9. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

By Gabrielle Zevin (397 pp)

This book was a gift and I LOVED it. I love new-to-me authors that have zillions of online reviews and zillions of books and here I am finding out about them for the first time. I read this while I had The Covid and was too tired to do anything else. It's set in the gaming world which is something I know nothing about but for me it was really about lifelong friendships. The characters were flawed and did things you didn't want them to do, but I really enjoyed this. Recommend!

8. The Once and Future King

By T.H. White (654 pp, ebook)

When I picked this up, I didn't realize how long it was (4 books in 1) and it's mostly really good but there are some sloggy bits in the middle. This is a re-telling of the story of King Arthur. The first book, The Sword in the Stone is set when Arthur was a boy and growing up with Merlin the magician. This book is so playful and adorable -- I wondered why no one put it in my hands when I was a middle school reader and looking for just this kind of book. (Probably someone did and I didn't read it.) The middle 2 books are about Arthur's enemies, and Lancelot and Guinevere's affair. The last book is about Arthur at the end of his life with everything he built unraveling and trying to make sense of it. There is a lot of food for thought in here -- great turns of phrase. Makes me want to read The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) again.

7. Bad Day for Sunshine

By Darinda Jones (397 ebook)

This is yet another author that I have heard a lot about but never read. This one is about Sunshine, a woman who returns to the New Mexico town where she grew up to be sheriff. The story is shared with her teenage daughter who is having a tough time fitting in at school. A teenage girl goes missing and there is drama at the high school. There are a lot of characters including a super sexy former crush who stills lusts for Sunshine. It took me awhile to get into it but ultimately it was a fun read although there was a lot of melodrama.