Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Murder at Gulls Nest

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Happy Tuesday everyone I’m back with the offers post tomorrow, but for today I’m back with in the mystery realm with a book from the to-read pile. I really am trying to reduce the size of that. Not least because the overspill is currently on my jigsaw table and I have two that I got for Christmas that I want to do… Anyway, to the book:

In Murder at Gulls Nest it’s 1954 and Nora Breen has asked to be released from the monastery where she has lived for the last thirty or so years to try and find out what has happened to a former novice whose letters have abruptly stopped. Nora heads to Gore-on-Sea on the south coast and to the very boarding house where Frieda was living to investigate. When she arrives there she hides her connection to Frieda and starts to dig. But when another resident is found dead, she starts to worry that Frieda may have found herself caught up in something even more worrying than Nora feared.

Nora is a great character and I really like the way that she is rediscovering the world and herself as we go through the book. The world has changed while she has been cloistered away and she has decades of habits to break as well. And then the mystery is really good. I think that boarding houses are great settings for mystery books because it’s a way that hugely different people can be forced into proximity and they can feel very claustrophobic. They are also places where there are rules – and rules are something that Nora is used to, just in a different context. Inspector Rideout, who is the police officer that she comes into contact with, also makes for a great foil for Nora to bounce off, but he has depth and complexity of his own too.

This was one of my Christmas books, and there is a second book featuring Nora coming out next month which I’ve already started thanks to the wonders of NetGalley, which just shows how much I enjoyed this first installment. I hadn’t read anything by Jess Kidd before, but it seems like this was a bit of a departure from her previous writing and I’m really glad that she went in this direction because I enjoyed it a lot.

This one should be pretty easy to get hold of – I’ve seen the hardback in a bunch of stores and the paperback is out towards the end of March too. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too where I’m expecting the price to drop when the paperback comes out.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 2 – March 8

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I’m starting to thing that March might be the month of shows – I saw two shows last week, and I’ve got two more this week, and I’ve got another two booked for later in the month already. So on that basis, I’m still pretty pleased with the reading last week, even if I didn’t finish anything from that pesky still reading list. I will try again on that this week.

Read:

And The Crowd Went Wild by Susan Elizabeth Philips

Overture to Death by Ngaio Marsh

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Murder in the Cathedral by Kerry Greenwood

Murder at the Tower by N R Daws*

Thunder in the Sky by Elizabeth Peters

The Bombay Prince by Sujuta Massey

Started:

Murder at the Spirit Lounge by Jess Kidd*

Death Waits in the Dark by Julia Buckley

Still reading:

The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

Nothing bought. For once.

Bonus picture: What I saw on Monday – it’s really good, but it’s only on two nights a week and tickets are very limited so if you want to see it, move fast.

*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: February 2026

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Books read this month: 29*

New books: 23

Re-reads: 6 (5 audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 3

NetGalley books read: 11

Kindle Unlimited read: 9

Ebooks: 1

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

Books bought: 9 books and 9 ebooks – it was all going really well until the last 10 days of the month when the Heated Rivalry books went on offer and then the damn burst on a bit of physical book purchasing too.

Most read author: hard to tell because it’s probably among the audiobooks – either Ngaio Marsh or Elizabeth Peters, because the Falcon at the Portal is now the longest book I’ve read this year and I’m a way through the next one too, but I’ve also done four Inspector Alleyns.

Books read in 2025: 58

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 599 – this is back a little again because I’ve added a bunch of the 2026 releases that I either want to read or have copies of via NetGalley. So hopefully that will come down again as I read them!

Firstly an apology that I’m posting this so far into March, but there were a few things that I wanted to talk about in the first week of the month that couldn’t really wait, and so this was the thing that got bumped. A pretty good month in reading to be honest. I’m pretty pleased with the number of books on the list from NetGalley, even if the to-read pile list is a bit shorter. I’m still some way off getting the list down to where I want it, but progress is progress.

