Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Mona of the Manor

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I wonder how many of you predicted that this would be today’s choice when you saw the list yesterday? Yes, it is breaking a rule because it’s the tenth in a series, but I think you absolutely can read this one standalone, although obviously you’ll get more out of it if you’ve read the others.

It’s the 1990s and we’re in the English countryside. Yes, this is filling in a gap in the series and we’re finally going to find out what Mona got up to in Britain after she inherited a stately home from her husband. Of course it’s all a little more complicated than that, but that’s the bare bones of how she ended up running a hotel – of sorts – in order to keep the bills paid and avoid having to sell up. At the start of the novel, while Mona and her adopted son are looking forward to a visit from the San Francisco contingent, they welcome a couple from the US and it all gets a little complicated and they have to sort it all out before Michael arrives.

Not going to lie, reading this was a treat that I had been saving myself and I just couldn’t wait any longer. I love this world and I love Maupin’s writing, and it was lovely to go back in time and get some more of them in their younger glory. And there are some nice nods in this to earlier books – and some bits of 90s culture that Maupin would have had to disguise or fictionalise at the time (if he’d known about them) but can now just put in there. This isn’t as interwoven with the events of the time as the original few books were – but that’s only to be expected when they’re no longer being written contemporaneously with the events themselves. If you like the series, I don’t think this will disappoint. If you’ve never read them before then it’s not a bad place to jump in – but you could always just start at the beginning and slot this in in its chronological spot in the series.

You should be able to get this in any good bookshop – I think they’ve even put the paperbacks out in new editions to match this one, which is nice but also annoying because now my set matches even less. I’ll cope though I’m sure! And of course it’s on kindle and kobo too

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Darkest Sin

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I said yesterday I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, but it all became clear to me while I was trying to get to sleep last night, even if this is slightly rule breaking.

It’s rule breaking because The Darkest Sin is not the first book in the series – but I didn’t realise that when I bought it and I haven’t read the first in the series. I picked this off the shelf to take on holiday because it is set in Florence and we were going to Tuscany so it seemed fitting – and it was really good.

Cesare Aldo is an investigator at one of the criminal courts in Florence, a city full of factions, alliances and secrets. When he is sent to a convent to investigate reports of night-time intruders, he finds rivalries and secrets – and that’s even before the body of a naked man is found inside the convent. Alongside this, a constable of the same court finds the body of a missing colleague, that was pulled from the river near his childhood home. who would have dared kill a court officers – and if Carlo Strocchi can find out, it could secure him the promotion he yearns for. But Florence is dangerous and treacherous and the answers could prove a bigger problem than the mysteries.

Having not read the prior book in the series, I don’t know how much of the backstory in this had already been revealed in that – and what would have been a twist to a reader already familiar with Aldo. But going in blind, this was a twisty and page turning thriller with clever, well-drawn characters – not just in the main characters but in the supporting roles too. Sixteenth Century Florence is also a character in this – you can hear it and smell it and sense the danger lurking all around.

As I said yesterday, it was a doing and seeing sort of holiday not a lazing around one – so I was still finishing this on the plane home, and I was actually annoyed when the plane landed sooner than I expected and I had to leave it unfinished for a few hours while we made our way home. I’ll definitely be looking for more of these – I want to find out what the first book told you and see what happens next!

You can get The Darkest Sin on Kindle and Kobo and in paperback. There are three books in the series available now – with a fourth coming in the autumn.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: How to End a Love Story

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I said yesterday that I didn’t know what I was going to write about today, and it took a lot of thinking about because there wasn’t a lot of options on the life without breaking some of my own rules, but when it comes down to it, I had the most to say about this one, because I have Thoughts. Lots of thoughts!

Helen is a successful young adult author whose trilogy is about to be turned into a TV series. She’s negotiated herself a place in the writers room, but it turns out that also in the room is Grant. Grant went to high school with Helen and they are bound together by a “tragic accident” – that’s the blurb’s choice of words, not mine. But as they work together, sparks start to fly between them and maybe they might be the key to each others future?

I said on Thursday when I wrote about this for release week that I wasn’t sure if Helen and Grant’s shared past was some thing that they would – or should- be able to get past, and I absolutely stand by that. If the event in their past was almost anything else, I think it would be ok, but this specific issue felt unfixable. And I’ll put the issue at the bottom if you really want the spoiler. Now that aside, it’s a great read – Grant is a charismatic leading man who stays charming without veering into insufferable. It’s also fun watching Helen find her feet in Los Angeles and build a life for herself. They are a good couple in every way, except for that one thing. And other people’s views on that may vary.

