Category: book round-ups

book round-ups, books

Recommendsday: February Kindle offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month so that means it’s kindle offer day and it’s a bumper crop this week.

First up, it was only was BotW a couple of weeks ago – but now Capote’s Women is 99p to coincide with the TV series that we still can’t stream over here. Not that I’m bitter about that. Also in the former BotW stakes, just from varying degrees of time ago are another few 99p deals: Ashley Poston‘s The Seven Year Slip, Annabel Monaghan’s Nora Goes off Script and Jenny Jackson’s Pineapple Street which is a great rich people problems novel and I think is on offer to coincide with its paperback release I think.

I read The Vanishing Half a lot longer ago than the rest, but it’s really good and stuck with me – it’s 99p too. 99p. Lissa Evans’s Old Baggage which is chronologically the first in her trilogy of related books (even if it was the last one published) is 99p and I really, really loved it.

In books I own but haven’t read (yet), Curtis Sittenfeld’s The Man of my Dreams is 99p as is Love in the Time of Serial Killers is 99p. And I already mentioned this offer, but The Breakup Tour is 99p this month, if you haven’t already had enough Taylor Swift in the aftermath of the Super Bowl (congrats Tayvis). In the related category of TV series I have watched but haven’t read the books of, Graham Norton’s Holding that the TV series was based on is 99p.

The Shadows of London, which is sixth in the Restoration mystery series about James Marwood and Cat Lovett is 99p – I’ve read this one and a couple of others in the series but with some gaps – so I can vouch for the fact you don’t need to have read all of them for it to make sense, and in fact if you don’t like on page sexual violence, you should probably avoid the first book in the series completely.

In series watch, this month’s cheap Terry Pratchetts are Night Watch at £1.99 and in his non-Discworld stuff The Long War from the Long Earth Trillogy he wrote with Stephen Baxter is 99p: The Georgette Heyer is Unknown Ajax is 99p as is the Bridgerton adjacent The Sum of All Kisses by Julia Quinn. And in Peter Wimsey it’s the second Peter and Harriet book Have His Carcase which is 99p – one of my favourites as you know, featuring the death of a dancer at a large coastal hotel. It’s actually better to read than listen to, on account of a section of code breaking that is really just a string of letters read out loud as an audiobook!

And that’s your lot – it’s a potentially expensive post depending on your reading tastes – I got off quite lightly writing it but I did also get four or five samples while I was writing this so I may yet regret saying that!

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: 50 States Mop-up

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For today’s Recommendsday I’m taking the opportunity to talk about a couple of books from last years read the USA that I hadnt got to yet!

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead

This is the story of an aviatrix in the first half of the twentieth century but intercut with the story of the Hollywood actress who is playing her in a biopic. Given my reputation with award winning bond, it may not surprise you that this was a slog for the first half. It has took me literal months to read this despite having bought it on Kindle to try and get it finished because I wasn’t prepared to lug the paperback around everywhere with me. The early stages of Marion’s story are so depressing and such hard work it made it hard for me to spend too much time with it at once. But once we got to the Second World War it really came alive and I read the last couple of hundred pages in a few days and the end was more satisfying than I had feared it would be.

Wild Dances by William Lee Adams

So this one is a little unusual because I know the author. William is one of the preeminent Eurovision bloggers but also someone u work with in my day job. This is his memoir about growing up in Georgia with a profoundly disabled mother and an undiagnosed bipolar mother, and that’s only the half of it. William discovered learning as his escape and it took him to Harvard and then eventually to the UK. It is a brilliantly written and almost heartbreaking in places, but I know that because I know William I might be biased. Anyway, even though it’s sold as how Eurovision helped him, it’s actually about much more than that, and if you know him as a Eurovision figure, don’t go into this expecting lots of ESC info because it’s mostly about William and his life from childhood onwards.

