Happy last Wednesday of the month everyone, and for this Recommendsday I bring you some reviews of recent releases. It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how much I liked them (and I left out the one that I really, really detested) but if I only ever raved about books and I kept all the stuff I didn’t like strictly to the Goodread account, if you never check that as well, in the end you might stop believing me. So here we are. And I was going to call this quick reviews, but then I realised I actually had quite a lot to say about each of them so it’s just ‘reviews now!
My Name is MacKenzie Bly by Lissa Evans*
This one is actually out tomorrow, and it’s the one that I liked the most of the three I’m talking about today. MacKenzie Bly (real name Philip Stevens) is a 14-year-old boy who doesn’t like his life much. He’s tall, he’s broad, one of his mums teaches at his school, the other is a plumber and his dad turns up at all the worst possible moments. All of this means the other kids at school have plenty of ammunition to use against him and to top it all off, his best friend has moved to New Zealand. This is his story in his words, and is blurbed as being Adrian Mole for the 21st century. I enjoyed reading this and read it very quickly but I’m unsure who the audience for it is. It’s very different from Lissa Evans’s other recent books which have all been historical fiction. It has the feel of a YA book in some ways (and the cover of one) but there are a lot of references in here that are clearly for adults – stuff that the teenage protagonist doesn’t understand or doesn’t see but that adults clearly will. It made me laugh and I enjoyed it but don’t know how like a real-current-14 year old our protagonist is – to me he felt like a teenager from the sort of era that I was a teen for (so early 00s) but with a dash of added viral videos (but not really much reference to social media or messaging among students beyond that). So it’s a retro feel book, that’s a lot of fun but which also ends very abruptly and is a bit confusing. I’m not sure who I would be buying it for – and that may be the main issue for it. But I did really enjoy it.
The One Where They Fall in Love by Cristina Wolf*
Elle is a romance editor who has watched her friends find love without any luck herself. Oliver is a reluctant medical resident who doesn’t think a relationship is in the cards for him. When Oliver moves into the apartment above Elle, complete with a dog with separation anxiety, the two of them are thrown into each other’s path. When Elle starts to dog sit Thor and they spend more time together, a connection starts to develop – but can it lead to a happily ever after? I liked the idea of this – and the start was promising, but ultimately Elle and Oliver are very different people and it was hard to see how they could make a relationship work long term, given the various obstacles in their way. It’s all pretty low stakes, but also some proper conversations between the two leads could have solved some of the issues much earlier. It’s fine while you’re reading it but it hasn’t really stuck with me – I’m writing this ten days or so after reading it because I wanted to let my thoughts percolate a little and I’m regretting that because it’s already fading away in my memory! This came out on the 11th, and I haven’t really been in a bookshop since then so I don’t know how easy this is going to be to get hold of in paperback, but it’s in all the usual ebook formats.
Henrietta by Sophie Irwin
Henrietta has been in love with Arthur since she was a child. When he went away to fight Napoleon she was a shy debutant, but now he’s back she’s determined to try and make him see her in a different light, but can she make herself over into a toast of society and attract his attention enough to notice what’s hiding under his nose? Here’s the thing: I really like Georgette Heyer – I have read all of her Regency romances and re-read my favourites time and time again. I have also read Sophie Irwin’s other books, so I was excited and interested to see what a new “official Georgette Heyer” novel meant. Unfortunately this didn’t work for me on a couple of levels. Now I appreciate that my summary sounds simple, but it’s really not. There are at least two other major story lines and there is just too much plot going on here – which is something that I have found with other Sophie Irwin books but which has sometimes been fine, but in this means there is just too much going on and that the ending(s) feel very rushed. It also felt like it was trying to include plot ideas from as many different Heyers as possible but it didn’t really hang together very well – or feel particularly consistent. In terms of the writing style, it felt like it was trying to create a Heyer like feel by just dropping as many words and phrases from Heyer as possible rather than actually trying to emulate the writing style. So in short it felt like a Sophie Irwin (and all the problems often I have with that) but with added Heyer-vocab. Not a success for me sadly. This one came out two weeks ago too and see my point above about lack of bookshop visits since but given it’s official status and hardcover release, I suspect it’s going to be easy to find if you want to see if you agree with me or not.
That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 