Book Review - Gone Girl

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Publisher - Broadway Books
Publish Date - April 2014
Genre - Fiction/Suspense
Buy on Amazon
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My Rating:

This is not usually my type of genre but this book had gotten such rave reviews that I figured I would give it a shot. I definitely don’t do horror type thrillers but figured I could handle a psychological thriller like this one. I also knew that I wouldn’t want to see the movie until I read the book. The book is ALWAYS better.

Gone Girl tells the story of Nick and Amy Dunne and her mysterious disappearance. It is the eve of their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy vanishes without a trace. Nick starts off as the husband everyone feels sorry for. When Amy’s diary is found, it is revealed that her perfectionist, dominating personality could have put anyone on edge. Throughout the entire investigation, as pressure mounts from the outside, Nick becomes evasive and produces a string of strange lies that only tarnish his public image. As the story progresses, the reader learns that there is more to their lives than meets the eye.

Flynn takes the reader on a rollercoaster of psychological plot twists that make you question everything you thought you knew. Trust is constantly put on the line and questioned throughout this novel and Flynn does a great job of taking readers into a dark world of Nick and Amy’s relationship. You’ll never cease to be surprised at what someone is willing to put up with for their interpretation of love. The style of narration caused me to need to flip back to previous chapters every so often to keep up with the varying points of view but, once you start reading, you won’t be able to put it down.

Pair This With: Apothic Dark

You need something dark and brooding to pair with this thriller. Apothic Dark is exactly that. It has dark flavors of blueberry and raspberry with hints of dark chocolate and coffee. This wine is the perfect pairing to get you through this emotional rollercoaster.

Love at First Bite - Wine and Chocolate

If you love chocolate and wine individually, why not enjoy them together! There are a lot of differing opinions on whether the bold tannins of both make a happy palette. Our friends over at ProFlowers have a few wine and chocolate pairing suggestions we love! They created this handy guide with 13 popular chocolates, including favorites like peanut butter cups and fruity truffles, to help you pick the perfect match. 

They also offer a few tips to help in case your favorite chocolate didn't make the list. 

Please include attribution to Proflower.com with this graphic.

Basic wine and chocolate pairing rules:

1.     The wine should be as sweet as the chocolate.

2.     Begin pairing by color. The darker the chocolate, the darker the wine.

3.     When possible, opt for a high quality chocolate bar.

4.     Consider texture as well as taste.

I’ve done a few wine and candy pairings with my friends and it is always such a good time! It doesn’t have to be fancy, just grab some wine and some chocolate and see what works. Sometimes, it makes it even more fun if the pairings don’t end up tasting very good. The reactions are usually pretty priceless!

One of my favorite pairings (not on this list) is chocolate covered blueberries paired with a brandy infused port wine, like the Bin 21 from Pippin Hill. It makes for a perfect after dinner dessert.

Comment below and let me know what your favorite is!

RVA Brewery Crawl

Over the past few years, Richmond has become a hot spot for craft breweries. There seems to be one on just about every corner. There’s one area in particular near my house called Scott’s Addition where these little places have popped up like crazy.

Some friends were in town last weekend so we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to do a little brewery crawl through Scott’s Addition. All of the places we went were within walking distance of each other and it ended up being a gorgeous, sunny day!

Since my girlfriend had just run the Richmond Marathon the previous day, she wanted a burger. I don’t blame her. If I ran 26.2 miles (and was still alive) I would want to eat ALL OF THE BURGERS. So, we hit up this fun little place called Boulevard Burgers and Brews which kicked off our day of drinking perfectly.

One of the things that I am super into right now is hard cider. It’s the perfect beer alternative for someone who doesn’t like beer. There is a new cidery that opened recently called Buskey that I’ve been dying to try out. So, that was our first stop. And let me tell you – they did not disappoint! They had an awesome selection of ciders ranging from traditional to crazy flavor infusions like coffee and jalapeno lime. My favorite was the newly released Pink Lady which was smooth and tart.

Our next stop was another recently opened cidery called Blue Bee. I was familiar with their ciders but this location in Richmond was brand new. The atmosphere there was very cool with a huge outdoor patio area to hang out. Unfortunately, their ciders completely disappointed us. None of them were really very good. My chemist husband said it seemed like they had been contaminated with Bret (which makes them sour). So, it could have just been a bad batch. We’ll probably give them one more shot maybe in the spring.

Our last stop of the day was at Isley Brewing Company. This was a cool place because they really had a wide variety of beers to choose from like Belgian White, Pale Ale, Brown Ale, Porter and IPA’s. The whole group went for their Plain Jane Blueberry Belgian White which was a huge hit. 

This would be a great place to go with a group of people who have varied tastes in beer. They also do a ton of Trivia Nights – you can’t go wrong!

