I just wanted to mention that the third in Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series of F/f romances has come out this week. I read the first two back to back earlier this year and have been waiting for this one to finish off the set. Iris has been a secondary character in the other two and I’m really looking forward to seeing what her happy ending looks like. This is very much a trilogy (or at least I think it is) so do try and read the others first for maximum effect. And I promise I will report back when I’ve read it.
This week’s Recommendsay is another in my occasional series of recommendations based on romance tropes. Well sort of. I’m not sure that reality shows are actually a full on trope, but I’ve read a bunch of them now so I’m claiming it. What most of them have in common is that the hero or heroine is falling in love with someone that they shouldn’t – in the ones on dating shows they’re usually falling for a producer rather than one of the contestants. But I’m not sure what that counts as as a trope – falling for the wrong person maybe? Or forbidden love? Anyway, to the books
I’m starting with the book that sparked the idea for this post – The Love Rematch by Kay Marie*, which came out last week and is currently in Kindle Unlimited. Emily finds herself as the lead on a TV dating show (think the Bachelorette) after her mum goes on breakfast TV begging America to find her daughter a boyfriend. It’s not until she gets to the show that she finds out that one of the producers is Jake, the boy who broke her heart when he left her without a word just as they had finished high school. She’s determined to get revenge on him by showing him how happy she can be without him (and launching her jewellery brand by wearing it on the show) and he’s trying to get a promotion. But it’s a romance novel so of course they’re not as over each other as they think they are. I really enjoyed this – although it took a bit of a surprising turn at the end, which I think needed more time to work out, and the epilogue wasn’t really an epilogue – more of a final chapter just set a year later. But I read it in a couple of days once I really got into it and it was fun. And obviously made me want to write this post!
In One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London, Bea also finds herself as the lead in a dating show, this time not because her mum volunteered her, but because she wrote a blog complaining about the lack of body diversity in dating shows. When i wrote about this three years (!) ago, I said not to go into it expecting at traditional romance, because it’s more complicated than that – for all that it has a happily ever after. But I’m still including it here becuase I think if you read it you would like the Kay Marie, and vice versa.
Not set on a dating show, but on a show that’s basically Bake Off lightly disguised, Rosaline Palmer takes the Cakeby Alexis Hall (yes I know, I wrote about Hall’s new book last week, but sue me, this fits!) has a single mum breaking away from parental expectations to compete on a TV cooking contest and finding herself in a love triangle (sort of) with two of the other contestants. This isn’t as straight forward a romance as some of Hall’s other contemporary romances, but you do get a happily ever after even if you’re left guessing who it’s going to be with for a while.
It’s only a few months since The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren was BotW so I can’t really justify writing about it in massive detail again here, but trust me when I say that it also fits this prompt – and is probably the closest to The Love Rematch and also more successful in execution than that is. And an honourable mention to Battle Royal by Lucy Parker, which isn’t actually set on a reality show, but that is where the hero an heroine first crossed swords.
Bit of a marginal choice this week, but I thought I’d do something different and throw in a rare Royal Romance read that’s also a Christmassy one – even if we’re not past Halloween yet!
Dani Martinez is a professor hoping for tenure. She’s also hoping her ex-husband will sign the divorce papers and has sworn off love completely. Trouble is, she’s about to be an attendant at a royal wedding and this involves some contact with the playboy duke the bride dumped for Dani’s friend. Max has issues of his own: his parents are awful, he’s finished his studies and doesn’t have a job, and now his engagement has been broken off, his parents are trying to find a replacement fiancée for him, stat. Dani and Max become unlikely friends, but it can never turn into anything more – can it?
This was absolutely delightful until about the 80 percent mark at which point it just didn’t quite stick the landing. I’m not quite sure what went wrong – whether it was too much to do in not enough time, if I just didn’t like the way Jenny Holiday decided to resolve the conflict/tension in the relationship or if it was a combination of the two but after an absolutely cracking unlikely friends, vanquishing the evil ex, rebuilding sibling relationships ride, it just didn’t quite end as well as I wanted it too. But it’s still pretty good – and better than a lot of the other romances I’ve tried lately, many of which haven’t even made it on to the list because I didn’t get further than 50 pages before I gave them up in a rage. And not always in a Sunday afternoon funk either!
This one is on offer on Kindle and Kobo at the moment, and it’s the second book in a trilogy of related romances which are also on offer. Enjoy!
I don’t know what happens to me on a Sunday at the moment where I lose the ability to pick a new book and stick to it. It’s a real puzzle to me, but it seems to happen every week at the moment. Still identifying a pattern of behaviour is the first step to breaking it right? Still I had a good week – with a lovely trip to Old Friends and then two nights in Essex. This week has a few nights in London and I might go and see another show. So we’ll see what that does to the list next Monday!
Bonus photo: Christmas is coming – the fancy advent calendars are startingto appear! Thiswasin thewindow of Liberty on Tuesday – it’s their famous (well depending on whether you follow makeup/skincare bloggers a fewyearsback or not) beauty one. Every year I think about treating myself and then remember the amount of lotions and potions I have kicking around that I need to clear out and give myself a stern shake.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
This was my Tuesday evening entertainment this week and of course I was going to write about it, given that I bought the tickets the day that they went on sale and have been looking forward to it for months.
Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends is the West End run of the tribute show that Cameron Mackintosh put on with some of the best known and most loved songs from his long producing relationship with the late musical genius. It’s on a limited run in the West End with headline stars Bernadette Peters (her first ever West End show!!) and Lea Salonga (Princess Jasmine herself) along with support from West End powerhouses like Janie Dee and Joanna Riding.
And I was in musical theatre heaven – I’ve seen Company, Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, Follies (three times!), Sweeney Todd and Merrily We Roll Along so there were a lot of songs that were familiar to me. I have the Sondheim 80th birthday prom on the Tivo and have watched it more times than I can count, and I’ve watched the various documentaries about his life that have popped up in the last few years. So it was wonderful to get what is essentially a greatest hits concert – and to try and guess who was going to sing what – the programme has a song list but not who is doing which bits. And there are plenty of options for each one – as more than one of the cast have played each role. I was mostly right, but there are a few gender-swapped suprises. And it definitely brought home for me how wonderfully Sondheim wrote songs for older women. It’s not just Send in the Clowns, it’s Losing My Mind, and Everything’s Coming Up Roses, I’m Still Here, The Boy from and Ladies Who Lunch AND MORE. Just wonderful. I’ve been humming the songs for days.
How it will work for you if you don’t know your Sondheim, I’m not sure, so I had a bit of a hunt around to find the trailer for it with the most singing in it (see above!) but I think there are enough songs here that you would know – there’s West Side Story here too and A Little Night Music that you would probably enjoy it – and at least come away wanting to see the full version of some of the shows. I loved it so much I would go back again. And who knows, I might well go back and see it again.
It would be remiss of me to end this post without mentioning the amazingly talented Haydn Gwynne, who died this week and who should have been in this show. She had to withdraw days before previews started for “sudden personal reasons” – which sadly turned out to be a cancer diagnosis. And now, just weeks later she’s gone. I saw her in Women on the Verge of A Nervous Breakdown and The Audience – and I know she would have been fabulous in this – because she was in the original tribute show last year. So leave you with part of her performance of Ladies Who Lunch from that show, which if you’re in the UK you can find on iPlayer to watch again – which we did on Friday night.
Do you remember how excited I got only a few weeks ago about the romance section at Waterstones Piccadilly? Well I went in this week to try and find the new Alexis Hall in the wild and guess what… it had gone! They’ve reorganised it all already and now it’s smaller (I think) and at the back. The whole of that front section is now Crime and Thriller. I have no words but I do have a few pictures.
I say it’s smaller but I’m not actually sure, it just felt more cramped. The photo above is the main section and then on the left there is a Pride section – which is a mix of fiction and non fiction LGTBQIA+ books – including some Alexis Hall but not the one I was looking for!
Then the main romance bit is to the right. I don’t think it was properly set up – there were still gaps all over place on shelves elsewhere on the floor and trolleys of books too as you can see in the picture below.
I only had about ten minutes to wander around – so I couldn’t properly dig into what had gone awol, but I thought I should probably do an update as I’d been so excited about the old configuration…
It’s the run up to Halloween, so I was thinking that I probably ought to try and do a spooky or vampire-y series post at some point this month. Trouble is, I don’t read a lot of books with spooky or supernatural stuff in them. I’ve already written about Sookie Stackhouse (vampires! werewolves! all sorts!) and I’ve put more links to Terry Pratchett recently than I can shake a stick at (but I’ll throw you somemore). But tangential thinking takes me to another Charlaine Harris series – albeit one that doesn’t have any supernatural shenanigans.
When we meet Aurora Teagarden in the first book, she’s a librarian in Lawrenceston, Georgia. Along with some of her friends, she’s part of a Real Murder club – who meet every month to discuss and analyse famous true crimes. Her mum doesn’t approve, but Aurora doesn’t see any harm in it until a member gets murdered – and the other group members are suspects. Of course she solves the murder, but it’s just the start because over the course of ten books she just keeps stumbling across bodies and murderers!
If you like cozy crime and you like Charlaine Harris, these will really work for you. I find Harris incredibly easy to read and her mystery plots are pretty solid. I can sometimes figure out who did it, but not always, and not usually particularly early in the book, and you can’t say that about everyone! Aurora is an engaging heroine and she manages not to fall into the too-stupid-to-live trap too often – and I like the slightly antagonistic relationship she has with the local police because it’s not *just* about the fact that she keeps poking her nose into their investigations – although that is also a factor. Sidenote: some series are better at managing the amateur and the police relationships than others – some go too cozy (why aren’t they bothered this person is inserting themselves?) or some too antagonistic (which is just anxiety inducing for the reader and not what I come to cozy crime for).
