Against A Brightening Sky

againstbrightsky“In an age of empires, princes were raised to rule, and often, to fight and die.”

Against A Brightening Sky
By Jaime Lee Moyer

The Delia Martin mystery/paranormal series comes to a conclusion with this third book. The story opens during the spring of 1919 and Delia is now more immersed in the world of magical arts with the help of her friend Isadora. She also continues to help her husband, Police Captain, Gabriel Ryan on his cases but this time around they may be in over their heads.

As the couple attends a St. Patrick’s Day parade the festivities quickly turn to chaos when gunmen start shooting into the crowds. There is confusion and fear as they try to get out of harm’s way and all along Delia knows there is a new ghost following her.

Who is this ghost seeking her attention? The couple and their friends will soon be in charge of keeping a young woman who can’t remember anything safe but the ghosts and other entities that begin to show up lead them to believe that she must be someone important.

The standout characters in this series are Delia and Gabriel. While the author does a good job of incorporating other characters and bringing back favorites, I think that by telling the stories in alternating chapters from the viewpoints of Delia and Gabriel, it is much easier to see the growth these two have had since the beginning of the series.

I was surprised to find out that this book was the end of the series. I feel like there were more stories that could have been explore and I thought Delia and Gabriel still had more to share with the readers. Their love story hasn’t been easy and they’ve had their share of grief.

The paranormal aspects of this mystery were interesting and there is one character that is very creepy and I thought gave this mystery a more somber mood than previous entries. All in all a satisfying conclusion to the series.

Source: Library copy

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Teaser Tuesday

TeaserTuesdays-ADailyRhythm3I’m back for another Teaser Tuesday hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. The rules: grab your current read, open to a random page, and share two (2 or 3) “teaser” sentences from that page while avoiding any spoilers.

My teasers are from a couple of different pages but I think a lot of you will guess where these teasers are from:

“The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest.” Pg. 2

“In this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the post, which contained a proposal particularly well timed. It was the offer of a small house, on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of her own, a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire. The letter was from this gentleman himself, and written in the true spirit of friendly accommodation.” Pg. 19

Did you guess where these teasers are from?

They are from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. My mom and I watched the movie last weekend and I decided that it was time to actually read the book. Have you read this and how does it rank compared to other Austen books you’ve read?

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Sunny Sunday

MonthInReviewI hope you’ve all been enjoying the weekend. We broke a weather record today, we reached 86 degrees. Yikes. I love the beautiful sunny skies we had all weekend but I am not ready for this temperature. It makes me think of just how hot summers can get.

Anyway, we’ve had a great weekend. Spent some time with friends, my husband tried to make some Carmelitas, which were quite good but very rich, and I was able to do a bit more reading this weekend.

Thank goodness for that because my reading this January has not been the greatest. I read four books, mainly mysteries, but I wasn’t blown away by any of my reads. I didn’t make any progress in my reading challenges either. I’m hoping February will be a much better reading month.

Here are the titles I read:
Murder on St. Nicholas Avenue by Victoria Thompson
The House of the Vestals by Steven Saylor
Paid For: My Journey in Prostitution by Rachel Moran
Against A Brightening Sky by Jaime Lee Moyer

My shelves are overflowing and I have a lot of ARCs I’ve received this month and not to mention that I borrowed (and have some holds pending) from the library. So surely February will be a good reading month right? Hope you will also find lots of great reads in February!

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