book blog – The Wandering Wordsmith

Where there are ghosts, Cassidy Blake follows … unless it’s the other way around?

Cass thinks she might have this ghost-hunting thing down. After all, she and her ghost best friend, Jacob, have survived two haunted cities while travelling for her parents’ TV show.

But nothing can prepare Cass for New Orleans, which wears all of its hauntings on its sleeve. In a city of ghost tours and tombs, raucous music and all kinds of magic, Cass could get lost in all the colourful, grisly local legends. And the city’s biggest surprise is a foe Cass never expected to face: a servant of Death itself.

Cass takes on her most dangerous challenge yet…

I’m so glad I finally picked up the conclusion to the Cassidy Blake trilogy and a little upset I waited so long. I don’t want to delve into too much since it is the last book of the trilogy, but I really enjoyed how Cassidy seemed to grow up a little in this book, she was more open to recognizing things about herself. I think New Orleans as a setting was perfect, though I think my favorite setting of the three was Paris overall, and felt like the locations they selected for the TV show to highlight were very appropriate. All in all it was a really solid conclusion and I was more than satisfied with where the characters were left at the end.

Happy reading!

I get the question a lot from people in my life as to how I’m able to read so many books. Last year I read 301 books and that surprised quite a few people in my life, even though they almost always see me with a book or kindle. The question that always follows is ‘how?’ so I’m going to break down some of the things I do to read so much.

So the first thing that really ups my game is the fact that I am able to listen to audio books at work. I’ve mentioned this many times, but it really helps. With a lot of books I’m able to listen at about double speed, though depending on the speed of the narrator’s speech I have been known to up it to 2.5 times speed. If I was not able to listen to audio books my numbers would be no where near what they are.

I also read a number of different formats and things such as graphic novels, poetry collections, manga, etc. will obviously take less time to read than full size novels. I also enjoy novellas and don’t turn my nose up at shorter books, I don’t choose books based on their page count so I often end up with a wide range of lengths and formats.

Another thing I’m able to do is read multiple books at once. I know that a lot of people can’t do this or don’t like to do this. I used to not be able to do it but then I went to college and had a double major, so I was constantly reading multiple things and having to keep them straight (often many different types of literature, not just textbooks) and I think that is what really started my ability to read different things at the same time. I will give one caveat though that they have to be different genres/types of stories.

The only other thing I really do, which I know a lot of other people do as well, is make sure I make time for reading. Like I said, I always have some form of a book with me and even if I can only eek out half an hour on my lunch, I take it.

So those are the main things I do that allow me to read so many books. Sometimes I have years like last year but sometimes I don’t. I’m definitely always trying to read more, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t.

Happy reading!