I’ve already mentioned this book a whole bunch of times at this point – as I’ve been excited for it since it was announced and mentioned it again in the anticipated books of the second half of the year post, but it’s finally here – the second book in the Palace insiders series that started with Battle Royal. I had forgotten that the ebook was coming out a month ahead of the paperback until my preorder dropped onto my Kindle on Tuesday so that was a delightful treat and I couldn’t not mention it given how much I like Lucy Parker’s books! Here are the Kindle and Kobo links – and you can of course pre-order the paperback as well if you have the willpower to wait.
Last week I asked you for recommendations for romances featuring musicians, so in return this week, I’m recommending you some books about bands or musicians – nb these are not romance recommendations!
Lets go with Fiction first. Obviously, if you haven’t read Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones and the Six already, do go and read that. If you’ve been under a rock, this is a fake oral history telling the story of a rock band who break up right at the height of their fame. Think Fleetwood Mac style dramas but supercharged. I really liked it – and the audiobook is also really good too – it really enters the spirit of the oral history format of the book by having a full cast and it’s great. The adaptation is out on Amazon Prime now – I still need to watch it but life has been too busy for me to get to it so far.
If you’ve already read Daisy Jones and want another fake oral history of a band, then you could try The Final Revival of Opal and Nev* by Dawnie Walton. The Opal and Nev of the title are a famous – or infamous – musical duo who are most known for an incident at a showcase that left one of their band members dead. It’s quite hard to explain the the structure – it’s an oral history of the band but it’s also the story of the writing of the oral history as the journalist writing it tries to make sense of the story she is hearing and how it fits into her own life because she has a personal connection to the story. The oral history device means it is easy to read in bite sized chunks – which is what I did because it’s more serious than my brain could cope with at some times but don’t let that make you think that’s it’s not good, because it is. Because it’s an oral history it may draw comparisons with Daisy Jones and the Six but they’re actually very different in a lotof other ways – but both worth reading.
I mentioned it in a quick reviews last year – but Robinne Lee’s The Idea of You has the mum of a fan of the biggest boyband in the world falling for one of band members. If you told me it had started out as One Direction fan fic, I would have believed you, and I’m going to say again that it didn’t really work for me and it is not a romance by the definition of the genre, but it has been lots of people’s thing, and the adaptation is coming to Amazon Prime in the not too distant future, starring Anne Hathaway as the mum.
Amore recent book about a musician – rather than a band – is The Unsinkable Greta James, which was a book of the week last year and I actually saw it in paperback in a store the other day. It’s about an indie musician who is struggling after the death of her mum and goes with her dad on the holiday of a lifetime her parents were meant to be taking together.
And is it cheating to suggest the Vinyl Detective series? I feel like it might be, but I’m going to anyway – each book is about a different musical genre, centring on one band’s record and usually featuring at least one member of the band.
In the non-fiction side of things, I’ve mentioned it so many times now, but Viv Albertine’s first memoir, Clothes, Clothes Clothes. Music, Music, Music, Boys, Boys, Boys. is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read – not just one of the best ones by a musician. It’s raw and unflinching and I can’t believe it’s nearly 10 years old. She has written another book since which I keep meaning to getting around to buying. It’s hard to be as brutally honest as Viv Albertine is, but the next closest I’ve read is Martha Wainright’s Stories I Might Regret Telling You, which was of course a Book of the Week last year and which is now out in paperback so should be reasonably easy to get hold of.
So. Quite a difficult choice this week because there wasn’t anything that I finished that I didn’t have a few reservations about. I actually wrote another book up as BotW before I wrote this one because that first one just didn’t feel right because I didn’t like it enough. But – I had less issues with this than I did with the other options, and I read it really quite quickly which is always a positive sign with me. Plus the next book in the series came out last week (which I had forgotten I had preordered, hurrah for Past Verity sending a nice suprise) so it’s sort of timely. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it anyway.
Our heroine is Kareena, who dreams of a big love story, but at the start of Dating Dr Dil it’s the morning of her 30th birthday and it hasn’t happened for her so she’s about to hit the dating apps. Then her family forget her birthday and drop the bombshell that her dad is selling the family home that her mum had renovated and poured her heart into. Kareena and her dad strike a deal: if she can find her soulmate before her sister’s engagement party, he’ll give her the house. Our hero is Prem, a cardiologist who doesn’t believe in love and who has a TV talk show that he’s using to boost his profile to try and fund the medical centre he wants to set up. When he and Kareena first meet it turns into an argument that goes viral and his donors start to pull out. So he proposes a plan: they should date – to restore his image, but also so her dad will follow through on his deal about the house. But how does that fit with Kareena wanting true love?
This is a reimagining of the main plot strand of The Taming of the Shrew – the Petruchio and Katherina bit (not the Bianca bit) or alternatively if you’re a musical fan the Fred/Lili bit of Kiss Me, Kate. And if you’re feeling frustrated with how some of the characters are behaving, remind yourself of that fact and use it to channel your annoyance to the source material. I wanted the two of them to come to their senses a bit earlier, but: plots need conflict, even if Verity wants every one to be happy all the time. But this is basically an enemies to lovers romance with a side order of meddling friends and family and that makes it a lot of fun really.
My copy was on Kindle – bought when it was on a really good offer a while back- but it’s also on Kobo is £2.99 on both at the moment which is quite a good deal really. It’s also in a paperback edition that I’ve even seen in stores. And the next in the series is out now – this time it’s retelling Much Ado About Nothing.
Well. After my busy week at work last week, this week was equally busy at work. And now I’m tired. So tired. And I think my brain is tired too, because by the end of the week I was really struggling to concentrate on a book or settle into reading. At least I’m blaming tiredness because I can’t think of anything else it might be! Anyway, the two on the started list are the two I got to at least 50 pages on and I’m ignoring the pile of discards by my end of the sofa! At least I finished one of the long runners though so that’s something.
Oh boy. I’m not even sure I can explain how excited I was about seeing the Freddie Mercury auction exhibition at Sothebys. Honestly. It was the one thing my sister and I wanted to do together this summer and it absolutely was everything we were hoping it would be.
I may have mentioned before that I am a big Queen fan, and I’m also too young (or not old enough?) to remember them when they were still performing. So I’ve done pretty much all of my fandom through the music and the documentaries (and the musical), which meant that when Mary Austen announced that she was selling basically everything Freddie had left her it was a Big Deal. Mary was his girlfriend during the early days of Queen and was one of his closest friends for the rest of his life. And now for about a month, you can go and look at what is up for sale.
I saw the David Bowie is… exhibtion at the V&A back in the day and had always vaguely wondered why there had never been an equivalent exhibition for Queen. This auction sale is the answer: Freddie himself kept hold of all of his stuff- and passed it on to Mary and she’s been looking after it ever since. Things like the jacket from the Bohemian Rhapsody keep when he sings “I see a little silhouetto of a man”:
And basically every other outfit you’ve ever seen him wear on stage, in a video or at a public appearance. The only exceptions I can think of are the yellow jacket from the Wembley 86 tour and the harlequin leotards. But everything else is here. The “prawn” costume from Its a Hard Life, the leather jacket from Radio Gaga, the suits from Barcelona and Great Pretender, the winged cat suits. The cat waistcoat.
And then there’s all the ephemera – white label pressings of singles and albums, hand written lyrics, photographs and contact sheets, the tour handbooks, the paperwork for Live Aid. My sister and I were wandering the the rooms with our mouths hanging open. It’s truly astonishing.
Then there’s the art and furniture. I’m going to predict that this is going to be popular not just with the Queen fans and music collectors but also the art collectors. Freddie was an art and design student and he loved beautiful things and had an eye for it. He was buying pieces from Sothebys himself back in the day. So there’s a Picasso and a Chagal and a wall of Goya drawings. Plus beautiful pieces of Japanese art and so much more. However much they think it’s going to make, I think it’ll be more.
So if you’re in London before the start of September, this is very much worth a visit. And it’s free.
Well, another fun month. I know this looks a lot, but six of these are that order from Words and Kisses closing down sale, two were preorders (The Cuban Heiress and Tastes Like Shakkar) and the final one was an impulse purchase when I saw it second hand. Now I just need to work my way down the backlog…
I’ve actually named this post for the author of the series because it feels too complicated to do anything else. Today I’m talking about Nancy Spain’s post-WW2 detective (well sort of) novels that feature Natasha DuVivien and Miriam Birdseye – particularly the four that have been republished by Virago in the last couple of years.
