Category: book round-ups

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommensday: April 2026 Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month and of course you know what that means. So here I am with three reviews of some of the other books I read in April.

Madonna of Darkness by Hugh Morrison

This is the latest book in Hugh Morrison’s series about Reverend Shaw, a vicar in the 1930s who also has a bit of a sideline in stumbling across murders and intrigue. This one sees him at a fete in a neighbouring village where a new vicar has been causing ructions within the community with his views. But when the troublesome minster is found dead in the church shortly after cancelling the fete he starts to investigate. This has got religious art, more of Morrison’s son than we have previously seen and quite a lot of adventure-thriller along with the mystery.

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula*

I’m reporting back in on this one as I featured it in release week. As I said in that post, I was hoping for something in the Emily Wilde, Legends and Lattes ends of the spectrum when I started reading it, but having finished it’s actually closer to the Shades of Magic ends of the spectrum. It’s not a apocalypse-end-of-the-whole-world scenario here but it is very much life and death and future of society one. It’s also got a lot more religion in it than I was expecting – I wasn’t expecting a religious inquisition and battle between church and magic type situation from the blurb either. It felt a lot like Philippa Gregory Tudor fiction-type stakes but in a Victorian setting and with dinosaurs (and Gregory does have magic in some of hers so maybe that’s fair?) and that wasn’t really what I was hoping for – and I’m note sure that’s what the blurb is selling so there may well be a mismatch of expectations of readers going in with what is delivered. There is a second book and there are plot threads left hanging, but I’m not sure I care enough to slog through it when it comes out to find out!

Mr Campion’s Fox by Mike Ripley

One of my holiday reads was a new murder mystery by Mike Ripley that’s coming out at the start of June. I enjoyed it (more on that closer to the time) and when I was looking at Goodreads I realised that Ripley has written some Albert Campion continuations and that I had some of them on the pile and went back to try one. This is 1960s set and sees Campion recruited by the Danish ambassador to observe an unsuitable man that his daughter has become entangled with. But when the daughter goes missing and the boyfriend turns up dead, Albert – along with his wife and son – are in the middle of a mystery again. This has got all the regulars that you could hope for in a Campion book and the setting was reminiscent of Sweet Danger (one of my favourites of the season) but I didn’t love the actual writing style – it wasn’t quite Allingham and I think I might like Ripley more when he’s writing as himself. I do have another of these on the pile so I will give that a go and see how that one pans out.

And that’s your lot for this month. In case you missed them the other April Recommensdays were Recent Romance reads, Non-fiction about Literary Figures and What I read on my Holiday. The books of the week were Sky High, While You were Seething, D is for Death and How to Solve Your Own Murder.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups

Recommendsday: What I Read on my Holiday Spring 2026 edition

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Happy Wednesday everyone. As you know now I was on holiday for nearly the last two weeks, so it seems only fair that this week’s Recommendsday is a round up of some of the books that I read on my sunlounger. You will be hearing about some of the others too, but here are the ones that don’t obviously fit in with something else that I have planned or that I thought I ought to report back on,

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

This is the fifth Thursday Murder Club mystery, and I would have read this last holiday if the last holiday hadn’t started (inconveniently) the week before it was released. Now I know that I don’t usually review later books in series because: spoilers, but we left the gang at a moment where things had changed at the end of the last book and I wanted to report back in on what the mood of the next book was. Now this is going to be slightly euphimistic (for spoiler based reasons) but I think the theme of this book for the core gang in many ways is recovery. But there’s also a really good heisty-murder mystery plot going on that keeps you entertained. I read more bits of this than I should have done out loud to Him Indoors (it’s a wonder he puts up with me) and it also made me teary eyed a couple of times. I continue to be in awe of Richard Osman – he comes up with great plots and interesting characters and knows exactly what he’s doing with how he writes his books to make them appeal to the widest possible audience, fully aware that for some (lots?) of people reading them they may be one of a very few books that person reads each year. That said if he makes many (any?) more in jokes about the casting of the movie version of the first book I might revise my opinion.

