This week’s BotW Death at the Opera and also is a bit of a compare and contrast. I read of Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley Mysteries last week – this one I loved and the other I could barely get through. As I didn’t read a huge amount last week – and two of them were books I’m reviewing for Novelicious (which I can’t preempt here) – I’ve made Death at the Opera my book of the week. Death at the Opera ticks a lot of my boxes – it’s a murder mystery set in a girls school – but Mrs Bradley is a bit different to a lot of the Golden Age Sleuths. She’s going to track down whodunnit, but she’s not necessarily going to hand them over to the authorities when she does. And that’s what makes her interesting – she wants to know, but often without having a yearning for justice for the victim – she’s more detached and curious than some of the other dectectives of the time.
Death at the Opera is fulled with interesting and intriguing characters, some of whom have very modern attitudes, and a twisty turny plot that I didn’t work out until right at the end. I absolutely zipped through it and went straight on to another Mrs Bradley from the to-read pile (I picked up three from the charity shop a couple of months back) – and what a contrast that was. I really struggled with Come Away, Death. I didn’t like the characters or the setting and I found it really difficult to get into. I finished it, but only just – and only because I liked the Death at the Opera so much I was hoping it would improve. But I guess when a series is so long running there’s bound to be a few duds. Hey ho.
This week’s BotW is Charlaine Harris’ Day Shift – the second book in the Midnight, Texas series – which I think is going to be a trilogy (or that’s how it looks at the moment anyway). And yes, I know Midnight Crossroad was Botw 2 months ago. But this was the best thing I read last week excepting Janet Evanovich, and we’ve already had that discussion…
We pick up where we left off (almost) in Midnight – the same characters that are left at the end of the last book are still in situ, but there’s a strange (even for Midnight) boy who is staying with the Rev and a mysterious company has started renovating the abandoned hotel. This book is faster paced than it’s predecessor and works the better for it. Some of the characters in book one were hard to warm to because they were just *so* mysterious. Well a lot of that is cleared up in book two – although there’s still a lot of unresolved plot strands at the end of the book. And of course Day Shift has a mystery-of-the-week too – which is neat and intriguing – and works well alongside the Bigger Picture puzzle as well.
But what I really loved was the crossovers. Oh the crossovers. I mentioned in my review of Midnight Crossroad that there were some familiar faces from previous series, but in this one the guest appearances are brilliant. I can’t say anymore (as per usual) or I’ll spoil it, but I was thrilled to see some more old friends reappear – I’m the sort of reader who doesn’t like to say goodbye to characters* and so crossovers like this, and side characters from previous books reappearing in bigger roles really makes me happy. I’ve got my fingers crossed for more in the last book!
And that’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the plot and the excitement for you. I honestly don’t know how well these would work for you if you were coming entirely new to Charlaine Harris’ worlds, but for me, I passed several happy hours reading this.
Day Shift is only in hardback and e-book at the moment, but you can get your copy from all the usual sources – here’s Day Shift at Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and on Kindle. And if harback prices are too eye-watering for you, then Midnight Crossroad is available in paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and Kindle.
* I’m always hoping for a sequel to rom coms to see the happily ever afters, but get really annoyed when sequels turn up where the couple break up and make up to create a plot. Yes I know. A book full of happy people wouldn’t be very interesting. What can I say. I’m a difficult audience.
This week’s BotW is Deanna Raybourn’s Silent on the Moor – which is the third in her Lady Julia series, and I think these best so far in that two books worth of serious tension and angst comes to the boil in the harsh and unforgiving setting of the Yorkshire Moors.
Lady J had invited herself to Nicholas Brisbane’s new house, which is not only in the middle of nowhere, but had some unexpected (to Julia at least) residents. There are secrets and tensions and grim discoveries and oh so much Gothicky drama. I hasn’t realised that this was what this series has been waiting for, but it totally was. And thinking about it – unconventional widows, gypsies, seers, eccentrics – should have screamed melodrama to me.
The solution to the book’s puzzles is suitably ghastly – with definite ick factor – but it’s so in keeping and well executed that it seems both perfect and obvious once you’ve read it. Do not let the horrible pink cover of my copy confuse you, is is not saccharine or run of the mill by the numbers romance. There is romance (mostly of the will they won’t they kind) and there’s mystery, but Julia (although she makes mistakes) is not a too stupid to live heroine. You’ll jump to some of the same conclusions she does, albeit with a nagging voice in the back of your head that you’ve missed something somewhere that she doesn’t always have.
I know I keep mentioning books that are from series and then telling you to go back to the start first, but I really do mean it with this, you need two books worth of build up to get the full emotional whack from this. So good. And a catnip (as the Smart Bitches say) that I didn’t know I had!
