It’s Monday, What Are You Reading? Is hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date, a great place to meet up and share your reading plans for the week. I love finding new blogs and new books – so a link-up that helps me do both? Sign me up!

Happy Monday, friends! Living in Houston, TX, the last week has been a crazy ride. Between constant rain followed by flooding, followed by sunshine, and then even MORE rain… why can’t the weather just pick a theme and stick with it? Oh well, it gave me a great excuse to stay in this weekend, cooking up a storm and finishing some long overdue reading. At the end of the day Sunday, I probably spent a total of 6 hours in the kitchen after slow cooking BBQ ribs, making pasta salad, and meal prepping for the week – it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time!

I also had plenty of time to finish reading The Ballroom by Anna Hope, be it a little forced. I was so excited for this one! A romance set in an insane asylum during the Edwardian Era on the moors of England, it couldn’t be more intriguing, but instead I found an improbable romance between two under developed characters, both controlled by a doctor slowly going insane over his obsession with eugenics. Quite a different story, indeed. Nonetheless, the novel raised some interesting questions over an often overlooked topic of history. I also finished several audio books over the  week, including Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy and Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. I loved the narrators for both, but especially Eileen Stevens for Dumplin‘! She really brought the character to life for me.

This week I’ll be reading Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien and The Solace of Monsters by Laurie Blauner. I haven’t read a summary for either yet, but I’ve heard nothing but good reviews for Thien’s novel – which no surprise there, as it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize last year.

What are you reading?