Category: new releases

Book of the Week, cozy crime, new releases

Book of the Week: Murder on the Half Shell

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This is a strange BotW post for me to write – as there were two other books that nearly beat The Murder Quadrille last week, and nothing that I liked as much as them this week.  But I have a rule about not carrying over picks that weren’t used in a previous week.  So Shawn Reilly Simmons’s Murder on the Half Shell gets the nod – but I enjoyed it more this paragraph implies.  Trust me, keep reading!

Murder on the Half Shell is the second book in The Red Carpet Catering Mysteries. The plot: Penelope Sutherland runs a catering company that works on film sets, she’s on an island in Florida catering a movie – but it’s not all plain sailing.  The director is difficult, the leading lady has a seafood allergy and it is hot, really hot.  Then two of the waitresses she’s been using go missing after a crew party and Penelope’s former culinary school instructor turned celebrity chef is the prime suspect.  But she’s sure he didn’t do it and starts to look into it herself.

Food-related cozies are such a massive trend at the moment.  There’s a lot of cupcakes, bakers and coffee shops and so a catering company is a nice variant.  One of the problems I often have with cozy series is that there’s a lot of murder going on in a very small area.  I’m not sure how long a real cake shop/coffee shop/bakery would last if bodies kept turning up outside them and that does sometimes affect how I feel about a series as it goes on – depending obviously on how the author handles it.  But the location catering idea means that there’s potential for the series to move around a bit.  This of course makes it a little harder to maintain a large gang of supporting characters, but it does stop the Cabot Cove effect.  The flipside is that with location moving around does it does mean that the murders might start to seem to be following the lead character around – the Jessica Fletcher effect.  But there are ways and means of dealing with all of these issues – and we’ll see how Red Carpet Catering copes if the series continues.

Penelope is one of the more appealing heroines I’ve recently read in the genre too.  She’s not too stupid to live (or at least not often), she’s not too obviously encroaching on police territory in a way that would get her arrested and she still manages to spend enough time at her business (or have staff manning it) that you can see that she’d stay solvent.  I guess I’m trying to say that Murder on the Half Shell has a good premise, lead character and is solidly executed.  I did think that some of the set-up and diversionary tactics were a little heavy-handed at times – the “obvious suspect” evidence particularly – but it wasn’t enough to annoy me.  It’s not as humourous as my favourite books in the genre, but again, that’s not really a problem if the mystery is interesting – and this one is.

Murder on the Half Shell was a perfectly nice way to spend a couple of train journeys – my copy came from NetGalley and I liked it enough to go back and get the first book in the series from there too.  If you fancy dipping your toe in the world of cozy crime on location, you can pick it up on Kindle (for £1.99 at time of writing).

Happy crime reading!

 

Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: The Glittering Art of Falling Apart

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This was a tough choice.  A really tough choice.  I had two contenders for BotW this week and it was so hard to decide.  In the end I went for Ilana Fox’s The Glittering Art of Falling Apart – as comes out on February 11th.  I’m not telling you what my other option was, because it’s part of a series and can’t help but feel that a blog post may come on it further down the line…

The Glittering Art of Falling Apart is a timeslip novel set in the 1980s and the present day.  And there’s a country house involved. And as regular readers will know, this is just the sort of thing that I love.  The present day heroine is Cassie – obsessed with trying to keep the abandoned Beaufont Hall in the family, despite her mother’s reluctance to talk about her childhood there.  Tenancious Cassie wants to know more.  Back in the 1980s, Eliza is breaking free from her family for the bright lights and glamour of Soho.  But will it bring her the future that she craves or is the price to heavy?

If you’ve read a few timeslip type novels you will probably have a few ideas about where this story is going (I certainly did), but this is so well put together, that it doesn’t matter.  Often in books like this a location is a character in the book – I was expecting Beaufont Hall to take that role, but actually it’s Soho that is the start location in The Glittering Art of Falling Apart.  Ilana Fox paints such a vivid picture of this patch of London in the 1980s you can almost smell it.  And there’s also a really clever use of music to help create the atmosphere as Eliza tries to make her mark on Soho.  I had OMD’s Enola Gay stuck in my head for two days but the lovely people at Orion have pointed me at the playlist that Fox has put together for the book which has given me some ideas for a bit more variety!

I haven’t read any of Ilana Fox’s novels before, but from reading the descriptions of them it seems like this may be a bit of a shift.  If you like books like Harriet Evans A Place for Us or Rosanna Ley’s The Saffron Trail, this may be the book for you.  My copy came from NetGalley*, but I think this should be fairly widely available when it comes out – it feels like it might be the sort of book that goes into the supermarkets (and I hope it does) – but here are some links if you want to pre-order (or buy if you’re reading on Thursday or later) Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones, Kindle and Kobo.

