Category: Book previews

Book previews

Out this Week: New Perveen Mistry

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After a three year break, there is a new Perveen Mistry mystery out this week. These are murder mysteries set in 1920s India and our heroine/detective is Perveen, who happens to be Bombay’s only female solicitor. This new book is called The Star from Calcutta and sees her securing her biggest client yet – a Bollywood studio. She’s meant to be helping an actress who owns the studio with her director husband, who is caught up in a breach of contract dispute, but a body is found after a screening and the actress goes missing. I’ve read the first two in this series and really like Perveen as a character and the whole setting and set up and as you know I love a 1920s-set mystery. I have the third one waiting to be read, and as you know I try to read things in order so it may be a while before I get to this one, but if anything was going to tempt me to get going on the series it’s the prospect of a Bollywood-set book because I love a Hollywood-set book, particularly in the early years of the movie industry so this is right up my street.

Book previews

Out this Week: New Library Lovers

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The latest Library Lovers book, Booking for Trouble, came out in hardback in the US on Tuesday, This is the sixteenth in Jenn McKinlay’s series about Lindsay Norris, a library director in Briar Creek, Connecticut, and sees Lindsay getting involved in a murder after heading out on a book boat to some of the islands in her library’s patch, inspired by bookmobiles (or mobile libraries as we have here I guess?) that she’s seen in other areas.

But this also is my chance to talk about the demise of the mass market paperback in the US. These aren’t available on Kindle in the UK, so I’ve been buying in the paperbacks for years from the US. There are a couple of series like this, where I rely on these smaller than average (and cheaper than average!) paperback copies to get my fix. But sales have been dropping, and more and more books have switched to the larger and more expensive trade paperback format. Various people have been writing about it, but here’s the New York Time’s article from the start of the month, and Publisher’s Weekly’s from December. As a voracious and speedy reader, the price point and convenience of mass markets – especially secondhand – has been a boon for my reading – particularly in my early days of romance reading when the likes of Eloisa James and Sarah MacLean weren’t always getting UK releases. There are series that I want to finish – or continue reading – where I definitely can’t justify the hardback price for them. And given my love of matching sets, a size change is definitely not what I want either! This is one of a number of series where I’m going to have decisions to make as the next books come out.

Book previews

Romance Series: Bluebird Basin

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With the skating over and the Winter Olympics coming to a close, I’m keeping the winter sport tangent going on for ever so slightly longer with a trilogy of romance novels set around a ski resort. Slightly tenuous, but I’m going with it and you can’t stop me!

This three novels are interconnected but not really interdependent (the last one is the question mark) romances set in the ski resort of Bluebird Basin. Come As You Are which was a BotW in 2023 and was about Madison the ex-rockstar and sober living home owner and Ashley who is fighting to keep control of her family’s ski hill. She’s in her mid 40s, he’s around a decade older and they both have baggage to overcome before they can get to their happily ever after. The second book is Lips Like Sugar which is about Mad’s bandmate Cole and Ashley’s best friend Mira who end up fake dating at Ashley and Madigan’s wedding because of Mira’s awful ex. But the fake date is the start of a real connection between the two of them even after Cole has headed back to Seattle.

And finally Wish You Were is the only one I haven’t written about here beforeand is the story of Kevin and Davis, who were a couple until Kevin relapsed into drug addiction. He’s back from rehab and wants to win Davis back, but she really doesn’t know if she can trust Kev again. And the resort is so small they can’t exactly never see each other. There are themes of addiction and recovery running through the first two stories but this one has addiction and recovery much more front and centre than those two did, which is a bit less in my regular reading wheelhouse. Like the others in the series this is a second chance romance, but this time the protagonists are a lot younger, and they are looking for their second chance after Kev’s relapse into drug addiction. It’s still really well written, and it’s really emotional and builds to a satisfying resolution but I think it was a bit too high on the angst scale for me at the time that I was reading it (and to be fair, I don’t think I’ve got any more emotionally resilient since, if anything the opposite). But if you do like that, I think it’s really going to work for you. But the first two with the older protagonists were much more my thing – they’re not quite the same as the Cathy Yardley older protagonist romances that I’ve loved, but they’re not too-too far away from that.

These are all in Kindle Unlimited at the moment- along with Jess K Hardy’s two space-set romances, which I haven’t read (yet).

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book previews

Out this Week: Alexandra Vasti

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I’ve got one for the historical romance fans this week, while you wait for the second half of the latest series of Bridgerton to arrive next week! This is a paperback release of the first two books in Alexandra Vasti’s Halifax Hellions series – In Which Margo Halifax Earns Her Shocking Reputation and In Which Matilda Halifax Learns the Value of Restraint – rather than something new-new, so serious fans may have read already. I have Vasti on my to-read-once-the-pile-goes-down list because so many people in the romance communities that I hang out in are huge fans of her books, and she’s also a really interesting interview, which is usually a good sign too. This is out in Kindle next week, but in the meantime Ladies in Hating, which came out in September is on offer on Kindle for 99p!

Happy Reading!

