This week’s BotW changed on Sunday afternoon – which is quite last minute for me. As is usual by that stage in the week I had a novel in mind as my favourite of the week – and had even got as far as thinking about what i was going to say (but not as far as drafting it!). Then I picked up Janet Evanovich’s Wicked Business which I’d borrowed from the library the previous day…
My hardback library copy
This is the second book in Evanovich’s Lizzy and Diesel series,* following a cupcake baker with special powers and her mysterious and supernaturally gifted partner in crime. I’m clearly missing some of the back story, because I’m pitching up in a well established universe midway through a series which I think is a spin off in its own right. But golly I had a ball reading this and I’m residing the urge to go out and buy a whole load more of Evanovich’s books. I read this in one sitting, curled up under the blanket on the sofa, ignoring the rest of the world! It perfectly fitted my state of mine after doing a nightshift on Saturday night.
They’re not at all the same thing really, but this reminded me of the feeling that I get from reading a good Charlaine Harris novel. But funnier and with less biting! Several people have recommended Janet Evanovich to me at various points and if they’re all as much fun as this, I think her books may be my next obsession. And that is not good news for reducing the to-read pile because a new obsession always ends up with me going on a buying binge…
* I thought it was the first, but the books were listed in reverse order in the front and I didn’t notice, which is stupid of me because Evanovich’s other series has numbers in the titles!
This week I have been mostly tackling some of the longest standing overdue books from my NetGalley list. The good news is, that everything that is left on the list is now something that was published this year. Which is a big step forward!
Read:
Mapp and Lucia by E F Benson
The Great Christmas Knit Off by Alexandra Brown
All About Love by Stephanie Laurens
The Zig Zag Girl by Elly Griffiths
What Milo Saw by Virginia Macgregor
The Importance of Being Alice by Katie MacAlister
It Girl by Nic Tatano
The Affair by Gill Paul
Spirits, Stilettos and a Silver Bustier by Deanna Chase
Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich
Summer at Castle Stone by Lynn Marie Hulsman
Started:
Stanley Chambers and the Problem of Evil by James Runcie
Still reading:
n/a
A one-off Saturday nightshift lead to a little bit of book purchasing, but I’ve been very good really. I even took some library books back (after reading them). Although I did then borrow some more…
Well here we are, in a first for Verity Reads Books, I’m part of a blog tour. Isn’t this exciting! Today I welcome Jenny Oliver to the blog. She’s going to tell you why she loves the arrival of Spring, and then I’m going to tell you what I thought about The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café – which is the first book in her new Cherry Pie Island series. So, over to Jenny:
Hurray it’s Spring!
Every season I think, ‘This is my favourite season!’ So naturally, right now, I’m thinking that Spring is my definite fave. Here’s my rational…
1. What could be better than a bright yellow flower with a trumpet that costs less than a pound a bunch? They’re happiness in a vase. Right by my parents’ house in Cornwall there are daffodil fields and I think I’m right in saying they leave them to bloom the first year after planting. Last year it was amazing to see this huge yellow field of happy little flowers.
2. This is not to say that I don’t love winter food – stews and casseroles and lasagnes – but I really love a good salad. I’m talking about crispy lettuce, maybe a bit of rocket, and some tiny new potatoes, crispy bacon, feta and lemon juice. Eaten sitting on our back step (because we don’t have a garden) with a glass of really lovely white wine.
3. The smell of the air when you walk out the door in the morning. The warmth of the sun mingling with the cold of the night, the scent of cut grass and daffodils and the sound of birds and cars and people getting up and starting their day happy because it’s not raining or cold!
4.Not wearing a coat! Don’t get me wrong, I really like my coat but after months of wearing it non-stop it’s a pleasure to walk out the house in only a jumper.
5. The knowledge that summer is just around the corner…
Thanks Jenny! Now on to my review…
Dandelion Café tells the story of Annie’s return to island that she grew up on to take over the family café. Annie’s got some issues, and she’s not thrilled to be back on Cherry Pie Island where everyone remembers (and won’t let her forget) her youthful mistakes and misadventures. But it does have the added bonus of Matt-the-millionaire (not the cliche that it sounds, trust me) who she had a massive crush on when she was at school.
Jenny Oliver manages to get a lot of plot into a short book, but it never feels rushed or forced. I got swept away in the world of the island and was rooting for it all to turn out right in the end. And for Annie’s brother to end up getting a dunking in the sea!
I read this on the way home from a nightshift (the last of three), desperately needing some light relief that wouldn’t overtax my frazzled, sleep-deprived brain. The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café put a smile on my face (helping counteract the purple dark circles) and perked me up nicely. It also didn’t send me into the simmering rage that some partworks/serialisation-y type things do by ending on a cliff hanger which I can’t find out the resolution to for weeks/months/years.
There are some loose ends left at the end of this book – don’t get me wrong – and I need to find out what happens to them, but the main plot of this part of the series is resolved at the end, and the next book in the series is set up neatly – with the prospect of keeping track of how Annie gets on as the next story unfolds. And since reading Dandelion Café, I’ve been back and found a Jenny Oliver book that had been sitting in the Kindle backlog for a while (I’m not looking to see how long – I don’t want to know!) and read and enjoyed that too.
The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Cafe is available now from the usual e-book based outlets. My copy came from NetGalley – but I liked it so much I’ve shelled out my own money to pre-order the next in the series!
This week’s BotW is the new novel from Eloisa James – who is one of my favourite historical romance authors. Four Nights with the Duke is book 8 in her Desperate Duchesses series. My first Eloisa book was Desperate Duchesses 3 – Duchess by Night – which I stumbled across at the library back when I still lived in Essex (so 5+ years ago) and when she returned to the series to add a 7th book last year I was thrilled. Although I’m still really annoyed that we only got a UK paperback release of books 1 – 4 – I had to buy 5 and 6 from the US to read them as they weren’t on Kindle at that point – and then the paperbacks started again with 7. And of course none of them match…
The Historical Romance bookshelf – three difference sizes across the same author in some cases. Your basic nightmare.
Four Nights with the Duke is the second story in the second generation of the Duchesses – which appears to be subtitled “Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers”. Four Nights tells the story of Mia and Vander. Mia needs to get married (no, not because of that) and the only person she can turn to is a man she swore that she would never marry (and he was there when she did the swearing). Vander definitely doesn’t want to marry Mia – after all her father was his mother’s mistress and he’s still Very Angry* about that. But Mia has a rather incriminating piece of paper that means that he’s going to have to do it, or lose everything. So he offers her a deal – he’ll marry her, but he’ll only spend 4 nights a year with her (if you know what I mean) and she’s going to have to beg him for them…
Now that sort of set up is totally my sort of thing** – this is a plot device that totally floats my boat – the spouses at war/married because we had to trope is one of my favourites – right up there with fake engagements and you’ve been like a sibling to me until…x. Not an accidental pregnancy in sight (yay!). Add to that the fact that Mia has an alter ego as a romance novelist and I’m in historical romance heaven. And Eloisa James is such a safe pair of hands. There’s never an anachronism that I can spot, or a jarring word (except when I’ve got the American editions with the Wrong Spelling) or something that seems just too improbable – even for romance.
I read this practically in one big gulp on Easter Sunday – pausing only (with less than 50 pages remaining) to go to the big family meal at my auntie’s in the evening – and if I could have put off leaving to finish it, I would have done. The only problem with that is that I’ve now got to wait a year until there’s another one, and I think I’ve practically read the whole of the Eloisa James back catalogue now – as evidenced by the Kindle folder and the romance folder…
The Kindle folder for Eloisa James books is three pages long
Having read some Historical Romance recently that I was less than crazy about – and a couple of books that weren’t as good as I was hoping they would be as well, I was really pleased that this totally lived up to the hype that I had given it in my head. It’s not my favourite in the series (a toss up between a Duke of Her Own and Duchess by Night) but it’s still really, really good. If you’re not a historical romance reader – and want to see what the genre is all about, Eloisa James along with Julia Quinn and Sarah MacLean are the authors I recommend as starting points (they’re also the authors that keep hold of after I’ve read them – as you can tell from the romance shelf).
You can get your copy of Four Nights with the Duke from all the usual sources – it’s got a paperback release – so Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles are all stocking it – and you never know, it might even make it into WH Smiths and the supermarkets too. And obviously, like me, you can buy it for Kindle or ebook.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I bought my copy of Four Nights – but I am in Eloisa’s fan outreach-y group on Facebook. But I’m posting this because I loved the book – not because they told me to.
BONUS PICTURE: Another brilliant example of the difference between UK romance covers and US ones…
* Sorry, I was watching Pretty Woman over the weekend – and writing that sentence made me think of this quote: “I was very angry with him. It cost me ten thousand dollars in therapy to say that sentence: “I was very angry him.” I do it very well, don’t I? I’ll say it again: I was very angry with him. “Hello, my name is Mr. Lewis, I am very angry with my father.” Although obviously Vander is angry with his mother and Mia’s Father, not his father. But still. It’s a good line.
** The Smart Bitches would call it my catnip. I’m not sure whether I can pull off calling something my catnip. I think I might be too British/dull/self conscious.
A good week of reading – some really good stuff in there – and the kindle backlog slightly reduced too. I do love a long holiday weekend…
Read:
Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan
The Julius House by Charlaine Harris
The Little Things by Jane Costello
Expecting the Earl’s Baby by Jessica Gilmore
The Parisian Christmas Bake Off by Jenny Oliver
The Harlot Countess by Joanna Shupe
In For a Penny by Rose Lerner
Four Nights with the Duke by Eloisa James
Started:
Mapp and Lucia by E F Benson
The Great Christmas Knit Off by Alexandra Brown
Still reading:
The Affair by Gill Paul
What Milo Saw by Virginia Macgregor
One book bought – the Julius House on Kindle – after I read Midnight Crossroad last week and felt the need for some Aurora. But I valiantly resisted the urge to buy the next book. And I went into The Works on Saturday and emerged EMPTY HANDED! That’s practically superhuman willpower for me!
I know, I know, it’s Easter, and I’m reviewing a book with Summer in the title! But Easter is often the start of the holiday season – and this is my first really beach-y read of the year.
Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery is the sequel to last year’s Little Beach Street Bakery (which was one of my Summer Reading suggestions last June). As per, I’m reluctant to say too much about the plot – in case you haven’t read the first book – but we rejoin Polly and all the crew in Mount Polbearne, where there is a whole new set of challenges for them all to face.
When I read a book and love it, I almost always want more – I want to see how they get on after the happily ever after so to speak. So I love a sequel – but I do get frustrated when their plot is basically breaking up the beloved couple and getting them back together again. I’m a big fan of Jenny Colgan, and what I really like is that her sequels don’t do that to you. There’s plenty of plot and lots of drama, but her couples are usually working their way through things together – as a unit. Much more fun.
The supporting characters in this are also great – Polly’s friends are a hoot and there are a few new characters in this who work really well as well. It made me laugh and it had me in tears, on a train OVER A PUFFIN for crying out loud* – so it must be good.
My copy of Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery came from NetGalley – but I’ll be buying my own paperback – because I need it for my shelf of Jenny Colgan books. And I need to lend it to my sister. If you’re not on a book buying ban** you can get your copy from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones (who are doing an extra 10% off for Easter) or on Kindle and if you’re going to an actual shop, I would expect it to be in all the supermarkets and WH Smiths at stations and airports too.
Have a Happy Easter – I find the best accompaniment to an Easter Egg is a good book!
*And had me googling “sponsor a puffin” when I got home.
** The Boy wasn’t happy when some more paperbacks turned up in the post the other day, so I’m not buying any more paperbacks until he’s got over it!
On Good Reads to-reads shelf (I don’t have copies of all of these!): 441
New books read this month: 32
Books from the Library Book pile: 1
Books from the to-read pile: 11
Ebooks read: 20
Most read author: tricky – I’m giving it to Charlaine Harris – because I read two complete books from here, and was more than half way through a third when we hit midnight last night (I also read 2 by Gail Carriger, R J Palacio and Jane Thynne)
Books read this year: 83
Books bought: 11 actual books and 3 ebooks
New Year’s Resolutions kept: 1 library book read, 1 non fiction (two if you count the Josh Sundquist) but I did buy the same number of actual books as I read, so the physical pile isn’t any shorter, and my NetGalley habit means the electronic one didn’t shrink as much as you’d hope either. Maybe I should have given up buying books for Lent rather than chocolate, sweets, crisps, cake and biscuits. Although knowing me that would just have resulted in a pre-ordering splurge on Shrove Tuesday and then a catch-up one on Easter Sunday!
I really struggled to pick a favourite book from last week. Not because I didn’t like anything, but there wasn’t one book I really wanted to shout about – except my book club book – and that’s not out til next month, so I’ll tell you about that when you can actually buy it!
In the end, I have settled on Charlaine Harris’s Midnight Crossroad – which I got through NetGalley*. It’s the first book in her new series (I think it’s pegged at three books) – and her first post-Sookie creation. I’ve now read all of the Southern Vampire series, all of the Harper Connelly series, all of the Lily Bard series – and three of the Aurora Teagardens** so I guess you could say that I’m a fan. I find her books really easy to read, her world building ticks my boxes and although each series clearly does have a formula, they are original enough that they don’t seem like the same book with new names if you know what I mean.
So Midnight Crossing is the convergence of the supernatural world of Sookie – and the worlds that we’ve seen in her other series – and to me it seems to try to root them all firmly in the same universe – which is something I’ve always wondered about. There are some familiar faces from the previous series – and I’ve had trouble writing this without giving you spoilers.
The residents of Midnight might look normal (mostly), but they’re all hiding something. Manfred has just moved to town and is about to discover that still waters really do run deep. Ummmm. And that’s about all I can say without giving too much away. The story has multiple points of view, which can be a bit confusing at first, but it does work to establish the different characters and set up the town from the inside out as well as Manfred looking in. But that’s not to say that by the end of the book you’ll know all the answers.
It’s not perfect, it’s not the best thing I’ve ever read – but it really is a nice way of passing an afternoon, especially if you’ve read the previous series. It’s not the same genre really as the True Blood books – but it’s closer to them than any of her other series are.
As I said, my copy came from NetGalley – in advance of the UK paperback release on April 9 – you can pre-order that from Amazon or Foyles. I can hear you pointing out the contradiction in not having my Book Club book as BotW because it’s not out yet – and then reviewing this which isn’t out for another week, and to that I offer you the Kindle link (and for the US readers, the amazon.com link because the paperback is already out there!) – although I’m sure the price will drop once the paperback comes out. But you can get a sample now to see if you like it, while you can’t even get a sneak peak of my Book Club novel yet – it’s not out for three and a half weeks (or indeed the end of May in the US). And it’s cruel to recommend something and make people wait that long!
* Having been reading the Dear Author palarva over the weekend, I’ve resolved to make sure I’m even more upfront about where my books come from – I already say on Goodreads if my copy was from NetGalley or similar, and I try to here, but I’m redoubling my efforts. Transparency is key…
** I’ve bought book four after reading Midnight Crossing. I suspect the second Omnibus is in my future…
Another fairly good week’s progress – despite a lot of real life stuff getting in the way so to speak. Some really good books in there – some that were a little disappointing. But hey, c’est la vie.
Read:
Pluto – A Wonder story by R J Palacio
Letters to the Lost by Iona Grey
Dream Cottage by Harriet J Kent
The Secrets of Sir Richard Kenworthy by Julia Quinn
Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris
The Visitors by Sally Beauman
Started:
The Affair by Gill Paul
What Milo Saw by Virginia Macgregor
Still reading:
n/a
One book and one e-book bought this week – and a few requests on NetGalley too. But overall not too bad.
This week’s BotW is RJ Palacio’s Wonder. It was hands down my favourite book of last week’s reading – I was enjoying it so much I nearly took it to London when I went down for work at the weekend – even though it was a hardback library copy! And the first thing I did when I got home on Sunday afternoon was to curl up on the sofa and finish it.
Wonder is the story of Auggie – born with a terrible facial abnormality and starting school for the first time after years of home schooling. With multiple narrators, you see the world from his point of view and from those of the people around him as he tries to fit in and make friends and be “normal”.
If I could have read this in one sitting, I would have done (don’t you just hate it when real life gets in the way of reading?!), it’s that kind of book. It really is one of those novels where you fall in love with the characters and the world and don’t want to leave it behind. And you can insert my usual comment about the state of my to-read pile meaning I don’t get to good stuff soon enough – because this has been on my to-read list since it was mentioned in an Emerald Street mailing soon after it came out.
I need to get my own copy – firstly because my library copy didn’t have “The Julian Chapter” in the end of it and secondly because I want to lend it to my sister and my mum. And I want to read it again. It’s that sort of book. And don’t be put off by the fact that it’s a children’s/YA book if you don’t usually read that sort of thing. It’s really worth it.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 