48. Lightning in a Mason Jar by Catherine Mann

read on Kindle

270 pgs.

2025
Adult CRF/HF
Finished 10/28/2025
Goodreads rating: 4.16
My rating: 4
Setting: 1970s and contemporary Bent Oak, SC

My comments: Took forever to read, but was ultimately an excellent story.  Told in two voices: Bailey Rae's in 2025 and Winnie's years previously in the late 70s, we learn the backstory and the current story of a 25-year-old who has lost her "adoptive" mother...Winnie.  Abusive marriages, abused children, and found families versus blood families are the huge themes in the story.

Goodreads synopsis:   In South Carolina, a woman discovers her aunt’s profound secrets in an emotional novel spanning decades about trauma, survival, and the bonds of female friendship.

Since Bailey Rae Rigby’s adoptive aunt Winnie passed, Bent Oak, South Carolina, doesn’t have much of a hold on her anymore. So it seems.

Bailey Rae aims to settle the small estate and, armed with her aunt’s inspiring personal cookbook, buy a food truck with an ocean view in Myrtle Beach. Everything goes awry when a distraught young mother arrives in town clutching a copy of that same cookbook. Embedded inside is a code that promises a safe place in Bent Oak for desperate women on the run. For Bailey Rae it opens up a world of questions. Who really was the beloved aunt she’s known most of her life?

Winnie Ballard’s story reaches back fifty years—one of a Southern debutante’s harrowing marriage, of her escape and reinvention, and the galvanizing friendship of three resilient women who overcame their traumas, created a shelter, and found purpose. But there’s more to Winnie’s deliverance and long-held secrets than Bailey Rae imagines.

With each revelation, Bailey Rae draws on her aunt’s courage to find purpose herself. For now, whatever threats may come, Bailey Rae isn’t going anywhere.

16. Fragile Designs by Colleen Coble

listened on Audible
352 pgs.
2024
adult murder mystery 

Finished 2/27/24
Goodreads rating: 4.24
My rating: 2
Setting: Contemporary Beaufort & Savannah, Georgia

My comments: I'm afraid there were more things I disliked about the story than liked.  Very little that happened was believable.  The series of events and their numerous characters were even less believable.  The outcome was ridiculous.  Over-the-top mean, jealous sisters who instantly change their tune after many years.  And at the HEA, the baby that was adopted three years previously - a huge part of the plotline -  was not even in the picture! Absolutely no mention.  And the 70-year-old reunited twins discovered their birth mother was still alive and kicking.  On top of all that, add a whole lot of praying and I can't believe I even finished this story. So much eye-rolling during this listen.      I DID like the setting.

Goodreads synopsis:   NOTE:  This synopsis says the neighbor/co-protagonists' name is SIMON.  It's Not!  If I remember right it's Lucas.... Family secrets can be the most dangerous of all. When Carly Tucker’s police-officer husband is killed during a home break-in, she knows that her side hustle finding the antique treasures at flea markets isn’t enough to support her and their infant son, Noah. So her grandmother’s proposal to have her and her two sisters restore the family’s waterfront Beaufort home into a bed-and-breakfast--that Carly will run--is immediately intriguing. But it’s equally daunting with the animosity that exists between the three sisters. What Carly never expected as she begins to go through the attic was to find a letter in a trunk, written in her husband’s handwriting . . . dated two days before his death. Eric had discovered that Carly’s grandmother was adopted--a fact Carly is certain Gram is not aware of--and had already begun trying to track down her birth family. Is it possible that Eric’s death wasn’t random after all? With few options, Carly reaches out to Gram’s neighbor Simon—and the older brother of her high school sweetheart--who is a local homicide detective. One of the items in the trunk is an enameled egg. If it truly is a Faberge egg, the value could set Carly up for life . . . and would certainly be worth killing for. The journey to find the truth and protect her family will have Carly delving deep into the lost treasures of Eastern Europe--if she and Simon can survive that long.

65. The Planters by Victor Zugg

#2 A Ripple in Time

read on Kindle

2020
371 pgs.
Adult Time Travel
Finished 6/21/21
Goodreads rating: 4.30 - 624 ratings
My rating: 3.5
Setting: 1720 South Carolina coastline

First line/s: "Nathan Sims eyed the sword's sharp point, hovering inches from his throat."

My comments: Most of this episode taes place on the open sea as Mason, Charlie, Jeremy, and Nathan travel back-and-forth between the plantation and the Spanish fort in Saint Augustine where they sell the rice so that they can pay the first installment that they owe Mrs. Stevens in New York for the purchase of the plantation.  At the end, the rotten Nthan has died and Karen is nearing the end of her pregnancy.  

Goodreads synopsis:  A continuing struggle for survival in a time long past.

        Former Federal Air Marshall Stephen Mason has again done the impossible. He has passed back through an unexplainable time portal and reunited with the three people he cares about most.
        It’s 1720, Charles Town, Carolina Colony, a time and place fraught with hardships and hazards. Carving out a life here will be challenging, especially for these modern-day transplants. There are few people they can trust, none in whom they can confide. But they have each other. And they have a rice plantation.
        With no apparent way home, the plan is simple: grow, harvest, sell, and make life as comfortable as possible, without getting too far ahead of history. But with a million ways things can go wrong, the execution may prove considerably more complicated.
        New to a new world, can Mason, Karen, Jeremy, and Lisa navigate the hard realities they are only beginning to understand?

40. The Time Between - Karen White

Audio read by the three voices (though Eleanor's is the primary voice) Jennifer Ikeda, Barbara Rosenblat, and Angela Goethals

13 unabridged cds/15.5 hours) - think I might have enjoyed an abridged version....

2013 Recorded Books

352 pgs.

Written for adults

Finished 9/15/2013

CRF with flashbacks to WWII Hungary

GoodreadsRating: 4.14

My Rating: 2/It was okay

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Charleston, SC and nearby Edisto Island

My comments: This one dragged....and I felt like slapping the protagonist and yelling, "get over it!" The foray into history - world war two and the Holocaust - was interesting, but also incredibly dragged out and predictable.  Oh well, I finished an afghan while listening to it, and it wasn't horrible....there were some beautifully written descriptive passages.

from Goodreads:  Thirty-four-year-old Eleanor Murray is consumed with guilt for causing the accident that paralyzed her sister—and for falling in love with her sister’s husband. But when her boss offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt, Helena, Eleanor accepts, hoping this good deed will help atone for her mistakes.

On the barrier island of Edisto, Eleanor bonds with Helena over their mutual love of music. Drawing the older woman out of her depression, Eleanor learns of her life in Hungary, with her sister, before and during World War II. She hears tales of passion and heartache, defiance and dangerous deception. And when the truth of Helena and her sister’s actions comes to light, Eleanor may finally allow herself to move past guilt and to embrace the song that lies deep in her heart