Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: The Queen of Poisons

veritywilde

As I mentioned yesterday, lots of rereading on last week’s list, so options for BotW were somewhat limited – and this is a bit of a rule breaker again because it’s the third in the series. But hey, what can you do.

When the mayor of Marlow drops dead in a council meeting, one of the Marlow Murder club is actually a witness. Suzie’s sitting in the gallery of the planning meeting when Geoffrey Lushington collapses. And not just that – this time the police are using Judith, Becks and Susie as civilian advisors from the start so they don’t have to guess about the details of the investigation. But the mayor seems like a nice guy – who would want to kill him?

These fit squarely into the wave of mysteries that have popped up in the wake of the success of the Thursday Murder Club. I mean it’s even got murder club in the title! But what makes the Marlow lot different is that it’s written by Robert Thorogood who is the creator of the TV series Death in Paradise and who had already written four novels based on that series before he started with Judith, Suze and Becks. I think they’re more straightforward cozy crimes than the Osman’s are, but they’re fun and easy to read and not too dark. Plus they’re set in a place that I used to know fairly well and that’s always fun.

I realise that this is more a review of the series in general than the book, but I can’t say much more about the murder plot without giving too much away (although I found the solution this time less satisfying than the previous ones) and I can’t say too much about what’s going on alongside the murder without giving too much away about the previous books in the series. But I do think you could read this without having read any of the others and not feel like you’ve missed out too much.

My copy came from NetGalley but this came out in hardback ten days or so ago and I think it’ll be fairly easy to find in the shops – the others certainly have been. And of course it’s in Kindle and Kobo. There is a TV adaptation of the first book coming soon as well so if you’re a read the books before you watch the series person, now is your chance.

Happy Reading.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Golden Hour

veritywilde

Always an interesting choice for Book of the Week after a holiday week, but actually this time I’ve picked a book that has a bit of a beachy feel about it – in one strand of the story anyway. Sadly my book poor planning means I didn’t take a photo of it on the beach with me, but you’ll just have to trust me that I was reading it there. You also can’t see the sand I shook out of it while I was taking this photo back at home!

Anyway, to the book: The Golden Hour is a twin timeline story about two women in the first half of the twentieth century. The first (and main story) is Lulu who, newly widowed, heads to Nassau to try and get an interview with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It’s 1941, most of the world is at war and the ex-King has been made governor of the Caribbean island. Lulu’s pinning her future on getting an interview with the former Wallis Simpson, but as Lulu gets closer to her, she realises that all is not quite as it seems in the Windsor marriage and in their circle. At the centre of it all is Benedict Thorpe, a scientist who has a lot of charm and even more mystery around him. And then there is a murder. Meanwhile in the very early years of the twentieth century, Elfriede is at a Sanatorium in Switzerland recovering from what would now be known as post natal depression after the birth of her first baby, but while she’s there she meets someone who will change the course of her future.

This is not the first time that I have recommended a Beatriz Williams book – she’s written a bunch of novels by herself and also with Lauren Willig and Karen White, all of which are usually twin timeline type stories. She’s one of the authors that I’m always looking out for – and this book particularly appealed to me because it mentioned Windsors in the blurb and I have always been really interested in the abdication crisis and what happened next – as you’ll know from the fact that Gone with the Windsors is one of my favourite novels and Traitor King was one of my favourite books of 2021. And this is where I need to flag that David and Wallis are leas central to this story than the blurb would have you believe. Yes, they’re there and they’re involved in the story, but the 1940s end of the story is mostly about Lulu and what happens to her and what she gets involved in. But if you want some World War Two espionage and two strands of romance then this is for you. It got me all teary on the beach at the end – and that’s a good thing.

And if you want more books from Beatriz Williams, I would recommend Her Last Flight – which is about a female pilot who disappeared on an attempt to break a flying record or Along the Infinite Sea, which is the third of her linked Schuyler sisters novels but which also has a connection to The Golden Hour. And I should also mention The Lost Summers Newport which is one of those collaborations I mentioned earlier which was BotW back after my last holiday!

I had a paperback copy of this one that came from the to read pile, but you can also get in on Kindle and Kobo. It looks like physical copies might only be in the very biggest of bookstores – Waterstones Piccadilly claims to have click and collect, but none of the Foyles do.

