Category: Recommendsday

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Halloween 2026

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It’s Halloween on Saturday so for this week’s Recommendsday I’ve got some spooky season reading for you. As ever, I had a whole list of books I was planning to read for this, and managed to only read a few of them, but a few is better than none right?

A Murder at Midnight by Ellie Alexander*

Halloween is coming in Redwood Grove and along with the rest of the town Annie and Fletcher are preparing for spooky happenings. When they get a phone call from a TV company looking to film an episode of their ghost hunting show in the bookshop it seems like great publicity – they get the Haunted Bookshop on TV on a show with a big fan base. But when a member of the crew dies, it seems like the only publicity they’ll be getting is bad, unless they can figure out who did it. This is the fourth in the Novel Detectives series but can absolutely be read standalone because there’s very little of any of the ongoing story lines in this, it’s mostly the mystery of the week. And it’s a fun set up – if you remember the Most Haunted TV show of the early 2000s this TV show will feel familiar to you and the crew working on it have plenty of tensions and rivalries to provide a motive for murderer. My favourite in this series in a while – more of this please and less of the running background stories!

Ghost Business by Jen DeLuca

This was Jen DeLuca’s new book for 2025 – the second in the Boneyard Key series. This features Sophie the ghost tour guide from Haunted Ever After and Tristan a newcomer who runs a ghost tour business and is there to open a new franchise. He’s surprised to find there’s already a ghost tour and she’s horrified that his ghost stories are made up. Then they go viral when their two tours run into each other, but both of them are actually fighting their attraction to each other. This is actually pretty gentle for a book that features an actual hurricane, and I enjoyed it although there was a bit of a case of just have a proper conversation going on at a few points in the plot, and Tristan needs to just grow a bit of a backbone! I don’t think this is the pairing that people were expecting for Sophie from book one but it did work, so I look forward to seeing what DeLuca comes up with for the next book in the series.

Scared Off by Barbara Ross

This is a novella length story that fits into the Maine Clambake series between Shucked Apart and Muddled through and sees Julia trying to solve a murder when a Halloween party her niece is at is gatecrashed by local high schoolers. If you’re following the series and haven’t read as far as Shucked Apart yet, this will give away a big plot development, so bear that in mind, but if you are (relatively) up to date, this is a nice addition to the series. The mystery is complicated enough that you don’t find the solution too fast, but not so complicated that the story feels rushed, and that’s not something that you can say about all novellas. Worth a look if you only want something short.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Kindle offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means: my monthly encouragement to spend money on cheap Kindle books. And just before I start, a mini rant that Amazon seem to be majing it harder and harder to find which books are on a (really good) offer by constantly only offering me about twenty recommendations per category in books that it thinks I will like – rather than the old school long lists of best sellers per genre. I hate everything about this.

Cover of A Deadly Episode

Lets start with the mystery books and there are two Anthony Horowitz on offer at 99p this month – the latest Hawthorne and Horowitz A Deadly Episode and The Magpie Murders – I assume because the adaptation of the third book in that series is currently on the TV. The Killing Time, the second in Elly Griffiths latest series is also 99p as is the Rivers of London novella Winter’s Gifts, the second in Simon Brett’s latest series Major Bricket and the Body in the Belfry, and Graham Norton’s debut Holding which I think counts as a mystery and was turned into a really good TV version.

Moving on and Katherine Centre’s The Shippers is 99p which is almost annoying because I’ve been waiting for an offer since it came out on Kindle but they clearly waited until the paperback came out – which was the backup that I had pre-ordered (and which arrived last week), the new Maria Semple Go Gentle, Travis Baldree‘s Legends and Lattes is 99p, as is Libby Page‘s The Lifeline, and if you’re in a Halloween-y mood, then Olivia Dade’s latest book World’s Okayest Oracle (reluctantly) Seeks Demon is 99p. In historical fiction there’s Leonora Nattress’s The Bells of Westminster, the second Shardlake mystery Dark Fire and Tom Hindle‘s A Fatal Crossing. I’ve been on a run of translated fiction recently, so it would be remiss of me not to mention that former BotW What You Are Looking for is in the Library is 99p as is the third Before the Coffee Gets Cold book, Before Your Memory Fades.

In the nonfiction lists there’s former BotW Hello World from current Celebrity Traitors start Hannah Fry and Trevor Noah‘s Born a Crime. Among the stuff that I haven’t read but which looks good or has been recommended there is An African History of Africa by Zainab Badawi, Satnam Sangera’s Empireworld, which is the sequel to the award-winning Empireland, Otto English’s Notorious (which I have on the pile from a previous holiday airport purchase), Anthony Beevor’s The Second World War, Tracy Borman’s The Private Lives of the Tudors, Alice Roberts’s Crypt and Lucy Worsley‘s Queen Victoria. I bought Victor Sebestyen’s Weimar Germany to add to the heap of books about 20th Century Germany I have waiting for me to read, as well as Peter Cozzen’s Deadwood and Adrian Tinniswood’s The Power and the Glory.

The Terry Pratchett is Thud! which is the seventh in the Watch series; the John Le Carré is The Honourable Schoolboy which is the sixth Smiley book and also the second in the Karla trilogy (the first being Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and the Georgette Heyer is An Infamous Army which is the fourth (and my least favourite) in the Alistair-Audley books which are the only time(s) that she revisits any of her characters in her historical fiction. If you’ve never read any of Nancy Mitford’s novels, the Penguin Complete Novels is 99p and would be worth it just for The Pursuit of Love or Love in a Cold Climate let alone those two plus six more. I’ve been doing some more Mitford-related reading recently, so watch out for a follow up to my Recommendsday on them in the near future*. Also in if you haven’t read is Jeannette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit which I read as an A Level set text along with The Color Purple. The 1300 lines of Wordsworth’s Prelue was worth suffering through to get those two novels…

In books that I keep seeing advertised to me, there is The Road to Tender Hearts which has The Wedding People and The Correspondent as comps, which are both waiting on my to-read pile, so I probably should read one (or both) of them before I pull the trigger on that one! I did however buy Jeeves Again, which is a collection of Twelve new stories in the world of PG Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster by people like Jasper Fforde and John Finnemore which I must some how have missed when it came out last year.

And if that’s not enough for oyu, I don’t know what would be! Happy Humpday and best of luck to your wallet!

*by which I mean hopefully before the end of the year!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

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It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so here I am with some quick reviews of some books I read last month that I haven’t already told you about. I had a lot of books that I didn’t like last month, but I’ve tried to moderate myself and give you some stuff I actually did like!

Laura Clark is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell*

Laura Clark is a 40-something HR manager, married to a golf-obsessd husband with a 19 year-old daughter who is drifting towards the end of a gap year with no idea what comes next and a mother who constantly calls on her to ask for things or complain. But one day Laura doesn’t turn up for work, disappears from her home and stops answering her phone. Gradually the people in Laura’s life find their lives descending into chaos without her there to perform the invisible labour they had all taken for granted. This is told from the point of view of one of Laura’s work colleagues, her husband, her daughter and her best friend and as you read you build a picture of a deeply unappreciated woman moving through her life without anyone doing anything for her. The collapse of everyone else’s lives is humourous to read, but actually I found this suprisingly bleak – the idea that Laura had been slogging on through all of their grunt work without anyone noticing is chilling. Luckily I thought the ending pulled it around or I might have been really quite depressed by the end!

In Dog We Trust by Beth Kendrick

Jocelyn is a town person and her mother has always told her to stay away from summer people – except for providing them with their clean laundry as part of the family business. But when she is named legal guardian for a pack of pedigree dogs she finds herself thrust into the rich side of town. But along with the dogs comes their owner’s estranged son who is determined to overturn the will…This is the fifth book in this series and I’ve read the first two and really enjoyed them and skipped a few to get to this one and it’s fine – but it’s not as good as the first two. I appreciated the subtle commentary on class but I did want to give some of the characters a bit of a shake at times. I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two so much I would have enjoyed this more – I was just holding it to a higher standard!

When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden

This is a retrospective on the beloved TV series written by its creators. If you like the show, you’ll enjoy the insider information in this – I really liked learning how the show evolved from its original form into the show that we all loved. James Corden has a bad rap (rep?) as a person these days but Gavin and Stacey is a masterpiece and his rapport with Ruth is charming. If you like the show you’ll like this, but if you like the behind the scenes of how things get made, this is also interesting.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Mysteries set on boats 2

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Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve already done one set of murders set on boats, but I’m back with even more this week. And I’m not ruling out a third post in the further – because there’s the latest Three Dahlias that I still haven’t read and I’m sure I can find some more…

Death on Lusitania by R L Graham*

Set on the Lusitania in 1915, if you’ve spent any time looking at maritime history around this time you’ll know that the omens are not good for the passengers on board the voyage from New York to Liverpool, but on board is Patrick Gallagher, who in charge of getting a disgraced diplomat back to Britain. Gallagher is a former sailor turned civil servant of a fairly specific type and when another passenger is found shot dead in a locked room, the captain asks him to investigate. He quickly uncovers a range of people who could have wanted the victim dead and the countdown is on until they enter the war zone. This is a carefully constructed mystery, that moved a bit slower than I wanted it too initially until all the twists and turns really started to kick in. The pace did pick up as the end approached, but the actual ending was over pretty quickly. I liked Patrick as a character though and I’m pleased to see that there is another book featuring him because there are definitely some lose ends left about him and his personal life.

Murder Below Deck by Orlando Murrin*

This is the second book about Paul Delamare, and after the murderous events of the first book he’s been inveigled into a trip on a super yacht to help a friend write her memoirs. Except that once he gets on board things start going wrong and all is definitely not quite what it seems. I really enjoyed Knife Skills for Beginners as you may remember and was really pleased to be back in Paul’s world again. A book set on a super yacht felt like it was something a bit different but I think this plot is more far-fetched (I can’t really say why because: spoilers) but it moves so quickly that you don’t really notice that until the end when you have time to think about it. It has got a large cast of pretty unlikeable characters outside of Paul and the claustrophobia of the limited communications on the yacht really adds to the tension. I enjoyed it and will happily read a third book if it should come along.

Murphy’s Law by Rhys Bowen

This is the first in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series and is a little bit of a cheat because the murder happens at Ellis Island just after Molly has got off the ship to New York, but a lot of the build up to it is on the ship. Molly is fleeing to America after committing murder in self defence. She’s also travelling under an assumed name and looking after children that aren’t hers, so being prime suspect in a murder investigation really isn’t what she needs. This also looks at the Tammany Hall corruption of the era as Molly tries to clear her name and keep her chance to stay in America. It’s a promising start to a series – I will read some more just as soon a as I get the to read pile down!

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Japanese Novels in Translation

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Happy Wednesday! I’ve said that it’s feeling autumnal and there’s something about autumn that makes these three Japanese novels feel really apt. I’ve said they’re in translation which is a bit of a “well obviously” because I haven’t been hiding a secret talent for Japanese, but there’s a definitely a bit of a vibe about this sort of Japanese novel too – it’s sort of cozy and low stakes and reflective. And that is what I want in back to school season, even though it’s a long time since school!

Tsubaki Stationery Store by Ito Ogawa*

Hatoko has recently returned to Kamakura to take over her grandmother’s stationery store and scribe business. As a child Hatoko rebelled against the expectation that she would become a scribe and the atrict training that was required and ran away (sort of) as soon as she was old enough. But now she is back, she starts to find her place in the community as she writes various correspondence for the locals and she starts to uncover the secrets of her grandmother as the seasons of her first year running the shop gently pass. This is really lovely. Hatoko gets into a sort of flow state when she’s writing and reading about her process is very soothing too. I could really imagine her neighbourhood, the people that she helps, the friends she makes and the food she eats. There are no bad consequences from her letters to worry about and it has a real gentle rhythm about it that is sort of hypnotic.

The Cat Who Saved The Library by Sosuki Natsukawa*

This is the sequel to former BotW The Cat Who Saved Books and Tiger the Cat is back and saving more books. This time our human is 13-year-old Nanami who has asthma and spends more time with books than she does with other children.

Nanami had a peculiar habit of reading multiple books at once, yet still feeling the need to reach for new ones. There were always so many books she wanted to read, far more than she could keep up with.

I mean I think we know that this is basically me. I have such a huge pile of books to read and so many on the go at once and yet I still find myself standing in front of the to-read bookshelf trying to find something I want to read next. Anyway. Nanami notices that books are disappearing from the library where she spends a lot of her free time and finds herself helping a talking cat to save the books from forces of darkness. I enjoyed this as much as I did the first one – and was delighted to see some of the characters from that first book reappear here. And of course there are plenty of parallels with what is going on in the book and with books being banned in real life.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa*

I often find Japanese fiction slightly more melancholic than I want it to be, but I pretty much always enjoy it anyway. This is one of those. The central character is Takako who goes to stay in the flat above her uncle Satoru’s bookshop after her boyfriend tells her he is marrying someone else. What happens then is a discovery of shared community, making of new friends, a new found love of reading and a greater understanding of love. It’s short but it’s very readable, although I preferred the first section that is about Takako, her uncle and the community around the bookshop to the second part which has the return of Satoru’s long disappeared wife. This has got a sequel out now, which I’ve seen in bigger bookshops.

And that’s your lot for this week – enjoy!

Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Famous people romances

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A couple of years ago now, in spring 2023 I read a pair of books about a famous person and a normal (or normalish) person – Nora Goes Off Script and Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. Since then I’ve read a bunch more because it really seems to be a trend, and since then we e had a positive rash of romances about campus people and normal people, or just involving famous or famous adjacent people. And I suspect the flood is not over yet because Parasocial relationships with famous people means these things sell. So for this week’s Recommendsday I’ve got a bit of a round of some of the others that I’ve read. And be warned, this is less a list of recommendations, more a survey of my reading…

The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord

The premise here is good (if a bit far fetched) – with two former best friends doing some fake dating to reclaim the narrative after their respective relationship breakups go viral – but the reality of it is that I found it a really frustrating read. Neither the hero nor the heroine seems capable of using their words ever, and almost everything about their relationship (or lack thereof) and everything that goes wrong could have been sorted with a proper conversation. Add to that the fact that the heroine is both too stupid/naïve to live as well Peak Not Like Other Girls and the hero is incapable of making a decision on his own, and the only reason I made it to the end of this was to see if her ex got sufficient comeuppance for dumping her for his reality TV show co-star. Spoiler: he did get some comeuppance, but not really at the hands of the heroine. Which given how the rest of the book had gone for her was unsurprising by that point. Deeply, deeply annoying.

Love Songs and Ferry Tales by Julie Farley

This is a famous person-normal person type romance set on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Although there were things I liked about it, the pacing didn’t feel quite right to me – the ending wrapped up far too fast and didn’t quite resolve everything that the prior narrative felt it should have done. And your tolerance for deception may impact how much you enjoy the romance as the heroine doesn’t know the hero’s real identity for quite a lot of the book (and your ability to believe she wouldn’t have recognised him). A couple of the characters are meant to be British – but you wouldn’t really know except for odd bits of (not remotely accurate*) British trivia dropped in from time to time- which as a Brit really annoyed me! Also for me her brothers tipped over from fun comic relief into meanness. So not entirely successful for me – in fact I downgraded it a star on Goodreads while writing this review when I realised how much about it annoyed me!

How to Fake it In Hollywood by Ava Wilder

Grey’s role in a long running show has just ended and she needs to give her career a boost. So she agrees to a fake relationship with a troubled heartthrob. Ethan is newly divorced, newly sober and in mourning for his best friend; but he wants to produce the last movie they wrote together so he agrees to the plan to try and get everything back on track. And obviously sparks fly. This is another where I have distinctly mixed feelings. I bought it off the back of the preview, but for me the rest of the book doesn’t live up to the promise of that. It’s a fake relationship trope which I love but there’s not enough character development and growth here for me. There are some similar issues going on with Ethan and the hero to Funny You Should Ask, but in that book you get to spend large amounts of time with later Gabe and see that he really has changed and got a handle on stuff. You don’t have that here, and I’m not sure that I actually wanted them to end up together – I think Grey deserved better or at least more time to see that Ethan really has sorted himself out. Never mind.

I also read Melissa Ferguson’s Famous for a Living a year or two back which probably falls within the scope of this post- it’s about an influencer who goes to work at a national park in Montana after her career implodes and a rugged park ranger. When you read it, it’s more a voyage of self discovery than a romance – and there’s a lot of heavy lifting on that front done at the end. Still I did want to visit the national park afterwards, even if I didn’t love the book!

And that’s your lot. You could probably add Thank you for Listening to this list, but I’ve already written about it once and this is meant to be stuff I haven’t told you about before, but I did like it more than I like any of the three I have written about here so there’s that in its favour!

Happy Humpday!

*spoilers ahead: the hero grew up in Watford which is described as “Our town is far enough outside of London to not be a commuter town. Most people work in the factories and businesses nearby” and at one point says “ Sam and I took the Tube in a couple of times in high school, but we never had enough money to do anything once we got there.” The idea that Watford is not a commuter town is absolutely laughable and that someone living there would only have been into London from there a couple of times as a teen is frankly insane. I commute through Watford every week day and it is a) only 15 miles from central London and b) inside the tfl network so is actually massive commuter area as is evidenced by the fact that my train fills to full and standing only every time it stops there. Its like saying that no one from New Jersey commutes in to New York to work. Thus I suspect that the author has never been to Britain.

books on offer

Recommendsday: September Kindle Offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of September and that means it’s Kindle offer o’clock and it’s a real bumper one this month – probably because it’s a bumper release month too.

Cover of Lessons in Chemistry

In books I read and enjoyed: Bonnie Garmus‘s Lessons in Chemistry is 99p, presumably ahead of the release of her new book next month, same story with Ashley Herring Blake‘s Dream on Ramona Riley except that third book is out the end of this month. There’s also Katherine Center‘s The Rom-Commers, Kate Claybourn‘s The Paris Match, Jess Kidd‘s A Murder at Gull’s Nest, Godmersham Park by Gill Hornby, Lissa Evans‘s Small Bomb at Dimperley, Richard E Grant‘s A Pocketful of Happiness, Dan Jones’s The Hollow Crown, How to End a Rom-Com by Yulin Kuang and one of the rare award nominated books that I’ve read and liked Rose Tremain‘s Restoration and Kevin Kwan‘s Crazy Rich Asians which is £1.49.

Right on to the series: the first in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series, The Word is Murder is 99p, the Discworld is The Fifth Elephant (one of the Watch novels) and Tiffany Aching’s Guide to being a Witch, the fifth Canon Clement mystery A Death on Location, Tales from the Cafe the second in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series, the first Agatha Raisin – the Quiche of Death as well as the first Hamish MacBeth Death of a Gossip

In historical romances there’s Julia Quinn’s The Secrets of Richard Kenworthy and the Georgette Heyer is Arabella, In classic novels we have Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Muriel Spark‘s A Far Cry from Kensington, R J Palacio’s Wonder and a little bit of non-fiction with Mary S Lovell’s The Mitford Girls,

On to stuff I haven’t read yet – last year’s Emily Henry Great Big Beautiful Life and B K Borison First Time Caller, the Miss Hortense sequel Miss Hortense and the Last Rites and the second and third books in Kate Mosse’s Languedoc series.

Things I bought while writing this: Thinking Fast and Slow, When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between (there are also a couple of Gavin and Stacey cast memoirs on off – from Joanna Page and Larry Lamb), Worth Fighting For by Jesse Q Sutanto – a Mulan retelling! And before I go, in the Sports Romance 2 Recommendsday I mentioned the final book in Simone Soltani’s Lights Out series was coming – and Crash Into You is out now and 99p this month.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: August Quick Reviews

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As ever, the first Wednesday of the Month is quick reviews day and I’m back with three more books I read last month that I haven’t talked about yet.

Murder-Sur-Mer by Hugh Morrison

This is the third in Morrison’s Clarice and Cliff series and sees our titular leads tying the knot and heading off on honeymoon to France. Of course crime follows them there – in the form of a murdered jewel thief in their hotel room. The French police seem to them to be making slow progress and determined to look in the wrong places so they take it upon themselves to try and solve the crime. I don’t like this series as much as the Rev Shaw mysteries but this was a light, easy read even if I had the rough outlines of the solution figured out fairly early on. I don’t know if the fact that I’ve been listening to the Miss Marple series has made me a bit fussier at the moment but that can’t be ruled out as a factor in my opinion on this one. Still I liked it the most of the books I’m writing about here today – and I’ll be keeping an eye for the next one – they’re definitely a step above the J G Colgan that I mentioned last month.

The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens

This is the twelfth book in Laurens’ Cynster series. I’ve read the first six and then 14th as well. This one was written 20 years ago, which probably counts as an old school romance at this point and it did feel a bit like it – that or my tastes have changed, although to be fair I did start reading historical romances of this sort in around 2008 so it’s not that old school for me! Anyway our hero is Gerrard Debbington a painter who is desperate to paint the gardens of Hellebore Hall, but the only way the owner Lord Tregonning will let him do that is if he also paints a portrait of his daugher, Jacqueline. And Jacqueline is (of course) our heroine, she’s been the target of rumour and innuendo since the disappearance of her suitor and the death of her mother, and is hoping the portrait will help clear her. And of course they fall in love but also solve the mysteries. And I was much more interested in the mystery solving than I was in the romance, but maybe that’s just me. It’s a bit gothic and a lot overblown (anyone actually believe that a portrait can reveal guilt or innocence?) but as I found it on the bookshelf at the hostel I didn’t spend anything on it and and so I can’t complain too much. That said, it was a really useful indication of how my reading tastes change and evolve – it’s the first Laurens I’ve read in some years and as I didn’t love it, I took the opportunity to clear some space on the to-read shelf by checking for any physical copies of Laurens on there and moving them to the charity shop bag!

The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne

I read this thinking it was going to be another murder on a boat story – but although the first murder does indeed take place on a voyage from Argentina to Britain, despite what you might take from the blurb the main action happens after that boat journey in London. Chief Inspector Shand is on board ship for that murder and finds himself drawn into events in London because also on board ship is the widow of Lord Dalberry, making her way to England after the death of her husband where two young cousins of her husband encounter her. In terms of plot this is as bonkers as some of the maddest of the Girl’s Own books – I’m talking C Bernard Rutley and Rita Coutts level madness here – but it’s no where near as easy to read. I’ve read two of Thynne’s other books and enjoyed them much more than this one which I can’t really recommend.

new releases, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Summer New Releases Reviews

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Happy last Wednesday of the month everyone, and for this Recommendsday I bring you some reviews of recent releases. It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of how much I liked them (and I left out the one that I really, really detested) but if I only ever raved about books and I kept all the stuff I didn’t like strictly to the Goodread account, if you never check that as well, in the end you might stop believing me. So here we are. And I was going to call this quick reviews, but then I realised I actually had quite a lot to say about each of them so it’s just ‘reviews now!

My Name is MacKenzie Bly by Lissa Evans*

This one is actually out tomorrow, and it’s the one that I liked the most of the three I’m talking about today. MacKenzie Bly (real name Philip Stevens) is a 14-year-old boy who doesn’t like his life much. He’s tall, he’s broad, one of his mums teaches at his school, the other is a plumber and his dad turns up at all the worst possible moments. All of this means the other kids at school have plenty of ammunition to use against him and to top it all off, his best friend has moved to New Zealand. This is his story in his words, and is blurbed as being Adrian Mole for the 21st century. I enjoyed reading this and read it very quickly but I’m unsure who the audience for it is. It’s very different from Lissa Evans’s other recent books which have all been historical fiction. It has the feel of a YA book in some ways (and the cover of one) but there are a lot of references in here that are clearly for adults – stuff that the teenage protagonist doesn’t understand or doesn’t see but that adults clearly will. It made me laugh and I enjoyed it but don’t know how like a real-current-14 year old our protagonist is – to me he felt like a teenager from the sort of era that I was a teen for (so early 00s) but with a dash of added viral videos (but not really much reference to social media or messaging among students beyond that). So it’s a retro feel book, that’s a lot of fun but which also ends very abruptly and is a bit confusing. I’m not sure who I would be buying it for – and that may be the main issue for it. But I did really enjoy it.

The One Where They Fall in Love by Cristina Wolf*

Elle is a romance editor who has watched her friends find love without any luck herself. Oliver is a reluctant medical resident who doesn’t think a relationship is in the cards for him. When Oliver moves into the apartment above Elle, complete with a dog with separation anxiety, the two of them are thrown into each other’s path. When Elle starts to dog sit Thor and they spend more time together, a connection starts to develop – but can it lead to a happily ever after? I liked the idea of this – and the start was promising, but ultimately Elle and Oliver are very different people and it was hard to see how they could make a relationship work long term, given the various obstacles in their way. It’s all pretty low stakes, but also some proper conversations between the two leads could have solved some of the issues much earlier. It’s fine while you’re reading it but it hasn’t really stuck with me – I’m writing this ten days or so after reading it because I wanted to let my thoughts percolate a little and I’m regretting that because it’s already fading away in my memory! This came out on the 11th, and I haven’t really been in a bookshop since then so I don’t know how easy this is going to be to get hold of in paperback, but it’s in all the usual ebook formats.

Henrietta by Sophie Irwin

Henrietta has been in love with Arthur since she was a child. When he went away to fight Napoleon she was a shy debutant, but now he’s back she’s determined to try and make him see her in a different light, but can she make herself over into a toast of society and attract his attention enough to notice what’s hiding under his nose? Here’s the thing: I really like Georgette Heyer – I have read all of her Regency romances and re-read my favourites time and time again. I have also read Sophie Irwin’s other books, so I was excited and interested to see what a new “official Georgette Heyer” novel meant. Unfortunately this didn’t work for me on a couple of levels. Now I appreciate that my summary sounds simple, but it’s really not. There are at least two other major story lines and there is just too much plot going on here – which is something that I have found with other Sophie Irwin books but which has sometimes been fine, but in this means there is just too much going on and that the ending(s) feel very rushed. It also felt like it was trying to include plot ideas from as many different Heyers as possible but it didn’t really hang together very well – or feel particularly consistent. In terms of the writing style, it felt like it was trying to create a Heyer like feel by just dropping as many words and phrases from Heyer as possible rather than actually trying to emulate the writing style. So in short it felt like a Sophie Irwin (and all the problems often I have with that) but with added Heyer-vocab. Not a success for me sadly. This one came out two weeks ago too and see my point above about lack of bookshop visits since but given it’s official status and hardcover release, I suspect it’s going to be easy to find if you want to see if you agree with me or not.

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: BLCC mysteries about artists

veritywilde

Verdict of Twelve was a BotW in July and Sky High back in April, but generally my rate of reading BLCC books has slowed a little this year as I try to do some work on the actual to read pile and the Netgalley backlog. But I’m back now with another BLCC round up. And all of these actually feature artists – which I only realised as I added the last review, it wasn’t at all intentional but as I do like a mystery about artists I’m embracing it and changed the title of the post accordingly – it was originally the much more boring BLCC Summer 2026!

The Double Turn by Carol Carnac

Adrian Delafield used to be a celebrated painter, but these days the old man is a recluse at his home in St John’s Wood, jealously guarded by his housekeeper Miss Trimming. But when she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs, and Delafield is found badly hurt after seemingly trying to help her, the police – and some of people around the household are not convinced it was an accident – despite the fact that the house was locked tight. This is a relatively recent release, hot on the heels of the success of other Carnacs for the BLCC and it’s a really good one. This is a nice variation on the theme – Delafield is very much a relic of a prior artistic era, a curiosity that has been (mostly) forgotten. His household is fascinating – and has that staple of the mystery genre: a religious fanatic, but there is a backstory to it (more than you get in many of these!) that means you do come to understand how Miss Trimming might have turned out the way she did. Well worth a look – probably my favourite of this selection.

Death Knows No Calendar by John Bude

This is the second half of a BLCC double bill of John Bude. I did read the first one as well, but I’m focusing on the second one (which is the better one of the two). It’s a locked room mystery in an artists studio with plenty of candidates for the killer to be investigated by local retired soldier Major Boddy. This has a more adventure-y streak than a lot of Golden Age Crime, but Bude does tend towards that at times. This is listed as being part of the Inspector Meredith series, but don’t be fooled – he’s not in it, but it is apparently in the same universe as the ones that do. If you haven’t read any Bude before and you’re not wedded to reading a book about an artist, I’d start with The Lake District Murder or The Cheltenham Square Murder.

The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly

Cover of the Spoilt Kill

The artist in this one is primarily a designer of pottery patterns, so it’s maybe a little stretch, but she’s clearly doing other drawing in her spare time (you see them as part of the plot) so I say it counts! Anyway an old established pottery company in Stoke on Trent is having its designs stolen by the competition and then undercut. So they call in a private detective to investigate where the leak is coming from but while Hedley Nicholson is investigating, he finds more is going on than just industrial espionage – even before a worker is found in a vat of liquid clay. This isn’t quite in the common way of mystery books as it’s very character driven and introspective and feels noir-ish in the way it paints a picture of the Potteries and the people Nicholson encounters while he’s investigating. I think I liked The Christmas Egg more, but both are grittier and darker than many other BLCCs – and are also set in the post-war period rather than the interwar one. There is another book featuring Nicholson available in the series and I suspect I’ll read it when I get a chance.

That’s your lot – this time… Happy Humpday!