Tag: book review

Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: A Wedding Planner’s Guide to Stealing the Bride

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Happy Tuesday and my pick today is back to romance and it is one of the new releases that I read last week and there’s another coming up tomorrow in the quick reviews too.

Kalpana is planning the wedding of her dreams, or at least the wedding of her fiancé’s dreams. Marcus is a literary fiction superstar and Kalpana is a romance writer. He’s from old money and she’s the third generation of her family born in the UK but they’re in Sri Lanka with their wedding planner Sampath to plan the big traditional Sri Lankan wedding that Marcus wants – even though Kalpana isn’t sure those traditions feel right for her. Sampath is a great listener – and seems to hear what Kapana wants in a way that Marcus seems not to be.

I read it across less than twenty four hours over the weekend and it was a real treat. As you can tell from the title this is a love triangle type situation, but I don’t think this is going to ping anyone’s cheating monitor for reasons that I can’t really explain without it being a spoiler. As well as the romance, Charika is exploring feelings of identity and culture and also looking at the place of romance and commercial fiction in the bookish infrastructure all of which is right up my street. It also really made me want to visit Sri Lanka – it paints such a vivid picture of the future places they visit and the potential wedding venues.

My copy came from NetGalley but this came out last week and I’m not sure how easy the paperback will be to find but it’s on Kindle and Kobo for £1.99 at the moment as are some of Charika’s previous novels some of which I’ve written about here like Picture Perfect and Knowing Me, Knowing You.

Happy Reading!

mystery, series

Mystery Series: St Just Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone and today for the series post I’m writing about G M Malliet’s St Just books. I’ve already written about her Max Tudor series, most recently back when I did a spy-themed week a couple of months back. But this week I finished the last book in the series I hadn’t read (reading severely out of order!) and so now I can tell you about then.

Our detective is Arthur St Just, a police Detective Chief Inspector and the crimes are Christie or Golden age-esque. Many of them are set around rich families, authors or Oxbridge colleges, or some combination of the above. St Just is from Cornwall but primarily based in Cambridge but Oxford also makes an appearance or two. St Just is a widower but does acquire a fiancée later in the series for some continuity of running characters as well as the fact that is it even a mystery series without a love interest?

It is very much a series of two halves as there was a decade or so gap (and a change of publishers) between book three and book four, and in fact I hadn’t realised that the series had restarted until I saw Death and the Final Cut on NetGalley last autumn. I read that then and now I’ve filled in the gaps with books four to six. And I’m pretty sure I’ve enjoyed these later ones more than I liked the earlier ones. My reviews of those on Goodreads from around a decade or so ago (I read them after having already started on the Max Tudors) are short but very much in the ok to fine sort of area.

Books three to six are in Kindle Unlimited at the moment and I actually think these are a pretty good place to start or at least test out series. They all have interesting characters, but the earlier books are more in the dislikeable mode than the later ones, and three to six particularly have good pacing and interesting mysteries. Seven isn’t quite as good, but it clearly wasn’t enough to put me off going back for the rest when I got a chance or to make a note to keep an eye for any more appearing.

Have a great weekend!

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: The Shampoo Effect

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Yes I know, this is the least unexpected BotW pick since, oh I don’t know, the last time I previewed a new release book on the Thursday and then promptly had it on the read list on Monday. But in my defence, I do try not to do this and pick my previews accordingly – and indeed when I went back and checked this the last time it happened is more than a year ago with A Murder for Miss Hortense (but only because I spaced out reading Dolly All the Time, The Paris Match and Finders Keepers from their previews – mostly because those were paperback preorders and not *right there* on my Kindle tempting me). But although there were a lot of books out last week, this was the one I was most excited about given how much I loved Pineapple Street. And also one of those other books that was out last week was a second Miss Hortense book – and was trying not to repeat on that front too. Anyway, with that slightly defensive opening over, to the review:

Caroline has always wanted to be a writer and when she gets a year long writer’s fellowship, she gives up her job in publishing and moves to Greenhead, Massachusetts and the cottage that writer the fellowship is endowed for once lived in. In Greenhead she meets Van. Van is one of the locals – an outdoorsy, ecologist who is like a big friendly dog made human. Soon they’re seeing each other and and Van is including her with his group of friends – including Bailey, who he’s been falling into bed with ever since they were at school. Van’s friends aren’t overly pleased at the advent of this rival to Bailey, and this only gets worse when Bailey realises that she’s pregnant with Van’s child. She’s definitely only in their circle because Van wants her to be – and what she does when she’s not anymore throws everything in the group up in the air even more than her presence did in the first place.

The blurb doesn’t reveal what it is that Caroline does – and as it happens a long way into the book (I want to say after the 60 percent point) I’m not either because it’s a huge spoiler, but it’s totally delicious and turns what was already a really good read into something truly excellent. This is very much a rich people problems novel as well as the Greenhead group with their family summer homes and ski trips, Caroline’s mother is a hugely successful writer and there’s never any sense that Caroline’s finances are dependent on whatever she writes on the fellowship being a success and so she’s an outsider only in that she doesn’t know them, not so much in status or class. And so it’s all about relationships and drama on that front and even if people break up you know they’re going to be OK financially, even if they’re upset interpersonally.