Happy Reading.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Cat Who Saved Books

veritywilde

Making a bit of a change this week, and I’ve got some Japanese fiction in translation for you. I do like to mix it up a little when I can, and today is one of those weeks where I can!

Our hero is Rintaro, a high school student whose beloved grandfather had just died and left him his second hand bookshop. The trouble is, Rintaro is also going to have to close it down because his aunt is his new guardian and wants him to move in with her. Rintaro is shy and would rather be reading books in the shop than talking to other people or going to school. Then a talking cat appears in the bookshop and tells him he needs his help to save books. What happens next sees Rintaro and Tiger entering different labyrinths to try and free the books.

This is about a teenager and a cat and the friends he makes along the way as he tries to rescue books from people who are misusing and mistreating them. Rintaro has to debate the value of books and reading against people who are diminishing them. That might sound a little heavy but it’s actually a charming story about how a love of books and reading can help you in difficult times and is important in a world where things are changing fast. It’s not a massively long book but I read it in one sitting and was very sad it was over so fast. A treat for the bookish and something a little bit different.

My copy was part of my NetGalley back log, so it has been out for a while now. I’m not sure how easy it will be to get a physical copy – I don’t think I’ve seen it in Foyles’s books in translation section – or at least not with the cover. But it is on Kindle and Kobo and in audiobook.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Capote’s Women

veritywilde

It’s the first BotW that I read in 2024 and it’s one of my Christmas gifts. And it’s non fiction, so here we are ticking off some goals for the year – more non fiction and reducing the pile!

Capote’s Women is Laurence Leamer’s look at Truman Capote and the women who he surrounded himself with – right up until the point where he published thinly disguised versions of them in his famous – or notorious – extract from his unfinished novel in Esquire magazine. This functions as a bit of a group biography – looking at each woman’s life and how it fitted in with Truman’s.

I’ve read – and written – about this little coterie before and this is a pretty good overview of the women and their involvement with Capote. I think I was expecting more about the fall out from his article – but I think I might have drawn that conclusion from the fact that the book is the basis for the next series of Feud because looking back at the blurb for this, it doesn’t really imply that. Several of the women are interesting enough that you want to read more about them – some of them I already have, others I’ll keep an eye out for. There are a couple of Swans not covered – including Ann Woodward, which is a fairly big omission, but you wouldn’t know there was any one missing if you didn’t know about the group already if that makes sense! You do sometimes lose a little track of where in time you are as it goes through the women, but I think trying to go with everything chronologically would have been even worse and very, very confusing.

Anyway, this was an interesting read that fitted right into my areas of interest that I was delighted to get for Christmas. I look forward to seeing what the TV series does with it! it’s out in hardback now but you can also get it in Kindle and Kobo – and as a bonus the price on the e-edition has come down to £4.99 (from £9.99) over the last day or two.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: If You Only Knew

veritywilde

Well after a bumper week of reading last week to get the fifty states challenge finished, I’m starting the new year with a Kristan Higgins book for Book of the Week which wasn’t one of the missing states. Who could have predicted that!

If You Only Knew is a dual narrative story about two sisters who are both at turning points in their lives. Wedding dress designer Jenny is moving back to her home town to open a new storefront after her divorce in an attempt to get away from her ex and his new wife whose lives she’s still entangled in. Her sister Rachael has a seemingly enviable life – adoring husband and cute triplet daughters. Except Rachael’s just caught him sexting with a colleague and she’s not sure what what to do about it – she’s not sure she believes in second chances but she’s also not ready to give up on her family dream.

This is really readable – I read it across about 36 hours despite it being Christmas – I liked the mix of big city New York and small town New York State and it all works out alright in the end, despite my fears at various points while reading it. As always with stories like this I liked one side of the story better than the other – in this case it was Jenny I wanted more of, but maybe that’s because adultery plots are never really quite my thing and I loathed Rachael’s husband (although now I’ve finished the book I don’t think you were meant to like him but I wasn’t sure about that at the time) and wanted her to burn it all down straight away. That said I’m not sure Jenny’s strand of the plot on its own would have been enough to sustain a novel – and I definitely wouldn’t have read just Rachael’s – so it was probably the right decision to do both!

