With the nights turning cool and the stores busting out the fall decorations, I thought it was a good time for a post about scary stories. Not only am I way overdue for a Friday Firsts post, but the scary season is almost upon us!
I have loved books from a young age. There were always books in our home growing up. We had story books and early readers, chapter books, teen books, and young adult books. I remember Frog and Toad, Nancy Drew, and The Babysitter’s Club. My mother loved to read and passed this trait down to me. She was always reading when I was growing up. Of course, her books were much thicker and much scarier looking. My mom is a huge fan of Stephen King. For a while there she had read everything he’d ever written, and perhaps that’s true today, though I think she has a little catching up to do. 😉
I wasn’t a fan of being scared when I was younger. Some kids love monster stories and creepy movies and look forward to Halloween because it’s a time to get scared. Not me. I didn’t like monsters or ghosts or creepy things. I remember a couple of creepy movies we watched as kids, but they were Disney movies, not Stephen King. I remember hearing titles like Misery and Thinner and wondering why in the world my mom would want to read something so scary. They must be good, I reasoned, if she kept reading them. I started thinking that maybe I wanted to try to read a scary book. Enter Mr. R.L. Stine.
For this Friday Firsts post, I’d like to talk about my first romantic read. Let me start by saying that I read a ton of romance novels in my twenties. Favorite authors included Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts. My first Danielle Steel novel was Star and I read it after I saw a Lifetime TV movie version of the film starring Jennie Garth (I know, I’m dating myself here) 🙂 The book was very different, as tends to be the case, but I loved it and I was hooked. From there, I progressed to Nora Roberts novels which I loved because, they not only had romance but usually quite a mystery as well. I would stay up reading into the early morning hours because I just had to find out whodunit and if the couple was really going to end up together – spoiler alert – yes, they always did! In trying to pinpoint which of these novels was my first real romance book, I found myself going back earlier than my twenties, or even my late teens. I found myself remembering a book I read in my early teens, a time of just discovering boys and really not even understanding what romance was. 
It’s been a while since I wrote a Friday Firsts post. And yes, I realize it’s Saturday. But with the holiday this week, my days are mixed up! I intended to post this on Friday, and since today feels like Friday, here you go – a Friday Firsts! This month, I read my first cozy Christmas mystery, Death of a Toy Soldier by Barbara Early. I liked it so much that I immediately read the sequel, Murder on the Toy Town Express. Before I get into the books, let me answer the question you’re probably asking yourself…what is a cozy Christmas mystery?
For this Friday Firsts post, I’d like to talk about my first mystery book. I learned about mysteries from my mom, who introduced me to a young woman named…
Kaitlin Scirri