Category: book round-ups

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

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Just a couple of books to tell you about today – September was very much a month of series reading and some/many/a selection of those will feature elsewhere!

Hitchcock’s Blondes by Laurence Leamer

Leamer’s previous book Capote’s Women was a Book of the Week right back at the start of the year (side note: the mini series based on that one still hasn’t appeared on TV here which is annoying) and this one tackles another group linked by a man. Alfred Hitchcock was a great director, but not necessarily a great person as this book will hammer home. I think I would have appreciated a bit more a clarity about why he picked the women that he did – no Doris Day here for example and she was definitely blonde – but it’s an interesting read and there’s some good Classic Hollywood insider info in here too.

The Red House Murder by A A Milne*

I filled in a gap in my crime-fiction history knowledge by reading this, the only mystery novel by the author of (among many other things) Winnie the Pooh. It’s a locked room-type mystery and it’s hard to tell at this distance – and having read so many similar plots – how revolutionary this might have seen at the time. That said, it’s a really good example of the genre, with the long lost brother of the host of a house party found shot through the head shortly after arriving from Australia. I figured out part of the solution, but not the hows and whys of it – and enjoyed reading how it had all been done. Worth reading if you’re a fan of classic mysteries.

Worrals goes East by W E Johns

This is the latest in an occasional series of reviews of genuinely terrible Girls Own (or Girls Own-adjacent) books. Worrals was the female version of Biggles, in a very literal sense, and gets up to all sorts of adventures as a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force. The last one of these I read, you could probably have swapped Worrals and Frecks names for Biggles and Ginger and it would have still made sense (or as much sense as these make) and as that one was set in occupied France, there was just the usual anti Nazi stuff rather than actual racism. You know where I’m going with this don’t you? This one at least has a plot that could only be carried out by women, but that’s because it’s set in Syria and Iraq and, yeah. I suggest you don’t read it!

That’s your lot this month – happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: August Quick Reviews

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Another mixed bag of quick reviews this month – but fairly on brand for my August – something Girls Own, some modern crime and some classic crime!

The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown

This is the story of seven children from three different families who band together to start a theatre company in an abandoned chapel in their home town. Across the course of the book they grow in confidence and reputation to the point where they enter an acting competition against other amateur groups in their town. Children’s books featuring the theatre world are among some of my favourites (the Drina series, Sadlers Wells series and of course Ballet Shoes) so I was excited to read this. And although it’s a bit slow to get going, and may be a bit too long (although it does cover a two year period so maybe the length is understandable) but actually once it got to the final phase of the children trying to prove to their parents that they should be allowed to pursue careers on the stage it was much better. Probably not one that I’ll read again, but I’m glad I read it.

Cracked Mirror by Chris Brookmire*

What happens when a hard-bitten LA cop and a little old lady who solves murders in her small village collide? Well, a completely brain fuddling murder mystery that’s what – and I mean that in a good way. The Cracked Mirror of the title is a screenplay, which seems to have lead to several deaths, which the authorities think are suicides, but Johnny Hawke and Penny Coyne are not convinced and end up investigating their separate cases – which soon collide. And lots of other things are colliding in this too – it’s really hard to explain without giving too much away, but I did enjoy it, once I had time and brain space to concentrate on it so that I could follow what was going on. But it is definitely not a straight-down-the-line crime or mystery novel and I know the blurb says that, but I really cannot emphasise that enough.

Death and the Maiden by Gladys Mitchell

Given how much I enjoy the other Queens of Crime, every now and again I acquire some more Mrs Bradley books and try again in the hope that I just haven’t found the right one to unlock the series for me yet, and every time it’s the same problem. They’re just so hard going compared to the others. The TV version clearly seduced me!

Happy Humpday!

Book previews, book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Summer of Sequels

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Something slightly different for this week’s recommendsday, because it’s a bit of a preview type thing. There are a lot of books coming out this summer that are sequels to books that I’ve really enjoyed, and per my rules, I probably won’t be able to review them, because: spoilers. So today I thought I’d flag them now – while I’m still excited about them and before any of them have the chance to disappoint me)!

First of all, and all ready in the shops, is Displeasure Island by Alice Bell, a follow up to last year’s Grave Expectations. I was hoping for a sequel to that – but for some reason this one had gone completely under my radar until I spotted it in the airport bookshop the other weekend! It came out at the start of May, and sees Claire and her friends off on holiday on a remote Irish island, where the hotel is double booked, there are fighting ghost pirates and – per the blurb – Claire is fighting off “anxious And Then There Were None vibes” even before a murder. This sounds like a lot of fun and I’m probably going to end up picking it up at some point.

Out yesterday in the US and who knows when in the UK is The Guncle Abroad, the sequel to Steven Rowley’s The Guncle, which I loved when I read it and started me off on buying all of Rowley’s books (except Lily and the Octopus because I think that’s going to be way too sad). The sequel finds us rejoining Patrick as he heads to a family wedding in Italy, in a very different place professionally from where he was at the start of the first book. He’s also nearly fifty, and out of favour with the kids, who a struggling to adapt to their new normal.

Next up, and out in a couple of weeks is How to Solve Murders Like a Lady by Hannah Dolby. This is a second book featuring Violet Hamilton, after last summer’s No Life for a Lady. This finds Violet hard at work as a lady detective, but when the body of a woman is found on the beach, her efforts to investigate are thwarted at every turn for some reason. The first in this series has been consistently in Kindle Unlimited for the last few months, so it may be that this one is too at some point in the near future.

And of course there are lots of longer running series that have fresh books out this summer, but I’m sticking to the actual sequels today, so that’s your lot.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

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.