Murder on the Bernina Express by J G Colgan

This is a much less enthusiastic review I’m afraid, but I’m putting it in here because I read this after having recommended (ish) Colgan’s Christmas novel back in December. This is a murder mystery thriller set on a train travelling Switzerland on the eve of the Munich Conference of 1938. While the train is stopped on a famous viaduct (for weather reasons) a man on board is murdered. The murderer can only be someone on board, but the Swiss police can’t get to the train. And so the investigation is conducted remotely – with the train’s conductor (and eventually some of the passengers) enlisted to help. This is a great premise, and I think there’s a good plot in there. But it’s really let down by continuity issues, contractions and poor editing and proof reading and feels like it was published in a rush to try and follow up on that first book. In my review of that I said that it was readable but didn’t stick the landing, this is less good than that – I found myself having to go back and read sections more than once because I thought I had missed a piece of information or because something didn’t make sense. I think there is still potential here but the author really needs to take a bit more time over the process and do at least one more editing pass before they put things out – I’m not sure if I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt to read another one after this one, which is a shame because I think there is promise there.

Betrayal by Tom Bower

Last holiday I read Andrew Lownie’s Entitled, so this holiday I bought this year’s “big” royal book and to be honest it was a bit of a disappointment. I get that Meghan and Harry are a couple that seem to inspire strong reactions and so perhaps the writers just cater to one side or the other but that’s not what I want. I want something that feels at least like it’s trying to be even handed and came to a conclusion after doing the research (rather than finding the data that backs the author’s hypothesis up) but maybe I’ve just read Gaudy Night and it’s discussion about sound and unsound scholarship too much and this is popular non fiction. That said, the Lownie felt more rigorous than this for sure and it’s a similar market. But perhaps the principals on both sides of this are so entrenched that as an author your sources are either one side or the other and that’s it. I remain convinced that at some point there will be a good book about this whole saga though.

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, non-fiction, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Non fiction round up – Literary Figures edition

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It’s been a while, so for this Wednesday’s post I have a non-fiction Recommendsday for you. And as promised yesterday, it sort of ties in with D is for Death a little bit which is a delightful coincidence that I didn’t really realise when I started reading D is for Death after I finished Square Haunting last week – which was the last book I needed to finish reading to finish this post off!

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

This is a group biography of literary and academic women who are loosely tied together by having lived in Mecklenberg Square. The most celebrated of the five is Virginia Woolf who is the final of the five, but the one that I was most interested in (unsurprisingly) was Dorothy L Sayers – who was living in Mecklenberg Square when she created Peter Wimsey. I’ve written about my love of Sayers’s Gaudy Night before, but the problem at the core of that book, can a woman have her own life and intellectual pursuits and identity and be in a relationship, is a key theme running through this whole book too. The early 20th century was a time when a woman’s right to an academic education was still a matter of debate, and several of the women in this book were at the vanguard of the fight. I found some of the lives more interesting than others (as is always the case) but definitely wouldn’t have heard of or known anything about some of the women without having picked the book up because of the Sayers of it all. Definitely worth reading and one of the more successful group biographies I’ve read. And just to tie it back to D is For Death, here’s a link to a podcast where Harriet Evans and Francesca Wade are talking about Gaudy Night. You’re welcome.

Five Love Affairs and a Friendship by Anne de Courcy

Cover of Five Love Affairs and a Friendship

Anne de Courcy turns her focus on Nancy Cunard in this one. Cunard was an heiress (her father was one of the shipping line Cunards) and was part of a pre-Great War literary circle and then went on to spend the 1920s deeply enmeshed in the literary movement in Paris. She was a muse to many writers of the time – some of whom were also her lovers – and set up her own literary press, before going on to fight racism and fascism. She led quite a sad life in many ways – and this book doesn’t shy away from that, but it’s a really interesting read and a good look at the Parisian side of the roaring twenties. I’m not sure it’s your best place to start with de Courcy though – if you haven’t read any of her books before I might start with The Fishing Fleet or Chanel’s Riviera.

