Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, books, historical, Thriller

Book of the Week: The Hourglass Factory

veritywilde

So, a difficult choice for BotW this week – I finished the latest Laurie Graham last week and really enjoyed it – but I also read Lucy Ribchester’s Hourglass Factory and enjoyed that too.  So in the end, I’ve picked The Hourglass Factory for BotW and decided to do an Authors I Love post on Laurie G instead, which’ll be coming up in a few weeks. So more for you to read. Bonus.

The Hourglass Factory
Some of my best photos are taken on the train. No idea why.

In The Hourglass Factory, tom-boy reporter Frankie George is trying to make waves in Fleet Street, but all she’s getting are the women’s interest stories an the gossip columns.  When she gets assigned to write a profile of trapeze-artist-turned-suffragette Ebony Diamond she gets short shrift.  But then Ebony disappears and Frankie finds herself drawn into a world of corsets, circuses, tricks and suffragettes.  Where has Ebony gone?  What is going on with the suffragettes? And will anyone listen to Frankie if she finds out?

This has been sitting on my shelf for aaaaaages (what’s new) and I kept meaning to read it.  Then I saw it recommended by another blogger (Agi’s onmybookshelf) as one of her books of the year of 2015 – alongside several other books that I had read and liked and it gave me the push that I needed.

I really enjoyed this.  I haven’t studied the women’s suffrage movement in Britain in much depth – apart from as part of my history GCSE – so I knew the basics, but I don’t think you’d have too much trouble if you knew even less.  Lucy Ribchester paints a vivid picture of 1912.  Post-Edwardian London springs to life – all dark corners, imminent peril, seedy clubs, variety acts, cuthroats, suffragettes and jails.  Some passages were tough going – early 20th century jails were not nice places to get stuck in – but it was totally worth it.  This is quite a long read (500 pages) but it is pacy, exciting and thrilling – you don’t notice the pages going by.  So good.  And another cautionary tale about letting books sit on the shelf.

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones or Foyles, from Audible, or on Kindle, ebook or Kobo.  You’re welcome.  And thank you Agi for giving me the kick to read it.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Bleakly Hall

veritywilde

Welcome to the first Book of the Week post of 2016!  I really enjoyed writing these last year – and find that having to pick a favourite book each week really helps to focus the mind – not just about what I like and don’t like about books, but also about what I chose to read from the pile.  It doesn’t stop the bingeing on one author, but it does mean I try to add some variety in – after all a BotW from the same author each week would get very dull very quickly.  And speaking of binge-reading, there’ll be a post coming up at the weekend about the Pink Carnation series – which is one of the reasons why one of the three Lauren Willigs I read last week isn’t occupying this spot now!

So, Bleakly Hall.  This has been on the pile for over 2 years (!) – and had been on my radar for some time before that.  I think it’s another that was mentioned in the Emerald Street book section (where I’ve found several really interesting books) which I then added to my Amazon pile to wait for the price to come down (although in the end it came from Waterstones who must’ve been doing a deal judging by the prices) which is what happens to a lot of books.  Anyway, you all know about the state of my to-read pile and the less said about it the better.

Bleakly Hall
This is my best attempt at artistic. I polished the wood specially.

Bleakly Hall is a hydroprathic spa, populated by a cast of misfits and damaged people after the Great War.  New nurse Monty has taken a job there because she has a score to settle with Captain Foxley.  The Captain is there because he served with one of the two brothers who own it.  The other brother came back from the war minus his legs and now has a matrimonial problem on his hands.  Ada worked with Monty during the war – and misses the purpose and status it gave her. The residents are elderly, thin on the ground and not conducive to a health bank balance for the owners.  And then there’s the ominous noises from the pipes…

I read a lot of books set in and around the First World War as part of my A-Level English literature and the period has continued to fascinate me in the intervening years (no, I’m not telling you how many years) and so this book was right up my street.  I’m particularly fascinated with the aftermath of the war* and how it affected people so I found the characters in this fascinating.  And they are a bit of a microcosm of post-war society – people want nothing to have changed, people for whom everything has changed, others for whom everything has changed, but in a different way and then those who would quite like the war back in some ways.

This is quite black in places – there are moments that will make you laugh and then there are moments of horror.  The spa is damp and run down and there’s comedy in the treatments and quackery provided and then there are the flashbacks to Belgium and the carnage of the trenches.  The two are nicely balanced – and sometimes you realise you are still chuckling over the latest antics at the spa but you’re in the trenches and really shouldn’t be laughing.

I enjoyed (if you can call it that) Bleakly Hall – and got a lot out of it.  If you’ve read the usual Great War suspects – like Goodbye to All that, Regeneration, Testament of Youth etc – then this might be a good place to go next.  It’s available on Kindle, at Amazon (where there are some good second-hand prices), Waterstones and Foyles.

* It’s one of the aspects of Lord Peter Wimsey‘s character that I find really interesting, as is Daisy’s search for a career and a new future after the war and the changes it brought in Carola Dunn’s early Daisy Dalrymple books.

American imports, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance

Book of the Week: Anything For You

veritywilde

This week’s BotW is Kristan Higgins’ latest romance Anything For You – which in a stroke of serendipity is out today!  For those of you who are all Christmas’d out, this would make a great break from the festivities.  It has a winery, some star-crossed lovers and a whole lot of fun.

Anything For You tells the story of Connor and Jessica.  They’ve been hooking up in secret for years and now Connor wants to take it public – and make it official.  But Jessica thinks things are fine as they are – and she has her brother to look after, her brother who really doesn’t like Connor.  So with Connor down on one knee and telling her it’s all or nothing, how sure is Jessica that marriage isn’t for her?

This is such a good read.  Jessica and Connor have such a tangled backstory – which is explained really well in a series of flashback-type sequences in the aftermath of the proposal.  They are both really complicated, well thought out characters.  Connor has quite a privileged background (I mean he’s not a billionaire or a billionaire’s son, but there’s some money there) but a difficult relationship with his parents.  Jessica has dragged herself up from a trailerpark whilst bringing up her little brother in the process – she’s got trust issues, abandonment issues and a bit of an inferiority complex.  Watching them work out their problems is a really engrossing read.

And they are proper problems that need a proper resolution.  I’ve read a lot of romances where the obstacles keeping the hero and heroine apart aren’t really obstacles – or are easily resolved.  But these two have something real and tangible to work out.  And the resolution is really well worked out – it doesn’t involve one of them suddenly doing an abrupt character change or an about face.  They work out their problems and grow and mature to a solution.

And if that sounds too serious – don’t worry!  There’s plenty of humour here too – Connor has a fabulously funny relationship with his twin sister Colleen (aka Dog Face) and the two of them have some great sparky exchanges.  And Con and Jess have their moments too.  Add to that a very stabbable events planner and some meddling friends and the angsty bits are well balanced out.

This was my first Kristan Higgins – but I’ve already found another one in the Kindle backlog pile so that may well have jumped its way closer to the top.  My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get yourself a copy from Amazon or Amazon.com – although it doesn’t seem to be available on Kindle in the UK or the US at the moment.

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Bricking It

veritywilde

This week’s BotW is Bricking It by Nick Spalding. I read a lot of books last week, many of them good but Christmas-themed – and of them more in the next few days. But Bricking It made me laugh despite the tonsillitis so it was an obvious choice for my non-festive Book of the Week!

Bricking It tells the story of Dan and Haley Daley, who have inherited a run-down farmhouse from their grandmother and decide to do it up to make some extra money. And of course the road to profit does not run smoothly.  There’s an eccentric architect, a gang of builders, a TV crew and a few skeletons in the cupboard.  Oh, and a bit of sibling rivalry too!

I thought Bricking It was a bit different from the usual run of house renovation stories. Haley and Dan both have their issues to deal with and that gives the book a great heart as well as a lot of jokes. If you’re off work for Christmas but not feeling in the mood for a Christmas-set book, this may well be the perfect solution to read curled up in front of the Christmas tree after you’ve finished wrapped (or unwrapping) your presents!

Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle.

Book of the Week, Young Adult

Book of the Week: One

veritywilde

This week’s BotW is brought to you courtesy of heavy duty cold pills, painkillers and a bout of tonsillitis.   It’s all fun chez Verity I tell you.  So this post is late arriving and somewhat shorter than I intended.  Also it may not make sense.  I’m quite highly medicated and it feels like razors are playing at the back of my throat.

