Category: week in books

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: The Love Hypothesis

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I read a lot of books on holiday last week including a lot of mysteries but breaking with recent trends I’m going for a romance novel. But as I said yesterday there were lots of things I want to talk about, so I suspect you’ll be hearing about more of them soon anyway.

Olive needs to convince her best friend that she’s over her ex (because her best friend fancies him and won’t date him until Olive has found someone else). Because they’re all PHD students, Anh is demanding empirical proof of this, so Olive has a bit of a panic and kisses the first man she sees. Unfortunately the man in question is Adam Carlsen – a rising star in the science world, a professor at the uni and also known as a tyrant towards his PHD students. But for some reason, he agrees to her proposal that he be her fake boyfriend. But the more time they spend together, the more Olive finds that she may actually quite like him. But that wasn’t the deal was it? But what really is going on between them – and can it survive a science conference where Olive’s career takes a bit of a turn?

Goodness me I love a fake relationship romance and this one works really well. It’s all told from Olive’s point of view, which I wasn’t expecting, but it means that you *think* you know what’s going on with Adam, but you’re never quite sure. I don’t know a lot about the world of academia, but I did like the fact that the book explicitly addressed the issues of a relationship between teacher and a student and spelled out the reasons why it was ok and what they had done about it. I was worried for a little while that the denouement was going to rely on a Stupid Misunderstanding or People Not Having Basic Conversations which are two of my pet peeves in the romance genre, but it doesn’t and it’s actually really neatly done. I raced through it in an evening and was really sad when it was over. I was always an arts and languages person at school and not a STEM one, so I loved the details about what it’s like working in labs and working in higher levels of academia. This is Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel and I am really looking forward to seeing what she writes next.

My copy of The Love Hypothesis came from the library, but it’s out now in paperback, Kindle, Kobo and audiobook. The paperback isn’t showing any click and collect on Foyles’ website, so I suspect it may be an order it in thing – at the moment at any rate. One last thing: helpfully there are some content warnings for the book on Ali Hazelwood’s website – mild spoilers ahoy.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 15 – November 21

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So I have a confession. I’ve been on holiday again. I valiantly went to Gran Canaria for a week to help Him Indoors use up some leave before the end of the calendar year. And it was delightful. Very chilled out and lovely and warm. I also did a lot of reading. I’m making good progress on the Barbara Pym biography – but it’s very long, and I have been reading it on the iPad and my kindle wouldn’t hook up to the Wifi to sync so I couldn’t read it on the beach – so it’s not finished yet. And I didn’t take Almost English and Heroine Complex with me so they’re still ongoing (since last holiday – eek!). But I did read really quite a lot and lots of it good. Plenty of stuff to talk about. I just need to figure out when I’m going to do it. This week is back to normal really – I just need to catch up on everything I’ve missed in the last week… wish me luck!

Read:

Weekend at Thrackley by Alan Melville

IQ by Joe Ide 

Home for a Cowboy Christmas by Donna Grant*

Wish Upon a Cowboy by Donna Grant*

Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris*

Death Under the Dryer by Simon Brett

Stormy Weather by Carl Hiassen

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Sealed Off by Barbara Ross

Shucked Apart by Barbara Ross

Started:

Garment of Shadows by Laurie R King

Theroux The Keyhole by Louis Theroux

The Tormentors by George Bellairs

Still reading:

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*

I have been very restrained and haven’t bought anything since the two books at the airport last weekend. Check me out!

Bonus photo: Of course it’s from the holiday. What else would it be. Here’s the lagoon by the beach at Maspalomas. And it was as lovely and sunny as this looks.

Lagoon and sand dunes with glorious blue sky

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Book of the Week, crime, Forgotten books, mystery

Book of the Week: Murder in the Basement

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Another week, another British Library Crime Classic pick. I’m not going to apologise though because they’ve got seem to have changed their Kindle Unlimited selection and you have to take advantage of that while you can!

