Now I didn’t intend for this to be the BotW because I’ve already mentioned it a few times, but it has one of the best grovels that I have recently seen in a romance so I couldn’t help myself so here we are!
How does Athena Grayson find herself living in a tiny house in between her former fiancé and his brother? Well it’s because she impulsively bought the spite house as a wedding gift for her husband before the engagement imploded. Now she’s stuck living in it – attached to her ex’s house and with the man who is the reason her fiancé broke up with her across the alley from her – and visible from every window. So she does what every woman living in a house with spite in the name would do – tries to get petty revenge. Except that Doctor Matthew Vine the Third may not be quite the uptight judgemental jerk she thought he was.
You know where this is going, but I will admit to having my doubts when I read the blurb about how Matthew was going to be redeemable. But luckily it’s pretty clear early on what his issue with his brother’s marriage is and that makes it all better or easier for the reader anyway. This has however got a portrayal of serious depression in it, which there is a warning for at the front so I’m not spoiling anything, and may mean that you need to approach with care depending on your own situation.
This is the first book in Olivia Dade’s new series set in Harlot’s Bay and it sets up a delightful community and set of secondary characters for the reader to revisit in the next books in the series. I’m really interested to see who the next person to get a book is – it feels like it maybe should be Athena’s ex, and yet I’m not sure how I feel about getting on board with him as a hero – he doesn’t seem to fit the sort of hero that Dade creates. So I look forward to seeing what the next one is when we get more information on that – whenever it maybe!
I had my paperback copy preordered, but you can also get it on Kindle and Kobo.
Well this list looks a lot longer than it should because of the short stories from Improbable Meet Cute and a graphic novel. And obviously it has last week’s BotW on it because it was one of those weeks too. I’m off on my travels for work this week – proper travels out of the country – so we’ll see what that does to the list. I’m going to try and get that long running list down, but we will see. Service here should continue as usual though, even if I am in a different time zone.
I mean that’s pretty much the message. The new season dropped on Friday and so thats what we settled down to watch on Friday night after work. You all know how much I’ve enjoyed the previous series but they had lots of on track action to work with so I was very interested to see what they did with the 2023 season which, spoiler alert, was not the most exciting on the actual racing front. If you want to watch, it’s on Netflix but if you haven’t watched before go back and start with maybe season two (not all the teams did season one) and go from there.
This Saturday I’m taking the opportunity to noodle a bit about a few things I’ve spotted in my wanderings around the various bookshops. You’re welcome.
First up, this was the window display at the Euston W H Smith bookshop this week. I haven’t read Katy Brent’s debut, How to Kill Men and Get Away with It, because I’m fairly sure it’s too dark for me, but I do love the design they gave it and this second novel looks just as cool. And it’s clearly getting g a bit of a push in the shops.
This is one I spotted in my local Waterstones – I do like a Hollywood story, and I’m curious about behind the scenes at Disney, so this one has in the list of stuff I want to read just as soon as I’ve got the to read pile down a little bit!
And lastly, this was the hardback fiction tower at that same Waterstones. The books that jumped out took to me were Over My Dead Body, which has a murder victim stuck in limbo unless she can prove she was murdered; Kiley Reid’s second book because I’m curious to see how she follows the massive success of Such a Fun Age; and Sara Sheridan’s The Secrets of Blythswood Square because I used to read her Mirabelle Beavan mystery series and I’m interested to see what she’s doing now. But like the others, it may have to wait for a smaller backlog! Perhaps by the time they’re in paperback.,.
Happy Friday everyone, it’s nearly the weekend and today I’m looking at this year’s Amazon original story offer for Valentine’s Day – the Improbable Meet Cute series of short stories.
So the idea behind these is finding love when you least expect it, and they feature improbable first encounters that lead to a special connection, each one written by a different best selling author (or duo in the case of Christina Lauren). I would say I really like fifty percent of the authors here, and have a… more mixed relationship with the other half. So I thought it would be fun to read them all and read them in order and see what I thought.
