This week’s BotW is Deanna Raybourn’s Silent on the Moor – which is the third in her Lady Julia series, and I think these best so far in that two books worth of serious tension and angst comes to the boil in the harsh and unforgiving setting of the Yorkshire Moors.
Lady J had invited herself to Nicholas Brisbane’s new house, which is not only in the middle of nowhere, but had some unexpected (to Julia at least) residents. There are secrets and tensions and grim discoveries and oh so much Gothicky drama. I hasn’t realised that this was what this series has been waiting for, but it totally was. And thinking about it – unconventional widows, gypsies, seers, eccentrics – should have screamed melodrama to me.
The solution to the book’s puzzles is suitably ghastly – with definite ick factor – but it’s so in keeping and well executed that it seems both perfect and obvious once you’ve read it. Do not let the horrible pink cover of my copy confuse you, is is not saccharine or run of the mill by the numbers romance. There is romance (mostly of the will they won’t they kind) and there’s mystery, but Julia (although she makes mistakes) is not a too stupid to live heroine. You’ll jump to some of the same conclusions she does, albeit with a nagging voice in the back of your head that you’ve missed something somewhere that she doesn’t always have.
I know I keep mentioning books that are from series and then telling you to go back to the start first, but I really do mean it with this, you need two books worth of build up to get the full emotional whack from this. So good. And a catnip (as the Smart Bitches say) that I didn’t know I had!
I had trouble picking a BotW again this week – my top rated books of last week were Janet Evanovichs (and I can’t do another of hers for BotW or you’ll all think I’m insane) and a Nora Roberts that I’ve reviewed for Novelicious (I’ll post a link to the review when it goes up). So, instead I’ve gone for the fifth in Sabrina Jeffries’s Hellions of Halstead Hall series – because I’ve really enjoyed reading about the Hellions, and wanted to share it with you.
So, these are historical romances about the Sharpe siblings, whose parents died in scandalous circumstances when they were very young and who have issues tied up with that. At the start of book 1, their domineering grandmother – who holds the purse strings – tells them she’ll disinherit them if they don’t all find themselves spouses with the year. Over the course of the books we see them all find their happiness – and they investigate what really happened to their parents all those years before.
I suggest that you read the books in order – not because you’ll spoil who the other siblings end up with but because you’ll ruin the mystery plot if you don’t – and I don’t think it would be the easiest to follow that part of the book if you haven’t got the full backstory.
My favourites in the series were the first two books and I didn’t love book four, but as a whole the Hellions’ stories ticked a lot of boxes for me and gave me 10 (ish) hours happy reading – hence the BotW post on book five. There is a sixth book in the series – featuring a secondary character from the previous five – which bridges the gap between this series and Jeffries next one – The Duke’s Men (which I’ve already read one of, out of order ), which I’m going to try and get my hands on soon.
So there you go. An unusual BotW from me – and a reminder that I need to slow down on the Janet Evanovich’s to keep my reading material balanced…. You should be able to find Sabrina Jeffries’ Hellions series where ever you usually pick up your US romance novels – I read mine on Scribd, but you can also get them on Kindle and in paperback. The first one is The Truth About Lord Stoneville – and I suggest you start there.
This week’s BotW is Louise Candlish’s The Sudden Departure of the Frasers – which was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for April, but which didn’t get finished until last week because that was when the discussion was.
This has such a striking cover I know I would have looked at it in the shop, I’m not sure if I would have bought it without the Book Club
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers tells the story of Christy and Joe Davenport, who have just bought the house of their dreams in a leafy London area they never expected to be able to afford. The previous owners, the Frasers, renovated the house and then abruptly disappeared. As the Davenports settle in to their new home, Christy becomes obsessed with why the Frasers left and particularly what happened to Amber – beautiful, popular, charming and the centre of the social whirl – and why the atmosphere on the street is so tense.
This is another book that I probably wouldn’t have picked out for myself – but ended up really enjoying* – in fact, I read the vast majority of it across the course of one afternoon and evening because I got sucked in and then I Needed To Know. It’s one of those books where you can’t put it down because your brain is frantically trying to work out what has gone on and you just need to read one more page/chapter/section because then you might be able to figure it out.
One of the reasons this book worked so well for me is that the setting and the characters seem utterly believeable. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the fantasy that one day the dream home that you’ve always wanted will pop up on the market miraculously in your price range despite being worth oh-so-much more usually. And then obviously the old adage about “if it looks too good to be true, maybe it is” springs into your mind. Now scenarios like this usually lend themselves to horror or ghost stories (definitely not my thing) but this is neither. It’s a gripping little thriller, which will mess with your head but not leave you with nightmares about blood and gore and ghosts.**
Now I am breaking one of my own rules in writing about this now – because The Sudden Departure of the Frasers doesn’t come out until the 21st. But after a long deliberation I’ve put it up as this week’s BotW – because a) it was really good, b) if I didn’t BotW would probably be another Janet Evanovich (the obsession continues) and c) it will be a really, really good beach read, so preorder it for your holiday and you’ve one less thing to worry about!
You can pre-order The Sudden Departure of the Frasers from all the usual outlets – here is a selection of links – Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and Kindle – and I suspect that when it does come out it may pop up in your local supermarket as it’s being published by Penguin.
* Which illustrates why I have such a massive to-read pile. I like so many different books. And if I had bought myself this, it would probably have sat of the shelf for years because of the backlog because it’s not obviously a book that I’d like. Then you’d get another of my patented posts saying that I loved it and I can’t believe how long it sat on the shelf and why didn’t I read it sooner. I know. I’m a nightmare.
** I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there isn’t any blood or gore or ghosts. It’s not that sort of book. But you know what I mean.
This week’s BotW is Lauren Willig’s The Orchid Affair – the eighth book in the Pink Carnation series. It’s been nearly two years since I read my last Pink Carnation book and I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy them. One of the really good things about this series is that Willig has come up with a way to generate plots that doesn’t involve breaking up couples that you love.
My copy is the US hardback edition – which is pretty if very different from UK book covers
In part eight, we meet Laura, a governess for more than a decade, who has been recruited to the Pink Carnation’s spy network watching Bonaparte’s Paris. She’s got a post in the household of Andre Jaouen – the right-hand man to the Minister of Police. He’s part of an investigation is underway into a royalist plot – and Laura’s charged with reporting anything suspicious. But, as always, things are more complicated than they seem. Meanwhile back in the modern day, Eloise (the historian who is researching the Carnation’s network) is due to meet Colin’s mother.
This is a fun romp through Post-revolutionary France – with likeable characters and a gripping plot. There’s a great balance of suspense and romance – and although I would have liked to have seen a bit more of Colin and Eloise, I appreciate that Willig is taking her time with those two and not rushing them into things – and that more of them might have slowed the pace of the rest of the book.
My only real problem with this book was that the copy that I got is the US edition and so it was in American English – not British English – which in books like this yanks me out of the narrative abit (sometimes to Google things – like AP French). But hey, when you have a backlog like mine, and strict rules about book spending you can’t be picky. And it’s a very minor quibble really.
There’s another three Pink Carnation books I haven’t read yet – with a twelfth and final volume due this year. I suggest you start at the beginning so that the Colin and Eloise thing works best for you, but really they all work quite well on their own. Although you may not get the running jokes. The Orchid Affair is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Kindle – but I don’t think there’s been a UK edition, which can make the prices a bit.. high (hence why it’s taken me two years to get to the Orchid Affair). But the earlier books in the series did get a UK release, so you should be able to get your hands on them – I got the first couple from my local library.
***Bonus content****
Regular readers know that I like matching books. I have a couple of this series on my kindle (and the novellas), borrowed a few from the library, and then started buying. But due to the vagaries of the book market, I have three different sizes and styles of books – out of three. There isn’t a way to shelve this and make me happy.
I need to move these to the other end of the shelf, then they can be in series order at least…
I know, I know. I’m repeating an author again, but Janet Evanovich’s One For The Money was my highest rated book that I read last week – and it seemed churlish not to give it book of the week. Trouble is, as I said a week or so back, I think Evanovich may be my new obsession, so there’s no guarantee that one of her books won’t crop up here again in the near future. Here’s hoping that the to-read pile also contains lots of other really good books so that I can get some variety going on…
My retro looking Penguin edition of One For The Money
So, One For The Money is the first book in the Stephanie Plum series – which has now run to twenty-one novels – with a twenty-second due out this year. As a side point, I love discovering a series like this when it’s been going a while – it means you have lots of time with the characters and lots of things to discover, before you reach the point where you have to wait a year for the next book to come out so you can get your fix.
Anyhow, I digress. When we meet Stephanie Plum she has lost her job as a lingerie buyer for a very third-rate company. Her flat is emptying of possessions as she hocks them to make rent, and a repo man is following her trying to take her car back. Her mum sends her over to her cousin Vinnie – who needs a secretary for his bail bond company, but Stephanie ends up blackmailing him into letting her take on a case to try to make some quick cash. Trouble is the man she’s trying to bring in is her high school crush come hate figure. And he’s a cop on the run from some very dangerous people…
I laughed out loud on the train reading this – several times – drawing a level of scrutiny from my fellow passengers that I try to avoid. It’s a bit out of my comfort zone in terms of my usual type of crime novels (you’ll have noticed by now that I tend towards the cozy and the Golden Age end of the spectrum) but it’s so funny that it didn’t bother me that the violence and suspense level was a step up from what I usually read.*
Stephanie is a little bit too dependent on getting herself helped out of trouble that she’s walked herself into for my liking, but I’m putting that down to the fact that she’s walked into bounty hunting with no clue what she’s doing and without the requisite skills – which is naive and foolhardy almost beyond belief, but I went with it because the book swings along at such a pace that you only really think about that once it’s over – because you’re laughing and turning pages too fast to notice!
I put an order in for book two within 24 hours of finishing book 1 (it’s been dispatched!)and I’m hoping that as Steph wises up, she doesn’t lose the humour and fin that I’ve enjoyed so much in this first book. Cross your fingers for me!
You should be able to buy your copy of One for the Money from the usual suspects – Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles – although I haven’t been able to find it on Kindle or Kobo.
* And it’s not much worse, really, than some of the crime-y thriller-y sections that you get in some of Charlaine Harris’s novels.
Another bonus review on the blog today – Iona Grey’s Letters to the Lost. This was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for March – and it would have been my book of the week back when I read it – except that it was a month from it’s release at the time, and I hate reading reviews of books and then not being able to buy them *rightnow*. So here we are, the book comes out today and I can tell you about it.
My copy was an advance copy – so my cover is different to the “proper” one
In modern day London, Jess breaks into an empty house to hide after running away from her violent boyfriend. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives at the house, and after opening it, Jess is drawn into the story of two lovers in 1942 – Stella and Dan, who is a US airman. And in keeping with my no spoilers policy*, that’s about all I’m going to tell you about the plot.
I’m not usually one for a weepy – and you know from very early on that there are going to be tears involved in this – but I absolutely loved this book. The characters felt real, the places felt real and the crying was definitely very real. I had very definite views about what I wanted to happen to some of the characters (which didn’t always come true) and wanted it to be longer – even though it’s already really quite long.
So if you like timeslips, weepies, World War 2 set epic romances and non sappy saga-y type books, this may be for you. It’d make a great holiday read – and if you’re a “normal” reader (which apparently I’m not, the speed I go through stuff) it’d probably last you a few days at the beach!
As I said, I got my copy in advance because I’m lucky enough to be in Curtis Brown’s Book group, but you can get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and for a bargain £3.99 (at time of writing) on Kindle.
* A policy which I’m increasingly realising means that I can’t say a lot of things that I really want to about books, but which stops me from being that person I hate, who ruins plots and shocks and reveals and spoils people’s enjoyment of books, so it stays!
This week’s BotW is Gail Carriger’s latest – Prudence – and you can’t say that I didn’t warn you that this might happen. Because I did, even if it’s a few weeks later than I thought it might turn up here. And that’s because I took an executive decision to save it for my holiday book – for our trip (to Vienna in the end) to mark a Significant Birthday for The Boy. A holiday book should be a treat, preferably something that you know you’re not going to hate, and as it was already on the to-read pile, saving this meant I didn’t incur the wrath of The Boy for buying books again…
I really like the purple and pink theme. And I’m not usually a pink person…
Anyway, Prudence is the first book in Carriger’s new series – the Custard Protocol. Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School books, there are some familiar faces, not least Prudence herself – last seen as a toddler in the Parasol Protectorate series. When Rue is given a dirigible, she names it The Spotted Custard and heads for India on a secret mission. But the situation there is not as simple as she had been lead to believe (and that wasn’t that simple to start with) and before long she’s dealing with dissidents, kidnappings and a pack of Scottish werewolves and it will take all her metanatural skills to deal with it.
Now, I’ve read all (I think) of Carriger’s other series, but I don’t think it would spoil your enjoyment of the book if you haven’t read them* as Carriger has been very careful not to give away too many spoilers for the plots of her previous books.** However, for those of us who have read the previous books, you get the delicious enjoyment of being better informed about the past than our heroine, and equally delightful anticipation of confrontations and revelations yet to come.
When I read Timeless, I spotted a few dangling threads left that I hoped were teasers of stuff yet to come – and I was on the right track. Again, my spoiler policy makes it difficult to be more specific than that, but I really like the direction that this series looks to be heading in. The only problem with having read Prudence in fact is that I now have to wait (probably) a year to find out what happens next in Imprudence – and it’s still more than six months until the final Finishing School book – Manners and Mutiny – where I finally get to find out how Sophronia’s world became Alexias.
You can buy Prudence from all the usual sources – like Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles and Kindle. I’ve also spotted it in my local library already – which I haven’t seen before – and is brilliant, because hopefully it’ll introduce more people to Gail Carriger and then they can fall in love with her world like I have.
* Although the Parasol Protectorate is the more relevant to this book if you want somewhere to start
** Although the identity of Rue’s parents is a bit of a spoiler for Souless, there’s no way to avoid that!
This week’s BotW changed on Sunday afternoon – which is quite last minute for me. As is usual by that stage in the week I had a novel in mind as my favourite of the week – and had even got as far as thinking about what i was going to say (but not as far as drafting it!). Then I picked up Janet Evanovich’s Wicked Business which I’d borrowed from the library the previous day…
My hardback library copy
This is the second book in Evanovich’s Lizzy and Diesel series,* following a cupcake baker with special powers and her mysterious and supernaturally gifted partner in crime. I’m clearly missing some of the back story, because I’m pitching up in a well established universe midway through a series which I think is a spin off in its own right. But golly I had a ball reading this and I’m residing the urge to go out and buy a whole load more of Evanovich’s books. I read this in one sitting, curled up under the blanket on the sofa, ignoring the rest of the world! It perfectly fitted my state of mine after doing a nightshift on Saturday night.
They’re not at all the same thing really, but this reminded me of the feeling that I get from reading a good Charlaine Harris novel. But funnier and with less biting! Several people have recommended Janet Evanovich to me at various points and if they’re all as much fun as this, I think her books may be my next obsession. And that is not good news for reducing the to-read pile because a new obsession always ends up with me going on a buying binge…
* I thought it was the first, but the books were listed in reverse order in the front and I didn’t notice, which is stupid of me because Evanovich’s other series has numbers in the titles!
This week’s BotW is the new novel from Eloisa James – who is one of my favourite historical romance authors. Four Nights with the Duke is book 8 in her Desperate Duchesses series. My first Eloisa book was Desperate Duchesses 3 – Duchess by Night – which I stumbled across at the library back when I still lived in Essex (so 5+ years ago) and when she returned to the series to add a 7th book last year I was thrilled. Although I’m still really annoyed that we only got a UK paperback release of books 1 – 4 – I had to buy 5 and 6 from the US to read them as they weren’t on Kindle at that point – and then the paperbacks started again with 7. And of course none of them match…
The Historical Romance bookshelf – three difference sizes across the same author in some cases. Your basic nightmare.
Four Nights with the Duke is the second story in the second generation of the Duchesses – which appears to be subtitled “Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers”. Four Nights tells the story of Mia and Vander. Mia needs to get married (no, not because of that) and the only person she can turn to is a man she swore that she would never marry (and he was there when she did the swearing). Vander definitely doesn’t want to marry Mia – after all her father was his mother’s mistress and he’s still Very Angry* about that. But Mia has a rather incriminating piece of paper that means that he’s going to have to do it, or lose everything. So he offers her a deal – he’ll marry her, but he’ll only spend 4 nights a year with her (if you know what I mean) and she’s going to have to beg him for them…
Now that sort of set up is totally my sort of thing** – this is a plot device that totally floats my boat – the spouses at war/married because we had to trope is one of my favourites – right up there with fake engagements and you’ve been like a sibling to me until…x. Not an accidental pregnancy in sight (yay!). Add to that the fact that Mia has an alter ego as a romance novelist and I’m in historical romance heaven. And Eloisa James is such a safe pair of hands. There’s never an anachronism that I can spot, or a jarring word (except when I’ve got the American editions with the Wrong Spelling) or something that seems just too improbable – even for romance.
I read this practically in one big gulp on Easter Sunday – pausing only (with less than 50 pages remaining) to go to the big family meal at my auntie’s in the evening – and if I could have put off leaving to finish it, I would have done. The only problem with that is that I’ve now got to wait a year until there’s another one, and I think I’ve practically read the whole of the Eloisa James back catalogue now – as evidenced by the Kindle folder and the romance folder…
The Kindle folder for Eloisa James books is three pages long
Having read some Historical Romance recently that I was less than crazy about – and a couple of books that weren’t as good as I was hoping they would be as well, I was really pleased that this totally lived up to the hype that I had given it in my head. It’s not my favourite in the series (a toss up between a Duke of Her Own and Duchess by Night) but it’s still really, really good. If you’re not a historical romance reader – and want to see what the genre is all about, Eloisa James along with Julia Quinn and Sarah MacLean are the authors I recommend as starting points (they’re also the authors that keep hold of after I’ve read them – as you can tell from the romance shelf).
You can get your copy of Four Nights with the Duke from all the usual sources – it’s got a paperback release – so Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles are all stocking it – and you never know, it might even make it into WH Smiths and the supermarkets too. And obviously, like me, you can buy it for Kindle or ebook.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I bought my copy of Four Nights – but I am in Eloisa’s fan outreach-y group on Facebook. But I’m posting this because I loved the book – not because they told me to.
BONUS PICTURE: Another brilliant example of the difference between UK romance covers and US ones…
* Sorry, I was watching Pretty Woman over the weekend – and writing that sentence made me think of this quote: “I was very angry with him. It cost me ten thousand dollars in therapy to say that sentence: “I was very angry him.” I do it very well, don’t I? I’ll say it again: I was very angry with him. “Hello, my name is Mr. Lewis, I am very angry with my father.” Although obviously Vander is angry with his mother and Mia’s Father, not his father. But still. It’s a good line.
** The Smart Bitches would call it my catnip. I’m not sure whether I can pull off calling something my catnip. I think I might be too British/dull/self conscious.
I really struggled to pick a favourite book from last week. Not because I didn’t like anything, but there wasn’t one book I really wanted to shout about – except my book club book – and that’s not out til next month, so I’ll tell you about that when you can actually buy it!
In the end, I have settled on Charlaine Harris’s Midnight Crossroad – which I got through NetGalley*. It’s the first book in her new series (I think it’s pegged at three books) – and her first post-Sookie creation. I’ve now read all of the Southern Vampire series, all of the Harper Connelly series, all of the Lily Bard series – and three of the Aurora Teagardens** so I guess you could say that I’m a fan. I find her books really easy to read, her world building ticks my boxes and although each series clearly does have a formula, they are original enough that they don’t seem like the same book with new names if you know what I mean.
So Midnight Crossing is the convergence of the supernatural world of Sookie – and the worlds that we’ve seen in her other series – and to me it seems to try to root them all firmly in the same universe – which is something I’ve always wondered about. There are some familiar faces from the previous series – and I’ve had trouble writing this without giving you spoilers.
The residents of Midnight might look normal (mostly), but they’re all hiding something. Manfred has just moved to town and is about to discover that still waters really do run deep. Ummmm. And that’s about all I can say without giving too much away. The story has multiple points of view, which can be a bit confusing at first, but it does work to establish the different characters and set up the town from the inside out as well as Manfred looking in. But that’s not to say that by the end of the book you’ll know all the answers.
It’s not perfect, it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read – but it really is a nice way of passing an afternoon, especially if you’ve read the previous series. It’s not the same genre really as the True Blood books – but it’s closer to them than any of her other series are.
As I said, my copy came from NetGalley – in advance of the UK paperback release on April 9 – you can pre-order that from Amazon or Foyles. I can hear you pointing out the contradiction in not having my Book Club book as BotW because it’s not out yet – and then reviewing this which isn’t out for another week, and to that I offer you the Kindle link (and for the US readers, the amazon.com link because the paperback is already out there!) – although I’m sure the price will drop once the paperback comes out. But you can get a sample now to see if you like it, while you can’t even get a sneak peak of my Book Club novel yet – it’s not out for three and a half weeks (or indeed the end of May in the US). And it’s cruel to recommend something and make people wait that long!
* Having been reading the Dear Author palarva over the weekend, I’ve resolved to make sure I’m even more upfront about where my books come from – I already say on Goodreads if my copy was from NetGalley or similar, and I try to here, but I’m redoubling my efforts. Transparency is key…
** I’ve bought book four after reading Midnight Crossing. I suspect the second Omnibus is in my future…
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 