Children's books

Girl’s Own series: Helen trilogy

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After writing about some modern ballet with Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man on Sunday, it seemed fitting to write about a ballet series this Friday. All three of these were bought at Bristol conference, so I’ve even read them pretty promptly too, which doesn’t always happen for me!

I wasn’t quite sure what to call this series – I’ve called it the Helen trilogy even though that’s probably not going to mean anything to anyone but it is three books about Helen, who we follow across her ballet and dancing career. They were written in the late 1950s and take her from her audition for ballet school and initial professional experience in the first book, through dancing (ballet) in a musical theatre show in book two and on a television show in book three. There is also a love interest – because of course there is, good girls in Girl’s Own books get a nice boy – who is one of the male dancers we meet in the second half of the first book and a large portion of book three is devoted to a misunderstanding in their relationship which could have been solved by actually having a conversation and would have been very tedious if you hadn’t read the two previous books – and was still quite tedious for me when I had!

Ballet stories were among my favourite childhood reads and even now I have copies of books in the Sadlers Wells and Drina series on bookshelves that I can see as I type this post. So it’s not a suprise that I would have picked up another series of ballet storie at conference. And these aren’t anywhere near as good as those are but they’re not awful. The first is definitely the best of the three – with a clear sense of the routine of classes and training that a trainee dancer would need to try and become a professional. It’s not as good on the uncertainty or peril because there’s never really as sense that Helen isn’t going to make it – even though her parents have given her a time limit on her training she’s set up as being talented and also the teacher’s favourite. Sadler’s Wells has various obstacles that the heroines have to go through – whether it’s moving away from teachers, parents who don’t want them to dance, lack of money – and Drina has a grandmother who doesn’t want her to dance and a big secret that might make her success not entirely because of her own merits. I did like all the detail of what working in TV was like in book three and I don’t feel like I paid too much for them, but they’re not where I would be telling someone to start if they wanted a Girl’s Own ballet story to try.

This is another one of those cases where I’m not really expecting any of you to want to read these but they are going to be hard to get hold of. I can see a couple of copies of each of them on abebooks – all of them for more than I paid and more than think they’re worth. But if you’re now desparate to read them and want to make me an offer for my copies you know where I am…

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

New Noodle shop mystery

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You may remember that in my haul from Red Lion Books back in May was a Noodle Shop mystery – number 12, Crime Rangoon. Well the next book in the series is out this week – it’s called And Then There Were Bun. this one has a murder in the aftermath of a surprise party for Lana that sees her boyfriend in the frame as the main suspect. As I said back in May, these are har to get hold of in the UK – the Kindle prices are too rich for my blood and the paperbacks only used to turn up if you’ve got somewhere that’s importing some paperbacks from the US – and we all know what’s going on with Mass Markets at the moment. But still, the cover is pretty, I know some of you reading this are in the States and so here I am.

new releases, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Summer New Releases Reviews

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Happy last Wednesday of the month everyone, and for this Recommendsday I bring you some reviews of recent releases. It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how much I liked them (and I left out the one that I really, really detested) but if I only ever raved about books and I kept all the stuff I didn’t like strictly to the Goodread account, if you never check that as well, in the end you might stop believing me. So here we are. And I was going to call this quick reviews, but then I realised I actually had quite a lot to say about each of them so it’s just ‘reviews now!

My Name is MacKenzie Bly by Lissa Evans*

This one is actually out tomorrow, and it’s the one that I liked the most of the three I’m talking about today. MacKenzie Bly (real name Philip Stevens) is a 14-year-old boy who doesn’t like his life much. He’s tall, he’s broad, one of his mums teaches at his school, the other is a plumber and his dad turns up at all the worst possible moments. All of this means the other kids at school have plenty of ammunition to use against him and to top it all off, his best friend has moved to New Zealand. This is his story in his words, and is blurbed as being Adrian Mole for the 21st century. I enjoyed reading this and read it very quickly but I’m unsure who the audience for it is. It’s very different from Lissa Evans’s other recent books which have all been historical fiction. It has the feel of a YA book in some ways (and the cover of one) but there are a lot of references in here that are clearly for adults – stuff that the teenage protagonist doesn’t understand or doesn’t see but that adults clearly will. It made me laugh and I enjoyed it but don’t know how like a real-current-14 year old our protagonist is – to me he felt like a teenager from the sort of era that I was a teen for (so early 00s) but with a dash of added viral videos (but not really much reference to social media or messaging among students beyond that). So it’s a retro feel book, that’s a lot of fun but which also ends very abruptly and is a bit confusing. I’m not sure who I would be buying it for – and that may be the main issue for it. But I did really enjoy it.