Book previews

Out This Week: New Chicago Stars

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The NFL season may be over and the Seahwawks have taken the Vince Lombardi trophy back to Seattle, but this week we have a new addition to Susan Elizabeth Philips’s Chicago Stars series. I’ve written about these before – the last one actually came out the week following the Super Bowl too, but they remain one of my favourite sports romance series (maybe my actual favourite?) despite the huge swaths of NFL and NHL romances that are on the shelves at the moment. The new book is called And the Crowd Went Wild, and it has a star quarterback and an actress as the duo – now I could get cynical about this (yes Taylor is a pop star and Travis is a tight end, not a QB) except that it’s Susan Elizabeth Philips and this is what she does but also I just heard Julia Quinn recommend it on last week’s Smart Bitches Trashy Books podcast. I’m really looking forward to reading this when I get hold of it.

Book previews

Out Today: Misty Divine sequel

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Cover of Missing in Soho

It’s the first Thursday of February, and I wanted to mention that there is a sequel out today to one of last February Quick Review books, Murder in the Dressing Room. The sequel is called Missing in Soho and has a missing photographer and an attack on a private detective. As I wrote in that review of the first book, there is was a big hanging plot thread left in that one, so I’m intending to read this one to find out what happens next. I will try and remember to report back! It also should be noted that that first book has had a bit of a cover redesign since last year so don’t be confused if you spot the paperback in the shops and it looks a bit different to the one from last year.

New cover of Murder in the Dressing Room
Screenshot
Book previews

Out Today: Night Rider

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Happy Thursday everyone, and I have another new book out today that I wanted to talk about. So we have a big trend of Cowboy and ranch romances at the moment, but Night Rider is adding in the famous person and normal person trope in this case a a cowboy and a Hollywood starlet. But. But. Look at this cover: Pastel colours, illustrations. Yes there is the word suspense in the Bailey Hannah quote, but does this look like a romantic suspense novel? Because this is the final line of the description:

But that dream is threatened when Nina’s past catches up with her. And when an unlikely predator strikes, she and Maverick must make a choice: to let each other go or face the world together.

So. I have a copy of this via NetGalley because I am behind with the Cowboy/Ranch trend and I wanted to get in on it, but when I was picking it out, I didn’t really peg it as being as Romantic Suspense as the Amazon page says it is. So I’m going to read it, and see how romantic suspense it is, and then go and find some more cowboys to see if they’re all actually romantic suspense and cover signalling has gone even more out the window than I previously thought!

Book previews, cozy crime, detective, first in series, new releases, reviews

Bonus Review: A Very Novel Murder

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Cover of A Very Novel Murder

I have an extra review this week because A Very Novel Murder came out on Tuesday and I have already read it – back in December in fact. This is Elllie Alexander’s new series which is itself a spin-off of her Secret Bookcase series. So if you’ve read that you’ll already be familiar with our heroine Annie, who is now opening her own private dectective agency with her friend Fletcher, as well as continuing to run the Secret Bookcase bookshop. I can’t really say any more about the backstory than that, because if I do, I’m spoiling the previous series for those who haven’t read it – but you can find my post about the series here.

Anyway in this first in the new series, Annie and Fletch take on their first case when an elderly woman asks them to investigate the death of her neighbour, a promising surfer whose death the police think was either accidental or suicide. There is also a new running story for the series, in the same way that the thread that ran through the Secret Bookcase was Annie’s quest to find out who had murdered her best friend.

I enjoyed this – it’s got some set up going on for the series, but because it’s an established group of characters from the previous series Alexander hasn’t felt the need to go overboard there (also it would have been spoilery!). I had the culprit for the murder pegged relatively early, but there were enough side twists that I didn’t mind too much when I did turn out to be right. My issue with the final Secret Bookcase was that the running plot meant that the mystery of the week (so to speak) got less complex to allow time for that, this was better than the last couple there, so hopefully we won’t see the same thing again in this series. I’m looking forward to reading the next one.

I got my copy via NetGalley, but it’s out now and in Kindle Unlimited, which of course means it’s not on Kobo at the moment except for as an audiobook. I’ve never seen these in the shops, but Amazon claims it’s available in Paperback (and that that came out in November) so who knows.

Happy Reading!

Book previews, series

Series Redux: Marlow Murder Club

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The latest Marlow Murder club mystery is out this week and so I thought now was a good time to point you back at my post about the series last year – which you can find here. This new books is The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts centres on a secret from Judith’s past. She’s always been a bit of an enigma, but it looks like we might be about to get some answers as someone from her past appears in town. On top of that, there’s two dead local celebrities for the ladies to investigate. I really enjoy these – actually more than the TV versions of them as the adaptation seems much more played for laughs/humour than it reads to me as a book. The new one is in hardback and should be pretty easy to find in shops as well as in ebook and audiobook from all the usual sources. And if you haven’t read the earlier books yet, the first is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and all the others are on offer for £2.99.

Book previews

Out Today: New Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy

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Happy Thursday everyone, and having mentioned one of the Christmas Notch books in my Not-New Christmas Recommendsday, I wanted to flag that Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy have a new book out today, The Fundamentals of Being a Good Girl. This is set in a college town and has a professor for the hero and a new lecturer in town for the heroine. I’m looking forward to reading it, but have a few reservations about the conflict of interest situation here because as you know I’m all about the competent heroines. However given that they’ve managed to handle similar stuff quite well in Christmas Notch I’m prepared to go with it and give it a try!