Category: books

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Devil in Winter

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Yes, this was one of my impulse purchases while compiling the Kindle Offers post; yes, I read it immediately; yes it’s now book of the week. I’m predictable like that.

Sebastian, Lord St Vincent is licking his wounds after a failed abduction of a potential bride when Evangeline Jenner finds him to make him a proposal: marry her to save her from the machinations of her relatives. A marriage of convenience seems to be the solution to both of their problems. But it’s never actually simple is it and feelings get involved that means that shy wallflower Evie comes into herself and her own power and a notorious womaniser is tamed.

This is the third in a set of four novels and I’m pretty sure if you’ve read the previous two (which I haven’t yet!) you have seen Sebastian being pretty awful – I mean the woman he abducted is one of Evie’s friends and is engaged to his best friends – so this is a reformed rake resumption story on a par with Eloisa James’s Villiers. Add into the mix a gaming hell and a bit of the seamier side of regency life and it’s incredibly readable and a lot of fun.

Devil in Winter came out back in 2006 when the historical romances tended to stick much more to the haute ton, Almacks and house party side of things – so Lisa Kelypas was doing interestingly new things at the time even if it might be more common now. If you’ve read Sarah MacLean (and I’ve told you to enough) and haven’t read this, then go back for this immediately – it’s even on offer to make it easier for you!

I read this on Kindle, but it’s also on Kobo and it’s on offer for 99p there too. You may be able to get hold of a paperback too if you look in the right places. And if you read this and want some more reformed rakes then I have a post for that too!

Happy reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 6 – November 12

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A fairly steady week of reading all things considered. Some Christmassy stuff is creeping in now, and a mix of new releases and a dash of things I thought while writing the Kindle offers! This week is looking busy though so we’ll see what that does to the list next Monday.

Read:

Murder on the Marmora by Edward Marston

Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

A Holly Jolly Ever After by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

Fancy Meeting You Here by Julie Tieu

The Proof of the Pudding by Rhys Bowen

Begin with You by Petra Velezboer*

Started:

Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth

Still reading:

Silver Lady by Mary Jo Putney*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by Mary Roach

Two preorders – one paperback, one kindle – arrived but that was it.

Bonus photo: is a gingerbread alpaca too cute to eat (hint: no, it was delicious)

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books

Books in the Wild: Supermarket edition

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After the disappointment of the airport last week, I have actually spotted some of the Christmas releases in the wild, so here we are with this Saturday’s post!

So to start with, thank you Sainsbury’s for being super useful, and not just for decaf coffee for my mum and dad. Their chart selection has a lot of those Christmas new releases if you’re thinking about gift buying and getting some loyalty points to help you in January! Obviously the Britney Spears memoir has had huge amounts of talk, and I’ve already mentioned the Patrick Stewart book too, but they’ve also got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book, Dawn French’s tour tie in, Billy Connelly and one I’ve been keeping an eye out for, Phillippa Gregory’s non fiction book about women in history. And then there’s the fiction options, with the latest batch of celebrity novels and some big names like Sophie Kinsella and Sarah Morgan.

Next acrosswe have some more of the Christmas releases – I saw Michael Palin at work the other week while he was doing the promotional trail for his book Great Uncle Harry, and David Mitchell has done a bunch of the talk shows for his book about the monarchy as has Miriam Margolyes about her latest memoir. We also have a sighting in the wild of the new V E Schwab. Then there’s the usual batch of cook books, the traditional Alan Partridge book and Clare Balding. I’ve also read a bunch of Dan Jones’s history books but haven’t read any of his historical fiction yet – Wolves of Winter of the second in what going to be a trilogy – if you’re in the US, this second one doesn’t come out where you are until January.

Next up, more cook books, plus Strictly start Johannes Radebe’s memoir and buzzy autumn release Yellowface, which I have read and didn’t love but I know lots of people who have really entered it. Plus the usual batch of best seller authors like John Grisham and Jo Nesbo. Then there’s an Anthony Horowitz James Bond and Lessons in Chemistry – the adaptation of which has just dropped on Apple TV!

The next shelf was a bit patchy, so I’m skipping it, but you can see the interesting bits in the edges of this photo and the last one – so Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the S J Parris on the last picture and the Mary Berry baking book on this one! Finally, right down the end her we have some Colleen Hoover (because is it even a book selection without her at the moment!) plus a few more of the high selling, long running favourites. And then there’s the kids books obviously!

And that’s your lot for today, hourly is been at least somewhat useful as you plan your Christmas book purchasing – and don’t worry, I’ll have some recommendations coming up in the next few woods to!

Have a great weekend everyone!

books, Series I love

Series I Still Love: Royal Spyness

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The latest book in Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series came out this week so I’m taking the opportunity to have another little chat about how much I love this series. It’s the 1930s and our heroine is Georgiana, a cousin of the king and granddaughter of Queen Victoria (just go with it and don’t think too hard about that bit) who is trying to build herself a niche in a changing world and runs parallel to some key events in interwar history.

When I wrote about my original series I love post, there were 15 books in the series- but now we’re up to 17 and well into 1936, which is obviously a Big Year for the Royal Family – and has turned out to be a big one for Georgie too. At this point every time a new Royal Spyness book comes out, I wonder if it’s the last one and whether we’ve nearly reached a logical ending for the series. I haven’t read the latest one yet so I don’t know if it is this time – but I really hope it’s not because these are such good fun, and Georgie is such a lovely heroine that it’s always fun to spend time in her admittedly body-strewn orbit! If you take away the royal connection they’re very similar to Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series – with a fairly innocent heroine, which makes for a lot of entertainment when Georgie finds herself among the Happy Valley set whereas Phryne Fisher (for example) wouldn’t have been shocked, but would probably have found it all very tiring!

I’ve been able to borrow these from the library and buy them in stores so hopefully if you’re interested you can get hold of some of them, although this latest is Kindle or American hardback import only at the moment.

Have a great weekend!

books

Out This Week: Fancy Meeting You Here

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We’re definitely in to the run in to Christmas now and the new books are starting to thin out, but one of (the last of?) this autumn’s buzzy romance releases came out this week. We’re in a bit of a phase of romances set around weddings, and Julie Tieu’s Fancy Meeting You Here has a heroine who is both bridesmaid and florist at three of her friends’ weddings over just a few months and a hero who is a caterer. I had it pre-ordered and I’m looking forward to reading it!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 30 – November 5

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Well, I may have fallen a little behind in October, but the start of November has gone ok so far. Fingers crossed it continues!

Read:

Somebody at the Door by Raymond W Postgate

Intruder in the Dark by George Bellairs

The Snake, the Crocodile and the Dog by Elizabeth Peters

Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue by Cat Sebastian

Dancers in Mourning by Margery Allingham

Picture Perfect by Jeevani Charika*

Guaranteed to Bleed by Julie Mulhern

Death in Fine Condition by Andrew Cartmel

Started:

Silver Lady by Mary Jo Putney*

Murder on the Marmora by Edward Marston

Still reading:

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Animal, Vegetable, Criminal by Mary Roach

I may have bought a few books because of the fresh batch of Kindle offers. More on that on Wednesday…

Bonus photo: watching Lover Come Back on Saturday afternoon

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books

Books in the Wild: Airport update

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Him Indoors is on a jolly to the Med this weekend and kindly helped me out with some photos from the airport bookshop – bless his cotton socks he only sent me three, and it’s all fiction, but he’s trying and working out what he took photos of has been fun!

So we have biggest books – which is a very strange mix of stuff, but appears to be mostly classics, literary fiction and a few odds and ends of other bits and bobs – including that latest Richard Osman in the airport paperback.

Now I’m not going to lie, this doesn’t look very different from the selection when I went away in September – which is a maybe not a surprise – because he’s gone for the actual paperback fiction shelves – not the airport special editions – so its the big authors and big paperback editions – Lessons in Chemistry, older Thursday Murder Club, Coleen Hoover, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Monica Heisey which appears to have been the big paperback release of the autumn – which surprised me because the hardback only came out in January.

And finally, even more paperback fiction and along with more of the same from the previous shelf, I see new Sarah Morgan, All the Light We Cannot See – which has a Netflix adaptation out this week, Babel by R F Kuang which seems to be popping up more places now that Kuang’s Yellowface is doing so well, the Secret Diary of Charles Ignatius Sancho and the new Janice Hallett Christmas mystery. From the glimpse of the airport non-fiction shelf next to it, it appears to have lots of the Walter Isaacson Elon Musk book and new Future of Geography book and potentially not a lot of the Christmas memoirs *but* Him Indoors might not have noticed them for photos – or understood the difference…

So what have we learned? Don’t rely on the airport for your big autumn memoirs, and that despite living with me (and reading some of my airport format purchases) I’m not sure Him Indoors notices that books come in different sizes!

Have a great Saturday!

books

Series I love redux: Parasolverse

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Shelf of Gail Carriger books

It was Halloween this week, so it seems an appropriate time to remind you all of one of my favourite universes – and one of the not many I read that feature the supernatural. I’ve mentioned my slightly iffy relationship with books with vampires, werewolves and the like before, and my total inability to work out in advance what sort of supernatural series I’m going to like, and which I’m not. But Gail Carriger’s Parasolverse is definitely in the like category. There’s loads and loads of detail in my original Series I Love post – from back in 2020 – but they’re steampunk Victoriana in three different series and three different generations. The Parasol Protectorate series were written first but chronologically come in the middle, and feature the adventures of Alexia Tarabotti, then The Finishing School series of Young Adult novels are about Sophronia Temminnick and are connected to Alexia’s story in a way I can’t reveal without giving major spoilers and then the final series written and chronologically are the Custard Protocol, which feature Prudence (also linked to Alexia’s story) and her band of friends and their airship. I would read them in the order they were written for maximum enjoyment, but you can really suit yourself. Generally they’re a lovely witty way to spend some time with a large dollop of adventure, peril and some romance too. Just lovely.

Have a great weekend everyone.

books, stats

October Stats

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Books read this month: 30*

New books: 23

Re-reads: 7 (including 5 audiobooks)

Books from the to-read pile: 6

NetGalley books read: 7

Kindle Unlimited read: 6

Ebooks: 6

Audiobooks: 5

Non-fiction books: 1

Favourite book this month: either A Christmas to Remember or To Swoon or to Spar.

Most read author: probably Margery Allingham because of the Campion re-listen

Books bought: 5 ebooks, two preorders and think that’s it!

Books read in 2023: 313

Books on the Goodreads to-read shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 708

An okish month. It went a bit off course at times, but towards the end I think I was getting my mojo back. Onwards into November and the start of the real run of Christmas reading…

Bonus picture: a houseplant success – I’ve killed one of these before, nearly killed another and yet – this one has got a new shoot coming!!!

*includes some short stories/novellas/comics/graphic novels – including this month

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

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Pinch, punch etc. Just the two for the quick reviews this month because it’s been a fairly re-read heavy month and I’ve already written about a lot of the new and new-to-me stuff! But hey, two is better than nothing right?

Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian Farr

Well this was a lot of fun. It’s both a musical mystery and a story told entirely through correspondence so that makes it a touch different to a lot of the other Golden Age Murder mysteries that you might come across. Our victim is a much-disliked conductor shot dead mid performance, seemingly without anyone seeing anything amiss until he keeled over. Our Detective is DI Alan Hope and the story is told thorugh the letters that he sends to his wife about the case – and the documents he includes in with that – which are a mix of letters from suspects, newspaper clippings and other similar items. It’s a really clever way of doing things – and it’s a shame that Farr never wrote any more, although I suspect it would not be an easy trick to pull off more than once. If you know a bit about music you’ll be able to follow this – I think if you know more about music than I do (grade 6ish clarinet and piano, bad at music theory) then you’ll get even more out of it. How it would work for a non-musician I don’t know!

A Lady’s Guide to Scandal by Sophie Irwin

As you might remember I read and really enjoyed Irwin’s first book when it came out last year, and so I’ve now come back to report in on her latest. My main critique of the first book was that there was just so. much. plot going on but that it moved so fast that you didn’t notice it. This second book doesn’t work as well – or at least didn’t for me – and the main culprits (I think) are that firstly that the two love interests in the heroine’s love triangle are both not great (at 50% I was wondering if we were going to get a late arriving third contender) and secondly that the heroine is just… hard to root for. She is both a pushover and ridiculously foolhardy by turns and it just gets very wearing really quite fast. And then – like the first book – it’s got a lot of plot, which leaves not a lot of time for it all to be resolved satisfactorily and when you don’t love the main characters you notice that. There’s a big revelation at more than 80% through that there is not time for a redemption for and the final resolution and reveal is just… too much too quickly. I’m sad I didn’t enjoy it more to be honest.

And of course there was a lot of other stuff too – including To Swoon and to Spar, Duke, Actually, 10 Things that Never Happened, Three Times a Countess and lots of Romances – M/m and on reality shows.

Happy Humpday!