It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

"It's Monday! What are you reading?" is a fun meme hosted by Kathryn @ The Book Date. This is where we share the books we have read the last week and our reading plans for this week.

Books for Review

Based on Charles Dickens’ famous character of the same name, the radiant ghost shines again when embarking on a spiritual adventure into its past in search of its extinguished flame.

The Ghost of Christmas Past has had its flame extinguished. Lost souls cannot find their way to redemption without the Spirit's fire illuminating their shadowed memories. Guided by the Christmas Angel, the Ghost of Christmas Past must search for its missing flame within the visions of a mortal life it had long forgotten and brave witness to the troubled child it once had been.

Justice Lonesome has enjoyed a life of bounty. 

Even so, she’s inherited the curse of the Lonesome. A poet’s soul. Which means she’s still searching for something. Searching for peace. Searching for the less…that’s more. 

And when the foundation of her life is pulled out from under her, grieving, she goes to the mountains to find her oasis. She hits Carnal, Colorado and decides to stay. 

Deke Hightower lost everything at the age of two. He lost it again at fifteen. His life has not been about bounty. It’s been about learning to live with less, because there’s no way to get more. 

Deke’s also watched all his friends go down to the women who gave them what they needed. He wants that for himself. But he knows that search isn’t going to be easy because he’s a rider. His home is the road. That’s the only place he can breathe. And the woman who takes her place at his side has to do it sitting on the back of his bike. 

When Deke meets Justice, he knows she’s not that woman. She’s cute. She’s sweet. And she’s into him, but she’s got it all and Deke knows he won’t fit into that. So he holds her at arm’s length. Establishes boundaries. And Justice will take it because she wants Deke any way he’ll let her have him.

But when Justice finds herself a pawn in a dangerous game, Deke makes a decision. 

When he does, he has no idea he’s just opened himself up to bounty.

Received for review

The bastard child of Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Stephen King’s CARRIE, KAI explores how one innocent girl becomes the target of enormous rage living inside another girl-who is seemingly from another world. 

Satsuki Takamoto is an invisible otaku teenager in Hiroshima. The only thing she has going for her is the upcoming birth of her sister. No longer will she be alone. But when her mother has a gory miscarriage right in front of her, Satsuki loses her one chance at happiness. She spirals into a deep depression, shutting out everyone and everything by locking herself inside her bedroom-for good. Her sadness, however, pales in comparison to her uncontrollable anger. It spreads like a nuclear fire, ambivalent to what or who it destroys, and won’t stop until Satsuki accepts her sister’s death. 

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world in Evanston, Illinois, Seul Bi Rissiello can’t sleep because every time she closes her eyes, she relives her adoptive parents’ gruesome deaths. Why is she thinking so much about them now, ten years afterward? As she struggles with working at a clinic for the mentally disturbed, Seul Bi starts to unravel under the weight of living a lonely life and being twice an orphan. Her life devolves into a series of ominous and dangerous hallucinations that threaten not only her sanity, but her very existence as well. 

As both girls struggle to understand what is happening to them, their enigmatic connection comes into focus, raising the question: What if all the suffering in your life was carefully choreographed by somebody you’ve never met?

Currently reading

Olivia shouldn't be checking out the sexy older guy at the coffee shop. She should remind herself what happened the last time she was drawn to a man.

Olivia should know better than to start something that could ruin both their lives.

The trouble is, sometimes the things we shouldn't do become the hardest habits to break.

Lindsey Baker and Will Claxton had once been best friends, until betrayal drove them apart.

Now someone is sabotaging Lindsey’s ranch, and Will seems the most likely candidate. Although Lindsey wants to believe he’s innocent, he’s the one with the motive. Years earlier, her father had foreclosed on a loan that cost Will his family’s land. Still, he insists he had nothing to do with the ‘accidents’ plaguing Lindsey's ranch. He wants his property returned, but he plans to buy it fair and square.

Lindsey wants to believe the man she’s loved since childhood, but she fears he'll do almost anything to reclaim his family's ranch. His sudden interest in her as a woman is too convenient. Can she trust a man who’s never seen her as anything but a friend, when she knows he’ll do anything to regain his family’s heritage – including breaking her heart once again? 

How about you? What are your reading plans this week? 

Happy Monday!