Recommendsday: March Quick Reviews

Now I’m not going to lie, this is a bit of a mixed bunch this month – I’ve written about all the stuff I’ve really loved and that was standalone, and then there was a lot of serials/series novellas. So this is less other things I have enjoyed, more other things I have read. But some months are like that aren’t they.

The Last Action heroes by Nick de Semlyen

You may recognise this from the long runners list, as I started it while we were on holiday – it was one of Him Indoors’ holiday books, although I was the only one who read it! I read de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys on a previous holiday and really enjoyed it so picked up this look at the action heroes of the 80s and 90s. And it’s good – I don’t think it’s as good as Wild and Crazy Guys, but maybe that’s because I’m more interested in the comedians than I am in the movie tough guys. Anyway, this took a while to read because a) it’s a large format paperback and a bit unwieldy to take around with you and b) because I get distracted by fiction and series – not because it’s not good.

Antique’s Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C L Miller*

This is a debut novel by an antiques expert and is about a former antiques hunter investigating a suspicious death. I really liked the idea behind this – I was expecting a murder mystery with maybe a bit of adventure/chase thrown in – but the actual reality is not as much fun as that, and not as readable either. I think that it was just trying to do too many things and not executing any of them particularly well. The narrative switches around between so many people that you never really get a chance to get to know anyone, and it’s all a little muddled and underdeveloped. The wealth of expert knowledge the author has about antiques didn’t counteract the issues with the actual plot and pacing. There is already a second book up on Amazon (although not on goodreads) so some of the too-much may be to do with the fact that it’s setting up for a series, so that explains a bit of the too-muchness, but it didn’t help when I was reading it!

Ricky at the Riding School by Patricia Baldwin

This one is so terrible and I don’t have a picture (and left it in Portugal) so I’m giving you cats instead. This is an evangelical pony book (yes that’s a thing) and it’s so bad it’s not even amusing. I’ve read a lot of career books and a few evangelical ones at that, and I’ve always understood that the trick is to make the heroine seem likeable and aspirational to make the reader want to be the secretary/nurse/kennelmaid/new convert to Jesus. Well this doesn’t bother with that. The heroine is awful, the potential boyfriend who introduces her to God is awful and it’s just generally fairly unreadable. And I don’t say that lightly because I have read some terribly written Girl’s Own stuff over the years – including the Elinor Brent Dyer Geography readers! Baldwin is capable of (slightly) better – Linda Learns to Type is ok as far as these books go, but as I said in that Recommendsday post helped by the fact that Linda is working at a chocolate factory – partly because Chocolate, but also because if you know your history you know that a lot of the British chocolate manufacturers (Cadbury’s, Fry’s, Rowntree’s) were founded and owned by Quakers, so there was an element of religion going on there in reality (if you go to Cadburyworld you’ll see all about how their faith filtered into the way the company worked). But this is terrible – in fact the only good thing about it is that it’s the first time I’ve ever been the only person who’s rated (and reviewed) a book on Goodreads. And as I left it with my friend in Portugal, that may not even last!

Happy Humpday!