A busy week of nightshifts – and then sleeping them off. So not as much read as I was hoping, but there was some good stuff in there.
Read:
Somebody’s Baby by Donna Alward
The Whole Art of Detection by Lynsday Faye
Treasure in Paradise by Kathi Daley
The Best of Adam Sharp by Graeme Simsion
Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha
The Rising of the Larks by Cris Johnson
Started:
Big City Heat by David Burnsworth
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Still reading:
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
But on the brightside, I didn’t buy any books – which is *really* unusual for nightshifts. Really unusual. I had to check twice to make sure I hadn’t succumbed to the urge to buy books in the early hours. But I didn’t. I really didn’t!
A bonus post from me, for you to enjoy this weekend as I recover from my nights. I’m looking for escapist reading this week after a busy news week, so here are some suggestions for you as I try to read myself back into day time living.
Rosie’s Little Cafe on the Riviera by Jennifer Bohnet
I read this on holiday – it’s a sweet romance set in the French Riviera. Rosie’s opening her dream cafe, but a Michelin starred chef is opening up a fancy hotel nearby. She’d be mad, only she didn’t find him so attractive. There’s also two friends – one recently widowed with a daughter and the other newly single – and you follow them all across the course of the first spring and summer season in business. Perfect for a spring weekend, but t may make you want to move abroad though.
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
Immerse yourself in the world of Singpore’s super rich. Rachel Chu has agreed to spend the summer in Singapore with her boyfriend’s family. But what she doesn’t know is that Nick is one of the island’s most eligible bachelors and that she doesn’t measure up to his family’s expectations for a potential wife. There’s outrageous wealth, spoilt IT girls and culture clashes galore – not just Rachel’s ABC (American-born Chinese) background, but also the old money versus new money of Singapore’s old family’s and China’s new superrich. It’s bonkers, it’s addictive and it’s perfect to escape from your normal life.
The Accidental Detective by Michael R N Jones
I read this modern Sherlock Holmes retelling on holiday. Victor Locke is a beer-drinking genius, who’s banned from owning laptops or smart phones after getting caught hacking into something he shouldn’t have done. Dr Jonathan Doyle is his court-appointed psychologist and the two of them race around Middlesbrough (of all places) solving crimes and outwitting shadowy government figures. This is from my perennial favourites Fahrenheit press, so if you’ve read some of my other recommendations from them you’ll have an idea about the sort of tone we’re looking at. Funny and escapist, read it with a drink in your hand like Victor would!
While reading Royal Flush last week, where one of Lady Georgie’s tasks is trying to keep the Prince of Wales away from Wallis Simpson, I couldn’t help but think of Gone with the Windsors – my favourite novel that features Wallis. Then I realised that I’ve mentioned it in passing several times on here* but never actually reviewed. So Recommendsday this week seemed the perfect time to remedy that.
“A wicked comedy about the Romance of the Century” is pretty spot on
Gone with the Windsors is the story of Wallis Simpson’s romance with Edward VIII as seen throught he eyes of her (fictional) best friend, Maybell Brumby. Maybell is a recently widowed Southern Belle who comes to London to visit her sister (married to a Scottish Earl) to one up her social rivals back home just as one of their old school friends is making a stir by stepping out with the Prince of Wales. Soon Maybell is hobnobbing with royalty as Wallis (with the help of Maybell’s money) sets London society ablaze. Maybell and her family are carefully woven into the real story and as someone who’s read a fair bit about the Edward and Mrs Simpson and the 1930s in general, I didn’t spot any howlers.
How could you not love Maybell’s insider view of the Abdication Crisis?
The Wallis of Gone with the Windsors is a ruthless social climber, with an aim in mind, who doesn’t mind stepping on anybody to get there. David is weak and easily led, thinking more of his own pleasure than of his responsibilities. But Maybell is a total joy. I mean you wouldn’t want to be friends with her, but she is a brilliant prism to watch the slow motion car crash that was the Abdication Crisis. She is delightfully dim (witness her dealings with her sister Doopie) and part of the fun is watching her misunderstand what’s going on – or miss the undercurrents. Her sister is firmly on the Royal Family’s side against Wallis, while Maybell is convinced she’s picked the winner, which makes for fraught times on the summer holiday in Scotland.
Maybell finds new ways to keep herself occupied during a summer at her sister’s Scottish estate.
GWTW was my first Laurie Graham book – I spotted it in the window of Waterstones and had to have it – and since reading it she’s been an autobuy for me and I’ve picked up a lot of her back catalogue. I like her straight up novels too, but my favourite are the ones like this where she takes a historical event or person and puts her spin on it. I mentioned the Importance of Being Kennedy in my Inauguration Reading post, and The Grand Duchess of Nowhere was my first review for Novelicious, but A Humble Companion (about a companion to one of George III’s daughters) and The Night in Question (about a music hall comedienne who gets caught up in the Jack the Ripper panic) are also excellent.
They’re both gorgeous, but I have a soft spot for the white one – as it was the first version I had.
