Hello, my name is Nancy, and I am a graceful klutz. At least that’s what my mother called me growing up. She also called me Nancy, Nance, and Baby Girl no matter how old I was. But what’s in a name?

While I have lived nearly my entire life in the Chicagoland area, I was born in California. My dad was in the Air Force and finished his enlistment about four months after I was born. That’s when my parents moved back to Illinois, two kids in tow.

My mom wanted both my older sister and me to have the initials CAL for California. My sister is Cynthia, which means “moon goddess” (she’s going to love that). I was supposed to be Carol, which means “song of happiness” or “song of joy.” My dad, however, said there were already too many C names in the family. My grandmother was Catherine, my sister Cynthia, my cousins are Constance and Christine.

He decided he liked the name Nancy, meaning “full of grace.” 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

To be fair, he didn’t know I would turn out to be a klutz. But as we walked barefoot along a pier in California when I was five, I bloodied my toe because I kept stubbing it. I regularly hit my foot on the center leg of the couch that I knew was there. I broke my arm in my sixth grade PE class.

I still trip over my own feet. I have missed the last step on a staircase more than once. When we move the kitchen table for parties, I hit my head multiple times on the chandelier light fixture in the center of the room. I bump into things so often that I end up with bruises and can’t pinpoint the cause. And my knees…well let’s just say they’ve been abused multiple times over the years.

And yet, when we were expecting Corinne, Dennis and I never looked up the meaning of her name (“beautiful maiden,” if you’re wondering). We didn’t know she was a girl, and we had decided on a name long before I got pregnant. We happened to notice our doctor’s first name one day, and I said, “Corinne would be a pretty name if we ever have a girl.” He agreed, and that was that.

I finished a new book recently based in Ireland, and some of the names were very Irish. They’re one of the reasons I knocked the rating down (only half a star). Unfamiliar and difficult to pronounce, they pulled me out of the story a lot because I had to keep going back to remind myself who each person was and how to pronounce the name.

You’ll want to pick this one up.

---

Book Review

⭐⭐⭐⭐½
4.5 Stars for No Strangers Here by Carlene O’Connor

336 pages
Publisher: Kensington
Publication Date: October 25, 2022
The Creepy Book Club selection for November 2022, purchased on Amazon.

Publisher’s Description

On a rocky beach in the southwest of Ireland, the body of Johnny O’Reilly, sixty-nine years old and dressed in a suit and his dancing shoes, is propped on a boulder, staring sightlessly out to sea. A cryptic message is spelled out next to the body with sixty-nine polished black stones and a discarded vial of deadly veterinarian medication lies nearby. Johnny was a wealthy racehorse owner, known far and wide as The Dancing Man. In a town like Dingle, everyone knows a little something about everyone else. But dig a bit deeper, and there’s always much more to find. And when Detective Inspector Cormac O’Brien is dispatched out of Killarney to lead the murder inquiry, he’s determined to unearth every last buried secret.

Dimpna Wilde hasn’t been home in years. As picturesque as Dingle may be for tourists in search of their roots and the perfect jumper, to her it means family drama and personal complications. In fairness, Dublin hasn’t worked out quite as she hoped either. Faced with a triple bombshell—her mother rumored to be in a relationship with Johnny, her father’s dementia is escalating, and her brother is avoiding her calls—Dimpna moves back to clear her family of suspicion.

************

• Saoirse Griffin – pronounced “Ser-sha,” her 13th birthday is the day the book begins, she has snuck away from home because she wasn’t getting a real party, believed to know something about the murder
• Cormac O’Brien – Detective Inspector brought in to solve Johnny O’Reilly’s murder
• Paul Byrne – former Detective Inspector, was demoted after beating up Saoirse Griffin’s father years ago, resents DI O’Brien’s presence and inserts himself into the case
• Detective Sergeant Neely – works for the Dublin police and assisting on the murder case
• Dimpna Wilde – a veterinarian in Dublin, left her home in Dingle 27 years prior and never went back, widowed when her husband Niall Flor committed suicide before he could be arrested for his part in a retirement investment scheme
• Eamon Wilde – Dimpna’s father, a well-known veterinarian in Dingle who recently began showing signs of dementia, has provided veterinary care for the O’Reilly’s for free since the death of their race horse Last Dance
• Maeve Wilde – Dimpna’s mother, local tarot card reader
• Donnecha Wilde – Dimpna’s brother
• Ben Wilde – Dimpna’s son, travels away from Dublin a lot since Niall’s suicide but has never been to Dingle and doesn’t know his mother’s history there
• Róisín O’Reilly – pronounced “Ro-sheen,” wife of Johnny O’Reilly and matriarch of the wealthiest family in Dingle, has long blamed Dimpna for the death of Last Dance when she was a teenager,
• Sean O’Reilly – son of Johnny O’Reilly, the main reason Dimpna left Dingle
• Tommy Healy – one-armed jockey who was expected to ride Last Dance, never jockeyed again after the horse’s death, but still works for the O’Reilly’s
• Niamh – pronounced “Nee-iv” or “Neev,” Eamon’s veterinary office manager
• Sheila Maguire – Eamon’s veterinary assistant and Dimpna’s former best friend

Trigger warning: sexual assault, suicide

No Strangers Here is the first in a new series by Carlene O’Connor, who is a new author for me and known for her Irish mysteries. I rated it 4.5 stars for two reasons. It was a bit slow-going in the beginning. Don’t get me wrong. Chapter 1 started with a dead body on the beach, but there were a lot of characters that needed to be introduced and a lot of back story since it’s the beginning of a series. That slowed the story down a bit.

In addition, understanding that the story took place in Ireland and the character names were likely common Irish names, some of them were very difficult to keep straight just because they were unusual. It pulled me out of the story a bit each time I had to go back to remind myself who a character was and how their name was pronounced.

Kudos to the author for including text that offered the pronunciation, and I assume I will get used to them over time, since I will be reading this author again. But it would be great if there were only one or two difficult names to work through or a list of characters with pronunciations somewhere in the book.

This is a murder mystery…and a very good one. So many suspects, and the author did a great job of not giving too much away and putting suspicion on almost every character. I never suspected Dimpna because she was in Dublin being evicted from her veterinary office at the time of the murder, and I never suspected DI O’Brien. But everyone else…oh yeah. And I didn’t figure it out until everything started to be revealed. I was surprised I never thought of it, but as I said, the author did a great job at making everyone a suspect.

I liked Dimpna’s devotion to her family and the veterinary practice but also her morality in not hiding too much from the police. She feels her family is being framed, but she doesn’t want to put herself and others at risk by hiding things. She and DI O’Brien had a natural chemistry that I hope will play out in the rest of the series.

O’Connor’s story is well-written with interesting characters and well-paced once everyone was introduced and the plot really got moving. Just when you think you have it figured out, she throws something in that makes you rethink everything. And you may do what I did and suspect the same people more than once.

I won’t give anything away so you can enjoy the ride on this one as much as I did. I’m very much looking forward to the next book in the series.

---

If you enjoyed this post, please comment below. Subscribe for regular updates, and share it with your friends. If you’re interested in starting a conversation, send an email to booksundertheblanket@gmail.com.

^{As an Amazon affiliate, I earn a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using the links on my site.}