Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: The Year of Living Danishly

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This week’s BotW is a rare non-fiction pick – and has been a big hit in our house. I picked it out a couple of months ago and gave it to The Boy to read last weekend when he’d done too much Janet Evanovich in a row.  He laughed so hard at it and enjoyed it so much that I promoted it to the top of my to-read pile and read it too.  And it is just joyous.

  
The Year of Living Danishly is the story of author Helen Russell and her husband Legoman who move to Jutland in Denmark after he gets a job with the Danish toy giants.  As the country is reputed to be one of the happiest in the world, she sets out to find out whether the hype is true – and whether living a bit more Danishly can help everyone.  Ms Russell does have some reservations about the Danes – they seem to have a bit of a herd mentality and some of their habits are a bit … odd – so this is quite a balanced look at the pros and cons of Danish life as she experienced it.

I absolutely fell in love with this book.  It’s witty and engaging and an absolutely fascinating insight into a country that I knew very little about.  I finished the book thinking that Denmark wouldn’t be a bad place to relocate too – even if the winters are dark and glacial.  The Boy has an auntie and uncle in Denmark – so he had some personal experience of a few of the experiences detailed in the book – he can confirm that Danish kindergarten is fabulous and laid back – he just joined in with a class of them in the park some time in the early 80s and the teachers didn’t even bat an eyelid.

Even if you’re not a big non-fiction reader, this is well worth a look. It’s not dry or academic, it’s warm and enthralling and will leave you wondering what pickled herring tastes like (but maybe not enough to try it).  Meanwhile, The Boy and I are thinking about making a trip to see his relatives in Copenhagen soon!

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle and Kobo – so go forth and live more Danishly.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, fiction, Series I love, Thriller

Book of the Week: Plum Spooky

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This week’s BotW post has been really tricky.  If I picked my absolute favourite book from last week – can I then still include it in my holiday reads post (which is why I was reading it in the first place)?  If I don’t pick my favourite, all my other options are going to be repeating previous favourite authors.  If I do pick my favourite it’s a repeat as well.  Tricky.  So people, this week’s book of the week is Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich.  Yes.  I know.  But There Were Reasons.

Plum Spooky
I do love a foil cover – but they’re really tricky to photograph

Plum Spooky is the fourth (and last as it stands) in the Between-the-Numbers Stephanie Plum books – which means it’s a bit like a normal Stephanie Plum but with a supernatural twist.  They’re also the books where you meet Diesel – who goes on to get a series of his own (the second of which was my Evanovich Gateway Book back in April – see previous BotW post).  Plum Spooky is the longest (a proper novel rather than a novella) and best of these fill-ins – it has the balance right between NormalSteph and SupernaturalStuff – and is a good read in it’s own right – not just because you like the other Plum books.

In Plum Spooky, Steph’s FTA has got messed up with the guy that Diesel is trying to find – and it all gets a little bit scary/weird in the Barrens – an area which reminds me a lot of the were-panther area in Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Series.  Spooky is very good at balancing the supernatural element of the story with the normal bounty hunter storylines from the regular series.  Having Diesel around does mean less Ranger and Morelli action – but as these are meant to be slightly outside the mains series you couldn’t really have any action that impacts those relationships without causing ructions.

This is great fun – but probably best enjoyed with a bit of existing knowledge of the series – or if you know you like this sort of book. You should be able to get it from all the usual places – and probably your second-hand book store too.

This week I’ve planned my reading better.  And that Summer Reading post is nearly ready, I promise. Just a few more books to read…

Book of the Week, Chick lit

Book of the Week: The Cake Shop in the Garden

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This week’s BotW is Carole Matthew’s latest – The Cake Shop in the Garden.  Last week was a heavy detective fiction week, and as my highest rated book on Goodreads was the second Peter Grant book and it’s only a couple of weeks since the first was my BotW, I thought a fun summer read should be my Book of the Week.

Fay runs a cake shop from her garden, next to the canal near Milton Keynes.  Her mum is difficult and cantankerous and her sister is thousands of miles away in New York, getting up to antics her mum isn’t meant to know about.  Then Danny Wilde arrives at the bottom of the garden on his boat and she starts to question her decisions.  When tragedy strikes, it looks like everything is going to change.  Will Fay have the courage to make the decision that’s right for her?

