Category: reviews

Book Club, Book of the Week, reviews

Book of the Week: The Sudden Departure of the Frasers

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This week’s BotW is Louise Candlish’s The Sudden Departure of the Frasers – which was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for April, but which didn’t get finished until last week because that was when the discussion was.

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This has such a striking cover I know I would have looked at it in the shop, I’m not sure if I would have bought it without the Book Club

The Sudden Departure of the Frasers tells the story of Christy and Joe Davenport, who have just bought the house of their dreams in a leafy London area they never expected to be able to afford.  The previous owners, the Frasers, renovated the house and then abruptly disappeared.  As the Davenports settle in to their new home, Christy becomes obsessed with why the Frasers left and particularly what happened to Amber – beautiful, popular, charming and the centre of the social whirl – and why the atmosphere on the street is so tense.

This is another book that I probably wouldn’t have picked out for myself – but ended up really enjoying* – in fact, I read the vast majority of it across the course of one afternoon and evening because I got sucked in and then I Needed To Know.  It’s one of those books where you can’t put it down because your brain is frantically trying to work out what has gone on and you just need to read one more page/chapter/section because then you might be able to figure it out.

One of the reasons this book worked so well for me is that the setting and the characters seem utterly believeable.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the fantasy that one day the dream home that you’ve always wanted will pop up on the market miraculously in your price range despite being worth oh-so-much more usually.  And then obviously the old adage about “if it looks too good to be true, maybe it is” springs into your mind.  Now scenarios like this usually lend themselves to horror or ghost stories (definitely not my thing) but this is neither.  It’s a gripping little thriller, which will mess with your head but not leave you with nightmares about blood and gore and ghosts.**

Now I am breaking one of my own rules in writing about this now – because The Sudden Departure of the Frasers doesn’t come out until the 21st.  But after a long deliberation I’ve put it up as this week’s BotW – because a) it was really good, b) if I didn’t BotW would probably be another Janet Evanovich (the obsession continues) and c) it will be a really, really good beach read, so preorder it for your holiday and you’ve one less thing to worry about!

You can pre-order The Sudden Departure of the Frasers from all the usual outlets – here is a selection of links – Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and Kindle – and I suspect that when it does come out it may pop up in your local supermarket as it’s being published by Penguin.

* Which illustrates why I have such a massive to-read pile.  I like so many different books. And if I had bought myself this, it would probably have sat of the shelf for years because of the backlog because it’s not obviously a book that I’d like.  Then you’d get another of my patented posts saying that I loved it and I can’t believe how long it sat on the shelf and why didn’t I read it sooner.  I know.  I’m a nightmare.

** I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there isn’t any blood or gore or ghosts.  It’s not that sort of book.  But you know what I mean.

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!

Blog tours, books, reviews

The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café (Blog Tour)

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Well here we are, in a first for Verity Reads Books, I’m part of a blog tour.  Isn’t this exciting!  Today I welcome Jenny Oliver to the blog.  She’s going to tell you why she loves the arrival of  Spring, and then I’m going to tell you what I thought about The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café – which is the first book in her new Cherry Pie Island series.  So, over to Jenny:

Hurray it’s Spring!

Every season I think, ‘This is my favourite season!’  So naturally, right now, I’m thinking that Spring is my definite fave. Here’s my rational…

1. What could be better than a bright yellow flower with a trumpet that costs less than a pound a bunch? They’re happiness in a vase. Right by my parents’ house in Cornwall there are daffodil fields and I think I’m right in saying they leave them to bloom the first year after planting. Last year it was amazing to see this huge yellow field of happy little flowers.

2. This is not to say that I don’t love winter food – stews and casseroles and lasagnes – but I really love a good salad. I’m talking about crispy lettuce, maybe a bit of rocket, and some tiny new potatoes, crispy bacon, feta and lemon juice. Eaten sitting on our back step (because we don’t have a garden) with a glass of really lovely white wine.

3. The smell of the air when you walk out the door in the morning. The warmth of the sun mingling with the cold of the night, the scent of cut grass and daffodils and the sound of birds and cars and people getting up and starting their day happy because it’s not raining or cold!

4.Not wearing a coat! Don’t get me wrong, I really like my coat but after months of wearing it non-stop it’s a pleasure to walk out the house in only a jumper.

5. The knowledge that summer is just around the corner…

Thanks Jenny!  Now on to my review…

Dandelion Café tells the story of Annie’s return to island that she grew up on to take over the family café.  Annie’s got some issues, and she’s not thrilled to be back on Cherry Pie Island where everyone remembers (and won’t let her forget) her youthful mistakes and misadventures.  But it does have the added bonus of Matt-the-millionaire (not the cliche that it sounds, trust me) who she had a massive crush on when she was at school.