All of which makes it exactly my sort of soapy, beach read and I absolutely devoured it, messaging various people as I went along with choice quotes and how much I was enjoying it. It would be a perfect sun lounger read – and I can see why it’s the July pick for Jenna’s book club* because it’s a summer read and I can see people having diverging views about it – and in fact if you look at the goodreads reviews you will see that! If you liked Pineapple Street (which obviously I did), I think you’ll like this. That was about Rich People Problems in Washington DC, this is about Rich People Problems on the coast. The relationships are dysfunctional – and apart from Caroline that’s because they all have so much history together – and do they even really have that much in common any more aside from that shared history? Read it and find out, if you like the same sort of books that I do (and maybe that’s why are you here?) then I don’t think you’ll regret it.

My copy came via NetGalley but I think this is going to be everywhere. Pineapple Street was, and as previously mentioned, this has been picked by one of the big US book clubs so I’m expecting this to be as everywhere as Pineapple Street, if not more so. And of course it’s also on Kindle and Kobo and in audiobook.

Happy Reading!

*Jenna is Jenna Bush Hager, daughter of George W Bush and presenter of the Today Show on which her book club is a feature.

romance, series

Romance Series: Improbable Meet-Cute Second Chances

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It’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow and after 2024’s Improbable Meet-Cute series of Originals, Amazon are back with a second set themed around the idea of a second chance after a meet cute. nd I have read them all so you don’t have to. I was really optimistic after the first three, because I really liked all of them, but then it went downhill a little. So I’m going to focus on the ones that I really liked.

The Christina Lauren has a marketing consultant who ends up in the wrong zoom meeting and then gives a brutal critique of the presentation she sees. This leads the company boss to offer her a job, but their emails turn flirty and soon she’s torn between him and her hot but mysterious neighbour. This is a a wild premise, but the banter is good and I raced through it. I’ve mentioned before that Christina Lauren can sometimes come down the wrong side of my tastes when it comes to workplaces and professionalism, but this navigates the workplace romance dynamic neatly and has an actually competent heroine who is good at her job and flirting on the side. It also has just the right amount of plot for the length, which cannot be said for some of the others in the series!

Time Will Tell has a heroine who gets a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a long held secret – and leading her to a time capsule and a lost love affair. This starts an email conversation with the grandson of her grandmother’s lost love all the way over in England. This is also just the right amount of plot for the length, and the main characters felt really three dimensional. It was my first time reading Hannah Bonam-Young, and I would definitely give something full length a chance on the basis of this.

In Second Act Romance, an emergency replacement is drafted in to play Bex’s leading man when the cast of the musical that she’s in comes down with food poisoning. But it turns out that he’s the same guy she shared some onstage fireworks with years before. Now they’re working together again, and can they work out the misunderstanding that stopped their first encounter going any further. I’m a bit mixed on Julie Soto, but her entry in this series is probably my favourite thing I’ve read of hers. It’s a bit bonkers, but I went with it.

Of the other three, Death to Valentines Day has far too much plot for the length that it is – a murder and and romance in less than 100 pages! – and that means that there’s not a lot of time for characterisation so everyone feels quite caricaturish and over drawn. Valentine’s Slay is (thankfully) not actually a vampire story, but it is the most outlandish in terms of plot. On the other hand, it’s also the spiciest so some may like it best because of that – although for me I’m not sure I’d be up for sex about an hour after waking up buried alive, but hey danger boner is a staple of romance novels so what do I know. Anyway, although I have some reservations, they’re all short and as they were in KU I didn’t have to pay for them, so all in all a nice way to read some romance before Valentines day and try out some new authors as four of the six were new to me.

Have a great weekend!

books

Read the USA 2025: The List

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It should be noted as the first thing in this post that I am not doing this again this year. There are a few states that have got harder and harder each year to find something that I want to read for them and every year there are books I end up carrying on with that I’m not enjoying so that I can tick the state off. And this feeds into the next issue: the last two months of the year always turn into a mad rush to get things finished – rather than reading what I fancy. And this is when I end up reading those books that I’m not enjoying so that I can get to the end.

But more importantly I find myself thinking about whether I should read x book now or save it to be a state for next year because I’ve already ticked that state off this year. Sometimes that’s the next book in a series, sometimes it’s a new arrival altogether. I’d even already started a chart for 2026 with the things I had in stock and which states they match to. Add to that the fact that with Beverly Jenkins’ Blessings series seemingly complete and I’m nearly at end of the Cupcake Bakery Series and I’m out Kansas and Arizona and it just makes me feel tired thinking about it.