This is a fun, romantic summer read which is set not far from where I live (which I’ll admit added to the attraction of the book for me).  I thought it was well set up and the plot worked really well – with a few twists that I wasn’t expecting.  The only downside for me is that I found myself wanting to give Fay a shake sometimes and tell her to man up and stand up for herself.  But I know that that’s easier said than done, particularly in the situation that she found herself in.  I was happy with the resolution – although I was worried for a while that I wasn’t going to get the ending that I wanted.

So, another week, another great book for your holiday*.  OK the Costa del Keynes (as Matthews calls it) isn’t quite as hot as a beach in the Med, but I think this might be the perfect for a staycation in the UK – I can see people reading this on canalboat holidays or on the beach in Devon.  It’s not my favourite of Matthews books – that title still belongs to Welcome to the Real World – but this is a good page-turner.

The Cake Shop in the Garden should be fairly easy to get hold of – the paperback came out in April** – but here are some links to Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle and Kobo incase you can’t wait to go to a real shop.

* I promise the summer reads post is coming. Soon.  Before August starts.  There’s just a couple more books I want to read first…

**My copy came from NetGalley to coincide with that, but as usual, I’m behind on the NetGalley list.  Also, insert usual honest review disclaimer here.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Chick lit, reviews

Book of the Week: The Day We Disappeared

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So this week’s BotW is Lucy Robinson’s latest – The Day We Disappeared.  And this is likely to be quite a short post because I’m terrified of saying too much about this.  You may remember Lucy Robinson from previous posts – about The Unfinished Symphony of You and Me which was one of my books of the year in 2014.

The Day We Disappeared tells the stories of Annie and Kate.  Annie has a secret and it’s caused her a lot of problems – but now there’s someone who wants to fix her.  Kate is running away and she’s not going to tell you why – because that would defeat the object the reinvention that she’s trying to pull off.  And there are undercurrents.  Lots of undercurrents – of different types – and there are complications.

And that’s all I dare say.  Which isn’t much more than the back of the book says.  But that’s because to tell you more would Give Too Much Away and Ruin It All.  And Lucy Robinson’s clearly worked really hard in writing this not to do that and I don’t want to spoil it.  Because this book blew me away – in a really good way.  As you can tell, I loved Unfinished Symphony, and I think I like this more – even if there isn’t a side-kick as funny as Barry.  This is a bit different though.  The last book had me in tears – of both types, whereas this one had me holding my breath and totally gripped.  I did laugh and I nearly cried, but there’s so much suspense and tension in this as well that wasn’t in the last one.

It did take me a while to read this – but that’s mostly because I was worried about ending up in tears in public again.  Crying on the train is so embarrassing. To be honest, my only problem with this book is that the cover does not match the rest of Lucy Robinson’s books – which is more about my issues with matching books than anything else.  And I read this on my e-reader. So it’s not really a problem at all until I buy a paperback version for completeness…

My copy came from NetGalley* (yes, I know, I’m behind again) but you can get yours from all over the place – like Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle (for a bargain £1.79 at time of writing), Kobo and hopefully the supermarkets too.  It’d be a great book to take on holiday,** as long as you don’t have any pressing plans to do anything other than reading it because you’ll be glued to your sun lounger!

*With the usual provisos – honest review, only write about stuff on here I do genuinely love etc.

** Yes I know, I promised a holiday reads post.  It is coming. It really is. I’ve even started working out what I’m going to include.  But there are a few more books that I need to read before I can be sure I’ve covered all bases.

Book of the Week, new releases, Young Adult

Book of the Week: Fire Colour One

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This week’s BotW is Jenny Valentine’s Fire Colour One.  I do try to mix my choices up a bit – although when I go on a massive reading jag of one author that doesn’t help – so here’s some new YA fiction.  I got my copy via NetGalley and raced through it in two train journeys.

Iris likes lighting fires.  She doesn’t like her mum – or her mum’s boyfriend.  She’s lost touch with her best (and only) friend Thurston. Then the dad that she hasn’t seen for years gets in contact to say he’s dying.  Her mum is delighted – she wants Ernest’s art collection to fund her lifestyle. Iris is angry.  But her dad has things he wants to tell her.

Now, it took me a while to warm to Iris.  She’s a bit difficult to like at first, but then you see what she’s dealing with.  And she’s dealing with a lot.  Her mum sees her as an inconvenience and really isn’t on her side.  Her mum’s partner is the most narcissistic guy I’ve come across in a book this year.  Iris can control the fires.  She can’t control her life, or stop her dad from dying (and she’s not sure she wants to either).

Death is such a theme in YA literature at the moment, that I was worried that this book was going to leave me miserable and upset*, but I got to the last page with a tear in my eye and a smile on my face.  Then I went back and read the last chapter all over again.  I can’t really say much more about why the end worked for me, without giving it away and that would really spoil the book, but it’s clever.  Really clever.  And I’m desperate to know what Iris does next.

So, I didn’t read a lot last week, but I’m still thinking about this one – and I’m wondering if there are any teenagers in my life that I can buy it for (I’m not sure there are).  I know that I’ll go back and read it again too, which is unusual for me and YA fiction that’s not boarding school stories.  I’ve added Jenny Valentine’s other books to my to-read list too

Fire Colour One came out last week – get your paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones or on Kindle or Kobo.

 

* A la the 3am Fault in Our Stars crying jag.

Book of the Week, detective, Fantasy, reviews

Book of the Week: Rivers of London

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So, last week was a holiday week and I read a fair few books (some of which will feature in a holiday reads post in the near future) but my favourite book of the week was Ben Aaronvitch’s Rivers of London.  This appeared on my radar as an if you like then you might like recommendation from someone/somewhere and I laid in a copy and saved it for one of my paperbacks for the holiday and it was so, so good.

I love the cover illustration, but I’m not sure it actually reflects the sort of book this is

Peter Grant is a newly non-probationary police constable in the Met.  He’s just been assigned to the unit which does the paperwork so everyone else doesn’t have to, when he tries to take a witness statement from a ghost after a particularly unusual murder in Covent Garden.  Then Chief Inspector Nightingale turns up and he’s suddenly an apprentice wizard.  And that’s where the fun begins.

This book is a total mash-up of some of my favourite things – it’s a police procedural (but not too thrillery chillery) with a strong fantasy element (magic! ghosts! spirits!), which knows exactly how its world works and isn’t going to dump it all on you at once, with a cast of intriguing and complex characters and a load of humour too.  So Urban Fantasy Crime Comedy. Maybe.  Anyway, it’s fabulous and I need to read the next one, not least because there are still some fairly important questions unresolved about the characters and the wider world.

You should be able to get a  copy of Rivers of London at any good bookshop – I checked a mid-sized WH Smith in a local supermarket shopping centre* and they had two copies and 3 other books from the series.  If you have poor impulse control (like me) the kindle edition is just £1.99 at time of writing. Or you can buy actual copies from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and the like.

* The sort of shopping centre that is based around a giant supermarket.  Like you get in France, but less classy as this particularly shopping centre was on the front page of the Daily Mail website the other week as the Tesco shoppers went a bit nuts over reduced price meat.

Book of the Week, Chick lit, romance

Book of the Week: Stealing the Show

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This week’s BotW is Christina Jones’s Stealing the Show.  Now Jones is a long time favourite author of mine – back since I discovered Heaven Sent via the Melissa Nathan Prize (god how I still miss Melissa Nathan.  I bought everything she wrote.  I cried in Tescos when I read that she’d died).

Stealing the Show is an early CJ book – and if you’ve been reading the later  books in the series, this one is the origin of the Memory Lane Fair that crops up in so many.  It’s a look at the life of travelling show people – and it’s a great love story.  I absolutely gobbled it up.  It’s maybe not as funny as some of her later books, but it’s dealing with more serious issues than they are – there’s domestic abuse tangled up in this as well as inheritance and family pressures.

But don’t let me make that sound like it’s a weighty tome that’ll drag you down.  It’s totally not.  It’s so much fun.  If you haven’t read any Christina Jones before, this really might be a good place to start – even if Heaven Sent is still my favourite.

Accent Press have been republishing some of the harder to find Christina Jones novels as ebooks – so this is easier to get hold of than ever. Go read some of her books – you won’t regret it. 

