Tag: Book of the Week

Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: The Glittering Art of Falling Apart

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This was a tough choice.  A really tough choice.  I had two contenders for BotW this week and it was so hard to decide.  In the end I went for Ilana Fox’s The Glittering Art of Falling Apart – as comes out on February 11th.  I’m not telling you what my other option was, because it’s part of a series and can’t help but feel that a blog post may come on it further down the line…

The Glittering Art of Falling Apart is a timeslip novel set in the 1980s and the present day.  And there’s a country house involved. And as regular readers will know, this is just the sort of thing that I love.  The present day heroine is Cassie – obsessed with trying to keep the abandoned Beaufont Hall in the family, despite her mother’s reluctance to talk about her childhood there.  Tenancious Cassie wants to know more.  Back in the 1980s, Eliza is breaking free from her family for the bright lights and glamour of Soho.  But will it bring her the future that she craves or is the price to heavy?

If you’ve read a few timeslip type novels you will probably have a few ideas about where this story is going (I certainly did), but this is so well put together, that it doesn’t matter.  Often in books like this a location is a character in the book – I was expecting Beaufont Hall to take that role, but actually it’s Soho that is the start location in The Glittering Art of Falling Apart.  Ilana Fox paints such a vivid picture of this patch of London in the 1980s you can almost smell it.  And there’s also a really clever use of music to help create the atmosphere as Eliza tries to make her mark on Soho.  I had OMD’s Enola Gay stuck in my head for two days but the lovely people at Orion have pointed me at the playlist that Fox has put together for the book which has given me some ideas for a bit more variety!

I haven’t read any of Ilana Fox’s novels before, but from reading the descriptions of them it seems like this may be a bit of a shift.  If you like books like Harriet Evans A Place for Us or Rosanna Ley’s The Saffron Trail, this may be the book for you.  My copy came from NetGalley*, but I think this should be fairly widely available when it comes out – it feels like it might be the sort of book that goes into the supermarkets (and I hope it does) – but here are some links if you want to pre-order (or buy if you’re reading on Thursday or later) Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones, Kindle and Kobo.

One final note – at time of writing this, I spotted previous BotW The Astronaut Wives Club on a deal on Kobo for 99p – which is a total bargain – and Kindle seem to be price matching it. Go forth and purchase!

*And this seems like a good point to remind everyone of my standard disclaimer –  I review everything I read over on Goodreads but I only recommend stuff here that I genuinely like. The books I read are a mixture of books that I’ve purchased myself, books that I’ve been given and e-proofs via NetGalley.  I try to acknowledge where the books that I review here come from in the interests of transparency, but being given a book for free doesn’t influence the review that I give it – I’m always honest about my thoughts.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, graphic novels, Thriller

Book of the Week: Body Work 1

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Tricky choice this week.  I read Eloisa James’ My American Duchess and I have things to say about it – but I read it for Novelicious, so you’ll have to wait!  I also read the second Sam Jones book and that was, if anything, even more fun than the first (Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane references!) but it’s only been two weeks since I made The Black Rubber Dress BotW and I don’t like to repeat myself too often*.  So I’m going left field and picking a comic – Part 1 of Body Work, the Rivers of London graphic Novel.

I’ve mentioned Ben Aaronvitch here before (Rivers of London was a BotW and a Christmas Pick for Him) and i actually broke one of my rules reading this – this is actually set between book 4 and book 5 in the series and I was only reading book 3 when I read this (although book 4 may be following shortly).  But having missed out on a physical copy of this in its first printing back earlier this year, I treated myself to this at the weekend to see what I thought of it ahead of the release of the trade in April.

I’m not a big reader of graphic novels, so something based on a familiar set of characters is attractive to me.  Of course in these cases there’s always the risk that the illustrations won’t match the pictures that you have in your head of the characters.  But in this case, that wasn’t a problem for me.  This isn’t very long, but all the characters that I encountered in this were near enough to how I imagined them.  It’s pretty much all set up for what is going to come next, but it’s fun, witty and feels like it fits with the novel.

It left me wanting to know what happens next, but I need to read book four first so that I don’t ruin anything when I read the next part of this.  If you want to try a graphic novel, the Kindle version (read on a tablet) is under £2 at time of writing, or if you trust me you can get your preorder in for the Trade version in Paperback or Kindle.  But as it’s so far ahead until it comes out, please do consider buying it from your local comic book store and supporting an indy.  If you don’t know where that is, here’s a handy resource to help you.  My local shop is friendly and helpful – and will get copies of stuff in for me *justlikethat* without deposit or anything.  If you want more recommendations they’ll be able to help too.

* Although do read Sam Jones.  It’s so worth it.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Queen Lucia

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This week’s BotW is the first in the Mapp and Lucia series by E F Benson – which doesn’t actually feature Miss Mapp – just Lucia!  I’ve read Mapp and Lucia – which is the the fourth boo in the series and have come back to the start.  I have Miss Mapp waiting on the Kindle in the interests of fairness!

 

 In Queen Lucia, we meet the residents of Riseholme and their snobbish leader.  Emmeline Lucas – Lucia – always wants to have the upper hand, and employs all sorts of underhand methods to dominate the neighbourhood.  She and her husband drop snippets of Italian into conversation to make people think they’re fluent (they’re not), and she practices her piano duets in secret so she can “sight-read” them when Georgie comes over.  Georgie is her best friend (if she can be said to have one when life is a constant competition for superiority), balding and greying and desperate to hide it, he has his faults, but in this book at least is a slightly more sympathetic character than Lucia.

But for all that Lucia is awful, this is such a fun book.  The townspeople’s snobbery leads them into trouble at every turn.  If you watched the 2014 TV adaptation you’ll recognise some of the plots here.  Snigger as the Riseholmians embrace yoga. Chuckle as they compete to be best friends with the visiting opera singer. Cringe as Lucia’s (lack of) proficiency in Italian comes under scrutiny.  And then thank goodness that your group of friends are nothing like this.  And if your group of friends are like this, then maybe consider finding some new ones – constantly trying to one-up everyone else must be exhausting!

Queen Lucia is available for free on Kindle and although it’s not free on Kobo it is available in a variety of file formats for free from Project Gutenberg.  There’s also a variety of omnibuses (omnibii?) at differing price points (depending on if you want the cover that ties in with the TV series) and DVD releases of both the most recent and the 1980s TV series.  Enjoy!

Book of the Week, books, detective, reviews

Book of the Week: Black Rubber Dress

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This week’s BotW is Black Rubber Dress by Lauren Henderson.  These days she’s better known as Rebecca Chance, best-selling author of glamourous, sexy thrillers, but back in the 90s she wrote the Sam Jones series of mysteries about a sculptor in Camden.  They’re currently being republished by Fahrenheit Press (more on that later) and have come into my orbit.  Black Rubber Dress is the first of them to reappear.

Sam’s just made a big piece for a London bank.  But soon after the unveiling a body is found underneath it.  Determined to prove that it wasn’t her fault, she gets caught up in a web of intrigue, blackmail and Banking.  There’s stockbrokers, anorexic rich girls, trust funds, fraud and much, much more. Sam is smart, wise-cracking and no holds barred.  She knows what she wants, and she’s going to get it.  Her life is nothing like mine and if put in some of the situations she’s in I would curl up and cry, but reading the book I really wanted to be her.  I already have the second book underway.

It’s also quite fun to read and realise that a book written and set in the 90s is now a period piece – Sam has an answering machine not a mobile, there’s no talk of the internet and Camden is much seedier than than it is now.  It’s also a little traumatic – because I can remember life being like that too!

Start your Sam Jones obsession with Black Rubber Dress – it’s currently yoyoing between 99p and £1.99 on Kindle.  And when you get hooked, you might want to consider Fahrenheit Press’s Book Club – until the end of January for £36/$60/€50 you can get every book they publish this year.  I treated myself as a birthday present to myself (yes, another one) and the first to pop into my inbox was Freeze My Margarita – the next Sam Jones book…

Book of the Week, books, historical, Thriller

Book of the Week: The Hourglass Factory

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So, a difficult choice for BotW this week – I finished the latest Laurie Graham last week and really enjoyed it – but I also read Lucy Ribchester’s Hourglass Factory and enjoyed that too.  So in the end, I’ve picked The Hourglass Factory for BotW and decided to do an Authors I Love post on Laurie G instead, which’ll be coming up in a few weeks. So more for you to read. Bonus.

The Hourglass Factory
Some of my best photos are taken on the train. No idea why.

In The Hourglass Factory, tom-boy reporter Frankie George is trying to make waves in Fleet Street, but all she’s getting are the women’s interest stories an the gossip columns.  When she gets assigned to write a profile of trapeze-artist-turned-suffragette Ebony Diamond she gets short shrift.  But then Ebony disappears and Frankie finds herself drawn into a world of corsets, circuses, tricks and suffragettes.  Where has Ebony gone?  What is going on with the suffragettes? And will anyone listen to Frankie if she finds out?

This has been sitting on my shelf for aaaaaages (what’s new) and I kept meaning to read it.  Then I saw it recommended by another blogger (Agi’s onmybookshelf) as one of her books of the year of 2015 – alongside several other books that I had read and liked and it gave me the push that I needed.

I really enjoyed this.  I haven’t studied the women’s suffrage movement in Britain in much depth – apart from as part of my history GCSE – so I knew the basics, but I don’t think you’d have too much trouble if you knew even less.  Lucy Ribchester paints a vivid picture of 1912.  Post-Edwardian London springs to life – all dark corners, imminent peril, seedy clubs, variety acts, cuthroats, suffragettes and jails.  Some passages were tough going – early 20th century jails were not nice places to get stuck in – but it was totally worth it.  This is quite a long read (500 pages) but it is pacy, exciting and thrilling – you don’t notice the pages going by.  So good.  And another cautionary tale about letting books sit on the shelf.

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones or Foyles, from Audible, or on Kindle, ebook or Kobo.  You’re welcome.  And thank you Agi for giving me the kick to read it.

American imports, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews, romance

Book of the Week: Anything For You

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This week’s BotW is Kristan Higgins’ latest romance Anything For You – which in a stroke of serendipity is out today!  For those of you who are all Christmas’d out, this would make a great break from the festivities.  It has a winery, some star-crossed lovers and a whole lot of fun.

Anything For You tells the story of Connor and Jessica.  They’ve been hooking up in secret for years and now Connor wants to take it public – and make it official.  But Jessica thinks things are fine as they are – and she has her brother to look after, her brother who really doesn’t like Connor.  So with Connor down on one knee and telling her it’s all or nothing, how sure is Jessica that marriage isn’t for her?

This is such a good read.  Jessica and Connor have such a tangled backstory – which is explained really well in a series of flashback-type sequences in the aftermath of the proposal.  They are both really complicated, well thought out characters.  Connor has quite a privileged background (I mean he’s not a billionaire or a billionaire’s son, but there’s some money there) but a difficult relationship with his parents.  Jessica has dragged herself up from a trailerpark whilst bringing up her little brother in the process – she’s got trust issues, abandonment issues and a bit of an inferiority complex.  Watching them work out their problems is a really engrossing read.

And they are proper problems that need a proper resolution.  I’ve read a lot of romances where the obstacles keeping the hero and heroine apart aren’t really obstacles – or are easily resolved.  But these two have something real and tangible to work out.  And the resolution is really well worked out – it doesn’t involve one of them suddenly doing an abrupt character change or an about face.  They work out their problems and grow and mature to a solution.

And if that sounds too serious – don’t worry!  There’s plenty of humour here too – Connor has a fabulously funny relationship with his twin sister Colleen (aka Dog Face) and the two of them have some great sparky exchanges.  And Con and Jess have their moments too.  Add to that a very stabbable events planner and some meddling friends and the angsty bits are well balanced out.

