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Recently Finished
Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants: The Art of the Paperback
Found this in a neighborhood Little Library. Not much text, so it's a fast read. Mostly just pictures of old paperback book covers. It was fun to look at as something I got for free. Wouldn't buy it, though.

We Live Here Now
A woman and her husband move to an isolated old house after she's released from the hospital following a nearly fatal accident. From the beginning, there are strange goings on, but while the MC thinks the house might be haunted, her husband is convinced she's just hallucinating as a symptom of her post-sepsis syndrome. Spoiler alert: it's haunted. I think this was one of the most interesting haunted house stories I've read and I really liked the twists.

The Killings at Badger's Drift
First novel in the series the Midsomer Murders show is based on. I don't usually go for mysteries with male protags, especially policemen, but this was on a two-for-one Audible sale and I've heard go things about the show, so I decided to check it out. I like the MC all right and the mystery was interesting. Did not like that the stereotypes regarding the lone gay character, though this was published in the late 80s, so somewhat to be expected. The narrator was enjoyable. I am interested in checking out more in the series, but neither my library nor Hoopla has further audiobooks, so I'll just get book books, as I wasn't into it enough to want to spend money on it.

Chef's Secret
Most recent book in the Front Desk series of middle grade novels about a tween (now teen) Chinese-American girl who works at her family's motel. I really liked the earlier books but this one was such a disappointment. There had been little bits of romance between the MC and her male best friend in the previous couple books, but this one was not only entirely romance focused, but was from the POV of said boy, rather than the previous MC. I do not like him as a narrator and just found the romance plot of thirteen-year-olds dreadfully boring. It seems like this might be the last book in the series, but if it's not, I'll probably check out the summary/reviews before reading any further books rather than just automatically checking it out. I prefer MG over YA precisely because of the lack of romance focus (I don't mind books where the main plot is a romance, though it's not my favorite genre, but so much YA theoretically has another plot but it's actually all about choosing between two cute boys or whatever), so having it be the main plot here was a disappointment.

Yellow Stringer
This was a Hoopla bonus read or whatever they call it. Previously my library allowed you to check out six things a month with Hoopla, but recently it was cut down to four, so I assume Hoopla increased their prices or something and the library had to go down to a lower tier. Disappointing, but since I'd reached my max, I checked out the list of things you can borrow without having it count towards your total, and this was one of them. Not sure I would have checked it out otherwise. It's an English language comic done in manga style (specifically it very much reminds me of Detective Conan). A reporter for a tabloid is one of the few people who knows the articles she writes are about real supernatural events, rather than just sensational stories. Her new partner is a former cop who is sceptical until mummies start attacking them. The first several chapters are part of one longer story, and then there's a few more stand-alones. They're all just fine. It says volume one, but it's been several years and no sign of any further volumes, so it's probably abandoned. It was fine, but not something I'll bother checking up on to see if any more are ever released.

My Home Hero vol. 5-6

1. I worked from home again today, which was nice, but the reason was not so much. I'm sick again. D: Yesterday afternoon I started to feel a tickle in my throat that just continued throughout the evening, but it was super dry yesterday so it was the sort of thing that could have just been due to the weather. Unfortunately when I woke up this morning it was definitely more of a proper sore throat. So far testing negative for covid, but I'll keep checking. (I will say that the time last year when we actually did have covid, it showed up on the tests right away. But I know it doesn't always, so I won't take an early negative as a sure thing.)

2. Our new coffee table arrived and is all set up! It was not a full DIY table like Ikea, just had to attach the legs, so it was very quick to do.

3. Finished up another puzzle today. This is one of the ones we got at Target recently. It's 500 pieces but felt easier than a lot of the other ones of that size we've done, though the foil made it annoying at times since the light would kind of glare off it.



4. Jasper is such a handsome guy.