Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Roughest Draft

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It may be a new month, but for the second week in a row I’m picking a contemporary romance with a then and now strand to it. Admittedly I did finish this in March, so maybe it’s not the start of a trend, but hey, it’s nice to imagine that there’s some rhyme or reason to my reading!

Katrina and Nathan used to be writing partners. But three years ago after they had finished their second book together, their partnership broke up for reasons neither has ever spoken about. Since then, they haven’t spoken and have moved on with their lives – including Nathan writing a novel on his own. But it didn’t sell as well as the books they wrote together – and now his publisher has passed on his next novel and says they want the third book on his contract with Katrina. And so the two of them end up in the same house they wrote the last book in, trying to write another best seller. But it’s hard to write a romantic novel when you hate the person you’re writing with and the two of them will have to try to work through their differences to get it done.

The book jumps backwards and forwards to show you what went wrong between Nathan and Katrina as well as them in the present day. So it’s sort of friends to enemies to lovers. The reasons for the break up are sort of what you expect they might be – or at least what I was expecting – and the pace of it all is quite slow. It’s very close focus on the two of them – but also manages not to give you much detail about either of their personalities beyond that they are writers. Emily Wibberley and Austin Sigemund-Broka are a married writing duo and have written a few YA romances – which perhaps explains some of the above. And I know that sounds like I didn’t like it, but I actually really did. I read it in less than 48 hours and bought the next book from them to see how they handle something that’s not writing about a couple writing! Given that this was their debut rom com and only came out in October, I was surprised they already have a second out but who knows the mysterious ways of publishing in the TikTok algorithm era.

If you are only going to read one of the picks from the last two weeks, I would probably go with Funny You Should Ask, but if you like YA or New Adult romances then this might be the one for you. I read this on Kindle, but it’s also on Kobo. I haven’t spotted it in a bookshop yet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t.

Happy Reading.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Scattered Showers

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A familiar name on the cover of this week’s pick, but this time it’s a short story collection from Rainbow Rowell and not a novel

Scattered Showers is a collection of short stories and novellas, some of which have been published before and some of which have some familiar faces from other Rowell novels. My edition is also very, very pretty. You can’t see it in the photo, but the long edge is sprayed in rainbow colours and the type itself is a sort of dark pinky purple colour that is really nice.

I think my favourite might be the last in the book – about two characters waiting to be used by a writer. It’s a bit meta but it really is charming. But it was also nice to spend time with Simon and Baz again and I loved the text conversation short story with the women from Attachments, and also the college dorm story set in the same world as Fangirl. And that’s already at half the book without mentioning the two that I had already read which are also good. Some old friends and some new friends and really it’s a lovely way to spend a few hours.

My copy was a preorder because it’s a nice signed one, but it should be fairly easy to get hold of this in hardback – I saw it in a shop just the other week – but it’s also on Kindle and Kobo. And a couple are available on their own too on Kindle Unlimited if you just want to sample a bit of the range.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, cozy crime

Book of the Week: Catering to Nobody

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Another week, another cozy crime pick. It feels like I’m coming off a run of romance picks onto a run of murder mystery ones. And looking at what I’ve been buying recently, this could continue for a while. Anyway, lets pack Past Verity on the back, because this is the book that I mentioned that I finished on Monday last week and nearly picked then, but restrained myself and chose The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras instead, which was clearly a smart choice, because I read another two in the series last week as well.

So, the set up: Goldy is a divorced mum of one, with an awful actually abusive ex-husband. To support herself and her son Arch after the divorce (her ex is bad at paying child support and she doesn’t want to have any more contact with him than she has to) she has started a catering company. In Catering to Nobody, Arch’s favourite teacher has been found dead and Goldy has been tasked with catering the wake. But at the event her former-father-in-law is taken violently ill and she’s accused of poisoning him. With the leftovers impounded, her kitchen shut down and her ex-husband loudly proclaiming her guilt all over town, Goldy sets out to clear her name and find out what really happened – and why.

This was published in 1990, so it’s even more vintage than the first Meg Langslow and slightly less vintage than the start of the Kinsey Milhone series (which I also love). There is something about the pre-mobile phone, pre-internet era that really just works for murder mystery plausibility. This is also set in small town Colorado and that works as well and is a bit different to California or the Eastern Seaboard states which are where a lot of the cozies I read are. Goldy is a great heroine and I really liked her friendship with her husband’s other ex-wife, Marla. I’m slightly annoyed that the cover says “Goldy Schulz Mysteries” on it – as in book one (and in fact until book four) Goldy’s surname is Bear (which inspires the name of her catering company – Goldilocks Catering, where everything is just right) so it’s giving away a bit of a plot development. But I forgive it because it’s really good – so good that I immediately read book two, and then book four because the series is so old they’re not all on Kindle and it takes a while for second hand books to arrive so I’ve given up on reading them in order for once.