One final note – at time of writing this, I spotted previous BotW The Astronaut Wives Club on a deal on Kobo for 99p – which is a total bargain – and Kindle seem to be price matching it. Go forth and purchase!

*And this seems like a good point to remind everyone of my standard disclaimer –  I review everything I read over on Goodreads but I only recommend stuff here that I genuinely like. The books I read are a mixture of books that I’ve purchased myself, books that I’ve been given and e-proofs via NetGalley.  I try to acknowledge where the books that I review here come from in the interests of transparency, but being given a book for free doesn’t influence the review that I give it – I’m always honest about my thoughts.

American imports, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance

Book of the Week: Anything For You

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This week’s BotW is Kristan Higgins’ latest romance Anything For You – which in a stroke of serendipity is out today!  For those of you who are all Christmas’d out, this would make a great break from the festivities.  It has a winery, some star-crossed lovers and a whole lot of fun.

Anything For You tells the story of Connor and Jessica.  They’ve been hooking up in secret for years and now Connor wants to take it public – and make it official.  But Jessica thinks things are fine as they are – and she has her brother to look after, her brother who really doesn’t like Connor.  So with Connor down on one knee and telling her it’s all or nothing, how sure is Jessica that marriage isn’t for her?

This is such a good read.  Jessica and Connor have such a tangled backstory – which is explained really well in a series of flashback-type sequences in the aftermath of the proposal.  They are both really complicated, well thought out characters.  Connor has quite a privileged background (I mean he’s not a billionaire or a billionaire’s son, but there’s some money there) but a difficult relationship with his parents.  Jessica has dragged herself up from a trailerpark whilst bringing up her little brother in the process – she’s got trust issues, abandonment issues and a bit of an inferiority complex.  Watching them work out their problems is a really engrossing read.

And they are proper problems that need a proper resolution.  I’ve read a lot of romances where the obstacles keeping the hero and heroine apart aren’t really obstacles – or are easily resolved.  But these two have something real and tangible to work out.  And the resolution is really well worked out – it doesn’t involve one of them suddenly doing an abrupt character change or an about face.  They work out their problems and grow and mature to a solution.

And if that sounds too serious – don’t worry!  There’s plenty of humour here too – Connor has a fabulously funny relationship with his twin sister Colleen (aka Dog Face) and the two of them have some great sparky exchanges.  And Con and Jess have their moments too.  Add to that a very stabbable events planner and some meddling friends and the angsty bits are well balanced out.

This was my first Kristan Higgins – but I’ve already found another one in the Kindle backlog pile so that may well have jumped its way closer to the top.  My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get yourself a copy from Amazon or Amazon.com – although it doesn’t seem to be available on Kindle in the UK or the US at the moment.

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Bricking It

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This week’s BotW is Bricking It by Nick Spalding. I read a lot of books last week, many of them good but Christmas-themed – and of them more in the next few days. But Bricking It made me laugh despite the tonsillitis so it was an obvious choice for my non-festive Book of the Week!

Bricking It tells the story of Dan and Haley Daley, who have inherited a run-down farmhouse from their grandmother and decide to do it up to make some extra money. And of course the road to profit does not run smoothly.  There’s an eccentric architect, a gang of builders, a TV crew and a few skeletons in the cupboard.  Oh, and a bit of sibling rivalry too!

I thought Bricking It was a bit different from the usual run of house renovation stories. Haley and Dan both have their issues to deal with and that gives the book a great heart as well as a lot of jokes. If you’re off work for Christmas but not feeling in the mood for a Christmas-set book, this may well be the perfect solution to read curled up in front of the Christmas tree after you’ve finished wrapped (or unwrapping) your presents!

Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle.

Book of the Week, Chick lit, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: A Christmas Cracker

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It will be absolutely no surprise to you regular readers that this week’s BotW is Trisha Ashley’s latest – A Christmas Cracker. You can see my previous musings on her work here, here and briefly here. I’m not usually a Christmas book in October kind of person (although I seem to have read a few of them already this year) but I’m always read to make an exception for Trisha.  Her books are totally my catnip.  Warm and humourous, with heroines on journeys and a variety of different types of heros.  Her heroines have usually made had problems in their love lives before – whether through picking Bad Men or through mistakes and misunderstandings.  I always think of them as second chance romances (as in slightly older people, and not their first love affair), but I know that the “proper” definition of that trope is the “we met when we were young but it didn’t work out, but now we’re trying again” type of story, although Trisha has written a couple of those and they’re really very good.

