Fog Island Mountain by Michelle Bailat-Jones

Good morning, everyone! Today I'm a stop on the TLC book tour for Michelle Bailat-Jones's Fog Island Mountain.

The people of Komachi are bracing for a storm, but for Alec Chester day dawns with worse news. As he receives his diagnosis, his wife is nowhere to be found. In fact, she'd driven to the hospital with the intention of being by her husband's side only to realize that the possibility of facing life without him is too much. With the storm looming, each of them will make decisions that will affect the other - some in quite possibly grave ways. 

This is an interesting little read as it's narrated by a third character, Azami. Azami is a storyteller like her father and I quite enjoyed the bits of folktales she inserted into the story.

The actual style of the narration was something I found difficult to ease into. I felt disconnected from the story and the characters and had a hard time with the reading in general. I found myself frequently having to go back over portions before really grasping what was going on. I don't know if the blame lies with me - maybe I was distracted - but it hung up the flow of the story and I found myself putting it down a lot with less and less desire to return. (I appear to be the only one with this issue so we'll place the blame firmly on me as the reader!)

To see more stops on the tour be sure to check out the official TLC tour page here.

Fog Island Mountains is out now from Tantor Media and is also available in audiobook from Audible, who have been kind enough to share a little excerpt:

Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier + a giveaway

Hi, readers! Today I was supposed to run a review and giveaway for the first title in Juliet Marillier's latest series. Instead, I have to do more of a "What I'm Reading" post and here's why: this weekend was insane. Truly insane!

Friday was, of course, Halloween, which some of you might remember is also my wedding anniversary. Yep, it's been four whole years (married - ten together) now. And Saturday our longtime friends welcomed their firstborn, Owen Jackson, into the world! We headed over to meet him - and he's already a charmer - on Sunday and then made the mistake of going to Ikea for the bed frame we'd promised ourselves just before hubs broke his hand. Now that the cast is off we figured we needed it (it's got under bed storage and we've got super small closets). What we didn't realize was that said bed frame was going to take upwards of 6 hours to assemble.

So yes, my weekend reading plans got pushed to bits I could fit in between moments of madness. But that was ok, too, because Dreamer's Pool was perfect for those moments! Everything I've come to love about Marillier's work - vibrant settings, fully realized characters, and overall enthralling tales - is here. And though I'm not quite finished, I'm already looking forward to more of Blackthorn's story!

Here's the description from the publisher:

Blackthorn, an embittered healer, is incarcerated and awaiting execution when a mysterious visitor offers her a chance to escape; in exchange, she has vowed to set aside her bid for vengeance against her enemy. Accompanied by her former cell-mate, the hulking and silent Grim, Blackthorn flees northward where she settles in a derelict cottage on the fringe of the mysterious Dreamer’s Wood. There, she will live duty bound for seven years to assist anyone who asks her help, with Grim as her unofficial, and self-appointed guard. 

Meanwhile, the Crown Prince Oran has been waiting anxiously for the arrival of his future bride, Lady Flidais, whom he knows only from a portrait and her sweetly poetic letters. Convinced that she is his true love, he is stunned to find that while Lady Flidais matches her portrait, her brutality fails to match up to their correspondence. But now, it’s far too late, with the marriage imminent and his parents delighted to see their troublesome son wed at last.

But word has spread that Blackthorn possesses a remarkable gift for solving problems, and Oran turns to her and Grim. But this is a problem that will require all of their resources: courage, ingenuity, and leaps of deduction. Not to mention, more than a little bit of magic.

If you're a fan of Marillier's work, then you'll love this latest. If you've not yet had the pleasure of reading her work, I highly suggest starting now!

Dreamer's Pool officially hits shelves tomorrow.

Thanks to the publisher, I'm able to offer up one copy of Dreamer's Pool! Fill out the Rafflecopter below - before Monday, November 17 - to enter. US only and no PO boxes please.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Dreamer's Pool is also available as an audiobook through Audible. You can check out a clip of the opening chapter here: