Our heroine is Brynn, newly divorced and with a new roommate, Josh, to help her pay the bills. On her birthday she makes a wish on a cake that mysteriously appears on their doorstep and the next morning she wakes up inside her favourite 90s soap Carson’s Cove – and Josh is there too – he’s the bad boy and she’s the sweetheart. The blurb is promising a rom com with 90s nostalgia – and this is one of those where I feel like it’s either really, really going to work for me – or somehow not. But I’m always an optimist in these preview posts, which is why I picked it out of the new releases this week to highlight! Prime Time Romance came out on Tuesday if you’re in the US or today (Thursday) if you’re in the UK and it’s a Penguin release so it should be available pretty widely.
I know Matt Haig is an autobuy for some people, so today I wanted to mention that he has a new book hitting the bookshops. It’s called The Life Impossible and it’s his first novel since the mega hit The Midnight Library, which I still need to get around to reading, especially given how much I enjoyed How to Stop Time. Anyway, this is about Grace, a retired maths teacher who is left a rundown house on Ibiza and sets out with a one way ticket and absolutely no plan about what to do about it. The blurb promises hope, adventure, wonder and the power of a new beginning. From which I deduce it may make you cry so maybe not one to read on the plane, but perhaps one for behind some big sunglasses on your late summer holiday!
Happy Wednesday everyone, and I’m taking the opportunity today to do a quick run through of some of the new books coming this autumn, as we’re about to hit the flood of books arriving in the shops in time for Christmas. The literary fiction headlines are the new novels from Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout, Olga Tokarczuk and Haruki Murakami, but we all know my tastes run slightly differently.
Lets start with the ones I’ve already got on the Kindle waiting for me, thanks to the joys of NetGalley. Firstly there’s the new book by Lissa Evans – A Small Bomb at Dimperley, which comes out next week, so I’m doing this just in time. This is set at the end of the Second World War, with a second son returning to his ancestral home – where he is now responsible for the whole kit and caboodle after the death of his older brother. Also waiting on the Kindle but not out until October is Miss Beeton’s Murder Agency by Josie Lloyd, a cosy crime which features a distant descendent of *the* Mrs Beeton who runs a household staff agency where one of her staff ends up dead over the festive period. This might be the first of the Christmas themed novels I’ll read this year – but it won’t be the only one…
And that’s because only a few months after the third instalment of the series, we have a fourth Three Dahlias book and as I mentioned in my post about the series, this next one is a Christmas one. I don’t have this on Netgalley so I will have to wait – or maybe put it on my Christmas list, but A Very Lively Midwinter Murder is out on November 5. Out the same day is The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White which appears to be a bit of a new direction for the trio – as the blurbs are promising a whodunnit with literary satire when a superstar author is found dead on a remote Scottish Island. I look forward to getting my hands on it.
A couple of memoirs to finish today – firstly Lisa Marie Presley’s, From Here to the Great Unknown, which has been completed after her death by her daughter Riley Keogh. I watched Priscilla on the plane to Manila, and I’ve watched most of Elvis (probably need to start again from the beginning at this point though) so I look forward to seeing where Lisa Marie’s story fits in on that spectrum given all the controversy about those two movies and the family splits they caused, not to mention all the fighting after Lisa Marie’s death early in 2023. That’s coming in early October. And then there’s Darren Hayes Unlovable (another one out on 5 November). You may remember Hayes as the lead singer of Savage Garden, and you may also remember that I went to see him in London the other year and was in floods of happy tears to hear all my favourite songs of his sounding amazing, more than 25 years on. Given that one of my favourite songs of his is the haunting Two Beds and a Coffee Machine, which is clearly about domestic violence, there’s obviously going to be some difficult stuff to read in here – even before you get to the attitudes of the music industry to his sexuality. But I’m looking forward to reading it – and to finding out more about what he was up to in his ten year hiatus – and what made him come back.
That’s your lot for today – I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about some of these in the next few months though. Happy Humpday everyone.
This week I wanted to highlight a book that might not be as obvious or prominent in the shops. Of course now I’ve said that, it’ll turn out to be everywhere but hey, here we are. I think you can tell from the cover but Sanaka Hiiragi’s The Lantern of Lost Memories is looking to appeal to people who have enjoyed Before the Coffee Gets Cold and its sequels. And I am one of those people, but I’m also someone who quite enjoys the fact that Japanese fiction is just so different from the rest of what I read so I’m prepared to risk tears and melancholy in it even when I’m not in anything else!
It’s about a magical photo studio where people go after they die to view key moments of their life and relieve one of them before they go on to the afterlife. You can see why I might be expecting some tears. Anyway, I’ll try and remember to report back when I read it…
There is a new standalone Rainbow Rowell out this week and I am excited. Slow Dance is about two friends who went to school together and who everyone thought would end up together, but whose lives took different paths after high school. Now one of them is heading to an old friend’s wedding and wondering whether the other will be there and whether she wants him to be…
Doesn’t it sound great? It came out on Tuesday on Kindle and Kobo and is out on August 8th in hardback. Rowell typically gets pretty big releases – Waterstone’s had a signed pre-order option, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to get hold of it pretty easily in stores if you want to.
Role Playing was one of my favourite books of last summer, so I’m really looking forward to reading Cathy Yardley’s new book, which came out on Tuesday. Do Me a Favour’s blurb also sounds like absolutely my cup of tea. The heroine is Willa, a cookbook writer who has moved from California to the Pacific North West for a new start after the death of her husband. The hero is her new neighbour, Hudson, a handyman who lives on a farm with his parents and adult children. I am absolutely here for romances with older heroes and heroines with a bit of life experience, and I’m hoping that despite bereavement in the backstory this isn’t going to be too heavy or angsty.
I pre-ordered this one – because it helps authors – but it’s in Kindle Unlimited from the get go, so there’s no Kobo link for you, and it looks like the paperback is from an Amazon imprint too, so it may not be in the shops either.
This is billed as a cross genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly – with an elderly village lady sleuth and a doesn’t play by the rules LA homicide detective whose worlds collide. I haven’t read any Chris Brookmyre before but I was lucky enough to get an advance of this – and I have got it underway so I’ll report back on whether or not it’s too hard boiled for me!
We may be into July but there are still some summery romances releasing. This week it’s The Next Best Thing, which is Gabriella Gamez’s debut romance with a librarian heroine, an NFl hero and a fake relationship situation. Sounds promising doesn’t it? And I really like the cover too.
The rush of summer releases continues and this week it’s Ashley Poston’s new book A Novel Love Story. The blurb tells me that our heroine is Eileen, a romance novel lover who breaks down on her way to her annual book club retreat and finds herself in Eloraton – a small town which seems too good to be true, which may be because it’s also the setting of her favourite book series. Eileen is sure that she’s been sent to give the town a story book ending – except that there’s one character who doesn’t want her to finish the story – the grumpy bookshop owner who she just can’t place…
She’s done ghosts, last year it was time travel, and it looks like she’s doing magic – well sort of anyway. I would say I’m sceptical about it, but I was sceptical about the last two and I liked them both, so I’m actually optimistic this is going to be right up my street when I get my hands on it.
Now I haven’t read this one and so I can’t tell you if it’s another Tinye Heroine and Giant Hero, but there is a new Ali Hazelwood out this week. It’s another STEM romance – this time it’s a biotech engineer who gets caught up in a hostile takeover. Apparently this is also her spiciest yet as well. I’ll try and remember to let you know when I think when I pick up a copy – which I’m sure won’t be that far in the future knowing me!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 