The One Where They Fall in Love by Cristina Wolf*

Elle is a romance editor who has watched her friends find love without any luck herself. Oliver is a reluctant medical resident who doesn’t think a relationship is in the cards for him. When Oliver moves into the apartment above Elle, complete with a dog with separation anxiety, the two of them are thrown into each other’s path. When Elle starts to dog sit Thor and they spend more time together, a connection starts to develop – but can it lead to a happily ever after? I liked the idea of this – and the start was promising, but ultimately Elle and Oliver are very different people and it was hard to see how they could make a relationship work long term, given the various obstacles in their way. It’s all pretty low stakes, but also some proper conversations between the two leads could have solved some of the issues much earlier. It’s fine while you’re reading it but it hasn’t really stuck with me – I’m writing this ten days or so after reading it because I wanted to let my thoughts percolate a little and I’m regretting that because it’s already fading away in my memory! This came out on the 11th, and I haven’t really been in a bookshop since then so I don’t know how easy this is going to be to get hold of in paperback, but it’s in all the usual ebook formats.

Henrietta by Sophie Irwin

Henrietta has been in love with Arthur since she was a child. When he went away to fight Napoleon she was a shy debutant, but now he’s back she’s determined to try and make him see her in a different light, but can she make herself over into a toast of society and attract his attention enough to notice what’s hiding under his nose? Here’s the thing: I really like Georgette Heyer – I have read all of her Regency romances and re-read my favourites time and time again. I have also read Sophie Irwin’s other books, so I was excited and interested to see what a new “official Georgette Heyer” novel meant. Unfortunately this didn’t work for me on a couple of levels. Now I appreciate that my summary sounds simple, but it’s really not. There are at least two other major story lines and there is just too much plot going on here – which is something that I have found with other Sophie Irwin books but which has sometimes been fine, but in this means there is just too much going on and that the ending(s) feel very rushed. It also felt like it was trying to include plot ideas from as many different Heyers as possible but it didn’t really hang together very well – or feel particularly consistent. In terms of the writing style, it felt like it was trying to create a Heyer like feel by just dropping as many words and phrases from Heyer as possible rather than actually trying to emulate the writing style. So in short it felt like a Sophie Irwin (and all the problems often I have with that) but with added Heyer-vocab. Not a success for me sadly. This one came out two weeks ago too and see my point above about lack of bookshop visits since but given it’s official status and hardcover release, I suspect it’s going to be easy to find if you want to see if you agree with me or not.

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, Fantasy, romance

Book of the Week: Swordheart

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This was a really easy pick today. Yes I read books last week that are out this week, but actually this was my favourite thing I read AND it has a sequel out today, which I’m going to have to sit on my hands not to buy straightaway because I loved this so much. And you can hear about one of this week’s new releases tomorrow, because I wrote a Recommendsday for three of the new August books that I’ve read and you can thank me for that later.

Halla has been housekeeper to her great uncle since her husband died. But now Uncle Silas is dead, she’s inherited his property and her cousin and his mother have locked her in her room until she’ll agree to marry him. She’d rather die than marry clammy handed Alver, so after a few days imprisonment and increasingly desparate she takes the sword that’s mounted on the wall in its scabbard to see if she might be able to use it to commit suicide. But when she unsheathes it, a man appears. Sarkis is an immortal warrior trapped inside the enchanted sword. He is usually fighting battles or carrying out assassinations but now he’s bound to protect Halla. What follows is a journey back and forth across the land to try and secure Halla’s safety and her inheritance and an experience quite unlike anything Sarkis has had in the centuries since he was trapped in the sword.

I really, really enjoyed this. It’s got great characters, a good central problem to solve and brilliant world building that is never info-dumped on you. This is set in the same world as some of Kingfishers other series but I haven’t read any of them (yet!) and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. I’m on a big run of cozy fantasy at the moment and this was exactly what I was hoping it might be. I’ve written before about my patchy record with fantasy and also with knowing what I’m going to like in the genre, but this hit smack into my reading wheelhouse and was just what I needed after a distinctly mixed week in some of my other reading. It was a brilliant palate cleanser after a book that I really, really disliked and I would happily have followed Halla and Sarkis around for another hundred pages – and it’s already a 400 page book.

I picked this up in The Spicy Librarian after seeing it in various shops for ages – including reading the first few pages in Foyles a year or so back and enjoying it but not being able to justify buying it at the time – and seeing various people in my bookish communities raving about them for a while. On the one hand, I regret not reading this sooner, on the other, as I said at the top I now don’t have to wait to read the next in the series- and for people who read this when it first came out it’s been an eight year wait! The new one is called Daggerbound, and it’s about The Dervish, one of Sarkis’s comrades – and there’s a third one coming next year about Angharad. I’m already very excited.

