Our Real Christmas Tree

Last year was our first year with a real tree and I’m looking forward to making it one of our traditions! It smelled so nice and it was so wonderful to walk past the dining room and see it twinkling in the corner. I can’t wait to take everyone to pick one out again this year.

And as a quick holiday reading recommendation, I loved Christmas at the Island Hotel by Jenny Colgan. Jenny is one of my favorite closed-door romance authors and this one about a Swedish royal heir and a Scottish baker was especially sweet and fun.

Forever Wild

My love and adoration for The Simple Wild is well-documented here. But with the reveal of the cover of the new novella Forever Wild, out December 2nd, my obsession has really maxed out here. I really thought long and hard about my casting for Jonah and Calla and I’ve decided on Travis Fimmel (literally the quintessential hot Viking) and Alicia Vikander—who always comes across as almost ethereally beautiful but tough. Which is something I think is perfect for Calla’s growth and development as a character as well as allowing her to standout even in the midst of all the Alaskan beauty.

For Susan I would love to see Rachel Weisz (who looks so much like Alicia—and in the book, Calla is her spitting image!) and Josh Lucas as Wren. Josh has done an amazing job on Yellowstone playing a younger John Dutton so I think he definitely has enough of that roughneck energy to really make it work.

When you’re wish-casting your favorite books, do you usually gravitate to well-known actors or do you tend to try to match lesser-known picks?

October

Who is ready for a thriller to kick off the spookiest of months? Karen Dionne’s The Wicked Sister is sinister and atmospheric and I loved it almost as much as I did The Marsh King’s Daughter—a personal favorite of mine.

Falloween Reading Guide: Day Seven

Lost Autumn by Mary-Rose MacColl is the perfect fall read if you enjoy historical fiction with an English royals vibe—very much Downton Abbey goes to Australia. I found this book sumptuous and immersive and interesting enough to keep me reading—which is quite the feat these days! It seems like all I want to do is re-read romance novels and watch Pride & Prejudice (the Keira Knightley version, thank you.)

Falloween Reading Guide: Day Six

Who wouldn’t love a spooky book of stories for middle grade readers? My girls have been enjoying Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker and we think you would, too.

Falloween Reading Guide: Day Five

I had to shoutout this fabulous new translation of Beowulf by Maria Dahvana Headley in my August Favorites but I couldn’t resist adding this as my day five pick for the Falloween Reading Guide. If you can get the audiobook version, it’s four hours of gravelly consonants and resonant “bro”s that you will not regret. For us native English speakers, this is the first great work of literature in the oldest iteration of our language and feeling it updated is like smooth whiskey on the tongue.