Bonus picture: Unexpected stained glass spotted while wandering through Soho.

*often includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – 7 this month!

books

Bonus Review: Final Phryne Fisher Book

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I’m actually sad writing this post, because it’s the last time I’ll have a new book by Kerry Greenwood to write about, but I wanted to send Phryne and her off in style, so this Saturday I’m here with a bonus review to mark the release of the final book in the series in the UK, a few months after it came out in Australia and just a couple of weeks short of a year after she died.

In Murder in the Cathedral, Phryne is in Bendigo (famous to Brits as a place where people moved to from Ramsey Street*) where her old friend Lionel is about to be installed as bishop. But when a murder occurs actually during the ceremony, she finds herself called upon to investigate. Because how could she not. The murder victim seems to have had a knack for alienating people and so there are no shortage of suspects. There are also a lot of returning characters from across the series who pop up to help, even though Phryne is away from her home patch.

I’ve read this twice now and although I don’t think it will be my favourite book in the series, but if there has to be an ending, it’s feels like a nice note to stop at. It’s not a “series finale” “tie up all the loose ends” sort of book but there are plenty of call backs to previous adventures and it will leave you with the sense that Phryne and the gang are still out there in the world solving mysteries and living their lives.

Thank you Kerry Greenwood for all the hours of happy reading – and listening – to the adventures of Phryne and also Corinna Chapman.

*that’s a vintage Neighbours reference, you’re welcome, Drew didn’t deserve to die, Toadie’s ponytail was an abomination.

Authors I love, series

Series Redux: Lady Julia Grey

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There is a new Veronica Speedwell out this week and it features an appearance from Lady Julia Brisbane (formerly Grey) and so I’m taking this opportunity to remind you about my post about the Lady Julia Grey series. Yes it’s only a year since I wrote it (to coincide with the release of the Killers of a Certain Age sequel, which I still haven’t read and is out now in paperback) but how could I resist the opportunity to write about Julia (especially given that I’ve written about Veronica quite a lot). There are five full length books about Lady Julia and her continuing encounters with mysteries and corpses. They are set in the late Victoria era, as opposed to Veronica’s Edwardian, so I’m expecting an older (though probably not more wiser) Julia in her appearance in A Ghastly Catastrophe. They have the wit and snark that you get from Veronica, but the romantic element is quite different because Julia and Nicolas get married about half way through the series, whereas Veronica and Stoker have… a different relationship dynamic. And yes, I know that’s a spoiler for the Julia books, but her married name is in Deanna’s post, and it’s a series that started 20 years ago. All of that said, these are really cheap on Kindle at the moment – you could pick up all five full length novels for well under £10 at the moment, which is a total bargain and will give you many hours of happy reading.

Books from the Lady Julia series
Book previews

Out this Week: New Perveen Mistry

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After a three year break, there is a new Perveen Mistry mystery out this week. These are murder mysteries set in 1920s India and our heroine/detective is Perveen, who happens to be Bombay’s only female solicitor. This new book is called The Star from Calcutta and sees her securing her biggest client yet – a Bollywood studio. She’s meant to be helping an actress who owns the studio with her director husband, who is caught up in a breach of contract dispute, but a body is found after a screening and the actress goes missing. I’ve read the first two in this series and really like Perveen as a character and the whole setting and set up and as you know I love a 1920s-set mystery. I have the third one waiting to be read, and as you know I try to read things in order so it may be a while before I get to this one, but if anything was going to tempt me to get going on the series it’s the prospect of a Bollywood-set book because I love a Hollywood-set book, particularly in the early years of the movie industry so this is right up my street.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February 2026 Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so it is time for the Quick Reviews, which this month has turned out to be a reporting back in special – with reviews of three books that I mentioned when they were released and which I’ve now read. You’re welcome.