When in Rome by Sarah Adams

This is another famous person and normal person romance – in this case a slightly Taylor Swift- y popstar and a small town baker. This was my first Sarah Adams and I quite liked it although it was more New Adult than I was expecting I think, but I can’t quite put my finger on why. I liked the small town vibe, I liked famous people and normal people romances (go read Nora Goes Off Script if you haven’t already, it’s wonderful) and I liked the twist of it being the heroine that’s famous and the guy that’s normal. But something just didn’t click to tip it over into great for me. Hey ho.

And there you are, three more books and we’re done. If I was going to put links to all the other books from Fiftyt States that I’ve already talked about I’ve been linking all day, so I’m just going to point you at the wrap up post which had them all there’s for you already.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, books

Recommendsday: Not New fiction of 2023

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So I was about to say this is the last look back at 2023 post, but I realised that I would absolutely be lying because I can think of at least two more. Any how, this is my favourite new-to-me fiction of last year. Many of them you’ll always have heard me talk about, but hey I enjoyed them and they’re worth it.

So in keeping with the celebrities and normal people romances that have been a theme of the year, let’s start with one of those: Nora Goes off Script by Annabel Monaghan. And I think this might have been the first of the trope that I read last year and it was really good. Nora’s been dumped by her husband but has to keep writing screen plays for romance channel movies. But when her new script is picked up by a major studio, the sexual man alive walks into her house (literally) to star in it and then doesn’t want to leave. It’s wonderful and just writing about it makes me want to read it again!

Next up is one of the books that Nora was comped with and which I finally got around to reading this year – Beach Read by Emily Henry. This has got two rival authors living in neighbouring beach houses and struggling with writers block – until they challenge each other to write in their genre. So Augustus had to write something happy, and Janet had to write a Great American Novel. It’s a grumpy-sunshine delight – even if I’ve only just realised that he’s got the summery name and she’s got the wintery one!

More authors in pick three: The Roughest Draft by Emily Wibberley and Austin Sigemund-Broka. This has got estranged writing partners forced back together to complete their original book contract after his new solo effort doesn’t sell. It’s friends to enemies to lovers as you flash backwards and forwards between the two different trips to the same Florida rental house.

Ok, that all the romance done, let’s go for some mystery! And The Three Dahlias by Katy Watson was one of my post Christmas sale buys between Christmas and new year last year and I loved it. It has all the things that I like – Golden Age mystery stories and a modern day cozy crime murder on the set of an adaptation of the books. So much fun and something I’ve recommended a lot this year. I’m counting down to book three.

And finally, something a bit different – Acts of Violet by Margarita Montimore. This one’s a bit quirky – with a missing illusionist and a podcast at the centre of it. I didn’t fully love the ending, but I did love the rest of it. This is actually the only book here from the second half of the year, and I have had a think about that and a look at the stats – there were less five star picks in the second half of the year among the not-new fiction but quite a few four stars that I’ve only just written about, so maybe that’s what’s gone on. And I did read more new fiction in the second half of the year than the first and that played into this too.

Anyway, here’s to the books I’ll discover in 2024!

book round-ups, books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: My summer holiday reading

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So as I mentioned in the Week in Books post, we’ve been on holiday, and although I’ve already told you about We Could Be So Good , The Lost Summers of Newport and The Mysterious Mr Badman, but I have a couple more reviews from my holiday week of reading. You’re welcome. And by a weird quirk, they’re all murder mysteries of various types. Who knew.

Lets start off with The Sea Breeze by S J T Riley. This came out last year and is a murder mystery set in 1950s Devon. A crime reporter at a London paper receives a call from an old friend after a boat is found abandoned in the harbour with one crew member dead and others missing. When he arrives in town, he finds his friend is missing and the locals are closing ranks against him. But that’s not going to stop him investigating. This throws you in without a lot of explanation and the pacing is a little spotty at times, but it’s a pretty well-executed murder mystery that will appeal to you if you like things like the BLCC titles that are set at sea (or near the sea).

