Month: November 2019

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Christmas books

Book of the Week: Hither, Page

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An embarrassment of riches on this week’s list, but I think this was my favourite.  Lots of stuff from it will be making appearances in other posts soon too – in fact the only thing against Hither, Page being this week’s pick is that I sort of wanted it for my Christmas reading post, which is taking longer to put together than I was expecting because I haven’t liked a lot of the stuff that I’ve been reading with an eye to including it.  But this wasn’t on the original list of potentials for the Christmas post, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Anyway, on to the book.

Cover of Hither, Page

Hither, Page is a murder mystery and romance set in Britain in the aftermath of World War Two. James Sommers has come back from the war to work as the doctor in the village that he lived in as a child.  After he catches his cleaning lady looking through his patient records and snooping in his flat he lets her go. But soon she’s found dead after a dinner party at the Big House and James feels like the peace of his post-war sanctuary has been shattered. Leo Page works for one of the shadowier (and possibly dodgier) bits of the British secret service and is surprised to be sent to a sleepy village to investigate a charlady’s death. Soon Leo and James are crossing paths – one as as he tries to solve the crime, the other he tries to get his village back to normal – or at least that’s what he thinks he’s doing.

I think you all know me well enough to know that this plot summary ticks quite a lot of my boxes – murder mystery, mid-twentieth century, secret services connection and it’s sort of enemies forced to work together.  It’s funny and snarky and has a great cast of supporting characters who – as it’s the first of a series – we should hear more from in books to come. What is not to love.

I’m always after a new historical mystery series, and Cat Sebastian was one of my 2018 Obsessions as I worked my way through her back catalogue so this is practically a Venn diagram all on its own. My only complaints were that it wasn’t long enough and as it’s the first in the series I now have to wait impatiently for the next installment which doesn’t even have a name yet it’s so long away.  However in writing this post I realised that there is another Cat Sebastian book due out soon (in December and I’ve got it pre-ordered already, well done PastVerity) which is good, but I think we’ve just ruled that out of BotW contention if I read it straightaway, which I think we all know I will.  Hey ho (ho, ho), you can’t win them all.

My copy of Hither, Page came from the library – but it’s available on Kindle and on Kobo now.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 18 – November 24

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I used my three days off to read books. Can you tell? And I needed the relaxation because my days at work were Very Busy. But then it’s still election season isn’t it. Only three weeks to go…

Read:

Shirley Flight, Air Hostess and the Congo Rescue by Judith Dale

Sweet Valley Confidential by Francine Pascal

Maid of the Abbey by Elsie J Oxenham

Bad to the Bone by Katy Munger

Seduction on a Snowy Night by Madeline Hunter, Sabrina Jeffries and Mary-Jo Putney

It Happened on Christmas Eve by Kirsty Greenwood

Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian

The Banks by Roxane Gay and Ming Doyle

Meant to be Yours by Susan Mallery

A Very Merry Princess by Susan Mallery

Started:

Competence by Gail Carriger

The Likeability Trap by Alicia Menendez

War on Peace by Ronan Farrow

Still reading:

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser

A couple of ebooks bought. And some Christmas presents. But they don’t count because they’re not for me.

Bonus photo: the winter soup cauldron. Now back out for the season and in heavy rotation.

book round-ups, Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Royal Romances

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Another bonus post for you today – there’s a new series of the Crown out on Netflix this week and there’s been a rush of romances about royalty recently (gee, I wonder why) – a lot of which I seem to have read – so I thought I’d round up a few for you here – new and old.

The Princess Plan by Julia London

Cover of The Princess Plan

This came out yesterday (in the UK at least) and is a historical romance which sees a prince and a commoner team up to solve a murder mystery. Prince Sebastian of Alucia is in Britain for trade talks when his private secretary (and friend) is murdered after a ball.  Eliza Tricklebank helps write a popular gossip sheet and receives a tip off about who committed the crime.  She is probably the only person in the country who doesn’t really care about Sebastian’s rank (for Reasons).  Soon the two of them are investigating what happened – with Eliza digging in the places Sebastian can’t go, while he investigates at court. And as they work together, they develop feelings for each other – but how can a prince marry a nobody – a spinster firmly on the shelf and with a scandal in her past? You know they’ll find a way! I read a lot of historicals – but not many that involve royalty – and this is really quite fun. The mystery is twisty and although I had the culprit worked out very early on, I didn’t work out how they were going to fix the Happily Ever After.  Lots of fun and it’s the first in a series. I had an advance copy from NetGalley, but the ebook for this looks like it’s on offer here this week for release – it’s £2.99 Kindle and Kobo at the moment.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Cover of Red, White and Royal Blue

Alex Claremont-Diaz is the First Son of the United States.  Prince Henry is, well a British Prince.  They hate each other, right until they don’t (hello enemies to lovers trope again) and then there’s a whole lot of secrecy and new problems to deal with. This is a lot of fun while you’re reading it – it rattles along so fast that you don’t get a chance to analyse or dissect the backstory and set up too much. I don’t read a lot of New Adult because usually it’s too angsty and drama-filled for me, but in this most of the drama and angst is external to the couple which worked well. And by the end I wanted the ending to be true in real life. Just don’t think too hard about it all or it all falls apart! Luckily it rattles on at enough speed that you don’t have time to think about it too much – a bit like the Royal Spyness series – and try not to over think it afterwards! This one is new and expensive – Kindle and Kobo are in the £7-£8 bracket at the moment, and the physical version even more.
The Runaway Princess by Hester Browne
Cover of The Runaway Princess
An older pick now – I read this five years ago, but it actually came out in 2012.  The title is something of a spoiler, but hey, I’ll try and not give too much away. Amy is a gardner, not a social butterfly, but when a drunk European prince crashes her friend’s party, she falls for Leo the guy who helps her sort the mess out.  But Leo and Amy’s lives are very different and soon Amy’s trying to decide if he’s worth the changes and problems that life with him would bring This is a fun, easy, romantic read with likeable characters and a lovely (if a perhaps a little bit underdeveloped male lead). It’s a modern princess story – but with a leading lady that’s not as polished and perfect as Kate Middleton (remember this came out in the year of the First Royal Wedding, not the Harry and Meghan era). Amy has some skeletons in her closet – and to be honest I’m surprised they didn’t come out sooner when the press started sniffing around. I had pretty much worked out what had happened (I’m being vague because I don’t want to give it away) but the resolution to that strand of the story was more inventive than I expected. Oh and the Kindle and Kobo editions are £1.99 at the moment.  A win all around.

Reluctant Royals series by Alyssa Cole

Cover of A Prince on Paper

And I couldn’t let this post go by without reminding you of the Reluctant Royals.  I’ve reviewed Alyssa Cole a lot in recent years and two of this series have already been Book of the Weeks – A Princess in Theory and the novella Can’t Escape Love – but if you haven’t already checked out this series, they’re well worth a look.   The last in the series, A Prince on Paper, features a Playboy prince (or so we think) and a woman trying to find out who she is after discovering that her father has betrayed her. I had a few quibbles with how it all resolved itself (it seemed to easy) but absolutely raced through this the day that it came out – which says pretty much all you need to know about it! A Princess in Theory is £1.99 at the moment on Kindle and Kobo – but they’re all under £3 – and there are three novels and two novellas. Cole’s new series, Runaway Royals, starts next year with How To Catch A Queen and I’m looking forward to it already.

So there you have it – the best of my recent royal-themed reading and some older picks too.  If you’ve got some more recommendations for me, leave them in the comments!

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Unhoneymooners

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A very unseasonal pick for this week’s BotW – the weather here is cold and often wet, the pavements near my house are a sludge of fallen leaves and I’ve had to retire my in-between season wardrobe and admit that it’s actually winter.  And yet here I am recommending a book mostly set on a tropical island vacation. I know. But not everyone wants to read winter books at this time of year – and if you’re not the sort of person that might impulse book a hot weather holiday if you read a book set on the beach at this time (and maybe if you are and you’re ok with that!) then this is such a great read. And yes I know, I’m repeating authors – I’ll get to that later.

Cover of The Unhoneymooners

Olive thinks she’s unlucky – she’s just lost her job and nothing ever seems to go right for er.  Her identical twin sister on the other hand is so luck she’s financed her wedding by winning contests. Great for her – but not for Olive who is going to have to spend the day with Ami’s new brother-in-law, who is best man and also Olive’s sworn enemy.  But when Ethan and Olive are the only people who don’t go down with food poisoning at the reception, suddenly they’re off on Ami’s nontransferrable all-expenses paid contest prize honeymoon.  Surely they can pretend to get along for a week’s free vacation? But Olive’s bad luck seems to have followed her to the holiday – because she runs into her future boss who now thinks she’s married and suddenly the stakes got a bit higher.  And Olive is starting to think that maybe she doesn’t hate Ethan as much as she thought she did…