Swordheart should be super easy to get hold of – I’ve seen it in almost every bookshop with a fantasy or romantasy section for the last year or so – and it’s in Kindle and Kobo. I had been waiting for it to go on offer since I read the start in Foyles, but I hadn’t spotted it happening yet, so maybe the new one will be the moment for an offer?

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: August 17 – August 23

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A super busy week last week, but not too awful week in reading all together. This coming week is even busier, so we’ll see how I go, but I have at least finished all of my August new releases from NetGalley before the end of the month which is practically a first. If only I had finished the July ones. Or the June ones.

Read:

The Double Turn by Carol Carnac

My Name is MacKenzie Bly by Lissa Evans

The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens

The Comeback by Mel Giedroyc*

At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie

Swordheart by T Kingfisher

The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious by Scott Lynch

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell

Nothing bought!

Bonus picture: The orchestra pit at The Car Man.

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

not a book, theatre

Not a Book: The Car Man

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I’m taking a break from plays and musicals this week to bring you some dance from my (many) theatre trips – this time the latest revival of The Car Man, his ballet using the music of Bizet’s Carmen but with an entirely different story to the opera.

It’s the 1950s and in the small town of Harmony, somewhere in mid-western America, the town’s Italian-American community is turned upside down after the arrival of a stranger in town. There is a garage and a diner, both owned by a man called Dino, who treats his wife more like property than anything else. Luca is the stranger who arrives in town and answers a help wanted sign at Dino’s garage only to start a chain of events that will end in greed, lust, betrayal and revenge.

This has a great cast with some regulars from the other Bourne productions that I have seen but also new faces and new talent too. In the programme they mention that a high proportion of the cast have come through various of the New Adventures talent development initiatives but also that this is one of the shows that his dancers are keenest to do because of the technical challenge it presents. But don’t confuse technical challenge with hard to follow or anything like that – this is brilliantly to watch and amazingly evocative.

This has got familiar music, but played soley by strings and percussion and a distinctly film noir feel. Part of the story is loosely based (or at least inspired by) the Postman Always Rings Twice, but the subplot adds more unrequited love, betrayal and revenge, which are regular themes in Matthew Bourne’s works. And I really, really love Matthew Bourne’s work. At this point I’ve seen most of his major works (I’ve previously written about The Midnight Bell and The Red Shoes here) I think now I’ve seen The Car Man, Cinderella is the major omission – and that is coming to Sadler’s Wells this Christmas so I will have my chance to remedy that.

This is at Sadler’s Wells until August 29th (so just this week to go), but then it’s touring the UK and then finishing with one week in Amsterdam at the end of November. You can find the dates and details here. If you can make it to see it somewhere, it’s really worth it.

The pile

Books Incoming: Mid-August 2026 edition

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So this post is in three parts. First we have the books I bought on the way to conference, then the books after conference and then everything else. If you want to see what I bought *at* conference, you can find that post here.

Firstly we have my haul from The Spicy Librarian and the many, many charity shops that were between The Spicy Librarian and the car park on our way back to the car! From the Spicy Librarian we have Samantha Spük: Paranormal Wedding Planner, Death Meets Cute and Swordheart. I hadn’t come across the first two before but I’ve had my eye on Swordheart for a while and finally succumbed! From the charity shops we have Twelfth Knight which is (as you might be able to guess) a Twelfth Night retelling, but featuing e-sport (which you might not have guessed) and which ended up being a late addition to my friend’s talk about niche sports in children’s books, a Chanel Cleeton which I’ve had my eye out for, Thank you for Sharing which is an enemies to lovers romance and a Penelope Lively that I haven’t read but which is *technically* for my sister!

Then we have the Bath purchases. There are three from Persephone, which was as wonderful as ever, and then two Agatha Oddly’s from one of the charity shops near Persephone and finally A Little Buzzed and Apparently Sir Cameron Needs to Die from the brilliant selection at Mr B’s Emporium.

And as for everything else:

Yes! I managed to resist temptation, and so far in August (book Con was the last weekend in July) I haven’t bought *any* actual physical books. We will just ignore the ebook purchases… and obviously the fact that I’ve already talked about 14 book purchases in this post, let alone the nine I bought at conference, although it should be noted that five of them are already off the pile because I’ve read them already. Go me!

series

Mystery Series: Spector Locked Room Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone and for the third series post in a row I have a mystery series for you. After current (at the time it was written) with Imogen Quy last week and St Just before that this week (coincidentally both set in Cambridge) this week it’s a historical mystery series – not set in Cambridge!

These are called the Spector Locked Room mysteries, but I think it’s fair to say that Joseph Spector and the police detective who calls him in George Flint are equal leads in these locked room mystery stories. And every mystery may not be a literal locked room (although several are!) but they are so called ‘”impossible” crimes where it appears impossible for the deaths to have been carried out by a human or be anything other than suicides.

