Category: reviews

reviews, romance, series

Romance Series: Women Who Dare

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Happy Friday everyone, another week, another romance series for you today.

Beverly Jenkins’s Women Who Dare trilogy is three books set in the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. First there is Rebel, which is set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Our heroine is Valinda, a transplant from New York in town to teach the newly emancipated community while she waits for her fiancé to return from abroad. Our hero is Drake LeVeq, an architect and son of an old New Orleans family descended from pirates. Second is Wild Rain which is set in Wyoming and is that rare thing: a western historical romance that I liked – so much so that I made it a BotW! And finally To Catch a Raven – which is set back in New Orleans and has a hero and heroine who are forced together in order to reclaim a stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. Raven comes from a family of grifters, Braxton emphatically does not and as they fake marriage as part of the job they start to discover that perhaps they’re more suited to each other than it seems.

I don’t read a lot of American-set historical romances but I will always make an exception for Ms Beverly Jenkins. I love her writing and characterisation – her Blessings contemporary series is one of my favourites as you know – and she brings all that to the historicals but with interesting settings and premises that you don’t see a lot in the genre. I don’t think you have to read these in order to appreciate them – I didn’t – but you’ll probably get a better experience if you do.

They used to be quite hard to get hold of – but they’re all on kindle now, and they seem to rotate on offer fairly regularly so you can pick up the set.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Show Don’t Tell

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Happy Tuesday everyone and today I’m back with a new release (it’s under two weeks since it came out, that totally counts as new still) collection of short stories from one of my favourite authors.

This is a new collection of short stories from Curtis Sittenfeld, mostly looking at various aspects what it is like to be a women, usually a woman in her forties, in the Mid-West of America. It’s her first full collection of short stories since 2018’s You Think It, I’ll Say It which was also a Book of the Week when I read it in 2019 (and which is probably the only book of hers I don’t own. I should fix that). Since then she’s written Rodham, her alternative history of Hillary Clinton, and Romantic Comedy which was one of my very favourite books of 2024 and which I now want to go back and read again. It should also be noted that there is a bit of overlap here with some short stories having appeared elsewhere individually or in a mini collection. But given that I didn’t write about any of those at the time I’m feeling ok about recommending this – just if you are a fan (like me) you’ll have read some before and you may want to calibrate your expectations of new stuff accordingly.

Anyway there are not enough stories about normal women, with normal lives doing things and this is full of them. As with that last collection there is just enough action to keep things moving but not so much that you don’t get to know the character. And once again Sittenfeld has picked out a few things that are happening in the world and done interesting and often witty takes on them. It’s just lovely. Really really nice. I rationed myself to make it last longer. It’s that sort of book – and you can do that with short stories if you just let yourself read one in a sitting.

As you could see from my photos at the weekend, this is getting shelf space on display in the bookshops, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: Death Upon a Star

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Happy Tuesday everyone, this week I’ve got a review of one of last week’s new releases for you – so points to me for being timely for once!

It’s 1939, and Evelyn Galloway is a script supervisor who has just arrived in Hollywood. She’s a script supervisor and she’s got a job working on Alfred Hitchcock’s new movie, Rebecca. Soon she’s on the film lot and mixing with the stars and crew. When she meets one of her favourite actors, she’s delighted to find that he’s actually a nice person and they arrange to meet for lunch. Except that he never turns up – and is then found murdered. When the stories in the papers don’t match up with what she know, Evelyn decides to start looking into the murder herself.

This is the first in a series – and there’s a bit of mysterious backstory going on here as well as the mystery plot. This is right in a part of history when I think mystery stories really work and Hollywood is a fun setting for something like this. There are some real people in this in minor roles, and there are some bits that are inspired by real people or stories that you can spot too if you’ve read a bit about golden age Hollywood. It’s not ground breaking, but it is a nice easy and relaxing read that is a fun way of spending a few hours. I would happily read the next one in the series if it passed my way.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it came out last week and it’s available now in Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday, reviews

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

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Another month over, and as you probably saw on Monday, a mega reading list to finish the month off, because we were on holiday. Only one of these is actually something finished on the holiday – but I promise you will hear more about a bunch of those holiday books at some point. However in the meantime here’s a three of the books I read in November and haven’t told you about yet!

Frequent Hearses by Edmund Crispin

I’m slowly working my way through the Gervase Fen series – so slowly in fact that they’ve now started a fresh redesign since I started reading them. I’ve now read six of the ten slightly out of order as this is in fact book seven. It sees Gervase entangled with the movie making set and trying to untangle the mystery around the death of a young actress who threw herself from Waterloo Bridge one night after a party. I had part of the solution figured out, but not all the whys and wherefores so it was a good read finding out.

Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans*

The Second World War is over and Valentine Vere-Thissett is on his way home. Except the war has changed his world – his elder brother has been killed, leaving him with a title he doesn’t want and and now the fate of his family home, built in the 1500s, in his hands. I have really enjoyed a lot of Lissa Evans’s novels, but for some reason this one didn’t quite work as well as I wanted it to. It’s got all the elements – a reluctant younger son taking over, post war setting, an ill-assorted group of people thrown together, but just this time, it didn’t provoke as strong a set of emotions as her books usually do. It’s still good, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not brilliant, and I was hoping for brilliant.