The Crichel Boys by Simon Fenwick

paperback copy of The Crichel Boys on a sun lounger

This is a group biography of Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys who bought Long Crichel Rectory in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. Later they are joined by Raymond Mortimer to form a sort of surrogate family and literary Salon (per the author) that lasted across the rest of the century. I’d never heard of this before I saw the book, but they seemed adjacent to the sort of inter-war Bright Young Things set that I’m always fascinated by (and have read a lot about at this point) so I gave it a go. The big problem for me is that there’s not actually enough to say about the core four (so to speak) so it has to expand out to the rest of their circle. And while that does include Nancy Mitford, Cecil Beaton, various Bloomsbury-set types, Benjamin Britten and more, in doing that there’s a lot of jumping backwards and forwards in time as you get sections on various people and it starts to get very confusing. So not entirely successful, but not a disaster either – Square Haunting definitely worked better!Almost the best thing about it for me was the passing mention of Gervase Jackson-Stops and Horton Menagerie – which is just down the road from where I grew up.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March 2026 Quick Reviews

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It’s the first day of April and it’s also a Wednesday, so I’m back with the quick reviews from last month. This was an interesting one to pick – because there were quite a lot of books from last month that I want to write about, but a lot of them fit into other posts that I’ve got planned, but in the end it’s worked out ok – with three murder mysteries so it even feels a bit cohesive! The stats are coming up – but I think it’s fair to say that I did quite well on the to-read pile front and on the NetGalley one too, and this post reflects that: two books from NetGalley – both recent releases – and one from the pile.

A Murder in Eight Cocktails by Kelly Mullen*

Willa is a recent (early) retiree who has turned herself into an ASMR cocktail influencer. When she’s invited to the launch of a new bar, she’s excited to make content for her account – even if her husband is less than enthusiastic. But when she arrives at the even she discovers it’s being hosted by her ex-husband and things go from bad to worse when the owner of the bar is found dead on the rocks below the ocean-side bar. The police think it’s suicide, but Willa isn’t convinced, and soon she’s teaming up with her ex-husband and her current husband to try and figure out what really happened. I wanted to like this more than I did, but I found the way that Willa bounces between unhappiness with her husband’s “dullness” and enthusiasm for working with her ex-husband quite trying. I think the push-pull was meant to create tension in the story (beyond the murder mystery) but I thought it reduced the reader’s sympathy/empathy for Willa because she never really gives concrete examples of the problems in her marriage or tries to address them with her husband (she just seems to get exasperated) and is written in a way that suggests that she might jump ship to her ex. The mystery was interesting though – although I’m not sure about an emotional support chameleon…

The Pie and Mash Detective Agency by J D Brinkworth*

Jane Pye and Simon Mash are a couple who start taking a private detective class in their free time and end up investigating a real live case as part of their final assessment. A woman called Nellie Thorne has been reported missing by her boyfriend – except that she is not the first Nellie Thorne to go missing, there have been at least five of them over the last fifty years. Can these two wannabe PIs work out what has happened to all the Nellies? Ok, I’m not going to lie, this didn’t really work for me. I was hoping it would, but I found it quite hard going. There is some fun dialogue between Jane and Simon, but you never really got to know them that well – what their personalities are like and why they are a thing – beyond the snark. The mystery was quite convoluted and I felt like it couldn’t quite decide if it wanted to go all out into the surreal/fantastic or stay in the cozy crime lane. Hey ho, this happens – the cover is lovely though.

Fishing for Trouble by Elizabeth Logan

This is the second book in a cosy crime series set in Alaska. Charlie has taken over running her parents diner after moving home following a broken engagement in San Francisco. In this it’s high summer, with long days of daylight and lots of seasonal workers. But when one of those seasonal workers collapses and dies in her diner, Charlie starts to investigate. So this didn’t really work for me. Charlie doesn’t have a lot of personality beyond liking her cat (shown by buying him loads of cat toys she can run from her phone while she leaves him home alone all day) and being a bit immature as well as somewhat too stupid to live. It’s a shame because the details of life in Alaska make for a nice change from most cozies.

A quick reminder of the other posts from March – the Recommensdays were Books set in the Tower of London, and some first in series books; and the Books of the Week were The French Bookshop Murder, Slow Dance, The Love Haters, Murder at Gulls Nest and Love and Other Brain Experiments.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday, series

Recommendsday: First in series…

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Happy Wednesday everyone, this week I’ve got a mixed bag of first books in series that I have recently read – we’ve got one fantasy, one historical mystery and one cozy crime, which may not be entirely representative of my general reading over the year, but is actually fairly representative of where my reading is at at the moment, minus a romance but I’m mostly reading standalone romances rather than series at the moment so I didn’t have one I could include!