This week’s pick is One by Sarah Crossan.  I devoured this in one sitting after a late shift (when I should have been sleeping).  One is the story of conjoined twins Grace and Tippi, told from Grace’s point of view and in free verse.  They’ve beaten the odds and made it to 16, but now they’ve got to go to school because the money to home-school them has run out. But something is happening to them, something that Grace doesn’t even want to think about.

I was absolutely gripped by Grace and Tippi’s story.  Free verse (or verse altogether) isn’t often my thing, but I thought it really worked to tell the girls story, saying a lot in not a lot of words and packing a big emotional punch.  It also gives the book an air of uniqueness – which goes with the girls themselves.

It’s fascinating, touching and will probably leave you in tears.  Its a YA book that I can see being read in schools in the years to come.  Well worth a look. One is out in Hardback and should be available from all the usual suspects like Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle, Kobo and Audible.

Now I’m off back to my sick bed. Apparently they don’t give antibiotics out for this type of tonsillitis these days and I just have to ride it out. How fortunate I have such a big to-read pile to keep me company!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Children's books, Series I love

Book of the Week: Shocks for the Chalet School

veritywilde

An unusual choice for BotW this week – Shocks for the Chalet School was one of my post-Paris purchases from Girls Gone By and it turned out to be that rarest of things – a Chalet School book that I hadn’t read.  I know. Who knew.  And this also gives me hope that there may be more!

  
Shocks for the Chalet School is the book where Emerence Hope bursts onto the scene.  Now I think that the reason why I thought that I had read this is partly because her early antics are talked about so much in the later books, and partly because it takes place at the same time as Chalet School in the Oberland.

For those of you who are not Chalet afficionados (and I appreciate that early/mid 20th century boarding stories may not be your speciality) a quick recap on where we stand at this point in the series: It’s after the war and the school is on St Briavels Island after the problem with the drains at Plas Howell. The new term means a whole new team of prefects – as the finishing branch is just starting in Switzerland and many of the Sixth formers have left to go there. Mary-Lou is still a Middle-schooler, Jo and her family are in Canada with Madge and her family and the book opens with news of the arrival of Jo’s Second Twins and a letter from former teacher Miss Stewart (now married) apologising for having unwittingly unleashed Emerence on the school.

With me so far?  Really all you need to know is that a (very) naughty new girl is arriving at an established boarding school, where an inexperienced team of prefects will have to try and deal with her.  Who knew it was that simple to explain!

I’ve mentioned my abiding love of the Chalet School before on this blog, and reading one for the first time reminds me how much.  Yes, they are dated – and in the Girls Gone By reprints you get the original unabridged text complete with smoking teachers and problematic racial sterotypes. They are of their time.  The plots are some times repetitive; Elinor M Brent-Dyer has favourites and doesn’t know how to make lists (or do continuity in some cases); there’s an unbelievably high number of dead parents and “kill or cure” operations; there are huge families, religious messages and you would never try and bring children up like this today.  But with an appropriately sceptical eye and a tongue in cheek where necessary, they are joyful.  No one gets bullied, very few problems are completely unsolvable, no one is homesick (for long at least), Joey (the series’ main heroine) can sing people out of comas and if you’re a good girl, you’ll get to marry a doctor and live happily ever after, popping out babies in a Chalet near the school!

  
Basically a new (to me) Chalet School book was exactly what I needed to bring me out of my World Events-based slump.  And I got an unabridged copy of Rivals for the Chalet School a couple of days later too so got to read the missing bits in that as well.

If you’re not already a boarding school fan, then these probably aren’t for you – so may I instead recommend Cathy Bramley’s Wickham Hall serialisation – the final part of which came out last week. 

Book of the Week, reviews

Book of the Week: Not Quite Normal Service

veritywilde

Hello!  After last week’s fog of misery and gloom, you’ll be pleased to hear I’m in a slightly better place in my head.  I’m not quite back to normal yet, so this is still not your normal BotW post.  Instead, here’s a brief snapshot of what I read last week.

So, there was a double dose of Janet Evanovich – Steph Plum 18 and Full Tilt, one of her romantic suspenses with Charlotte Hughes.  The Plum was quite a good one – not my favourite, but not quite as strangely magic-inflected as 17 so I was happy.  I’m still not sure what I make of the Full series – they’re not as fun as the other Evanovich series, but I get the feeling that if I just happened across them and they were an author that wasn’t Janet Evanovich I’d feel more enthusiastic about them!