The other thing that this has got going for it is that I really like the recipes. Diane Mott Davidson has included lots of them – not just baked goods but some of the other dishes that Goldy is making for the events she is catering (or just for her family) as well. There are a lot of cozy crimes with recipes and quite often, as a Brit, the recipes boggle my mind. But the books in this series that I have read so far have several that I am interested enough in to think that at some point I might try and convert the American recipes (a stick of butter? Cups of dry ingredients? How imprecise) and give them a go. Which is more than I usually think!

So, my copy of Catering to Nobody came from Kindle, but it’s also available on Kobo. Getting a paperback copy is going to be reliant on the secondhard market I think – if you’re in the US you might find it in a bookshop, but I think in the UK chances are fairly remote – the best cozy crime selection I’ve seen recently was the Waterstones Gower Street one – and they didn’t have any Diane Mott Davidson books at all.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras

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I nearly picked the Diane Mott Davison today, even though I finished it on the train on Monday morning, but you never know what’s going to happen in a week, and I did really enjoy the Pot Thief Who Studied Pythagoras, so I’m going for that today, but I suspect this isn’t the last time I’ll mention Diane Mott Davison.

Hubert Schuze runs a shop selling Native American pottery in New Mexico. Officially that is. Unofficially he’s also an illegal pot hunter – after all that’s what got him kicked out of university – so perhaps it’s not a surprise when a mysterious man offers him $25,000 to steal a pot. Except that this pot isn’t on a reserve, it’s in a museum – so it’s proper stealing. But the money is tempting, so he goes to scope out the museum, but when he returns to his shop he finds an agent accusing him of stealing a different ancient pot. And then he’s accused of murder. It’s all getting a little bit out of hand – will Hubie manage to escape jail and make sure that the culprit doesn’t?

This fits into the not-quite-the-right-side-of-the-law adventure caper genre, if such a thing exists. Think Ranger from Steph Plum – but before he started his security company and with pottery. Or a Karl Hiassen novel – but with a lot less death and destruction. Like a cozy crime that’s gone a bit rogue. Think John Smythe from Vicky Bliss if he owned a shop in New Mexico and specialised accordingly, and his friends call him Hubie. You get the picture. And it does exactly what you want it to – there’s a very tight spot for Hubert to try and get out of – hopefully in one piece and preferably coming out with a profit of some sort. Or at least something to try to sell. It is a lot of fun – and it’s the first in a series so I will try and remember to report back on whether it manages to keep the momentum going!

This is easiest to get hold of in ebook – and it’s actually cheaper on Kobo than Kindle at the moment although in terms of my target prices for ebooks both prices are a bit high at time of writing for what is a cozy crime adventure caper. It is also available in paperback form, but the prices are (even more) eye-watering for that!

Happy reading.

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: The Soulmate Equation

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Oh it’s another contemporary romance book pick. Two weeks in a row. It was Valentine’s Day, it’s allowed. The fact that it’s Christina Lauren again, just a few months after Something Wilder got a mention in a Recommendsday and not a year since Roomies was a BotW pick, is less allowed. But it’s my blog and I make the rules so I can break them too.

This is a sort of enemies to lovers but definitely fake relationship romance featuring single mum Jess. She doesn’t date because she’s too busy keeping all the balls in the air – being a single mom, her business doing data and statistics, keeping a roof over her family’s head and looking after her grandparents. Her best friend Fizzy buys her a kit for a new DNA-based matchmaking services for her birthday and in a moment of weakness she submits her spit sample. Which turns up the highest match the company has ever seen – the trouble is the person the algorithm says is her perfect match is the company’s cofounder, Dr River Peña, who she already knows she can’t stand. But soon the company is offering to to pay her to see if she’s wrong and she finds herself spending more and more time with River and starts to wonder if there is something in this matching thing after all…

This is a delightful treat of a romance. It’s told purely from Jess’s point of view, which I started off by finding frustrating but after about fifty pages I didn’t mind because it meant you really didn’t know what was going on with River and whether he was falling for Jess or just playing along for the sake of the company. Jess’s daughter Juno is just the right side of romance children (and it’s a difficult line to tread) and I loved the set up with the apartment building with Jess’s grandparents in the bungalow in the garden.

I’m not a numbers and figures person (I dropped all maths and science just as soon as I could because I wanted to do languages and history) so I can’t speak to the accuracy of the data and stuff, but it made sense to me without losing me in the technicalities and detail. This is another fake relationship Christina Lauren (like Roomies was) and has no pranks or any of the bits of their novels that sometimes don’t work for me, so if you’re not a humour from embarrassment person, I have good news for you, this is safe to read.