A Body on the Doorstep by Marty Wingate

It’s 1921 and Mabel Canning has moved to London to try and strike out on her own and be a Modern Woman. To this end she’s got a job with the Useful Women’s Agency, but one one of her assignments a dead body turns up on the doorstep when she answers the door. And of course she can’t help but get drawn in to trying to figure out what happened to him. This was the latest in my quest to find a new historical mystery series to fill the gap left by the end of the Daisy Dalrymple books. And it’s not bad – the mystery isn’t the most complicated, but it’s got a fair bit of set up to do and characters to introduce as the first in the series so I don’t mind that too much. It’s in KU so I will likely read more of them as and when I get a chance.

And there you are, that’s your lot today – but a quick reminder of the November Books of the Month, which were Rivals, Top of the Climb, The Anti-Social Season and Death at the Dress Rehearsal

Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: The Rom-Commers

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It might be December, but today’s pick isn’t a Christmas book (sorry), it is a literal beach read from my holiday last week. But even if you’re not on a sun lounger right now, I think it’s still a pretty good option for a bit of escapist reading if that’s what you need.

Emma has always wanted to be a screenwriter – she’s studied for it, she’s obsessed by rom coms and she’s been writing her own for years – and she’s won contests with them. But she’s not in Hollywood hustling for gigs, she’s in Texas looking after her dad. That is until she gets a call from an old friend to offer her the chance to work with a legendary screenwriter. Charlie Yates has won all the awards you could think of but the screenplay for his new movie sucks. It’s a rom com written by a man who doesn’t believe in love – and it shows. Charlie is Emma’s writing idol so she heads off to LA for six weeks to doctor his script. Except when she gets there, he doesn’t want to work with her and he doesn’t even care about the script, it’s just a means to an end. But Emma isn’t letting her big chance go without a fight…

Now I love a Rom Com – I’ve actually been revisiting some of my old favourites recently (with somewhat mixed results, but that’s a story for another day) so as a premise this was right up my alley. And this has got all the banter and sparks flying that you could want. Emma and Charlie are a chalk and cheese duo on the surface but as you get to know them you realise how perfect they are for each other underneath. It’s got a third act twist that made me worry that I’d missed a “a novel” disclaimer on the front, but it was OK in the end. I don’t think I would have able to write about it if it had broken the rom com conventions that it was writing about – unless I was rage-writing any way.

I enjoyed Katherine Center’s previous two book Hello Stranger and The Bodyguard, but I think this is my favourite of hers yet. And I’m looking forward to seeing what we get next too.

This is out now – it’s a relatively recent release in paperback so I haven’t had a chance to check out the bookshops to see how easy it is to find in person, but I’m hoping it shouldn’t be too hard. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy reading!

Book of the Week, Christmas books, new releases

Book of the Week: The Anti-Social Season

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It’s November and we have our first Christmas-set pick of the season and it’s one of the new releases! And yes I know, I told you about it on release day, but now I’m reporting back…

Thea has been a firefighter for a decade, except that now she can’t do it any more after a colleague was injured. She’s got the chance of a job managing the fire service’s social media – but can she cope with being so close to her old job without actually doing it? And who even is she if she isn’t a firefighter? Simon is a librarian and manages the library’s social accounts part time. He’s the man tasked with teaching Thea the ropes of her new job. He also had a huge crush on her when they were at school – even though she didn’t notice him at all. As they work their way towards Christmas the two of them realise that there is something going on between them – but can they do anything about it without risking their jobs?

This is actually much lower angst than that description sounds. There is no active peril really, just some slightly toxic family members and two adults working out whether they might work together beyond the bedroom. There are adult conversations when things go wrong (not always straight away) and grown up behaviour. It’s actually a very comforting and calming read. Well except for Simon’s sister and mother who need to be fired into the sun. But apart from that. If you want to start your festive reading, this wouldn’t be a bad place to do it.

As you already know, I had this one preordered and it’s available now on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: Kingmaker

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As I said yesterday, it was a pretty easy choice this week. And this was actually the first book I finished last week – I didn’t manage to get it finished in time for the previous week’s list, and it would probably have been BotW last week instead of The Man Who Didn’t Fly (because there’s always a BLCC post in progress somewhere where I could write about that. But actually this works better in a way as this js somewhat Truman Capote adjacent and he would have been 100 yesterday, so sort of points to me on the timing of this review!

Pamela Harriman has crossed my reading path a couple of times in the past – most often as one of Truman Capote’s slightly more tangential Swans – namely the one who came and stole Slim Keith’s Husband and whose amorous exploits were among those featured in Capote’s notorious La Cote Basque 1965. Anway, Pamela’s reputation was as a modern courtesan, but in this book, Sonia Purnell sets out to re-examine Harriman’s life and legacy and position her as a secret political power player who learnt how to exercise soft power as Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law and took those lessons on to the rest of her life – to help Gianni Agnelli while they were lovers and then later to help the Democratic Party back to life in the late 1980s and early 1990s, culminating in her appointment as Ambassador to Paris by Bill Clinton and a role in American involvement in the Balkan conflict.