This is Yulin Kuang’s debut and there is lots about it that I did like, so I will be looking out for whatever she writes next, as well as those Emily Henry adaptations that she is working on.

My copy of How to End a Love Story came from Netgalley but it’s available now on Kindle, Kobo and as an actual book.

Happy Reading!

The tragic past is that Helen’s sister killed herself by stepping in front of Grant’s car.

Book of the Week, cozy crime, new releases

Book of the Week: The Potting Shed Murder

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I’m going fora new murder mystery novel this week – new as in not out until Thursday, so for once I’m ahead of the game. Mark your calendars, it’s not an April fool (that was yesterday!) and it may not happen again this year!

Daphne sends her family have left London behind and moved to Norfolk. Their new home is a a historic farmhouse in a seemingly idyllic village that even has a name to match – Pudding Corner. But when the primary school headteacher is found dead, Daphne realises that all is not what it seems. Daphne gets even more involved when one of her new friends is implicated – but Mr Papplewick was a on the verge of retirement after a career spent in the village – could some one from his past want him dead, or is it one of the other parents at the school?

I really enjoyed the setting and the characters, but I will avoid that I had the murderer pegged pretty early on, but I read a lot of murder mysteries and this is a debut. It sounds like they’re setting up for a series. So as I liked the premise so much, I will definitely comeback for more if more is offered to me. This is written by Paula Sutton, aka Instagram‘s Hill House Vintage and as well as the murder mystery this also has dollops of her vintage style. This has blurb comparisons to Richard Osman and Richard Coles and I think that’s pretty fair, but also some of the American cozies themed around hobbies and handicrafts.

My copy came from NetGalley, but is out on Thursday so you have a few days left to preorder a physical copy, kindle or kobo edition. As it’s not out yet and it’s a debut novel I V have no idea how easy it will be to get in the shops, but I will keep an eye out for it.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: When Grumpy Met Sunshine

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A big old stack of reading last week because: holiday, so a few things to chose from, but this was easily my favourite – although I have one reservation if you read on!

As the title suggests, this is a grumpy-sunshine romance, where the sunny half of the couple is ghost writer Mabel and the grumpy is her latest subject, former footballer Alfie who has been persuaded to write his memoirs. Except that he doesn’t want to reveal anything about himself and he doesn’t do emotions. So Mabel’s job isn’t going to be easy, but she tries and they start snarking and squabbling as they try to get something down on paper. And then they’re spotted together in public and the press decides that Mabel and Alfie are a couple. And of course the first rule of ghost writing is that no one can know that you’re a ghost writer so they pretend to be in a relationship. Except that there is a lot of chemistry going on and Mabel is in very real danger of catching feelings for Alfie. But he couldn’t really be interested in a girl like her, could he?

And therein lies my problem with this book. Because it is absolutely clear that Alfie really does have feelings for Mabel and he has them from quite early on, and she is just the most obvious person that was ever oblivious not to see it. And obviously that’s how she has to be for the plot to work, and Charlotte Stein does make a good attempt at trying to give a reason why Mabel might not think he’s into her and it does make his grand gesture at the end very grand but still. For a smart woman, Mabel is very stupid when it comes to noticing how into her Alfie is. But the banter was so fun and it was so funny I forgave it because it really was a lot of fun. And it is also really quite steamy during the fake relationship portion of it – I had to put it down while I was on the plane home because I was worried the person next to me was going to read it over my shoulder and then I would have died of embarrassment!

This is the first Charlotte Stein novel that I’ve read – and from what I can see it’s her first novel in this sort of area – she’s written a couple of dozen romances before but the rest of her back catalogue seem to be in the ménage/erotica end of the genre which is not really what I read, so I will be keeping an eye out for what she writes next if there is going to be more like this!

I’ve seen When Grumpy Met Sunshine in the shops all over the place – and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Miss Pickle

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This is another one of those weeks where I’m writing about a book that is a curiosity and is in no way good. But it was the thing I read last week that I most wanted to talk about so I’m going with it.

Miss Pickle is an evangelical school story, set in Australia. Our heroine is the plucky Lola, vicar’s daughter, misunderstood by her stepmother, star of her local school and now off to a boarding school as a scholarship girl. On arrival she meets her new roommate Trixie – the school’s problem child, who gets a new roommate every year in the hopes that they will reform her but instead the reverse happens. Oh you know where this is going.

