Shannon Kay

Our school district started 2 weeks earlier than last year. It’s been about 99℉ / 37℃ all week. My elementary kids had to eat lunch inside, and school pickup traffic is at rainy day levels.  My fourth grader kid literally cooked s’mores outside in a solar oven that he made today, so I guess the weather was good for that.

The Last King of Faerie, the first book in Cassandra Clare’s newest(final?) Shadowhunter series, The Wicked Powers, is expected to release November 3, 2026. Here’s the re-read I have planned to prepare for this new book. Will I make it? Time will tell! The new book is supposed to take place after The Dark Artifices and center the characters Kit, Ty, and Dru, with Ash being featured as well. I took that into account when choosing what I want to re-read.

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I just love Rainbow Rowell’s writing. Julia at the Drive-In by Rainbow Rowell is a short story from Amazon’s short story collection, The Edge of Everything. It’s the short tale of a girl named Julia who goes to the Drive-In movie theatre the weekend before school starts for her senior year of high school. It’s mainly a little slice of life story that focuses on lots of weird thoughts and worries from the mind of this young woman, with a vivid setting.

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Recently, I was entering the weather for a blog post. I just type my weather in manually when I want to include it. It was for a review of a book that took place in a region where they use Celsius, so I decided to include my current weather in Fahrenheit and Celsius. In the Apple Weather app, I tapped the option to change between Fahrenheit and Celsius. It was then that I noticed that ℉ and ℃ were not just a regular F and C with the degree° sign symbol, but their own unicode special character.

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My kids have already been in school for a week because the school board decided to start the year two weeks earlier than last year, just stealing two weeks of the summer break that we can never get back. They started school(2nd, 4th, and 9th grades) last Thursday. Yes, the first day of school was a Thursday. And then had a complete 5-day week this week. Longest week ever! I’m glad it’s Friday!

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My sister got tickets to a Death Cab for Cutie concert on August 2 at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, and invited me to go. The venue was an outdoor theater in Griffith Park.

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Today, while browsing through the Way Back Machine on Internet Archive, I stumbled upon an old website that I had made, RunWithTheBest.net (archive link). This was almost certainly my first “professional” website, and I believe I made it in the year 2000 when I was sixteen years old.

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The Name Game by Beth O’Leary was fantastic. It starts off like an easy-reading romance with flashbacks of deeper character backstories. There’s a cozy small island setting, and a bit of mystery surrounding the two people called Charlie Jones.

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We saw The Beths in concert. After seeing The Beths twice in 2023, we’ve had tickets to two other concerts that we didn’t make it to because of complications with our kids. This year, the perfect storm was created with The Beths playing on my husband, Jerrod,’s birthday right in our own county. We didn’t even have to drive to Los Angeles! For merch, we both got Straight Line Was a Lie t-shirts, and I got a tote bag and sticker!

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Tides of Fortune is the sequel to Heir of Storms by Lauryn Hamilton Murray. It was a perfect YA fantasy. A quest-vibed adventure, medium-level stakes, plenty of lore and great romantic tension. Exciting and unputdownable, but also lots of cozy scenes.

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Mrs. Nash’s Ashes by Sarah Adler was a wonderful fast and funny romantic comedy. I loved the characters. There is a broccoli festival. It also has a bonus historical romance in it. The main character is a redheaded former child star.

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The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner is a historical fantasy, more toward historical than fantasy. It’s not really a romance, but contains love stories. It has multiple timelines and points of view.

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This year, I joined the choir at a small, local Presbyterian church. I sing Soprano 2! I grew up singing, but haven’t had a choir to sing in for years. 

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The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst was a delightful cozy fantasy. I’ve had the beautiful FairyLoot edition sitting on my shelf, but I’m glad I saved it for summertime. The inn was welcoming and cozy, but filled with things to explore and discover. A respite from the rest of the world.

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The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden was a beautiful book. It starts off leaning more historical with court/political drama than fantasy, and gradually moves into a story of enchanting legend. It grows to be a magical and romantic story. The writing style is lovely.

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Coldwire by Chloe Gong was fantastic. It felt properly sci-fi. It was fairly fast-paced with riveting mysteries. It deals with serious situations and has reasonably high stakes, but doesn’t feel at all dark. 

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