It’s Friday and I’m back with another romance series for this week’s series post. This time another Jill Shalvis series – I’ve already written about her Lucky Harbor series and recommended a few of her others in recommendsday posts too.
Heartbreaker Bay is a series of eight connected romance novels centered around a renovated building in San Francisco, with characters coming from the residents of the building and employees of the businesses in it or nearby. In the centre of the building is a courtyard with a fountain, and the legend is that if you wish on the fountain you will find love. You know where this is going! You don’t have to read them in order – in fact I read them radically out of order because I borrowed loads of them from the library and read them over a fairly extended period. Half of the series are Christmas books and there are fill in novellas as well.
I was trying to pick a favourite of these but was struggling – by ratings it’s either Accidentally on Purpose or Chasing Christmas Eve, but I read them a while ago and who can tell if I’d still rate them above the ones I’ve read more recently. What I will say about all of these is that the characters have proper backstories, often with some trauma and have reasons for being wary of relationships and that often makes for the most satisfying romance novels for me. So maybe just start at the beginning and go from there!
These are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, so the time is ripe for you to read them if you’re interest – that’s what finally got me to finish off the series now my local library and its hours are unpredictable…
Back in February, The Fan Who Knew Too Much was a Book of the Week, so I wanted to mention that the sequel, Lies and Dolls, came out on Tuesday. The blurb for this promises Kit and Binfire en route to Lincolnshire to see undiscovered tapes of Vixens of the Void and promises missing action figures that lead to murder. I thought the first one could have been a bit tighter, but that was possibly because it was doing the world building work – so I’m looking forward to seeing what Nev Fountain has got planned and how it’s all developed. As you can see, I had the paperback pre-ordered – but given the state of the pile at the moment, who knows how long it will take for me to get to it!
Happy second Wednesday of the month – I’m back with the Kindle offers that I’ve spotted (and in some cases bought!).
Lets start with the fact that The Three Dahlias (aka the first in the series) is 99p this month. I really like these as you all know at this point, so if you haven’t already checked them out, now may be your time. Murder Most Royal, the third HM the Queen Investigates book is 99p, and the first two are actually in Kindle Unlimited at the moment too. And recent book of the week A Murder for Miss Hortense is 99p too which is a total bargain.
Meanwhile there are some new releases on offer too: like the new Ashley PostonSounds Like Love is 99p at the moment – this is one of the books I bought while writing this! The latest Trisha Ashley, The Book of Lost Stories, is 99p – if you’re a Trisha reader, it should be noted that this is an updated version of Lord Rayven’s Revenge which apparently has new material. If you like a pregnancy plot then Cara Bastone’s Ready or Not is 99p. Pregnancy tropes are not my thing but this one is well reviewed for those of you who are and I like other books that are in the same multi-author series/collection.
In other things I bought while writing this post, there is Carl Hiaasen‘s latest book Fever Beach for 99p, and it should be noted that one of his earlier books Razor Girl is also on offer – this is the sequel to the recently-adapted Bad Monkey. I also bought Maigret’s Holiday, because I keep picking these up when there’s an offer on one I haven’t read and it’s a hugely long series so that happens fairly often!
Happy Tuesday everyone, I finally made a start on the Alicia Thompson backlog last week and here I am reporting back!
When Daphne goes to a baseball game days after she’s signed her divorce papers, she’s doing it because her ex wanted the ticket. So she gets drunk and then she heckles a player and seems to make him cry. The moment goes viral and she reaches out to him on social to apologise… except in all the drafting and redrafting she edits out the bit where she says she was the heckler. And so when Chris unexpectedly replies to her message it all gets complicated really fast. Chris is struggling with his own issues and finds himself strangely drawn to his new online friend. But how long can Daphne keep her secret and what happens when he finds out?
Let’s get the big problem over with right away: yes she’s basically catfishing him. And we’re meant to be fine with it – or at least get over it by the time it’s all resolved because: romance reasons. And so your mileage on this one may vary depending on your tolerance for that. I was mostly OK with it, but it took far too long for Daphne to come clean with Chris and I think there were ways that the book could have worked better if the dual identity situation had been resolved sooner.
And I realise that that sounds like I didn’t enjoy this, but I actually did – I read it in about 24 hours – and I liked the banter and the baseball setting and the development of Daphne’s character. I just wanted it to be better in a couple of areas. I wanted to see Daphne’s ex getting his comeuppance for his awful behaviour – which would have helped the reader understand her a bit better (and thus help with the deception thing) – which could just have been as simple as him being really annoyed at the success she sees as part of the plot.
