Check it out: I finished one of the long runners this week! My still reading list is reducing. It’s the little things you know. Anyway, a good week of reading, dominated by one author. And to be honest, I would have bought more Susan Elizabeth Philips to read, if I wasn’t on a ActualBook buying ban (because we’ve got building work due to happen at the house and everything has to be packed up) and more of the Kindle editions were cheaper…
Read:
The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen
Kick by Paula Byrne
Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Philips
First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Philips
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf by Nick Bryan
Lord of the Wings by Donna Andrew
Started:
Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich
Blue Flame by Jill Shalvis
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
Two ebooks bought – First Star I See Tonight as part of the SEP binge and then These Old Shades on ebook because it was only 99p and I wanted to have an e-copy as well as a paper one. So that doesn’t count really. And as I’ve already read First Star… that means a net addition to the to-read pile of… zero. So I’m counting that as a success.
A shorter BotW post this week, because you’ve already had three great books from my reading last week in my Summer Reading post! But I finished Picture Miss Seeton on Sunday afternoon and wanted to give it a mention.
I do love a stylised cover. As long as you can get a matching set!
A retired art teacher, Miss Seeton witnesses a murder after leaving a performance of Carmen. Despite only getting a shadowy view of the killer, she manages to draw a picture that enables Scotland Yard to identify him. Soon she’s facing peril in the rural cottage she’s just inherited, where the villagers are also taking an interest in the new arrival.
This really scratched my itch for cozy crime with added humour. Miss Seeton is a wonderful send up of elderly lady detectives. She’s impossible to shock, utterly unflappable and practises yoga in her free time. She’s always one step ahead of the police and always manages to be in the right place at the right time to pick up the vital clue. I found the switching points of view occasionally a bit jarring or confusing, but I forgave it because I was having so much fun reading about Miss S’s adventures. It was a perfect book to read while recovering from nightshifts.
I’m fairly sure I’ve seen some Miss Seeton’s at the library (or maybe in the discount bookshop) so I suspect I may be reading more of her adventures in the near future. Picture Miss Seeton is available on Kindle and Kobo and should be available (probably to order) from all the usual sources.
Nightshift week and lots of good books read. You’ll have seen some of them already in my Holiday Reading post too. I started a couple that I didn’t have the brain power to cope with with nightshift brain, but that always happens. But nights are over now and I’m attempting to get my body clock back to some semblance of normal with the help of early nights and more books!
Read:
A Quiet Life in the Country by T E Kinsey
Big Sexy Love by Kirsty Greenwood
Duke With Benefits by Manda Collins
One Kiss in Greece by Kirsty Greenwood
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Picture Miss Seeton by Heron Carvic
Started:
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf by Nick Bryan
The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen
Still reading:
Kick by Paula Byrne
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
I’m afraid some impulse purchasing took place on the nightshifts. But I think that’s entirely understandable really. I mean it’s hard to resist the urge to purchase at 3am…
This week’s Book of the Week was an easy choice – I devoured the Sumage Solution as soon as it was published last week, and read it as quickly as I could within the restrictions of having to work and go to bed to get enough sleep to work. I don’t read a lot of male/male romances, but because I love all of Gail Carriger‘s other work I had this on pre-order and was prepared to give it a go.
The cover is a distinct shift from Carriger’s other books – but it works.
This is the first in a new contemporary paranormal series, which Carriger is self-publishing under the name G L Carriger because they are (very) different to her Parasol Protectorate and Custard Protocol series. And she’s not wrong. This book made me blush reading it, and I’ve read a lot of romance over the years. This is a modern day version of the same world as we know from the other books – although it has evolved somewhat – but with a lot of explicit sexy times here. A lot. So be warned. If you don’t want to read about what a werewolf and his bad boy mage get up to, then just give this book a miss and go and read the Parasol Protectorate or the Custard Protocol series or if you don’t want any sexy times at all, the Finishing School series.
So, that disclaimer out of the way, if you’re still interested, this is the story of Biff, who has just moved to San Francisco with his brother and his brother’s new werewolf pack, and Max, a failed mage who works at the magical equivalent of the DMV. They meet when the pack paperwork comes in front of Max and soon they’re trying to prove the idea that werewolves and mages must hate each other wrong. Along the way they’ve got to deal with an enchanted house and the vexed question of whether the pack will get permission to stay in San Francisco.
