Category: Book of the Week

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: One For The Money

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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…

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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.

Book of the Week, historical, literary fiction

Review: Letters to the Lost

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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.

Iona Grey's Letters to the lost
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!

Book of the Week, Fantasy, new releases, reviews, Uncategorized

Book of the Week: Prudence

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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…

Gail Carriger's Prudence
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!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Wicked Business

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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…

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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!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Four Nights with the Duke

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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…

Romance paperbacks
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.

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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…

picture of kindle screen
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.

Eloisa James books
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.

Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, reviews, Uncategorized

Book of the Week: Midnight Crossroad

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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…

Book of the Week, books, Children's books, Young Adult

Book of the Week: Wonder

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This week’s BotW is RJ Palacio’s Wonder.  It was hands down my favourite book of last week’s reading –  I was enjoying it so much I nearly took it to London when I went down for work at the weekend – even though it was a hardback library copy!  And the first thing I did when I got home on Sunday afternoon was to curl up on the sofa and finish it.

Wonder is the story of Auggie – born with a terrible facial abnormality and starting school for the first time after years of home schooling.  With multiple narrators, you see the world from his point of view and from those of the people around him as he tries to fit in and make friends and be “normal”.

If I could have read this in one sitting, I would have done (don’t you just hate it when real life gets in the way of reading?!), it’s that kind of book.  It really is one of those novels where you fall in love with the characters and the world and don’t want to leave it behind. And you can insert my usual comment about the state of my to-read pile meaning I don’t get to good stuff soon enough – because this has been on my to-read list since it was mentioned in an Emerald Street mailing soon after it came out.

I need to get my own copy – firstly because my library copy didn’t have “The Julian Chapter” in the end of it and secondly because I want to lend it to my sister and my mum.  And I want to read it again.  It’s that sort of book.  And don’t be put off by the fact that it’s a children’s/YA book if you don’t usually read that sort of thing.  It’s really worth it.

You can get your copy of Wonder from Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Waterstones etc.  You won’t regret it.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Fantasy, Series I love

Book of the Week: Timeless

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I had real trouble choosing the BotW this week – because I don’t like repeating – and Gail Carriger has a new book out  on Kindle TODAY and in paperback on Thursday (and my pre-order hasn’t dispatched yet – Amazon I’m watching you – you didn’t use to delay posting pre-orders to those of us who refuse to pay postage…) and if Prudence is half as good as her other stuff, it’s going to be a candidate for BotW as well.

But I’ve enjoyed Timeless and the whole Parasol Protectorate series so much, it would have been disingenuous not to pick it as a BotW – especially as it was the my favourite thing I read last week.  It’s my own fault for saving Timeless because I didn’t want Alexia’s story to be over.

Timeless by Gail Carriger
I don’t love this cover shot – although the costume is one from the book, I think the face is… odd!

Timeless is the fifth and final volume in the story of Alexia Tarabotti – a preturnatural in steam punk Victorian London.   And I can’t really say much more than that about the plot of Timeless because anything else would be Spoiling The Previous Four Books.   Ms Carriger was on my list of Discoveries of 2014 – and I said then that she was well on course to be on my automatic pre-order list if Timeless didn’t do something dreadful and disillusioning.  And it didn’t.  It’s not my favourite of the series, but it is still pretty darn fantastic and ties up a lot of the dangling threads from the previous books and then sets up a few new questions too.

Alexia is a fabulous creation – and the world that she lives in is equally brilliant.  Carriger has worked out how her world works and wears that very lightly – in fact she’s a big old tease.  She really doesn’t want to tell you her secrets – unlike some authors who can’t wait to dump all the rules of the world on you.  Even in this last book in the series we’re still discovering new things about Alexia’s abilities – and you get the feeling that Carriger has had this planned all along – none of it comes across as invented for this book.  Which either means she’s brilliant at long term plotting – or she’s really good at faking it.

I’ve read all the Finishing School books* that have been released so far – and I can’t wait to see how that pans out – because the world of 20 years before Alexia is very different.  And I’m so excited to read Prudence and see what happened next.