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

Cover of Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl

As I said on release day this is set in a college town and features a new arrival to the the town who takes on a nannying job alongside her work at the college only to discover that her new boss is the guy she had a one night stand with on her first night in town. Once again with these two authors’ joint works, I like the premise and some of the execution but not all of it. It’s got fun banter, it navigated the power dynamic issues of boss-nanny really well (much better than I expected) but I found the plot strand about Maddie’s longer term career aspirations frustrating and I thought it was one plot strand too many. Also this had a couple of my personal bug bear words during sex scenes (please, no seeping) which was annoying.

Night Rider by Sloane Fletcher*

Cover of Night Rider

Now I had my doubts about the signals the cover was sending when I wrote my preview post for this and I was right: this has got the wrong cover. Because this is definitely a romantic suspense and the cover doesn’t really indicate that. It’s in the blurb to some extent, but this is a much darker read than a pink and lilac cover would have you think. There are various points of not insignificant peril and a heroine who is suffering the after effects of trauma. There is a lot of cowboy ranch action here, but it is broken up by the darkness and peril. There is possibly a bit too much plot going on here too and I felt like it left the readers hanging a bit as well – it felt like there should have been an epilogue to wrap up one key plot strand completely – or a preview explaining that it would be tied up in the next book in the series. Sorry if that doesn’t make sense, but any more would be a spoiler.

Missing in Soho by Holly Stars*

Cover of Missing in Soho

This is the second book featuring the drag queen and sometime detective Misty Divine. Now as I said in the preview, I was coming back to see how the huge hanging thread from the first book was resolved. And the good news is that that thread was resolved in this one (more or less) but some of the things that I didn’t love in the first book were even more prominent in this one. Misty/Joe in that first story was a bit too-stupid-to-live and foolhardy at times in that – but this one it felt like their behaviour has properly crossed over into selfishness – which is what a lot of the other characters were accusing them of. I did understand Misty/Joe’s motivations but it made them a very hard character to like – and I think the whole point is that you’re meant to be rooting for them. Other people may not have that issue or be bothered by it in the same way that I was though. The end of the book teases a third in the series, but I’m not sure I’ll be reading it.

And that’s your lot for this month, a reminder of the other two Recommensday posts from February – Sports books and Edwardian mysteries, and the books of the week which were Future Saints, Cyanide in the Sun, Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter and Hattie Brings Down the House.

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Love and Other Brain Experiments

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m back with a new release (well it was released in February and I read it in February so that counts as new release) romance for this week’s Book of the Week.

The heroine of Love and Other Brain Experiments is Frances, a neuroscientist who has spent the last five years trying to build her career after turning down a job – and her boyfriend – to follow her own research. Now she’s heading back to New York to a conference, where she’s going to come face to face with that same ex, who said she’d never make it on her own. When an argument with a rival is mistaken for an argument between a couple, she’s flustered and inadvertently confirms the misconception and suddenly both her and Lewis’s careers are at risk – and thus starts the fake dating agreement…

My favourite Sophie Kinsella book is Can You Keep a Secret, which starts with a genius scene set on a plane, and this also starts with an excellent plane-based meeting which set me up to really enjoy this. I had a slight concern with the fake dating scenario – because as the book sets it out Frances’s main problem with the initial relationship misconception is gaining a reputation for untruthfulness in science (where falsifying data is the worst thing you can do) but then she and Lewis create a much bigger reputational risk with the prolonged fake dating scenario. However, I love a fake dating story, and an enemies to lovers plot and this is so much fun that I just decided to go with it and hope that the resolution was well thought out and satisfying enough to negate that fear – and it basically was.

