Author: veritywilde

Journalist, armchair sports fan, book worm and show fiend. There's a sentence you don't hear too often.
books

Recommendsday: March Quick Reviews

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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!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, new releases

Book of the Week: The Potting Shed Murder

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I’m going for a new murder mystery novel this week – new as in not out until Thursday, so for once I’m ahead of the game. Mark your calendars, it’s not an April fool (that was yesterday!) and it may not happen again this year!

Daphne sends her family have left London behind and moved to Norfolk. Their new home is a a historic farmhouse in a seemingly idyllic village that even has a name to match – Pudding Corner. But when the primary school headteacher is found dead, Daphne realises that all is not what it seems. Daphne gets even more involved when one of her new friends is implicated – but Mr Papplewick was a on the verge of retirement after a career spent in the village – could some one from his past want him dead, or is it one of the other parents at the school?

I really enjoyed the setting and the characters, but I will say that I had the murderer pegged pretty early on, but I read a lot of murder mysteries and this is a debut. It sounds like they’re setting up for a series. So as I liked the premise so much, I will definitely comeback for more if more is offered to me. This is written by Paula Sutton, aka Instagram‘s Hill House Vintage and as well as the murder mystery this also has dollops of her vintage style. This has blurb comparisons to Richard Osman and Richard Coles and I think that’s pretty fair, but also some of the American cozies themed around hobbies and handicrafts.

My copy came from NetGalley, but is out on Thursday so you have a few days left to preorder a physical copy, kindle or kobo edition. As it’s not out yet and it’s a debut novel I V have no idea how easy it will be to get in the shops, but I will keep an eye out for it.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 25 – March 31

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it’s April Fool’s Day, and I’m wondering if I’m fooling myself because I’ve started another non-fiction book that has potential to end up in on the long-runners list because it’s a hardback. But the documentary that goes with the Lucy Worsley Agatha Christie book was on TV the other day and it reminded me that mum has just read the book and said it was really good, so off I went. Anyway, beyond that I’m challenging myself to try and get a little ahead with the NetGalley reading, by which I mean I’ve started the April books already – because we all know that I’m way behind with the NetGalley reading in general! But hey, at least I got one thing off the long-runners list last week. This week I’ve got a couple of days off work but also a couple of days of rail disruption (engineering work *and* strikes) so less commuting time than usual so we will see what happens.

Read:

Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh

Nabbed in New Mexico by Patti Benning

Lurking in Louisiana by Patti Benning

Dead Water by Ngaio Marsh

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Foul Play in Florida by Patti Benning

The Potting Shed Murder by Paula Sutton*

Started:

Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley

The Other Side of Disappearing by Kate Clayborn*

How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang*

Still reading:

The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R King

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

One pre-order, one ebook, two second-handbooks. Posititively restrained

Bonus picture: Easter Saturday evening in All Saints, Northampton. I do love a bit of church architecture and I always forget how spectacular it is inside here – it looks like something from Mayfair has been transported out of London.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, The pile

Books Incoming: Late March Special edition

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So I’ve pulled the trigger on an emergency Books Incoming because the pile of books that have arrived was getting very tall and a little wobbly, and that was before the arrivals while I was in Portugal. So here we are. To be fair, the mid-month post was early this month, and the photo was taken before Manila, so it was more a late February arrivals situation, but still. Ahem.

Half of this post is preorders of new releases – the RuPaul (which is signed!), the Armistead Maupin and the two Angela Thirkells – as Virago appear to have decided to release some more, which is going to mean another rearranging of the bookshelves! Then we have the airport purchases on the war to the Philippines – the Nita Prose sequel to The Maid and the new Tessa Bailey because I was intrigued by the idea of a golf romance!

The actual Manila purchases are the Beverly Jenkins, Susan Elizabeth Philips – which I have read but via the library and was such a bargain I couldn’t leave it in the shop and the final part of Angel Catbird which you can just about see at the back. And finally there’s the Diane Mott Davidson, which as I mentioned in the Goldy Schulz post is the last reasonably priced one that I can find.

And that’s it – as if it wasn’t enough! – until the next post at least and the pile is already not that small…

books, series

Mystery series: Max Tudor

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Happy Friday everyone! Here in the UK it’s a bank holiday for Good Friday so I’m taking the opportunity to write about a murder mystery series featuring a vicar!

Max is a former MI5 agent turned vicar, who is now parish priest in an idyllic village on the south-west coast of England. He was hoping to escape his past, but he’s still attracting more attention than he would like from his female parishioners. The ex-spy situation gives Max a really good reason to be involved in investigating deaths, including ones where he doesn’t stumble across the body himself. Across the course of eight books Max has found his place in the village and started a family of his own, which poses its own challenges too.

I really like Max as a character and the options for stories that his backstory provides. Plus the secondary characters are interesting and the setting is charming. They’re often a little darker than some other cosy mysteries, but there’s the solutions aren’t usually as unexpectedly dark as, say, the Dandy Gilver series often turn out to be. I haven’t read the latest book because, well you’ve seen the state of the tbr pile, and I haven’t seen it in a store yet, and you all know that’s when I find it hardest to resist buying books!

If you want more cosy crime mysteries that are vicar adjacent, you might want to check out the ministry is murder series, although they added a little harder to get hold of than Max Tudor is, as the latest Max book came out last year. And they don’t have vicars, but G M Malliet has a couple of other series that you can check out too.

