A tricky choice this week – I didn’t finish a lot, and there’s a lot of repeat authors here. And I’ve been super busy, so that means I don’t have a lot of time to write. But as I’ve read three Lucky Harbor books in as many weeks, this seemed like a good option. Anyway, to the book…
Grace never thought she’d end up in a town like Lucky Harbor. Her super successful parents had plans and ideas for how they wanted her life to turn out and she’s never wanted to make them feel disappointed in the little girl they adopted. But when the job she moved across country for turned out to have some sexual strings attached, she knew it wasn’t the job for her. But that left her without a job and a long way from home and she doesn’t know how she’s going to sort this out before her parents find out. Then she ends up dog sitting and then baby sitting for local doctor Josh. Josh has got far too much on his plate. His son is only communicating in barks since his sister brought home Tank the puppy. And his sister has got a serious case of rebellion going on, after the accident that killed their parents and left her in a wheelchair. Soon he and grace are getting on really well and the sparks are flying, but they both know that this can only be a temporary thing – after all she isn’t staying in town and he’s been burnt before and doesn’t want to upset what balance he does have in his life. Right?
So Lucky Harbor books come in threes, and this is the third of its groups, so if you’re reading in order you’ve already seen Grace’s arrival in town and the friendship that she’s built with Amy and Mallory, the heroines of the previous two books in the series, as well asserting glimpses of Josh as he interacted with his friends in town. This makes this book extra satisfying because you’re already engaged with the characters and invested in a happy ending for them. Jill Shalvis is so good at these small town romances. Her characters are three dimensional and their backstories feel very realistic. And the writing is so witty – you get to laugh as well as getting a happy ending. What more could you want?
As you can tell, I got my copy from Barnes and Noble as part of an omnibus edition, but you should be able to get hold of these fairly easily as ebooks from all the usual sources although the paperbacks may be a little harder to find in the UK, but I have found them in the library on occasion too.
After a good week of reading last week I was spoilt for choice forBotW options, but in the end I went for a new to me author and series that I picked up in a secondhand shop during one of my lunchtime strolls through Washington DC.
Casey is a private eye. Or at least she would be if it wasn’t for a spell in jail that means that she can’t get a licence in her current home in North Carolina. What she actually is, is the person doing all the hard work for Bobby D, an overweight eating machine who doesn’t want to do anything that means he needs to leave the office. Casey’s current job is some security work for a local senatorial candidate. Mary Lee Masters decided she needed extra protection when she started getting threatening phone calls, so when she finds a dead body in her car it’s Casey she calls for help. Soon Casey is investigating some very seedy dealings and trying to keep the fact that she doesn’t have a licence under wraps from Detective Bill Butler.
Long-term readers may remember me tearing a streak through Janet Evanovich’s back catalogue, in particular the Stephanie Plum series, and that I’m always looking for books and series that scratch a similar itch. I think this might be one of them. Casey is a so much fun to read about. She’s smart and tough and knows what she’s good at – and she’s good at her job. Casey is no damsel in distress who needs rescuing. She’s running away from her past, but she knows she’s doing it and that she’ll have to face up to it some day. The mystery is well plotted and twisty and all the characters are well drawn. I also really liked Southern setting, which is so well described I can almost smell it. I’ll definitely be looking for the next book in the series.
Legwork first came out in 1997 – three years after Stephanie Plum, which makes it another older series which I’ve discovered years after the fact. Clearly I need to do some more research and digging to see if there are anymore unconventional female sleuth series from that era that I’m missing out on.
As I mentioned earlier, my copy was secondhand, but it’s still available in Kindle or in paperback if you want to take a look. In fact the whole series is available for free on Kindle Unlimited if you’re a member (which I’m not, we all know I’ve got enough access to books as it is and the to-read pile is already massive!)
This is more like it isn’t it? I’m back in the grove and have also discovered some of Washington’s bookshops, which may be dangerous! But I’ve also joined the library, so that may help reduce temptation! The first of my visitors from home arrives this week, so the reading run may not continue…
Read:
Aunty Lee’s Delights by Ovidia Yu
Frill Kill by Laura Childs
Legwork by Katy Munger
Death in the Spotlight by Robin Stevens
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
At Last by Jill Shalvis
Masked Ball at Broxley Manor by Rhys Bowen
Started:
Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen
Death of a Russian Doll by Barbara Early
Still reading:
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Fear by Bob Woodward
To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas
Five books bought – two secondhand, three new. And two library books borrowed too.
Bonus picture: part of the cozy crime section in my local Barnes and Noble!
