Tag: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, detective, historical

Book of the Week: D is for Death

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Happy Tuesday everyone. And I’m back with a murder mystery this week after taking a break for romance with While You Were Seething last week.

It’s 1935 and Dora is on the run from a fiancée she didn’t want in the first place. When she arrives in London she finds he has followed her there and hides in the London Library together away from him. Except inside the library she finds a dead body. Now she’s inside her first murder investigation and she is not the girl to walk away. She’s a book lover who particularly likes detective fiction but who is also the sort of person who notices everything and she’s sure she can help Detective Inspector Fox. He however is not so convinced.

Harriet F Townson is actually Harriet Evans writing under a different name to differentiate this from her usual genre. Because this is a historical mystery romp. It really is a romp. Dora is a delightfully quirky heroine and the plot just rattles along as she makes new friends in London, meets old friends and tries to solve the crime. There are references galore to the golden age of crime – including one of the characters living in Mecklenberg Square – home of Dorothy L Sayers in real life (more on that tomorrow) and her creation Harriet Vane (in the Gaudy Night).

I raced through this in one evening basically and I really hope there is a sequel because Dora is a lot of fun and there are enough plot threads left hanging to suggest it’s a possibility. It was also nominated for a Crime Writers Association Award so that’s got to help to right? This has got comps in the blurb with the aforementioned Sayers as well as Margery Allingham, Enola Holmes (only watched the Netflix films) and I Capture the Castle which sounds a bit bonkers on the eclectic front but I sort of endorse that! If you (like me!) like series like Veronica Speedwell, Daisy Dalrymple or Phryne Fisher, this is definitely worth a look.

I read this on Kindle, but it’s also in Kobo and should be available in paperback too

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: While You Were Seething

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It’s Tuesday and it’s time for another Book of the Week – and this week it’s a romance pick after a few weeks of mystery ones. And actually it could have been one of a couple of romances this week – so tomorrow’s Recommendsday has got some more of them for you. But in the meantime, my favourite book that I read last week was the new Charlotte Stein – which also came out last week. So as I said yesterday – I’m even fairly timely!

Daisy and Caleb were at college together and they’ve been enemies ever since. These days Daisy is a crisis PR specialist and her latest assignment is to try and dig Caleb out of a public relations disaster: he’s a romance author who has just told the world he doesn’t believe in romance or happy endings. She knows it’s not going to be easy to persuade him to do the book tour they’ve got planned, but she hadn’t quite realised how hard it would be. Soon Daisy’s on a road trip with him to each stop of the tour which is hard enough, but more than that people at the events are starting to think that Daisy is the mysterious woman that he dedicates all his books too – the love of his life. Soon they’re going along with the idea and now they’re also trapped in a fake relationship. Except the chemistry is starting to feel much more real than it ought to considering how much they hate each other. Because they do hate each other, don’t they?

This is the third fake relationship romance in an interconnected series from Charlotte Stein which started with When Grumpy Met Sunshine. Now my main issue (if it can be considered an issue) with that book was that it was pretty clear to you as a reader that the hero was into the heroine and it was hard to see how she didn’t see it. Now in this one it is much easier to understand why Daisy doesn’t think that Caleb is into her – she’s so beaten down by always been seen as too much that you can see how she would misinterpret or not see the signs. And as a reader it’s really quite delicious as they get stuck in these increasingly ridiculous situations being forced into ever closer proximity. And it’s so much fun – I read it in less than 24 hours and actively resented having to go to work and not carry on reading it!

In the afterward Stein says that this is the last of her rom coms – and I really hope that’s not as final as it sounds because I have really, really enjoyed reading them and I hope that she writes something similar soon. She has a small town paranormal romance series that I have my eye on for if/when prices drop because at the moment the kindle prices are too rich for my blood considering how big the to-read pile is!

