The Gnome Project - Jessica Peill-Meininghaus

The Gnome Project - Jessica Peill-Meininghaus - 185 pages

This book pinged two of my most dearly held beliefs:

1. A daily practice of anything (but most especially crafting, for me) is amazingly effective for developing coping strategies for any adventure, strife, or surprise that comes along, and

2. Tiny gnomes live in my home and alternately find and hide important things that I need.  Here's hoping they don't read this and decide to move because I blew their cover.  Those dudes are awesome.

The story itself is so relateable: a woman plagued by feelings of failure because of her inability to follow through decides to adopt a proactive practice and work it out.  She commits to making a gnome a day for one year.  Daily life happens, and she needle felts gnomes.  Through this practice, she learns about herself and what commitment really means, and it ripples out into the rest of her life like a beardy beacon of hope and renewal.  It was a great reminder that small moves and changes are empowering, and that even a silly thing can be a serious change for good.

Trust No One by Jayne Ann Krentz

Trust No One by Jayne Ann Krentz - 337 pages

Grace has moved back to her childhood hometown after finding the body her motivational speaker boss.  She's using the time to figure out what she wants to do next in her life.  Unfortunately, it seems that some people think she killed her boss, some people think she embezzled money, and someone is stalking her.  Luckily, her blind date Julius is determined to help her figure it all out.

I listened to this on audio.  It is a typical romantic suspense from Jayne Ann Krentz.  I'm glad she's moved on from her paranormal romance she was writing for so long and has gone back to romantic suspense.  It was a pretty good book.  It was fairly easy to figure out the culprits early on, but it was still interesting to listen to.  My only problem was with the audio itself.  It had some really long awkward pauses throughout the book.