The third Theatreland mystery featuring stage manager Hattie comes out today and the fact that I’ve picked this to highlight this week should probably not be a surprise to you as the first book was a BotW back in February and the second one was one of my favourite new books of last year. According to the blurb, Hattie Breaks A Leg sees Hattie struggling to find work because of all the enemies she’s made. And that’s why she finds herself working on a one night only vanity project. But when a friend comes looking for help to escape serious trouble, she finds herself sucked into a cat and mouse game with some shady types. I really enjoyed the first two books and I’m really looking forward to reading this when my preorder arrives (hopefully today). And because I think it’s a bit under the radar I’m happy to keep banging on about these because I think they deserve it
Hattie Breaks a Leg is out today in paperback, on Kobo and in Kindle Unlimited. I’m hoping that it will relatively easy to find in bookshops too – I’ll be keeping an eye out and reporting back!
A slightly rule-breaking choice this week on an author repitition point, but I have a valid reason for this apart from the fact that this one comes out this week and so is timely. Read on and all will become clear. I promise.
Sierra and Benji were meant to be together – until the stillbirth of their baby ripped them apart. After their devastating loss, they struggled to carry on working together at Sierra’s family’s ranch and so Benji got a new job as a wrangler across the border in Utah. But when circumstances mean Benji is needed back at the ranch, the two of them have to find a way of working together – and may be that will also see them finding their way back to each other.
Now the baby loss isn’t mentioned in the blurb for this – it’s just called “a devastating twist of fate” but given that this has a big warning from the author before the book about the book being something you might want to avoid for people who are struggling with starting a family that I feel like it’s only fair to mention it. Also Blue Devil Woman is the second book in Sloane Fletcher’s Hunt Ranch series and it is mentioned in the first book because Sierra and Benji are the main secondary side characters in that. And that is one of the reasons that I wanted to write about it is because when I previewed that first book, Night Rider, and then reviewed it in Quick Reviews my main point was that the cover didn’t reflect the content – ie that it was very much a romantic suspense novel. So I wanted to read this second book both because I wanted to see how Sierra and Benji worked it out but also whether the working out of it was going to be a romantic suspense as well.
And the answer is that it’s much more of a straight romance novel. The tension in it doesn’t come from an external threat as it does in Night Rider, it comes from the loss that Sierra and Benji have suffered and the different ways that they are dealing (or not dealing) with it. And so the warning at the start about who this might be suitable for is very apt. I do think that for people in some circumstances this is going to be too much grief and loss. But with that said, I though that it needes something else within the plot to help propel it along – I felt like there was a lot of time spent covering the same ground over and over rather than moving the narrative on (*slight spoilers at the bottom) and then when we got to the resolution it was over a little quickly and felt a bit rushed.
Now I get that this isn’t an entirely positive review – and usually Book of the Week is my favourite thing I read in a week, and this doesn’t quite fit that. However it is the book that I read last week that I had the most to say about and so I feel justified in my choice!
My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out on Thursday in the UK in Kindle and in paperback, although strangely not until October on Kobo.
Happy Reading!
*after a certain amount of time I didn’t any more demonstrations that Sierra was dealing with her loss by ignoring it and keeping busy so that she couldn’t/didn’t think about it, and the way that she kept pushing Benji away started to get almost irritating because it felt like she was stuck in a moment she wasn’t willing to try and get out of. Now that may be a very accurate representation of baby loss, but when it’s the driving element in a romance plot and happening over and over, it started to feel like there wasn’t enough to the plot and the book either needed to be shorter or needed another element to it.
It’s Thursday and I’ve got another book for you that is out today (in the UK). Murder at the Hotel Orient is set in modern day Vienna at an (in)famous hotel where cameras are forbidden, guests use aliases and lovers can enjoy a night of debauchery. But when two people are found dead after a party, concierge Sterling Lockwood has to work out who the killer is in order to clear her name. This one is on my virtual to read pile and yes, I know I said I was getting a bit ahead on some of the NetGalley reads, but no, this wasn’t one of them. I don’t know why, it just wasn’t. But I will get to it…
A mini bonus review for you this week as A Death in the Dark, the second book in the Novel Detectives series came out and I have read it already! This sees Annie and Fletcher investigating after the high school’s track coach comes into their offices covered in blood and claiming not to remember the previous evening. When the body of his assistant coach is found, it becomes a murder investigation and Annie and Fletcher find themselves digging into a tangled web of secrets among the staff at the high school to try and work out who the killer is. I had the murderer pegged pretty early on, but there were enough twists and turns going on to keep me guessing about whether I really was right! I like the set up and the characters, although because the series has a running story going on in the background I find that the actual murder-of-the-week is perhaps less complex than other series. However, I do want to find the answer to the long running backstory so I will definitely keep reading them!
