Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: The Future Saints

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We’re into February and for the third time in four Books of the Week so far in 2026, I’ve picked a new release. OK, so this came out the week before last not last week, but it was still a late January release and so I’m claiming my prize.

Anyway, The Future Saints is about Theo, a music executive and the latest band he’s been sent to try and rescue: The Future Saints. The three-piece band has been struggling (unsurprisingly) since the death of their manager and when Theo first sees them they’re bombing at a dive bar in their home town. But they owe their label one more album and Theo’s job is to try and get that done and complete their contract. Hannah, the group’s lead singer, has taken them in a new direction with tortured rock about grief and loss replacing their earlier California-pop-surfer sound. But when one of Hannah’s performances goes viral it looks like the band is on an upward trajectory even as Hannah appears to be spiraling out of control. Can Hannah – and her sister Ginny – survive the effects of fame and overcome the tragedy that the band has suffered? And can Theo help them through it and keep his career?

I read one of Ashley Winstead’s previous novels, The Boyfriend Candidate, nearly three years ago. That was a romance, but since then she’s written thrillers – until this. The Future Saints is comped with Daisy Jones and the Six in the blurb and although that’s not quite right (for me at least) it’s definitely different to both of those prior genres Winstead has written in. There isn’t a thriller plot here but there is a romance strand, but it’s not the main point to the plot – which is how does a band deal with a tragedy and how can you save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.

It’s also hard to explain all of what is going on here without giving a major element of the plot away, which the blurb and the early stages of the novel are very careful not to do, so I’ve respected that, but I also need to say that it was quite unexpected and kept me guessing about what was going on and how it was all going to work out for a long time. I also thought that the resolution of the novel was really well done in a way that I hadn’t thought possible at times. It has a few overblown or over drawn moments, mostly when it came to Theo, who for a smart person is remarkable dense at times when it comes to his career, but I enjoyed it and I think it would make a really good book club book.

My copy of The Future Saints came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo – where it’s only £3.99 at time of writing, as well as in paperback. I haven’t spotted it in the shops yet, but I will keep looking

Happy Reading

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 26 – February 1

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As I said yesterday, there’s a new Amazon valentines novella series and so there are a few of those on here. Otherwise I’ve nearly finished one of the long runners and so I’m getting there, despite a night out at the theatre in the week and a very busy weekend. Onwards into February.

Read:

Tide Up by Patti Benning

A Deadly Affair by Agatha Christie

The Future Saints by Ashley Winstead*

The Nursing Home Murder by Ngaio Marsh

Cross the Line by Simone Soltani

Accidentally Yours by Christina Lauren

Time Will Tell by Hannah Bonam-Young

Second Act Romance by Julie Soto

On Spine of Death by Tamara Berry

Started:

Night Rider by Sloane Fletcher*

Under Admiralty Arch by S J T Riley*

Still reading:

The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy*

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

One book and one ebook bought.

Bonus picture: the Fitzrovia Chapel in almost daylight one day after work this week. It’s getting lighter everyone…

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, stats

Reading Stats: January 2026

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Books read this month: 31*

New books: 26

Re-reads: 5 (all audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 5

NetGalley books read: 5

Kindle Unlimited read: 12

Ebooks: 4

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 2

Favourite book: Meet the Newmans

Books bought: 4 actual books (3 of them in Sheffield), 1 pre-order placed, 5 ebooks

Most read author: Goodreads tells me that the Elissa Sussman is the longest book I’ve read this year so far so it must be that!

Books read in 2025: 31

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 597 (I told you I’d done a cull!)

January started well, but then sailed a little bit off course on account of that entire week of skating in Sheffield. Which was amazing and I regret nothing. The week of recovery I regret a little bit more, but hey these things happen. There are more novellas on this list than usual – because at times that was all my fried little brain could cope with, but also because Patti Benning writes annoyingly readable things and I kept going straight on to the next one but also because Amazon dropped another Valentines Novella collection with a bunch of romance authors I like and I ended up reading those instead of finishing off some of the things I had on the go. I’d like to think February will be a better month in reading, but the Winter Olympics start on Friday and we all know how much I love the Olympics. And given that I can only watch one thing at a time and I also have to work, the reading may get a little sidelined in favour of figure skating, skiing and sliding,

Bonus picture: Another picture from my fabulous week in Sheffield!

