Figures, right?

TTT – Book Besties

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Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is top ten characters I’d like to best friends with, but I’m tweaking it slightly. These are ten books that have been my best friends. They’re not necessarily my favorite ten books; but they are books I have repeatedly gone back to; books I have found comfort in, books that have taught me things I needed to know, or simply books that I have lugged around the country with me because I couldn’t bear to give them up.

First off are two classics; my Norton Shakespeare, and my Complete Works of Lord Byron. My Shakespeare is still in very good condition; it’s a hardcover, with those tissue-thin pages like a Bible. My Byron, however, is missing its cover, title page, and the contents pages are starting to look pretty ragged. I have highlighted and dog-eared and beat the crap out of that book, and I keep going back to it. In my high school Emo phase, I hand-wrote Lord Byron’s The Tear onto a huge sheet of paper and posted it on my bedroom door. (Now I look back on that and think OMG I was so melodramatic…) Regardless, Byron and Shakespeare are still always there for me when I need them.

Next we have three childhood books whose plots have embedded themselves in my mind and are partly responsible for my lifelong love of fantasy and dragons. I mentioned Dragon’s Bait and The Forbidden Door a few weeks back, in childhood favorites. They remain two of my most-loved books. The third is Black Beauty and Thirteen Other Horse Stories, an omnibus of amazing stories for the young horse-obsessed girl I was.

In the category of friend-who-tells-you-the-hard-shit-you-need-to-know, I have Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which opened my eyes to how awful my science and history education really was, and The Jealousy Workbook, which helped me work through the beginning of our journey in polyamory. Both books are full of truths in very different ways, and helped me immensely at different stages of my life.

god bless the gargoylesGod Bless the Gargoyles is that friend who you absolutely adore for no real reason that you can define. It is a gorgeous gothic picture book and I just love it. I’ve tried my best to keep it in nice condition, but as a picture book, it’s prone to getting bent up. My copy is starting to show its age, which makes me sad, as I want it to stay pristine because I love it so.

cheesecake extraordinaireLastly we have the food friend. You know the one. Always making amazing things for dinner, always baking new experimental things and bringing fantastic things to parties. That friend. Cheesecake Extraordinaire taught me how to make cheesecakes and have fun with it. From that book I learned that cheesecake is an extremely versatile dessert and can be turned into almost any flavor you can imagine. (I won three blue ribbons at my county fair back home and use to dream of starting a cheesecake cafe!)

Book Review: Wicked Fox

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wicked foxWicked Fox
by Kat Cho
Young Adult / Romance / Fantasy
426 pages
Published June 2019

I loved everything about this book except the epilogue. But we’ll get to that. Wicked Fox is the story of Miyoung, a gumiho. Better known to most Westerners as a Kitsune, but this is Korea, not Japan. The difference is important, and evident. I really enjoyed all of the Korean culture included in this book; it’s not as common a setting as Japan or China. Americans often make the mistake of lumping all of eastern Asia together as far as culture, but they are very different. South Korea isn’t as unfamiliar to us as some East Asian cultures – like Mongolia, Taiwan, or North Korea – but China and Japan tend to overshadow the rest.

So in Seoul, we have Miyoung, whose nature drives her to absorb the life essence of humans to sustain her own. She tries to do this in the best way she can, by hunting evil men, but something goes wrong on one of her hunts, she saves a human boy’s life, and things unravel from there.

I loved Jihoon. The poor boy is thrust into the middle of an impossible situation, and tries to do his best by everyone involved. It’s easy to see why Miyoung is drawn to him, and I love the easy comradery between Jihoon and his friends, as well.

The book would easily be a perfect standalone were it not for the epilogue. I will probably just pretend to myself that the epilogue doesn’t exist, and be happy with the book as-is. I don’t think it needs a sequel, and it feels a little forced. Almost like the book was done and turned in and the publisher offered the author a sequel, and she decided she could make that happen and tacked on a few pages to lead us to the next book. It’s just – unneeded.

The epilogue aside, I adored this book.

From the cover of Wicked Fox:

Eighteen-year-old Gu Miyoung has a secret. She’s a gumiho – a nine-tailed fox who survives by consuming the energy of men. But she’s also half-human and has a soft spot for people. So she won’t kill indiscriminately. With the help of a shaman, Miyoung only takes the lives of men who have committed terrible crimes. Devouring their life force is a morbid kind of justice . . . or so she tells herself.

But killing men no one would ever miss in bustling modern-day Seoul also helps Miyoung keep a low profile. She and her mother protect themselves by hiding in plain sight. That is until Miyoung crosses paths with a handsome boy her age as he’s being attacked by a goblin in the woods. She breaks her mother’s cardinal rule – revealing herself and her nine tails – to save Jihoon from certain death. In the process, she loses her fox bead – her gumiho soul. Without it, she will die.

