Well as you know I’ve been on my travels recently, so this Saturday and next it’s the highlights of my trip to Obidos’s bookshops… And part one is the Livraria de Santiago, because why not when it looks like this!
It’s an ex-church, it’s gorgeous and the book selection is excellent.
I mean look at it. It’s just such a nice mix of old and new, and it’s so full of books!
Here are the two ends of RF/Rebecca Kuang – do note that in Portuguese they’re both under RF Kuang.
Also there was a Mallory Towers omnibus and how could I not take a picture!
There’s also a fair few romance novels – in translation and by local authors – and plenty of YA. All in all, great fun.
And to finish, here’s the outside – which is out to keep the fact it’s a bookshop secret!
It feelso like there may be a run of series post about murder mysteries in the near future, so here I am today with a romance series, just because I finally finished the third of these last week and I even mentioned the fact there’s an offer on the first one in this month’s kindle offers post. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2bbzQHrYdg/?igsh=MTZoNWYwb245OWM1eA==
This is a trilogy of books following a group of friends in the town of Bright Falls. Delilah returns to town she grew up in (and hated)in the first book to photograph her step sister’s wedding and finds herself drawn to her stepsister’s best friend Clare. The second sees Astrid, the aforementioned stepsister, rebuilding her life by renovating a historic inn and fighting with the inn owner’s granddaughter. And the final boom sees Iris, the final member of the group and romance author seeking to solve her writers block with a part in a queer retelling of a Shakespeare play and a fake relationship with her love interest in the play.
So as you can tell from those summaries, several of my favourite tropes crop up here – enemies to lovers, fake relationships and returning to a small town, oh and house renovations. The dialogue is fun and the extended friendship group is a delight and if you’ve ever read a small town romance and wished the town in question was a bit less straight, these could be the romances foryou.They’re fun and queer and that’s not even an issue that comes up as worth commenting on.
These were Ashley Herring Blake’s first romance novels and this is it for this series – but she has a festive romance coming this year, featuring two exes finding themselves stuck together at Christmas and the first in a new series coming in 2025 too so plenty to look forward to if you read these and like them.
Well technically only this week if you’re in the US – it was last week for those of us in the UK. Anyway all that really matters is that mid April sees the release the fifth in Anthony Horowitz’s incredibly meta murder mystery series in which a fictionalised version of himself keeps getting mixed up in murders while working with a former police detective. I’ve already started this and I do really like this series, although of his two meta series I do prefer Magpie Murders, but I get that those are much harder to make into more than a couple of books, so I’ll definitely take this!
Last week we said goodbye to one of my aunties. She spent her whole life living on farms and in the countryside, so it got me thinking about books set in farms or in the countryside, so that’s what I’m theming today’s Recommendsday around.
Firstly I’m going to mention an Enid Blyton book, The Children of Willow Farm, because when I read this as a child, it was how I imagined life on the farm my aunties lived on was like when they were little. I’m going to admit I haven’t read it as an adult, and I know that a lot of people say Blyton doesn’t stand up when you go back to it as an adult, but I don’t care.
Also in the same sort of era in terms of when they were written are the James Heriot books – that’s spawned the tv series All Creatures Great and Small. I’ve read or listened to a few of them and they are a glimpse into a Yorkshire of times gone by. Do note if you’ve seen the most recent TV series that it’s based on the characters not the plots once you get past the first couple of seasons.
You could also have Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm from this era – I really loved it – and it’s got a great TV movie adaptation featuring young Rufus Sewell in it that’s just been repeated on BBC Four and should be on the iPlayer if you want a dose of Sexy Seth. Even older is Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, which has as its heroine a lady farmer. I read it back in my school days when I was assigned extra reading by by English teacher and I found it much less annoying than a lot of the rest of that list.
A few years before that particular bout of assigned reading I read Flora Thompson’s Lark Rise to Candleford trilogy which are all about country life at the end of the nineteenth century – and set not that far away from where the actual bits of my family who were farmers really were.
If you want countryside-set murder mysteries, then I’ve written a whole post about the Lady Hardcastle series – and I think we’re due another one in the not too distant future too. If you want romance, there are a good few of the older Katie Fforde’s and Trisha Ashley’s set in various parts of the English countryside – Ashley is usually Lancashire and Fforde the Cotswolds.
And that’s all I’ve got. But I’ve enjoyed thinking about options for this and it made me smile too which I needed
I said yesterday that I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, and it took a lot of thinking about because there wasn’t a lot of options on the life without breaking some of my own rules, but when it comes down to it, I had the most to say about this one, because I have Thoughts. Lots of thoughts!
Helen is a successful young adult author whose trilogy is about to be turned into a TV series. She’s negotiated herself a place in the writers room, but it turns out that also in the room is Grant. Grant went to high school with Helen and they are bound together by a “tragic accident” – that’s the blurb’s choice of words, not mine. But as they work together, sparks start to fly between them and maybe they might be the key to each others future?
I said on Thursday when I wrote about this for release week that I wasn’t sure if Helen and Grant’s shared past was some thing that they would – or should- be able to get past, and I absolutely stand by that. If the event in their past was almost anything else, I think it would be ok, but this specific issue felt unfixable. And I’ll put the issue at the bottom if you really want the spoiler. Now that aside, it’s a great read – Grant is a charismatic leading man who stays charming without veering into insufferable. It’s also fun watching Helen find her feet in Los Angeles and build a life for herself. They are a good couple in every way, except for that one thing. And other people’s views on that may vary.
This is Yulin Kuang’s debut and there is lots about it that I did like, so I will be looking out for whatever she writes next, as well as those Emily Henry adaptations that she is working on.
My copy of How to End a Love Story came from Netgalley but it’s available now on Kindle, Kobo and as an actual book.
Happy Reading!
The tragic past is that Helen’s sister killed herself by stepping in front of Grant’s car.
It appears that reading the Lucy Worsley Agatha Christie biography has started me on a Christie re-read/listen. And then having read one of the Ann Grangers I had in hand the other week, I then promptly mainlined the other two – there is another one coming out this year – but not until the autumn so now I have to wait. I did however make some excellent progress on reducing the long runner list – more than you would guess from the list too. I will get there in the end! Interestingly though, I still don’t know what I’m going to write about tomorrow. We’ll see what happens…
I’m back with another stack of books that I’ve managed to acquire some how. There’s two pre-orders here – the new Vinyl Detective and Steven Rowley’s The Celebrants, which has been out in the US for ages but has only just got here. Then there’s my two purchases on the way to Portugal – which were When Grumpy Met Sunshine and Death at the Chateau. Then there’s the books I brought back from Portugal. Seven Scamps was a belated birthday gift and the two Julia books are loans (I think!) from the same friend. The Patricia Wentworth, Susan Elizabeth Philips and Jenny Colgan were acquisitions from the book exchange in Portugal. And then at the very back is Delayed Rays of a Star which was an impulse purchase second hand. So just a few then…
In a touch of serendipity given this week’s BotW pick, I saw two Kate Clayborn books in the wild in the works last week, so as they’re now even easier to get hold of, I wanted to remind you all of Clayborn’s Chance of a Lifetime series – which are more straight romance or at least feature less complicated lives than The Other Side of Disappearing is. So head on over to my post from last year to find out more.
Yulin Kuang’s debut romance is an enemies to lovers trope about two writers linked by an incident in their past who end up working on the same TV show. I know you know I’m reading this at the moment, so I can’t give it a review yet but it’s a really interesting premise and without giving too much away, I’m really not sure if their shared past is overcome-able (is that even a word?) and any sensible person would have decided not to work together, but hey this is a romance novel and people don’t do sensible things in them always! Kuang is working on the adaptation of a couple of Emily Henry’s novels and I love them so I’m hoping optimistic.
It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means, it’s time for me to tempt you to spend a whole bunch of money on cheap Kindle books!
In relatively recent picks, Come as You Are is 99p – this one was a BotW pick last year – and I think the price is down now because a second book in the series has just come out – and although that one is more expensive to buy Lips Like Sugar is also in Kindle Unlimited! Also 99p is Delilah Green Doesn’t Care, which is the first in Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series. As you know I’m currently reading the last one (when I can find the paperback, which I keep misplacing!) in this trio of romances featuring a friendship group in a small town. Alexandria Bellefleur also has a new book coming out this month and I think that’s why all three of her Written in the Stars series are £1.99 at the moment.
I’ve written whole posts about how much I love A J Pearce’s books about Emmy Lake, so it’s only right that I flag to you that the second in the trilogy (so far) Yours, Cheerfully is 99p this month – and the first one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment as well. Double bonus. I read Alexander McCall Smith from time to time – and I think The 44 Scotland Street series is my favourite of his – and the first one of those is 99p at the moment. He’s definitely an author to read in order and if you binge too many in a row (like MC Beaton) you may notice patterns and trends and enjoy them less so pace yourself for best effect.
In older favourites, Jenny Colgan’s Little Beach Street Bakery is 99p. The heroine escapes a horrible relationship and does some healing through bakery, way before sourdough was the craze of the early pandemic. I have a special place in my heart for this book, because I won a competition when this came out and the prize was a new oven. I think enough time has passed now that I can admit that what I actually got was a stack of John Lewis vouchers to buy the oven – and as I didn’t need a new oven at the time, I held on to them and they bought new pillows and a new washer dryer when the one that I inherited from my grandpa gave up the ghost! Thank you lovely competition.
Another old favourite is Trisha Ashley – and her Wedding Tiers is 99p this month if you want to visit her Lancashire universe. We’re only a just over a month away from the first part of the third series of Bridgerton dropping on Netflix, but if you can’t wait (and bearing in mind everything I’ve said about the difference between the books and the series) then The Further Observations of Lady Whistledown is 99p – this is a collaborative effort with Julia Quinn and two other authors each telling a story in the Whistledown world.
This month’s bargain Georgette Heyer is Bath Tangle, which isn’t one of my favourites, but which I probably should re-read again to see if I’ve changed my mind on it, as can sometimes happen as I get older and wiser. This has a formerly engaged couple coming back into contact with each other when he is appointed her trustee after the death of her father. Devil’s Cub and An Infamous Army are among the ones at £1.99, There’s also a PG Wodehouse omnibus on offer for 99p if you want some Jeeves and Wooster.
I should probably mention some non-fiction too right? The Dress Diary of Miss Anne Sykes is 99p. I don’t recommend a lot of cook books, but when I do it tends to be Rukmini Iyer – I love her Roasting Tin series, and The Green Roasting Tin is £1.99 if you are someone who can cope with cook books on tablets.
And in books I bought while writing this post, there’s Genevieve Cogman’s Scarlet – I’ve read The Invisible Library and really liked it and this is French revolutionary vampires and comes with comparisons to Gail Carriger who you know I love. I’m excited to read it – and there is a sequel coming next month too. I also bought The Storied Life of A J Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, which was her big book before Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow went mega-huge. And finally I bought The Partner Plot which is the new book from Kristina Forrest, who wrote The Neigbor Favor which was a book of the week last summer.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 