As you can see, I have two copies of Gone with the Windsors. The blue one is a signed copy sent to me by the author after I cried and wailed on Twitter about losing my original (white) copy** and it being out of stock everywhere, the other one is a secondhand copy I bought because the signed edition was too nice to read. So now the pristine blue on is on the shelf with the other Laurie Graham books and the white one lives by my bed for when I need a dose of Maybell.
Maybell is just so much fun. Often unintentionally.
In a fabulous twist of fate, Gone with the Windsors is coming out on Kindle later this month – I’d actually already written a sentence saying that I was said it wasn’t available Kindle so now I’m very overexcited at the prospect of having Maybell to hand whenever I need a pick me up. So, you too can preorder Gone with the Windsors on Kindle, or pick up a secondhand hardcover or a (new or secondhand) paperback copy from Amazon. I’m hoping the preorder link for her next novel – a sequel to Future Homemakers of America out in June – appears soon as it’s been more than a year since her last new novel came out and I’ve got withdrawal symptoms.
Gosh this has turned into a long post. But I feel very good for having told the world about my love of Maybell Brumby and her crazy view of the world. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it – and I hope you get0 the book.
Happy reading!
*Usually when talking about another Laurie Graham book to say that GWTW is my favourite.
** I lent it out without writing my name in the front of it and never got it back. It was a salutary lesson.
It was actually a really tough choice picking this weeks BotW partly because I didn’t read as much last week and partly because none of what I read was an absolute stand out for me. So in the end, I’ve settled on Tonya Kappes’ Southern Fried – a cozy crime mystery that comes out today, which has its issues, but overall was the book I had the most to say about of last week’s reading!
I like the cover – simple but actually relevant to the story.
This is the second in the Kenni Lowry series – about the sheriff of small town in Kentucky who is assisted on the job by the ghost of her grandfather (no, don’t walk away, it’s not quite as nutty as it seems) who was also the town’s sheriff. Kenni loves her job, but her mother isn’t best pleased about her daughter’s vocation – and neither are some of the townspeople as the local crime rate starts to rise. In Southern Fried, Kenni is investigating the death of a man found dead in the greenhouse of his former (as it turns out) employer in the run up to a cook off that they were both taking part in. In working out what happened, Kenni gets tangled up in family feuds and local intrigue just as election season is starting to get underway. As the danger mounts, Kenni, her dog Duke and her new (and handsome) deputy Finn must work out what’s going on before the rising death toll scuttles Kenni’s chances at holding on to her dream job before the voting even starts.
There’s a lot that I liked about this – I love the southern setting, the mystery is fast-paced and twisty with a potential slow burn romance running alongside. However as a Brit, I struggle to get my head around the idea of elected sheriffs and the hyper-local police forces and at times Kenni doesn’t help with this. In the first book in the series I found her spacey and not entirely convincing on police procedure (especially for a police academy graduate) but she seems much more competent in this one, which helped me cope with the fact that she’s taking advice from a ghost! Regular readers will know that I have a strange releationship with the supernatural and parnormal in books*, but in the main this works for me. There were still a couple of points where I raised my eyebrows at Kenni’s actions – an amateur detective can get away with a lot more than a sheriff can – but the book moves quick enough that you only notice this when you stop to think!
This book also made me muse on the role of the knowledgeable background character in cozy crimes. Kenni being the sheriff is a double-edged sword – it means that she has the right to be investigating crimes (and indeed is likely to come across them) in a way that many of the sleuths in cozies don’t, but it also rules out an important source of information and means that at times the sleuth can come across as not being very good at her job. there’s a couple of points in this where Finn the deputy seems like he knows what he’s doing more than Kenni does. But this is only book two in the series and is a big step on from book one so there is lots of potential for development and improvement as the series goes on.
My copy came from NetGalley, but you can buy Southern Fried on Kindle or in paperback from Amazon from today.
Happy Reading.
* As in sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t but I can never work out in advance what I’m going to like and what I’m going to hate!
A more normal/typical week this week – back at work, rushed off my feet and exhausted (I know, so soon after my holiday) so everything was fairly easy on my brain. And the dreaded nightshifts have started (fingers crossed I’m asleep when this publishes or I won’t be worth knowing at work tonight), so I don’t see this situation changing at all in the next seven days.
Read:
House at the Corner by Enid Blyton
Southern Fried by Tonya Kappes
The Six Bad Boys by Enid Blyton
The Decorator Who Knew Too Much by Diane Vallere
American Gods: Shadows 1 by Neil Gaiman, Scott Hampton et al
Royal Flush by Rhys Bowen
Started:
Siracusa by Delia Ephron
Still reading:
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
Beyond Shame by Kit Rocha
The Whole Art of Detection by Lynsday Faye
On the brightside, I didn’t buy anything. Check me.
While I was on my holly-bobs I read the last in the Geek Girl series by Holly Smale. I think I suggested the series a couple of years ago as a YA Christmas book idea, but now the last book is out, it seemed like a good time to give the series a proper (if quick) mention.
The titular Geek Girl is Harriet Manners, nerd and fact fan who ends up getting scouted by a modelling agent after going to the Clothes Show Live with her fashion-mad best friend. What ensues across the six books (I’ve read all bar book 5) and several novellas is a fish-out-of-water story as she tries to navigate her way through the modelling world. And it’s a lot of fun. I’ve really enjoyed reading about Harriet tripping (literally) her way through the fashion world and going to school at the same time.
I remember reading a few books about models back in my early teen years, but they were all about beautiful and glamorous 18 year olds with backstabbing and bitchy tendencies. This is much more fun. Harriet isn’t the most popular or the prettiest at school and she didn’t ever think about being a model. But she’s ended up doing it and is trying to be as good at it as she is at school – but with a lot of gaps in her fashion education. This does have some bitching and backstabbing, but Harriet is never the one doing it. Or at least she never starts it!
I’d say these are bottom end of YA territory – perfect for the very top end of primary school or early secondary school. Or overgrown kids like me.
I got Geek Girl 6 via NetGalley, but I’ve bought myself a couple of the others on Kindle or in actual books before. You should be able to track them down fairly easily – I bought one of mine in Tesco.
As you may have noticed, I read a lot of books on my holiday. But actually this week’s BotW was an easy choice because Him Indoors read The Roanoke Girls after me and really enjoyed it too – and he doesn’t read anywhere near as many books as me and our tastes don’t always coincide.
My very pretty ARC of The Roanoke Girls – which has all sorts of nice touches to it
Lane Roanoke goes to live with her grandparents and her cousin Allegra after her mother’s suicide. They live on a large estate in Kansas and are top of the town hierarchy. But Lane only spends one summer there. 11 years later, Lane returns to the estate after Allegra goes missing. Roanoke girls have a history – they either run away or they die. Which has happened to Allegra and what is the dark secret that threatens the Roanoke girls?
I can’t say any more than that about the plot – because it will spoil it. This has been billed as a provocative thriller – and I’d agree. It’s dark and shocking and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. But I was absolutely and totally engrossed and gripped. I couldn’t stop turning the pages, even if on occasion it was from between my fingers with horror. The Roanokes are by turns fascinating and horrifying and it is a great book to read on the beach. In fact, it’s a great beach book – because if you read it on the sunlounger it will help chase the darkness away. Although rural Kansas is fairly hot and steamy, so that might not work.
I’m still thinking and digesting it a week on – but I think it might be my go to summer holiday book recommendation. For people who can cope with the darkness…
I lucked into an advance copy, but the Roanoke Girls is out now in hardback from Amazon, Foyles and Waterstones and on Kindle and Kobo. The paperback is preorderable – but it’s not out until September, which might be too late for your holidays.
I’ve been on holiday – I wonder if you can tell. And yes, I did do things other than reading – we drove the whole way around Fuerteventura and I walked along a lot of beaches!
Read:
The Roanoake Girls by Amy Engle
The Accidental Detective by Michael RN Jones
Sam Keddie: An Introduction by Paddy Magrane
See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
The Duke by Kerrigan Byrne
One Wild Night by Melissa Cutler
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
Last Night with the Duke by Amelia Grey
Cream Buns and Crime by Robin Stevens
My One True Highlander by Suzanne Enoch
Tightening the Threads by Lea Waite
Forever Geek by Holly Smale
Rosie’s Little Café on the Riviera by Jennifer Bohnet
Double Up by Gretchen Archer
Shock and Awe by Simon Reynolds
Duels and Deception by Cindy Anstey
Started:
The Whole Art of Detection by Lynsday Faye
Still reading:
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Difficult Women by Roxane Gay
I bought on ebook – as a kindle daily deal – but that was it. Not bad.
After yesterday’s ravings about Bet Me, I thought for Recommendsday this week I give a quick shout out to other books and authors doing similar things.
A lot of the books that spring to mind are actually from a while ago – and now have spots on my keeper bookshelves – but this also means some of them aren’t available on kindle, or are only available second hand. Which is a real pain, because they’re all excellent.
I’m going to start with Sarah Mason – and in particular The PartyThe Party Season Season. Izzy and Simon have a great love/hate relationship and all the supporting characters are brilliant too. I wish there were more books by Mason, but she appears to have vanished from the bookish world. She did have a business career as well, but I’ve often wondered if she’s still out there writing under a different name* and I just haven’t spotted her yet. Luckily these are available on Kindle.
Talking of authors that I wish there were more books from, I cried in Tescos when I picked up Melissa Nathan‘s last book and read I the in the author ioraphy that she’d died. She wrote smart, sexy funny romantic comedies the likes of which are hard to find. The good news is that they’re available on Kindle too – The Waitress was the first of hers that I read, but I think The Learning Curve is my favourite.
It’s not that long since I had a rave about Christina Jones, and she definitely fits into this sort of company, as do Hester Browne, Claire Sandyand Jenny Colgan. Hopefully that’s enough suggestions to keep you going for a few days, but if you have any more suggestions for me, do leave them in the comments.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 