The Parasol Protectorate books
My soul is so outrage that the set doesn’t match I can’t shelve them like this

Gosh this review is gushy.  Sorry.  Now this is where I would usually put links to the book of the week so you can run away and buy it.  But if you haven’t read the other four books in the series first, you really won’t appreciate it – so go and buy Soulless from Amazon or Foyles or Waterstones or on Kindle and get started on Alexia’s story.  I’m off to re-read them.  And don’t tell me off if there’s some more Carriger on here soon…

* In fact Etiquette and Espionage was my first Carriger book – thank you NetGalley for throwing that one in my path – and after I read that and Curtsies and Conspiracies  and then started on The Parasol Protectorate.  NB in light of the Wrong Size issue in my Parasol set, I am reading Finishing School on Kindle – and waiting til the end of the series to buy myself a matching set.  What kind of crazy person am I?!

My Shelving solution
My Shelving Solution – but I cannot allow a repeat of this situation with the Finishing School books!
Book of the Week, historical, Thriller

Book of the Week: Black Roses

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This week’s BotW is Jane Thynne’s Black Roses – a Nazi Germany set spy thriller – and another example of why I need to get the to-read pile under control.  Clara Vine’s mother is German and she heads to Berlin to find acting work at the famous Ufa studios.  She gets drawn into a circle of high-ranking Nazi wives – and is soon recruited by British intelligence to report on the goings on in the elite.

Nazi Germany is possible one of my least favourite historical settings as a general rule.  I like World War Two settings – but usually from the British side of the fence as anything involving Germany itself has potential to be tremendously depressing. But this has an interesting concept and is also book one in a series (more on this later) so I was fairly confident going in that the heroine would still be alive at the end of the book*!

Clara’s adventures are tense and atmospheric and Thynne paints a vivid picture of what it was like in Berlin in 1933.  As I’ve mentioned, I don’t usually “do” Nazi Germany – and it’s a period of history that I’ve always managed to avoid having to study in any depth, so I can’t really pass comment on whether it all fits with the facts – but the historical note at the end was useful for clarifying some of the bits that I had thought were the most bizarre.

I mentioned at the top that this is another lesson in why I need to deal with the book backlog – and this is a particularly ridiculous example.  I bought this on Kindle in October 2013 (!) and it’s been sitting in my unread folder forgotten about since then. In October this year I picked up book 2 in the series in Tesco and then picked out book 3 on NetGalley. When I came to update my Goodreads, I realised that I had book 1 and went back to read in order.  I’m really glad that I liked it so much – as I already have the other two!  And as I said, another example of why I need to get my to-read pile under control.

You can get Black Roses from Amazon, Foyles and Waterstones and on Kindle.

* One of my least favourite book tactics is the book which kills off the hero/heroine at the end.  I’m not saying it isn’t a valid plot device, I’m just saying that, for me, nothing takes the shine off a book that I’ve enjoyed than flood of tears because a character that I liked has been killed off to shock/prove a point.

Book of the Week, books, Chick lit, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Creature Comforts

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Regular readers to the blog will be unsurprised to discover that this week’s BotW is the new novel from Trisha Ashley.  The first review on this blog (and one of the earliest posts) was of her last book Every Woman for Herself  and I’ve been waiting eagerly for Creature Comforts ever since. And I managed to control myself – and read the book across three days, rather in one sitting.

Creature Comforts tells the story of Izzy, who returns to her childhood home of Halfhidden, after years travelling around the world.  She’s just broken up with her fiancé Kieran and is looking for answers about a tragic accident she was involved in as a teenager.  On top of that, she’s starting a new business and helping her friends with a plan to regenerate the village by getting more tourists in.  And her aunt’s dog rescue centre is in a spot of bother – with money and with the new owner of the estate that owns the land…

I love the corner of Lancashire that Trisha Ashley has created – and Halfhidden is a great addition to it.  I liked the dynamics of Izzy and her gang of friends – and there’s some fun supporting characters (as usual) who are quirky in a non-irritating way.  The plot’s a good one too – as Izzy tries to discover what happened that fateful night.  Trisha’s heroines always have a bit of baggage behind them to overcome – and I liked that Izzy’s wasn’t a husband/ex-partner as it so often is with books in this sort of genre.  I also really empathised over her ex-fiancé – who reminded me of one of my ex-boyfriends* with his attitude towards her and her life.

As usual, after reading on of Trisha’s books, I wanted to go back and read the earlier ones – this is partly because there are always little references to them, enabling you to catch a glimpse of what’s going on with some of your old friends, and reminding you how much you enjoyed reading about their lives.

Creature Comforts is Trisha’s first book to get a hardback release – you can buy it on Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and hopefully in stores too.  The Kindle edition is available too and you can pre-order the paperback too if you can control yourself and wait until June.

 

*Although my exboyfriend didn’t cause me any of the trouble that Kieran causes Izzy!