Why can I never get a good photo of a book with foil lettering on the cover?
The heroine of A Christmas Cracker is Tabby.  She’s ended up doing prison time for a crime she didn’t commit, her fiance has dumped her and given her cat away, one of her friends lied about her in court and her life is generally in tatters.  Then she gets a second chance from Mercy.  She’s been working in Africa for years, but has retired and come back to try and rescue the family cracker business, which is floundering.  She thinks that Tabby could be the breath of fresh air that it needs to save it from the chop.  But Mercy’s nephew Randall think’s Tabby is a con-woman and out for what she can get – he’s got his own plans for Marwood’s Christmas Crackers and he’s watching her like a hawk…

I’m hoping that you’ve read that and thought – “Gosh that sounds generally delightful and festive too” – and it really is (if you didn’t, I’m sorry – I haven’t done it justice).  Tabby is a wonderful and relatable heroine.  I was initially sceptical about a lead character who starts off the book in the clink, but I shouldn’t have doubted Trisha – it’s a masterstroke.  Trisha Ashley’s books have a long history of giving us quirky/fun older/elderly lady characters too (Great Aunt’s Hebe and Ottie in A Winter’s Tale, Mad Aunt Debo in Creature Comforts, I could go on) and Mercy is another great addition to the list – she’s a bundle of energy in light-up trainers who sees the best in everyone and will give hospitality to anyone.

Honestly, I can’t say enough good things about A Christmas Cracker – I got an e-copy via NetGalley – but I went out at the weekend to buy myself an actual copy as well.  And not just because I have all her other books in paperback (and most of them in ebook as well) and I have a thing about sets and completion, but because I wanted to read it again, in a proper book, so I can pick out my favourite scenes so I know where they are in the book so I can go back and read them again.

If you only read one Christmas book this year (or before December at any rate) make this it.  It should be everywhere – Tesco were selling it for a very special price of £2 at the weekend (so cheap that I almost wanted to go and buy it somewhere else in case it meant the author royalties would be smaller) and I’d expect it to be all over the place in the other supermarkets and bookshops.  If I’ve sold it to you as being so good that you can’t wait to go to a shop (and you wouldn’t be wrong), the Kindle and Kobo editions are £2.99 at time of writing. Prices aren’t quite as special for the paperback at the online retailers, but here are the Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles links just in case.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Fantasy, new releases, reviews, Series I love, Young Adult

Book of the Week: The Shepherd’s Crown

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Crivens! This week’s BotW will come as no surprise – it’s the final Terry Pratchett novel, the 41st Discworld book and the fifth to feature Tiffany Aching.  I managed to force myself to read it slowly (for me anyway) and made it last a week. I’m already listening to the audiobook on my walks to work.

 

As you can see I have the others in the series in paperback, but I wasn't prepared to wait this time.
As you can see I have the others in the series in paperback, but I wasn’t prepared to wait this time.

In the Chalk, something is brewing.  Tiffany can feel it coming, the Kelda can feel it coming. An old enemy is gathering strength.  To quote the back of the book, Tiffany stands between the light and the dark, the good and the bad.  And there will be a reckoning.

And to be honest, that’s about all that I can say about the plot of The Shepherd’s Crown without giving too much away. I encountered a massive spoiler in the Audible sample a week before the book came out – and my sister ran into the Guardian review which reveals the same Major Event – and I’ve become really concious of the fact that I  don’t want to ruin the story for anyone reading this the way that plot twist was spoilt for me.

What I can say about the book is that it made my cry, repeatedly.  But it’s not a sad book.  As the back cover says, it is a time of endings and beginnings, and they’re handled beautifully.  It is a Young Adult book and there are Serious Issues in there, but it deals with them very well, with Sir Terry’s trademark wit and warmth.  I laughed and smiled and really enjoyed Tiffany’s adventure.

I wish there were going to be more. But as I said earlier this year (in this post), we knew that the end was coming sooner than anyone could have wished for.  I still want the Moist the Tax Collector book.  I am greedy for more from the Discworld.  And the afterword in Shepherd’s Crown drops tantalising hints about what could have been.  But I absolutely respect (and agree with) Rhianna Pratchett’s decision that if her father is not here to write them, there will be no more new Discworld books.

And if the end had to come, The Shepherd’s Crown is a very good place to finish.  There are plenty of old favourite characters and there are some new favourites too.  Of all the Discworld regulars, Mistress Tiffany has more life ahead of her than the others (unless you count Young Sam Vimes) and so it seems fitting that she is the centre of the last book.

