More of the Same

Listening to an audiobook while quilting my maximalist quilt is my main daily activity. I haven't working on anything else since last Thursday.

When I need a little change of pace, I hand appliqué a few more circles onto the quilt. 

Basically, what's left to quilt is about 8" around the perimeter. Maybe I'll finish quilting next week? 

So the highlight of this post is to review two more books I've listened to.

Book Recommendations

The Inmate is the second book I've read by Frieda McFadden. The previous book is Never Lie, reviewed here last month. 

In this psychological thriller, the reader takes an in-depth look into what happened to Brooke Sullivan when she was in high school.

The story begins a decade later, with Brooke starting her first day of work as a nurse practitioner in a men's prison. She helped put her high school boyfriend behind bars in this same prison, and she's hoping she never runs into him. Of course, she does. 

While working at the prison, she's living in the house where she grew up because her parents died the year before. She's on her own, being a single parent to ten year-old Josh. When she runs into her former best friend, Tim, who's living in his parents home a few houses away, and is now the assistant principal at Josh's school, they rekindle their friendship. As their relationship becomes more serious, and Brooke continues to nurse Shane in prison, she begins questioning everything she thought she knew about what happened that one night. Could the wrong man have been convicted? 

Linda's score: 4.0/5.0

Now is Not the Time to Panic is also the second book I've read by Kevin Wilson who wrote Nothing to See Here that I reviewed in April 2020. 

It's 1996, and 16 year-old Frankie lives with her divorced mom, and triplet older brothers in a small town: Coalville, Tennessee. Frankie meets Zeke at the swimming pool. He's new to town. They become friends. As they learn about each other and are looking for an activity to keep away summer boredom, they collaborate to make a poster.

Frankie, who loves to write and is working on a novel, writes: 

"The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us."

Zeke, who's an artist, creates the drawing to go with Frankie's lines.

Together they find satisfaction in making copies of their poster to hang and put in mailboxes throughout Coalville. The local newspaper writes about the poster and its meaning, and a series of incidences puts the poster in the news. Everyones' speculating about what it means - An author's discovered manuscript? Devil worship? Satanic symbolism? It's getting out of hand. Zeke to want to end what they're doing; Frankie wants (needs) to keep making copies and distributing them. When Zeke leaves town, and Frankie has to face her life that won't stand still, and that she found meaning in it only with Zeke.

Decades later, the source of the "Coalville Panic of 1996" has never been revealed. Perhaps it's time for Frankie to come clean. 

Linda's score: 4.0/5.0

Linda