I also finished The Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard last week.  This had been popping up in my recommendations lists all over the place and I mostly liked it.  I thought it had a slump at about two thirds of the way through – where I started to lose faith in the outcome, but it recovered and I was enjoying it again at the end.  I’m not sure if I’ll be reading the follow-ups though.  But that might be because it is quite dark, and I was in a dark place last week so it may not have been ideal reading matter for me!

Then there was Death before Decaf by Caroline Fardig, which NetGalley pitched to me as “if you love Janet Evanovich, then you’ll like this” – and while it didn’t quite live up to that billing (heroine a little too stupid to live, love triangle feeling a bit forced) I can see where the comparison was coming from.  A perfectly fine way to spend a few hours though.

Cathy Bramley’s latest, Conditional Love, brightened my mood a lot in the middle of the week – it’s this month’s Novelicious Book Club book – you can read my thoughts here and we’re chatting on Twitter tonight at 8pm.

My last book of the week was a Flavia de Luce – and I’m still not sure what I think of this series – Flavia drives me bonker sometimes, and the plots are a bit bonkers, but this one was really good fun.

So there you are.  I can string my thoughts together enough to give you mini-reviews, but that’s about it.  I’m getting there though.  Next week, dear reader, next week!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Special Edition

veritywilde

There is no Book of the Week this week. I’m sorry.  I spent the start of last week reading a string of books that I’m reviewing for Novelicious – and I don’t review/recommend those here before my reviews have gone up there, although I do put them in my list of books that I’ve read. It’s a courtesy thing.  I’d planned to use read some books from my to-read pile at the end of the week, from which I was hoping a BotW would emerge.  And then Friday happened.

As many of you will know, my “proper” job is as a journalist – and I was on shift on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as the terrible news came out of Paris.  And after that, not only was I exhausted and sad, but my brain just couldn’t cope.  I didn’t feel like sitting down and reading new books and thinking critical and analytical thoughts about them.

I know there’s been a lot of talk about Paris getting more attention than other attacks, and I’d like to say that my feelings aren’t because it’s Paris where this has happened rather than somewhere outside Europe.  It’s because this has been a year where there have been more dreadful images and video than any other year that I’ve been working in news.  I’d list them all, but I’d be sure to leave something out and that would defeat the point of what I’m trying to say.

I’ve seen dead bodies around the world, people cut down by gunfire, bombs and natural disasters.  There’s been video of people killed on camera, of dead children, of wreckage smashed on mountainsides and deserts, of grieving families, of funerals. And all that’s without the videos from so-called Islamic State (or whatever you wish to call them) of the killings of hostages which, thankfully, I haven’t seen – because my employer put safeguards in place so that only a few people in the whole organisation had to watch them.  And of course I haven’t gone looking for them – once you’ve watched someone be killed – for real – on camera, you don’t want to ever see it again.

So  there you are.  I could have cheated, and recommended something that was the only new book that I’d read that wasn’t for Novelicious, or a book that I started on Sunday and finished this morning.  But both of those solutions felt disingenuous and wrong.

Books are my coping mechanism for life.  When I’m stressed, tired, fed-up or upset I turn to the worlds inside their pages for comfort.  And that’s what I’m still doing. I’m getting out my old favourites, worlds where bad things only happen to bad people, where everything turns out all right in the end.  So if there is a Book of the Week this week, make it one of your own old favourites.  One you turn to when you need solace.  Personally, I’m back in the world of boarding school stories and romance.  Normal service will be resumed soon. I hope.

Buffy: Does it ever get easy?

Giles: You mean life?

Buffy: Yeah, does it get easy?

Giles: What do you want me to say?

Buffy: Lie to me.

Giles: Yes. It’s terribly simple. The good guys are always stalwart and true. The bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and, uh, we always defeat them and save the day. No one ever dies and… everybody lives happily ever after.

Buffy: Liar.