Anyway, I have one proviso to mention with this series; and that’s that the final two books were written after a considerable gap and are… perhaps not one hundred percent consistent with some aspects of the earlier stories but that’s probably only something oyu would notice if you really did binge-read these from start to finish. As to why there was such a big gap – or rather why Charlaine Harris came back to the series, well I would point the finger at the success of the Hallmark Movie versions of the books – which again, are not entirely consistent with the books but are among the better cozy crime TV adaptations that I’ve watched (and I’ve watched a few) and you can pretty much just see them as a separate thing.
They should be fairly easy to get hold of on Kindle, and there were definitely fairly comprehensive paperback releases of the first eight in the series (because that’s how i read them – from the works or the library) and the kindles have new covers now which suggests there may have also been a release at some point.
Just a quick post today to mark the fact that Sweet Mercies, the sequel to recent BotW Small Miracles, is out today. It’s a Christmas book and I’ve started it, but not finished it yet because of that whole reading mojo slightly awol thing that I mentioned on Monday. I will get there though and it is on track to be my first Christmas novel of the season!
This inspired by the chat thread I have with my friend Tom, who I’ve been trading recommendations with for a while now after he read Red, White and Royal Blue and wanted more! I’ve been working on it for a while, but as yesterday’s Book of the Week was the new Alexis Hall, (yes he’s the person I already recommended it to) I thought now was the time to let it loose on the world.
Let’s start with the Timothy Janovsky, which I also read last week and am also lending to Tom. This has a time travel gimmick/device and although it didn’t work as well for me as The Seven Year Slip did, that was because I found the hero, Nolan, incredibly hard to like. But I know I’m a massive grump at the moment on that front, so other people may love it. Nolan is a wannabe standup comedian who blows off his sister’s wedding reception and disappoints his family, while also leaving his best friend and crush in the lurch (see what I mean about hard to like?!), after arguing with everyone he wishes on some crystals before bed and wakes up seven years later a massive success but with friends and family still ignoring him. Thus begins his quest to fix it all and get back to his “real” life. And that’s the point where Nolan starts to get better, but it does take a while to get there!
In The Problem with Perfect by Philip William Stover, Ethan is the mastermind behind style icon, influencer and TV star Chase and their TV bosses think they’re a couple. They’re very much not, and when Chase (and his ego) walks out and leaves the country ahead of a major Pride event he’s due to be fronting, Ethan hunts down Chase’s twin brother Beau and persuades him to take Chase’s place. You know where this is going. I loved the side characters, but didn’t think the main romance was quite as satisfying or well-resolved as it should have been because it all wraps up super, super fast.
If you read the Stover and like it, then you might also like Best Men by Sidney Karger (or at least like it more than I did!), which is another book set around a wedding – Max’s best friend Paige is getting married and wants him to be her Man of Honor. This throws him into close contact with the groom’s brother Chasten who is basically his complete opposite and they have to learn to work together. I had a bunch of issues with this – lack of sympathetic characters, not enough time with Max and Chasten together to understand why they might want to be a couple, constant references to Max being the “gay best friend” but I can see from Goodreads that other people have really enjoyed it because they found it much, much funnier than I did!
It’s a short story, but I wanted to include A Thief in the Night by K J Charles, a historical romance where a highwayman turns valet and ends up caught up in a plot to steal a priceless bracelet. It’s linked to Charles’ The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting which I’ve mentioned here before and also would fit into this post if you want some more historical M/m romance.
Today’s Book of the Week is actually out today – so it’s very apt and I’m sort of pleased with myself for the timing of my reading. Look, it’s the small things at the moment. I’ll take positives where I can find them.
Sam is the manager of a bed and bath store. His days are spent trying to pull the rest of the staff out of whatever disaster they’ve just caused. They need the jobs and he likes them. Trouble is, Jonathan, the owner of the chain has noticed that’s Sam’s store isn’t doing as well as the others so he sends for him to visit the head office in London. The trouble is, while Sam is there, there’s a little accident involving a shower enclosure and the next thing Sam knows he’s in hospital with concussion and he’s accidentally made Jonathan think he has amnesia. With no one to call to help, Sam ends up staying at Jonathan’s house and how on earth is he going to get out of this, especially as maybe Jonathan isn’t as bad as he thought he was…
So, amnesia-related storylines are not my favourite type of romance plots, but generally I have loved Alexis Hall’s contemporary romances, so I made a rare foray in to the trope to see what he would do with it. And it’s a lot of fun. It made me surprisingly emotional at times – and obviously faked amnesia is an easier sell for me than actual amnesia – although there are some issue still around how you un-fake the amnesia. It’s a grumpy-sunshine sort of thing, although I’m not sure we really got to understand enough of why Jonathan is the way he is – especially as he’s so mean to start off with – I wanted more of him being kinder. Also I wanted to know a bit more about Sam – but then when I did, I got what was going on there, and yes I know that’s a bit cryptic but it will make sense if you read it! I don’t think I love it as much as I loved Boyfriend Material, but it’s still a really, really good read and I will happily recommend it. In fact I already have, even before this post!
My copy came from NetGalley (praise the gods of books!) but as I said at the top it’s out today in Kindle, Kobo, audiobook and paperback – which Waterstones seem to have in stock across their Central London branches so I’m optimistic that you’ll be able to get a copy if you want one!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 