2019 Local Reads

In 2019, I made it a personal goal to read books written by local authors and leave reviews for those books to help support the local writing community. I worked in a couple here and there throughout the year along with my regular reading, and I really enjoyed the process and plan to continue the practice next year. I managed to read nine books by five different authors and I thought I’d share the books with you.

I’ve tried to include not only links to the reviews I’ve left about these books on Goodreads, but also a link on where you can find out more about the author, whether on their website or a social media account.

C. Meadows

The first two books on this list come from author C. Meadows who writes cozy mysteries. She published two books in the PJ Mysteries series in 2019 (which is so impressive to me) and I read them both. The thing that grabbed me from the beginning was that whenever I’d set down the book, I’d feel the pull of the characters calling me back. They were warm and sincere. So along with the mystery that pulled the story along, there were these characters with just enough tension in their day-to-day lives that the intrigue kept me engaged until the very end. The first book in the series is No Coincidence and the second book is called PJ and the Vegas Showgirl. I wrote reviews for both books on Goodreads. These books provide a flavor for the Wyoming landscape, the hard work involved in ranch life, it tantalizes the senses with homecooked meals and baked goods, and brushes on metalsmithing as the main character learns the craft of making jewelry in her spare time.

Kara Jaynes

I read the Fabled Hunter trilogy, back-to-back. I happened to have all three books and they were fast reads with fantastic story arcs that concluded each book while pulling you into the next book with the overarching plot arc that connected all three books. Seriously, these were some page-turners. Kara Jaynes plays with some traditional fairy tales, including familiar characters and crafts them into brand new stories. Here are links to my reviews for Fabled, Deception, and Eternal, if you would like to know a little more.

Josh Walker

Josh Walker was one of the first writers I met in my community outside of my writing group and over the years I’ve found that he is always kind and helpful to other writers in the community, so I’ve wanted to read his books for a while and finally made time to fit in two this year. The first book I read was Luke Coles and the Flower of Chiloé, which is part of the Luke Coles series and contains four books plus an anthology of short stories related to the series. This is a young adult, urban fantasy story that follows the hero, Luke Coles. Luke doesn’t remember his past, but you slowly learn things about his unnaturally long life as he confronts the paranormal. You can read my review of Luke Coles and the Flower of Chiloé to learn more about my experience with the book. While I gave both of these books a high rating, this was my favorite of the two, and I’m happy that there are more books in the series. The second book I read was Shadowed Dreams, which is a young adult supernatural horror story. This was a novella, so even a faster read than the Luke Coles book. The story follows the protagonist Alexis Wright as she moves to a new town and discovers that the town holds a lot of secrets about not only a string of missing persons but also her past. Here’s a link to my review for Shadowed Dreams.

Nicholas Trandahl

Nicholas Trandahl is the first author I pulled into the group of local reads who isn’t from my town but is from my state. Our paths first crossed sometime in early 2019 and we’ve been bumping into each other ever since. We’re both members of WyoPoets and since I signed on with the flock, we’re now both authors of Winter Goose Publishing. I picked up his poetry book Pulling Words during a WyoPoets’ poetry workshop in 2019, and it’s the first of three poetry books he has published as of this posting and is among several other books he’s written. Nicholas writes observational poetry that is deeply embedded in nature and journey’s through his life from love to pieces about his deployment as a soldier. For some unknown reason I didn’t write a review of this book, so I may have to reread it in 2020 to rectify that oversight. In the meantime, you can learn a little more about Nicholas Trandahl at the Winter Goose Publishing site.

John Roedel

Hey God. Hey John. is an entertaining and insightful journey through John’s struggles with his belief in God, depression, anxiety, and understanding of his son’s autism. John Roedel tackles some serious issues, doubts, and fears of his own that transcends the personal and impacts the reader through similar struggles they may also be experiencing and he does it in an uplifting and sometimes humorous manner. This reads as a script of dialogue between John and God and I personally enjoyed reading a handful of entries a day, as these were originally Facebook posts that John wrote daily. He then collected and arranged these entries to form this book. I pretty much covered the same information I did in my review, but you may find a little bit more in my review of Hey God. Hey John.

There were so many great books that I read by local authors. I originally planned to do an overview of all the great books I read in 2019, but since I wanted to cover all the books by local authors I read, this post ended up longer than my regular posts, so I’ll have to save the rest of the overview of the books from 2019 until next time.

Did you read any books by local authors from your area in 2019? Let me know in the comments what were your favorite.