Anyway you can get this on Kindle and Kobo and it’s only £2.99! It does have a paperback version but as it’s a few years old now it may not be that easy to get hold of a physical copy – Amazon is certainly asking crazy money for it, but the ebook is cheap so that’s something.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Socialite Spy

veritywilde

As I said yesterday, although I should have been reading Christmas books and books that ticked off missing states in my reading challenge, actually last week I was reading a bunch of other stuff, so today’s pick is Sarah Sigal’s The Socialite Spy.

It’s 1936 and Lady Pamela Moore is somewhat unconventional socialite – she’s married but she’s the writer of a newspaper column called Agent of Influence – it’s about fashion and high society. When her editor asks her to interview Wallis Simpson for a puff piece about her wardrobe, she has no idea what will come next. She’s approached by MI5 to keep an eye on Mrs Simpson and Edward VIII and to report on their links to Nazi Germany. As she finds herself moving around in high society and political circles she discovers that things are not quite as she thought they were – but is she putting herself in danger?

My love of 1930s set books is well known and I have a particular soft spot for books and novels about the abdication crisis so this really appealed to me. If you’ve read other books set around this period you can probably figure out who Lady Pamela is going to be meeting and what Wallis is getting up to. This isn’t as good as my all time favourite Gone with the Windsors, but it’s doing something different to that with the thriller/espionage element. But it was still a fun read that stuck pretty closely to what I understand the actual history to be. But of course it did make me want to go back and read Laurie Graham all over again – which I really didn’t need to add to my list at the moment because I have plenty of other books to read.

If you like the Royal Spyness series, this will probably work for you as well – it’s got slightly more peril than those so, but it’s in quite similar sort of area in a way. I think there’s a chance we could get a sequel to this – which I would happily read, just to see what Sarah Sigal does with Pamela next.

I read The Socialite Spy via Kindle Unlimited – which of course means that it’s not on Kobo (at the moment anyway) but I can see the paperback also available on Waterstones too – with some click and collect availability.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Cape May

veritywilde

Yes, I’m cheating because I finished this on Monday, but as ever they’re my rules and I’m allowed to break them if I want and nothing else on last week’s list qualifies for a variety of reasons. So here we are.

It’s 1957 and Henry and Effie are on honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey. They’re staying at Effie’s uncle’s house, where she spent some of her childhood summer holidays. Except the season is over and the place is deserted. Or nearly deserted. Staying at the house down the street is Clara, now a beautiful socialite but formerly one of the children Effie used to sometimes play with. With her are her lover Max and Alma, Max’s half sister. Over the course of their trip, under the influence of a lot of gin, Effie and Henry’s marriage will be tested and the pattern of their lives will be set as they run riot through the town, swept up in the glamour and decadence of their new friends.

This has been sitting on the tbr pile for some considerable time, but this weekend I felt in need of something a bit different. The cover has a blurb that compares it to The Great Gatsby, and I can sort of see why – Clara’s world is a heady alcoholic world of yachts by day, illicit wanderings by night and gallons of alcohol. Effie and Henry are the outsiders – from Georgia compared to the other three’s big city sophistication and the reader can see that they’re heading for trouble and heartbreak.

The narrative follows just Henry and his actions, which is a little frustrating because I wanted to know what Effie was thinking and doing, but given that the author is a man, possibly for the best as I didn’t always love the way the sex scenes were written as it was so maybe I would have liked the book less if I’d been given more of Effie’s inner life. So, not perfect but I still read it in just over 24 hours so it’s very readable despite that. It’s not really Rich People Problems, because Effie and Henry definitely aren’t rich, but it is Rich People Problems-adjacent – in that the rich people are the ones who are causing the problems!

This was Chip Cheek’s debut – and I’d read more from him if/when it appears. I had my copy of this in the NetGalley backlog (!) but it’s on offer on Kindle and Kobo for £1.99 at the moment which is a pretty good deal. I can’t say I remember seeing it in bookshops, but I’m also not sure I ever specifically looked for it and it’s had a couple of different covers now too. Anyway, worth a check if you’re at a shop with a fairly decent literary fiction selection.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Hello, Stranger

veritywilde

The list last week was long, but actually today’s pick is the last book I finished at the weekend – and in fact read in less than a day while snuggled up on the sofa trying to will the cold I have to go away (it’s not Covid, I did several tests…) and it’s also not a Christmas book but won’t worry there are plenty of those coming up over the next few weeks!