Next up is A Death in the Parish, which is the second historical mystery from Reverend Richard Coles. I said that I would get to it didn’t I! I read the first Canon Clement book last year and I enjoyed that one, but this one definitely feels like he’s settling into writing cozy historical crime books. He’s established his late-1980s rural set up in the first one and in this one he gets to flesh out the characters and the world and show the aftermath of the events of the first one. And if you haven’t read the first one, this one will spoil the murderer in that – so that’s worth bearing in mind if you’re thinking of going in fresh to the series with this. But the mystery is good – and the clash between Daniel’s style of ministry and that of the vicar in the neighbouring parish is good, especially if you have ever been involved in a parish church and the various different factions that you get in one. There is a third one coming – and I thought I knew where some of the running strands were heading towards the end of the book, only for it to surprise me at the last so I’m looking forward to seeing where this is going to go next.

And finally and less successfully my latest attempt to try and find another mystery-thriller type series in the vein of things like Janet Evanovich’s Steph Plum or Carl Hiassen was Cultured by D P Lyle – which mentions both of those authors in its blurn. This is the sixth in a series (but it’s very clear that you can read them standalone) about a retired professional baseball player whose PI father gets him involved in investigations. In Cultured, he’s asked to try and infiltrate a self-improvement programme by an anxious mum after her daughter who was working there disappears. Is The Lindemann Method a scam? A Cult? A front for something else? Jake and his girlfriend Nicole are going to find out. This had all the elements that I wanted in the blurb, but just didn’t really work for me. It doesn’t really have the humour of Evanovich or Hiassen and Jake doesn’t have enough personality to carry a book. Add to that a lot of focus on how attractive the various women are, some unexpected changes of Point of View and pacing that means it doesn’t quite flow and it didn’t really work for me. Never mind.

That’s your lot for today, but there are a couple more things that I read on holiday that I suspect will pop up on here in the future – but I’m going to leave you guessing as to what they are!

Happy reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books about bands

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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!

Cover of Daisy Jones and the Six

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.

And that’s your lot for today – Happy Reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Marriages of Convenience

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I was surprised when I was writing the series post about The Fitzhugh trilogy to discover that I haven’t written a Recommendsday post about marriages of convenience – so today I’m writing that wrong!

So obviously the first books in this trope that I discovered were the Georgette Heyers – namely A Convenient Marriage and April Lady. Of the two I think April Lady is my favourite because I love the denouement the best – with Nell trying to fix everything without Cardross finding out – whereas Horry in Convenient Marriage is just a bit too foolhardy for me. In more recent historical romances we have Duchess Deal by Tessa Dare which features a battle-scarred hero rebuilding his life after coming back from war and a heroine who is on her own in the world who marry each other because he needs an heir and she needs security. Then there is The Highwayman by Kerrigan Byrne which overcame my dislike of comedy Scottish accents in the dialogue and a tonne of melodrama with a smart heroine and a tortured bad boy hero. I can’t believe it’s seven years since I read it though!

Let’s jump to contemporary romance where you find marriages of convenience less often than you find the fake relationship – because there aren’t a lot of reasons why you might have to marry someone in the present day. But there are a few – former BotW Roomies by Christina Lauren, featuring a heroine who has come unmoored professionally and marries a musician on an expired visa so he can get his big break on Broadway. Then there is Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams, in her Bromance Book club series – which has another marriage for a visa, this time between the daughter of a Russian journalist with powerful enemies and a Russian Ice Hockey player. It does have a lot of tropes in it all mashed together – but it’s fun.

And finally, as it was the Fitzhugh books that made me write this, I would be wrong not to mention Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas – but you can go and read the aforementioned series post if you want to know more about that. It’s worth it though.

Happy Humpday!

book related, book round-ups

Father’s Day

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It’s Father’s Day today – so Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And for those of you who don’t have your dad around any more, I hope you’re doing ok too.

I was thinking about some of my favourite dads in books for today’s post – and threw the question out to my little sister who suggested Mr Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (mainly for the comebacks not the actual parenting), Bridget’s dad from Bridget Jones’s Diary and Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter, all of which I can get on board with. I’d add Sam Vimes from Discworld to the list – in several of the Watch books he worried that he wasn’t a “good” man, in his early days he was a drunk, but he’s devoted to his son, Young Sam, and comes home every night to read Where’s My Cow to him – which when you know Vimes is quite a big turn around.