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 10 this month!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: New Releases in stores!

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Happy Saturday, I hope you’ve got something nice planned to mark the end of January, which often feels like the longest month of the year. To cheer myself up on a bleak cold afternoon this week, I dodged the rainshowersd to take a look at what’s in the bookshops at the moment now we’ve had the first 2026 releases start to drop.

This is Foyles Charing Cross Road, and the first thing to note her is that Heated Rivalry is right there. The series based on the books has had loads of buzz and now the novels are available here in paperback. They were also in the window at Waterstones just up the street on Tottenham Court Road, but Foyles is clearly ready for the demand because they had them on the shelves and piles of them in the over flow section at the back of the romance section.

Meet the Newmans is also all over the place. It was in both windows, it’s on this the front fiction table at Waterstones and it was on one of the front pillar displays at Foyles. I also spotted it in the Waterstones in Sheffield a couple of weeks ago, so it’s cearly got a big old release. The thing that interested me in Waterstones though was how many books on this table came out this week. These include Chosen Family, which is the next novel from the author of the very buzzy Green Dot, Wants and Needs and The Old Fire. The Ten Year Affair came out on the same day as Meet the Newmans, all of which is to just hammer home how busy January has been for new books after the desert that was December for physical releases.

Apart from Meet the Newmans, the other book whch is all over the place is Jennette McCurdy’s debut novel. You may remember her memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was massive a couple of years ago. I read that back in 2024 and it needed all the content warnings and a resilient frame of mind to read, but it was really really powerful. Half His Age is her next project after that, and is about a seventeen year old high school student and her obssession with her creative writing teacher. From all the reviews that I have read it sounds just as unsettling as her memoir was, and I’m not sure I’m in the right headspace (am I ever?) for somethign that’s being described variously as shocking, uncomfortable and eerie, but I’m expecting it to do well.

Here are the Mysteries from Foyle’s front entrance: The Osman is obviously a pre-Christmas release as is the Adam Kay, but the new Marlow Murder Club book is here, as is the latest Tom Hindle. The Don Winslow is also a new release this week – it’s a collection of six short novels, all of which sound very Not For Verity which is also the case for the Darkrooms (another January release), Our Last Resort and What We Left Unsaid, just in different ways!

So lets end on an up note, back where we started with the piles of Heated Rivalry books, waiting for the fans to descend after watching the adaptation! Have a great weekend.

series

Series Redux: Cowboys of California

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Covers of the Cowboys of California books

So after my little moment about Cowboys and Romantic Suspense yesterday, I thought it was the perfect time to remind you about my post about Rebekah Weatherspoon’s Cowboys of California series which I wrote nearly three years ago. As I noted in that, although Weatherspoon has other series which are very much romantic suspense* but these are much lower angst, rich people falling in love on a luxury ranch stories, which are also fairy tale retellings so subtle that I didn’t spot the fact that that’s what they were doing when I was reading them!

Side note: as we’re moving towards illustrated/cartoon covers for ranch/cowboy novels, I’m expecting these three to get a recover at some point in the near future, if the whole of the rest of the genre isn’t romantic suspense!

*some of which are a bit trauma bonding/inappropriate relationship with a co-worker-y

Book previews

Out Today: Night Rider

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Happy Thursday everyone, and I have another new book out today that I wanted to talk about. So we have a big trend of Cowboy and ranch romances at the moment, but Night Rider is adding in the famous person and normal person trope in this case a a cowboy and a Hollywood starlet. But. But. Look at this cover: Pastel colours, illustrations. Yes there is the word suspense in the Bailey Hannah quote, but does this look like a romantic suspense novel? Because this is the final line of the description:

But that dream is threatened when Nina’s past catches up with her. And when an unlikely predator strikes, she and Maverick must make a choice: to let each other go or face the world together.

