Tag / Samantha Downing

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Book 1 (of 52) – Too Old For This

Too Old For This – Samantha Downing

When a journalist shows up on her doorstep looking to make a docu-series clearing her name, retiree Lottie Jones has only one option: to kill her and make her disappear.  However, this starts the ball rolling, as the police, the journalist’s boyfriend, and her mother start poking around.  Can Lottie pull her fat out of the fire without putting further focus on herself?

Samantha Downing’s latest, Too Old for This, brings her back to my Kindle for the first time since 2022.  In this tale, Downing has you pulling for the old lady, even though she really should be the villain of the piece.  Given my enjoyment of this book, I can only hope it won’t be another 3+ years before I come across Downing’s work again.

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52 Books in 52 Weeks – 2026 Edition

A new year is upon us, and it is time to once again set a goal of reading a book a week for the entire year, totaling 52 books in 52 weeks.

Last year, for the fifth straight year, I completed my goal, finishing the year with 61 books read.  Prior to that, I’d had a low point of eight books back in 2010 and a high point of 66 books.

While I am hoping to have a better balance between reading time and exercise this year, I’m going to give it another go.  I’ve got plenty of new books stocked up, both in the Kindle app on my iPad and actual physical books, not to mention my handy dandy library card, so I’ve got a good pile to start with.  As a reminder, the rules I am using are:

  • You can count a book as read as long as you have completed the book in 2026 and at least 50% of that reading takes place in 2026.
  • Any book counts as long as you’re not embarrassed to count it.
  • Poetry collections do indeed count.
  • Re-reading a book is okay as long as it isn’t done this year. (Reading Twilight twice in 2026 only counts as one read).
  • Audiobooks also count.

My first book of the year looks like it will be Too Old for This by Samantha Downing.  Here’s hoping 2026 is another good year when it comes to books.

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2022: The Year In Books

As we wrap up 2022, my second full year of remote working, I managed to surpass my previous records by completing a whopping 55 books, an increase of one book over last year and my second consecutive year completing the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge.  I surpassed last year’s total with a mere three days remaining in 2022.  I read (or listened) to 19,328 pages, by far my highest total of all time and only the third time I’ve passed 10,000.

Of those books, fifteen were non-fiction and, of the remaining 40 novels, only two were tied to a TV show, either as the source material or as a tie-in.  None of the books came out of my dwindling “to-read” drawer, with 44 e-books and three audiobooks.  I continued to take advantage of my library card, which helped me procure 37 of the books I consumed throughout the year.

A little more than half of the books I read this year were by authors I had read before. The 31 authors that I read for the first this year were:

Adam Nedeff Kelsey McKinney Simone St. James Laura Dave
Jeff Warren Carlye Adler Matt Paxton Jordan Michael Smith
Alyssa Milano Alex Finlay Taylor Jenkins Reid Emily Ratajkowski
Samantha Downing Dave Grohl Mary Lynn Rajskub Stephanie Perkins
Michael Schur Joseph Henrich V.E. Schwab Brianna Madia
Jimmy Piersall Richard Whittingham Richard Osman Colleen Hoover
Jenette McCurdy Sally Rooney Josh Malerman Alice Sebold
Katie Mack Penn Jillette Elin Hilderbrand Nita Prose

Alex Finlay, Simone St. James, Karin Slaughter, Megan Goldin, Jeffery Deaver, and Richard Osman were the only authors that I read multiple titles from during 2022.

16 of the books I read were released this year, while only two of them were released last century, with the oldest first published in 1953.

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Book 27 (of 52) – My Lovely Wife

My Lovely Wife – Samantha Downing

A husband and wife have an odd way to keep their marriage interesting: kidnapping and murdering innocent women.  But when their latest abduction takes some unexpected turns, and starts impacting their children’s psyches, the husband starts to question if he truly knows his wife and how much of their extracurricular activities are truly down to her.

This summer will be ten years since Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl was published and took the world by storm.  In the years since, there have been many novels that have been dubbed the “next” Gone Girl, and this novel, My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, came to my attention via an article placing it as a descendent.  There is some shared DNA, the crazed woman driven to act by their husband’s infidelity, but this entry is missing some of the, I don’t know, heart? of its predecessor?  Not that it wasn’t an enjoyable read, but it didn’t really hold up to the comparison.  Which, after ten years, maybe its time to stop looking for the next Gone Girl and instead start looking for the next Gone Girl.