Another super quick BotW post – I’m sorry. It’s been so busy. And it’s a day late because of the end of the month Stats. Sorry again. Anyway, this week’s BotW gave me some happy hours reminiscing about some of my teenage reading last week, and I thought it was worth a mention here. If you’ve been hanging around here a while, you’ll know that I’ve written a fair bit about fiction for teenage girls and middle graders in the past – from my weekend at a book conference all about them, through my enduring love of classics like Drina and the Chalet School, through new books like the Wells and Wong series, the Sinclair Mysteries and everything in between, so you can probably tell from looking at the cover that Paperback Crush would be right up my street…
Paperback Crush’s subtitle is “The Totally Radical History of 80s and 90s Teen Fiction” and author Gabrielle Moss takes a fairly deep dive into the American books of those two decades. If you read the Babysitters Club, any of the Sweet Valley iterations or the revamped Nancy Drews, there’s something here for you. I was delighted to rediscover a couple of series’ I’d forgotten about – like the boarding school series which I read a few of in the school library and was never able to find again. This also covers some of the single titles and the notable authors – like Caroline B Cooney’s Face on the Milk Carton, and it’s sequels which I remember devouring as an early teen and then watching the TV movie of!
This is an exclusively American book though, so if like me, you were a reader in the UK, some of your favourites and the series that you remember most won’t be here – there’s no Trebizon for example, which was one of the few “new” boarding school stories I remember reading. It’s also exclusively about girls fiction – so there’s no three investigators, or Hardy Boys – but it does touch on career books a little.
My copy came via NetGalley, but Paperback Crush is out at the end of the month in the US and the UK – my suspicion is that you’ll need to order it in specially, rather than happen across it in the store. Here’s the link for Amazon paperback and Kindle pre-orders if you want to get your bids in early.
I don’t know of you noticed but it was a bit of a busy news week. Also I want to the baseball, and I came home with a baseball from a player which I sort of caught basically this week’s list is short. Sorry, not sorry.
Read:
S is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Foster
The Spotted Dog by Kerry Greenwood
Lucky in Love by Jill Shalvis
Started:
To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas
The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish
Still reading:
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Fear by Bob Woodward
And I went to Barnes and Noble, so the fact that I restrsined myself to just one book should actually be celebrated. Even if it was an omnibus. And I bought an ebook earlier in the week too. So sue me.
Bonus picture: my baseball from Marlins @ Nats on Tuesday night.
I treated myself to this the day before my flight, and what greater treat to read for part of my flight (I slept and watched two documentary films* too) than the first Daisy Dalrymple book in quite a while. Long term reader may remember my long time love of Daisy – which has spawned my (mostly unsuccessful) quest for more similar sort of mysteries.
We rejoin Daisy and her family as they prepare for a visit from the long lost relatives she discovered in a previous book (Heirs of the Body). As part of the visit they make a trip to the Crystal Palace, where they stumble upon a body. Of course Daisy can’t help but get involved in the investigation. Over the course of the investigation there’s nightclubs, showgirls and Russian emigrés. Meanwhile in the background there’s a chance of a promotion for Alec. Can Daisy solve the crime? And is Alec ready for a new job?
It’s always nice to be back in Daisy’s world and this is particularly fun because there’s a lot of familiar faces showing up here from earlier books, some of whom we haven’t seen for a really long time. It’s not my favourite book in the series, but that was mostly because I wanted a bit more from the actual mystery. But as far as historical cozy crime series go, it’s hard to beat Daisy.
You should be able to get this in ebook from all the usual places like Kindle and Kobo, but I suspect the physical book will be harder to find in bookshops unless you order it in. Do yourself a favour though, if you’re new to Daisy and go back at start at the beginning and Death at Wentwater Court. It’s the sort of series where it’s worth it.
So, the good news is that I made it to Washington DC unscathed. The bad news was that changing time zones threw me a bit loopy and the worst news (for you anyway!) is that I spent my days off sightseeing. So on Friday I walked 20 kilometres around the National Mall and then fell asleep exhausted. Sorry, not sorry!
Read:
The Corpse at the Crystal Palace by Carola Dunn
P is for Peril by Sue Grafton
Q is for Quarry by Sue Grafton
R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
Bridges Burned by Annette Dashofy
Started:
Fear by Bob Woodward
Paperback Crush by Gabrielle Foster
S is for Silence by Sue Grafton
Still reading:
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Two proper books bought – including that copy of Fear I promised myself in the Washington post – and two ebooks. Positively restrained considering what I used to get up to on nightshifts!
Bonus picture: the Reflecting Pool at about kilometre 13 on Friday!
