There are several mystery series that involve catering/baking and include recipes!

OP, try Diane Mott Davidson’s series with Goldy Bear. Surely one of those books features brownies!

Another series is Recipes for Love and Murder, by Sally Andrew. This series is set in South Africa, so some of the recipes might be difficult because of ingredients, but it would be fun to make something from this series.

I’m the same way! I never read ahead with fiction, but I might with nonfiction. I don’t understand it, but the fact that it’s a real event that already happened makes a difference.

I had that reaction to The Glass Castle. I read it in a day, but I had to take breaks when it got too depressing for me. I felt so sad for the author as a child.

And I had a similar reaction when reading Unbroken. Sometimes I skipped ahead to see if the person Hillenbrand survived the war or not. Somehow knowing whether they survived or not made it easier to handle reading about their capture, torture, etc.

I recently read Life after Life, by Kate Atkins. It’s not about time travel per se, but one character keeps dying and being reborn. She doesn’t remember her past life, but has moments of deja vu, which influences her behavior. I liked it.

A while back (a few decades ago, lol) I used to take the year-end top 10 lists very seriously. Any book that was on several lists got added to my TBR list. Then one year I got around to reading several of these highly regarded, prize-winning, mentioned-on-several-top-ten lists and was hugely disappointed.

The last one was the worst. I don’t even remember the name, but it was so bizarre and pointless. I got nothing out of it. It wasn’t uplifting, inspiring, comforting, or even entertaining.

After that I stopped putting much stock in ratings and book reviews. They may point me toward new books, but I don’t add a book to my TBR list unless it looks like the type of book that I’ll enjoy.