The May Roundup - lots of reading and a few tornadoes

Weather woes

👇 This cool VTOMAN Generator came in very handy when the Tallahassee area had severe storms and tornadoes two weeks ago.  Much thanks to Les at Coastal Horizons for posting about these generators.  We promptly bought two, a large one and small one. Hurricane season is around the corner for us so it's that time of year to prep.  Little did we know we'd be using those generators within a week from purchase. We were able to have a lamp on, make coffee and charge our phones/tablets.

Reading so far this month

The DNF this month was Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered. Two strikes on an author and I don't generally seek out more of their work.

📚📚   Books read  📚📚

The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

The Will by Rebecca Reid

May book travel took me to Boston, Panama, Barbados, Norfolk, London and Cork Ireland.

That's it for the May round up.   Looking forward to good reading in June and may link up with The Twenty Books of Summer hosted at 746 Books. 

Thanks to Susan at The Cue Card for the inspiration to join in.  It has been fun starting my list so we will see how dedicated I can be.

 Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

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The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Twenty something Rachel Murray is finishing up college in Cork Ireland, working at a bookstore, trying to make ends meet due to the financial crisis in Ireland.  She meets James Devlin working at the store and after a rocky start they become best friends and end up living together.

This story is written by Rachel in retrospect when she is married, pregnant and settled in London nearly a decade later.  Her life is vastly different from 20 year old Rachel.  As she looks back, you'll read the almost complicated story of how something so simple can spiral out of control.

This could be labeled as a coming-of-age story but it's more than that.  No, Rachel and Devlin do not fall in love. They love each other and always have the others back, are protective, but zero love interest as Rachel is heterosexual and James is gay.

Major characters in this book are Rachel's English professor Fred Byrne and Byrne's wife Deenie, his editor. Another is one of my favorites, James Carey, who is from Derry and drives Rachel crazy.  Every one of the relationships slowly coils and weaves into subplots where, quite deftly, it all comes together in the end.

The title - The Rachel Incident - isn't mentioned until the 98% mark on my Kindle.  Usually a title is woven in earlier in a book.  When I started this I thought it would be about college aged people drinking, getting high, nothing complicated but it develops quickly and I very much enjoyed it.

Some triggers (for some people) might be abortion issues and anti gay sentiment.  I hope the author writes more.

Sharing with  Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday