Category: Recommendsday

Book of the Week, Book previews, books, books on offer, historical, new releases

Book of the Week: Silver Lady

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Back to historical romance this week – and this one isn’t actually out until next week, but I’ve already finished it, so I’m going with it today – sorry and all but you can at least preorder it if you like the sound of it.

Silver Lady is the first in a new series from Mary Jo Putney and is set in a lightly magical version of Regency Britain where some people are “gifted” – which means they have special skills that border on magic. Bran Tremayne is one of this – his powers of perception have made him an excellent investigator for the Home Office. But he finds himself drawn to Cornwall, where he was born before he was abandoned by his birth parents. When he is there he meets a mysterious woman who has had her memories suppressed. As she recovers her memories in his care, Bran discovers that Merryn is at the centre of a dangerous plot – can they survive the danger to get to a happy ending?

I mean it’s a romance novel, so I think you know the answer to that, but this is a fun read – it’s got some peril and adventure and the world building is pretty good – the “dangerous gifts” of the title are explained very well and naturally as part of the plot of the book . I’m not usually a lover of amnesia storylines, but this one makes sense within the framework that you’re given for the world and Merryn is less of a damsel in distress than I was expecting her to be. I’ve had a bit of a mixed record with Putney before, but I enjoyed this and will look out for the sequels when they come along.

Silver Lady is out next week – you can preorder it on Kindle and Kobo and if you’re in the US you should be able to get a paperback too.

Happy Reading!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: More Enemies to Lovers romances

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It’s nearly two years since my original Enemies to Lovers Recommendsday, and I’ve read a load more since, so today I’m back with another batch!

Lets start with The Hating Game by Sally Thorne I loved Thorne’s Second First Impressions and this was her debut novel (now also a movie) which features two rival PAs at a publishing company. I have a few issues with it but in the end they actually weren’t about what I was expecting – which was that their work rivalry would push my buttons for unprofessional pranks, but it actually didn’t because they didn’t sabotage each other. Lucinda does freak out a lot though and that did get on my nerves a bit so your mileage may vary, so generally for me – not as good as Second First Impressions, but still fun and worth reading.

In Beach Read by Emily Henry, Augustus and January are maybe more misunderstood rivals than they are enemies, because he is a Serious Writer of Proper Fiction and she writes best selling romances. They’re spending the summer living next door to each other at the beach and in an attempt to tackle both of their writers blocks, they challenge each other to switch genres… Anyway, there are complicated families and a warning for parental deaths in the backstories, but this is still a delightful feel good romance where two people discover that they really like hanging around with each other and that being together makes their lives better. Swoony. Oh and Henry’s Book Lovers would also fit this genre too.

Ali Hazelwood’s Love Hypothesis got a mention in the last post on this topic, but her Love on the Brain also fits this trope – the heroine of that finds that the downside of her dream job at Nasa is that she has to work with her grad school arch-nemesis. It’s another teeny tiny heroine and Great Big Hero, but your mileage on that may be different to mine, which I think is coloured by the fact that I’m 5’10! I will never be tired of competency porn though, and Bee (and Levi) are very, very good at their jobs. I was expecting one strand of the plot to be A Bigger Thing in the resolution, but actually the whole of the end wrapped up very quickly – but it was very satisfying.

And before I wrap this up, I want to give a mention to Mia Sosa’s Worst Best Man which I did also touch on in my romances with weddings post in the summer but would also fit for this.

Enjoy!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Kindle Offers

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It’s only the 8th, but it’s already Kindle offer o’clock, because I did the quick reviews last Wednesday on the 1st. It always slightly throws me when this happens, but that’s because I’m a creature of habit and I don’t like change! Anyway, on with the offers.

And a lot of them are distinctly Christmassy – A Holly Jolly Ever After by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy is brand new and is the second (of a planned three I think) books set in Christmas Notch – I read the first one last year and bought this one while writing this post! Lyssa Kay Adams‘ A Very Merry Bromance is also 99p, as is Trisha Ashley‘s The Magic of Christmas.

If you don’t want Christmas vibes yet, then Elissa Sussman‘s Once More With Feeling, one of my favourite books of the year is 99p, Jenny Colgan’s summer book from this year is on offer and The Summer Skies is the first with a fresh batch of characters too. And in excellent news for me personally, the latest Katherine Center Hello, Stranger is 99 – and I bought that one while writing this too! Also on offer is one of the new autumn romances that I keep seeing everywhere – Meryl Wilsner’s Cleat Cute. In other (relatively) new releases, the latest in Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s book, The Good, The Bad and the History is 99p. Dying in the Wool, which is the first in Frances Brody’s Kate Shackleton series is 99p as well, as is Shady Hollow, the first in Juneau Black’s slightly weird cozy crime series where the characters are animals. Or are they?

I haven’t read this one, but Rhys Bowen’s latest World War Two-set novel (as opposed to her historical mystery series) is also on offer this month – it’s called The Paris Assignment and features a woman spying in France to try and avenge the death of her son.

This month’s Peter Wimsey is Gaudy Night, which is maybe edging towards my favourite at this point, even if it has probably the least Peter of any of them – and it’s notable because I know I own the kindle of Gaudy Night, but its still offering me the option to buy it so they must finally have updated the Kindle edition, which is probably a good thing as the one I have has slightly weird formatting. In other authors that I love, Curtis Sittenfeld‘s American Wife is 99p this month, as is Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.

On the historical romance front, the Julia Quinn is On a Night Like This from the Smythe-Smith series and the novelisation that goes with the Queen Charlotte Netflix series. Tthe Georgette Heyer is The Corinthian – which is one of her hero helping a heroine running away stories. And one of the books that my Romance Facebook group always raves about, Lisa Kleypas’s Devil in Winter, is also 99p – I bought it because although I’ve read the follow up, Devil in Spring, I haven’t read the original and it’s meant to be a classic. One I have read and that I love (as you know) is the first in Sarah MacLean‘s Rules of Scoundrels series, A Rogue by Any Other Name, is 99p – and you should totally read it – check my Series I Love post for the reasons why!

And that’s your lot for this month – I hope this post hasn’t cost you as much money as it cost me

Happy Humpday!

detective, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: Somebody at the Door

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I know I mentioned a BLCC book in last week’s Quick Reviews so it’s two in a week, but I didn’t realise at that point that I was going to read another really good one so soon! Anyway, it is what it is – there were some fun books last week but a lot of rereads or authors I’ve already written about recently, so I’m just going with it…

It’s a cold evening in the winter of 1942. The blackout is in effect and passengers are stumbling their way towards the commuter trains home from London at Euston station. One of the passengers is Councillor Grayling, carrying £120 in cash that will be used to pay staff the next day. But after he gets off the train the cash goes missing and he ends up dead. But who did it? When the police start to investigate they discover that there are dark secrets among the passengers who he shared a train compartment with and that more than one of his fellow passengers might have wanted Grayling out of the way.

This is a really interesting mystery but it’s also a really atmospheric look at life on the Home Front during World War 2. First published in 1943 it’s another one of those war time books where the writers didn’t know who was going to win the war – and you can definitely feel that in the writing. There are lots of books set in the Second World War, but not that many of them (or not that many that I’ve read) where you really feel the uncertainty and fear of the population – that they really didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. There’s no hindsight or picking events because they foreshadow something else or because something is going to happen there (all the authors who send people to the Cafe de Paris I’m looking at you) – it’s just how things happened or felt at the time. The only other one I can think of that does this – although it’s not a murder mystery is Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country – which also has a feeling of uncertainty going through it even more than this because at the end people are going back to the fronts and you don’t know if they’ll make it.

Anyway, that aside there are plenty of people who wanted Grayling dead as he’s not a particularly likeable sort of person and the book takes you around the carriage as Inspector Holly investigates the case and tells you the backstories behind each of them. I found myself having quite strong opinions on who I didn’t want to have done it which is always good I think. Raymond W Postgate didn’t write a lot of mysteries – in the forward to this it suggests that may be his first one, Verdict of Twelve, was so well received that it was hard to follow. I haven’t read Verdict of Twelve (yet) but if this is the less good second novel it must be really blooming good!

I read Somebody at the Door via Kindle Unlimited (which also includes Verdict of Twelve at the moment, so I think you know I’ll be reading that soon!) but as with all the British Library Crime Classics they cycle in and out of KU and when they’re not in they’re also available on Kobo. And they’re all in paperback, which you can buy direct from the British Library’s own online bookshop here. They do often have offers on the BLCC books (like 3 for 2), although they don’t seem to at the moment.

Happy Reading!

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!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Romances set on reality TV shows

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This week’s Recommendsay is another in my occasional series of recommendations based on romance tropes. Well sort of. I’m not sure that reality shows are actually a full on trope, but I’ve read a bunch of them now so I’m claiming it. What most of them have in common is that the hero or heroine is falling in love with someone that they shouldn’t – in the ones on dating shows they’re usually falling for a producer rather than one of the contestants. But I’m not sure what that counts as as a trope – falling for the wrong person maybe? Or forbidden love? Anyway, to the books

I’m starting with the book that sparked the idea for this post – The Love Rematch by Kay Marie*, which came out last week and is currently in Kindle Unlimited. Emily finds herself as the lead on a TV dating show (think the Bachelorette) after her mum goes on breakfast TV begging America to find her daughter a boyfriend. It’s not until she gets to the show that she finds out that one of the producers is Jake, the boy who broke her heart when he left her without a word just as they had finished high school. She’s determined to get revenge on him by showing him how happy she can be without him (and launching her jewellery brand by wearing it on the show) and he’s trying to get a promotion. But it’s a romance novel so of course they’re not as over each other as they think they are. I really enjoyed this – although it took a bit of a surprising turn at the end, which I think needed more time to work out, and the epilogue wasn’t really an epilogue – more of a final chapter just set a year later. But I read it in a couple of days once I really got into it and it was fun. And obviously made me want to write this post!

In One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London, Bea also finds herself as the lead in a dating show, this time not because her mum volunteered her, but because she wrote a blog complaining about the lack of body diversity in dating shows. When i wrote about this three years (!) ago, I said not to go into it expecting at traditional romance, because it’s more complicated than that – for all that it has a happily ever after. But I’m still including it here becuase I think if you read it you would like the Kay Marie, and vice versa.

Not set on a dating show, but on a show that’s basically Bake Off lightly disguised, Rosaline Palmer takes the Cake by Alexis Hall (yes I know, I wrote about Hall’s new book last week, but sue me, this fits!) has a single mum breaking away from parental expectations to compete on a TV cooking contest and finding herself in a love triangle (sort of) with two of the other contestants. This isn’t as straight forward a romance as some of Hall’s other contemporary romances, but you do get a happily ever after even if you’re left guessing who it’s going to be with for a while.

It’s only a few months since The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren was BotW so I can’t really justify writing about it in massive detail again here, but trust me when I say that it also fits this prompt – and is probably the closest to The Love Rematch and also more successful in execution than that is. And an honourable mention to Battle Royal by Lucy Parker, which isn’t actually set on a reality show, but that is where the hero an heroine first crossed swords.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: M/m romances

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This inspired by the chat thread I have with my friend Tom, who I’ve been trading recommendations with for a while now after he read Red, White and Royal Blue and wanted more! I’ve been working on it for a while, but as yesterday’s Book of the Week was the new Alexis Hall, (yes he’s the person I already recommended it to) I thought now was the time to let it loose on the world.

Let’s start with the Timothy Janovsky, which I also read last week and am also lending to Tom. This has a time travel gimmick/device and although it didn’t work as well for me as The Seven Year Slip did, that was because I found the hero, Nolan, incredibly hard to like. But I know I’m a massive grump at the moment on that front, so other people may love it. Nolan is a wannabe standup comedian who blows off his sister’s wedding reception and disappoints his family, while also leaving his best friend and crush in the lurch (see what I mean about hard to like?!), after arguing with everyone he wishes on some crystals before bed and wakes up seven years later a massive success but with friends and family still ignoring him. Thus begins his quest to fix it all and get back to his “real” life. And that’s the point where Nolan starts to get better, but it does take a while to get there!

In The Problem with Perfect by Philip William Stover, Ethan is the mastermind behind style icon, influencer and TV star Chase and their TV bosses think they’re a couple. They’re very much not, and when Chase (and his ego) walks out and leaves the country ahead of a major Pride event he’s due to be fronting, Ethan hunts down Chase’s twin brother Beau and persuades him to take Chase’s place. You know where this is going. I loved the side characters, but didn’t think the main romance was quite as satisfying or well-resolved as it should have been because it all wraps up super, super fast.

If you read the Stover and like it, then you might also like Best Men by Sidney Karger (or at least like it more than I did!), which is another book set around a wedding – Max’s best friend Paige is getting married and wants him to be her Man of Honor. This throws him into close contact with the groom’s brother Chasten who is basically his complete opposite and they have to learn to work together. I had a bunch of issues with this – lack of sympathetic characters, not enough time with Max and Chasten together to understand why they might want to be a couple, constant references to Max being the “gay best friend” but I can see from Goodreads that other people have really enjoyed it because they found it much, much funnier than I did!

It’s a short story, but I wanted to include A Thief in the Night by K J Charles, a historical romance where a highwayman turns valet and ends up caught up in a plot to steal a priceless bracelet. It’s linked to Charles’ The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting which I’ve mentioned here before and also would fit into this post if you want some more historical M/m romance.

And of course there are also a whole stack of previous BotWs to mention too – as well as 10 Things that Never Happened, there’s We Could Be So Good from last month, Fake Dates and Mooncakes, Boyfriend Material and Husband Material (more Alexis Hall!), and finally, I mentioned Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjaming Alire Saenez in the last Quick Reviews too.

Happy Reading!

books, books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Kindle Offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month, so it’s Kindle offer day, but it’s also an Amazon promo event at the moment, so apologies in advance if there are a few deals in here that don’t last long.

But I’m starting this list the way I started the month – by buying Sarah MacLean’s latest book, Knockout, which is 99p on kindle. These don’t go on offer often, so grab it while you can. There are a few other historical romances on offer too – Just Like Heaven and The Lost Duke of Wyndham by Julia Quinn as well as Regency Buck by Georgette Heyer. In contemporary romances, there is former BotW The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood and an older Katie Fforde – Wild Designs – and Trisha Ashley – Wish Upon a Star – that are 99p

Lets move on to mysteries of various types and there is Death comes to Marlow by Robert Thoroughgood, for 99p, which is the same price as latest HM The Queen mystery Murder Most Royal. In classic crime, The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham is on offer if you want a hit of Albert Campion. The very dodgy looking Peter Wimsey editions continue, but the 99p good edition is one of my favourites – Strong Poison.

Moving on to stuff in other categories, About Time in Jodi Taylor’s Time Police series is on offer for 99p, as is The Rosie Project by Graham Simsion and The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatio Sanchez by Patterson Joseph. There’s a couple of non fiction books worth a look – including Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie biography and Hello World by Hannah Fry

And finally it’s about to turn 20, so maybe that’s why The Wee Free Men is 99p – it’s the first of Terry Pratchett‘s four Tiffany Aching books, which are childrens books in the Discworld and I love them, even if I’ve never been able to reread the last one, which was also Terry Pratchett’s final book. As a bonus Carpe Jugulum from the adult bit is £1.99.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: My summer holiday reading

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So as I mentioned in the Week in Books post, we’ve been on holiday, and although I’ve already told you about We Could Be So Good , The Lost Summers of Newport and The Mysterious Mr Badman, but I have a couple more reviews from my holiday week of reading. You’re welcome. And by a weird quirk, they’re all murder mysteries of various types. Who knew.

Lets start off with The Sea Breeze by S J T Riley. This came out last year and is a murder mystery set in 1950s Devon. A crime reporter at a London paper receives a call from an old friend after a boat is found abandoned in the harbour with one crew member dead and others missing. When he arrives in town, he finds his friend is missing and the locals are closing ranks against him. But that’s not going to stop him investigating. This throws you in without a lot of explanation and the pacing is a little spotty at times, but it’s a pretty well-executed murder mystery that will appeal to you if you like things like the BLCC titles that are set at sea (or near the sea).

Next up is A Death in the Parish, which is the second historical mystery from Reverend Richard Coles. I said that I would get to it didn’t I! I read the first Canon Clement book last year and I enjoyed that one, but this one definitely feels like he’s settling into writing cozy historical crime books. He’s established his late-1980s rural set up in the first one and in this one he gets to flesh out the characters and the world and show the aftermath of the events of the first one. And if you haven’t read the first one, this one will spoil the murderer in that – so that’s worth bearing in mind if you’re thinking of going in fresh to the series with this. But the mystery is good – and the clash between Daniel’s style of ministry and that of the vicar in the neighbouring parish is good, especially if you have ever been involved in a parish church and the various different factions that you get in one. There is a third one coming – and I thought I knew where some of the running strands were heading towards the end of the book, only for it to surprise me at the last so I’m looking forward to seeing where this is going to go next.

And finally and less successfully my latest attempt to try and find another mystery-thriller type series in the vein of things like Janet Evanovich’s Steph Plum or Carl Hiassen was Cultured by D P Lyle – which mentions both of those authors in its blurn. This is the sixth in a series (but it’s very clear that you can read them standalone) about a retired professional baseball player whose PI father gets him involved in investigations. In Cultured, he’s asked to try and infiltrate a self-improvement programme by an anxious mum after her daughter who was working there disappears. Is The Lindemann Method a scam? A Cult? A front for something else? Jake and his girlfriend Nicole are going to find out. This had all the elements that I wanted in the blurb, but just didn’t really work for me. It doesn’t really have the humour of Evanovich or Hiassen and Jake doesn’t have enough personality to carry a book. Add to that a lot of focus on how attractive the various women are, some unexpected changes of Point of View and pacing that means it doesn’t quite flow and it didn’t really work for me. Never mind.

That’s your lot for today, but there are a couple more things that I read on holiday that I suspect will pop up on here in the future – but I’m going to leave you guessing as to what they are!

Happy reading!

books, Forgotten books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Even more even more BLCC

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This week we have the latest in my occasional series of round-ups of books in the British Library Crime Classics series. I’ve read quite a lot of them now, so we’re a even further into the more recent releases – so even more forgotten section of their books, but there are still some good books to be found there

The Black Spectacles by John Dickson Carr

Poisoned chocolates are not exactly unknown in detective fiction, but this is a really good example. A young woman is suspected by her village of having planted poisoned chocolates in the village sweet shop. The local landowner stages a memory game to try to prove his own theory about how they could have been poisoned – and ends up dead himself. And it’s all on film. The crime is seemingly impossible, and yet someone has done it and Dr Gideon Fell is going to figure it out. It’s really good and really clever and keeps the level up all the way through. I’ve only read about half a dozen of John Dickson Carr’s mysteries, but this is one of my favourites of them – Til Death Do Us Part was a BotW and if you liked that, you’ll probably like this too.

Suddenly at His Residence by Christianna Brand

I’m working my way through the Christianna Brand books that are available from in the British Library Crime Classics series as they become available in Kindle Unlimited. I think Green for Danger is still my favourite, but I enjoyed this one more than Death of a Jezebel. This features a grandfather with a complicated family life who is found dead the morning after saying he would change his will. There are a lot of people who wanted him dead, and a crime that seems very hard to have committed. It’s set while World War Two is still going on (1944 to be precise) and although it was published in 1046 so it doesn’t quite have the same sense of not knowing what would happen that Green For Danger has, but it still has lots of wartime detail that adds to the mystery and setting. A very easy and interesting mystery.

The Mysterious Mr Badman by W F Harvey

And finally one from the thriller-y the end of the British Library Crime Classic collection. The Mysterious Mr Badman features a a mystery that starts with the nephew of a blanket manufacturer agreeing to mind the bookshop below his lodgings for an afternoon and three men coming all looking for the same book by John Bunyan. From there, it turns into a murder mystery with political overtones, the morals of which you may or may not agree with, but that will still manage to sweep you along while you’re reading it. I nearly called it a caper, but that’s not is not really the right word when there is murder involved. but think 39 steps, but with a book and a murder at the heart of it. Not bad at all.

Happy Wednesday everyone!