Jenny Oliver manages to get a lot of plot into a short book, but it never feels rushed or forced.  I got swept away in the world of the island and was rooting for it all to turn out right in the end.  And for Annie’s brother to end up getting a dunking in the sea!

I read this on the way home from a nightshift (the last of three), desperately needing some light relief that wouldn’t overtax my frazzled, sleep-deprived brain.  The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café put a smile on my face (helping counteract the purple dark circles) and perked me up nicely.  It also didn’t send me into the simmering rage that some partworks/serialisation-y type things do by ending on a cliff hanger which I can’t find out the resolution to for weeks/months/years.

There are some loose ends left at the end of this book – don’t get me wrong – and I need to find out what happens to them, but the main plot of this part of the series is resolved at the end, and the next book in the series is set up neatly – with the prospect of keeping track of how Annie gets on as the next story unfolds.  And since reading Dandelion Café, I’ve been back and found a Jenny Oliver book that had been sitting in the Kindle backlog for a while (I’m not looking to see how long – I don’t want to know!) and read and enjoyed that too.

The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Cafe is available now from the usual e-book based outlets.  My copy came from NetGalley – but I liked it so much I’ve shelled out my own money to pre-order the next in the series!

 

 

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!

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

Book of the Week: Midnight Crossroad

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I really struggled to pick a favourite book from last week.  Not because I didn’t like anything, but there wasn’t one book I really wanted to shout about – except my book club book – and that’s not out til next month, so I’ll tell you about that when you can actually buy it!

In the end, I have settled on Charlaine Harris’s Midnight Crossroad – which I got through NetGalley*.  It’s the first book in her new series (I think it’s pegged at three books) – and her first post-Sookie creation.  I’ve now read all of the Southern Vampire series, all of the Harper Connelly series, all of the Lily Bard series – and three of the Aurora Teagardens** so I guess you could say that I’m a fan.  I find her books really easy to read, her world building ticks my boxes and although each series clearly does have a formula, they are original enough that they don’t seem like the same book with new names if you know what I mean.

So Midnight Crossing is the convergence of the supernatural world of Sookie – and the worlds that we’ve seen in her other series – and to me it seems to try to root them all firmly in the same universe – which is something I’ve always wondered about.  There are some familiar faces from the previous series – and I’ve had trouble writing this without giving you spoilers.

The residents of Midnight might look normal (mostly), but they’re all hiding something.  Manfred has just moved to town and is about to discover that still waters really do run deep.  Ummmm.  And that’s about all I can say without giving too much away.  The story has multiple points of view, which can be a bit confusing at first, but it does work to establish the different characters and set up the town from the inside out as well as Manfred looking in.  But that’s not to say that by the end of the book you’ll know all the answers.

It’s not perfect, it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read – but it really is a nice way of passing an afternoon, especially if you’ve read the previous series.  It’s not the same genre really as the True Blood books – but it’s closer to them than any of her other series are.

As I said, my copy came from NetGalley – in advance of the UK paperback release on April 9 – you can pre-order that from Amazon or Foyles.  I can hear you pointing out the contradiction in not having my Book Club book as BotW because it’s not out yet – and then reviewing this which isn’t out for another week, and to that I offer you the Kindle link (and for the US readers, the amazon.com link because the paperback is already out there!) – although I’m sure the price will drop once the paperback comes out.  But you can get a sample now to see if you like it, while you can’t even get a sneak peak of my Book Club novel yet – it’s not out for three and a half weeks (or indeed the end of May in the US).  And it’s cruel to recommend something and make people wait that long!

* Having been reading the Dear Author palarva over the weekend, I’ve resolved to make sure I’m even more upfront about where my books come from – I already say on Goodreads if my copy was from NetGalley or similar, and I try to here, but I’m redoubling my efforts.  Transparency is key…

** I’ve bought book four after reading Midnight Crossing.  I suspect the second Omnibus is in my future…

Book of the Week, books, Chick lit, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Creature Comforts

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Regular readers to the blog will be unsurprised to discover that this week’s BotW is the new novel from Trisha Ashley.  The first review on this blog (and one of the earliest posts) was of her last book Every Woman for Herself  and I’ve been waiting eagerly for Creature Comforts ever since. And I managed to control myself – and read the book across three days, rather in one sitting.