I’m also going to throw Thursday Next‘s dad into the mix – ok so he’s travelling through time hiding from the Chronoguard, but he drops in on Thursday whenever he can and tries to help and offer her advice when he can. Technically not their dad but their guardian, I’m still going to include Arthur from The House in the Cerulean Sea because he will do anything to keep his kids safe. On the same front, Mr Tom from Goodnight Mr Tom gets the nod from me too – after all he does adopt William – and by the end of the book William is calling him dad. Obviously the traditional choice in any list of great dad’s in books is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, so you can take that one as read.

What I will say is that in writing this, I realised how many of my favourite books have dead or absent dads, which is a bit of a concern – but then the dead parent is a big thing in children’s books of a certain age – and often the drama in a historical novels is generated by the death of a father and the impact it has on the family – see Calamity of Mannerings most recently, but also a lot of the Georgette Heyer heroines and a lot of the more recent historical romance heroines too.

Which dads would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good Sunday everyone.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: May Quick reviews

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Only one new release in this month’s quick reviews after a couple of months of all new stuff. Which is interesting as I read a lot of new stuff last month, but I’ve already talked about most of the bits of it that I wanted to. Anyway, to the reviews

Summer Read by Jenn McKinlay**

Cover of Summer Reading set against a beachy background

I mentioned this on release day, and as you know I mostly read Jenn McKinlay’s cozy crimes, but the premise for this summer romance was very appealing – a return to a childhood home for the heroine who is at a bit of a crossroads in her professional life, and a newly arrived on the island hero who is searching for the keys to his family history. It’s sometimes a bit of a tough sell for a book to have a lead character who hates reading – after all we’re all readers because we’re reading it and so it can be hard to sympathise – but I think McKinlay does a good job of explaining Sam’s dyslexia and the issues that it causes for her. I’ll add that I’m not neuro-divergent – so I can’t speak to how accurate the depiction is, and obviously different people will have different experiences, but it all felt pretty plausible. I had a few minor quibbles – mostly around the fact that everything is very black and white and there’s a lot of jumping to conclusions going on at times in the romantic relationships. There’s also quite a lot of plot strands and that means even though the book is quite long, none of them really feel as completely explored as they could. But I enjoyed it and read it in two days so that says something too. I suspect it will work perfectly for people who are looking for something to read on their sun lounger – it’s a beachy summer read with a summery setting.

Proper English by KJ Charles

This is an Edwardian Murder mystery romance, set at a remote country house during a shooting party. Pat is a shooting champion, although she sometimes faces trouble from men who don’t like women being allowed to use guns. The party is at brother’s best friend’s house, where along with Jimmy’s family she meets Fenella – who deeply inconveniently is Jimmy’s new fiancée… I enjoyed it a lot and now need to read the other book that crosses over with this. I picked my paperback up in a second hand buying spree a couple of months back – a rare occasion when I’ve seen a physical copy of an early KJ Charles!

Strange Bedpersons by Jennifer Crusie

And finally for this month we have a Jennifer Crusie from the early 2000s. This is a fake relationship type set-up that sees Tess agree to pretend to be her ex’s fiancée for a business trip in order to help his career. In many ways this romance is quite of its time and I was never quite convinced that the hero and heroine belonged together (and even less so if it was a Democrat and Republican in our current political climate) but I do like filling in the gaps in author’s back catalogue and the snark and banter in this is great. This is a lot of fun to read if you don’t think about it too hard – and I read it in one sitting if that helps at all!

Anyway, that’s your lot, but just in case you missed them, the Books of the Week in May were Death of a Lady, To Love and Be Wise, Grave Expectations and Fake Dates and Mooncakes, and we’ve had Recommendsday posts on World War Two set novels, George III and (relatively) recent non-fiction.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: George III

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Have you been watching Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story on Netflix this week? If you have, and fancy some more reading about the period, I have the recommendsday post for you. The tie-in book for the series came out yesterday

Let’s start with the history bit – the Queen Charlotte they’re talking about is the wife of George III, aka the one who went mad, prompting the Regency, beloved of historical romance novelists for around a century now. She was born in 1744 and married George III a year after he became King. They were married for 57 years, until her death in 1818, two years before he died.