Friendsgiving - A New Tradition

Within my circle of friends, we had been talking about trying out a progressive dinner for a while now. We decided that Thanksgiving was the perfect excuse to give it a shot and so our first Friendsgiving was born!

Progressive dinners are pretty cool because it takes the burden of preparing an ENTIRE meal off of just one person. Now, I’m pretty lucky with this group of friends because we all live in the same neighborhood. This really took the travel out of the progressive dinner. It is doable to drive from house to house but please – have a designated driver!

We started out the night at house #1 with cocktails. It was a really fun and festive way to kick off the dinner. The host made up these DELICIOUS pumpkin pie spiced white Russians and some apple pie jello shots. When we showed up and saw this spread, we knew it was going to be a good night! And really, can we talk about how adorable the chalkboard signs are!?

I hosted house #2 and took care of the appetizers – and of course, there was wine! One of my go-to appetizers are these little glazed kielbasa and pineapple bites. They are so easy to do and always disappear quickly. We also did a fun cheese plate with gouda, cheddar, prosciutto, summer sausage and a spicy plum chutney. And finally, we found this new recipe for some sausage stuffed apples that are just divine, and SO fall!

After appetizers, we headed to house #3 who so graciously offered to do both dinner and dessert since one of our host houses had some last minute change of plans. First of all – the table was gorgeous! Everything the entire night was so festive and adds so much to the atmosphere of it all. All of us really enjoy food and this meal did not disappoint. We had a TON of food! One of the couples smoked a turkey which was absolutely divine. The meal was rounded out with green bean casserole, mac and cheese, sweet potatoes, rolls, corn and brussel sprouts. Needless to say, we were all ready to pass out on the floor after all the food.

None of us had much steam left when it came time for dessert but we ended the night with a yummy chocolate pudding trifle and some homemade apple pie. So good!

If you haven’t done a Friendsgiving dinner or a progressive dinner – you need to do it. It was decided before the night was over that this will definitely become a yearly tradition!

Book Review - The Lake House

The Lake House by Kate Morton
Publisher - Atria Books
Publish Date - October 2015
Genre - Fiction
Buy on Amazon
Goodreads











My Rating:

My review of this book has been a long time coming. Since Kate Morton is one of my favorite authors, I’m a bit disappointed in myself that I didn’t do this one sooner! I had waited with bated breath for The Lake House to be released. I’ve loved every book of hers and I knew this one was going to be good.

In true Kate Morton fashion, this novel takes you through time as you follow along story lines of impossibly intertwined destinies. The Lake House tells the story of Alice Edevane who lives on her family’s estate in Cornwall, England. Her story begins during her teenage years when one evening after a party, her baby brother Theo disappears. This even tears the family apart and leads Alice to learn secrets about her family that she never could have imagined.

The present story line picks up decades later with Alice living in London and introduces Sadie Sparrow, a young London detective. While on leave from the force, she is staying with her Grandfather in Cornwall. She stumbles upon the old Edevane estate and the detective in her must discover the secrets the estate is hiding. Sparrow sets off to solve the mystery of the Edevane estate which inevitably intertwines her story with Alice’s and they both learn the truth about events that happened long ago but most definitely shape their futures.

Like her other novels, The Lake House transports you away to another world and makes you feel as though you are right there with Alice and Sadie as their story unfolds. It’s full of suspense and plot twists that you’ll never see coming. Once I started reading, I truly couldn’t put it down. Just like Sadie Sparrow, I needed to know what the Edevane family secrets were. I’m not going to give the ending away, but I was a bit disappointed in how it all came together after such a suspenseful ride to the finish. It was all a bit too tidy in my opinion. Now, even though that was my feeling about how the story ended, I do not regret reading the book one bit. It was still an exciting, unexpected adventure!

Pair This With: Dreaming Tree Red Crush Blend

You’ll want a wine that wraps you up in warmth, but doesn’t take too much thought to enjoy. This is one of my go-to wines and it’s a perfect pairing with this novel. With flavors of raspberry, caramel and little bit of oak, this wine will stand up to the suspense but keep you calm all the way through.

Winery Wednesday - Blue Toad Cidery

Before you say anything, I know this says Winery Wednesday and I KNOW that this place is not a winery. We are just all going to be OK with this post being a Winery Wednesday feature because, let’s face it, none of the days of the week start with a “C” and alliteration just sounds better.

Now that we’ve addressed the elephant in the room – let’s move on to the good stuff. Cider! A couple of weeks ago, we were on one of our many trips to Carter Mountain and we needed a place to stop for lunch. My first choice was Pippin Hill Winery but let me tell you guys a little secret…apparently EVERY WINERY IN VIRGINIA is closed on Mondays! Not cool.