Creature Comforts tells the story of Izzy, who returns to her childhood home of Halfhidden, after years travelling around the world.  She’s just broken up with her fiancé Kieran and is looking for answers about a tragic accident she was involved in as a teenager.  On top of that, she’s starting a new business and helping her friends with a plan to regenerate the village by getting more tourists in.  And her aunt’s dog rescue centre is in a spot of bother – with money and with the new owner of the estate that owns the land…

I love the corner of Lancashire that Trisha Ashley has created – and Halfhidden is a great addition to it.  I liked the dynamics of Izzy and her gang of friends – and there’s some fun supporting characters (as usual) who are quirky in a non-irritating way.  The plot’s a good one too – as Izzy tries to discover what happened that fateful night.  Trisha’s heroines always have a bit of baggage behind them to overcome – and I liked that Izzy’s wasn’t a husband/ex-partner as it so often is with books in this sort of genre.  I also really empathised over her ex-fiancé – who reminded me of one of my ex-boyfriends* with his attitude towards her and her life.

As usual, after reading on of Trisha’s books, I wanted to go back and read the earlier ones – this is partly because there are always little references to them, enabling you to catch a glimpse of what’s going on with some of your old friends, and reminding you how much you enjoyed reading about their lives.

Creature Comforts is Trisha’s first book to get a hardback release – you can buy it on Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and hopefully in stores too.  The Kindle edition is available too and you can pre-order the paperback too if you can control yourself and wait until June.

 

*Although my exboyfriend didn’t cause me any of the trouble that Kieran causes Izzy!

Book of the Week, books, Chick lit, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Three Amazing Things About You

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This was so nearly last week’s book of the week – except that it didn’t get finished in time – and I can’t write a BotW post on something that isn’t over – after all it could all have gone terribly wrong in the last 100 pages.  But it didn’t and it was still the best thing I read last week, even if I did finish it first thing on Monday (!) so here were are.

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Such a pretty cover. I do love blue

Jill Mansell’s latest book tells the story of Hallie, Flo and Tasha.  At the start of the book we learn that Hallie has Cystic Fibrosis and is on the way to London for a possible transplant that could save her life.  Hallie runs a website where she answers people’s problems – like an agony aunt (but in a good way) – and her correspondents tell her three things about them before they tell her their dilemma.  As she travels to the hospital, she’s writing her three things –  an explanation – revealing her identity and her situation, in case she doesn’t make it.  Then we jump back to find out how we got to here…

The three stories intertwine in a way that I don’t really want to explain, except to say that it really works.  I loved all the characters in this book.  It made me laugh and it made me cry* and I think it may be my favourite of Jill Mansell’s books that I’ve read.  It’s definitely an evolution from her novels that I’ve read – and its a really good evolution.  I know I haven’t written a lot here – but I don’t want to give too much away.  But if you like smart, funny books with a heart, then this may well be for you.

Three Amazing Things About You is out now in hardback and ebook.  You can pick up a copy at all the usual place – and the supermarkets too – or if you can’t wait here are some links – Foyles, Waterstones, Kindle or my shop in My Independent Bookshop (which send money to my local indie)

* Luckily I have learnt from the Rabbit Hayes experience, and I did my crying on the sofa at home, not on the train!
Book Club, books, fiction, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: The Ship

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So.  I have joined a book group*.  Or rather I have been allowed to join a book group (thanks Curtis Brown!) and this week’s BotW is our book group read from January.

Antonia Honeywell’s first novel, The Ship, tells the story of a future where the world has descended into chaos – the food has run out, natural resources are exhausted, where people routinely disappear without trace, and you can only continue to exist if your identity card remains valid – forcing you to jump through hoops to keep it up to date.  Lalla has grown up sheltered and protected by her father – who has been assembling a new life for them as her mother shows her around the British Museum.  But when the new life – on board a former cruise ship where her father has had picked all the other residents – gets underway, Lalla grows uneasy – about her future and their destination.

Antonia Honeywell's The Ship
Isn’t the cover gorgeous? I would definitely pick it up in a shop

Now I’m not usually a big reader of dystopian future novels.  I studied The Handmaid’s Tale at A-level – and read Brave New World, Children of Men and 1984 alongside that – but it’s not an area of fiction that I tend to pick up.  But I really, really enjoyed this.  It’s taut and full of suspense and keeps the reader guessing all the way through.  It leads the reader with questions – and it provoked a lot of debate at the (online) book group.

I don’t really want to say too much else about the book – because it’ll spoil it for you, but it’s definitely worth a read.  It paints a very believable picture of a possible future – but it’s one that I sincerely hope never comes to pass.  There are interesting characters – with flaws and secrets for the reader to uncover.  One of the blurbs describes it as Hunger Games meets Handmaid’s Tale – and I think I could get on board with that as a broad summary of what is a really interesting and complex book.