My copy of While You Were Seething came via NetGalley, but as I have the other two in paperback I’m not ruling out buying myself a copy as well to give me a matching set for the bookshelves! I’ve seen the others in bookshops so I’m hoping this will be too but it’s only showing as in stock in one of the central London Waterstones at the moment so we will have to see. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too,

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Sky High

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It’s Tuesday so so here I am with another Book of the Week – and I’m back with the British Library’s Crime Classics series this week, making it two (albeit very different) murder mysteries in a row for my picks.

Cover of Sky High

Brimberley is a peaceful village, where everyone knows everyone else and very little happens. That is until the lead tenor in the village choir is killed by an explosion at his house. Choir leader Liz, her son Tim (a former commando) and a retired general are soon investigating to try and work out what’s happened. This was first published in 1955 and the post-World War Two world is very evident here – there are lots of ex military men of various types and vintages who may or may not be involved in the murder – and may or may not still be involved with the military. Some of my favourite of the Miss Marple plots revolve around issues thrown up by the aftermath of the war – I’m thinking of Brian Eastley in 4.50 from Paddington or the food rationing and bartering in A Murder is Announced that mean people can’t tell the police everything they are up to (and also a mega plot spoiler that I can’t explain) – which may be why this worked so well for me despite feeling a bit far-fetched at times!

This was a Janurary 2026 release in the BLCC series and I was pleased to see it pop up in Kindle Unlimited already. I read and enjoyed Michael Gilbert’s Smallbone, Deceased a year or two back which drew on Gilbert’s experience as a solicitor, while this one captures small village life in the 1950s with classic murder mystery mixing with spy thriller in a really pleasing way. I’ve got another of Gilbert’s books on the shelf and I’m moving it up the list now because I enjoyed this so much.

As I mentioned, this is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment which means it isn’t on Kobo right now, but it is available in paperback from the British Library online shop where once again they are running their three for two offer.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, first in series

Book of the Week: The French Bookshop Murder

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I said yesterday that I wasn’t sure what I was going to pick today and it turns out it’s actually a book I finished on Monday. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.

Zoe Pascal has relocated from her life in England to a small village in southern France where she is going to run a bookshop. But when she arrives in Sainte Catherine the locals are strangely hostile and there’s an undercurrent in the village that she just doesn’t understand. Then the body of a tourist is found in the local church – not long after she was due to meet Zoe. Suddenly Zoe finds herself under even more suspicion – from the gendarmes now as well as the locals. So she sets to to try and undercover the killer and the mystery at the heart of the village.

This is a lot of fun, with a really good puzzle as well as the murder mystery. I had a few bits figured out, but not all of it and I really enjoyed the village setting and the cast of characters. I could really picture the historic houses and Provençal countryside. There appears to be a tie in going on with a prior series by Greg Mosse, which I will be tempted to pick up – but there is a sequel to this to read first!

This is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, but it’s also still available on Kobo and there is a paperback too, although as only one of the London Waterstones‘ has it on click and collect you may have to have a bit of a hunt for it.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, romance

Book of the Week: Slow Dance

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We’re less than a month away from the release of Rainbow Rowell’s new novel Cherry Baby, so I thought I could probably risk reading her previous adult work now. You know what I’m like about saving things sometimes. Anyway, I wasn’t feeling very well last week so it seemed like a good potential treat in a week when I needed one. And here it is, this week’s BotW,

Shiloh and Cary were best friends in high school. The two of them and the third member of their trio Mikey were inseparable. But it was Shiloh and Cary that everyone thought would end up together. But they didn’t – and more than a decade later they’re going to meet for the first time in years at Mikey’s second wedding. Shiloh’s divorced with two small kids and Cary’s in the Navy, spending months at a time at sea. But is this the time that they will finally work out that they’re meant to be together?

This jumps backwards and forwards between the characters’ present day, high school and college showing how things were, how it fell apart and how they’re trying to make it work. I ended up really enjoying this, but I did have a few frustrations about it. Both characters needed to use their words more and have actual conversations, but I understood why they didn’t as teens because both had complicated home situations that they were working their way through. However, being inside Shiloh’s head made me anxious some of the time because the self sabotage was very real. But perhaps that’s what makes you root for them so much. This made me feel quite on edge through the final third, waiting for it all to fall apart again, but actually the resolution was pretty good. I can find military heroes a bit trying, but I understood why Cary was joining the Navy and what it was doing for him, but it was very much in the subtext and I felt like Shiloh’s lack of understanding about as a teen that was quite out of character for her considering how smart she was in other ways.