We ended up at this little pizza joint right across the street from Pippin Hill called Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie. It was DELICIOUS y’all. Since it was my day off from work, I figured that I deserved to have a drink with lunch. I spied a local hard cider on their menu that I had never heard of before called Blue Toad. They had a seasonal on hand called Festy that is a fall blend with cinnamon and cloves. Yes, please!

This cider did not disappoint. Thanks to modern technology and Google, I was able to look them up while we ate lunch. Guess what? They had a tasting room about 20 minutes up the road from where we were at! Of course I said we had to go. So we went.

Upon further investigation, it turns out this place is based out of New York and has just recently opened this location in Virginia. It was a cute little place all rustic and comfy. The location we were at also partnered up with a local winery called Well Hung (yep…you read that right) so it’s the best of both worlds. Cider and wine all in one place!

We got a couple of flights so we could try all their different varities. I had their Peach, Caramel Apple, Black Cherry and their Irish Dry. The Festy and the Black Cherry were hands down my favorites. I was excited about the prospect of caramel apple but it was just WAY too sweet for my taste. It was literally like I was drinking carbonated caramel. The Irish Dry was also really good. It’s made with all Granny Smith apples so it’s super tart.

If you get the chance, go check them out. And if you can’t make it to their tasting room, you can find their cider at your local Wegman’s. Now, excuse me while I go stock up on the Festy Harvest blend before it’s gone!

Game of Thrones Book Club - #1

I don’t know about you guys but, I am a HUGE fan of Game of Thrones. Now, since I am an avid reader (obviously) I almost always read the book before I watch the movie or TV show. This has been the one exception. I started to read the books back during Season 2. Then, my husband asked me to stop reading so that we could watch the show together and be surprised. He was so adamant that I just couldn’t say no. So, here we are like 5 years later and it’s now safe to pick up the series and start reading.

Since this is a really sad time of year when GOT isn’t on TV, I figured it would be the perfect time to get through the books. A couple friends of mine at work wanted to re-read them too so we decided to do a little Game of Thrones book club!

It’s nothing really super official, but it is just the excuse I needed to get reading. The books are long and not easy reads (think Tolkein-esque) so I wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get through them. We are tackling one book each month then getting together for lunch once a week to discuss (or talk football…that happens a lot.)

It’s an interesting experience reading the books now that I already know what happens. I will admit that it’s made some of the “oh my god did they really just kill that character” moments a bit easier to handle. Also, knowing who the characters all are ahead of time and how they all line up with each other has really helped too. When I started reading the first book way back in the day, I was overwhelmed by the number of characters and trying to keep up with them was difficult.

I’m just about done with the first book and am so excited to be reading this series. I can’t wait to start book number 2! My goal is to share a bit with you about each book and of course, give you a good wine to pair with it. Happy reading friends!

Game of Thrones Book 1 – Pair This With:

Wolf Blass Shiraz/Cabernet

Since Book 1 is really all about the Starks and their sigil is the Direwolf, I figured this was the perfect wine to get you into the GOT spirits. Wolf Blass wines are really great, inexpensive wines from Australia. This blend of Shiraz and Cabernet is super smooth but balanced in flavor with bright berries and a slight spiciness. Sip on this and get in touch with your inner wolf!

Wine Words to Make You Sound Smart

We all have that ONE friend who is a self-appointed sommelier and wants to make sure that everyone knows that they really know their wine. I’m not ashamed to admit that I am often that person within my circle of friends. I try not to be obnoxious about it but I’m sure it never happens.

But – we all also want to fit in, right? Just think how impressed your friends would be at your next gathering if you were to professionally swirl your glass of wine, sniff it and then rattle off a sentence full of really smart sounding wine words. You’ll be the hit of the party!

AROMA 

The smell of the grapes that are in a wine. You get the aroma when you sniff the wine in your glass. This is also called the “nose”. You just got a two-for-one here. You’re welcome.

FINISH 

A word used to describe the lingering flavor of a wine after you taste it. This is considered the most important way to determine the quality of a wine. Some people also say “aftertaste” but let’s be honest, that’s kind of a gross word and “finish” sounds way more high class.

AERATION 

This is the process of allowing a wine to breathe and is mostly required for younger wines. It allows the flavors of the wine to open up (aka – it will taste better). If you want to get really fancy, get yourself a decanter and teach your partygoers a lesson about aeration.

TANNINS 

This is the substance found in wine that causes you to pucker and are derived from all different parts of the grape vine and the fruit itself. Most of the time a wine that is high in tannins will be dry.

LEGS

These are the drops of wine that form on the inside of your wine glass after you swirl it around. Some wines will “stick” to the glass and form lines (or legs). Wines that are higher in alcohol content and/or sugar will have more legs than wines that are less sweet or lower in alcohol content. Swirl that wine and say “check out the legs on this beauty”. You’ll sound SO smart. Just make sure they know you are referring to the wine in your glass and not your friend’s wife.