The Shepherd’s Crown doesn’t feel like a goodbye, like a world is coming to an end – it feels like the Great A’Tuin is still out there, swimming through space with the elephants and the Disc on his back, it’s just that we won’t get to hear about the goings on there anymore.  And maybe that’s Sir Terry’s greatest achievement – he’s created a fantasy world so real that we can’t believe that it could stop.

The spines of the 5 Tiffany books
It’s not as if I had a matching set to start with, so I’ll cope with the non-matchingness.

I’m planning to re-read the whole series.  If you haven’t discovered Tiffany yet, start with The Wee Free Men and enjoy her whole journey.  If you are a Discworld fan, who’s been hesitant about reading this, don’t worry.  I don’t think this will be a disappointment to you.  It is safe to read it.  It feels right.  You should be able to get hold of a copy of The Shepherd’s Crown anywhere which sells good books – but just in case: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles (sadly no discount), Waterstones.

Enjoy it. Make it last. Raise a glass to it’s creator. And mind how you go.

 

Book of the Week, new releases, Young Adult

Book of the Week: Fire Colour One

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This week’s BotW is Jenny Valentine’s Fire Colour One.  I do try to mix my choices up a bit – although when I go on a massive reading jag of one author that doesn’t help – so here’s some new YA fiction.  I got my copy via NetGalley and raced through it in two train journeys.

Iris likes lighting fires.  She doesn’t like her mum – or her mum’s boyfriend.  She’s lost touch with her best (and only) friend Thurston. Then the dad that she hasn’t seen for years gets in contact to say he’s dying.  Her mum is delighted – she wants Ernest’s art collection to fund her lifestyle. Iris is angry.  But her dad has things he wants to tell her.

Now, it took me a while to warm to Iris.  She’s a bit difficult to like at first, but then you see what she’s dealing with.  And she’s dealing with a lot.  Her mum sees her as an inconvenience and really isn’t on her side.  Her mum’s partner is the most narcissistic guy I’ve come across in a book this year.  Iris can control the fires.  She can’t control her life, or stop her dad from dying (and she’s not sure she wants to either).

Death is such a theme in YA literature at the moment, that I was worried that this book was going to leave me miserable and upset*, but I got to the last page with a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.  Then I went back and read the last chapter all over again.  I can’t really say much more about why the end worked for me, without giving it away and that would really spoil the book, but it’s clever.  Really clever.  And I’m desperate to know what Iris does next.

So, I didn’t read a lot last week, but I’m still thinking about this one – and I’m wondering if there are any teenagers in my life that I can buy it for (I’m not sure there are).  I know that I’ll go back and read it again too, which is unusual for me and YA fiction that’s not boarding school stories.  I’ve added Jenny Valentine’s other books to my to-read list too

Fire Colour One came out last week – get your paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones or on Kindle or Kobo.

 

* A la the 3am Fault in Our Stars crying jag.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Day Shift

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This week’s BotW is Charlaine Harris’ Day Shift – the second book in the Midnight, Texas series – which I think is going to be a trilogy (or that’s how it looks at the moment anyway).  And yes, I know Midnight Crossroad was Botw 2 months ago.  But this was the best thing I read last week excepting Janet Evanovich, and we’ve already had that discussion…

We pick up where we left off (almost) in Midnight – the same characters that are left at the end of the last book are still in situ, but there’s a strange (even for Midnight) boy who is staying with the Rev and a mysterious company has started renovating the abandoned hotel. This book is faster paced than it’s predecessor and works the better for it. Some of the characters in book one were hard to warm to because they were just *so* mysterious.  Well a lot of that is cleared up in book two – although there’s still a lot of unresolved plot strands at the end of the book.  And of course Day Shift has a mystery-of-the-week too – which is neat and intriguing – and works well alongside the Bigger Picture puzzle as well.

But what I really loved was the crossovers.  Oh the crossovers.  I mentioned in my review of Midnight Crossroad that there were some familiar faces from previous series, but in this one the guest appearances are brilliant.  I can’t say anymore (as per usual) or I’ll spoil it, but I was thrilled to see some more old friends reappear – I’m the sort of reader who doesn’t like to say goodbye to characters* and so crossovers like this, and side characters from previous books reappearing in bigger roles really makes me happy. I’ve got my fingers crossed for more in the last book!

And that’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the plot and the excitement for you.  I honestly don’t know how well these would work for you if you were coming entirely new to Charlaine Harris’ worlds, but for me, I passed several happy hours reading this.

Day Shift is only in hardback and e-book at the moment, but you can get your copy from all the usual sources – here’s Day Shift at Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and on Kindle. And if harback prices are too eye-watering for you, then Midnight Crossroad is available in paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and Kindle.

* I’m always hoping for a sequel to rom coms to see the happily ever afters, but get really annoyed when sequels turn up where the couple break up and make up to create a plot.  Yes I know.  A book full of happy people wouldn’t be very interesting. What can I say. I’m a difficult audience.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, new releases, reviews, Uncategorized

Book of the Week: Prudence

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This week’s BotW is Gail Carriger’s latest – Prudence – and you can’t say that I didn’t warn you that this might happen.  Because I did, even if it’s a few weeks later than I thought it might turn up here.  And that’s because I took an executive decision to save it for my holiday book – for our trip (to Vienna in the end) to mark a Significant Birthday for The Boy.  A holiday book should be a treat, preferably something that you know you’re not going to hate, and as it was already on the to-read pile, saving this meant I didn’t incur the wrath of The Boy for buying books again…

Gail Carriger's Prudence
I really like the purple and pink theme. And I’m not usually a pink person…

Anyway, Prudence is the first book in Carriger’s new series – the Custard Protocol.  Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School books, there are some familiar faces, not least Prudence herself – last seen as a toddler in the Parasol Protectorate series. When Rue is given a dirigible, she names it The Spotted Custard and heads for India on a secret mission.  But the situation there is not as simple as she had been lead to believe (and that wasn’t that simple to start with) and before long she’s dealing with dissidents, kidnappings and a pack of Scottish werewolves and it will take all her metanatural skills to deal with it.

Now, I’ve read all (I think) of Carriger’s other series, but I don’t think it would spoil your enjoyment of the book if you haven’t read them* as Carriger has been very careful not to give away too many spoilers for the plots of her previous books.**  However, for those of us who have read the previous books, you get the delicious enjoyment of being better informed about the past than our heroine, and equally delightful anticipation of confrontations and revelations yet to come.

When I read Timeless, I spotted a few dangling threads left that I hoped were teasers of stuff yet to come – and I was on the right track.   Again, my spoiler policy makes it difficult to be more specific than that, but I really like the direction that this series looks to be heading in.  The only problem with having read Prudence in fact is that I now have to wait (probably) a year to find out what happens next in Imprudence – and it’s still more than six months until the final Finishing School book – Manners and Mutiny – where I finally get to find out how Sophronia’s world became Alexias.

You can buy Prudence from all the usual sources – like Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles and Kindle.  I’ve also spotted it in  my local library already – which I haven’t seen before – and is brilliant, because hopefully it’ll introduce more people to Gail Carriger and then they can fall in love with her world like I have.

* Although the Parasol Protectorate is the more relevant to this book if you want somewhere to start

** Although the identity of Rue’s parents is a bit of a spoiler for Souless, there’s no way to avoid that!

Chick lit, new releases, reviews

Easter Bonus review: Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery

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I know, I know, it’s Easter, and I’m reviewing a book with Summer in the title!  But Easter is often the start of the holiday season – and this is my first really beach-y read of the year.

Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery is the sequel to last year’s Little Beach Street Bakery (which was one of my Summer Reading suggestions last June).  As per, I’m reluctant to say too much about the plot – in case you haven’t read the first book – but we rejoin Polly and all the crew in Mount Polbearne, where there is a whole new set of challenges for them all to face.

When I read a book and love it, I almost always want more – I want to see how they get on after the happily ever after so to speak.  So I love a sequel – but I do get frustrated when their plot is basically breaking up the beloved couple and getting them back together again.  I’m a big fan of Jenny Colgan, and what I really like is that her sequels don’t do that to you.  There’s plenty of plot and lots of drama, but her couples are usually working their way through things together – as a unit.  Much more fun.

The supporting characters in this are also great – Polly’s friends are a hoot and there are a few new characters in this who work really well as well.  It made me laugh and it had me in tears, on a train OVER A PUFFIN for crying out loud* – so it must  be good.

My copy of Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery came from NetGalley – but I’ll be buying my own paperback – because I need it for my shelf of Jenny Colgan books.  And I need to lend it to my sister.  If you’re not on a book buying ban** you can get your copy from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones (who are doing an extra 10% off for Easter) or on Kindle and if you’re going to an actual shop, I would expect it to be in all the supermarkets and WH Smiths at stations and airports too.

Have a Happy Easter – I find the best accompaniment to an Easter Egg is a good book!

*And had me googling “sponsor a puffin” when I got home.

** The Boy wasn’t happy when some more paperbacks turned up in the post the other day, so I’m not buying any more paperbacks until he’s got over it!