Have a great weekend!

Book previews

Out Today: The Good, the Bad and the Aunties

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The third book in Jesse Q Sutano’s series that started with Dial A for Aunties is out today. I’ve got a copy to read – and I’m hoping it will be a return to what I loved about the first book, rather than the second which I found disappointing as the things that I had liked less about the first book were the things that had been increased and the cringe factor was just too much for me. But as we know, I am very bad with cringe and second-hand embarrassment. Cross your fingers, and I’ll try and remember to report back, but what ever happens, I have loved the covers for this series – the UK versions and the US ones are so pretty.

Also – before I go, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, which was one of my favourite books of last year is out in paperback today too and is really, really good.

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Italy

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It’s Easter this weekend, and so I’m going with a slightly tangential theme for this week’s recommendsday – books set in Italy, as that’s where the Pope hangs out, and you know that’s enough for a link for me at the moment!

Let’s start with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, which is about the childhood of two friends in Naples in the 1950s. The identity of the author is a mystery and many say that’s because the book seems so real it must be autobiographical. It’s the first of four books – I have the others still to read and I really must try to get to them soon. The Naples of this book is the opposite of the glamorous Italy you often see in films but it’s fascinating and engrossing.

Talking of the glamorous romantic view of Italy, that’s exactly why the women in The Enchanted April go to Italy in Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1920s novel. I’ve written about it before because it’s right in my wheelhouse, with a medieval castle and four very different women decamping from their normal lives looking for a change in a holiday to the Italian riviera.

Talking of medieval, and another book I’ve mentioned before – Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose which is a murder mystery set in a monastery with a legendary library. I read it as part of my degree, and you should all be glad that I’m recommending this and not Machiavelli’s The Prince, which I also read as part of the same module! Catch-22 was assigned reading for another module but again I really liked it (I did not like the Seven Pillars of Wisdom which was another assigned book for that one) although Heller’s novel is more about the madness and tragedy of war and just happens to be taking place (mainly) in Italy.

I read this a very long time ago, and haven’t been back since, but I’m still going to mention Anthony Capella’s debut, The Food of Love, which is a Cyrano de Bergerac sort of twist about an American woman visiting Rome and falling in love with a man who cooks for her. Except who is really cooking the food?

I’ve been trying to think if I have read any romances set in Italy but my mind is inexplicably blank, so if that comes back to me, I’ll do a follow up I guess. I do have a bunch of books set in Italy on the tbr pile – including some murder mystery and a few historical fiction novels too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: When Grumpy Met Sunshine

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A big old stack of reading last week because: holiday, so a few things to chose from, but this was easily my favourite – although I have one reservation if you read on!

As the title suggests, this is a grumpy-sunshine romance, where the sunny half of the couple is ghost writer Mabel and the grumpy is her latest subject, former footballer Alfie who has been persuaded to write his memoirs. Except that he doesn’t want to reveal anything about himself and he doesn’t do emotions. So Mabel’s job isn’t going to be easy, but she tries and they start snarking and squabbling as they try to get something down on paper. And then they’re spotted together in public and the press decides that Mabel and Alfie are a couple. And of course the first rule of ghost writing is that no one can know that you’re a ghost writer so they pretend to be in a relationship. Except that there is a lot of chemistry going on and Mabel is in very real danger of catching feelings for Alfie. But he couldn’t really be interested in a girl like her, could he?

And therein lies my problem with this book. Because it is absolutely clear that Alfie really does have feelings for Mabel and he has them from quite early on, and she is just the most obvious person that was ever oblivious not to see it. And obviously that’s how she has to be for the plot to work, and Charlotte Stein does make a good attempt at trying to give a reason why Mabel might not think he’s into her and it does make his grand gesture at the end very grand but still. For a smart woman, Mabel is very stupid when it comes to noticing how into her Alfie is. But the banter was so fun and it was so funny I forgave it because it really was a lot of fun. And it is also really quite steamy during the fake relationship portion of it – I had to put it down while I was on the plane home because I was worried the person next to me was going to read it over my shoulder and then I would have died of embarrassment!

This is the first Charlotte Stein novel that I’ve read – and from what I can see it’s her first novel in this sort of area – she’s written a couple of dozen romances before but the rest of her back catalogue seem to be in the ménage/erotica end of the genre which is not really what I read, so I will be keeping an eye out for what she writes next if there is going to be more like this!

I’ve seen When Grumpy Met Sunshine in the shops all over the place – and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 18 – March 24

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Well that was a lovely week. I’ve been off work and recharging my batteries visiting a friend in Portugal – this involved sightseeing, ice cream, cat petting and lots of reading. It was a delight. And this week I’m back to the real world, but it’s Easter at the weekend, so that’s nice! In terms of the actual reading, I’m blitzing my way through another series by Patti Benning and then there were a few Girls Own books and then I’m nearly finished the Nick de Semelyen.

Read:

Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Ricky at the Riding School by Patricia Baldwin

Offed in Oregon by Patti Benning

For The Sake of The House by Veronica Marlow

Croaked in California by Patti Benning

False Scent by Ngaio Marsh

Fallin’ Fast by Patti Benning

When Grumpy Met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein

Started:

Nabbed in New Mexico by Patti Benning

Still reading:

The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R King

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Two books bought in a bookshop, three more at the Book Exchange.

Bonus picture: Fishing boats on the beach on Saturday.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.