Except this is maybe even more bonkers than you might expect it to be. I did a lot of laughing and Him Indoors got quite annoyed at me for disturbing him. The only surprise is that there isn’t more proselytising in the dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still quite a lot, but it could have been much worse – the girls do speak like real people on occasion. I didn’t have Trixie being reformed so well that she is made a prefect within a term of her reforming in my bingo card, neither did I have Lola being told that she wasn’t made prefect because it will do Trixie more good than it will her. But I think my favourite piece of madness is a cheating scandal. The culprit is finally made to confess right before she leaves and goes away determined to do better, but no one really believes her and we all forget about her for fifty pages until right before the end we find out she’s died after saving a woman from a shark attack, and then lesson we are meant to learn is that she had truly reformed and become a better person. There is more plot – it gets a lot into 180 pages, but I think that’s the highlight.

I can’t tell you how to get a copy – the one I have came from my Aussie Book Con friends (hi Pat and Sheila if you’re reading this) who brought it over last summer and I have no clue if they’ve had it for years or acquired it specially. But as I’m not really recommending it as a good book – in fact it’s objectively terrible – that doesn’t matter. But I did have a hoot reading it and am now passing it on to a friend who I know will also laugh at it.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, memoirs, non-fiction

Book of the Week: I’m Glad My Mom Died

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As I said yesterday, I didn’t get a lot read last week – but I did finally get around to reading Jennette McCurdy’s memoir (it’s only been sitting on the shelf for fourteen months!) and hoooo boy.

Ok, so if you don’t know who Jennette is, she is a former child actress who played one of the lead characters in the Nickelodeon TV series iCarly. She won four kids choice awards for her work on that show – but as this memoir shows, behind the scenes she was suffering from the abusive behaviour of her mother, who was the driving force behind her acting career.

And this is the point where I tell you that this book needs all of the content warnings. All of them. I hadn’t read any in depth reviews but I knew a bit about what I was getting into because I had seen and heard people warning that it was a really traumatic read but even with that I wasn’t prepared for the full awfulness of what Jennette went through. I’ll put some specific warnings at the bottom for those who want to know more. But now you’re probably wondering why on earth I’ve made this my book of the week if it’s such a tough read. Well it’s just so well written and for all of the awfulness of it all, I read it in one sitting on Sunday afternoon.

I have long been convinced that a lot of the time the parents of child stars are exactly the wrong sort of people to be the parents of child stars. And McCurdy’s mother is absolutely proving that theory and then some. Debra died in 2013, but had had cancer on and off since Jennette was a toddler and weaponised this against her children. In Jennette’s case this took the form of forcing her to become an actress and become the main financial support for the family and then abusing and manipulating her throughout her acting career.

I really, really hope that McCurdy is in a better place in her life now. If I have one criticism of this memoir it’s that there is not enough of what Jennette’s life is like now and if she’s doing better to counteract 300 pages of extremely bleak stuff. But I get that she is someone who lived a life she didn’t want and is taking back control by sharing what it was really like behind the scenes in writing this and that part of the point of all the changes that she’s made in recovery is that she now has control of what she does and what people know about her life.

So if you’re feeling resilient and you want to have all your fears about child stars confirmed and then some, this is a really good book to read. But you do need to go in prepared for a lot of awful. If it helps you work out whether you can cope with this or not, I would say this is worse than Tara Westover’s Educated in terms of what Jennette goes through, but also because (as I said a moment ago) you don’t get quite the same payoff in terms of seeing how she has recovered and overcome it all.

You should be able to get hold of this really easily – it won a lot of acclaim when it came out – including Goodreads awards and the like. It was in the bookshops in the UK – even though I don’t think she was a massively big name here – as well as being on Kindle and Kobo. And Jennette herself reads the audiobook version – I had a listen to the sample and it does make it feel even more immediate and awful. So be warned on that front too.

Have a great Tuesday everyone – happy Reading feels a bit appropriate today!

Here are those more specific content warnings I promised you: emotional abuse, sexual abuse, eating disorders, alcoholism, addiction, manipulation,

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: First Lady

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I said yesterday that whatever I chose today was going to be tricky for one reason or another, so I’ve gone for a rule breaker on the repeat front, rather than tell you (again) how much I love the Peter and Harriet books in the Wimsey series. If you want to know about that, you can go and read this post. So, instead I’m back on the Susan Elizabeth Philips train with a book from her Wynette, Texas series.

