Ummmmm. Well. What can I say. Three are from the National Trust secondhand bookshop at Upton – including Maiden Voyages which is by Sian Evans who also wrote Queen Bees. Then there are a couple of paperback preorders – The Bodyguard and Lost Summers of Newport and another in the Goldy Schulz series. Then I popped into Foyles at the start of the week to see if they had the Dahlia Lively sequel (they did and as you can see I’ve already started it!) and ended up buying two more too! Where oh where is my will power? But do I even want to find it (hint: no!) I think the big run of preorders arriving is over now though as the summer releases are pretty much all out now, so perhaps I may keep a lid on things until the autumn rush starts in September?
One of my new arrivals last week was the new Willig, White and Williams in paperback and it’s Bastille Day today – aka the day the French celebrate the start of the French Revolution- so I’m taking the opportunity today to remind you of Lauren Willig’s Secret History of the Pink Carnation series – if you want spies and derring do in revolutionary France with a side of present day (or present day when the series started) action then these are for you. This goes double if you’ve enjoyed The Three Musketeers in any of its forms – including the recent movie!
Hilariously, given that my pre-ordered copy of The Bodyguard arrived less than a week ago, Katherine Centre’s new book is already out! I’d been waiting for the Bodyguard to come out in the UK for about a year – and now they’ve timed the release of Hello Stranger to match the US one. Bonkers. Anyway, the new one is out, and it’s got a heroine suffering from face blindness after an operation and trying to save her career as a portrait photographer. This sounds intriguing to me – although I only liked not loved The Bodyguard over the weekend so I may not buy it straight away!
It’s that time of the month again, but this time it’s a tricky one as we have prime day offers going on on the ‘Zon so it’s a bit of a lottery which of these are going to last all month… but I have to say it is a really good month for deals on the recent releases.
I have You and Me on Vacation waiting to be read – but if you’ve read some of Emily Henry’s others – like Happy Place and Book Lovers, then fill in a gap! Also waiting to be read is the new Sarah Morgan, Summer Wedding, which is 99p. I’ve read a couple of Sarah Adam’s romances and found them too New Adult for me – but I know they’re super popular so the fact that the latest Practice Makes Perfect is 99p will be good news for them. In historical detective novels, the latest in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series Dear Little Corpses is £1.99.
I bought David Sedaris’s Happy Go Lucky while writing this post, as well as Jarvis Cocker’s Good Pop, Bad Pop. And if that’s not enough books for you, I don’t know what is.
In Ashley Piston’s last book, The Dead Romantics (also a BotW) she was doing a spin on a romance with a ghost. This time it’s a romance with a time travel-y element. What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the plot: Clementine is trying to get through the aftermath of the worst day of her life and try and rebuild in a way that means she can’t get hurt again. She’s living in her late aunt’s apartment and trying to keep her working life as a book publicist on track. But one day she comes home and finds a stranger in her kitchen. Her aunt warned her that the apartment was a pinch in time and it turns out he’s from seven years in the past. Ian is charming and he cooks and they get on really well – but how can they ever get around that time thing?
I read this in less than 24 hours and really enjoyed it. I have a few minor quibbles – putting them in the least spoiler-y way possible it basically boils down to: I’m not sure that Clementine and Iwan actually spent enough time together across the course of the book. If it’s a romance I needed more of them together, and if it’s more woman’s fiction I needed a better resolution to Clementine’s own life dilemma/crossroads. BUT this only started to bother me once the book was over and I started thinking about it to review it. While I was actually reading it I was completely swept along by it. So on that basis it’s a really enjoyable read – and makes sort-of-time-travel really work for me. I would happily have read another 100 pages if it meant my issues above got more closure. And I liked the little glimpses of some old friends from Dead Romantics too. Another one that is great for the beach/sun lounger.
I got my copy via NetGalley – but you can definitely get it in the shows because I saw it in Foyles:
And if you’re not going into a bookstore it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.
It was British Grand Prix weekend this week and with Wimbledon going on too we’ve been treated to some remarkably changeable weather. The hot weather was so hot all you wanted to was lie down and read, and the wet weather gave you an excellent excuse to stay inside and read! Anyway, some good books read – and some progress on those long runners too…
I mean this may be the quickest one of these that I have recently written – because actually the easiest thing may be to point you at the reviews I’ve already written for this year’s picks at the midway point! I don’t think it’s going to surprise you that two of the five are romances, then there’s one rich people problems and a non-fiction book. And so in no particular order my favourite new releases of the year so far are:
Let’s see what has been added to the list by the end of the year!
Still to come for the halfway point: how many states have I ticked off my read the USA challenge? How am I getting on with colouring the bookcase drawing in my journal? And of course my favourite not new books of the year so far.
The topic of today’s post probably shouldn’t come as a surprise to you if you were paying attention on Monday because I basically read these (slightly out of order) in less than three days!
So this trilogy follows the Fitzhugh siblings – two sisters and their brother as they find their happy endings. Each book centres on one sibling but also has bits of the other siblings’ stories – I read Ravishing the Heiress (book two) first because I got an offer for it and went back for book one straight afterwards because of the split narratives. Book one is Beguiling the Beauty featuring Venetia, who has been widowed twice and hears herself being insulted by the Duke of Lexington and decides to get revenge – and of course falls in love with him in the process. Book two is Ravishing the Heiress – Fitz’s marriage to Millie was arranged – he got her fortune to save his estates and she got to be a countess. EIght years on they’re best platonic best friends but he has no idea that she’s been in love with him all along. Will he realise before it’s too late. And then book three Tempting the Bride is Helena – who has been risking her reputation through the first two books after falling in love with a man who has married someone else. But she ends up engaged to her brother’s best friend who has been tormenting her for years (because he’s secretly in love with her) after a rendezvous goes wrong. And then she loses her memory…
The amnesia plot – and the disguise plot in the first book – are pretty wild but they do work. The third book is actually my least favourite of the three – despite or maybe because of the slow build you’ve seen with Helena and David through the other books. But then I don’t really love amnesia plots usually although as far as they go this isn’t too bad and it does round off the series nicely. My favourite (of course?) is book two because I love a marriage of convenience historical – to the point where I’m sure I must have written a post about my favourites but it seems not. Like their cousin the Fake Relationship contemporary, they are just my absolute catnip and Fitz and Millie are a great couple – friends where one of them hasn’t realised that they’ve fallen in love after all and that the other has been in love with them the whole time.
Anyway, thoroughly recommend. If you’ve read Sherry Thomas‘s Lady Sherlock series I think you’ll recognise the writing style, but these are definitely straight romances rather than the historical mystery with a romantic subplot that she’s doing with Charlotte Holmes. Which reminds me, I’ve got the latest in that series waiting on the shelf. I should really go and read that shouldn’t I…
As I said on Sunday, I’ve already written about so many books this month that I don’t have much left to tell you about. But I’ve managed to write a few sentences about a couple more books from the June pile for you!
Jean Tours a Hospital by Doreen Swinburne
I’m starting with something completely left field that I’m not expecting any of you will ever read. This was one of my purchases at Book Conference last summer and as the title suggests is a career book encouraging girls into nursing for a profession. It’s not a great work of literature, but it is a fascinating look at what nursing was like in the 1950s – lots of cleaning, nothing disposable, lots of people on bedrest and not a drop of blood insight on Jean’s tour! Of course nursing is for girls and doctoring is for boys and there is the usual suggestion that if you’re a good girl you might get to marry a doctor but there’s also some interesting (for the time) ideas from the Matron about nursing becoming a degree subject. Not a masterpiece, but fun half hour for what I paid for it!
Final Acts ed Martin Edwards
This is another collection of classic crime short stories all set in or around theatres. I know I mention the BLCC stuff a lot – but usually in the context of the novels (see last week’s BotW for example) because I find the short story collections can be a bit patchy. But this one is a good one, with some big names you’ll recognise including Dorothy L Sayers doing a not Wimsey story and Ngaio Marsh Alleyn short, and some smaller names you may have read full length novels from like Christianna Brand. I do like a theatre-set story (be it murder mysteries or romances) so maybe that biased me, but it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment so worth a look.
Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*
This is a contemporary romance set in Nashville about a woman working at a struggling wedding magazine who has to work with a social media star on a video series that they hope will secure the magazine’s future. I read the previous book from these authors (borrowed it from the library) and liked the premise but thought that there was too much going on and that the romantic element was unsatisfying because all the options had issues. So I read this to see how the authors managed to redeem Claire – who was the villain of the piece in the last book. And the answer is: they didn’t really. And therein lies the problem. If you haven’t read the previous book, you spend a lot of the time wondering how bad she could really have been – and then when you find out what she did, I assume you lose any sympathy you have left for her – if you’ve managed to keep any with the “oh I’m so poor” thing, whilst living in a flat of her own and driving an expensive car. But, on the plus side – this has less plot elements and there is only one romantic option and he seems like an OK kind of guy – it’s just the heroine that’s the problem. So all in all, I think this is probably a sign that these authors are not for me. But it may work better for other people as these things often do and so I mention it anyway.
An incredibly Verity week – in reading and in life. I got a bit obsessed with the Sherry Thomas series and binged it instead of finishing some of the stuff I already had going, I went to a musical on the spur of the moment and I went to a concert to see a band I’ve loved for literal decades for the first time. I spent three nights away from home (two for work, one after that concert) and had a shocking time on the trains (the story of June on the commute) and binged a documentary series on Netflix. Standard stuff. And we’re halfway through the year now, so expect some half year review posts this month too.
Oopsie daisy, Words and Kisses is having a closing down sale and I went a bit nuts because: discounts. Six books there. And then another two paperbacks second hand. And then five ebooks too because I went nuts for Sherry Thomas. All the ebooks were in June though, so they’re already accounted for in the stats. The rest though…
Bonus photo: honestly, an embarrassment of riches on the photo front this week. I changed my mind twice, but here I am at the aforementioned concert – which was The Chicks on Sunday night – which was ah-May-zing. Truly brilliant.
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 