Frances is a great character – I loved all the details about the different places she’d worked in around the world and her complete single minded focus on her research made a great foil for her missing some issues in her real life outside of the lab. I thought Lewis was also really well drawn, although the reason why he and Frances became rivals seemed pretty unsurmountable initially, the actual explanation made it work. There is a slight case of just have a proper conversation you two here, but ultimately I raced through this in about 36 hours and ended with a big smile on my face at the resolution. This is Hannah Brohm’s debut – and this is a really accomplished start to a romance writing career and I look forward to seeing what she writes next. And on a more basic level this was one of the first STEM romances that I’ve read recently that wasn’t completely obviously a Reylo thing…

I got my copy of Love and Other Brain Experiments from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle, Kobo and paperback – and as you can see I’ve already found it in a Waterstones – so it should be fairly easy to find in the shops too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: February 23 – March 1

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A pretty solid week, considering that it included a theatre trip, an art gallery trip and another evening out as well. However I seem to be developing a bit of an issue on the still reading shelf by starting books and then not finishing them when I already have a few on the go. So I need to work on that. But on the bright side, more than half of the things I did finish last week were from Netgalley, so that is something.

Read:

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay*

Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh

Love and Other Brain Experiments by Hannah Brohm*

The Wedding Bait by Adele Buck

Death on the Lusitania by R L Graham*

Frozen Felonies by Patti Benning

Missing in Soho by Holly Stars*

Started:

And The Crowd Went Wild by Susan Elizabeth Philips

Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd

Still reading:

The Corpse in the Waxworks by John Dickson Carr

Game Changer by Rachael Reid

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

Ritual of Fire by D V Bishop

Pet Shop Boys, Literally by Chris Heath

We are not talking about the purchases, because a fresh month of kindle deals started yesterday and I bought two more books in the week. Bad Verity.

Bonus picture: One of the most famous paintings from that art gallery trip. And underneath Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier dancing to a song about it…

*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: Hadestown

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Another week, another theatre review, and given that the Hadestown cast is changing at the end of this week, I would have posted this last weekend, if it wasn’t for the fact that I think more people know about Hadestown than they do The Battle.

Hadestown tells a version of the story of the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the story transposed to an industrial factory version of the underworld, which Eurydice escapes to because of poverty and hunger. The show has a slightly complicated production history, which included a run at the National Theatre in London in 2018 before it went to Broadway and won the Tony for Best Musical Tony in 2019. It then returned to London in 2024 to take up residence at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue, where it has proved tremendously popular and commanded ticket prices and availability to match.

This explains why I only just managed to go and see it – I go to a lot of shows and I have rules about how much I will spend. I did try for the period the other summer when the original Broadway cast came over here for a limited run ahead of a pro-shoot, but the fans were there quicker than me to the cheap seats, and so it took a good ticket offer before Christmas to get me there (and if I’d realised it was during the Winter Olympic Skating programme I would have picked a different date!) to see what all the fuss is about. I have a mixed record with Best Musical Tony Winners. I tend to prefer the Big and Fun when it comes to musicals and the Tony’s can sometimes go with the Not Big and Fun option. There are a few years when I look at the nominees and I am genuinely torn between which I like more (La Cage aux Folles vs Sunday in the Park With George in 1984, Avenue Q vs Wicked in 2004 – and I still wish I had had the chance to see Hugh Jackman in Boy from Oz) but in the main I am a commercial musical girl except when it comes to Sondheim.

All of which is to say that I can see why people love this (and I know several people who do) but it is not my thing. It is clever and it is well staged, but it is not a Verity Show. Our show was sold out – yes it was half term week, but there were also a few understudies on and it is clearly the sort of show that has a fan base who want to see as many different people in the roles as possible – because they have a loyalty card you can get stamped to get access to special merch. And I respect that, even as it makes me feel super old, because I would absolutely have been in the market for that for We Will Rock You back in the day. I would probably still have my special WWRY merch in a drawer the way I still have my Gaga t-shirt. So all in all very much a Nice To Tick Off The List for me more than anything else. I can confirm that my current count is 29 out of 76 best musicals (with another 3 if you count amateur productions), 22 out of 49 Best Musical Oliviers and I still have another seven (across the two lists some appear on both) that I could tick off if I pull my finger out and get to the long runners in the West End I still haven’t seen. Maybe 2026 is the year…

Have a Great Sunday!