And it’s a rare graphic novel pick for this week’s BotW because it was what I needed last week and the art is great.
Ben is freshly graduated from college with his English degree. He and his friends have got a flat share and are starting out on their working lives. The trouble is Ben can’t get a job in the areas he’s looking at because he doesn’t have any experience. Running out of money and downhearted, he sees an advert for jobs – no experience necessary – at a restaurant. He goes in and gets a chance to land a full time job in the kitchen. He’s always like cooking, but can he take it to the next level and impress the owner – and his pet pig? And what about his crush on Liam, one of the other chefs at the restaurant…
This was exactly the sort of low stakes story I needed last week. The drawing is lovely with a great aesthetic, and it’s quirky and charming and has the best looking food I’ve seen in a graphic novel in ages. I think it needed a little bit more resolution about Ben’s parents at the end, but in the main it was a very satisfying read.
Chef’s Kiss is in Comixology at the moment – which is bundled with Kindle Unlimited. I’ve tried to find it in comic stores previously but without much luck. However, I may just have been looking in the wrong places.
I could write about Codename Charming again today, but you’ve already heard enough about Lucy Parker from me in the last week or so, so instead I’m going with Anne Booth’s Small Miracles which I finally got around to reading after I spotted it when I was putting together the Kindle offers post this month.
It’s the mid 1990s and Sister Margaret, Sister Bridget and Sister Cecilia are the last three members of their order and struggling to figure out how their convent can survive in the face of the loss of some of their number and a house in need of more repairs than they can pay for. But after 90-year-old Sister Cecilia decides to play the new National Lottery things start to change for them and their community.
This is a warm and uplifting novel which moves around between the nuns and some of the people whose lives they touch. It is about a religious community but it doesn’t feel preachy or overly religious – despite the fact that poor Sister Margaret has a lot to pray about at various points. One small miracle has a ripple effect – sometimes in ways that the people involved can see, others in ways that are only known to you as the reader. Basically it is just a lovely tale of how little things can start bigger things moving and can cause good things to happen.
So if you need a nice gentle read to make you feel warm inside, this would be a great pick. And as I mentioned in that offer post, there is a sequel coming – and it’s Christmas themed!
My copy of Small Miracles was an advance proof that I’m not quite sure how I got, and which I lent to mum before I remembered I needed a photograph. But it is 99p on Kindle and Kobo at the moment so run don’t walk if this sounds like your cup of tea.
So. Quite a difficult choice this week because there wasn’t anything that I finished that I didn’t have a few reservations about. I actually wrote another book up as BotW before I wrote this one because that first one just didn’t feel right because I didn’t like it enough. But – I had less issues with this than I did with the other options, and I read it really quite quickly which is always a positive sign with me. Plus the next book in the series came out last week (which I had forgotten I had preordered, hurrah for Past Verity sending a nice suprise) so it’s sort of timely. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it anyway.
Our heroine is Kareena, who dreams of a big love story, but at the start of Dating Dr Dil it’s the morning of her 30th birthday and it hasn’t happened for her so she’s about to hit the dating apps. Then her family forget her birthday and drop the bombshell that her dad is selling the family home that her mum had renovated and poured her heart into. Kareena and her dad strike a deal: if she can find her soulmate before her sister’s engagement party, he’ll give her the house. Our hero is Prem, a cardiologist who doesn’t believe in love and who has a TV talk show that he’s using to boost his profile to try and fund the medical centre he wants to set up. When he and Kareena first meet it turns into an argument that goes viral and his donors start to pull out. So he proposes a plan: they should date – to restore his image, but also so her dad will follow through on his deal about the house. But how does that fit with Kareena wanting true love?
This is a reimagining of the main plot strand of The Taming of the Shrew – the Petruchio and Katherina bit (not the Bianca bit) or alternatively if you’re a musical fan the Fred/Lili bit of Kiss Me, Kate. And if you’re feeling frustrated with how some of the characters are behaving, remind yourself of that fact and use it to channel your annoyance to the source material. I wanted the two of them to come to their senses a bit earlier, but: plots need conflict, even if Verity wants every one to be happy all the time. But this is basically an enemies to lovers romance with a side order of meddling friends and family and that makes it a lot of fun really.
My copy was on Kindle – bought when it was on a really good offer a while back- but it’s also on Kobo is £2.99 on both at the moment which is quite a good deal really. It’s also in a paperback edition that I’ve even seen in stores. And the next in the series is out now – this time it’s retelling Much Ado About Nothing.