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

After having enjoyed Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter so much last month, I went out and bought the first in Heather Fawcett’s previous series (yes I know, I’m repeating an author, but hey I make and break my own rules) about a professor who studies faeries and folklore. Emily Wilde has gone to visit a village in the far north to study the Hidden Ones, their local fae. She doesn’t want to talk to the locals and she is less than pleased when one of her colleagues from Cambridge turns up to help her. I really loved the world building and the characters are great. I felt like Fawcett did a really good job of explaining how the world works without info dumping on you and the two main plot strands – what are the fairies up to and who is Wendell Bartlett – provided plenty of action without being too stressful. Cozy fantasy so good I have already acquired the rest of the trilogy…

Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claud Izner

This is the first in a series of books featuring bookseller Victor Legris in late nineteenth century Paris. In this it’s 1889 and Paris is a buzz with the World Exposition. Victor witnesses a woman’s death on the viewing platform of the brand new Eiffel Tower and doesn’t think that the official explanation is the right one. Soon he’s ducking and weaving around Paris trying to work out what happened and who did it and more people start to die. The original French version of this won the Prix Michel-Lebrun in 2003, which is a prize for French crime novels, which I thought was a good sign, but I was obviously reading it in English and although the mystery is good I found the writing style quite hard going, but that could of course be the fault of the translator. I bought this on my trip to Paris about 18 months ago so it’s taken me a while to get to and I do have the second on the shelf already ahving spotted it cheap second hand. So I’ll give that a go at some point and see if it grows on me.

Jammed with Secrets by Selina Hill*

This is the first in a new series of small town cozy crimes and sees Sadie, a disgraced chef return to her home town to try and rebuild her life. She’s trying to do this by running food trailers at a local music festival when a member of a 90s boyband is found dead in one of them. Not satisfied with the police investigation, Sadie starts to investigate herself to try and save her business. The actual murder mystery plot was pretty good – but the problem here is Sadie. There are some issues with her backstory that make it hard for the reader to sympathise with her and entirely understandable why the people in town wouldn’t want to eat her food. This is a problem entirely of the author’s own creation – and made me wonder why it wasn’t set up differently. And that’s all I can say without spoilers, but this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you want to go and find out what I’m talking about!

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books with Sports

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We are closer to the end of the Winter Olympics than we are to the start so for today, I’ve got some novels with sports in them for you. They’re not all winter sports, but some of them are. There are also a whole bunch that I’ve read and not liked and haven’t included here – although I have included one of my more recent sports reads, because it made me cross and I needed to talk about it! And also the book that I was hoping to replace it with has also made me cross, but in a less interesting way. Anyway, I’ve also already written a Recommendsday about sports romances, so if you haven’t had enough yet, you can find that there.

The Favourites by Layne Fargo

Given that all the drama that came out of the Ice Dancing results (if you haven’t read about it yet, here are some articles), I couldn’t not start with Layne Fargo’s book about ice dance from last year. I wrote a bonus review about it around the time of Worlds last year, but it’s so much fun that it bears a repeat. This has got a scrappy wrong side of the tracks pairing taking on the world of ice dancing, and is framed through a documentary being made ten years after their final skate. It’s got lots of drama, the bits of the sport that Fargo has tinkered with are cleverly chosen and you don’t have to know anything about skating to enjoy it. I’m a huge figure skating fan – until Tuesday night I had watched every minute of competition this games, and this is one of the very few books I’ve read set in a sport that I’m a keen follower of that hasn’t managed to really annoy me in one way or another. There’s a reason why I haven’t read many/any of the figure skater (usually with a hockey player) romances that are having a resurgence at the moment. I read a few a couple of Olympics ago (Pyeongchang games I think) and they really wound me up and I haven’t been back since. But this I can really recommend.

Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams

Cover of Isn't it Bromantic

I’ve got an ice hockey-related romance for you now, and it’s not Heated Rivalry! Isn’t it Bromantic is the fourht book in the Bromance Book Club series, which have a couple of sporting heros. The first in the series had a baseball player hero who is trying to win his estranged wife back with the help of a secret romance book club for men, and the other books follow the other members of the group. Isn’t It Bromantic’s hero is Vlad aka The Russian who is a professional ice hockey player in Nashville. Years earlier back in Russia, he married one of his childhood friends to help her after her journalist father disappeared. It’s been a marriage of convenience, but Vlad has decided he wants more and is using the book club to try and work out how to win his wife’s love. This was the story in the series that I had been looking forward to maybe the most and although it didn’t quite live upto all my hopes it was still a fun read even if it did have far too many tropes all mashed in together. I found the series as a whole a bit uneven – full of great ideas but not always as good in the execution, which was a bit frustrating, but I don’t think any of them were actually bad if you know what I mean.