This is full of snarky humour and the witty banter that I’ve come to expect from a Carriger novel. As well as making me blush, it made me smile and laugh. I had so much fun watching Biff and Max work their way towards their happily ever after. The world building is great – a lot has moved on from the nineteenth century, but there’s enough nods back to the history of the paranormal in the Carriger-verse that a regular reader doesn’t feel at sea or confused. The rest of the pack is great fun as well and I’m hoping that this will sell enough copies that Ms Carriger will write some more installments for the other members.
If you want to get a bit of a sense of what’s going on here, try the novella that started it all (and has now turned into a prequel) Marine Biology which is 99p on Kindle and Kobo at time of writing ( and so must be worth a punt surely?). It’s the story of Biff’s older brother Alex and his merman boyfriend. If it turns out that’s not for you (and it’s not as explicit as Sumage Solution) then you’re not going to like the series proper. But if you do like it or you’re already an avid reader of M/M romance (and I know there are plenty of you out there), then Sumage Solution is available in Kindle and Kobo as well as in paperback from Amazon.
If you’ve got any suggestions for some more M/M romance for me to try, please do put them in the comments, because nothing makes me happier than making my to-read pile bigger!
By the time you read this, my nightshifts will be underway. I’ll probably just be waking up as this is posted – or at least I hope I’ll just be waking up if I’m going to have got enough sleep for me to be able to stay up all night again. This week has been really quite busy – and my brain has been quite frazzled – so there’s a lot of comics and graphic novels on this list. This may continue next week because of nightshift brain, which as usual, means expect to see a lot of cozy crime and romance on this list next week!
Read:
The Summage Solution by G L Carriger
Simple Irresistable by Jill Shalvis
Reel History: The World According to the Movies by Alex von Tunzelmann
Bitch Planet Vol 2: President Bitch by Kelly Sue DeConnick et al
Rivers of London: Detective Stories 2 by Ben Aaronovitch et al
Bitch Planet Triple Feature 1 by Kelly Sue DeConnick et al
Bitch Planet Triple Feature 2 by Che Grayson
Room For Doubt by Nancy Cole Silverman
Started:
A Quiet Life in the Country by T E Kinsey
Still reading:
Kick by Paula Byrne
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
Two ebooks bought – both on deals and part of series that I’m following or want to read more of to work out if I like them or not!
This week’s BotW is another case of “why on earth haven’t I read this before”. I have no idea why I hadn’t got around to the Camomile Lawn before. All I can think is that the TV version had Jennifer Ehle in it and that my mum may have steered me away from it in the immediate aftermath of the 1995 Pride and Prejudice because I was 11 and if the TV series is anything like the book, it really wasn’t suitable for me at the time and I may have got it in my head that the book wasn’t worth it! Who knows. Anyway.
A book, a Pimms (sorry, summer cup for the Great British Menu viewers) and a weekend on the beach
The Camomile Lawn tells the story of five cousins, who we meet at their Aunt-by-marriage’s house in Cornwall in the summer before the start of the Second World War. We follow them through the war and meet up with them again some years later as they reassemble for a funeral. There is beautiful, mercenary Calypso, outwardly conventional Polly, Oliver, Walter and much younger Sophy, who watches what the older ones are up to and wants to join in. And then there is Helena – married to a man injured in the last war and bored by her life, watching the kissing cousins as they set out into the future. As the war begins, life changes for all of them – new opportunities open up for the women and danger lurks for all of them – not just the obvious ones for the boys in the forces.
Mary Wesley was in her 70s when she wrote this – and it was only her second novel. She lived through the war that she is writing about and was a similar age to the characters when it happened. If she hadn’t been, perhaps there would be a temptation to say that the characters were having too much fun and too much sex considering that there was a war on. This reminded me a lot of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet Chronicles, but with the sex and antics turned up. Wesley doesn’t really bother with description – except for some of the details of the house in Cornwall – but she writes in a wonderful, understated way dropping bombshells in like they’re nothing so that you do a double take as you read it.