The romance run is back – this time it’s another contemporary featuring the wedding industry. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best one I’ve read recently (and I think this is the fourth in the last few months alone)
Ama is a wedding planner who doesn’t believe in happily ever afters. She started planning weddings for her mum – who has been married more than a dozen times – and therein is the reason for AMA’s lack of faith in true love. Her business is going well – and she’s just been booked to organise the wedding of an Instagram star and her fiancée. The only trouble is it means working with Elliot. Ama broke Elliot’s heart two years ago and they haven’t spoken since. But how difficult can it be to get through one wedding together without kissing or killing each other?
Well the answer is obviously very, because it’s a romance novel. This also has split point of view with Ama in the present and Elliot doing the before of their relationship. I bought this off the back of reading the sample, but for me it didn’t deliver on everything I was hoping – mostly because I’m not sure this had quite decided if it was romance or chick lit and so for me it fell in between two stools. But the wedding planning part of it is great – I could absolutely see the influencer wedding that Ama was organising. And given that I read it in about 36 hours flat it is pretty readable too.
My copy was on Kindle but it’s also on Kobo and there’s also a paperback – although I haven’t seen it in stores yet. It only came out in early July and it’s Julie Soto’s debut so we’ll have to wait a while for another but I would definitely give it a read when it appears.
It’s a new month – welcome to August everyone, and I’m back with another romance pick for this week’s BotW – and this time it’s one with an older hero and heroine and it made a really nice change after a run of early 20s heroines who read as really quite immature.
So our heroine is 46 year old Ashley, a divorced mum of a college aged daughter who is trying to keep her family’s ski hill going after the death of her father. When her mum springs the idea of employing men from the local sober living home for the season to help cut costs, she’s initially against the plan. But she goes with it and soon Madigan and his charges are moving into some of the staff cabins. Like the men who live in his home, Madigan is a recovering addict who has spent some time in jail. He went off the rails when he was guitarist in a grunge band and even spiraled even further after the band broke up. But he’s spent the last decade trying to help other people rebuild their lives the way that he has. The two are instantly attracted to each other – but they both have some issues to work through: Ashley has a cheating ex-husband who is trying to buy her mountain, and Madigan has walled himself off from relationships to concentrate on the men that he’s helping. Over the course of the skiing season they have to figure out what they have – and what they’re prepared to do keep it going.
This is the first book from Jess K Hardy that I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. I had some frustrations with Ashley’s mum and there were a few times when I just wanted Ashley and Madigan to have a proper conversation, but the romance is well put together, it’s steamier than I expected it to be and I’m enjoying seeing more older pairings in romance. If you read Cathy Yardley’s Role Playing after I recommended that this time last month, then I think you’ll enjoy this one. Obviously the outdoor life on the skiing hill is very different to the online world in that Aiden and Maggie meet in, but there are definite similarities. It’s also blurbed by Kate Claybourn – who I’ve written about here a fair few times too, so if you like her stuff, then also maybe check this out.
This one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, which means it’s exclusive to Amazon in ebook at the moment. Amazon claims there’s a paperback version too, but I haven’t seen it in any of the shops so I suspect e-book is going to be the way to read it. It also reckons it’s the first in a series, so I’m looking forward to seeing who might feature in a sequel.
Yes, today’s pick is the book that I stayed up late to finish on Sunday night. I have a lot of thoughts about it, not all of which I can mention here because: spoilers but it still makes it the book I want to talk about the most from last week’s reading!
It’s nearly ten years since magician Violet Volk disappeared – in the middle of her comeback show. In the intervening decade, her fans haven’t forgotten her – even if her sister Sasha wishes they would. Now with the anniversary approaching there is a fresh burst of publicity – including a hashtag where people are posting pictures of supposed sightings and a podcaster who keeps asking Sasha for an interview. Meanwhile Sasha’s daughter Quinn is doing some digging of her own around the aunt that she idolises and risks finding out some things her mother would rather stay hidden. And then there’s the fact that Sasha has started sleepwalking again. Told from Sasha’s point of view but also through transcripts of the podcast, emails and articles, you follow the run up to and aftermath of the tenth anniversary.
I have a lot of thoughts about this book – and I’m going to have to lend it to someone to read it as well so I can talk about it with them because I can’t say everything that I want to here. But the fact that I couldn’t go to sleep last night until I found out how it all ended says a lot about how engrossing it is. Margarita Montimore keeps you guessing about what was really going on with Violet and Sasha and their relationship and like the magic tricks that Violet was famous for you don’t quite know where it’s all going or who to trust. I’m going to front up and say that I didn’t love the ending, but I don’t quite know what I think would have been better!
