I did a series post for Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series a few weeks back, and if you liked those – you might also be interested to know that there is a new Alexandria Bellefleur novel out this week. Truly Madly Deeply came out on the 30th and the blurb tells me it has a bestselling romance novellist who has just found out her fiancee is cheating – just after she signed up to present a podcast giving relationship advice. But when she meets her co-host, who is a cynical divorce lawyer she walks out. But Colin (that’s the lawyer) tracks her down and asks for a second chance and as they get to know each other they go from enemies to friends and then maybe more…
I’m been taking a bit of a break from enemies to lovers romances, but the description of this does interest me, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for it.
It’s May Day, so here I am with another batch of short reviews of other things I read last month that I haven’t already told you about – or in one case, updating you on something I mentioned on release day.
Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley
A lot has been written about Agatha Christie’s disappearance in 1926 – in non-fiction as well as fiction – and while that is one of the key moments in her life, this sets it in the context of her childhood, her marriage and her work as an author. If all you know about Christie is that she wrote mysteries and that she disappeared, this will fill in all the rest of the gaps for you and is very readable as you do it. It’s clearly got a lot of research behind it, but it wears it very lightly. Definitely worth a read if you’re a classic mystery reader.
Vanishing Point by Patricia Wentworth
I’ve read a few of Patricia Wentworth mystery novels now, both in the Miss Silver series and outside it, and although they’re not my favourite of the “other” Golden Age crime novels, they’re still pretty consistently good, more towards the thriller side of the scale than some of the others, but still with a body or two. They tend to have a slightly higher proportion of Plucky Young Women of various types, but there is variation within that as well. I picked this one up from a charity book exchange, but they’re also relatively regularly available at a good price on Kindle.
The Breakup Tour by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka
I mentioned this when it came out so it’s only fair that I come back with a bit of a verdict on it – and it’s bad news considering how much I enjoyed The Roughest Draft last year. Sadly this is a disappointment and a puzzle. This is slightly spoiler-y but I can’t explain without them: A puzzle because I don’t know who this is actually for. I don’t think the Taylor fans will like it because the Taylor stand in is just terrible and plays all into all the worse of the tropes about her life. I don’t think the non-Taylor fans will either because as a reader you just can’t see how they can be happy and be true to themselves. It feels like it has all the elements of a toxic relationship where it will just keep repeating in patterns.
And that’s your lot – have a great Wednesday everyone.
I mean it may not be a surprise to you that this week’s BotW is the new Emily Henry. I’ve enjoyed her previous books so much that I was hoping this one was going to live up to my expectations and, luckily, it did!
Daphne moved to Waning Bay, Michigan because it was her fiancé’s home town. But when he decides that he’s actually in love with his best friend Petra, she finds herself stranded in a new town, where she may have her dream job as a childrens librarian, but she’s got no friends and will soon have no where to live either. So she does what any one would do – moves in with Petra’s jilted boyfriend Miles. The two would seem to be absolute opposites – Daphne is serious, practical and so quiet her colleagues think she might be in witness protection. Miles is scruffy and somewhat chaotic and likes listening to heartbreak ballads on repeat. But when the two of them get drunk together they think it might be a good idea to post deliberately misleading photos of the two of them together, and then, well things get even more complicated.
I read this in less than 18 hours. I was reading it on the train to work and I was cross when I had to put it down and get off and walk to the office. I was reading it on the train home, and was cross when I had to stop reading and get off the train – even though I was really hungry and wanted to go home for my dinner. And I finished in bed that night when I should have been going to sleep. Luckily I was near enough to the end that it didn’t end up being a 2am finish and the Bad Decisions book club.
I enjoyed Happy Place last year, but I liked this so much more. This is back towards the pure romance end of the spectrum, whereas Happy Place was closer to the Women’s Fiction end. This was back to Book Lovers levels of enjoyment for me and I would happily have read another hundred pages, especially if those pages included more comeuppance for Daphne’s awful ex-Peter. The only thing I didn’t really understand – to start with at least – was why Daphne would have been with Peter in the first place, but Henry did a really good job of making that understandable.
My copy of Funny Story came from NetGalley, but it’s out now and will be where ever you get your books from, because Emily Henry books get massive wide releases. It’s a hardback – so it’ll be at the airports in the large format paperback if you’re going on holiday any time soon – and of course it’s in Kindle and Kobo.
We’re hurtling towards the end of April and I’m still not entirely sure how that happened. Anyway all the usual end of month stuff coming up, but for once I have already finished all the new releases this month that I had got from NetGalley. I’m not sure when the last time that happened was, and when you add to that the fact that I’ve also finished the May requests too and it’s really unusual. What I haven’t done is got the list of ongoing books down – because I got a bit distracted by the exciting new releases. Still you win some, you lose some!
Bonus picture: it’s wisteria season again! There were loads of them in Italy, but they’re also coming into bloom on the building I walk past on the way to work.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Last week I said there was more from Óbidos and so here it is!
This is the Livraria do Mercado, which is a bookshop and an organic market. I have no idea what the proportion of books to produce is when it comes to sales, but in terms of the look of the place, it’s mostly books!
I also have no idea what how the prices for the produce stack up compared to in the other stores, but it seemed to be good quality and I know I’d be happy to buy my veggies in a bookshop – after all I’ve done my fair share of book buying in supermarkets over the years, and this is definitely the better way around!
It’s mostly Portuguese books (obviously) but they have also got a section with foreign language novels – including lots of Portuguese authors in translation and, in English at least, some very random secondhand books!
You’ve already seen this one, but this is the book exchange – and this is all English books (or the vast majority anyway). It’s run by volunteers who have moved to the area and raises money for local charities. As you know, I picked up a few books while I was there!
And that’s it! Have a great weekend and I hope you have a comfy spot and a good book to read in it!
Happy Friday everyone, I said last Friday that I thought that we were about to go on a bit of a run of crime series posts, and here we are with it
I’ve mentioned this series before, but as the fifth book is out now – and I’ve read it – the time seems right to do a bit of a recap. This is Anthony Horowitz’s mystery series where a fictionalised version of himself is working with Nathanial Hawthorne, an ex-policeman turned private investigator, to write what turns into a series of books about murder investigations Hawthorne has worked on. Book-Horowitz fits in these true crime books alongside his other work – writing novels, working on TV series, promoting his work – and often this leads to more crimes to investigate.
Hawthorn is a mysterious character – we are told the circumstances surrounding his departure from the police force, but not by him and any details about his life he does give up to BookHorowitz are done grudgingly or when his hand is forced. BookHorowitz is a Captain Hastings figure – stumbling through cases, drawing all the wrong conclusions but often thinking he is doing better than Hawthorne.
The first four books in the series have been written in the first person – but the new book is a bit of a departure, with BookHorowitz fulfilling a publishing contract by writing about one of Hawthorne’s prior cases, and giving us sections in the third person from the “book” and then first person sections as BookHorowitz goes through the process of finding out the details about the case – and about some new developments in the backstory.
Once I get going with these (and that usually means I need to actually sit down and get at least 50 pages in), they’re incredibly easy to read, and I really appreciate the meta-ness of it all as Horowitz weaves the fiction into his real biography. And I love how bumbling he makes himself – it’s fun and funny to read. As I said last week, I’m still hoping that he’ll write another Magpie Murder, but I’ll happily accept more in this series!
I would definitely start at the beginning if you’re going to read these – you don’t need to have read the others to follow the new one, but you’ll definitely get more out of it if you do. And they should be fairly easy to get hold of – the new one was in the airport bookshop last week and I fairly frequently see them on the tables in Waterstones and Foyles. And obviously they’re on Kindle and Kobo and audiobook too. Just watch out – because we’ve had a couple of different cover designs now, so you might find a few different styles out there if you’re looking at the paperbacks.
There are a few notable books out this week (like the new Emily Henry) but I wanted to flag the new book from Libby Page, which comes out today and is a follow up to The Lido, which I loved when it came out in 2018 so I’m looking forward to seeing where she’s taking it now.
I keep saying that it was a sightseeing holiday not a reading one – so I don’t have a What I Read on my Holidays post today – instead as I had such a wonderful time wandering around Italy – three provinces in one holiday! – I’m going to point you at the Books set in Italy post I wrote at Easter because I’m in the mood for more Italian-set books at the moment!
I said yesterday I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, but it all became clear to me while I was trying to get to sleep last night, even if this is slightly rule breaking.
It’s rule breaking because The Darkest Sin is not the first book in the series – but I didn’t realise that when I bought it and I haven’t read the first in the series. I picked this off the shelf to take on holiday because it is set in Florence and we were going to Tuscany so it seemed fitting – and it was really good.
Cesare Aldo is an investigator at one of the criminal courts in Florence, a city full of factions, alliances and secrets. When he is sent to a convent to investigate reports of night-time intruders, he finds rivalries and secrets – and that’s even before the body of a naked man is found inside the convent. Alongside this, a constable of the same court finds the body of a missing colleague, that was pulled from the river near his childhood home. who would have dared kill a court officers – and if Carlo Strocchi can find out, it could secure him the promotion he yearns for. But Florence is dangerous and treacherous and the answers could prove a bigger problem than the mysteries.
Having not read the prior book in the series, I don’t know how much of the backstory in this had already been revealed in that – and what would have been a twist to a reader already familiar with Aldo. But going in blind, this was a twisty and page turning thriller with clever, well-drawn characters – not just in the main characters but in the supporting roles too. Sixteenth Century Florence is also a character in this – you can hear it and smell it and sense the danger lurking all around.
As I said yesterday, it was a doing and seeing sort of holiday not a lazing around one – so I was still finishing this on the plane home, and I was actually annoyed when the plane landed sooner than I expected and I had to leave it unfinished for a few hours while we made our way home. I’ll definitely be looking for more of these – I want to find out what the first book told you and see what happens next!
You can get The Darkest Sin on Kindle and Kobo and in paperback. There are three books in the series available now – with a fourth coming in the autumn.
We’ve been on holiday, but it was a sightseeing and doing things sort of holiday, not a lying on a sun lounger one, so the book list isn’t quite what you might expect from a holiday week. But I had a wonderful time and I don’t care. No idea what I’m writing about tomorrow though. I’m sure something will come to me though. It usually does. Given that Taylor Swift has a new album out I should probably have tried harder to finish The Breakup Tour right?
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 