Verity Reads Books (lots of them)

It’s the end of June, so it’s probably about the right time for a Summer Romance recommendsday. After all I’ve been reading them for months at this point – and as I’ve said already – I’ve read most of the ones you’ll see on the romance tables in the bookshops. And yes, these are all longer reviews than I usually do in Recommendsday posts – but that’s because all of these could have been Books of the Weeks in their own rights.

Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan

Our heroine is Sam, visiting her family’s Long Island Beach house with her fiancé to tour wedding venues. But back at the house next door is her first love, Wyatt, who she spent every summer with as a child and teenager until suddenly it was over. But Sam’s got her life on track now – and there’s no reason to be this affected by the guy who broke her heart when she was 17… As you all know I loved, loved, loved Nora Goes Off Script when I read it at the start of the year and immediately pre-ordered this and then read it within three days of release. And it’s good. For me, it’s not quite as good as Nora, but then Nora was just so in my wheelhouse. This is different – it’s a second chance romance with big flashbacks of the before so although the relationship between Wyatt and Sam is complicated in the present day bit, you get to see the past bit to understand what went wrong. I’m not 100 percent that you can still be in love with your first – teen – love so many years on and that you’re still going to fit together, but Monaghan was clever enough with this that you just get swept along reading it and don’t notice all of this until you sit down to write a review afterwards and think about it! Perfect for the beach.

Once More With Feeling by Elissa Sussman

On to another second book from an author whose (adult) debut I read and loved earlier this year and another that is a second chance romance (if you’re only going to read one of them from this post, then make it this one) because it’s so good – I read it in one evening. As a teenager, Katee Rose was a one of America’s biggest pop stars. She was touring the country, scoring number ones, surrounded by screaming fans and papped by photographers everywhere she went – with or without her boyfriend Ryan LaNeve – the hearthrob from an equally adored boyband. But it all blew up after she found herself in the arms of Cal, one of Ryan’s bandmates. But that was then. Now Kathleen Rosenberg is ok with her life and with her popstar life being in the past. Then Cal shows up to offer her a starring role in the Broadway show he’s about to produce. Each blames the other for what happened before, but they find themselves working together and it seems that not everything is really in the past. If the hint of cheating in that plot description is worrying you, don’t worry. And if you lived through the Britney and Justin situation in the early 2000s, you’ll also get a lot out of this. Or at least I did. And I love a Broadway/theatre-set romance so it ticked so many of my boxes and pulled it off so well. perfect for a sun lounger by the pool.

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood*

Elise is an adjunct professor with a secret second life as a fake girlfriend to make ends meet. Everything is going swimmingly – at least with regards to keeping her two lives separate – until the brother of one of her regular clients turns out to be one of the physicists on the panel for her dream job and also the man who ruined her mentor’s reputation. I read this really fast across about 36 hours. Yes, it’s another tiny heroine and Great Big Man (which I am getting a little fed up of in general as I said the other day) but I found the relationship between extreme people pleaser/adapts herself to fit who she thinks people want her to be Elsie and Jack to be interesting to watch, even though I wasn’t ever 100 percent sure why Jack had originally been attracted to her. I wanted a little more resolution to Elsie’s issues with her family, and I could see one of the plot twists coming a mile off – so this is probably more of a 3.5 star read – but I’m nice so I round up. If you’ve liked Hazelwood’s other stuff, you’ll probably like this although it is a little repetitive in terms of academic feuds, misunderstandings and the aforementioned tinyHUGE. Nice cameo from Adam and Olive though.

And as I mentioned at the top of the post, I’ve been reading summer romances for months, and a bunch more of them have already been BotW picks or otherwise recommended – so I’m going to leave some more links here too: Mrs Nash’s Ashes from last week, The True Love Experiment from the week before, Happy Place and Romantic Comedy from April – and those are just the new ones that I’ve been prepared to recommend!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

It’s been a few weeks, so it’s about time we had another British Library Crime Classic to break up the summer romances, right? But don’t worry, if you want some more sun lounger recommendations, I have the very thing for you tomorrow never dear!

A reclusive scientist is found dead in his study during a storm, hours after a dinner to mark his daughter’s engagement. The dinner guests are stranded in the house because of the weather – and the telephone line has been cut. There are clues and motives a plenty, which of the closed group of suspects carried out the crime?

Twice Around the Clock is Billie Houston’s only novel – and it’s really quite impressive. She was an actress and singer who was part of a variety act with her sister in the 1920s until she retired because of ill health in the mid 1930s – as far as I can work out at a similar time to when she wrote this. The title comes from the amount of time that the novel covers – you start with the murder then the clock rewinds twelve hours to show you the lead up to the murder and then carries on until twelve hours after the death. It’s fast paced and has a bit of humour to it. It also has a murder victim who you are delighted to see dead after you see him alive and tormenting people and animals*. Basically it’s a good enough read that you wish Houston had written more!

This is one of the newer British Library Crime Classics (it came out in April) and it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, which means it won’t be on Kobo until that ends. But it’s also in paperback and you can buy direct from the British Library shop.

Happy Reading!

*there is a scene featuring animal cruelty in this but it’s brief and also clear that everyone else in the book finds it abhorrent – it’s just the victim who thinks it’s ok