I had trouble picking a BotW again this week – my top rated books of last week were Janet Evanovichs (and I can’t do another of hers for BotW or you’ll all think I’m insane) and a Nora Roberts that I’ve reviewed for Novelicious (I’ll post a link to the review when it goes up). So, instead I’ve gone for the fifth in Sabrina Jeffries’s Hellions of Halstead Hall series – because I’ve really enjoyed reading about the Hellions, and wanted to share it with you.
So, these are historical romances about the Sharpe siblings, whose parents died in scandalous circumstances when they were very young and who have issues tied up with that. At the start of book 1, their domineering grandmother – who holds the purse strings – tells them she’ll disinherit them if they don’t all find themselves spouses with the year. Over the course of the books we see them all find their happiness – and they investigate what really happened to their parents all those years before.
I suggest that you read the books in order – not because you’ll spoil who the other siblings end up with but because you’ll ruin the mystery plot if you don’t – and I don’t think it would be the easiest to follow that part of the book if you haven’t got the full backstory.
My favourites in the series were the first two books and I didn’t love book four, but as a whole the Hellions’ stories ticked a lot of boxes for me and gave me 10 (ish) hours happy reading – hence the BotW post on book five. There is a sixth book in the series – featuring a secondary character from the previous five – which bridges the gap between this series and Jeffries next one – The Duke’s Men (which I’ve already read one of, out of order ), which I’m going to try and get my hands on soon.
So there you go. An unusual BotW from me – and a reminder that I need to slow down on the Janet Evanovich’s to keep my reading material balanced…. You should be able to find Sabrina Jeffries’ Hellions series where ever you usually pick up your US romance novels – I read mine on Scribd, but you can also get them on Kindle and in paperback. The first one is The Truth About Lord Stoneville – and I suggest you start there.
This week’s BotW is Louise Candlish’s The Sudden Departure of the Frasers – which was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for April, but which didn’t get finished until last week because that was when the discussion was.
This has such a striking cover I know I would have looked at it in the shop, I’m not sure if I would have bought it without the Book Club
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers tells the story of Christy and Joe Davenport, who have just bought the house of their dreams in a leafy London area they never expected to be able to afford. The previous owners, the Frasers, renovated the house and then abruptly disappeared. As the Davenports settle in to their new home, Christy becomes obsessed with why the Frasers left and particularly what happened to Amber – beautiful, popular, charming and the centre of the social whirl – and why the atmosphere on the street is so tense.
This is another book that I probably wouldn’t have picked out for myself – but ended up really enjoying* – in fact, I read the vast majority of it across the course of one afternoon and evening because I got sucked in and then I Needed To Know. It’s one of those books where you can’t put it down because your brain is frantically trying to work out what has gone on and you just need to read one more page/chapter/section because then you might be able to figure it out.
One of the reasons this book worked so well for me is that the setting and the characters seem utterly believeable. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the fantasy that one day the dream home that you’ve always wanted will pop up on the market miraculously in your price range despite being worth oh-so-much more usually. And then obviously the old adage about “if it looks too good to be true, maybe it is” springs into your mind. Now scenarios like this usually lend themselves to horror or ghost stories (definitely not my thing) but this is neither. It’s a gripping little thriller, which will mess with your head but not leave you with nightmares about blood and gore and ghosts.**
Now I am breaking one of my own rules in writing about this now – because The Sudden Departure of the Frasers doesn’t come out until the 21st. But after a long deliberation I’ve put it up as this week’s BotW – because a) it was really good, b) if I didn’t BotW would probably be another Janet Evanovich (the obsession continues) and c) it will be a really, really good beach read, so preorder it for your holiday and you’ve one less thing to worry about!
You can pre-order The Sudden Departure of the Frasers from all the usual outlets – here is a selection of links – Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and Kindle – and I suspect that when it does come out it may pop up in your local supermarket as it’s being published by Penguin.
* Which illustrates why I have such a massive to-read pile. I like so many different books. And if I had bought myself this, it would probably have sat of the shelf for years because of the backlog because it’s not obviously a book that I’d like. Then you’d get another of my patented posts saying that I loved it and I can’t believe how long it sat on the shelf and why didn’t I read it sooner. I know. I’m a nightmare.
** I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there isn’t any blood or gore or ghosts. It’s not that sort of book. But you know what I mean.
Another bonus review on the blog today – Iona Grey’s Letters to the Lost. This was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for March – and it would have been my book of the week back when I read it – except that it was a month from it’s release at the time, and I hate reading reviews of books and then not being able to buy them *rightnow*. So here we are, the book comes out today and I can tell you about it.
My copy was an advance copy – so my cover is different to the “proper” one
In modern day London, Jess breaks into an empty house to hide after running away from her violent boyfriend. The next morning, a mysterious letter arrives at the house, and after opening it, Jess is drawn into the story of two lovers in 1942 – Stella and Dan, who is a US airman. And in keeping with my no spoilers policy*, that’s about all I’m going to tell you about the plot.