Kate Clayborn has consistently written some of my favourite books of any year that she has published a book, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that she has a new book out this week. It’s called The Paris Match and it’s about a woman who heads to Paris for her former sister-in-law’s wedding, where she accidentally gives the bride cold feet and ends up butting heads with the best man who wants her to fix it. I love the sound of this, and I love a book set in Paris. I had this pre-ordered in paperback (as you can maybe tell because of the photo!) and I’m planning on making this my post Easter reading treat. In the meantime, you can read my posts about The Other Side of Disappearing, Georgie, All Along, Love Lettering and the Chance of a Lifetime series.
The stats are coming up tomorrow as a Good Friday treat for you all, but before we get to that given that I’m on a run of cozy fantasy books I wanted to mention this one, which came out on Tuesday and which I’m already reading (but haven’t finished yet so this isn’t a review!). This is an alternative history type historical fantasy in a world where magic is real and Mary Anning (who was a real life fossil collector and palentologist) is a struggling fossil dealer who wants to be accepted into the Geomagical Society of London but is stymied by her gender and her lack of formal higher education. But one day she is out fossil hunting after a landslide when a pterodactyl egg hatches in her hand. Ajax could be the thing that makes her career – but the emissary from the society is her former fiancé and soon she is stuck between rival factions of the society with their own agendas. This is blurbed by Heather Fawcett (as in Emily Wilde and Agnes Aubert) which is why I requested it – so far (just over a third in) it’s a bit less cozy and has more religion than I was expecting, but I’m interested to see where it goes and how it all gets resolved.
I’ve written a lot about Gail Carriger’s Parasolverse before, but it’s been two whole years since I last wrote a post about it, so I think it’s only fair to do this week’s new book post about the omnibus edition of the Soulless manga, which came out on Tuesday. This is exciting because the individual editions which you can see in my picture are out of print and have been for a while (I’m very glad I splurged on them back in the day) and so it means that (hopefully) it will get a bit of a new life with the omnibus.
The manga covers the first three books in the story of Alexia Tarabotti, namely Soulless, Blameless and Changeless. I would tell you where that takes you to in her story, but that would be a spoiler so all I will say is that there are two more books – Heartless* and Timeless – after this, which haven’t been turned into manga (and won’t be) but it does work as a trilogy. I’m a graphic novel reader rather than a manga one, but I really did enjoy these and I’m glad to have them on my shelf. I will also be telling the comic book store to make sure they get a copy of the omnibus because I think there will be a customer or two who would like it.
*I’m still angry that my Heartless is a different size to the rest of the series, and if I ever see a copy that is the same size as the others I will be buying it so I can shelve them in order by chronology not by size because you can see from my photo what an absolute mess it is.
A bit left field for this week’s new book because Alan Bennett is a legend. This officially comes out today, but the copy I pre-ordered for my little sister arrived on Tuesday. So you may already have your copy too. Enough Said is the fourth volume of Bennett’s diaries, taking you from 2016 – 2024 when Alan turned 90. He will be 92 in May and so every new thing at this point is a blessing and a treat. A Question of Attribution was on TV over Christmas, and I’m waiting for The Choral to pop up on a streaming service so I can catch up on that too.
Honestly I’m torn between excitement and fear for this one. Kids Wait Until You Hear This was one of the books I mentioned in my anticipated books post, and as I said in that her discipline in maintaining her public persona is iron clad – as you could see in the authorised documentary about her last year – that I’m dubious about whether there will be anything new here but if there is it will be fascinating. I’ve also been a little bit worried about the AI dance track that she contributed vocals to along with the uptick in content she’s been featuring in on her socials given how frail she looked on Drag Race and in her appearance at the Oscars a few years back, but hey, hopefully all of it is her choices. I have my copy pre-ordered anyway…
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.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 