Murder in the Basement opens with a newly married couple moving into their first house together and promptly discovering a corpse being in the cellar. It has been there for some time and Chief Inspector Moresby’s first task is to figure out who it is. The first section of the book deals with the routine police work necessary to try and identify a body in pre-DNA times. When Moresby discover it, the reader is still left in the dark – you know it is a woman who worked at a school – but not which one. The next section of the story is a book within a book as you read the novel that Moresby’s friend Roger Sheringham wrote while working at the school and try to figure out who the victim is. And then the final section features the attempt to prove a case against the Very Obvious Suspect.

Now if I’ve made that sound complicated, I apologise but do go with me – it makes much more sense when you read it and it really is very cleverly put together and out of the ordinary for Golden Age crime novels. This is only my second Anthony Berkeley and from what I can deduce from my review of the other one I didn’t like that anywhere near as much as this one. I can’t quite work out whether part of my delight in this is because I love a boarding school story so much that seeing the seething rivalries between the teachers in the book within a book really really works for me, but it may well have something to do with it. Moresby and Sheringham are both interesting characters and the resolution is somewhat unexpected. Definitely worth a look – especially if you’re a Kindle Unlimited member.

And if you aren’t a Kindle unlimited person, the kindle edition isn’t too much to buy or you could just get the paperback. I assume the Kobo edition will reappear when it rotates out of KU.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 8 – November 14

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For some reason I’m on a mega murder mystery kick at the morning  even more than usual I mean. I’m putting it down to there being lots of good options in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, but it could just be that it’s autumn and I want to be curled up on the sofa with a good book and the mystery options have appealed more than the romance ones so far!

Read:

These Names Make Clues by E R C Lorac

The Body in the Attic by Judi Lynn

Murder in the Basement by Anthony Berkeley

Resorting to Murder ed Martin Edwards

The Stabbing at the Stables by Simon Brett

What Child Is This by Rhys Bowen

Take the Lead by Jessica Simpson

Started:

Home for a Cowboy Christmas by Donna Grant*

Weekend at Thrackley by Alan Melville

Death Under the Dryer by Simon Brett

IQ by Joe Ide 

The Dublin Railway Murder by Thomas Morris*

Still reading:

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*

Two actual books and an ebook. Positively restrained!

Bonus photo: somewhat unoriginal this week I have to say, but here’s a misty morning in London.

Fitzroy Square on a misty morning

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

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

Book of the Week: These Names Make Clues

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I mean I would say that this is slightly cheating but you know that already because I told you yesterday that I hadn’t quite finished this because I went to see Jools Holland, so you already know that I finished this on Monday. But I did read most of it last week and it is my favourite thing I (mostly) read last week so it’s fair game for this.

These Names Makes Clues is a classic closed group mystery. Detective Inspector MacDonald is invited to a treasure hunt at the house of a well-known publisher. Along the other guests are writers of mysteries, romances and other books all with pseudonyms to hide their identities as part of the game. But before the night is over, one of the guests has been found dead in the telephone room and MacDonald is suddenly involved in an investigation filled with fake names and complicated alibis.

I really enjoyed this. I’ve recommended some books by E C R Lorac before and this is right up there. There are plenty of mysteries among the cast of suspects, even though some of them are revealed quite late on which is verging on cheating for the rules of Golden Age mystery writing but I forgave it because it’s a proper thrill ride towards the end as it all unravels. If you have kindle unlimited this is definitely worth a look as it’s currently in the rotation of British Library Crime Classics included in your membership in the UK.

My copy of These Names Make Clues came from the British Library bookshop during my book buying spree on my London trip in mid-October, but as mentioned above it’s available on Kindle Unlimited at the moment – which means I can’t find it on other ebook vendors, but when the unlimited period ends it may well pop up on Kobo again.

Happy reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: November 1 – November 7

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Such a busy week. And sort of more like the old days in some ways, in that I stayed three nights down in London – except that the nights were in a Travelodge not a Youth Hostel (the hostels are still doing one booking one room and the only room they had left had 8 beds so the hotel was cheaper!) and there were two parties in the evenings. Less like the old days in that I managed to fall over on Wednesday lunchtime and turn one ankle over and graze the opposite knee, leaving me with one ankle larger than the other, a limp and the laughter of the builders who saw it happen ringing in my ears. Still at least my tights weren’t ruined – that would have made my embarrassment even more acute. It turns out there is something to be said for expensive opaques after all. Any way, all the partying had a bit of an effect on the reading. Never mind, at least nothing is broken. Oh and if you missed them last week – don’t forget the Mini Reviews from October!

