Who's ready for some more book club selections?!?! It's time for another batch of books to read together! We have another round of voting completed and we have another batch of great books to read together. The book for January 2025 is Where They Last Saw Her by Marcie R. Rendon. Feel free to read our book club books in any order that you choose and when you've finished reading, come back here and tell us what you think. Please label spoilers. We have a new trick for hiding spoilers. Type whatever you want and then highlight the spoiler portion and click the + button above and select Spoiler. If that doesn't work (seems to be funky on Macs) just highlight your text and change the color to white >>>This is a super secret spoiler alert!<<< like I did right there. Just a note, anyone is welcome to join in with our book club reading at any time and join in the discussion! The more the merrier! Happy reading!
I finished this book yesterday. It seemed a little slow to start with but it became more interesting as it progressed on. It revealed something about Native Americans I did not know about. I will not share what that is, as it is part of the story. Because of what I learnt, I am glad I suggested this book and read it.
I started looking for this book the other day and it's not available from my e-library. Going to have to see if it's available from my regular library. Glad you enjoyed it and learned something.
This story sucked me in and I finished it. Spoiler: spoiler The whole time I was worried that Quill would get abducted herself with the way she was looking into things and checking the cars, and then she did. I really liked the way the women came together and did the run with the older ladies organizing it. I wish we would have found out what happened to Mabel.
Yay! Glad to hear it sucked you in. I'm reading the Physician right now which is 900 pages, so after that I'll be able to get back around to check this out. (I'm not reading your spoilers yet)
I just started this one. I've gotten in to a bad habit of only reading the same authors. This is my second new author for 2025. Trying to expand my horizons.
Putting this on my list. In the Sarah J Maas long book stuff, so who knows when I'll get in this one. I can mainly just do audiobooks, so slower sometimes.
I finished this up a couple of days ago. Spoiler: Spoiler Here I really liked this book. I was actually kind of surprised because when I first started it I had low expectations. And this book didn't have the traditional happy ending which can often be a no for me but it was not with this book. Like Laura, I expected Quill to be abducted but then when Punk was abducted, I decided it wasn't going to happen after all. I was wrong. I am glad that she found Punk. I do wish I knew what happened to Gaylynn's mom once her case went to court.
This books was very engaging and I finished it in a couple days. I did find the main character's decisions to be a bit hard to believe sometimes but I suppose in today's world of true crime groupies, it isn't too hard to believe someone would dig into investigating a crime. I enjoyed the glimpse into daily life in the tribal community and learning more about MMIW issues which are important and obviously need more attention. I thought the writing itself was a little too basic and simplistic. I may check out the author's novels which I hear may be better.
I finished this pretty quickly and really enjoyed it. I don't think I would have read it without the recommendation so, thanks, for having this on the reading list.
This book finally became available on Libby, and I listened to it in a few days. I liked the pace of the story, it really kept me engaged. I also liked that it gave me more insight into what living in that type of community is like, and the complexities that come with it. The poverty, isolation, drugs, and exploitation, but also the strong sense of community and national pride. I was often frustrated with Quill's choices (especially as a mom of young kids) but I can see how that environment shaped her decisions.
I FINALLY finished this one and I have to say that I wasn't much of a fan. I was so annoyed with the lack of reality in Quill's decisions and life. She left her kids all the time to go running off to look for clues about women that she didn't even know and put herself in danger a ridiculous amount of times. Even after her husband told she was being stupid and to be more careful. Even when he took the kids to his sister's, she didn't stop what she was doing. Spoiler: My Goodreads review - some minor spoilers This book took me two months to finish. I stopped in the middle to read another book, but it still took me a LONG time. I'm not sure why I even decided to finish it since it didn't really pull me in. It had the potential to be a great story, but it just was lacking. The main character Quill was ridiculous. She continually put her own children on the back burner and even put them in danger to chase after women that she didn't even know. Other details about her life and her family bugged me, she didn't have a job, so she could just run around driving all over the place looking for clues? How could she afford all the driving around the the $150 earrings at the boutique? Her husband also seemed to have no full time job other than tinkering on an occasional car in the driveway? Did he get paid to fix friends and acquaintance's cars? There just seemed to be a lack of reality in a lot of the storyline. It was also unbelievable to me that her best friend Punk could disappear for over a week before she really started to get suspicious and went and found her and broke her out of the motel room. Then she drove around and happened to find Cliff/Trent and somehow her and a teenage girl were able to go back and overpower him and put him in the trunk and take him to the police? I just found everything a bit ridiculous. Then the ending was open ended and very abrupt and all I could think was that I was happy that I could finally move on to another book!