I mentioned Hello Stranger when it came out a few months back, hard on the heels of the UK release of Katherine Center’s previous book, The Bodyguard. And Hello Stranger is about Sadie, a portrait painter who has got a spot in the final of a prestigious competition. The only problem is that hard on the heels of this news, she discovers some less good news: she needs (minor) brain surgery. And then when she wakes up she can’t see faces any more. That is to say, the faces are there but her brain can’t make any sense of them and she doesn’t recognise anyone anymore. Which as a portrait painter is a bit of a problem but it’s also a pretty big problem for everyday life too. But she doesn’t want anyone to know about it so she heads back out into a new and different world where she meets a handsome vet and spars with the obnoxious neighbour in her building – but could either of them turn into something more?

As I said this was the last book I finished last week and I basically read it across the afternoon and evening – stopping only to cook dinner, eat and pack my suitcase for the week. And it really does hook you in – and is one of those books where it’s so fun that you can ignore the slight bonkers of it all. And there’s a fair bit of bonkers here – most of which could be solved by Sadie just telling people what her issue is and I never quite understood why she didn’t, except for her pathological dislike of admitting that she needed help and the fact that if she did the plot would disappear. And as someone who works in audio, I found it hard to believe that she didn’t recognise people’s voices more than she did – but again, I went with it because it is a lot of fun.

Sadie also has a really difficult relationship with her step sister and I wanted a bit more resolution to that – or at least more comeuppance for her sister but Sadie definitely comes out on top so that’s good. And overall I liked it a lot – and more than I did The Bodyguard, where I had a few issues that boiled down to having read a lot of celebrity and normal person romances this year and others being better and not really understanding what the hero saw in the heroine. And Hello Stranger has a really quirky premise and is first person in Sadie’s eyes and she has a lot to deal with so you don’t have time to worry about what the hero sees in her!

I also went off and did a quiz about face blindness as soon as I finished the book – and I actually did much better at it than I expected to, given that I think of myself as being bad at faces and names! And I suspect a lot of readers will go off and do the same thing. So in conclusion, if you’re not on the Christmas book train yet this would make a nice read – although given that it’s set in sunny Texas it’s not exactly a cozy winter read!

You can get Hello Stranger on Kindle and Kobo. It’s not out in paperback in the UK until May next year, but if you’re in the US it’s available in hardback.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, romance

Book of the Week: Next-Door Nemesis

veritywilde

Ok, so this is a slight cheat because I finished it Monday, but I know you’ll let me off, it’s been a long year and I’m only making myself problems for next week by doing this.

So as I said in my release day post, this is Alexa Martin’s latest book and it’s an enemies to lovers romance. Collins is back in her childhood bedroom after her professional life fell apart. On a trip to the coffee shop she runs into Nathaniel – her nemesis for years of high school. And it seems like nothing has changed – she’s still annoying him and he’s definitely still annoying her. And that’s how Collins ends up running against him to become president of the HOA of the subdivision she swore she would never come back to. Because they really, really hate each other – right?

I’ve already told you this is a romance, so you know they’re not going to hate each other by the end, and once you get past some pranking and mean behaviour towards each other (and you know I have a problems with pranks) it’s really good. I was a little worried about what the backstory was going to turn out to be on Collins and Nate in high school and how that could lead to a satisfying resolution but it actually worked really well in the end, for reasons that I can’t explain without it being a massive plot spoiler and you know I don’t do those.

I’ve been on a big old run of enemies to lovers contemporaries recently, and this is another good one to add to the list. I’m a Brit so Home Owners Associations are really not a thing here and only know them through books and home renovation shows when they are sucking their teeth about the HOA demanding they paint the house one of three colours or have dues that might affect whether buyers will go for a property, but I did really like the community that Collins is living in and her family are fun too.

I had my copy pre-ordered, so it’s out now in Kindle and Kobo and audiobook and paperback, although the price on Amazon suggests that it may be a US import rather than a UK version.

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

Book of the Week: Silver Lady

veritywilde

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

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

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

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

Happy Reading!