My Soul to Keep

Well, here we are in July. Who knew that summer could be half over and we've only just started? It must be the fact that it just hasn't been H-O-T like I remember summers being. Maybe that's because I played outside as a kid and I hide in the AC now.

No. Can't be that, I spent the better portion of the morning outside. And most of the afternoon also.

Dang, I love shade. That's the best part about this side of the state. Trees.

And I am Finally! Done! reading for ACFWs Book of the Year contest! Dear me, I was looking at my stack of books that had to be read last month and I thought it might not happen. I W-A-Y over committed myself between BOTY and Armchair. It's never a good thing when reading becomes a to-do rather than an escape-from.

So, as this is "New Book Tuesday" I shall tell you the first book I grabbed as soon as my obligations depleted: My Soul to Keep by Melanie Wells. Back cover copy reads like this:

As nasty as I knew Peter Terry to be, I never expected him to start kidnapping kids. Much less a sweet, funny little boy with nothing to protect him but a few knock-kneed women, two rabbits, and a staple gun...

Talk about your bizarre books. One minute you're laughing (it's written in first person, almost chick-lit voice) and the next you're, like Frodo says, "scared out of the creeps." No kidding, this 32 year old woman sat on the loveseat with her feet tucked up under her and made her dear ole Hubs get up, go lock all the doors and close the blinds because...well, because Melanie Wells writes this supernatural thriller stuff well enough that a rattlesnake might just get me if I got of the couch and maybe, just maybe someone was stalking me. {{shudder}}

And then she gives you this:

I should add here that it is an essential truth in the universe that all women obsessively compare themselves to one another. Why we engage in such futility is one of life's great mysteries. But as any married man knows, this should be accepted as fact without argument.

It's inevitable. It's a reflex. Just make peace with it now.

Was she at the pool with me this afternoon? And here I was thinking I was the only one with this obsession. But right there in black and white, I know that a fictional woman is just like me.

Confession is good for the soul.

Anyway, it was an excellent book. However, I believe that although this is a stand alone book, it is kinda related to another couple (which I haven't read) and you might want to go in order (even though it says nothing anywhere on the cover about being a series).