Story for the Week
I have said before that this blog is my passion project. A reader at heart, I started sharing reviews long before I launched this site. Once I launched, however, I really immersed myself in building a quality site that people would enjoy. I’m not striving to be an influencer. I have no expectation that this will ever allow me to quit my job. At the end of the day, I really just want to share stories and talk about books. My passion project rose out of my passion for reading.
Prior to launching Books Under the BlanketTM, I read whatever I felt like whenever I felt like. At the time, I tracked my books on Goodreads, wrote reviews when I finished, and posted them on Amazon. Now, especially with my commitments to reviewing ARCs before publication dates, I have to stick more to a schedule—a schedule I am constantly rearranging. 🤣
Several weeks ago, I came across a video by Kathryn R. Biel, who had just finished writing the book that she has planned for release in October. Biel, who I had the absolute pleasure of meeting at Happily Indie After last weekend, has fast become one of my favorite must-reads. I had already scheduled Be My Baby for review in October, and I commented that I can’t wait to read it. Then she said the magic words every avid reader wants to hear: ARC signups are open.
When she told me that, I already had six posts and reviews written and scheduled, taking me to mid-September. I also have four other ARC reads that I have to review before the end of September. So if I wanted to read this one early, I needed to shift some things. It can be a very complicated puzzle. Books I had planned to review later this year have already been moved to early 2027.
When I told a co-worker about the latest shifts, she joked that I was going to end up scheduled out through the middle of the year at this rate. I promptly sent her screenshots of my current schedule…through the middle of June. It’s changed several times since I sent it to her, and now I’m scheduled into July. 🫣 In fairness, the current list for 2027 contains a combination of books I own as well as ARCs, but she wasn’t wrong about the middle of the year. So now she figures that I’ll be scheduled through the end of 2027 by the time we finish 2026. She’s probably not wrong about that either. 🤷♀️
While I DO still read books because I enjoy it, I have to plan for the blog post and review I’ll be writing once I finish each book. I highlight in different colors while I read. Blue for characters, pink for storylines, yellow for typos, orange for passages I may want to quote, and green for potential blog topics. It helps me stay organized, and I can filter the highlights by color. It also gets me thinking about what the Story for the Week will be.
Sometimes, though, the story doesn’t come to me until something completely random happens and I think, I have to write about this. Swapping One Washington for Another tells the story of how we ended up in Silver Spring, MD, while I finished reading a book with a character who happens to be in Silver Spring, Maryland. More recently, I told a story about Oh, How the World of Dating Has Changed Over Time because Corinne and I were talking about a guy she met on a dating app. I said something to her that turned on a light bulb for me because of a passage I had just read.
Some of the stories come easily. Other times, I struggle…especially if I’ve fallen behind. More than once, I have had two posts that I need to get written while I’m halfway through another book. The further I get from when I finished, the harder it is to remember what I loved or hated about a book, so I do really try to write at least the review before I get too far into the next read.
On the flip side, many times I scrambled to get a post written because I just finished the book a day or two before I scheduled it for the blog. And those are the years I struggle to reach my reading goal because life gets in the way. Mind you, I set my own deadlines for ARC reviews. Publishers and authors prefer that the reviews post prior to the release date, but it’s not like there’s a contract or anything. The pressure to post weekly is all self-imposed.
Somehow this year, I am seven books ahead of schedule to reach my reading goal for the year. That never happens. I think it’s a combination of weekly book club (Do We Need a Name for Our New Book Club?) and Corinne’s busy work schedule. When Corinne works, I read (or write) more often than I watch television. I get into a zone and just lose myself to the book I’m reading or the stories I’m writing. It reminds me of how I got so lost in stories as a child and read the entire day away (What’s On Your Summer Reading List?).
I feel very accomplished to be so far ahead of schedule. I typically only have a couple of posts in the queue. If you’re reading this on the day it went live (August 23), I actually wrote it four weeks ago (July 27). So when I said earlier that I ran across a video a few weeks ago, when I wrote this post, I saw it a couple of days before. 👀 When I said I met Kathryn Biel last week, our meeting was actually still almost three weeks away (August 14). 👀👀 But by the time anyone reads this, I will have met her, and it will have been amazing. I even added a picture here to prove it. 😉
In the book below, the main character experiments with a variety of activities, seeking increasingly bigger thrills. When he talks to a reporter, he explains: “There’s a wonderful feeling I get when I’m completely caught up in something….When I’m not thinking, just doing. The world is a simpler place. A better one. And then I get a real sense of accomplishment when I’m done. It’s fabulous.”