I’ve seen this in Big Foyles and the Waterstones with the romance sections, so it should be fairly easy to get hold of this one (compared to some of my choices I mean) but it’s also on Kobo and Kindle.
A pretty solid list this week, although slightly more classic crime than I was expecting! But another one off the long-running list so that’s good. And after being nudged in Waterstones the other day, I’ve got started on some of the Kennedy books on the shelf. And we had a nice weekend in Cumbria so I got to wander around one of my favourite bookshops again as well as everything else!
Another TV series this week I’m afraid – and another of U’s new series. I mentioned the novelisation in my post yesterday, so I thought it was only right to report back in. I slightly struggled over whether this should be a Not a Book or a Book adjacent given that the book came after the TV series, but given that it’s a show about a man called Book who runs a bookshop called Book’s Books, it’s too book-y not to be adjacent!
Bookish is a six-part series, which tells three murder mystery stories (two episodes per murder) which are solved by bookshop owner Gabriel Book (Mark Gatiss), with assistance from his wife Trottie and new shop assistant the recently released from prison Jack. It’s post war London and Book has a letter from Churchill which allows him to help the police, who we see mostly as Inspector Bliss (played by Elliot Levey who I saw in Giant in the West End just a couple of months ago). The vibe is Sherlock meets, well Marple I guess (the Cumberbatch Sherlock and the ITV Marple) and the look is glossy.
I thought the first two episodes were good – but as the series went on it seemed to lose a bit of steam. It’s perfectly fine and I’ll probably watch the second series when it appears, but I don’t think it’s a show that I’ll re-watch if that makes sense. It’s perfectly fine, but if I had to chose, I’d rather have another series of Senora Volpe. And yes I know they are very different things, but they were both shown on U, so that’s why I chose it!
Happy Saturday everyone. I’ve been wandering the bookshops again, and so this week we’ve got my latest spots in Gower Street.
Firstly, lets have a moment for the Penguin book vending machine. I’m not sure how long it’s there for, but it’s so cool and I hope there are more of them on tour soon.
Secondly I’m always interested to see what in-store book clubs are reading. And Gower Street is super busy when to comes to events – when i was in there there were people galloping through the store performing Shakespeare, with an audience trailing behind. I read a lot of Nina Bawden as a child but I haven’t read much of her adult fiction and I have Sangu Mandanna’s previous book on the Kindle waiting to be read – this has given me a nudge to move that up the list a bit.
Another thing giving me a nudge – the display of Atmosphere. My copy is sitting on the pile at home too – but it’s the special edition version with the pretty edges.
Here’s A Case of Life and Limb in the wild – go read the bonus review, and my review of the first one – I’m hoping we get a third. And also on the hardback crime shelf is the book that goes with Bookish, the new TV show created by and starring Mark Gatiss, although he hasn’t written this novelisation…
And finally, I was hunting in the American history section for the Caroline Bessette-Kennedy book that I keep seeing being written about (often in the context of having the wrong photos in it!) and not findng it, but instead realising that Ask Not is now out in paperback and I still haven’t read the hardback, and then buying another book about the Kennedy wives despite that…
Happy Friday everyone, I’m back with another mystery series to talk about after I burned through three of the four books in this series a couple of weeks back, after having read the first one ages ago when it first came out and then forgetting to go back and follow up. Which, you know, is fairly typical for me given the state of the tbr pile…
Our amateur detective is Sam(antha) Clair, an editor for a small-ish publishing house who finds herself caught up in a string of murders across the course of the four books. The first book was a Murder of Magpies, where Sam’s caught up in a police investigation when someone decides that they really don’t want one of her books – a tell all about the fashion industry – to be published. In the second book, A Bed of Scorpions has one of Sam’s friends in trouble when his partner at the art gallery is found dead. In book three A Cast of Vultures Sam is caught up in neighbourhood drama when an house being used by squatters burns down and a body is found in the wreckage. And finally in A Howl of Wolves a trip to the opening night of a play, starring her friends from one of the other flats in her building, turns to tragedy when a real body appears hanging from the rafters instead of a dummy.
Sam is a great character – but she’s also surrounded by a cast of supporting characters who really make this sing. There’s her frighteningly clever and well connected solicitor mother, the handsome police inspector, Sam’s goth-y assistant and the various other people who live in the other flats in the converted house where she lives. I love a reoccurring character in murder mystery series and this has lots of really good ones. Sam hates conflict and will avoid (potentially) difficult conversations like the plague and means her relationship with Jake (sorry for the spoiler) the policeman who becomes her boyfriend has some real moments – where she should be telling him things and finds ways to avoid doing it.