Cross The Line by Simone Soltani

Cover of Cross the Line

Dev is a Formula One driver who may have blown up his career prospects with a social media disaster Willow is his best friend’s little sister who is full of ideas but struggling to get a job out of college. Dev hires Willow to help with his image problem, but the two of them struggle to keep it professional as their feelings threaten to get the better of them. I am a massive Formula One fan, and have been for as long as I can remember and really I think this may make me a bad candidate for reading F1-set romances, because I will pick at the sporting detail. All that aside, this one has a massive plot device that it uses towards the end but then leaves unresolved that really, really wound me up. In fact it annoyed me to the point that I went back and read the final chapter and the epilogue again the day after I read it, because I had finished it late at night and I wanted to make sure that I hadn’t missed something. I hadn’t. So, all in all frustrating. And as I said at the top, it made me cross and I wanted to talk about it, but also people who know I read romance and like F1 often ask me if I’ve read any of the booming trend for F1 romances and so now I’m reporting back!

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: December Quick Reviews

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The theme of this month’s quick reviews could be described as “reporting back” given that we have two books that I’d mentioned on release day that I’ve now read and I’m starting with a sequel to a Book of the Week from the start of last year.

Lies and Dolls by Nev Fountain

Lies and Dolls is a return to the world of Kit Pelham after The Fan Who Knew Too Much and sees Kit and Binfire on their way to Lincolnshire for the opening of a rare toy museum which will be housing some rare figurines from the Vixens of the Void series. Soon the figures go missing and start turning up in pieces. And then there are actual murders. I said in my review of the first book that it could have used being a bit shorter and that the plot was insane – this is even more outlandish on the plot front, but felt like it had had a tighter edit. The world is more absurd than ever, and Kit keeps making the wrong choices in her personal life, but it’s got plenty of black humour as well as another uttlerly bonkers mystery plot. Looking at the “Readers also enjoyed” choices on Goodreads, this is more unrealistic in many ways than the Peter Grant books – and they have magic – but it’s definitely less realistic than both the Andrew Cartmel series too but they are similar in some other ways.

Second Chance Romance by Olivia Dade

Cover of Second Chance Romance

Karl and Molly had crushes on each other when they were in high school, but nothing really happened. When they were at college they had an argument and never spoke again.Since then, Molly has become a successful audiobook narrator and Karl (although she doesn’t know it) is her most faithful listener, usually while he’s working in his bakery. When Molly sees an obituary for Karl she flies from California back to Harlot’s Bay for his funeral. Except that he’s not dead – and the two of them get a second chance to work out if that old connection was the real thing. I’m reporting back in on this one because I mentioned it on release day but although this is the second book in this series, you could read this as a standalone . That would would spoil the outcome of that first book as well as you missing out on the running humour that is Karl’s audiobook habits in that first book – so really, you should read At First Spite first. I really liked the relationship building here as Karl tries to show cynical and jaded Molly that he’s worth taking a chance on. And the Harlot’s Bay community continues to be a lot of fun providing plenty in the subplots as well as the romance.

You Had to Be There by Jodie Harsh*

Cover of You Had to Be There

This one took me so long to read – and I previewed it here when it came out – that I had to come back around with a review now I have finished it. I’m quite conflicted writing this review because I found the writing style quite hard going for large parts of the book – breathless isn’t quite the right word, but it is stream of consciousness and breakneck for the majority of the book, just like Jodie’s/J’s life was. And so that might be a stylistic choice, but that is one of the reasons why it took me quite a while to read. The other is that J/Jodie is also making some very bad choices at times and has a lot of traumatic events in his childhood and that is also quite hard to read. But this is a very honest book that is a glimpse into what it was like to be caught up in the Soho nighttime scene in the last years before Crossrail came and closed things down and knocked them down. The buildings that replaced them are shinier and more corporate and the things that were lost can never be replaced. But that’s the way of London – always changing and shifting and moving on to the next thing for more than a millennia. I’m lucky enough to remember seeing it before it changed – and after reading this I’ll be thinking about the communities and clubs that were lost every time I go down the escalators at Tottenham Court Road.

And that’s your lot. A reminder that the recommensdays in December had a strong Christmas theme – with series at Christmas 2, Not New Christmas Books and New Christmas Mysteries – and the BotWs were Season of Love, Murder Most Modern, Odd Flamingo, Heir Apparent and Buried in a Good Book.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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Happy first Wednesday of the month everyone. It will be no surprise to you that two of my quick reviews this month are books that ticked off missing states in this year’s reading challenge! Without further ado, here are the reviews.

The George Eliot Murders by Edith Skom

College professor Beth Austin is off to Hawaii for a vacation during her term off teaching. At the resort on the island she takes part in a tennis tournament and comes into contact with some of the hotel’s highest spending guests. When a woman falls from a balcony, everyone thinks it’s suicide or an accident, but Beth isn’t convinced. And then another body is found and she starts investigating for real, with the help of two friends that she’s made at the resort. This is as bit of a strange one because it was first published in 1990 and is quite dated and of its time in some ways, but actually in others it feels more modern. I also didn’t think it needed the Middlemarch tie-in, but I get that that’s the conceit of the series and so it has to be there. I’m not massively familiar with Middlemarch (I think I read the book after I watched the TV adaptation in the mid 1990s!) so it also didn’t really make a huge amount of sense to me either! But I liked Beth as a character and the mystery was good with a neat conclusion. I wouldn’t rule out reading more of these, but given that I picked this up from a bookswap bookcase I suspect I won’t be come across them any time soon!

Death and the Final Cut by G M Malliet

I wanted to report back in on this one because I mentioned it when it came out earlier this month. A reminder of the plot: an actress is found dead late at night in the Round Church in Cambridge, which is being used at the set of a Viking epic movie. As St Just investigates it becomes clear that there is plenty of conflict among the cast and crew and reasons why a murder could have happened. Despite having missed three books in the series, it was pretty easy to pick up the threads of the main characters and the mystery itself is pretty good interesting and I really like the Cambridge setting. I’ve got back and bought one of the ones in the series that I’ve missed to try and fill in some gaps.

Animal Attraction by Jill Shalvis

This is the second in Shalvis’s Animal Magnetism series which is set in the town of Sunshine, Idaho. Our hero is Dell, the town’s vet and the heroine is Jade, currently working as his receptionist after having mysteriously appeared in town one day. Dell knows that Jade has a secret – she’s overqualified for the job that she’s doing and doesn’t want to let anyone into her life. Jade has always said her time in town is temporary, but as the deadline from her family to leave approaches she realises that she doesn’t want to go. Jade has some trauma in her back story which is a fairly major plot point, but it never gets as far as romantic suspense and there are plenty of cute animals and a kind and sensible hero to even that out.

And that’s your lot for this month – the other Recommendsdays in November were First in Mystery series and Dysfunctional Families and the BotWs were Murder at World’s End, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, Buffalo West Wing and Death in High Heels.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the months and I have quick reviews for you – and one of them is even a new release! Two days in a row! Yes, it can happen! I’m almost proud of me. Except for the fact that the rest of the pile is massive. Moving on. To the reviews:

Taylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt*

Cover of Taylor's Version

I’m going to be honest and my most listened to album last month was the new Taylor Swift album. What can I say, I’m a millennial who likes Swedish pop, so an upbeat Max Martin-produced album is totally my jam. And so I was interested to read this book, which is a critical appreciation of Swift’s work, written by a professor who runs a course on her at Harvard. And it was interesting, but I had two key problems with it: one, I’m not a big enough Swiftie that I’m able to remember all the songs off all the albums without going back and listening to them again, and two, I’m not across (American?) music terminology and theory to be able to understand all the technicalities of the music and composition that Burt is explaining. I need someone to play it to demonstrate it to get it – like the Switched On Pop guys did with The Life of a Showgirl the other week – and to really understand the points that are being made. But I think it may well work for other people more than it did for me.

From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming

Paperback copy of From Russia With Love

This was my purchase in the Penguin Pop-Up back in September and is only the second of the actual James Bond books that I’ve read. I’ve watched the Connery and Bond movies a lot, so it was really interesting to see what the original was and where the plot was changed to make it into a film – and there are a few changes here and they weren’t always what I expected. There’s actually not a lot of Bond here until fairly late on – it’s mostly about the Russian side of the plot, building up to the chase sequence as Bond tries to make his way back to Britain (with Tatiana in tow). As a book it is of its time, but if you’re familiar with all the issues of the movie series, you know what you’re letting yourself in for!

The Body in the Kitchen Garden by Paula Sutton*

Cover of The Body in the Kitchen Garden

After reading the first in the Hill House Vintage mystery series last year, I’m back to report in on the second, because I said that I would come and report back on a sequel if it came. This sees Daphne helping in the renovation of the local manor house after the return of the owner after years out of the country. But when an unidentified body is discovered in the garden, she’s drawn into another murder investigation. In the first book, I had the murderer pegged fairly early on but I thought that might be because it was a debut, but also because there was a lot of series set up going on, so the mystery couldn’t be as complex as a result. But this didn’t have all that set up to do and I had the victim’s identity and the murderer worked out as early (if not earlier). And that’s a shame because I still really like the main characters and the setting. It’s just not got enough happening or complexity for me. Hey ho.

And that’s your lot for this month, as a reminder, the Books of the Week were: The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder; What You Are Looking For is in the Library; Red Land, Black Land and I Shop, Therefore I Am. The Recommendsdays were a Halloween preview, mysteries set in theatres and Novelised Real People II

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the start of October today, so I’m back with the Quick reviews for September, and stats will pop up later in the week. And September was quite a ride on the reading front. It really has. I’ve read some good stuff and some less good stuff, I’ve struggled with books for BotW at some points, but I’ve ended up at the end of the month with plenty of books on the list to chose from to talk about here, but I’ve decided that this month it’s a follow up special…

Chris at the Kennels by Patricia Baldwin

It’s been a while since I did a Girl’s Own book, and a year since I did my post about Girl’s Own career’s books, and so I’m popping this one in here as a follow up. This is another evangelical career book – so Chris finds God while she carries out an apprenticeship at a kennels. Because in the 1960s it seems that breeding dogs and showing them and doing a little bit of boarding for other people’s dogs was enough to pay two salaries as well as supporting the owner. Chris is a twin and grew up on a farm, but instead of staying on at school and trying to get into university she wants to leave and work with dogs. I have no idea how accurate this is on a life of a kennel maid front, but I enjoyed seeing what drama Baldwin had found to keep the plot moving and break up the dog care info! Additionally, unusually for the Baldwins that I’ve read, Chris’s religious awakening happens from reading the Bible and from the other kennel maid’s scepticism about religion, rather than a religious person coming in and converting her!

Island Calling by Francesca Segal*

I mentioned that this was coming out back in June and now I’ve read it, I am reporting back. I really think you need to have read the first one to make the most of this but it is part two of a trilogy, so that’s not really a surprise. But for me, having enjoyed Welcome to Glorious Tuga, it was lovely treat to return to the characters and the great setting and get another slice of island life. This time we have the addition of Charlotte’s bossy mother unexpectedly arriving on the island. There is some peril here, but it never feels too awful so it’s a charming and relaxing read. As far as I can tell there’s no news yet on a date for part three, but if it follows the pattern of this one, it should be next summer sometime.

The Paris Spy by Sarah Sigal*

And I’m also reporting back in on this one which came out a couple of weeks ago. The follow up to The Socialite Spy takes Lady Pamela More to Paris on the eve of WW2, and back into the orbit of Wallis Simpson, now Duchess of Windsor. I didn’t think this was as successful as the first book because it has a less defined task for Pamela to do, and it also covers a much wider and more chaotic time. It continues to follow fairly closely to what I have read about the antics of the Windsors after the abdication, so it feels pretty accurate on a history front, I just think it’s trying to do too much and doesn’t always resolve things as successfully as you want, although I suspect there’s a third book in mind… and I did enjoy this enough that I would read it though if there was!

That’s your lot today, but a reminder if you need it that this month’s books of the week were: The Last Supper, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, Breakneck and Entitled.