If you’ve been reading long enough to remember my Historical Romance Tropes post you’ll know that fake relationships are one of my favourites. Also on that list – although not talked about in that post – are forced proximity (stuck somewhere with no escape – often deployed in christmas novels where people get snowed in) and enemies to lovers (i hate you, I hate you, I hate you, wait why do I want to stroke your hair?*).  And this does pretty much everything you would want a forced proximity, enemies to lovers, fake relationship romantic comedy to do.  And it is very much a comedy at times.  There are some laugh out loud funny moments here.  I did have some doubts at various points if it would be able to wrap everything up in a satisfactory manner** but actually it all played out rather nicely.  It did all wrap up very quickly at the end, as romances often do, but the epilogue sort of made up for it.

I have been a bit hit and miss with Christina Lauren at times – although this is the second time they’ve been a BotW pick in just over a month, so I can see that you might not believe me – but this is the most fun of all their romances that I’ve read.  Aside from Autoboygraphy (which I loved, but which is YA) I’ve had problems with some of their  heros – I hated Carter in Dating You/Hating You and never really believed that he realised exactly how much of a jerk he had been. To be fair, I also hated the pranks in that book because they were incredibly petty and unprofessional and I like competency porn from my heros and heroines. I chalked that up in my review to not my tropes – but when the stars align and they are writing in my wheelhouse, they can be absolutely spectacular.  The trouble then for me is working out which of their novels will be my thing. I’m hopeful that Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating may be one I like – so I’m going to try that next.

My copy of The Unhoneymooners came from the library, but it’s available now on Kindle and Kobo.  It’s not out in the UK in paperback until May next year (which may be why the ebooks are so expensive – £9.99 at time of writing) so you won’t be able to get it in a UK bookshop yet (although you could preorder) but Book Depository seem to have copies, and you should be fine in the US.

Happy Reading!

 

 

 

*thank you Sarah Wendell

** mostly related to the reasons why the two of them had initially not got on and about one part of Ethan’s character to say more about either of these would be a spoiler.

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 11 – November 17

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Hooo boy what a week.  Three nights away from home at the start of the week on early shifts which were insanely busy with the election, and then another night away at the weekend because I was working – and that work involved a certain Royal Interview which is being much talked about.  All that plus a trip to the cinema (Le Mans 66 aka Ford v Ferrari) and to see some comedy (Dave Gorman). November may not be my month!

Read:

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Shirley Flight, Air Hostess and the Great Bullion Mystery by Judith Dale

Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles

Lumberjanes vol 12: Jackalope Springs Eternal by Shannon Waters et al

Gilded Cage by KJ Charles

Started:

Bad to the Bone by Katy Munger

Shirley Flight, Air Hostess and the Congo Rescue by Judith Dale

The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser

Still reading:

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

One book bought – a kindle daily deal impulse buy in a moment of weakness on Sunday.  It was a week.

Bonus photo: A typically mad cover for a Shirley Flight novel…

Hardback copy of Shirley Flight, Air Hostess in the Great Bullion Mystery

Blog tours, new releases

Blog Tour: Died and Gone to Devon

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Happy Friday everyone, and welcome to a special bonus post to mark the mid point in November.  I’m one of the stops on the blog tour for TP Fielden’s Died and Gone to Devon – which came out yesterday – and which I read the other week.

This is the fourth book in the Miss Dimount Investigates series, featuring an intrepid lady reporter in the seaside town of Temple Regis in the late 1950s.  In Died and Gone to Devon, a by-election is looming – but when one of the candidates winds up dead, Judy is soon investigating.  Add into the mix a new and suspiciously ambitious journalist and a visit from her mother, and Judy has soon got a lot on her plate.

Regular readers will know that I love a murder mystery set in the past, and I love an unconventional detective.  Judy is an older lady – not as old as Miss Marple certainly, but definitely not in the first flush of youth – and I really like the fact that she’s got her head screwed on and doesn’t sail off into danger without a thought.  She’s smart, she’s had to fight to get to wear she is and she’s not going to cede her position easily.  And I also like the late 1950s setting – Temple Regis is a sleepy, old-fashioned backwater but you can see the cusp of the swinging sixties on the horizon and the conflicts that are starting as times change.  I had some of the mystery figured out early on, but not all by any means and I enjoyed watching everything unfold, although to be fair reading it in the week that a General Election was called might not have been my best plan – as it all got a bit election overload at times!