I can see that it won’t be for everyone – common threads in reviews that haven’t enjoyed it are around Shiloh being too hard to care for because of a perceived “too cool for school” or “not like other girls” type personality, or the characters not changing/developing as the years pass, but honestly I read Shiloh more as stand-offish and not letting people get close to her because if people are close they can hurt you (or judge you) more than anything else, and I think they did grow and change although it’s mostly in the subtext rather than one character overtly saying “OMG you would never have done that when we were at school” or similar. But I read this across about 24 hours and was smiling at the end, so that’s a pretty good recommendation and if you look at how much I’ve written about it, it will at least make you think!

My copy of Slow Dance came from NetGalley (yes I know, I told you I was behind) but it’s out in paperback now as well as in Kindle and Kobo. Rowell has a new book out in April, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see a price drop on the ebook price next month to go with the new release. You should be able to find it in bigger bookshops relatively easily too.

Happy Reading

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The Love Haters

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I mentioned yesterday that I had to crack out an emergency book over the weekend because I wasn’t feeling very well and that’s what I’ve ended up picking today: the latest Katherine Center, The Love Haters, which came out in paperback back in November. And it’s particularly good timing because it turns out that Center has written an Amazon Original story that is out today too.

Katie Vaughan is a videographer. For her day job she works for a small media company who make corporate and promotional video. For herself she makes day in the life videos about people who have done something heroic. The trouble is the passion project doesn’t pay the rent and there is a massive round of layoffs happening at the day job. So that’s why when her boss Cole offers her a last chance job she takes it. Trouble is, it’s filming a coast guard rescue swimmer and Katie doesn’t swim and the swimmer is Hutch, Cole’s brother. Hutch is internet famous after his rescue of a dog went viral, but he’s turned down every interview request since. But Katie really needs her job, so she heads off to the Florida Keys, where she finds that everything is just a bit different – and Hutch is definitely not what she was expecting either.

So I had a few qualms at a couple of points when I was reading this. Firstly there was a point where I was worried that this was going to have too much comedy based on humiliation, then there was a big third act twist that I was a bit dubious about and then I was concerned about the finale. But every time, it pulled it around – for me at least. I can see from the reviews that some people have found the plot strand around body image too much for them, but as someone who grew up in the terrible times that were the early 2000s I could totally understand where Katie was coming from and found her evolution on that front quite satisfying. Hutch is a great character – I wasn’t really aware of Coast Guard Swimmers being a thing before this book, but it was the perfect match of character and job and makes total sense for the way that the ending plays out. I don’t know that it’s my favourite of hers – I think I love The Rom-Commers the most, and it’s not a surefire recommendation for people because for reasons that may be apparent from what I’ve already written, but I read this in the space of an afternoon and evening and really enjoyed it.

This is out now in Kindle, Kobo and paperback. It’s showing up as being in stock in some of the London Waterstones so I think you should be able to get it in stores too.

Happy Tuesday!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Murder at Gulls Nest

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Happy Tuesday everyone I’m back with the offers post tomorrow, but for today I’m back with in the mystery realm with a book from the to-read pile. I really am trying to reduce the size of that. Not least because the overspill is currently on my jigsaw table and I have two that I got for Christmas that I want to do… Anyway, to the book:

In Murder at Gulls Nest it’s 1954 and Nora Breen has asked to be released from the monastery where she has lived for the last thirty or so years to try and find out what has happened to a former novice whose letters have abruptly stopped. Nora heads to Gore-on-Sea on the south coast and to the very boarding house where Frieda was living to investigate. When she arrives there she hides her connection to Frieda and starts to dig. But when another resident is found dead, she starts to worry that Frieda may have found herself caught up in something even more worrying than Nora feared.

Nora is a great character and I really like the way that she is rediscovering the world and herself as we go through the book. The world has changed while she has been cloistered away and she has decades of habits to break as well. And then the mystery is really good. I think that boarding houses are great settings for mystery books because it’s a way that hugely different people can be forced into proximity and they can feel very claustrophobic. They are also places where there are rules – and rules are something that Nora is used to, just in a different context. Inspector Rideout, who is the police officer that she comes into contact with, also makes for a great foil for Nora to bounce off, but he has depth and complexity of his own too.

This was one of my Christmas books, and there is a second book featuring Nora coming out next month which I’ve already started thanks to the wonders of NetGalley, which just shows how much I enjoyed this first installment. I hadn’t read anything by Jess Kidd before, but it seems like this was a bit of a departure from her previous writing and I’m really glad that she went in this direction because I enjoyed it a lot.

This one should be pretty easy to get hold of – I’ve seen the hardback in a bunch of stores and the paperback is out towards the end of March too. And of course it’s on Kindle and Kobo too where I’m expecting the price to drop when the paperback comes out.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, romance, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: Love and Other Brain Experiments

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and I’m back with a new release (well it was released in February and I read it in February so that counts as new release) romance for this week’s Book of the Week.

The heroine of Love and Other Brain Experiments is Frances, a neuroscientist who has spent the last five years trying to build her career after turning down a job – and her boyfriend – to follow her own research. Now she’s heading back to New York to a conference, where she’s going to come face to face with that same ex, who said she’d never make it on her own. When an argument with a rival is mistaken for an argument between a couple, she’s flustered and inadvertently confirms the misconception and suddenly both her and Lewis’s careers are at risk – and thus starts the fake dating agreement…

My favourite Sophie Kinsella book is Can You Keep a Secret, which starts with a genius scene set on a plane, and this also starts with an excellent plane-based meeting which set me up to really enjoy this. I had a slight concern with the fake dating scenario – because as the book sets it out Frances’s main problem with the initial relationship misconception is gaining a reputation for untruthfulness in science (where falsifying data is the worst thing you can do) but then she and Lewis create a much bigger reputational risk with the prolonged fake dating scenario. However, I love a fake dating story, and an enemies to lovers plot and this is so much fun that I just decided to go with it and hope that the resolution was well thought out and satisfying enough to negate that fear – and it basically was.

Frances is a great character – I loved all the details about the different places she’d worked in around the world and her complete single minded focus on her research made a great foil for her missing some issues in her real life outside of the lab. I thought Lewis was also really well drawn, although the reason why he and Frances became rivals seemed pretty unsurmountable initially, the actual explanation made it work. There is a slight case of just have a proper conversation you two here, but ultimately I raced through this in about 36 hours and ended with a big smile on my face at the resolution. This is Hannah Brohm’s debut – and this is a really accomplished start to a romance writing career and I look forward to seeing what she writes next. And on a more basic level this was one of the first STEM romances that I’ve read recently that wasn’t completely obviously a Reylo thing…

I got my copy of Love and Other Brain Experiments from NetGalley, but it’s out now in Kindle, Kobo and paperback – and as you can see I’ve already found it in a Waterstones – so it should be fairly easy to find in the shops too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, cozy crime, detective, first in series, mystery

Book of the Week: Hattie Brings Down the House

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Happy Tuesday everyone, and as I mentioned in last week’s BotW post that this was in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, I don’t think it’s going to be a massive surprise to you that I’ve picked this for my BotW today, taking full advantage of the fact that even though Hattie Steals the Show was one of my favourite books of last year it wasn’t actually a Book of the Week – it was in a Recommendsday, so I’m not really breaking any rules even though that Recommensday was only in October!

Cover of Hattie brings down the house

Hattie is a stage manager, who’s currently cobbling together a living by teaching wannabe stage managers and behind the scenes workers and also working at the Tavistock, a theatre behind a pub. The Tavistock’s long time patron has just died, and the artistic director is trying to keep the theatre going by staging a Shakespeare play directed by a buzzy avant garde director. There’s a valuable mask in the mix as well as conflict between the artistic team – but all that pales in comparison to the dead actress that Hattie finds in the dressing room. As the stage manager is the designated problem solver of a production crew, Hattie finds herself investigating while still trying to keep the show on track to open on time.

The mystery is good and has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing. And I really, really love all the backstage information that Patrick Gleeson has put into this. As you all know, I go to the theatre a lot but I’m not in any way an actress and the closest I’ve got to being in an actual production of anything was when I played clarinet in the school musical version of Cabaret in my first year of secondary school and was the prompter for the university pantomime in my final year, which is to say I know next to nothing about this and am delighted to be learning a bit more about it. There’s lots of detail here – but it’s neatly woven in and not info dumped to you in the narrative.

This is the first book in the series, so I’m reading out of order – and I know what the issue is in Hattie’s background that means that she’s wary of the police and perhaps not getting the work that she would like. But if you were reading this first you wouldn’t and I think you might find that a little perplexing – however the reveal in book two is worth it. I’m really glad that I discovered this series and I’m not sure I would have done if I hadn’t found it in the Notting Hill Bookshop last autumn because sometimes you need a smaller, curated selection of books to discover something new rather than a massive shop where you can get overwhelmed and end up just looking for stuff that you already know that you want to read.

This is in Kindle Unlimited and suprisingly it is still available on Kobo. And even better is the fact that Waterstones say they have stock of both this and the second book in all of their central London stores so hopefully you should be able to find physical copies in stores fairly easily.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

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I may not have read much last week (Winter Olympics!!!) but at least one of the books I did read – and also really enjoyed – is out today so once again I’m managing to be timely. Even if it is a sort of accident.

In 1920s Montreal, Agnes is looking for a new home for her cat shelter. The previous one is collateral damage in a fight between two magicians so they can’t stay there, but no one is keen to rent a shop to a charity dedicated to rescuing street cats. And that is how the shelter ends up being a front for a mysterious magic shop. As the cats make themselves at home upstairs, downstairs Havelock Renard, the world’s most famous magician and possible Dark Lord is selling magic from the basement. Agnes isn’t happy about being connected with magic – she’s dedicated to the cats – but when one of Havelock’s enemies starts threatening him, she’s drawn into the world of the magicians and may end up having to help Havelock in order to save the world.

The first thing to say about this, is that this is incredibly Howl’s Moving Castle coded – but with more romance. And given that the thing I wanted from the movie of Howl was more romance, that was exactly my jam. Yes, it’s also looking at loss and grief, but it’s got a grumpy, misunderstood magician and an efficient non-magical person who isn’t taking any of his nonsense. I really loved the world building and the way that it was woven into the story and revealed as the plot unfolded rather than info-dumped on the reader, and the denouement at the end was so moving that I ended up crying on a train, which hasn’t happened in a very long time! I could absolutely have spent another 100 pages in the world at the end – and if there’s a sequel I will be first in line!

I’ve used the UK cover for the image at the top, because that’s what you’ll see in the shops, although I have to say that I’m not sure I would have picked it up in a shop if I’d seen it although I can’t quite put my finger on why. The version that I got from Netgalley had the US cover – which I’ve included a screenshot of below – because it’s so pretty but it’s also so 1920s and such a different vibe. Anyway. I have learned my lesson and I will be off to have a look at Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series which I’ve seen around but haven’t really picked up.

My copy came from NetGalley as I mentioned, but this is out today in hardback, Kindle and Kobo. I’ll be checking the shops for it so I will report back if/when I see it about how likely it is for you to be able to find this one in the wild. Also, while I have your attention. Hattie Brings the House Down, which is the first book featuring Hattie from Hattie Steals the Show (one of my favourite new books last year) is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment – so if you haven’t managed to read any either of those yet, this may be your chance!

Happy Reading!