Anyway despite that, I’m really glad that I spotted this in Foyles the other week and I don’t begrudge having paid more money than I usually do on a paperback on it – because I enjoyed reading it and I don’t think I would have come across it if it weren’t for that copy misplaced in the romance section. At least I assume it was misplaced – it’s not a romance, but I can see why the cover and format might have confused someone into shelving it there!
It’s also available on Kindle, Kobo (and on Kobo at time of writing it costs even more than my paperback did!) and audiobook which comes complete with multiple narrators to fit the different sections of the book – I had a listen to the sample and it sounds really good. I suspect you’ll need a fairly big bookshop to get a paperback copy – mine is a large format international edition and you don’t see a lot of those around usually.
Is this the third week in a row that I’ve picked a romance set in the world of publishing or writing for my Book of the Week? Why yes. Clearly it’s as much of a theme in the genre at the moment as the ones where one half of the couple is famous. And of course Business or Pleasure had both!
Anyway, Kristina Forest’s The Neighbor Favor (yes it did bug me they didn’t change the spelling to the British English one!) has You’ve Got Mail vibes but manages to be a bit less catfish-y than a lot of those set ups feel these days. Lily’s sisters are successful over achievers. She’s stuck in an entry level publishing job in a genre that makes her miserable and with a boss that’s even worse. One night, a bit drunk, she emails the author of a little known fantasy novel, and to her surprise he writes back. This begins an email back and forth between Lily and Strick, who is a travel journalist and moving around all over the world. But then, suddenly, he ghosts her and she’s devastated. A few months later Lily is living in her sister’s apartment and meets a cute new neighbour, Nick. She doesn’t know it but Nick is Strick. Nick does figure it out pretty quickly though and tries to be the best friend he can to her – because he can’t be her boyfriend for: Romance Novel Reasons including but not limited to the fact she doesn’t know he’s her former penpal. And that’s as much as I’m going to tell you.
As you can tell from that, there’s enormous potential for this to go very wrong in the execution. But actually Forest pretty much pulls it off. Yes, I had a few minor quibbles, but it’s fairly minor compared to the throw-it-across-the-room-into-a-fire rage that some of the other books trying to do this have given me. Lily is an interesting character with her own share of issues, and Nick is an interestingly flawed hero. And of course it has plenty of bookish moments as well with Lily working in publishing and Nick being an author. Obviously, I’ve now read a bunch of similarly themed books and although I think if you forced me to chose one as my favourite it would probably be Business or Pleasure, this is still very good. And this is Forests’s adult debut so hopefully the start of more to come.
I picked the Neighbor Favor up for 99p on Kindle back in May, I think after seeing someone recommend it in the summer romance suggestions. It’s currently £2.99 on Kindle and Kobo and Amazon reckons there is a paperback, but I think it’s the US version imported because I haven’t seen it in the stores anywhere (yet at least).
In Ashley Piston’s last book, The Dead Romantics (also a BotW) she was doing a spin on a romance with a ghost. This time it’s a romance with a time travel-y element. What do I mean by that? Well, here’s the plot: Clementine is trying to get through the aftermath of the worst day of her life and try and rebuild in a way that means she can’t get hurt again. She’s living in her late aunt’s apartment and trying to keep her working life as a book publicist on track. But one day she comes home and finds a stranger in her kitchen. Her aunt warned her that the apartment was a pinch in time and it turns out he’s from seven years in the past. Ian is charming and he cooks and they get on really well – but how can they ever get around that time thing?
I read this in less than 24 hours and really enjoyed it. I have a few minor quibbles – putting them in the least spoiler-y way possible it basically boils down to: I’m not sure that Clementine and Iwan actually spent enough time together across the course of the book. If it’s a romance I needed more of them together, and if it’s more woman’s fiction I needed a better resolution to Clementine’s own life dilemma/crossroads. BUT this only started to bother me once the book was over and I started thinking about it to review it. While I was actually reading it I was completely swept along by it. So on that basis it’s a really enjoyable read – and makes sort-of-time-travel really work for me. I would happily have read another 100 pages if it meant my issues above got more closure. And I liked the little glimpses of some old friends from Dead Romantics too. Another one that is great for the beach/sun lounger.
