September has been a rough reading month for me. I've struggled to make time to read to start with, work, coaching, and marathon training eating up most of my energy. Adding to my low book count is the fact that I had not one but two books that went into my DNF pile. I try very hard to finish any book I start (there was one that took me two years but I finally finished it over this past summer).

*My reviews may include spoilers.*



I began the month by finishing Dark, Witch & Creamy, the first book in the Bewiched by Chocolate Series by H.Y. Hanna. This had been a free download to my Kindle and falls into the fluffy read category. I loved the chocolate connections and appreciated the overall clean feeling to the book. For some reason I expected more romance even though the blurb does not lean that direction. I would pick up the next book in the series if I saw it was available at the library.

However, I could not get into my book club this month: Answer as a Man by Taylor Caldwell. I will say that the author did a great job with description. You knew exactly how the characters felt and their motivations because she laid it out very clearly. Nothing really happened though. I read about forty pages and no sense of where the book was going. I know character development is important, but I need some action, conflict, or at least a hint of a significant, specific problem. When I confessed at book club that I had not gotten very far into the book because nothing was really happening, one of the women replied that I needed to have made it to page 100 for the plot to start to develop. On a scale of 1 to 10 on feeling guilty for not finishing the book, I feel about a 3 since it was for book club and I could tell that the writer was skilled.

I then turned to Deadly Pursuit by Irene Hannon, the second book in her Guardians of Justice series. I had read Fatal Judgment earlier this year and was interested in continuing the series. The back cover of the book talked about a violent turn by the female main character's stalker and I got a nervous gut feeling as soon as I read about her rescue dog. As I got closer to the halfway mark, that gut worry increased and skipping ahead a few pages, I had my guess confirmed about the dog's fate. I stopped reading. I am not an animal activist but I have grown up with pets and love my cat dearly. I feel as though that approach by the author was not necessary to move the plot along nor to develop characters. Feeling guilty for not finishing the book? 0 out of 10



I went for a safe choice after that and picked up the next book in the Richard Castle series Raging Heat. I enjoyed the ABC TV Series Castle and have found these books based on the fictional characters created by the fictional writer in that series to be easy reads with some fun lines. Nothing deeply thought-provoking although this one did bring up the serious issue of human trafficking.

So how did your reading month go? Any DNF's for you?

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