What I read this week:

This week was defined by quick reads.  I have a stack of books I needed to pre-read, so I did my best speed reading (and started the week off with a quick treat just for me 💖)

Plot Twist by Bethany Turner 

I read this in one day.  I was SO so SO tired the next morning, but after figuring out each "chapter" was another February 4th, I had to keep reading to find out : does Olivia go back to that coffee shop ten years later?  Does she have the courage to chase her dream of becoming a great screen writer?  Does she find true love after all?  

This was a clever and cute rom-com book.  

Rescue by Jennifer A. Nielsen (the author of The False Prince) Oh my goodness.  I LOVED this book.  This is a fictional account of a French family unwittingly drawn into the very heart of what it meant to not only resist the evilness of the Nazi's, but also what it means to never, ever give up hope and always be willing to forgive.  I highly recommend this - 

Favorite quotes: 

"all people are not the same just because they come from the same place"

"There is nothing so dark that it cannot find its way back.  There is nothing so lost that time cannot return it to us again."

The Case of the Missing Marquess (anyone else's teens interested in the Enola Holmes' books?!?) by Nancy Springer 

This was a bit darker than I anticipated, partly because it seems to be marketed for tween-agers.  This is definitely a book you want to pre-read before handing it off to your kiddos if they are younger than fifteen/sixteen.  All that to say, this book was very well written.  It is captivating from beginning to end, especially if you are a fan of Sherlock.

Favorite quote:

"Horses sweat, you know, and men perspire, whereas ladies glow.  I am sure I looked all of a glow also.  Indeed, I could feel all-of-a-glow trickling down my sides beneath my corset, the steel ribs of which jabbed me under the arms most annoyingly."

47 Days by Annette Oppenlander

One of my teens read this for a school assignment and asked that I read it too.   It is a short story - actually an excerpt - from a larger novel (which I haven't read) called Surviving the Fatherland.

I am always surprised by each book I read regarding WWII.  This short story broadened my grasp of how horrific Hitler's regime truly was.  I don't know why, because I have read a lot of WWII novels, but each one still shocks me.  It is truly surreal to realize how far and how wide and how deep Hitler's evil spread unchecked and as a result, lives were absolutely shredded.

*edited* I have thought about what I wrote all morning and to say it spread unchecked is not completely accurate.  Although it is true that many, many people bent when they should have stood, just as many nameless, faceless (to us) people stood strong and brave, they offered forgiveness for every stroke of hatred, kindness and compassion in the face of demonic evil, and courage in the face of cowardliness.