Considering that Harriman is most often referred to as a courtesan, or as someone who made a study of rich men’s ceilings, this is quite a reappraisal. But Purnell makes a strong case for Pamela as a woman who used the skills and talents that she had in the ways that were permitted as a woman at whatever the given time was, and then seeking to improve and better herself and her education throughout her life. I look forward to what I’m sure will be a number of articles in response to this to see what the response is but Purnell has had access to a wealth of papers and interviews to write the book and in her telling the story of Harriman’s life is remarkable and compelling – and hard to find parallels to.

My copy of Kingmaker came via NetGalley, but it came out in hardback about two weeks ago and so hopefully should be in the bookshops now. And of course it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club

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A historical fiction pick today, and one that has taken me a while to read on account of my brain’s refusal to concentrate on long books when I’m tired and my uncertainty on how things were going to turn out and my current need for closure and happy endings!

It’s 1919, the war is over and the world is starting to return to normal. Except that normal seems to mean that all the gains that women have made during the war are being rolled back and having had a taste of independence the world is now trying to relegate them back to domesticity. Helen Simonson’s new novel focuses on three characters trying to figure out what their place is in the post-war world. Constance had taken over the management of an estate, but is now losing her job and her home to make way for returning men. After nursing the mother of her employer through influenza, she is sent with her to the seaside, where she meets Poppy and her group of lady motorcycle riders, and Poppy’s brother Harris, an injured wartime pilot who is still coming to terms with his new reality. And then there is Klaus, German by birth but a naturalised British citizen, who has got a job as a waiter again, but is finding that he has to keep a low profile on account of his name and accent.

This is a smart and thought-provoking novel set at an interesting time that is ripe for fiction. It’s also a coming of age story, but there is a deal of darkness to balance the tea dances and parties. The interwar period is one that I love reading about – but I haven’t read a lot of fiction set exclusively at the start of that period, and it gave me plenty to think about as well.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now and available on Kindle, Kobo and in hardback.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Do Me a Favour

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Oh you’re so unsurprised by this I know. I can’t keep myself. I tried to pace myself with this one but in the end, I just finished it. On Sunday evening and here we are!

As I said in last week – this is the story of Willa and Hudson. Willa is a widow and she has just moved to an island in the Pacific north west where she has inherited a house from her great aunt. Her parents want her to get a “proper” job, but she wants to try and rebuild her career as a cookery book ghost writer. Her comeback assignment is for a viral social media star who is more famous for the fact he cooks topless than his actual recipes. But no matter, she is determined. Hudson is her new neighbour. He lives on his parents’ farm, along with one, sometimes two of his grown up children. He’s a handyman and she has a house that needs work. Soon they are spending lots of time together, more than is technically necessary and it’s clear there’s something between them.

In case you haven’t worked it out, this is another romance from Cathy Yardley featuring an older hero and heroine. Both are in their 40s, both have got baggage and like Role Playing a lot of what is going on here is two mature adults figuring out that they’re into each other and then working out if that’s a thing that can work in their lives long term. There is no big external conflict here – and no real conflict between them really – so despite the sadness in Willa’s backstory (and it’s not a passing reference to her late husband, it’s a big part of her) this is actually quite low stress. You want them to get together, they want them to be together; they’ve just got a few things to work through.

So it’s a really comforting read as well as being romantic. And I also loved the setting – in real life I could not cope with living on an island, but in a book: totally. A lovely way to spend a few hours.

Anyway, I had my copy of Do Me A Favour preordered, it’s currently £1.99 to buy on Kindle but it’s also in Kindle Unlimited and also an Amazon imprint in paperback.

Happy Reading.

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

Book of the Week: The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling

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It’s Tuesday again and as I promised last week, I’m back with a Book of the Week pick – and we’re back in old Hollywood for Katherine Blake’s The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling.

It’s the early 1950s and the titular Loretta is a Brit abroad, escaping from her past in Lancashire by reinventing herself in Hollywood, not as an actress but behind the scenes in the make-up department. She’s new to Hollywood and its machinations, but she’s a fast learner and she has got some weapons of her own as she fights her way through the studio system in the hunt for success.

It’s quite hard to describe what actually happens in this, or give it a genre. It’s historical fiction, but there’s a dash of mystery in there and it’s witty too. But there’s also some sexual violence that I need to warn you about because I know that’s a hard no for some people. I love a book that features Golden Age and studio system Hollywood and this has plenty of that – with faded starlets, up and coming ingenues and plenty of awful men. If you liked The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo this has some similar vibes – but with a darker edge.

This is a relatively new release – it came out in the UK last month, but in the US last week. I haven’t seen it in the shops yet, but it may be that I’ve been looking in the wrong places because of that genre thing I mentioned – or simply that I haven’t been in a big enough bookshop. My copy came from NetGalley but you can also get it on Kindle or Kobo and on Audible.

Happy Reading!