An eight-year-old girl, Chelsea Compton, is missing in Pine Valley, California and for Detective Katie Scott it’s a cruel reminder of the friend who disappeared from summer camp twenty years ago. Unable to shake the memories, Katie vows she won’t rest until she discovers what happened to Chelsea.

But as Katie starts to investigate, the case reveals itself to be much bigger and more shocking than she feared. Hidden deep in the forest she unearths a makeshift cemetery: a row of graves, each with a brightly coloured teddy bear.

Katie links the graves to a stack of missing-persons cases involving young girls—finding a pattern no one else has managed to see. Someone in Pine Valley has been taking the town’s daughters for years, and Katie is the only one who can stop them.

And then another little girl goes missing, snatched from the park near her home.

Katie’s still haunted by the friend she failed to protect, and she’ll do anything to stop the killer striking again—but can she find the little girl before it’s too late?

Review

Little Girls Sleeping by Jennifer Chase was an amazing book that I couldn't put down. On her website Ms. Chase describes the main character, Detective Katie Scott as "the feisty, ex-Army K9 handler." which I think fits Detective Katie well.

Katie Scott returns from her second tour of Afghanistan where she worked in the K9 unit of the Army. Her parents have passed and she goes home to Uncle who is the Sheriff. She's not totally sure what she wants to do, if she wants to rejoin the police force or not. But her Uncle some how pulls some strings and is able to reunite Katie with her partner from Afghanistan, her dog Cisco. He also asks her to help with data entry at the station.

Little Girls Sleeping kept me wanting more. I thought I had the killer all figured out and boy was I wrong.

"I guess I've always handled problems I can't solve by going back to the beginning" 

Detective Katie Scott

Here is my one word of advice when reading this book, when you feel like the information you are being given is not relevant or important, it is and remember it. A few times I said to myself "what does this have to do with anything", oh it has a lot to do with everything. I think it takes a skilled writer to be able to do that and keep you engaged in the book (when most would give up) and then is still able to surprise you with the ending.

I'm not sure if this is going to turn into a series but I hope Detective Katie Scott get's a couple more stories. She was so relatable as a character and I also really liked that it focused on her, this wasn't a female detective who solved the case and fell in love. Yes, there is some hint of possible romance but this book really focused on Katie, Cisco, the case and Katie trying to figure out what she wants to do and how she's going to fit back into her community.

Little Girls Sleeping earns 4/5 ★★★★☆ stars from me

Little Girls Sleeping is available Friday May 31, 2019

Thank you to Jennifer Chase, Bookouture and Netgalley for the advanced copy of Little Girls Sleeping for my kindle.

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I found this quote on Pinterest and it got me to thinking about how my love of reading started at a very early age. Part of it was my need to be able to read my dad's Sports Illustrated with out having to wait for him to get home from work, the other part was reading was always a positive thing in our family.

To this day I still always laugh about being sent to my room when I was in trouble, especially in those feisty teenage years. I loved being sent to my room, my books were in there and no one was going to take them out. You could take my TV, my phone, my video games, but my books, for one I have too many of them to move them quickly and two reading was always treated as something sacred.

In my first blog post I posted a photo of me with my Gramma, I think around age 2 +/- a few months. She was (and still is) a huge supporter of my love of reason. My Gramma has a way of finding books related to whatever is that I was obsessing over at the time. I was super interested in WW 2, she got me books like the Diary of Anne Frank, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (which was a favorite because the main characters name is Annemarie and my middle name is Annemaree), and The Devil's Arithmetic by Jan Yolen. She did the same thing when I had my Titanic phase, and especially my John F. Kennedy obsession. I would get home from school (and by home I mean her house) and she would ask me about what I was reading, if I got confused by what I was reading I could ask her (mind you kids under 25 years old this was before The Google so Gramma was my Google).

It wasn't just my Gramma but I recall moments like this with pretty much everyone in my family. Heck even to this day I will still call my Dad and ask him how to pronounce a word, or to explain a concept to me. I just learned where the phrase "don't drink the kool aid" came from (add Cults to my list of obsessions).

The book (or should I say series) that really sparked not only my love of reading but eventually my love and interest in Early Childhood Education was the Babysitters Club by Ann M. Martin.

I started reading the Baby-Sitters Little Sister series. I would finish them so fast I don't know how my parents kept up. I remember the book store at the mall (Mall 205 to be exact for you Portland folks) I would drag my mother in there go straight to the Babysitters Club section to see if a new book came out (again this was before Al Gore created the world wide web 😋) and beg for her to get me a new one.

Then I moved on to the Babysitters Club. Luckily, those scholastic book order forms we got a school had this Babysitters Club-Club where you got a book every month or something like that (like Amazon minus the two-day free shipping). I basically had every book from both series. The day I donated those books hurt a bit, and I hope whoever bought them (my name is in all of them) is not only inspired to read but also to think about working with children.

So what was the right book you were given at a young age that sparked your joy in reading? Feel free to leave a comment below.

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Interested in the books I named above click the Links below:




This is the first version of the Diary of Anne Frank I got. Obviously there are newer ones, with updates as her father released more entries before he died. But for posterity I thought I'd post this one (also if you are ever in Amsterdam, go to the Anne Frank Haus, trust me)

Broken Wings tells the harrowing story of Butterfly, who is kidnapped and taken to a mountain village in which all the young women have left for the city. There, she is imprisoned and, later, raped in the cave home of the wifeless farmer who has bought her. These traumatic events and Butterfly's fading hopes of escape are described in her own voice, revealing a spirited young woman struggling to adjust to her new life.


Evening, I made my one hundred and seventy-eighth scratch on the cave wall.

Despite her humble rural beginnings, Butterfly regards herself as a sophisticated young woman. So, when offered a lucrative job in the city, she jumps at the chance.

But instead of being given work, she is trafficked and sold to Bright Black, a desperate man from a poor mountain village.

Trapped in Bright’s cave home with her new “husband”, she plans her escape… not so easily done in this isolated and remote village where she is watched day and night.

Will her tenacity and free spirit survive, or will she be broken?


I had really high hopes for Broken Wings by Jia Pingwa after reading the description. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed. I should preface this by saying I did not complete the book. Which is something I try really hard to do. Let's face it how many books have we read the first couple of chapters and been like "Ugh I can't read this any more" and then all of the sudden you can't put it down. I really had that hope for this book but I just couldn't.

I feel like the author was overly descriptive. He gave so much information that it became confusing if what I was reading was a "flashback" or was currently happening. I also felt like I couldn't separate the "kidnapper" from "Butterfly" their flashbacks and what was currently happening was so entwined that sometimes you thought you were reading about Butterfly and then realized that you were reading about the kidnapper.

This book was a book translated from Chinese and Jia Pingwa is one of the biggest names in Chinese Literature. So I'm sure that some of my issues with the book had to do with some of it being lost in translation. The best translators in the world are unable to capture the thoughts and feelings behind another person's words weather they be spoken or written. That is nothing against the translator as you would literally have to be in that persons brain to be able to do that and no one can.

I give this book 1/5 stars  ⭐

Broken Wings is available May 3, 2019

Thank you to Jia Pingwa, Alain Charles Asia Publishing, and Netgalley for the advanced digital copy for my Kindle!