On Monday, I had some errands and an appointment I needed to take care of so I decided to grab lunch with my mom and help her pick out frames for some art she has.
It's something we do whenever the framing place has a coupon (because holy crap, custom framing is EXPENSIVE). We got a few pieces all ready to go so that'll be fun to see them when they're all done.
After the framing place, we grabbed a few groceries from the nice market nearby and then ... locked the keys in her van. I am not quite sure how we managed that, since most vehicles won't even let you do that but she was using the valet key for some reason.
We had to call my dad to come rescue us! lol Thankfully, he was very nice about it and has the spare key to my car.
While we waited, we grabbed lunch at the market. I had a lovely slice of spinach pie and a truly ridiculous amount of roasted Brussels sprouts with cilantro vinaigrette. I am aware these are two things that people normally loathe but holy crap the sprouts were delicious and I could not stop eating them.
I was never a huge fan of sprouts and then I tried them roasted and was an immediate convert. SO amazing.
After my dad rescued us, my mom went home with him in the van and I went off to my appointment in my car. I had about an hour to kill before the appointment though so I took myself to a local bookshop nearby! What better way to spend my time, right?
I was bummed that they don't have a bigger queer/LGBTQ romance section. The only one I saw there was Red, White and Royal Blue.
I did find a really pretty journal and a book I've had on my TBR list for a little bit. I mostly read queer romance rather than literary fiction but this cover and title drew me in when I saw it sitting on a friend's table. And then I read the blurb and I was so hooked.
Alma Cruz, the celebrated writer at the heart of The Cemetery of Untold Stories, doesn’t want to end up like her friend, a novelist who fought so long and hard to finish a book that it threatened her sanity. So when Alma inherits a small plot of land in the Dominican Republic, her homeland, she has the beautiful idea of turning it into a place to bury her untold stories—literally. She creates a graveyard for the manuscript drafts and the characters whose lives she tried and failed to bring to life and who still haunt her.
Alma wants her characters to rest in peace. But they have other ideas and soon begin to defy their author: they talk back to her and talk to one another behind her back, rewriting and revising themselves. Filomena, a local woman hired as the groundskeeper, becomes a sympathetic listener to the secret tales unspooled by Alma's characters. Among them, Bienvenida, dictator Rafael Trujillo's abandoned wife who was erased from the official history, and Manuel Cruz, a doctor who fought in the Dominican underground and escaped to the United States.
I'm only a little ways into reading it but it's super interesting! You can check it out here if you want to learn more.
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