Then and Now #6 (8/30 - 9/5)

The Sunday Post is a blog news meme hosted @ Caffeinated Reviewer. See rules here: Sunday Post Meme. Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books that came in their mailbox during the last week.  It is hosted weekly over at Mailbox Monday and every Friday they do a round-up of some of their favourite, shared reads! 

Last Week

Technically I'm a day late with one of these memes, but yesterday was a travel day, so I didn't manage to get online at any point! I'm finally back home and after loads of stress I've once again settled into the awareness that I am only one person and that not everything depends on my decisions. So yay for that! I flew back from Bergamo yesterday, which is a beautiful city with an old town and town walls and beautiful museums and churches. I got to see a Rembrandt self-portrait that is on loan there, which was great! I did sadly twist my ankle right on the steps of the museum so I then had to hobble my way through the airport and back home. But it's already looking a little better, even if my right ankle is still twice the size of the other one! It was kind of sad to say goodbye to the mountains but I have high hopes it won't be another four years until I'm back there.

I'm very excited to start university classes this week and to get involved in some of the Introduction Week activities. I did decide to step back from the role of President in our society, just because I realized I couldn't quite dedicate as much time to it as the role and the society deserved. Thankfully the rest of the board was very understanding so yay! Also, my birthday is coming up and my mum is going to try and visit, so that will be nice! Maybe she can bake me an apple pie... 

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Recommendations

Don't have a whole lot of recommendations except that I started reading Monica Byrne's The Actual Star ahead of its publication this month and OH MY GOD. It is honestly so good, so amazingly researched and written. I'm utterly gripped by it!

The Actual Star takes readers on a journey over two millennia and six continents —telling three powerful tales a thousand years apart, all of them converging in the same cave in the Belizean jungle.

Braided together are the stories of  a pair of teenage twins who  ascend the throne ofa Maya kingdom; a young American woman on a trip of self-discovery in Belize; and two dangerous charismatics vying for the leadership of a new religion and racing toward a confrontation that will determine the fate of the few humans left on Earth after massive climate change.

In each era, a reincarnated trinity of souls navigates the entanglements of tradition and progress, sister and stranger, and love and hate—until all of their age-old questions about the nature of existence converge deep underground, where only in complete darkness can they truly see.

The Actual Star is a feast of ideas about where humanity came from, where we are now, and where we’re going—and how, in every age, the same forces that drive us apart also bind us together.

Mailbox

Not a whole lot of new books this week but quite a few I'm excited for!

 The Other Husband by Kathryn Croft (10/14/2021; Canelo)

One dinner party will destroy everything.

The night that throws a wrecking ball into Abby’s life starts out perfectly at first. There’s still a hint of summer sun in the purple-streaked sky. Abby and her best friend, Sienna, look on fondly as their two husbands laugh under the garden gazebo. None of them know it’s the last time they will be together again.

What starts out as just a little fun, has devastating consequences for the couples. Alone with Sienna’s husband, Greg, Abby finds him unexpectedly charming. And something happens that night that neither she nor Greg can take back.

Abby is desperate to tell her husband and Sienna the truth, but can’t risk Greg sharing what he knows about her. She has no choice but to keep quiet. Then Greg suddenly disappears.

Is her best friend’s husband simply running from his secrets? Or has someone decided they can’t risk that he may share theirs?

The most gripping and twisty psychological thriller you’ll read this year from #1 bestseller Kathryn Croft. Perfect for readers who loved Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train.

Everything I could ask for! Disrupted marriages, secrets, death, dramatic dinners, aaahhh. I think I'm really going to enjoy this one.

Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie (8/25/2021; BooksGoSocial)

A compelling gothic fairytale by bruja and award-winning writer Maria DeBlassie.

The women of Sueño, New Mexico don’t know how to live a life without sorrows. That’s La Llorona’s doing. She roams the waterways looking for the next generation of girls to baptize, filling them with more tears than any woman should have to hold. And there’s not much they can do about the Weeping Woman except to avoid walking along the riverbank at night and to try to keep their sadness in check. That’s what attracts her to them: the pain and heartache that gets passed down from one generation of women to the next.

Mercy knows this, probably better than anyone. She lost her best friend to La Llorona and almost found a watery grave herself. But she survived. Only she didn’t come back quite right and she knows La Llorona won’t be satisfied until she drags the one soul that got away back to the bottom of the river.

In a battle for her life, Mercy fights to break the chains of generational trauma and reclaim her soul free from ancestral hauntings by turning to the only things that she knows can save her: plant medicine, pulp books, and the promise of a love so strong not even La Llorona can stop it from happening. What unfolds is a stunning tale of one woman’s journey into magic, healing, and rebirth.

CW: assault, domestic violence, racism, colorism

I was so drawn in by the cover for Weep, Woman, Weep that I had to request it straightaway. It looks very, very good. 

A Wish Too Dark and Kind by M.L. Blackbird (11/1/2021, Little Blackbird LLC)

Among the immortals that inhabit our world, Arnaud Demeure is known as the man who can fulfill your one true wish or who can also conjure your worst nightmares.

Eight invitations are sent to eight immortals, and when Arnaud Demeure hosts a party, none refuse his request. Why have they been summoned? Is it for a celebration or does a sinister fate await them? After all, in the ways of magick, a party can also be a ritual to end the world.

As the mystery deepens, the attendees must overcome their personal grudges to unravel the threads of Demeure's grand plan that has been centuries in the making. But, with one of the guests secretly working with their host to sabotage the group's every move, it seems impossible to look behind the curtain to learn Demeure's true intentions.

With each guest hiding dark secrets and darker intentions, will they be able to uncover Demeure's mysterious motives or will the party prove to be the deadly nightmare that they each fear?

Another brilliant cover, another fascinating blurb that takes us into the dark and potentially horrid!

So that's me! Now that I'm back home I may have some more time for blogging, but university will also be claiming a big chunk of my time again! How was your week? And what's new in your Mailbox?