It has a beautiful cover – but I know that if I’d picked this up in the bookshop and brought it home it would have spent a long time sitting on the shelf waiting to be read – as I’m terrible for picking “light” fiction over books I perceive as harder work.  But the book group deadline meant I read this – and I really enjoyed it.  So clearly externally imposed deadlines will work on me – in a way that targets I set myself don’t!

Anyway, The Ship is out in Hardback on February 19th – preorder it on Kindle, from Amazon, Foyles and Waterstones.

*If you’re thinking that it’s odd that I’m not already in a book group, I work a job that has a 24/7 rota pattern making being able to be free on a specific night hard to guaranteed, and I live 80 miles away from where I work, which means I have a long commute – and friends split between home and work.  It’s a bit of a logistical nightmare…

Book of the Week, Children's books, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Arsenic for Tea

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I’m back in the children’s section with this week’s book of the week – embracing my long time (20-year plus) love of boarding school stories with Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens – the second book in her Wells and Wong series.

I mentioned the first book – Murder Most Unladylike – back in September and have been looking forward to reading the next one ever since.  In Arsenic for Tea, there’s a murder  at Daisy’s house, where Hazel is staying during the holidays.  Once again the Detective Society tries to work out who did it – from a cast of suspects including most of Daisy’s family.

When I started reading boarding school books – back in the early 1990s – the world that the girls at St Clares lived in wasn’t that different to the one that I was in.  They called maths arithmetic and the trains they travelled on were steam ones, but I could recognise their school life and identify it with mine. Since then, with computers, mobile phones, tablets and the like, school has changed a lot.  But Robin Stevens has found a way to write boarding school stories (yes this is set in the holidays, but it still counts) that still work for modern children.  By setting it in the 1930s, she can avoid having to include technology and things that may date very quickly, but she’s also included things that writers at the time didn’t talk about – but that children today can relate to and using Hazel as the principal narrator is a masterstroke.

Hazel is from Hong Kong – and this lends her narration a sense of detachment that works well.  She doesn’t fully understand this world either – so it makes sense for her to explain things that modern children might not quite understand but that would seem jarring if they were explained by Daisy who “belongs”.  Hazel also faces prejudice – and these are subtly dealt with, showing how unfair it is – in a way you never got in “old school” boarding school books, mostly because the cast was either all white – or because the author didn’t think that it was unfair (a sad commentary on a genre of books I love).

Daisy’s parents also have issues – their relationship is clearly… troubled and that forms part of the plot – which again you don’t have in books like Mallory Towers or my beloved Chalet School (where one doesn’t mention d.i.v.o.r.c.e or have any relationships that aren’t perfect.  Although there’s a high percentage of children missing one parent through death from TB or similar!).  This makes the book relatable – as well as making the plot make sense and hang together

I said in my mini review of book one that it’s like Mallory Towers crossed with Agatha Christie – and I stand by that.  There’s enough here for NotChildren like me to enjoy as well as the target audience.  In fact, it’s a bit like a good animated movie – there are bits that adults will love – nods to golden age detective fiction, etc – but that kids would pass straight over without realising that they were missing anything.  And Daisy and Hazel’s antics aren’t too outrageous – everything seems perfectly plausible for them to have been able to do, with enough peril to make it interesting, but not so much superhuman deduction that they don’t seem real.  In fact, part of the fun as a (supposedly) grown-up is the reading between the lines of what Hazel and Daisy don’t understand.

Arsenic for Tea is out on Thursday – you can pre-order the kindle copy here if you’re a grown-up, but I suggest if you’re buying for the 8 – 12 year old in your life and want use of your e-reader/tablet device in the near future, you buy the paperback – here it is on Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles or on my page at My Independent Bookshop – which gives money to one of my local indies.

books, new releases

Reminder: A Place for Us out today in Paperback

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Yes, I know, as if I haven’t gone on about Harriet Evans’ latest book enough already.  But for those of you who like a paperback in your hand – or who have a shelf of Harriet Evans they want to add to – A Place for Us is out today.

In case you missed my gushings about this already – it was on my Books of the Year List and I also did a bit of sleep deprived babbling about it after Part One and reviewed Part Two and Parts Three and Four too.

In case you can’t tell – I really liked it.  You should be able to get your copy all over the place – but here are some links: Foyles, Waterstones, Amazon and my page on My Independent Bookshop where you can also find various other books I’ve been raving about.