Read:

The Witness at the Wedding by Simon Brett

Crazy Stupid Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

A Surprise for Christmas edited by Martin Edwards

Isn’t it Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams

A Cup of Joe by Annabeth Adams

Started:

The Stabbing at the Stables by Simon Brett

These Names Make Clues by E R C Lorac

Still reading:

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*

Nothing – except for an ebook copy of The Unknown Ajax, which I already own in paperback, hardback and audiobook so can hardly be said to count…

Bonus photo: I could have used a picture of my injured ankle, but no one wants to see my Foot of Many Colours, so instead, here’s my Sunday night out at Jools Holland – a gig I booked two years ago and that should have happened a year ago but also the reason why I didn’t finish These Names Are Clues on Sunday…

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Book of the Week, new releases, romance

Book of the Week: All the Feels

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Welcome to post two of this week’s start of month extravaganza. As it’s a Tuesday, this is Book of the Week as usual but it’s also a new release – that dropped onto my Kindle on Tuesday last week and was in front of my eyeballs soon after. I’m slightly inside my year rule for author repeats, but this is a different series of Dade’s and as I said I’m being timely for once!

All the Feels is the follow up to Spoiler Alert, set in the same world and with an overlapping timeline – if you care about spoilers you’ll want to read Spoiler Alert first. Our hero, Alex, is one of the stars of a Game of Thrones-esque TV behemoth. After a fight in a bar while filming the final season of the show he finds himself with a new minder – Lauren – who is going to watch his every move until the last season airs. He is not very keen on the arrangement, but once she’s living in his guest house, he discovers that he actually might like hanging around with her. Lauren was in holiday in Spain when her awful cousin roped her in to babysitting one of his misbehaving actors. Burnt out from her job in the ER, looking after a spoilt star should surely be a breeze. But what she discovers behind the bad headlines is a man who cares – really very much – about the people around him and who doesn’t always think before he jumps in to try and rescue them. Then another scandal puts Alex in even more trouble and loses Lauren her job. But Alex isn’t ready to let her go and starts trying to figure out a way to keep him in his life.

This is fun and sweet and was exactly what I needed last week. Alex is the hero equivalent of a big friendly puppy – maybe a golden retriever – who bounces around causing chaos with a flick of his tail. If you’ve read Spoiler Alert, you’ll know what the scandal is that loses Lauren her job and you’ll also know that like Marcus, Alex likes to write a bit of fan fiction. You get extracts of that, plus the delightful group messages between the God of the Gates stars at appropriate points between chapters of the story. I didn’t reread Spoiler Alert before I read this, but if my memory is correct this is probably a little less… explicit than you might expect from Alex’s very frank disclosures in that. But that’s not to say it doesn’t have any bedroom action – because it does, but it comes later in the story than maybe you would expect based on what you already knew about Alex in the last book.

Flicking through the goodreads reviews (always dangerous I know), I can see that this has divided opinion somewhat, with some people feeling like it didn’t live up to Spoiler Alert and not buying the chemistry or liking Alex. I liked them as a couple but I can see how people would have taken a dislike to Alex – based on seeing him through Lauren’s point of view at the start. But I think that sorts it out once you get into his POV and also realise a bit more about how Lauren sees herself and the way that her family treat her. And as for not living up to Spoiler Alert – that probably depends on which tropes you like and possibly on the steam level you’re expecting from this. Spoiler Alert missed out on Book of that Week here – mostly because I read it very close to Well Met which was just glorious and has a slightly similar feel in terms of fandoms and the like.

So All the Feels is out now in the UK – on Kindle, Kobo and in paperback. But because of supply chain issues, its release in the States has been pushed back a few weeks – sorry not sorry that for once the UK readers have got something first!