When I think about how I feel about reading and the passion project of writing this blog, I couldn’t agree more. 🥰
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐
4 Stars for Dead Happy by Nick Spalding
280 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Publication Date: September 15, 2026
I received an advance copy of this title from Lake Union Publishing via NetGalley.
Publisher’s Description
For Alex Lowry, life is for the living. Even if that comes with a lot of risk.
And where some men his age might just buy a sports car, he’s become a full-blown adrenaline junkie. Whether it’s lawnmower racing, rock climbing, or medieval combat, he’ll give it a go—whatever makes him happy!
His daughter Hannah thinks he might have lost the plot. Chances are, she’s absolutely right.
So when Alex’s risk taking goes too far, and painful revelations from the past come to the surface, she has to intervene, before it’s too late….
Dead Happy is a darkly funny, deeply moving story about family, guilt, and finding the courage to face your demons.
************
Main Characters:
- Alex Lowry – 49 years old, divorced from Charlotte for the past year, chose to take an extended sabbatical after leaving his job at Sony, seems to be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis, seeking out activities that will help him chase an adrenaline rush
- Hannah Lowry – 21 years old, spends most of her time cooped up at home, Alex claims to be pursuing activities that show Hannah that life is about seeking things that make you happy, he tries to encourage her to finish her degree
- Charlotte Spencer – divorced from Alex, moved closer to her parents after the split, works for Apple
Trigger warning: mental health, suicidal ideation
Nick Spalding excels at dark humor in his stories. This one took me by surprise though. While it includes his classic humorous style, it definitely falls more on the dark side of storytelling.
Alex Lowry seems to be having a mid-life crisis of sorts. After leaving his job and taking an extended sabbatical, he started pursuing activities that provide frisson—in his case, a dangerous feeling of excitement. When we first meet him, he’s in the middle of a medieval tournament. Hoping to show his daughter the happiness that comes from living life to the fullest, he takes increasingly more risks.
Before the tournament, he crashed a ride-on lawnmower in a lawnmower race. He goes on a date 80 miles from home to dine at the only Japanese restaurant in the UK allowed to make fugu. If not made correctly, the pufferfish is toxic. Drag racing, chainsaw sculpture, rock climbing…Alex refuses to stop chasing the thrill, much to the dismay of his daughter and ex-wife.
I love Spalding’s style of writing. Written in the first person from Alex’s perspective, the narration is totally stream of consciousness. Alex insists to his family (and to us readers) that he’s perfectly fine, he’s just having fun. Neither his family nor the readers believe him. 😉
“It’s not the first thing you’ve done that’s dangerous, Dad. That’s why I’m worried about you.”
I affect a look of shock and surprise.
She gives me a withering look. “You crashed your bloody lawnmower to make sure you won that silly competition.”
“It was the only option I had to win the race, sweetheart,” I insist. “Sometimes you have to take risks to get what you want.”
Just call me Captain Insisty, if you like. You can come over any time, and we can spend a few hours with me insisting stuff at you. I appear to be very good at it.
“No, it wasn’t. It was completely unnecessary. Everybody I spoke to afterwards agrees with that.”
“Well, everybody else was wrong.”
Look at me insist! See how accomplished I am at it?
While we get hints throughout the book that there’s more to Alex’s crisis than he lets on, it’s not until pretty far into the book that we learn the truth. Spalding does an amazing job of digging into Alex’s emotional state without getting overly therapeutic or preachy. At the beginning, I felt like he was being ridiculously unsympathetic to his daughter and her mental state. I couldn’t understand his need to show her how fun life can be. By the end…whew.
If you haven’t read anything from Spalding before, you definitely should. If you’re already a fan, be prepared for this one to be a bit heavier than his previous books. This is definitely a thought-provoking read.
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