I’m not usually one for a weepy – and you know from very early on that there are going to be tears involved in this – but I absolutely loved this book. The characters felt real, the places felt real and the crying was definitely very real. I had very definite views about what I wanted to happen to some of the characters (which didn’t always come true) and wanted it to be longer – even though it’s already really quite long.
So if you like timeslips, weepies, World War 2 set epic romances and non sappy saga-y type books, this may be for you. It’d make a great holiday read – and if you’re a “normal” reader (which apparently I’m not, the speed I go through stuff) it’d probably last you a few days at the beach!
As I said, I got my copy in advance because I’m lucky enough to be in Curtis Brown’s Book group, but you can get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and for a bargain £3.99 (at time of writing) on Kindle.
* A policy which I’m increasingly realising means that I can’t say a lot of things that I really want to about books, but which stops me from being that person I hate, who ruins plots and shocks and reveals and spoils people’s enjoyment of books, so it stays!
This week’s BotW is Gail Carriger’s latest – Prudence – and you can’t say that I didn’t warn you that this might happen. Because I did, even if it’s a few weeks later than I thought it might turn up here. And that’s because I took an executive decision to save it for my holiday book – for our trip (to Vienna in the end) to mark a Significant Birthday for The Boy. A holiday book should be a treat, preferably something that you know you’re not going to hate, and as it was already on the to-read pile, saving this meant I didn’t incur the wrath of The Boy for buying books again…
I really like the purple and pink theme. And I’m not usually a pink person…
Anyway, Prudence is the first book in Carriger’s new series – the Custard Protocol. Set in the same world as the Parasol Protectorate and Finishing School books, there are some familiar faces, not least Prudence herself – last seen as a toddler in the Parasol Protectorate series. When Rue is given a dirigible, she names it The Spotted Custard and heads for India on a secret mission. But the situation there is not as simple as she had been lead to believe (and that wasn’t that simple to start with) and before long she’s dealing with dissidents, kidnappings and a pack of Scottish werewolves and it will take all her metanatural skills to deal with it.
Now, I’ve read all (I think) of Carriger’s other series, but I don’t think it would spoil your enjoyment of the book if you haven’t read them* as Carriger has been very careful not to give away too many spoilers for the plots of her previous books.** However, for those of us who have read the previous books, you get the delicious enjoyment of being better informed about the past than our heroine, and equally delightful anticipation of confrontations and revelations yet to come.
When I read Timeless, I spotted a few dangling threads left that I hoped were teasers of stuff yet to come – and I was on the right track. Again, my spoiler policy makes it difficult to be more specific than that, but I really like the direction that this series looks to be heading in. The only problem with having read Prudence in fact is that I now have to wait (probably) a year to find out what happens next in Imprudence – and it’s still more than six months until the final Finishing School book – Manners and Mutiny – where I finally get to find out how Sophronia’s world became Alexias.
You can buy Prudence from all the usual sources – like Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles and Kindle. I’ve also spotted it in my local library already – which I haven’t seen before – and is brilliant, because hopefully it’ll introduce more people to Gail Carriger and then they can fall in love with her world like I have.
* Although the Parasol Protectorate is the more relevant to this book if you want somewhere to start
** Although the identity of Rue’s parents is a bit of a spoiler for Souless, there’s no way to avoid that!
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.
This week’s book of the week is the very wonderful and very funny Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. I have recently discovered the Dear Bitches, Smart Authors podcast – and through it the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website. Now I’ve documented here in the past my slightly shamefaced addiction to US romance novels with the sort of cover I’m embarrassed to take out in public. Now whilst I stick mostly to historicals, these ladies have read the lot – and can dissect it brilliantly and hilariously. If you have a problem with profanity this may not be for you (Hi Mum!) but I just found it absolutely side-splittingly funny and totally on the mark.
My copy of Beyond Heaving Bosoms
As someone who has discovered the massive US historical romance market through Julia Quinn, Eloisa James and Sarah MacLean, I also got a lot of recommendations for old school authors to go back and read – to add to the massive book list I’m accumulating from the podcast.
I was reading this over the weekend whilst I was staying at my sisters – and had to keep stopping to read bits out to her – or pass the book over for her to read longer chunks. She’s not a romance reader – but she found it hilarious too.
My only gripe with the book is that in the chose your own romance novel section, I kept being too sensible and the stories ended too soon… Now I’ve got two days off this week and I’m off to read the new Sarah MacLean which has been sitting at the top of the to-read pile for weeks waiting for me to not have to leave the house!
Death at the Opera ticks a lot of my boxes – it’s a murder mystery set in a girls school – but Mrs Bradley is a bit different to a lot of the Golden Age Sleuths. She’s going to track down whodunnit, but she’s not necessarily going to hand them over to the authorities when she does. And that’s what makes her interesting – she wants to know, but often without having a yearning for justice for the victim – she’s more detached and curious than some of the other dectectives of the time.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 