A Gift To Myself

I have become a huge fan of podcasts in the past year and a half or so.  It began with me subscribing to the Revive Our Hearts podcasts so that I wouldn't miss out on Nancy's daily teachings and then expanded to include Happier with Gretchen Rubin and Rainer on Leadership with Thom Rainer.  A few others came and went in that time, but these three have remained the same. {Note: all links go to the iTunes page for each podcast.}

While reading Gretchen's newsletter last week I stumbled across a list of highly recommended podcasts and found a new favorite; What Should I Read Next? with Anne Bogel. The show description is as follows:

What Should I Read Next is the show for every reader who has ever finished a book and faced the problem of not knowing what to read next.  Each week, host Anne Bogel interviews a new person and finds out their tastes.  Then, she makes recommendations about what to read next.

I am still enjoying my Audible subscription, but I have been missing the feel of real books in my hands.  And, though I have plenty of 'To Be Read' books on my shelf, I have been missing the excitement of a good 'New Release' to dive into as a nightly routine. (I have been reading non-fiction before bed but have found that I am too tired to focus on something that serious and I end up abandoning most of them without finishing.) I want my nighttime read to be purely for pleasure. 

Then, one day as I was browsing Anne's blog (Modern Mrs. Darcy), I saw a list of things she is enjoying these days.  One of the items on her short list was -- The Book of the Month Club.  I hit the link in her blog post and voila!  Pure reader happiness!  They have a list of five books to choose from each month. AND, in case you can't possibly choose JUST ONE, you can purchase up to two more New Release hardcover books for $9.99 each. April's choices included two memoirs and three works of fiction (one of each - historical, family and thriller). I knew right away that this was my kind of place. 

So, I joined...and within the week I had a peach colored slip of delight in my mailbox notifying me that my book was waiting for me at the post office.  The very next morning I rushed to the post office to find this:

Even the design of the box makes me happy. 

And behind the packing was this little baby:

Check out this blurb:
The day Aubrey Hamilton’s husband is declared dead by the state of Tennessee should bring closure so she can move on with her life. But Aubrey doesn’t want to move on; she wants Josh back. It’s been five years since he disappeared, since their blissfully happy marriage—they were happy, weren’t they?—screeched to a halt and Aubrey became the prime suspect in his disappearance. Five years of emptiness, solitude, loneliness, questions. Why didn’t Josh show up at his friend’s bachelor party? Was he murdered? Did he run away? And now, all this time later, who is the mysterious yet strangely familiar figure suddenly haunting her new life?

In No One Knows, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of the Nicholas Drummond series expertly peels back the layers of a complex woman who is hiding dark secrets beneath her unassuming exterior. This masterful thriller for fans of Gillian Flynn, Liane Moriarty, and Paula Hawkins will pull readers into a you’ll-never-guess merry-go-round of danger and deception. Round and round and round it goes, where it stops…no one knows.

This is not my normal kind of read, but it sounded like a great premise for a book and I cannot wait to dive in!

And I can hardly wait until next month when I get to choose another book to gift myself!!!

If you would like to subscribe to the Book of the Month Club use promo code READNEXT to get 50% off of a three month subscription.  I subscribed before the code...and I still thought it was a great deal.  But hey, it never hurts to save a little money.

Okay, I'm getting off of here to go read now.  Let me know if you've read anything good lately.