Now there are a fair few locked room mysteries in Agatha Christie (Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Mysterious Affair at Styles) but I would say that these are closer to John Dickson Carr’s books. Tom Mead has come up incredibly twisty solutions, that often require a fair degree of concentration to follow as they’re explained, which is not something I’ve ever found with Christie.

These are set in the 1930s – we’ve reached 1939 in this latest one – which firmly puts them in that inter-war Golden Age-esque category of historical mysteries. The other series that has a magician and a policeman working together is Elly Griffiths’ Brighton Mysteries – but those are all post world war two, and tend to be more focussed on Edgar (the policeman) not Max (the magician). The first book in this series, Death and the Conjuror was a BotW in July last year, but I think the fourth book in the series is the best/my favourite – it’s got a creepy mansion that can get cut off by the tide that attracts ghost hunters and people seeking contact with the spirit world.

The first three of these have been consistently in Kindle Unlimited since I started reading them last year, but the fourth one isn’t yet – I was wondering if it would go in when it came out in paperback but it didn’t – although I did pick it up when it was on sale. No news yet on whether there is a book five, but there are a couple of short story collections too that I haven’t had a chance to read yet.

Have a great weekend.

Book previews

Out today: Hot Type

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It’s not often that I do a non-fiction book for this post but I was really glad when this popped up on the new release lists because not only is it right up my street but I’d been struggling to find anything on the fiction lists for this week that I wanted to write about! Anyway, Hot Type is the story of the Linotype machine, which was the invention that replaced Gutenberg’s moveable type. It was at least three times faster than hand setting type for printing and led to the boom in newspaper, magazine and periodical publishing in the late 19th century. The blurb for Jeff Jarvis’s book promises the stories of the characters that were involved – from the inventors, to the media moguls, the machine operators and the journalists. My book backlog is large as you know, but I’m putting this on the acquisitions list!

detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: BLCC mysteries about artists

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Verdict of Twelve was a BotW in July and Sky High back in April, but generally my rate of reading BLCC books has slowed a little this year as I try to do some work on the actual to read pile and the Netgalley backlog. But I’m back now with another BLCC round up. And all of these actually feature artists – which I only realised as I added the last review, it wasn’t at all intentional but as I do like a mystery about artists I’m embracing it and changed the title of the post accordingly – it was originally the much more boring BLCC Summer 2026!

The Double Turn by Carol Carnac

Adrian Delafield used to be a celebrated painter, but these days the old man is a recluse at his home in St John’s Wood, jealously guarded by his housekeeper Miss Trimming. But when she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs, and Delafield is found badly hurt after seemingly trying to help her, the police – and some of people around the household are not convinced it was an accident – despite the fact that the house was locked tight. This is a relatively recent release, hot on the heels of the success of other Carnacs for the BLCC and it’s a really good one. This is a nice variation on the theme – Delafield is very much a relic of a prior artistic era, a curiosity that has been (mostly) forgotten. His household is fascinating – and has that staple of the mystery genre: a religious fanatic, but there is a backstory to it (more than you get in many of these!) that means you do come to understand how Miss Trimming might have turned out the way she did. Well worth a look – probably my favourite of this selection.

Death Knows No Calendar by John Bude

This is the second half of a BLCC double bill of John Bude. I did read the first one as well, but I’m focusing on the second one (which is the better one of the two). It’s a locked room mystery in an artists studio with plenty of candidates for the killer to be investigated by local retired soldier Major Boddy. This has a more adventure-y streak than a lot of Golden Age Crime, but Bude does tend towards that at times. This is listed as being part of the Inspector Meredith series, but don’t be fooled – he’s not in it, but it is apparently in the same universe as the ones that do. If you haven’t read any Bude before and you’re not wedded to reading a book about an artist, I’d start with The Lake District Murder or The Cheltenham Square Murder.

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

Cover of the Spoilt Kill

The artist in this one is primarily a designer of pottery patterns, so it’s maybe a little stretch, but she’s clearly doing other drawing in her spare time (you see them as part of the plot) so I say it counts! Anyway an old established pottery company in Stoke on Trent is having its designs stolen by the competition and then undercut. So they call in a private detective to investigate where the leak is coming from but while Hedley Nicholson is investigating, he finds more is going on than just industrial espionage – even before a worker is found in a vat of liquid clay. This isn’t quite in the common way of mystery books as it’s very character driven and introspective and feels noir-ish in the way it paints a picture of the Potteries and the people Nicholson encounters while he’s investigating. I think I liked The Christmas Egg more, but both are grittier and darker than many other BLCCs – and are also set in the post-war period rather than the interwar one. There is another book featuring Nicholson available in the series and I suspect I’ll read it when I get a chance.

That’s your lot – this time… Happy Humpday!