 

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Fantasy

Book of the Week: Manners and Mutiny

veritywilde

Apologies for the late arrival of this week’s BotW post – I’d somehow convinced myself that I’d already written this piece because all I seem to have done this week is think about the end of the Finishing School series.  But no, clearly I dreamt it.  Anyhow, it’ll be no surprise to anyone who’s been following my social media in the last week that the BotW is Manners and Mutiny – the last book in the Gail Carriger’s Young Adult Finishing School series.

My Kindle tells you all you need to know about last week’s reading matter!

In book four, we find Sophronia back at school on board Madame Geraldine’s floating dirigible, but with a somewhat denuded gang.  No-one’s listening to her warnings about the Picklemen and she’s still not really sure where her future lies.  When danger threatens the ship and life as she knows it, she has to put all her training to the test as we what happened to make Sophronia’s world of mechanicals turn into the society we know from the Parasol Protectorate.

And that’s about all that I can say, without giving away big old spoilers. And even that last sentence is a bit of a spoiler, but I think Carriger readers have all been waiting since Etiquette and Espionage to see what on earth happened to turn one world into the other!  Or if you’re like me and E&E was your first Gail Carriger book and the gateway to the rest, to explain the moment at the start of Soulless where you were all “Huh?  Where did the mechanical servants go?”

So, it’s no secret that I’m a big Carriger convert, having basically read everything she’s written over the past year (see 2014 Discoveries post, my BotW posts on Timeless and Prudence and E&E’s mention in my YA Roundup) – and I was worried that this wouldn’t live up to the hype that I had set up in my head.  So many questions needed answering and it seemed like a bit of a mammoth task for one book to deal with.  I went so far as to re-read all three of the previous books at the start of last week so that I had everything fresh in my mind for the last book – and I can’t say that I spotted anything that wasn’t addressed or tied up (with a bow).  And it’s still a good read.  It doesn’t feel like a tying up the loose ends book.  It feels like Ms Carriger had a plan at the start of the series, and has executed it masterfully – leaving a trail of breadcrumbs through the books for us to follow so that in this last one it all slots together and clicks into place. And as you do this, you smack your head and wonder how you missed the clues.  So clever.

But I have to say that this is not the place to start your Carriger experience.  Do yourself a favour and start with the first book in the series.  Or if you’re not technically a Young Adult, start with Soulless and read them first and then come to Finishing School and see how clever it all is.  I’m so sad Finishing School is over, but it was a deeply satisfying series and never felt like it was going on too long.  If I hadn’t just finished listening to Soulless on audiobook, I’d be going straight on to read that again. As it is I’m halfway through the recording of Changeless, so I’m still in Carriger-land.  And I can’t wait for Imprudence.

Get your copy of Manners and Mutiny (if you’ve already read the others) in paperback or on Kindle.  Or start with Etiquette and Espionage – paperback or Kindle.  The complete-ist in me really wants to buy myself the paperback copies of all of them so that I can put them on the shelf next to the others, but as I’ve already bought two Carriger audio-books and the e-books of Soulless and Changeless this week (so I can read whenever I want…) I’m valiantly resisting for now.  Lets see how long that resolution lasts…

Book of the Week, non-fiction

Book of the Week: The Astronaut Wives Club

veritywilde

This week’s BotW is a rare (ish) non-fiction choice – Lily Koppel’s The Astronaut Wives Club.  I’m not sure how I first came across this – but it had been sitting on my to-buy list for ages waiting for me to find an excuse to buy it – and the nightshifts came around…

  
The book is about the wives of the first several cohorts of US Astronauts – who they were, how their lives were changed when their husbands were picked and the consequences for them as their husbands went off into space.

This is quite a light read – it reads very much like a string of anecdotes tied together and because there are so many women you don’t get a lot of detail on any of them.  But it is a fascinating glimpse inside the space bubble – I’m sure I’m not alone in that my knowledge of space exploration is fairly limited (the basic facts plus a viewing or two of Apollo 13 and a few documentaries) and I’m not massively interested in science.  This book was perfect for me – it’s always the people that I’m interested in particularly the women who had to smile in front of the world’s media as they watched their partners blast into the unknown.

Lily Koppel has done her research and has spoken to some of the women and come up with a very readable book telling the stories of a group of women who managed to support each other whilst competing with each other and never wanting to show weakness.  Well worth a read – if only to realise exactly how famous these men were and what a fishbowl their wives had to live in.

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles or on Kindle or Kobo