So. I have a copy of this via NetGalley because I am behind with the Cowboy/Ranch trend and I wanted to get in on it, but when I was picking it out, I didn’t really peg it as being as Romantic Suspense as the Amazon page says it is. So I’m going to read it, and see how romantic suspense it is, and then go and find some more cowboys to see if they’re all actually romantic suspense and cover signalling has gone even more out the window than I previously thought!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: 50 States Mop-up 2025

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As you know, I’m not reading across the US in 2026 (and if you didn’t you can find my reasons here) but as the last act of my six year odyssey reading a book from every US state each year, here are a couple of the books from the tail end of the 2025 challenge that I have not yet written about for today’s recommendsday.

New Uses for Old Boyfriends by Beth Kendrick

Cover of New Uses for Old Boyfriends

Delaware is always a hard state to do, so after enjoying the first book in the Black Dog Bay series so much that it was a BotW last year, in the absence of anything else from Delaware I came back for book 2 this year. This is a fresh romance story, but linked to the previous one in that the characters from that pop up again. Our heroine this time is Lila who is back in the town she grew up in after her marriage imploded and career as shopping channel host came to a screeching halt. Back home she finds that her family’s money is gone and her mum is in denial about this. The only reason I didn’t like this as much as the first one is that I found Lila (and her mum even more so) a bit grating at the start, she’s such a princess and that’s really not my thing, but the character growth was so good that it was worth reading through my initial irritation! I am definitely going to be reading book three!

Savage Run by C J Box

This second book in the series sees Joe investigating after a massive explosion in his patch which the police say has killed a notorious environmental activist in a stunt gone wrong. But he’s soon discovering clues that seem to point to a conspiracy. These books are right on the edge of what I can deal with in terms of thrillers – the plots are amazing but they’re very violent and the only reason I can stick it out is because I know that it’s a long series so Joe has to make it to the end of the book alive!

Renewing Forever by Kelly Jensen*

Cover of Renewing Forever

This is a later in life second chance romance between two men who were childhood friends but whose relationship broke down just during the summer after high school. It also has as side order of trying to figure out what to do with an old resort in the Poconos for one half of the duo and a difficult relationship with a parent (and some associated money issues for the other). I enjoyed reading it once I got into it, but it was a bit of a case of why didn’t they just talk to each other at some point. I know that for Book Reasons they had to not do it, but 30 years is a lot of stubbornness!

And there you are. That’s the lot from this year, but here’s the equivalent post from last year as well.

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m back with a Book of the Week pick after last week’s skip, although I have a slight issue, because although NetGalley says it was out last week, none of the sites seem to have it as out until the middle of February. But as it was the best thing I read last week, I’m still writing about it. Sorry, not sorry. I’ll try and remember to remind you when it comes out.

It’s 1949 and Beattie Cavendish works for GCHQ. Officially she works in admin and training secretaries, but actually she’s a covert operative. When her bosses send her to Scotland to investigate a disappearance at a a listening station. The staff there are suspicious of her, and she has a job on her hands to find out what is going on. Her uncle lives near the station but when she goes to visit, she discovers that his cottage is empty and looks like it was left in a hurry. Beattie becomes convinced that the two things are related and starts to dig in to what is going on in the Highlands with the help of private investigator Patrick Corrigan, who is all to happy to leave London for a bit after having caught the attention of some Russian gangsters.

This is actually the second book featuring Beattie, and although I haven’t read the first it didn’t really cause me too many problems with the plot. There are some throwbacks to that previous novel but enough is explained that you can follow along – although it did make me interested in reading that earlier book. This is the first book by Mary-Jane Riley that I’ve read but also the first Cold War set historical mystery that I’ve read in quite a long while. And this is specifically Cold War (rather than generic 1950s) because of Beattie’s work and all the circumstances of the mystery. And I enjoyed it a lot.