When Miyoung and Jihoon next meet, there’s no doubt they are drawn to each other. But their tenuous romance could be over before it even begins, as Miyoung’s efforts to restore her fox bead by the next full moon ensnares them in a generations-old feud, forcing Miyoung to choose between her immortal life and Jihoon’s.

 

Copycat Gluten Free Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies

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Oh, I know this is a book blog, not a recipe blog, but I absolutely have to share this one. I’m not going to make you scroll with a long-ass story to get to the recipe, just a very quick why of it. One of our friends brought Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme pies to a D&D session recently, and it had me drooling. Unbeknownst to me, my husband went looking for copycat recipes to see if we could make a gluten-free version, but all the copycat recipes were big chunky oatmeal cookies and buttercream. Which is SO not right. Little Debbie’s pies are molasses based, with marshmallow fluff! So we set out to make our own, and OH MY GOD DID WE NAIL IT.

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I have the recipe here for Molasses-Oatmeal Cookies, and a link to the Marshmallow Fluff recipe, which we only added a pinch of salt to. The cookies can be made gluten free or with regular flour. This is a big batch – we got three dozen sandwiches.

Molasses-Oatmeal Cookies with Marshmallow Fluff (Copycat Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie cookies)

1 cup Oat Flour (I pulsed some gluten-free oats in a small food processor until they were mostly flour.)

3 1/2 cups Other Flours (you can use all-purpose here, or your favorite gluten-free all-purpose blend; I used 1 cup almond meal, 1 cup tigernut flour, 1 cup of an all-purpose blend, and 1/2 cup of sweet rice flour.)

1 Tablespoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar (I used light because that’s what I had; dark would give it more molasses flavor, though)
1/2 cup molasses
2 large eggs
4 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions

  1. Throw the butter and brown sugar in the bowl of your favorite stand mixer, beat until it’s fluffy – about two minutes or so.
  2. While those are creaming, combine all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, spices, down through the salt) and whisk together.
  3. Pour molasses into your creamed butter and sugar and whip it again until fluffy looking again. (You can taste it here, it’s delicious! Not that I don’t sneak more of it at the end when there are eggs in it anyway…)
  4. Add eggs and vanilla, beat until combined.
  5. Add the flour mixture, about a cup at a time, beating on slow speed each time until incorporated.
  6. At this point you’ll have a very soft, somewhat sticky dough. Dump this into a bowl and shove it in the fridge for at least an hour, but not more than two. You don’t want it too hard to scoop. (Alternately, if you do this ahead of time and chill it overnight, just pull it out of the fridge and let it sit on the counter for a bit to warm up and soften a little.)
  7. Use this chilling time to make the Marshmallow Fluff. The only change we made here was adding a pinch of salt at the very end, after it was whipped. (Because we only have one mixer bowl, and you don’t want any fat left in it before making the fluff, we washed it thoroughly after the cookies and wiped it with vinegar, then washed it again.)
  8. Preheat your oven to 350, and line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper (silicon sheets would probably work too, but I love my parchment paper!)
  9. Scoop the dough out with a portion scoop; after some trial and error, the 1 Tablespoon scoop makes the perfect sized cookies for this. I know that sounds small, but trust me on this. (I like to use my biggest scoop for cookies, so believe me when I say you really do want your smallest one here!)
  10. Scoop out dough, dump into your hand, roll it into a ball, put it on the sheet. DO NOT FLATTEN. They will flatten themselves in the oven! I got 12 cookies per sheet. Make sure you let the sheets cool before putting another batch of cookies on them each time. Hot cookie sheets = more spread on your cookies, and they already cook up pretty flat!
  11. Bake for 10 minutes. No more, no less. This is the perfect softness. (You might have to cook longer if you made bigger cookies.)
  12. Let cool. Now we’re on to Assembly!

We took a couple hour break here, as baking cookies is always the most tiring part of the process. This also let them cool completely. Then we took the cookies, the fluff, and an off-set spatula and a spoon over to the dining table and made sandwiches!

Handle the cookies carefully; they are quite soft and will bend or break if you press too hard. This is how you want them! Just be gentle. Each sandwich gets about 2 Tablespoons of Fluff. Just eyeball it. You might taste-test a couple to see how much fluff you like in your sandwiches. I certainly won’t tell! I spread the fluff out on a cookie before topping it with another; my husband liked to dollop it in the middle, then squish it out to the edges with the cookie he put on top. It is up to you! We had a few extra cookies left over when we’d gotten all the way through the fluff, but this is a delicious recipe even without the fluff, so that’s certainly not a hardship!

I am SO HAPPY to have gluten free oatmeal creme pies. I LOVE these cookies. And this marshmallow creme is TO DIE FOR, too. You could certainly make a double-batch of it and eat the remainder by the spoonful. I’ll admit I was kinda sad we didn’t have any left over!