Written in the late 1940s and early 1950s the books follow a madcap theatrical duo who stumble across murders in the course of their (more or less) glamorous lives. Miriam is an actress and Natasha is a dancer and as I said in my BotW post about Death Goes on Skis it’s more about the satire and the black humour than it is about solving the actual mysteries. Depending on your reading tastes there’s a lot that she’s satirising here – school stories, mysteries set in theatres, etc. But there’s also a lot of hiding in plain sight queer representation that Nancy Spain snuck in there.
I think they’re going to divide opinion – I enjoyed them, but mum gave up on them I think because they were too much of a mishmash of mystery and also Evelyn Waugh-y satire. And your reaction to that sentence may determine whether these are going to work for you at all!
Virago have done reissues of but there are others in secondhand/collectible only that I haven’t read. You should be able to get hold of the Viragos in bookshops with a reasonable sized fiction section.
I was at the Proms earlier this week, and at The Chicks last month and it’s given me a yearning for some romances with musicians. The Chicks made me want one with backing musician who is secretly in love with his lead singer, who only sees him as a friend, and the Proms made me wonder about whether there are any orchestra-y ones – but I’m not sure what that would involve. I read one the other month with a concert pianist, but it took a turn into romantic suspense that wasn’t what I wanted it to do! So maybe it’s a soloist and the conductor of the orchestra they’re guest performing with? A bit like Sebastian and Veronica from Sadlers Wells but without the ballet or the bit where he ignores her for years because he doesn’t think she should have put her career over his performance. Even though he would have done the same if the situation was reversed. Not that I’m averse to ballet related romances either if that’s all I can get. Or opera. But no eating disorders or fat shaming. That’s all I ask.
Hit me with your suggestions in the comments pretty please!
It’s the second Wednesday of the month again – so you know what that means! Yes, hide your wallets, I’m about to tempt you into some serious buying action with the current crop of Kindle offers. After all, given that I end up buying stuff when I write it, it’s only fair that you buy some too…
Another one I need to get around to reading (but not crime as far as I know) is Small Miracles, which is 99p, I presume because it has arrived in paperback but there is also a sequel is arriving in the autumn, because I saw a proof copy in the office last week. I have Meryl Wilsner’s debut Something to Talk about somewhere in the backlog – Mistakes Were Made ahead of her next one, which is out in September. Also in romances on offer presumably ahead of the next release is Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, which I read recently along with the next in the series, Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail.
I wrote about Mary Balogh’s Survivors Club series not that long ago and this month Remember Me from her Ravenswood series is on offer. It only came out in June and is book two in the series. I of course still need to read book one! As you may have noticed in the weekly posts; I still need to finish The Other Side of Mrs Wood, but its £1.99 at the moment and I think if you liked
If you want some none fiction, Adrian Tinniswood’s The Long Weekend is 99p – I read it back in the pre blog era but if you like history this is the story of the aristocracy and their house parties through the years.
This month we have an increasing number of weird looking Peter Wimsey editions so I don’t even know if I can recommend them at the moment. Oh copyright expiry, how you confuse things! But Cotillion is the 99p Georgette Heyer this month,
The romance run is back – this time it’s another contemporary featuring the wedding industry. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best one I’ve read recently (and I think this is the fourth in the last few months alone)
Ama is a wedding planner who doesn’t believe in happily ever afters. She started planning weddings for her mum – who has been married more than a dozen times – and therein is the reason for AMA’s lack of faith in true love. Her business is going well – and she’s just been booked to organise the wedding of an Instagram star and her fiancée. The only trouble is it means working with Elliot. Ama broke Elliot’s heart two years ago and they haven’t spoken since. But how difficult can it be to get through one wedding together without kissing or killing each other?
Well the answer is obviously very, because it’s a romance novel. This also has split point of view with Ama in the present and Elliot doing the before of their relationship. I bought this off the back of reading the sample, but for me it didn’t deliver on everything I was hoping – mostly because I’m not sure this had quite decided if it was romance or chick lit and so for me it fell in between two stools. But the wedding planning part of it is great – I could absolutely see the influencer wedding that Ama was organising. And given that I read it in about 36 hours flat it is pretty readable too.
My copy was on Kindle but it’s also on Kobo and there’s also a paperback – although I haven’t seen it in stores yet. It only came out in early July and it’s Julie Soto’s debut so we’ll have to wait a while for another but I would definitely give it a read when it appears.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 