I got this off the pile last week because when I was reading up on the next Christina Lauren for last week’s upcoming books post I discovered that the heroine of that is the aforementioned Fizzy, Jess’s best friend who a romance writer and thought I ought to read Soulmate Equation before that came out. And I’m glad I did because it’s great but I’m also now even more excited about The True Love Experiment than I was before.

I got my copy of The Soulmate Equation from either the supermarket or the Works, I can’t remember which, but it’s all over the place – I saw it in Foyles the other week any everything. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo and all the usual ebook outlets too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, romance

Book of the Week: Nora Goes Off Script

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It’s Valentine’s Day today and we have a romance pick this week. Nora Goes Off Script is probably the easiest BotW choice in ages, for reasons which I will explain later in the post and (spoiler alert) are not the fact that it’s a romance and today is February 14th!

The plot: Nora is a scriptwriter for a romance channel, but after her husband leaves her and their two children she uses their breakup to write a script that doesn’t end in a chaste kiss and a happily ever after. And it sells to a movie company who want to film part of it on location at her farmhouse. Along with the film crew comes the film’s star: Leo Vance, former sexiest man alive and playing Nora’s ex. But when the film crew leaves, Leo doesn’t. And what turns into a week for him to clear his head turns into something more, something that can break your heart…

The Goodreads blurb calls this Evvie Drake Starts over meets Beach Read, and although I haven’t read Beach Read (yet) I have read Book Lovers and have been comparing it to Emily Henry to people so let’s call that pretty accurate. It’s romantic and sweet but it’s also relaxing. Yes Leo and Nora’s relationship doesn’t go smoothly but there’s no peril, and actually Nora does that thing I love in books of figuring out who she is and what she wants and the fact that she gets a handsome man by the end is a delightful bonus not the solution to her problems. Did that make any sense? It’s like in Legally Blonde: Elle is successful by the end because of her hard work and brains not because of a relationship. Yes she ends up with Emmett but he’s not the reason why she wins the case and gets voted valedictorian*.

I bought this while writing the Recommendsday post, started it in bed on Tuesday night and read nearly 100 pages without noticing (and definitely not what I meant to do and had finished it before bedtime on Wednesday. And then I read the last 20 percent again on the train to work on Thursday. Yup. I liked it that much. In fact writing this has made me want to go and read it all over again. It’s Annabel Monaghan’s first adult novel and I am already really looking forward to her second one which is due out in June. If it’s anything like as good as this I’ll be a happy girl.

As I said last week – this is 99p on Kindle at the moment and I don’t think you will regret it. I don’t know how easy the paperback will be to find – I couldn’t see it in Foyles on Friday, but that’s not foolproof.

Happy Reading!

* this is the crux of my biggest issue with the stage musical version of the show where Elle definitely succeeds because Emmet helps her and tells her what to do. But I digress.

Book of the Week, books, detective, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Death of an Author

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Another classic crime reissue from the British Library this week – this is the book I mentioned that I hadn’t finished in time for the Quick Reviews and in the end that’s turned out to be a good thing as it means I can write about it at a greater length here. And I’m also relatively timely for once – as this was one of the BLCC’s January releases.

The author of the title is Vivian Lestrange, the reclusive person behind several bestselling mystery novels. He is reported missing by his secretary – who arrived for work one day and found the house locked up and her boss – and his housekeeper – vanished without a trace. But the investigation is mired in confusion from the start – there is no body and there is even doubt about whether Lestrange really exists. Could the secretary, Eleanor, perhaps be him? Bond and Warner from Scotland Yard have a real job on their hands.

I enjoyed this so much. Lorac has set up a seemingly impossible crime and laid so many red herrings around that you can’t work out what you’re meant to think. And then there’s the humour. As previously mentioned E C R Lorac is a pen name for Carol Carnac, a woman mystery writer. And it’s clear that she’s having a lot of fun at the expense of reviewers and readers of the time who couldn’t believe that a woman could write mysteries the way that she did. It’s just delightful. I read it in about two giant sittings, across 36 hours and if I hadn’t had to get on with my normal life I would have read it even faster! It was first published in 1935 and has been incredibly rare and hard to get hold of until now – which is a bit boggling because it is so good – so thank goodness for the British Library!

I got Death of an Author through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, so that’s the only ebook platform you can get it on at the moment, but you can of course buy it in paperback direct from the British Library shop where they are doing three for two at the moment so you could pick up some of the others that I have recommended recently – or potentially through your local bookshop that carries the BLCC series as it only came out in the middle of January so it may well be in their latest selection.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Georgie, All Along

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Continuing the Kate Clayborn theme of the last few days, but I’m not even sorry about it because this was delightful and it’s new and it deserves a bigger mention than just Thursday.

