Rainy Days With Amanda

 Hey everyone! It's already going to be 2021 and that is pretty crazy to me. I like to write these year in reviews like I'm writing in a diary, so I'm going to stick to that format, but try to have a format, you know? Maybe not. Anyways, let's start at the beginning... The Beginning The beginning of this year started off pretty amazing. I spent New Years with my family and was able to see one of my cousins, who has been in Japan the past few years, while we watched illegal fireworks pop all around us in frenzy for the new year. Then, I was able to be in a Mardi Gras parade, that was pretty fun. I was on top of my sales at work and I was rocking it. And my husband and I did a tour of Italy in February where we spent 9 days traveling through Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice and lived out my dream of partaking in Carnival in Venice and Fashion week. ( You can read my post about Italy here ).  But I was pretty happy at the beginning of the year and felt like I was on top of...

    RIVER, SING OUT  BY JAMES WADE Categories: Contemporary / Literary Fiction Rural Fiction / Crime Fiction / Coming-of-Age Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Date of Publication: June 8, 2021 Number of Pages: 315 pages        “And through these ages untold, the river did act as the lifeblood of all those things alongside it.”   Jonah Hargrove is celebrating his thirteenth birthday by avoiding his abusive father, when a girl named River stumbles into his yard, injured and alone. The teenager has stolen thousands of dollars’ worth of meth from her murderous, drug-dealing boyfriend, but lost it somewhere in the Neches River bottoms during her escape. Jonah agrees to help her find and sell the drugs so she can flee East Texas. Chasing after them is John Curtis, a local drug kingpin and dog fighter, as well as River’s boyfriend, the dangerous Dakota Cade. Each person is keeping secrets from the others—deadly secr...