Luckily for me – although it didn’t seem so at the time, I didn’t manage to finish Early Riser in time for it to make last week’s WiB. I had 50 pages to go on the Sunday night and ended up finishing it on Monday morning. This made it eligible for this week’s BotW and meant that I could write this nice and early before the last minute madness descended ahead of my departure for DC. Hopefully by the time you read this I’ll be in the US and starting work – but I’m writing this a week earlier with a to-do list the length of my arm. However I’m fairly confident that nothing else I finish this week will pip this to the post – and if anything does run it close I’m sure I’ll manage to write about it at some point!
Early Riser is the latest novel from Jasper Fforde and his first new book in four years – and his first new adult novel in six years. It’s a standalone novel and it’s in a different alternative universe to his other work too. I’m a big fan of Jasper Fforde – I’ve read most of his books but I think that the long hiatus between books means that I’ve never had a chance to properly write about him here because I glommed on pretty much everything he has written before I started writing this. Anyway, to the plot:
Charlie Worthing is about to start his first season as a Winter Consul. Every year, the human population hibernates for four months to escape the bitterly cold weather. But some brave souls are needed to protect the sleeping – and Charlie has volunteered to be one of them. To stay awake during the winter means you need to be very committed – but also a little bit mad as Charlie soon discovers. One of his first tasks is investigating an outbreak of viral dreams – where people are having the same dream right down to the little details. And then the people who’ve had the dream start dying. And then Charlie starts having the dream – and bits of it seem to be coming true. Is it just winter narcosis – or is soething more sinister going on. Charlie sets out to find out the truth – but he’ll need to brave Villains and Nightwalkers and the seemingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk to do it.
If you’ve read and Jasper Fforde before you’ll know that his thing is creating bonkers parallel universes to our own and then just dropping you straight into them and leaving you to work out what’s going on. In the Thursday Next series is a world where the Crimean War never ended, where literature is venerated and where – if you have the right skills – you can actually get inside a book and wander around the story. In Early Riser he does the same thing. After a lovely diagram of a Dormitorium opposite the title page, you find yourself on a train with a dead woman who is playing the bouzouki. And it only gets weirder. This was probably the slowest starting of Fforde’s books for me – but that might be because I started reading it as an egalley (from NetGalley) which had all the footnotes out of sync with the pages – and boy do you need the footnotes at the start to help you get your head around the new world that you’ve found yourself in. But after I’d bought myself an actual copy of the book* everything got a lot easier and started to make more sense.
Taking this photo has got me wondering who has my copy of Something Rotten. I’m hoping my dad has it…
And it is a rollicking good adventure. There are lots of twists and turns and I really didn’t see many/any of them coming. Charlie is an engaging accidental hero and you sympathise with him as he bumbles his way through his first winter, running into complications and obstacles at every turn. I really like the worlds that Jasper Fforde creates – I don’t know where his ideas come from but they’re so clever and subversive. If you had pitched this to me before I’d read any of his stuff I would have chalked it up as not for me. But I trust him having read and loved the Thursday Next series and the Nursery Crime series and so was prepared to take the leap into this with him. I’m so glad I did – and I hope lots of other people are reading it too.
In the author’s note at the end of the book, he thanks readers’ patience for sticking with him in the long gap and says he hopes it won’t be such a big gap to the next book. I may hate waiting, but I’ll gladly wait if we get books like this at the end of it. I just hope that the next one is the eighth Thursday Next book…
Early Riser is out now in hardback and on Kindle and Kobo if you’re in the UK. I’ve seen copies in all the proper bookshops – Foyles Charing Cross have several display piles of it – so you should be able to lay your hands on it fairly easily. It’s due for release in the US on February 12th 2019 – and should be available to preorder at your bookseller of choice – there are some handy links on Jasper Fforde’s website to help you whether you’re in the UK or in the US.
Happy Reading!
*I went to Foyles during a lunchbreak one of my weekend working days in August. I was meant to be just having a look around, but they’d had a signing with Jasper Fforde a week or two earlier and they had one signed copy left – among piles of unsigned ones on various displays. I took it as a sign that I should buy it for myself.
Bonus Picture: My Dormitorium postcard that came with my hardcover!
A good week in reading. In case you missed my post on Saturday, I’m on my way to the USA for a couple of months for work – so normal service may be slightly disrupted while I find my feet. I do have a bunch of posts scheduled to help with the first week, but I can’t write BotW or WiB posts before I’ve read the books…
Read:
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge
In Glorious Technicolour by Francine Stock
The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump by Robert Sears
Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
This Is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare by Gabourey Sidibe
Star by Star by Sheena Wilkinson
Started:
P is for Peril by Sue Grafton
Still reading:
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
A couple of books bought – but I have got a long plane ride to deal with!
