Jenny Jackson’s first novel Pineapple Street was one of my favourite new books of 2023 and so it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that her new novel is the new release that I want to highlight this week. Per the Blurb: The Shampoo Effect is about one summer in New England, where writer Caroline arrives in Greenhead and falls for its charms and for one of it’s residents, Van Whittaker. She spends the summer with his friends, including one who is pregnant with Van’s child, and it seems that the fun will keep coming – right up until it doesn’t. I love a rich people problems story – and I’ve also had a pretty good run of summer people and year round people novels which this sounds like it is too, so I have high hopes for this – and I have it on my pile ready to go too!
It’s the first of July and it’s a Wednesday and normal service is resumed after the chaos in the posting schedule at the start of June and so that means it’s Quick Reviews time! And it’s a very mixed bag of genres this month – but also in how much I liked some of them. But here we go – three more books I read last month that I haven’t already told you about.
An Untidy Death by Simon Brett
This is the second in Simon Brett’s Decluttering series. Our lead character Ellen, is a declutterer (not a cleaner) and in this one she’s called in by a daughter worried about the state of her mother’s flat. Ellen isn’t too worried – yes the flat is a mess, but Ingrid seems to know what she’s about. But then the flat burns down and Ingrid is found dead inside and Ellen isn’t so sure it’s the accident the police think it is. I read the first one last year last year and thought it was only OK but this one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment so given how much I like most of Brett’sotherseries I came round to see if I liked it more than the first – and the answer is not really. The mystery itself is pretty good but the murder victim was probably the most interesting (and likeable) character in the book. I found Ellen’s family quite hard work – and that sort of bled into Ellen as well. I think I’m probably calling time on this series at this point.
Under the Milky Way by Jess K Hardy
This is a novella linked to the Bluebird Basin series our hero is Madigan’s brother Darryn, who spends Labor Day in Balsam Falls every year after visiting his brother . Hannah our heroine is newly an empty nester and is hoping to take her mind off it with a weekend at a remote cabin in Montana. Except that when she gets there, there’s already someone staying there. So they end up spending the weekend together, and find a connection between them – but can it last beyond the weekend when their lives are (literally) in different places. This is a fun quick read with two older characters finding love and figuring out how their lives fit together.
Castle in Northumbria by Lorna Hill
I am a long time fan of Lorna Hill’s Sadlers Wells series, but haven’t read as many (any?) of her other books, which were out of print when I was the right age to be reading them. They are now available through the Girls Gone By and I picked up this one – which is the fifth in the Marjorie series – a while back (actually two book cons ago!) and finally got around to reading it as part of the pre-book con clear out. And I think the problem is that I was coming in to a series with no existing relationship to any of the characters and although I usually like a kids go on a holiday story (see Swallows and Amazons) I found a lot of the characters in this really annoying! The claim to fame for the series is that it’s where Guy Charlton comes from – and obviously I’ve come across him in the Wells, and he’s much less likable in this than he was in Jane Leaves the Wells! On the bright side after reading this I went back and read two of the Wells books (including Jane leaves) and they were still good – although reading Guy across both series makes me realise that he has a bit of a thing about threatening to spank people!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 