Friday 5ive- June 5, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. This week seems like a year, doesn't it? New York City has dealt with COVID, and we seem to be on the back side of it thank goodness. This week has seen daily peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, and looting and mayhem at night by people taking advantage of a horrible situation. Now NYC is under a nightly curfew. Things seem to be calmer as the week moves on.

1) Every week I purchase a book online from an independent bookstore- I've bought books from Books Are Magic and The BookMark Shoppe in Brooklyn, Astoria Book Shop in Queens, Book Revue on Long Island, The Rivers' End Bookstore in Oswego, and Oblong Books and Music in Rhinebeck. This week I bought a book from The Lit.Bar, a black-owned bookstore in the Bronx. If you want to do something constructive, make a purchase from a black-owned bookstore, restaurant or business. It's a simple way to show your support. BuzzFeed put together a list here.


2)  My husband and I stopped at this little deli in Port Ewen to get some sandwiches for lunch. It's such a cute shop, like something you'd see in Mayberry. They have delicious sandwiches, and one entire wall is covered with a list of their specialty sandwiches, like The Dugout, The Texan, and High 5. They have a comic book rack and a baseball card display. I haven't seen one of those in years. I also saw a two hams sitting in the back, fresh out of the oven and ready to be sliced. If you ever find yourself in Port Ewen in the Hudson Valley, stop in.

Sandwich Wall

Comic Book Rack

Baseball Card Display

3)  Now that the weather has turned warm, restaurants in our neighborhood are setting up tables just inside their doors and selling adult beverages to go. Oda House, a Georgian (Russia, not US) restaurant up the street from us just set up a table to sell drinks and dumplings to go. It's sort of like a street fair atmosphere.

4)  My friend Kelly told me about a virtual bike race, Summer Around the Finger Lakes. You can virtually ride, walk or paddle your way around the 11 Finger Lakes in or around your home, and eventually you will build up enough miles to go around all the lakes. You submit your results from June 1- September 30, and you get a medal for each lake you traverse. My two sons and I signed up, and we now when we ride our Peletons, we get credit for the rides. So far it's been a blast, and I've recruited my nieces too. 

5) I finished two books this week- Molly Fader's The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season (my review is here) and Kimberly Belle's Stranger in the Lake (my review here. The Bitter and Sweet of Cherry Season is about a young woman who brings her daughter to her aunt's cherry orchard in Michigan, on the run from someone. Aunt Peg has a secret too, and it's a wonderful book about family, and a balm to escape these troubled weeks. 

Anyone who liked The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will want to put Stranger in the Lake on their summer reading list. A young woman discovers a dead body drowned under the dock near her and her husband's home, in the same spot where his first wife drowned four years ago. Is her husband a killer? 

I just started Britt Bennett's The Vanishing Half, about two light-skinned black twin sisters who leave their small town home in Louisiana in 1954. One sister leaves her sister behind to start her own life living as a white woman, and the other returns home with a daughter. I am tearing through this book, it is so fantastic and beautifully written. I can't wait to finish it. 

I hope you all stay safe and healthy.

Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle

Stranger in the Lake by Kimberly Belle
Published by Park Row Books ISBN 9780778388104
Hardcover, $28.99, 336 pages

Kimberly Belle has staked out a claim writing domestic thrillers about troubled marriages, and her latest, Stranger in the Lake, fits that category well.

We meet Charlotte as she is heading to her husband's architecture office where she also works. Charlotte married Paul a few years after his first wife was found drowned under the dock next to their gleaming mansion.

Paul loved Katherine, but people in the small resort town gossiped that he must have had something to do with her death; after all, she was a competitive swimmer. How could she drown so close to the dock?

Charlotte is eleven years younger than Paul, and she comes from the "wrong side of town", having grown up in the trailer park. Her father was in prison, and her mother was a drug addict who neglected Charlotte and her younger brother Chet.

People (including Paul's mother) also gossiped about "gold digger" Charlotte, digging her claws into the wealthy widower Paul. But Paul and Charlotte were in love, and hoped to start to a family soon.

After seeing Paul talking to a strange woman in town, Charlotte finds the woman's body the next day drowned under their dock. Two drowned women under his dock doesn't look good for Paul, and when he tells Charlotte that he must go away for three days after he lies to the police about meeting the dead woman, things go from bad to worse.

There are a lot of twists and turns in the story, and something that happened in Paul's past may have come back to haunt him. Back in high school, Paul was best friends with Jax and Micah, now Paul's neighbor. Jax went off the grid years ago, living in the woods, and Paul has helped him over the years by giving him money and clothes.

Did Paul kill the woman? Does he think Jax killed the woman, as the police suspect? Now that Charlotte has lied to the police to cover up for Paul's lie, she is determined to get to the truth.

Clever readers may be able to follow the breadcrumb clues as to who killed the woman, but there are so many layers to the book, the underlying elements to the story will keep the reader guessing why. Fans of books like The Girl on the Train and Gone Girl will want to add Stranger in the Lake to their summer reading list.

Thanks to Harlequin for putting me on their Summer Reads Blog Tour.