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 25 – October 31

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So I’m getting there on getting that still reading list down. The sticking points are the ones with physical copies – and the fact that my bag is full enough for the commute without adding one of them in. Excuses, excuses. And as today is the first of the month, a bumper crop of posts this week – we have Book of the Week tomorrow, mini reviews on Wednesday and October Stats on Thursday. Check me out with the organisation. I both love and hate when the first of the month falls on a Monday.

Read:

Before the Coffee Gets Cold: Tales from the Cafe by Toshikazu Kawaguchi*

All The Feels by Olivia Dade

The Black Pages by Nnedi Okorafor

Stealing the Crown by T P Fielden

The Hanging in the Hotel by Simon Brett

Pirate King by Laurie R King

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan*

2043: Merman I Should Turn to Be by Nisi Shawl

Started:

The Witness at the Wedding by Simon Brett

Crazy Stupid Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams

Still reading:

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*

A pre-order arrived – but I don’t think I actually bought anything…

Bonus photo: a misty Tuesday morning in London last week – as previously mentioned, this is Fitzroy Square – sometime home to the offices of Maisie Dobbs in Jaqueline Winspear’s series.

Fitzroy Square in London

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley

 

Book of the Week, detective, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: The Man Who Died Twice

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Why, hello. I bet you weren’t expecting this were you? What do you mean you were? Am I that predictable? Yes. I am. We all know I am. It’s why you love me. I know you love me really. Deep down. Definitely. Probably. Maybe. Sometimes. Perhaps.

This is the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club, which you can’t possibly have missed over the course of the last year – even despite the pandemic. Written by Richard Osman of Pointless and House of Games fame; the first book sold loads, it’s been everywhere that sells books and some places that don’t usually sell them. And it was a Book of the Week here too.

The Man Who Died Twice finds our gang of pensioners with a fresh set of troubles. A figure from Elizabeth’s past has reappeared and it’s going to be a real headache. Joyce and Ron are eager to help out, but Ibrahim has some issues of his own to resolve. There are diamonds, mobsters, spies, drugs and a collection of bodies that threatens to grow at speed. It’s all really quite dangerous. Will the foursome manage to solve the find the diamond, solve the murder and take their revenge?

First of all it’s lovely to be back in the Thursday Murder Club world. I was a bit worried about whether this sequel would be able to live up to the first, but actually it’s a joy. The characters continue to be a delight – and the more we find out about them the more I like them. And because the central foursome are already established we also get to see some more of their non-retirement complex friends and see some more potential plot strands develop. And of course we learn more about Elizabeth, Joyce, Rob and Ibrahim. I really, really enjoyed it – and for once I managed to pace myself and make it last a bit as well!

My copy of The Man Who Died Twice came via NetGalley but it’s out now in hardback as well as Kindle and Kobo and will be available absolutely everywhere. Foyles have even got some signed copies. And I suspect it’s going to be an awful lot of people’s go to book gift this year. As I write this, it sits at the top of the best seller list, while its predecessor is on top of the paperback chart. Domination indeed.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: October 18 – October 24

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Am I reading the Fetherings series at a pace that looks like it could be a classic Verity Binge? Why yes. Should I be reading other stuff? Almost certainly. Do I care? Well, slightly, but not enough to exert any will power! Another busy week as well – with two more trips to the theatre (!) and a bit of socialising too. How did I use to fit all this in?!

Read:

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman*

The Torso in the Town by Simon Brett

One More Christmas at the Castle by Trisha Ashley*

Murder in the Museum by Simon Brett

Peggy of the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent Dyer

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Marilyn Monroe by FX Feeney

Started:

The Hanging in the Hotel by Simon Brett

Stealing the Crown by T P Fielden

Still reading:

Index, A History of the by Dennis Duncan*

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Heroine Complex by Sarah Kuhn

The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne*

Pirate King by Laurie R King

I mean I was going to say that I bought less books than last week, but that might be a lie, as I put in two more preorders, the Chalet School on the list was a preorder that I ended up reading straight away and another preoreder arrived to. And on top of that it was a good week for cheap kindle books…

Bonus photo: This is from &Juliet on Monday night, which was truly the most astounding musical I have seen in a long time. I have a lot of thoughts, upper most of which is that I need to go again because David Bedella was off when we saw it!

An * next to a book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley