December 16th's Friday Post

We made it to Friday!  It's payday for me, which is extra nice.  Let's kick the day off with a Friday post.  As usual, I'm linking up to:

Book Beginnings
First Line Friday
Friday 56
Book Blogger Hop

I'll be kicking things off with teasers from Slay Ride by Diane Vallere.  This is the ninth entry in her Samantha Kidd mysteries.

Quite obviously, it is Christmas themed.  And it is a bit shorter than a typical book in the series.  It is billed as a novella, and it seems a bit too long for that, but it's definitely on the shorter side.  Not that labels really matter, right?

Anyway, Samantha is a former fashion buyer who seems to find lots of mystery and mayhem as her career jumps around from one fashion related thing to another.  You're getting the fashion theme, right?  Because that is critical to see the humor in the teasers I'm sharing.

Here's how the book kicks off:

For the first time in my life, I was wearing the wrong outfit.

Now, don't misunderstand, Samantha is not snobbish.  But anyone who knows the series will immediately smile from that opening line.

I'm sharing a bit more for the Friday 56.  It really helps set up the joke.  Samantha is thinking about how her past involvements in mysteries didn't lend themselves to social media posts:

In the three years that I’d been back in Pennsylvania, my life hadn’t exactly been worthy of updates. I’d gotten involved in one criminal investigation after another, and nothing about that felt like cause for a post. Did people want to know that I found my boss dead in an elevator? That I helped bust open a knockoff ring or helped catch an arsonist?

Sure, that all sounded good, but it was only half of the story. I’d been knocked out, shot at, beaten up, chased, threatened, and forced to wear sweatpants.

The horror!  Wearing sweat pants!!  (Types the guy wearing sweat pants right now.)

Obviously, this story is a lot of fun.  I'll be sharing a review on Tuesday (assuming I get it written), so I hope you'll come back then for my full thoughts on the book.

Now, let's turn to the Book Blogger Hop.  This week's question is:

Which time of day do you prefer to read: morning, afternoon, or evening?

I think afternoon.  When I have time to read on my own (holidays, weekends, etc.), that's the time I typically read.  Of course, I read on my breaks and lunch on work days.

Have a relaxing weekend!