I’m off to read some more Mary Wesley and to try and get my hands on a DVD of the TV mini-series. You should be able to get hold of a copy of The Camomile Lawn fairly easily. I got mine from a secondhand bookshop on Charing Cross Road. The Kindle and Kobo versions were £$.99 at time of writing and the paperback version was £5.99 on Amazon albeit in a slightly older cover than I saw in Foyles.
Not bad going all in all – and some really good stuff. I’m going to have trouble picking my Book of the Week tomorrow!
Read:
The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room by Paul Charles
Jeeves in the Offing by P G Wodehouse
Dead is Good by Jo Perry
Paper Girls Vol 2 by Brian K Vaughan
Killer Party by Lynn Cahoon
Lowcountry Bombshell by Susan M Boyer
The Camomile Lawn by Mary Wesley
Started:
Room For Doubt by Nancy Cole Silverman
Still reading:
Kick by Paula Byrne
Reel History: The World According to the Movies by Alex von Tunzelmann
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
A couple of books bought (two secondhand and two Ebooks), but nothing too bad really. I mean not compared to the last few weeks! I did treat myself to a new Kindle though…
Started the week going great guns, and then slowed to a halt – partly because of a family party on Saturday. On the bright side I got to dress up as an extra from the Bronze and live out some Buffy-ish moments!
Read:
Lowcountry Boil by Susan M Boyer
Trans Like Me by CN Lester
Dimsie, Head Girl by Dorita Fairlie Bruce
Murder in D Minor by Alexia Gordon
Lumberjanes Vol 5: Band Together by Noelle Stevenson et al
Started:
Modern Lovers by Emma Straub
Jeeves in the Offing by P G Wodehouse
Still reading:
Kick by Paula Byrne
Reel History: The World According to the Movies by Alex von Tunzelmann
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
The Hissing of the Silent Lonely Room by Paul Charles
I bought rather a few books again. Ooops. But some came from the Barnes Booksale – and were total bargains – and three ebooks as well. Naughty Verity. Must do better!
As you’ll have seen from yesterday’s Week in Books, I had a less productive week in reading last week, but that didn’t give me a problem when it came to picking a BotW – because after I read Lowcountry Bonfire, I went and bought myself another book in the series straight away.
I kinda like this cover – its simple but stylish.
Lowcountry Bonfire is the sixth book in the Liz Talbot cozy crime series. Liz and her partner Nate Andrews run a private investigation agency on an island in South Carolina. Their bread and butter cases are suspicious spouses and adultery cases. They’re not expecting Tammy Sue Lyerley’s case to be any different. But when her husband Zeke turns up dead in the boot of the car that Tammy Sue has just filled with his stuff and is trying to set alight, they end up smack bang in the middle of a murder investigation. Soon they’re trying to work out the truth behind Zeke’s tall tales and uncovering buried secrets.
After a disappointing run of cozy crime novels during my holiday*, this was a breath of fresh air. This is just the sort of cozy crime that I like – a great cast of characters, a quirky setting and a satisfying murder mystery. And to top that off, Liz is one of my favourite things – a sleuth who has a legitimate reason to be snooping around. The plot is perhaps a little bonkers at times, but the book is so pacey that you don’t really have time to think about that – which is exactly what you want really.
As I mentioned at the start of this post, I liked this so much that I went off and bought myself the first book in the series so I could see how Liz got to where she is. I finished that on the train home on Monday afternoon and can report that that’s also a lot of fun – although the mystery and pacing isn’t quite as good as in Lowcountry Bonfire. Admittedly that may be partly because I could spot which townspeople were no longer about in book six and extrapolate some of the solution from that!
My copy of Lowcountry Bonfire came from NetGalley, but it’s out now and available on all the usual platforms, like Kindle and Kobo. But if you want to start at the beginning, Lowcountry Boil was £1.99 on Kindle and Kobo at time of writing, as was book two, Lowcountry Bombshell, (although only on Kindle) which I may have just bought myself. Naughty Verity!
Happy reading.
*Written in Dead Wax (in my book at least) is not a cozy crime. And even if it was, I read it at the start of the week – it was the mysteries afterwards that were a disappointment!