And the answer was I really liked the ones by the authors that I usually like – Christina Lauren, Ashley Poston and Sally Thorne – andwas agreeably surprised by Abbie Jiminez’s story. The Sariah Wilson was my least favourite – which wasn’t a surprise because I didn’t really like the full length novel of hers I had previously read, and this featured royals which I always have a mixed record with.
But overall, it’s a nice collection with something for most people and they don’t take too long to read as and they’re all around the fifty page mark. And if you have Kindle Unlimited they’re free.
How excited was I to read the new Olivia Dade? Well, it dropped onto my doormat while I was at work on Tuesday and as you can see it came on the train to work with me on Wednesday. This is an enemies to lovers romance where the heroine was previously engaged to the hero’s brother. And the hero is the reason the wedding didn’t happen, so that’s going to be an interesting one to try to sort out. The only problem is that when I find out how that’s done, it’ll all be over and I’ll have to wait for the next book from Dade!
Yes, this is a thing. Seriously it is and I’ve read an increasing number of them and they start to form into patterns. Yes it’s slightly niche and I’m not expecting many of you to go out and buy these, but I have thoughts to share.
Firstly, lets be clear – my beloved Drina books are not career books. Yes, across the series Drina trains as a ballet dancer – which then becomes her career, but ballerina is not a realistic career for most young women. These are books that were written to give young women ideas of what they might want to do when they left school and what the training and actual job might entail. But the author of the Drina books did write some career books – Jean Estoril aka Mabel Esther Allan wrote Judith Teaches, which is one of a slew of books about becoming a teacher. What makes it interesting is that Judith becomes a teacher at a secondary modern – rather than a grammar school – and that gives a window onto mid twentieth century English society. It’s been reprinted recently, so worth a look if you can get a cheap copy.
Another popular job to get the career novel treatment is nursing – the Cherry Ames and Sue Barton series are the ones you’re most likely to have heard of, and I’ve read a couple of each of those, but I’ve also read Jean Tours a Hospital which is I mentioned in Quick Reviews last summer and is definitely emphatically not a great work of literature, but it is a fascinating look at nursing in the 50s and the attitudes around it.
There are a few with journalist heroines too – which is fun for me given my day job! There’s the Sally Baxter: Girl reporter series but also few weeks back I read A Press Story which has a plucky school leaver securing her first trainee job at the (very) local paper and you follow her as she learns the ropes.
Then there are some with more exotic jobs – I read June Grey: Fashion Student a couple of months back – which follows the titular June as she completes her course at fashion and design college and undertakes some work experience with a view to getting a job. Haute couture designers a plenty – and she gets a love interest (of course). In fact in most of these there is a romantic subplot as well – just to make sure that they all know that if they get a job it’s not going to stop them getting married. June’s is a fellow designer, a year or two ahead of her in career terms but also with some connections to the business which are revealed late on so we know that June won’t be struggling for cash when she bags her bloke.
I think the first career book that I read – way back when I was about 8 or 9 years old – was my mum’s copy of Shirley Flight: Air Hostess, which I blame for my crushing disappointment on my first ever plane flight when I discovered that the cabin crew no longer cooked a four course meal for the passengers in the plane’s galley during the flight. Luckily my disillusionment was assuaged by the fact that my sister and I were taken into the flight deck (I think my dad had told the crew it was our first flight – thanks dad!) and we got to see the Alps poking through the clouds below us. Anyway, at the time I had no idea that this was part of a series but as a grown up I’ve picked up most of the others for cheap at various points. They have all the issues that you might expect when it comes to books written in the 50s and and dealing with far flung parts of the world, so if you do ever pick one up, make it that first one or one of the North American or European set ones to avoid the worst of that.
And finally my most recent discovery is that we also had evangelical career books – last week I read Linda Learns to Type where our heroine wants to be a private secretary to an important man and so throws herself into her secretarial classes at her secondary modern. Linda’s sister passed the eleven plus and goes to grammar school – and Linda is jealous of that, but her sister has also Found God and by the end of the book Linda does too – and a nice boy too, who isn’t the first one you meet in the book for once, because that one doesn’t like Linda’s new interest in the chapel youth group. Linda’s job is at a chocolate factory – most of the chocolate manufacturers in the UK seem to have been Quakers so that scans – and there’s plenty of detail about all the secretarial work that needed doing in the pre-computer era.
Through all of this my guide is Kay Clifford’s Career Novels for Girls – the copy I have is my friends (as to be fair is Press Story!) but I also heard Kay talk at Book Conference a few years back. It’s an encyclopaedic guide to the genre, but written with a sense of humour and an eye to the truly outdated madness that some of these are peddling. But then there’s some really bonkers stuff in a lot of Girls Own books – not for nothing do my sister and I have a running joke about people being sung out of comas after all.
Yes, yes, yes, I finished it on Monday. It would have been on the train in to work on Monday, but just as I was reading the last couple of percent as we came in on the final stretch into Euston someone phoned me, and it was the train home instead – in fact I was so near the end, I had finished it before the train had finished pulling out of the station!
This is a friends to lovers, fake dating sort of romance where our hero and heroine, Hallie and Jack, meet at a wedding, have a one night stand and then meet again on a dating app. Hallie is trying to get her life back on track after a messy breakup with her high school boyfriend and she and Jack are definitely not interested in each other so make a bet on who can find true love first. And you know where this is going.
I found this really easy to read and a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of some of the “chick lit” romances I read back in the day and has a nice sense of humour about it. The hero and heroine are quite young, but it didn’t feel quite as New Adult-y as some of the other romances I have read recently with similarly aged couples. But once I had finished reading it and started thinking about it there were a few things that jumped out at me – Jack does some questionable things during the bit of the bet where he’s catching feelings for Hallie, and actually when it comes down to it neither of them have a lot of character beyond being hot and liking tacos. But it’s one of the books where I didn’t notice that in the moment (well except that thing that Jack did where my first thought was “well there’s the final act breakup moment set up”) and it’s funny so I didn’t care too much. But your mileage may vary, depending on how much late 90s/early 00s romance you have read and your feelings and tolerance of that.
This is my first Lynn Painter – I picked it up because it was on offer (yes the Kindle offers post research costing me money again!) and I keep seeing her books recommended. And it was definitely worth 99p, and I’ll have a look out for more from her in Kindle Unlimited as well (there’s one at the moment). It’s in Kindle and Kobo and claims to have a paperback.
A pretty good week all in all. Very busy but some good stuff read amid it all. A distinct romance turn to the list though – but then it was Valentine’s Day so that might only to be expected!
Five books bought – two kindle and three paperbacks. And a preorder arrived too, although that was the Susan Elizabeth Philips, which I read immediately so that’s already off the backlog, so maybe it doesn’t count?!
Bonus photo: it’s starting to get lighter in the mornings on the walk to work. If only it was lighter when I get on the train!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Yes, yes, my plant obsession continues. I’m hoping that everything has survived the winter and that worst of the cold weather is over.
I’ve got a bit of repotting to do – the mini Christmas tree was a gift and I’ll get it properly potted up now the decorations are down, but also the Pothos needs a bigger pole to climb – and maybe some kind of encouragement to put out some more shoots for the other side of the pole! And the ficus just needs some support. And if you’re thinking that the downstairs window sill is looking a little emptier – never fear, that’s not because they’re dead, it’s because I moved a few of them upstairs in January when we went on holiday and they haven’t come back down yet because I quite like my bureau top of plants.
See- it looks pretty good doesn’t it. Here is the newest of my spider plants, Cecily, along with Palmeria and in the background my Christmas cactus, and the fishbone cactus and tucked away right at the back a variagated Croton which is probably the most at risk of not making it through the cold snap.
And here are the big ones – the umbrella tree finally seems to be happy, Roger the monstera keeps flinging out new leaves and the bulbs are gearing up to floor. The banana plant is a little more of an unknown quantity, but I’m hoping when it warms up he’ll be ok too.
This is just a selection of the plants – I’ll try and do more at some point soon, but more dusting and tidying is require to show you more!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 