books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Books set in Italy

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It’s Easter this weekend, and so I’m going with a slightly tangential theme for this week’s recommendsday – books set in Italy, as that’s where the Pope hangs out, and you know that’s enough for a link for me at the moment!

Let’s start with Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, which is about the childhood of two friends in Naples in the 1950s. The identity of the author is a mystery and many say that’s because the book seems so real it must be autobiographical. It’s the first of four books – I have the others still to read and I really must try to get to them soon. The Naples of this book is the opposite of the glamorous Italy you often see in films but it’s fascinating and engrossing.

Talking of the glamorous romantic view of Italy, that’s exactly why the women in The Enchanted April go to Italy in Elizabeth von Arnim’s 1920s novel. I’ve written about it before because it’s right in my wheelhouse, with a medieval castle and four very different women decamping from their normal lives looking for a change in a holiday to the Italian riviera.

Talking of medieval, and another book I’ve mentioned before – Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose which is a murder mystery set in a monastery with a legendary library. I read it as part of my degree, and you should all be glad that I’m recommending this and not Machiavelli’s The Prince, which I also read as part of the same module! Catch-22 was assigned reading for another module but again I really liked it (I did not like the Seven Pillars of Wisdom which was another assigned book for that one) although Heller’s novel is more about the madness and tragedy of war and just happens to be taking place (mainly) in Italy.

I read this a very long time ago, and haven’t been back since, but I’m still going to mention Anthony Capella’s debut, The Food of Love, which is a Cyrano de Bergerac sort of twist about an American woman visiting Rome and falling in love with a man who cooks for her. Except who is really cooking the food?

I’ve been trying to think if I have read any romances set in Italy but my mind is inexplicably blank, so if that comes back to me, I’ll do a follow up I guess. I do have a bunch of books set in Italy on the tbr pile – including some murder mystery and a few historical fiction novels too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: When Grumpy Met Sunshine

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A big old stack of reading last week because: holiday, so a few things to chose from, but this was easily my favourite – although I have one reservation if you read on!

As the title suggests, this is a grumpy-sunshine romance, where the sunny half of the couple is ghost writer Mabel and the grumpy is her latest subject, former footballer Alfie who has been persuaded to write his memoirs. Except that he doesn’t want to reveal anything about himself and he doesn’t do emotions. So Mabel’s job isn’t going to be easy, but she tries and they start snarking and squabbling as they try to get something down on paper. And then they’re spotted together in public and the press decides that Mabel and Alfie are a couple. And of course the first rule of ghost writing is that no one can know that you’re a ghost writer so they pretend to be in a relationship. Except that there is a lot of chemistry going on and Mabel is in very real danger of catching feelings for Alfie. But he couldn’t really be interested in a girl like her, could he?

And therein lies my problem with this book. Because it is absolutely clear that Alfie really does have feelings for Mabel and he has them from quite early on, and she is just the most obvious person that was ever oblivious not to see it. And obviously that’s how she has to be for the plot to work, and Charlotte Stein does make a good attempt at trying to give a reason why Mabel might not think he’s into her and it does make his grand gesture at the end very grand but still. For a smart woman, Mabel is very stupid when it comes to noticing how into her Alfie is. But the banter was so fun and it was so funny I forgave it because it really was a lot of fun. And it is also really quite steamy during the fake relationship portion of it – I had to put it down while I was on the plane home because I was worried the person next to me was going to read it over my shoulder and then I would have died of embarrassment!

This is the first Charlotte Stein novel that I’ve read – and from what I can see it’s her first novel in this sort of area – she’s written a couple of dozen romances before but the rest of her back catalogue seem to be in the ménage/erotica end of the genre which is not really what I read, so I will be keeping an eye out for what she writes next if there is going to be more like this!

I’ve seen When Grumpy Met Sunshine in the shops all over the place – and of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 18 – March 24

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Well that was a lovely week. I’ve been off work and recharging my batteries visiting a friend in Portugal – this involved sightseeing, ice cream, cat petting and lots of reading. It was a delight. And this week I’m back to the real world, but it’s Easter at the weekend, so that’s nice! In terms of the actual reading, I’m blitzing my way through another series by Patti Benning and then there were a few Girls Own books and then I’m nearly finished the Nick de Semelyen.

Read:

Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner

Ricky at the Riding School by Patricia Baldwin

Offed in Oregon by Patti Benning

For The Sake of The House by Veronica Marlow

Croaked in California by Patti Benning

False Scent by Ngaio Marsh

Fallin’ Fast by Patti Benning

When Grumpy Met Sunshine by Charlotte Stein

Started:

Nabbed in New Mexico by Patti Benning

Still reading:

The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R King

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Two books bought in a bookshop, three more at the Book Exchange.

Bonus picture: Fishing boats on the beach on Saturday.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books

Books in the Wild: Dubai airport edition

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Following on from last week’s Manila bookshop post, I flew to the Philippines via Dubai, and on the way home I had enough time during my connection to have wander through the shops so of course I zoomed in on the books!

I was actually with impressed with the English language selection, I have to say. I think most people would be able to find something from this selection, as long as you’re happy going with something from the bestseller lists, or best seller-adjacent.

I’m pretty sure that my choice of I had needed one would have been When Grumpy Met Sunshine or With Love, From Cold World, even though I still haven’t read Love in the Time of Serial Killers yet! I had however spent some money in the bookshop in Manila and it was somewhere in the early hours of the morning, so I didn’t buy anything. Which as you know has quite an achievement for me so to can tell the long flights were affecting me!

And as a final bonus, no books but back in Manila airport there was a familiar name!

Have a great weekend!

series

Mystery series: Tj Jensen

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Today for the series post, I’m coming back to a series I mentioned on my book from in the Thanksgiving books post back in November, but now I’ve read the whole lot so it’s time to talk in more depth!

Our heroine is Tj, a high school teacher and sports coach in Paradise Nevada, who lives on her family’s resort with her two much younger half sisters. Their mum is dead and Tj has taken over as their parental figure. As with most of these series, Tj has a love interest and a solid group of secondary characters around her to keep things interesting and provide her with sidekicks for her sleuthing. Despite the fact that someone dies in every book, Paradise seems like a pretty nice place to live, and Tj herself is a fun, not too stupid to live heroine, even though she’s quite young in the grand scheme of things.

There are ten books in the series and they move through the seasons with the resort – so there are summer and winter weather books as well as books around the various seasonal festivals (Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas) so it doesn’t seem to much like there are bodies falling out of every corner at Tj and her friends. I found these incredibly easy to read – I started reading them via NetGalley when Henery Press had their books on there and were going through a pretty reliable period. And since then I’ve been able to pick off the rest of them either via Kindle Unlimited or as a bargain deal and the good news is that they’re all in KU at the moment. So if you fancy a solid murder mystery that’s not too gory, these are a pretty good way to pass a couple of hours. Kathi Daley has written a couple of other series – but I haven’t had a chance to read any of them yet, but they are on the list!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book previews, books

Out this week: Fresh Vinyl Detective!

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After a nearly two year wait (in which Cartmel released a book in the same universe but with a different cast) we finally have a new Vinyl Detective book. And as I said in my anticipated sequels post, this one is about the dance music scene which should be fun – because Him Indoors did a lot of clubbing in this era so I’m looking forward to seeing what I recognise from the stories that I’ve heard!

books, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Fresh Starts

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Happy Wednesday everyone, I’m back with a few more book recommendations for you, and because it is starting to feel spring like, which means spring cleaning and clear outs, this week’s theme is books with people making fresh starts.

Obviously romance novels are full of these, with tonnes of heroines moving to small towns to start over, so that’s where I’m starting! there are a lot of small town romance series that have elements of this, but it’s not a given because lots of them feature people finding love with people they’ve known all their lives. So if small town fresh starts are what you’re after, try Jill Shalvis’s Simply Irresistible, the first in her Lucky Harbor series, which actually has a fair few escapes to a new place type plots. This one has a heroine who has left LA for a fresh start and to claim an inheritance. The hero is the contractor she hires to help fix up the inheritance. And Shalvis’s Animal Magnetism series also features some new starts, although I’ve only read the first one and found the hero a little too alpha-y for my taste. If you want something really gentle, Debbie Macomber’s Dakota series from the early 2000s is very low stakes from what I remember, and super easy to read.

If you want a historical romance with a fresh start, Beverly Jenkins’s Tempest features a heroine who moves across the country to marry a man she’s never met, on the strength of their correspondence with each other – I’m not sure starts get much fresher than that! Anyway, Regan is a fantastic heroine and I really enjoyed both the romance and the bits where she was establishing herself in the new town. Jenkins did this so well – earlier in the same series is Tempest, is Forbidden, whose hero is a little too alpha for me and heroine a little too sweet, but I know that is personal preference. And Jenkins of course wrote the Blessings series, where the heroine buys a whole town and brings it back to life.

There are also loads of cosy crime series that start with the sleuth moving to somewhere new – Jenn McKinley’s Library Lovers is one of these for a start, as is M C Beaton’s Agatha Raisin, although a warning on the latter, I can’t read too many (or even more than one now) in a row because the formula is very strong in these and you notice it a lot.

There are a couple of former books of the week that fit here to – like Well Met by Jen DeLuca, the first in her Renaissance Faire series, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph – which is completely different to anything what I have mentioned in this part so far. And then there are a bunch of books that feature fresh starts that I still have on the to read pile, waiting for me to get around to – like Linda Holmes’s Flying Solo, Jasmine Guillory’s Party of Two,

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, books

Book of the Week: Miss Pickle

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This is another one of those weeks where I’m writing about a book that is a curiosity and is in no way good. But it was the thing I read last week that I most wanted to talk about so I’m going with it.

Miss Pickle is an evangelical school story, set in Australia. Our heroine is the plucky Lola, vicar’s daughter, misunderstood by her stepmother, star of her local school and now off to a boarding school as a scholarship girl. On arrival she meets her new roommate Trixie – the school’s problem child, who gets a new roommate every year in the hopes that they will reform her but instead the reverse happens. Oh you know where this is going.

Except this is maybe even more bonkers than you might expect it to be. I did a lot of laughing and Him Indoors got quite annoyed at me for disturbing him. The only surprise is that there isn’t more proselytising in the dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still quite a lot, but it could have been much worse – the girls do speak like real people on occasion. I didn’t have Trixie being reformed so well that she is made a prefect within a term of her reforming in my bingo card, neither did I have Lola being told that she wasn’t made prefect because it will do Trixie more good than it will her. But I think my favourite piece of madness is a cheating scandal. The culprit is finally made to confess right before she leaves and goes away determined to do better, but no one really believes her and we all forget about her for fifty pages until right before the end we find out she’s died after saving a woman from a shark attack, and then lesson we are meant to learn is that she had truly reformed and become a better person. There is more plot – it gets a lot into 180 pages, but I think that’s the highlight.

I can’t tell you how to get a copy – the one I have came from my Aussie Book Con friends (hi Pat and Sheila if you’re reading this) who brought it over last summer and I have no clue if they’ve had it for years or acquired it specially. But as I’m not really recommending it as a good book – in fact it’s objectively terrible – that doesn’t matter. But I did have a hoot reading it and am now passing it on to a friend who I know will also laugh at it.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: March 11 – March 17

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I actually have no idea what I’m going to write about tomorrow. Well maybe a little idea. Anyway, another super busy week, but still a few things read. I’ve got some days off this week which I’m really looking forward to – and plotting some reading time as part of that. I’ve got to get that long-runners list down. It’s starting to get embarrassing.

Read:

Chillin’ Out by Patti Benning

The Antiques Hunter’s Guide to Murder by C L Miller*

Scales of Justice by Ngaio Marsh

Warned in Wisconsin by Patti Benning

Off With His Head by Ngaio Marsh

Mayhem in Montana by Patti Benning

Miss Pickle by Constance Mackness

Started:

n/a

Still reading:

The Lantern’s Dance by Laurie R King

Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake

The Last Action Heroes by Nick de Semelyen

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

One book bought. After quite a lot more than one the week before!

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.