On the non-fiction front, Lucy Worsley’s Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court will give you a window into the actual life of the court at Kensington Palace in the first reigns of the first two Georges – which finishes ever so slightly before Charlotte arrived in England, but it absolutely sets the scene for what happened next and paints a vivid picture of all the rivalries that simmered under the surface – or not so under the surface. If we’re looking at wider aristocratic society at the time, it’s along time since I read it, but Stella Tillyard’s Aristocrats looks at the lives of the Lennox sisters (who were descended from another one of Charles II’s illegitimate children in a nice throwback to my Coronation post the other day!) who were in and around the court during the reign of George III. Another of the big aristocratic figures of the era is Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (who in another throwback to the Coronation post was a Spencer) who was a socialite and political organiser with an unhappy marriage.

Meanwhile back to the royals themselves, George and Charlotte had 15 children, of whom thirteen survived into adulthood. Included in the children were George IV (the prince regent) and William IV, of whom there are a lot of biographies, but less has been written about the others. In Princesses: The Six Daughters of George III by Flora Fraser you can learn about the lives of the Charlotte, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia and Amelia but also about their parents and life at court. If you want to go a little bit later, Fraser also wrote a very good biography of Caroline of Brunswick, wife of the Prince Regent, who had a very tumultuous life to say the least.

Moving over to fiction and Laurie Graham’s A Humble Companion ties in neatly with the Flora Fraser – as Nellie is a companion to Princess Sophia. You follow their friendship from childhood from George III’s era all the way through to the early Victorian period. And of course, as mentioned earlier, the Regency part of George III’s reign has been popular with historical romance authors since Georgette Heyer started writing about it. But Heyer actually started writing her historical romances in the earlier period and these include some of my favourites – we’re talking The Maskeraders, These Old Shades and Devil’s Cub. Aside from those, The Desperate Duchesses series is set in the Georgian period (rather than the Regency) and so is Elizabeth Hoyt’s Maiden Lane series, which I’ve only read a couple of but I know they have a lot of fans the romance groups that I hang out in.

And finally I’m going to issue another warning at this point – don’t go expecting Queen Charlotte to figure in the Bridgerton book series the way she does in the streaming series.

Happy Wednesday everyone.

Best of..., book round-ups, series

Series of the Year 2022

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So this is the point where I look back on the series I’ve read this year and pick out some highlights for you.

Let’s start with a new to me discovery – Her Majesty the Queen Investigates. These were fun cozy Murder mysteries with a royal twist. As I said in my series post about them, I think they work best in slightly closed settings – or at least not London – but I liked the characters and the tone a lot. It’s a shame there’s a year until the next one.

Moving on to Richard Osman. This year we got the third Thursday Murder Club book and they continue to be both clever and witty and fun but occasionally heartbreaking. This is the series that spawned the copycats that are popping up all over the place at the moment – I’m reading my way through some of them so you don’t have to!

I really enjoyed the Nanette Hayes mysteries, but I wish there were more of them. I am still looking for more 90s crime series that I missed out on (too young at the time!) and can catch up on now because they do seem to work for me – see some of the Fahrenheit series I’ve enjoyed. And I have another of the Liz Evans books waiting that I picked up from the charity book stall at the shopping centre. If you have any suggestions please do whack them in the comments please.

I’ve also carried on working my way though some of the other series I’ve been reading for years. I’m up basically up to date on the Kate Shackleton series now, as well as Dandy Gilver. It continues to be tricky to find new historical-set mystery series that I don’t wish to throw across the room, but I’m still trying. I hope Carola Dunn is having a happy retirement but I do miss her and the prospect of a new Daisy Dalrymple. But I’ve basically binged the Mary Russell series over the last two years, which has been good, but that age gap still annoys me. Royal Spyness continues and Kerry Greenwood has written a new Phryne that I’m saving for a special occasion. All hail Kerry.

Roll on 2023!