I read the first book in the series back in 2017, and enjoyed it but thought that there was a lot of set up for the series going on and a few too many unexplained hints about Judy’s past. But this definitely felt like a book in a series that has hit its stride – the characters are established, there aren’t any info dumps about people and there are a few little nuggets about previous cases that would work as callbacks if you’ve read them, or tempt you into reading them if like me you haven’t.

My copy of Died and Gone to Devon came via the publisher, but it is available now as a paperback and on Kindle, Kobo and Audible.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, non-fiction, Uncategorized

Book of the Week: Catch and Kill

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It may have been a shorter than some reading list again last week, but nevertheless I am back to normal service with the BotW posts today and I’ve got a cracker for this week’s pick. And yes it’s had a lot of hype but it’s really worth it.

Cover of Catch and Kill

I think you’d have to have been under a rock to have missed the Harvey Weinstein story breaking last year. The former movie mogul – the producer behind many Oscar-winning movies – was accused sexual harassment and paying settlements to women in a New York Times article by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and then five days later by multiple women of a pattern of predatory behaviour of sexual assaults (including rape) in a New Yorker article written by Ronan Farrow. Weinstein has always denied wrong doing, saying that via his lawyers that any allegations of non-consensual sex are unequivocally denied and there are cases still making their way through the courts in the US. But Farrow’s investigation of Weinstein originally started as part of his work for NBC News. This is the story behind that original New Yorker article – of how Farrow assembled the witnesses and evidence to stand the story up and of the efforts that he says were being taken to stop the story getting on air.

Two years after those first articles (which saw Kantor, Twohey, Farrow, the NYT and New Yorker share a Pulitzer Prize) we already know most of the allegations about Weinstein and this book has mostly made headlines because of the allegations made about the attempts to suppress the story. But it’s also a pacey and incredibly readable piece of narrative nonfiction. It’s very easy to read, and Farrow is realistic about his role and position in the world – in case you’ve missed it, he’s the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen and was a child genius who went to college in his teens and who is estranged from his father. Farrow has a way with words – this reads almost like a thriller novel, and not just because of the presence of secretive Israeli spies. It’s also wryly funny in places – mostly when Farrow’s partner, podcaster and former Obama speechwriter Jon Lovett, appears, something that Lovett has Thoughts About when it comes to the audiobook:

This is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve read this year and would make a great Christmas book gift – even though the subject matter doesn’t sound like it would. I borrowed my copy from the library, but you should be able to get a copy of Catch and Kill from all good bookshops (I’m thinking it’ll be on a table/new books display), as well as on Kindle, Kobo and Audible, although I understand that there have been some problems in some territories with legal threats.  Is it any wonder that I’ve read and rewritten this post several times?!

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 4 – November 10

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A super busy week. Again.  Also I spent Sunday at two concerts, which was amazing, but obviously not reading.  Maybe I’m finally getting my reading and everything else balance sorted out?

Read:

Already Home by Susan Mallery

The Princess Plan by Julia London

Wrapped Up In You by Jill Shalvis

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Royal Holiday by Jasmine Guillory

Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths

Started:

Shirley Flight, Air Hostess and the Great Bullion Mystery by Judith Dale

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

Any Old Diamonds by KJ Charles

Still reading:

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

Three books – all Girls Own stuff – bought in a moment of weakness. Lovely stuff.

Bonus photo: The stage ahead of Maria Friedman’s concert at the Southbank Centre on Sunday night.

Spotlight on a microphone

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: No BotW

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Yeah, I’m sorry. There was a wedding last week and I didn’t get as much read as usual.  All the good stuff I read last week is already earmarked for other posts or I’ve written about too recently and I can’t write about stuff that I don’t really feel enthusiastic about – it’s just not my style. Normal service will be resumed next week!  In the meantime, here’s some stuff I’ve written previously about Lumberjanes the graphic novels and the Lumberjanes novelisations and about Jill Shalvis .  And there’s a whole bunch of posts about Trisha Ashley too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 28 – November 3

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A really, really busy week – what with an election coming our way in the UK in December and a family wedding to go to (and then recover from!).

Read:

Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Lumberjanes Vol 11 by Shannon Watters et al

Died and Gone to Devon by TP Fielden

The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman

The Christmas Invitation by Trisha Ashley

The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karina Yan Glaser

Started:

Wrapped Up In You by Jill Shalvis

Already Home by Susan Mallery

Still reading:

The Dollhouse by Fiona Davis

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

No books bought – no time!

Bonus photo: a rare sighting of me, here I am in my finery at the wedding reception!