February round up

Wow, where did February go?! Blink and you miss it month lol. Managed a lot of crafting this month and made a HUGE dent in my stash so very pleased. :)
So here is my round up for the month.

Pounds lost - 3

Games completed - 1, Pikmin 2 now finished.

Layouts done - 2

Projects finished - 25 PL style layouts, 18 secret projects, 4 mini books, 10 gifts for friends!!

Cross stitch done - Um, none lol.

Books read:
A dark dark wood - Ruth Ware
Blurb - Nora hasn't seen Clare for ten years. Not since the day Nora walked out of her old life and never looked back.
Until, out of the blue, an invitation to Clare’s hen party arrives. A weekend in a remote cottage - the perfect opportunity for Nora to reconnect with her best friend, to put the past behind her.
But something goes wrong.
Very wrong.
I started reading this in Waterstones and was surprised to see it some cheap on Amazon. It caught my attention very quickly and while some bits felt a little unneccesary and coincidental it was a good read. There was enough suspense to keep me guessing but it wasn't dragged out enough to make me stop caring iykwim. Shorter than most books I read I finished it quite quickly.

The chameleon - D.S Mitchel.
Blurb - It’s important to take stock of your life…………
Anna Bright has just learned the biggest lesson of all. In a coma and unable to help herself, she is desperate to wake and prove her ex-boyfriend’s innocence. Anna is forced to listen to the world make up events that didn't really happen, and she has no choice but to examine her life and the events that brought her here, to this hospital bed, as a silent and helpless victim. At the mercy of Pam, a seemingly callous and uncaring nurse, nothing is ever as it seems. Will Anna wake in time to save James from prison? Or will the truth remain locked inside her, still and silent? Does James even deserve to walk free?
There was a LOT of swearing in this one. I'm not usually bothered by swearing but there was so much I found myself skimming the bits where the guy was just yelling abuse at his girlfriend. That said I read this in 3 nights. I wanted to know what had happened, what would happen, why etc. It may be a frustrating read for some, why does Anna keep going back when her boyfriend is so dreadful? But having been on the recieving end of domestic abuse I though it was actually pretty accurate of how easy it is to slip into that role. Well worth a read.

Dying eyes - Ryan Casey
Blurb - With the Christmas and New Year chaos out of the way, it's time for the Preston Police Department to put their feet up and return to normality.
But for Detective Brian McDone, there is no respite from the frenzy. An unidentified young woman is found brutally murdered in a seedy section of the city, her body laced with bruises, her sharp fingernails digging into her palms. Her eyes are staring up at something in pure fear.
Nobody knows who she is.
As Brian and his team begin to piece together the clues, the answers lead him to places he would least expect. The further Brian digs, one question soon becomes apparent: who can he trust? The answer, it seems, may be life-threatening.
Mixed feelings on this one. The actual crime, who did it, why, how they were discovered etc was interesting and kept me reading. That said I didn't like the characters at all. Brian seemed like a whiny kid, Cassie a bit of a cheerleader and the other police officers just seemed odd. Don't think I'd read another in this series.

The postcard killers - James Patterson
Blurb - NYPD detective Jacob Kanon is on a tour of Europe's most gorgeous cities. But the sights aren't what draw him - he sees each museum, each cathedral, and each cafe through the eyes of his daughter's killer.
Kanon's daughter, Kimmy, and her fiance were murdered while on holiday in Rome. Since then, young couples in Madrid, Salzburg, Amsterdam, Berlin, Athens and Paris have been found dead. Little connects the murders, other than a postcard sent to the local newspaper prior to each attack.
Now Kanon teams up with the Swedish reporter, Dessie Larsson, who has just received a postcard in Stockholm - and they think they know where the next victims will be..
I love James Patterson and this was no exception. The killers were interesting, their motives and how they carried out the murders has depth and reason and the whole story seemed to flow together well rather than some more disjointed ones I've read recently.

So epic fail on the cross stitch this month. But done well on crafting :)