Book of the Week, detective

Book of the Week: Death at the Opera

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This week’s BotW  Death at the Opera and also is a bit of a compare and contrast.  I read of Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley Mysteries last week – this one I loved and the other I could barely get through.  As I didn’t read a huge amount last week – and two of them were books I’m reviewing for Novelicious (which I can’t preempt here) – I’ve made Death at the Opera my book of the week.  Death at the Opera ticks a lot of my boxes – it’s a murder mystery set in a girls school – but Mrs Bradley is a bit different to a lot of the Golden Age Sleuths.  She’s going to track down whodunnit, but she’s not necessarily going to hand them over to the authorities when she does.  And that’s what makes her interesting – she wants to know, but often without having a yearning for justice for the victim – she’s more detached and curious than some of the other dectectives of the time.

Death at the Opera is fulled with interesting and intriguing characters, some of whom have very modern attitudes, and a twisty turny plot that I didn’t work out until right at the end.  I absolutely zipped through it and went straight on to another Mrs Bradley from the to-read pile (I picked up three from the charity shop a couple of months back) – and what a contrast that was.  I really struggled with Come Away, Death.  I didn’t like the characters or the setting and I found it really difficult to get into.  I finished it, but only just – and only because I liked the Death at the Opera so much I was hoping it would improve.  But I guess when a series is so long running there’s bound to be a few duds.  Hey ho.

Book of the Week, reviews, Series I love

Book of the Week: Mary Ann in Autumn

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This week’s BotW is Armistead Maupin’s eighth book in the Tales of the City series – Mary Ann in Autumn.  I discovered the series last year as book nine came out and have loved every installment so far.

  In Mary Ann in Autumn our favourite characters have reached middle age with new challenges and old ones.  Mary Ann has never been my favourite character in the series, but in this she comes across as the most human and real that I’ve seen her.  It does make me sad that Mrs Madrigal is much older and frailer in this book, but that’s life and that’s aging.  And it means we get more of Jake.

I think it’s a real testament that Maupin has been able to keep the series feeling fresh and real and relevant 30 years after it started.  Not all authors would have been happy to keep bringing their characters up to date – and still less of them would have been able to do it and make it beliveable and true.  The “final” book in the series is just out in paperback and I need to get my hands on a copy asap.  Although with the current state of the to read pile I may try to hang fire on that for a week or two.

You should be able to get Mary Ann in Autumn from all the usual sources, but do yourself a favour and start from the beginning of the series. Even The Boy likes them!

Book of the Week, Fantasy, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Day Shift

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This week’s BotW is Charlaine Harris’ Day Shift – the second book in the Midnight, Texas series – which I think is going to be a trilogy (or that’s how it looks at the moment anyway).  And yes, I know Midnight Crossroad was Botw 2 months ago.  But this was the best thing I read last week excepting Janet Evanovich, and we’ve already had that discussion…

We pick up where we left off (almost) in Midnight – the same characters that are left at the end of the last book are still in situ, but there’s a strange (even for Midnight) boy who is staying with the Rev and a mysterious company has started renovating the abandoned hotel. This book is faster paced than it’s predecessor and works the better for it. Some of the characters in book one were hard to warm to because they were just *so* mysterious.  Well a lot of that is cleared up in book two – although there’s still a lot of unresolved plot strands at the end of the book.  And of course Day Shift has a mystery-of-the-week too – which is neat and intriguing – and works well alongside the Bigger Picture puzzle as well.

But what I really loved was the crossovers.  Oh the crossovers.  I mentioned in my review of Midnight Crossroad that there were some familiar faces from previous series, but in this one the guest appearances are brilliant.  I can’t say anymore (as per usual) or I’ll spoil it, but I was thrilled to see some more old friends reappear – I’m the sort of reader who doesn’t like to say goodbye to characters* and so crossovers like this, and side characters from previous books reappearing in bigger roles really makes me happy. I’ve got my fingers crossed for more in the last book!

And that’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the plot and the excitement for you.  I honestly don’t know how well these would work for you if you were coming entirely new to Charlaine Harris’ worlds, but for me, I passed several happy hours reading this.

Day Shift is only in hardback and e-book at the moment, but you can get your copy from all the usual sources – here’s Day Shift at Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and on Kindle. And if harback prices are too eye-watering for you, then Midnight Crossroad is available in paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and Kindle.

* I’m always hoping for a sequel to rom coms to see the happily ever afters, but get really annoyed when sequels turn up where the couple break up and make up to create a plot.  Yes I know.  A book full of happy people wouldn’t be very interesting. What can I say. I’m a difficult audience.