It’s still early in the year, so the book release calendar is still getting itself sorted for new stuff, but I’ve been wandering the bookshops of central London to take a look at what is about at the moment so that I could report back!
I’m starting with a set of books from Foyles where we have a few that are almost certainly too much for me on one front or another! I read Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires a few years back and it was a great idea but the horror was too much for me. I have learned from that – this one is about a home for unmarried mothers in Florida in the 1970s and is clearly Not For Verity, even if I know it will be for others. I still have Alex Hay’s The House Keepers on my Kindle TBR so I’m not allowed to buy anything else from him before I’ve read that. And the same applies to the Tom Hindle. And the rest all look to be down the end of the thriller spectrum that is too scary for me!
There’s a few duplicates here in Waterstones Piccadilly, but there’s also a few that I’ve read too – the Richard Osman, Robert Thorogood and Richard Coles. I read the previous book in this Faith Martin series and I have the Leonora Nattrass waiting to be read too. And there are some lovely covers – The House With Nine Locks is beautiful and Ink Ribbon Red and White City are striking too – even if the actual books probably aren’t my thing.
For some reason, I like the crime and mystery covers that are about at the moment more than the women’s fiction/romantic fiction ones. So much at the moment seems so similar. And I know that’s always been the way with cover trends – see all the cartoon covers in the early 00s, and then the headless ladies of historical romance – but at the moment it’s like there’s four styles only that they’re choosing from. And maybe that’s why I’m buying more mystery in shops than anything else right now?
Have a great weekend everyone!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
I definitely agree about the mystery covers being a lot more interesting than the general fiction at the moment.
And they usually give you more of a clue about whether they’re going to be your thing than romance does at the moment. There’s something about the dark and thriller end of the spectrum that you can tell from the covers – whereas the same style of romance covers seems to be going on everything from closed door to extremely not closed door and it’s hard to tell where anything is going to fall on the spectrum.
That’s definitely true and one reason why I tend to stick to authors I know for romances or books that I’ve seen reviewed.