This plot is quite a lot, so hold on and bear with me. Our heroine is Cornelia Litchfield Case, widow of the President of the United States and also daughter of a former vice president. She’s found herself being pushed back into the role of First Lady and it’s killing her from the inside. So she gives her secret service minders the slip and escapes DC for a cross country road trip. Our hero is Mat Jorik, a disillusioned journalist whose ex wife has just died and is now taking charge of her children – but only to deliver them to their grandmother on the other side of the country. Nealy and Mat’s paths cross at a service station, and soon they’re on a cross country road trip together -in an RV with a surly teenage girl and a baby. The sparks fly between them – and this is the first time ever Nealy has had the chance to get to know a man who doesn’t know all about her baggage and her background, and who has no expectations of her. What could possibly go wrong?

So this is a road trip romance with a side of found family. I loved Mat from the start – he’s an absolute softie with a heart of gold that he hides behind a bit gruff exterior. And Nealy is one of the more interesting heroines you’ll encounter – her backstory is wild. I wasn’t quite sure how this was going to work itself out at the end, but it did and it was really quite neatly done – although it did all happen quite quickly, which is always annoying. But basically this is a fun read with a bit of an unusual set up and is all the better for it. I have the next two books in the series lined up (because they were on offer, although this was not) so I look forward to reading more of the series – and maybe seeing a bit more of the Wynette of the name!

I have no idea if it’s possible to get this in paperback for a reasonable price – but it’s available on Kindle and Kobo. And yes, I did break my usual pricing rules while buying it, but I’m blaming the jet lag!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: At First Spite

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Now I didn’t intend for this to be the BotW because I’ve already mentioned it a few times, but it has one of the best grovels that I have recently seen in a romance so I couldn’t help myself so here we are!

How does Athena Grayson find herself living in a tiny house in between her former fiancé and his brother? Well it’s because she impulsively bought the spite house as a wedding gift for her husband before the engagement imploded. Now she’s stuck living in it – attached to her ex’s house and with the man who is the reason her fiancé broke up with her across the alley from her – and visible from every window. So she does what every woman living in a house with spite in the name would do – tries to get petty revenge. Except that Doctor Matthew Vine the Third may not be quite the uptight judgemental jerk she thought he was.

You know where this is going, but I will admit to having my doubts when I read the blurb about how Matthew was going to be redeemable. But luckily it’s pretty clear early on what his issue with his brother’s marriage is and that makes it all better or easier for the reader anyway. This has however got a portrayal of serious depression in it, which there is a warning for at the front so I’m not spoiling anything, and may mean that you need to approach with care depending on your own situation.

This is the first book in Olivia Dade’s new series set in Harlot’s Bay and it sets up a delightful community and set of secondary characters for the reader to revisit in the next books in the series. I’m really interested to see who the next person to get a book is – it feels like it maybe should be Athena’s ex, and yet I’m not sure how I feel about getting on board with him as a hero – he doesn’t seem to fit the sort of hero that Dade creates. So I look forward to seeing what the next one is when we get more information on that – whenever it maybe!

I had my paperback copy preordered, but you can also get it on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Love Wager

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Yes, yes, yes, I finished it on Monday. It would have been on the train in to work on Monday, but just as I was reading the last couple of percent as we came in on the final stretch into Euston someone phoned me, and it was the train home instead – in fact I was so near the end, I had finished it before the train had finished pulling out of the station!

This is a friends to lovers, fake dating sort of romance where our hero and heroine, Hallie and Jack, meet at a wedding, have a one night stand and then meet again on a dating app. Hallie is trying to get her life back on track after a messy breakup with her high school boyfriend and she and Jack are definitely not interested in each other so make a bet on who can find true love first. And you know where this is going.

I found this really easy to read and a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of some of the “chick lit” romances I read back in the day and has a nice sense of humour about it. The hero and heroine are quite young, but it didn’t feel quite as New Adult-y as some of the other romances I have read recently with similarly aged couples. But once I had finished reading it and started thinking about it there were a few things that jumped out at me – Jack does some questionable things during the bit of the bet where he’s catching feelings for Hallie, and actually when it comes down to it neither of them have a lot of character beyond being hot and liking tacos. But it’s one of the books where I didn’t notice that in the moment (well except that thing that Jack did where my first thought was “well there’s the final act breakup moment set up”) and it’s funny so I didn’t care too much. But your mileage may vary, depending on how much late 90s/early 00s romance you have read and your feelings and tolerance of that.

This is my first Lynn Painter – I picked it up because it was on offer (yes the Kindle offers post research costing me money again!) and I keep seeing her books recommended. And it was definitely worth 99p, and I’ll have a look out for more from her in Kindle Unlimited as well (there’s one at the moment). It’s in Kindle and Kobo and claims to have a paperback.

Happy Reading!