There are some commonalities in Beattie’s back story with other characters that I have liked in inter-war-set mysteries – I can’t really tell you what because it’s spoilers – and it makes for an interesting character. I’m also interested in the friendship with Corrigan and the context around that – this is where I did feel that I was missing some context – he has a fiancée and without having read the first novel I wasn’t sure if I was meant to be rooting for him to break it off with her for Beattie or not – because from the information given his fiancée had helped in that previous mystery even if her actions in this one seemed to be slightly against what Patrick wants in terms of his future. So definitely up for reading a third book to see what happens there.

My copy came from NetGalley, as I said at the top it’s not out until February 19th. You can however pre-order in Kindle or Kobo. There is also apparently a paperback edition coming in the autumn.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: January 19 – January 25

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Not quite back to normal service after Sheffield because it was a very, very busy week but I’m getting there. And as we’re hurtling towards the end of the month that’s probably for the best. Hopefully now I’m back up to date with everything and I can get down to finishing some more books and not just starting them!

Read:

A Not So Model Home by David James

Managed Mayhem by Patti Benning

Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway by Mary-Jane Riley*

Walled Off by Patti Benning

The Vanderbeekers Ever After by Karina Yan Glaser

Murder at Melrose Court by Karen Baugh Menuhin

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

Started:

On Spine of Death by Tamara Berry

Still reading:

The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy*

Future Saints by Ashley Winstead*

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

No books bought!

Bonus picture: I love an old school logo, and this moving van in Fitzroy square felt like such a mix of modernity and tradition that I had to take a photo!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

comedy, not a book, streaming

Not a Book: I’m Chevy Chase, and You’re Not

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Happy Sunday, it’s documentary o’clock again, and this is one that came out around New Year, so I’m even kind of topical for once. Check Me.

I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not is a documentary film exploring the life and career of Chevy Chase. For those who are younger than me: Now in his 80s, Chevy Chase was the breakout star from the first season of Saturday Night Live in 1975 and left the show in its second season to go to Hollywood. In the 1980s he was in a string of box office hits – in Caddyshack, three National Lampoon’s Vacation movies and the one I remember being repeated on TV when I was a child: Three Amigos. But as the 90s progressed his movie career stalled out and he only really returned to prominence when he was cast in the sitcom Community in 2009, and then that ended badly. As you can see from the trailer, this has interviews with the man himself, his family, some of his costars and others who have worked with him behind the scenes and a few other famous talking heads.

Now the other thing that you need to know about him is that he’s got a bit of a reputation for being an “asshole”. I read Nick de Semylen’s Wild and Crazy Guys back in 2023 and he didn’t come over as particularly sympathetic in that. And he’s not helping himself out in some of the interviews that he does for this either. There are some glaring absences among the talking heads of people who have worked with him. So he’s not a massively sympathetic figure a lot of the time. But his childhood sounds grim and he’s been married to the same woman for more than 40 years and so that helps soften him a little. And he’s been ill recently – with time in a coma which has left him with some memory loss, which along with the coke addiction may mean that he’s not (always) lying when he says that he doesn’t remember doing or saying what others say he did or said.

This is directed by Marina Zenovich, who also made Lance about Lance Armstrong (which is really good) and Robin Williams: Come Inside my Mind (which I have on my to watch list) as well as other documentaries including two about Roman Polanski and another about Richard Prior. So she has plenty of experience with making films about comedians and it shows because the clips she’s picked of Chevy in his comedy prime are really good. If you weren’t around for his hey day (which I wasn’t) it’s easy to just dismiss him because of the stories about what a nightmare he can be. But he’s hard going when he’s not playing a character. He really is. Just read this New York Times interview he did with Zenovich to promote the documentary if you don’t believe me.

This is on Sky Documentaries and Now TV in the UK and on CNN in the US at the moment. It is due to appear on HBO Max at the end of January

Happy Sunday!