Only three of these are available as e-books (although they are in Kobo plus in the UK at the moment if you’re a member there), the fourth is only available as a hardback, which I bought myself as soon as I finished reading book three because I really wanted to find out what happened next. These are Judith Flanders’s only novels as far as I can see, the rest of her writing is non-fiction history and while I’m sure they’re really good and interesting, it’s a shame because these are great and Sam is the sort of character you would like to have as a friend.
I know I often mention new Meg Langslows when they come out but I’m doing it again this week because Meg 37 has emerged into the world because it is another excellent pun for the title in For Duck’s Sake, but also because my paperback Megs recently returned to me. I lent them to a friend a few years back, but she died just over a year ago and a couple of weeks back her husband messaged me to say that he’d found my Megs and would I like them sending back along with a few others of hers that I had borrowed before. And the answer was of course I would, so a few weeks ago four boxes of books arrived – and inside were my Megs, all the Mitchell and Markbys that I had borrowed from her the first time I read them, and some bonus books. I miss my friend so much still – there’s rarely a day that goes by when I don’t see something and think either that I must message her and tell about it or wonder what she would think about it and so I’m happy to have the books on my shelves as a reminder of her.
Anyway, in For Duck’s Sake we have Meg supervising work going on at her brother’s new house garden when she discovers a skeleton. I haven’t read last year’s Christmas book yet and I am going to at least try and save that until the actual festive season so it may be a while until I get to this because I am strict with myself about reading these in order! And Donna Andrews is continuing her two a year schedule because we have number 38 coming in just two months time in October.
A slight theme to the post this month – everything is a mystery, two of them are first in series and the other is the first book I’ve read by the author. And yes, I finished this first one after last weeks’ BLCC roundup had gone up or it might have gone in that instead and reduced the amount of Lorac/Carnac books in that one!
Scandalize My Name by Fiona Sinclair
This is one of the more recent BLCC releases (it came out in April) and is one from a much lesser known author who, based on this, really deserves rediscovery. The murder happens at a house in North London that has been divided into flats. While the residents and neighbours are assembling for a 21st birthday party, one of the residents has been killed in the basement. There is no shortage of people who might have wanted the victim dead, and Superintendent Grainger has a tight group of suspects all of whom had motive and opportunity. Sinclair introduces a lot of characters in a hurry at the start of this which might put you off initially, but stick with it and it’s a good and clever read. I skipped back and read the first chapter again after I had read the solution and spotted a few really neat details hidden in plain sight, although it doesn’t really gives you all the clues to be able to solve it yourself.
Six Sweets Under by Sarah Fox
This is a cozy crime novel set in a fictional town in Vermont which is filled with canals and small businesses. Our detective is Becca, a former actress who has moved back to her home town after a spell in Hollywood. She’s taking over her grandparents’ chocolate shop and settling back into small town life when a local man is found dead after having been seen arguing with her grandfather, who becomes one of the main suspects. So, because this is cozy crime, Becca sets out to clear him. This has an interesting setting – lots of canals, lots of boats – but I found the heroine a bit irritating (for example she’s afraid of deep water because her brother told her there was a monster living in it) and the characters didn’t feel as well developed as I would have liked. I picked this up from the cozy crime section in Waterstone’s Piccadillyback in the autumn and I can see that there are two more in the series – but the second of those appears to have changed publishers so I suspect that there will be no more. I enjoyed it enough that I’m not ruling out getting one of the others to help me out with Vermont if I do the 50 States challenge again in 2026.
Flipped for Murder by Maddie Day
This is another first in series, another cozy crime and another of the harder to get states for the 50 states challenge. This time we’re in Indiana, and our detective is Robbie (short for Roberta) who has moved to South Lick in the south of the state after falling in love with the town while visiting her aunt. In this Robbie is opening her new business, a country store and restaurant, but the day after the grand opening, the mayor’s assistant is found dead and Robbie finds herself in the spotlight. This has got a lot going on, particularly with Robbie – she’s a cook and carpenter, she likes puzzles, her mum has recently died and there is a bit of a love triangle going on too. I had the culprit figured out early on but for some reason I had the second book in the series on my kindle (they’re all in KU at the moment which is how I read the first one) so had a read of that as well to see if the mystery in that was harder to solve, and it wasn’t really, but the love triangle seemed to get sorted out. Solidly OK, but not something I’d want to spend a load of money on.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 