This was my first Kristan Higgins – but I’ve already found another one in the Kindle backlog pile so that may well have jumped its way closer to the top.  My copy came via NetGalley, but you can get yourself a copy from Amazon or Amazon.com – although it doesn’t seem to be available on Kindle in the UK or the US at the moment.

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Bricking It

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This week’s BotW is Bricking It by Nick Spalding. I read a lot of books last week, many of them good but Christmas-themed – and of them more in the next few days. But Bricking It made me laugh despite the tonsillitis so it was an obvious choice for my non-festive Book of the Week!

Bricking It tells the story of Dan and Haley Daley, who have inherited a run-down farmhouse from their grandmother and decide to do it up to make some extra money. And of course the road to profit does not run smoothly.  There’s an eccentric architect, a gang of builders, a TV crew and a few skeletons in the cupboard.  Oh, and a bit of sibling rivalry too!

I thought Bricking It was a bit different from the usual run of house renovation stories. Haley and Dan both have their issues to deal with and that gives the book a great heart as well as a lot of jokes. If you’re off work for Christmas but not feeling in the mood for a Christmas-set book, this may well be the perfect solution to read curled up in front of the Christmas tree after you’ve finished wrapped (or unwrapping) your presents!

Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle.

Book of the Week, Young Adult

Book of the Week: One

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This week’s BotW is brought to you courtesy of heavy duty cold pills, painkillers and a bout of tonsillitis.   It’s all fun chez Verity I tell you.  So this post is late arriving and somewhat shorter than I intended.  Also it may not make sense.  I’m quite highly medicated and it feels like razors are playing at the back of my throat.

This week’s pick is One by Sarah Crossan.  I devoured this in one sitting after a late shift (when I should have been sleeping).  One is the story of conjoined twins Grace and Tippi, told from Grace’s point of view and in free verse.  They’ve beaten the odds and made it to 16, but now they’ve got to go to school because the money to home-school them has run out. But something is happening to them, something that Grace doesn’t even want to think about.

I was absolutely gripped by Grace and Tippi’s story.  Free verse (or verse altogether) isn’t often my thing, but I thought it really worked to tell the girls story, saying a lot in not a lot of words and packing a big emotional punch.  It also gives the book an air of uniqueness – which goes with the girls themselves.

It’s fascinating, touching and will probably leave you in tears.  Its a YA book that I can see being read in schools in the years to come.  Well worth a look. One is out in Hardback and should be available from all the usual suspects like Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle, Kobo and Audible.

Now I’m off back to my sick bed. Apparently they don’t give antibiotics out for this type of tonsillitis these days and I just have to ride it out. How fortunate I have such a big to-read pile to keep me company!

detective, reviews

Book of the Week: Silent Nights

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This week’s BotW sees normal service well and true resumed with Silent Nights – a book of Golden Age detective short stories set at or around Christmas.  This is one of the British Crime Library’s reissues – I’ve read quite a few now and have discovered some really good authors that I was previously unaware of and who help me with my cravings for “proper” classic crime.

As well as familiar names like Dorothy L Sayers and Arthur Conan Doyle and lesser known but still in print authors like Margery Allingham, there are others I hadn’t heard of before and who I’ll now try and investigate.  Some of them have had long out of print titles recently republished in the same series, some of them are even more obscure than that.

There’s also a really good variety of types of mystery.  The Conan Doyle is a Sherlock Holmes, complete with leaps of deduction unfathomable to the normal person, The Sayers is a Wimsey locked room-esque short story about a missing necklace.  There’s also really quite creepy suspense in the form of Ethel Lina White’s Waxworks, a story based around a chess problem, another which leaves you to work out who was arrested (with an explanation at the back of the book) and a poisoning with a really nasty old man.

I enjoyed all of the stories in Silent Nights.  The weak point for me was the chess-based story, but that was because chess isn’t really my game.  I also really appreciated the biographical notes about each of the authors at the start of the stories – complete with information about other notable titles.

If you’re looking for some Christmas reading, this might be a nice, bite-sized place to start, and equally it would make a nice present for any fan of classic crime – particularly those who haven’t ventured much beyond the obvious suspects.  It’s also not violent or graphic so might work for the cozy-crime lover in your life too.  Talking of Christmas present ideas, I have many more to share with you – and they’ll be posted very soon as I know this is prime Christmas shopping time!

My copy of Silent Nights came from NetGalley*, but you can the very pretty paperback from Amazon or I’ve seen it on the speciality Christmas displays in several Waterstones stores as well as Foyles in Charing Cross Road – so it may have made it into your local bookshop too.  And the Kindle version is a bargain £2.99 at time of writing, so you could treat yourself to a bit of festive sleuthing without having too big an impact on your Christmas Present Buying Fund!  Several of the other British Library Crime Classics are a similar price, I can recommend Mavis Doriel Hay – Her festive story Santa Klaus Murder as well as Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell are all under £3 at the moment – as well as books by J Jefferson Farjeon and Christopher Sprigg.**

 

* And as usual, I only feature books here that I genuinely like – I’ve read 25 books from NetGalley in the last quarter, but only a few of those have made it to a review on here (although they all get reviewed over on Goodreads).

** Back on full disclosure again – I bought Murder Underground and Death of the Cherwell for myself, but have read various Farjeons and Sprigg’s Death of an Airman via NetGalley over the last year.

Authors I love, Book of the Week, Children's books, Series I love

Book of the Week: Shocks for the Chalet School

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An unusual choice for BotW this week – Shocks for the Chalet School was one of my post-Paris purchases from Girls Gone By and it turned out to be that rarest of things – a Chalet School book that I hadn’t read.  I know. Who knew.  And this also gives me hope that there may be more!

  
Shocks for the Chalet School is the book where Emerence Hope bursts onto the scene.  Now I think that the reason why I thought that I had read this is partly because her early antics are talked about so much in the later books, and partly because it takes place at the same time as Chalet School in the Oberland.

For those of you who are not Chalet afficionados (and I appreciate that early/mid 20th century boarding stories may not be your speciality) a quick recap on where we stand at this point in the series: It’s after the war and the school is on St Briavels Island after the problem with the drains at Plas Howell. The new term means a whole new team of prefects – as the finishing branch is just starting in Switzerland and many of the Sixth formers have left to go there. Mary-Lou is still a Middle-schooler, Jo and her family are in Canada with Madge and her family and the book opens with news of the arrival of Jo’s Second Twins and a letter from former teacher Miss Stewart (now married) apologising for having unwittingly unleashed Emerence on the school.

With me so far?  Really all you need to know is that a (very) naughty new girl is arriving at an established boarding school, where an inexperienced team of prefects will have to try and deal with her.  Who knew it was that simple to explain!

I’ve mentioned my abiding love of the Chalet School before on this blog, and reading one for the first time reminds me how much.  Yes, they are dated – and in the Girls Gone By reprints you get the original unabridged text complete with smoking teachers and problematic racial sterotypes. They are of their time.  The plots are some times repetitive; Elinor M Brent-Dyer has favourites and doesn’t know how to make lists (or do continuity in some cases); there’s an unbelievably high number of dead parents and “kill or cure” operations; there are huge families, religious messages and you would never try and bring children up like this today.  But with an appropriately sceptical eye and a tongue in cheek where necessary, they are joyful.  No one gets bullied, very few problems are completely unsolvable, no one is homesick (for long at least), Joey (the series’ main heroine) can sing people out of comas and if you’re a good girl, you’ll get to marry a doctor and live happily ever after, popping out babies in a Chalet near the school!

  
Basically a new (to me) Chalet School book was exactly what I needed to bring me out of my World Events-based slump.  And I got an unabridged copy of Rivals for the Chalet School a couple of days later too so got to read the missing bits in that as well.

If you’re not already a boarding school fan, then these probably aren’t for you – so may I instead recommend Cathy Bramley’s Wickham Hall serialisation – the final part of which came out last week.