I got my copy via NetGalley – but you can definitely get it in the shows because I saw it in Foyles:
And if you’re not going into a bookstore it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.
The summer release romance theme continues after last week’s Recommendsday with today’s BotW – the new novel from Rachel Lynn Soloman which is actually out this very day in the UK.
As ever, lets start with the plot. Chandler is a ghostwriter and after a disappointing experience at a signing for a book that she has ghosted for an influencer, she ends up having a one night stand with a hot guy she meets in the bookshop cafe. Sadly the sex is not as hot as the man and she chalks it up to experience and forget it as fast as possible. She moves on to her next gig – ghost writing the memoir of Finn Walsh – one of the stars of a cult classic teen werewolf show. It should be a step up for her – except that it turns out that Finn is her awful one night stand. Obviously Chandler’s determined to keep it all very professional but when Finn finds out that their night wasn’t as mind blowing for her as he thought it was, she agrees to help him out. As they write the book together they realise that they get on really well – but Finn is famous and Chandler is not, so is there any chance of a future for them?
Oh yes. This is a Sex Lessons but definitely no feelings/emotions book and I was absolutely here for it, because of course I am. Most of the book takes place as Chandler accompanies Finn on the fan convention circuit so there’s also a fair bit of forced proximity going on with this too, which again is something I love (see also Mrs Nash’s Ashes). This is another of The Summer of Famous Heroes but I really liked the Finn is terrible in bed twist to this one. And of course this does mean that the steam level in this books is H-I-G-H because of course what would be the point of doing this closed door. And having read Rachel Lynn Solomon’s other books I would say this is steamier than they are – which is not a problem for me, but I mention it for those who like their romances slightly more closed door. But I guess if you see a plot that is basically Sex Lessons for Reasons you should be expecting a fair bit of bedroom action.
And alongside all of that, Chandler herself is figuring out what she wants from life – with a bit of help from Finn. Before her one night stand with Finn, she was rejected as a romantic prospect by a friend that she’s had a crush on for years and she’s also very scarred from being laid off from her journalism job – which is what led her to ghost-writing in the first place. So along with the romance you also get to watch her figure out what she really wants and to build up the courage to go for it. And I do like it when the heroine has more going on than just a romance – and when thinks work out for her not because of the romance. And I hope that makes sense and isn’t too much of a spoiler. I did rewrite this whole paragraph because the first attempt gave too much away!
Anyway, I got my copy of Business or Pleasure via NetGalley, but it is out today on Kindle and Kobo and out on Thursday in paperback. I’m not entirely sure how easy it will be to get hold of – I don’t remember seeing Weather Girl or The Ex Talk that often in stores, but I think I have seen it in the Big Foyles and maybe also in Waterstones Gower Street. I will report back…
My excellent summer of romances continues with another new(ish) release for this week’s pick – and I am rapidly working my way through all the books on the romance tables in the shops. Which has been quite fun and is also fairly unusual!
Anyway, Mrs Nash’s Ashes is Sarah Adler’s debut novel and features a former child actress trying to make a trip to Florida to reunite her elderly best friend’s ashes with her lost love. But when the planes are cancelled and Millie finds herself sharing a car with a former course mate of her ex. Hollis doesn’t believe in love that lasts forever and Millie is a born romantic, looking to reassure herself after a break up so how will these opposites get on when forced to share a car and a twelve hundred mile road trip? Hint: this is a romance!
There seems to have been a trend for romances this year where one half of the couple is famous – or formerly famous – and some of them have been good and some have… not. Obviously as this is a BotW post this is one of the good ones. I read this in basically one sitting at the weekend and enjoyed it no end. It has opposites attract, forced proximity and a cynical hero that gets won over by a sunshine-y but unapologetically weird heroine.
I suspect that some will find Millie a little Manic Pixie, but she made sense to me, and it also makes sense that anyone who was in the spotlight as a kid might be a little different. But because you see everything from Millie’s point of view, I (as a reader) understood what she was doing and was fine with it all. And that also means that Hollis is a big old enigma to you as well as to Millie and that worked really well too. And although I’ve read a lot of the celebrity adjacent romances this summer, I haven’t read many road trips so that was a nice change too. Basically, if you’re looking for something to read on your summer holiday, this would be a great choice. I’m looking forward to seeing what Sarah Adler does next.
I bought my copy of Mrs Nash’s Ashes in Foyles and I’ve seen it in some of the other bookshops already too, so I think it will be fairly easy to get hold of. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 