Georgie is back in Virginia after years away working as a PA in LA. Most of the time she’s too busy to think about anything except the next job on her list. But suddenly there are hours and days and weeks stretching out in front of her. She’s meant to be helping her best friend – who has just moved back to their home town too ahead of having her first baby – but it doesn’t feel like she really needs Georgie. And then they find a diary they wrote in high school full of plans for the future. Are these the ideas Georgie needs to figure out who she is and what she wants? And then there is the problem of Levi, her unexpected roommate and former town bad boy and current dock builder and semi recluse, who offers to help her on her quest…

This was a really lovely, calming read – and also romantic. There is very little peril (maybe no peril?), just two people trying to figure out who they are and what they want in the world. And if you’ve ever wondered what you’re doing with your life and why everyone seems to have things better planned than you, this may well speak to you on a cellular level. I often say that I’m very lucky because I knew what I wanted to do for my job at a very young age, and turned out that be good enough at it that I’ve been able to earn my living doing it (so far!). But I don’t really have a grand plan. I’m much better at knowing what I don’t want to do, than what I *do* want to do and so I really enjoyed watching Georgie working out what she wanted from life and also the way it all resolved – and I can’t really say more, because: spoiler.

So if you want a charming romance that will make you swoon-y happy but without making you anxious, then this may well be it. My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in various formats: in Kindle and Kobo in the UK – it looks like the paperback option is the US version (at the moment at least).

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, mystery

Book of the Week: The Three Dahlias

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I had a lovely week off last week and read some good stuff, but interests of not repeating myself, today’s pick is a book I finished on Monday. Yes I know it’s cheating, but the book is really good so I’m sure you’ll let me off!

The three Dahlias of the title are three actresses who have played or are about to play the same character – a legendary heroine of golden age detective fiction. They’re spending a weekend at a fan convention organised at the stately home the author lived in. But then there is a suspicious death and they have to work together to find the killer.

I mean could this be any more up my street? Honestly it ticks so many of boxes of things that I like: A murder mystery set in a country house! A classic crime connection! A group of actresses! A convention! It almost seemed too good to be true. But it wasn’t. It was really, really good. I was 100 pages in before I even realised it. I really liked the way the narrative switched between folllowing the three different actresses and I think it did really well at making each of them seem distinct. I did have the murderer figured out (or at least narrowed down) but I couldn’t figure out why so it had me partly fooled.

I loved the golden age crime tie in – from what you can work out, Dalhia is a bit of 1930s Phryne Fisher type character – glamorous and rule breaking and with a police man in tow (but written at the time) – and like some of the Golden Age detectives, the series went on being written for many years, although wisely the books didn’t move through time at the same pace as the author! And each chapter starts with a quote from one of the books and it works really well – making you want to read a Dahlia book without really ever telling you much about their plots!

A sequel is coming later this – which is both excellent news and really interesting to see if the formula can work again! I will be keeping my eye out for it for sure.

My copy of The Three Dahlias was part of my post Christmas book buying spree, so I think it should be fairly easy to get hold of in your format of choice.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: A High-End Finish

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New year (yes it’s still a new year even if we’ve hit the middle of the month), new cozy crime series for me and something different to talk about in today’s BotW. And you know I love a cozy crime series. So here we go.

A High-End Finish is the first in a series of cozy crimes featuring Shannon Hammer, a contractor specialising in Victorian homes in her town of Lighthouse Cove on the Northern California coast. In this first book, Shannon finds a dead body in the basement of a house that she’s working on – and becomes a suspect in a murder inquiry as she went on a blind date with the victim a few days earlier – and was heard threatening him after he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The town’s new police chief doesn’t seem inclined to believe that she had nothing to do with the murder, so Shannon starts investigating herself with the help of her friends, her nosy neighbours and a crime writer who has just moved to town.

This is a really nice set up for a new series but because there are a lot of characters to introduce and backstories to set up, the detecting is not quite as well developed as you would like and I thought the solution was a bit, ho hum. BUT I really liked Shannon, her friends and the town itself so I forgive it – because first books in series are often like this – either they don’t do a good enough job of setting up the side characters or the mystery isn’t as good as you want it to be. This usually settles down in book two – especially if it’s an established author starting a new series (which Kate Carlisle is). Luckily I picked up the next book in the series (in fact the whole series so far) second hand last month (as seen in Books Incoming) so it’s a good thing I liked them and I can also go straight on to book two to see if the problems get ironed out.

It is nice to have a home improvement/contractor theme for a cozy series though – as previously mentioned, I’m a bit cookery cozied out, and as I’m not usually into the supernatural sometimes it feels like there aren’t a lot of choices for me beyond that. Still hopefully these will keep me busy for a few weeks (at least).

As previously mentioned, my copy of A High-End Finish came via one of my Facebook book groups, but they’re available on Kindle and Kobo as well as in paperback. As they’re American Mass Market Paperbacks though, you may have trouble finding them in stores in the UK – so your best bet might be ordering from Book Depository or similar.

Happy Reading!