The theme of this month’s quick reviews could be described as “reporting back” given that we have two books that I’d mentioned on release day that I’ve now read and I’m starting with a sequel to a Book of the Week from the start of last year.
Lies and Dolls by Nev Fountain
Lies and Dolls is a return to the world of Kit Pelham after The Fan Who Knew Too Much and sees Kit and Binfire on their way to Lincolnshire for the opening of a rare toy museum which will be housing some rare figurines from the Vixens of the Void series. Soon the figures go missing and start turning up in pieces. And then there are actual murders. I said in my review of the first book that it could have used being a bit shorter and that the plot was insane – this is even more outlandish on the plot front, but felt like it had had a tighter edit. The world is more absurd than ever, and Kit keeps making the wrong choices in her personal life, but it’s got plenty of black humour as well as another uttlerly bonkers mystery plot. Looking at the “Readers also enjoyed” choices on Goodreads, this is more unrealistic in many ways than the Peter Grant books – and they have magic – but it’s definitely less realistic than both the Andrew Cartmel series too but they are similar in some other ways.
Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade
Karl and Molly had crushes on each other when they were in high school, but nothing really happened. When they were at college they had an argument and never spoke again.Since then, Molly has become a successful audiobook narrator and Karl (although she doesn’t know it) is her most faithful listener, usually while he’s working in his bakery. When Molly sees an obituary for Karl she flies from California back to Harlot’s Bay for his funeral. Except that he’s not dead – and the two of them get a second chance to work out if that old connection was the real thing. I’m reporting back in on this one because I mentioned it on release day but although this is the second book in this series, you could read this as a standalone . That would would spoil the outcome of that first book as well as you missing out on the running humour that is Karl’s audiobook habits in that first book – so really, you should read At First Spite first. I really liked the relationship building here as Karl tries to show cynical and jaded Molly that he’s worth taking a chance on. And the Harlot’s Bay community continues to be a lot of fun providing plenty in the subplots as well as the romance.
You Had to Be There by Jodie Harsh*
This one took me so long to read – and I previewed it here when it came out – that I had to come back around with a review now I have finished it. I’m quite conflicted writing this review because I found the writing style quite hard going for large parts of the book – breathless isn’t quite the right word, but it is stream of consciousness and breakneck for the majority of the book, just like Jodie’s/J’s life was. And so that might be a stylistic choice, but that is one of the reasons why it took me quite a while to read. The other is that J/Jodie is also making some very bad choices at times and has a lot of traumatic events in his childhood and that is also quite hard to read. But this is a very honest book that is a glimpse into what it was like to be caught up in the Soho nighttime scene in the last years before Crossrail came and closed things down and knocked them down. The buildings that replaced them are shinier and more corporate and the things that were lost can never be replaced. But that’s the way of London – always changing and shifting and moving on to the next thing for more than a millennia. I’m lucky enough to remember seeing it before it changed – and after reading this I’ll be thinking about the communities and clubs that were lost every time I go down the escalators at Tottenham Court Road.
And that’s your lot. A reminder that the recommensdays in December had a strong Christmas theme – with series at Christmas 2, Not New Christmas Books and New Christmas Mysteries – and the BotWs were Season of Love, Murder Most Modern, Odd Flamingo, Heir Apparent and Buried in a Good Book.
Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 