It’s also one too many things to do – I can try and reduce the to-read pile and I can try and reduce the NetGalley backlog, but I can’t do those two *and* read 50 states and the 50 states is the thing I enjoy least. So it’s going and that’s my New Year’s Reading Resolution. That said, here is the final 2025 list, which I completed at 1.30 in the morning of the 28th – a few days earlier than usual but some of these read with much suffering on my part when I would rather have given up on them.

AlabamaMurder Boogies with Elvis by Anne George
AlaskaAny Trope But You by Victoria Lavine*
ArizonaStrawberried Alive by Jenn McKinlay
ArkansasThe Murder at the Murder at the Mimosa Inn by Joan Hess
CaliforniaThe Favourites by Layne Fargo
ColoradoDark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson
ConnecticutWord to the Wise by Jenn McKinlay
DelawareNew Uses for Old Boyfriends by Beth Kendrick
FloridaGhost Business by Jen DeLuca
GeorgiaInnconvenient Murder by Patti Benning
HawaiiThe George Eliot Murders by Edith Skol
IdahoAnimal Attraction by Jill Shalvis
IllinoisA Farewell to Yarns by Jill Churchill
IndianaA Dark and Twisting Path by Julia Buckley
IowaIced in Iowa by Patti Benning
KansasCalling all Blessings by Beverly Jenkins
KentuckyBeaches, Bungalows and Burglaries by Tonya Kappes
LouisianaTo Catch a Raven by Beverly Jenkins
MaineScared Off by Barbara Ross
MarylandFinders Keepers by Sarah Adler
MassachusettsWhite House by the Sea by Kate Storey
MichiganOh Say Can You Fudge by Nancy CoCo
MinnesotaShow Don’t Tell by Curtis Sittenfeld
MississippiDouble Knot by Gretchen Archer
MissouriBig Shot by Julie Mulhern
MontanaWish You Were Here by Jess K Hardy*
NebraskaFangirl the Manga Vol 4 by Rainbow Rowell and Gabi Nam
NevadaA Disguise to Die For by Diane Vallere
New HampshireA Killer Edition by Lorna Barrett
New JerseyTastes like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma
New MexicoThe Pot Thief Who Studied Ptolemy by J Michael Orenduff
New YorkDeadly Summer Nights by Vicki Delany
North CarolinaThe Fiance Dilemma by Elena Armas
North DakotaMurder at the Library by Ellen Jacobson
OhioThe Chow Maniac by Vivien Chien
OklahomaThe Vanderbeekers on the Road by Karina Yan Glaser
OregonMurder on the Mountain by Ellie Alexander
PennsylvaniaRenewing Forever by Kelly Jensen*
Rhode IslandA Matter of Pedigree by Leslie Meier*
South CarolinaThe Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson
South DakotaMy Calamity Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows
TennesseeTaylor’s Version by Stephanie Burt*
TexasDeath of a Cheerleader by Marina Evans*
UtahThe One with the Kiss Cam by Cindy Steel
VermontSix Sweets Under by Sarah Fox
VirginiaRockin’ Around the Chickadee by Donna Andrews
WashingtonBuried in a Good Book by Tamara Berry
Washington DCBuffalo West Wing by Julie Hyzy
West VirginiaThe Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
WisconsinFear of Frying by Jill Churchill
WyomingSavage Run by C J Box

And as this is the last time, here’s a link back to all the lists from previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020, that last one reminding me that this was a pandemic era development and like so many things from the annus horribilis that was 2020 we can quietly let it go. This isn’t quite the last thing you’ll hear about the 50 states – there’s definitely a Recommendsday coming for some of these, but also there’s a bunch of books in series on here that I’m sure you’ll hear more about at some point too.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: What You Are Looking for is in the Library

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Hello everyone. Apologies for the slightly blurry photo – I was finishing this one late night on Sunday, and haven’t been home in daylight to improve this. These things happen. Anway…

What You Are Looking for is in the Library is the stories of a series of people who visit a library in Tokyo and receive book recommendations from Sayuri Komachi, the enigmatic librarian who works there. Each of them is struggling with something in their lives, and although they don’t really tell her that, she senses what the recommendation is that they need. Each chapter follows the person receiving the advice, so you don’t actually see that much of Sayuri – just when they visit her in the library.

This is quite quiet and low stakes, but it’s immensely satisfying and soothing, and I loved seeing little glimpses of the people we had already met in the subsequent chapters. I read this in about 24 hours – starting fairly late on Saturday evening and finishing later than I should have been awake the night before the early train on Sunday and it still almost felt like it was over too quickly. I would happily read a sequel, but so far I can’t see that there is one, although this has been so successful that another one of Michiko Aoyama’s books, The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, has been published in English already, with another, Hot Chocolate on Thursday, coming early next year although interestingly they both have different translators from this one.

What You Are Looking for is in the Library should be really easy to get hold of – it’s sold a tonne of copies and I’ve seen it all over the bookshops. And of course it’s also on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, memoirs, new releases, non-fiction

Book of the Week: I Shop, Therefore I Am

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Lets just take a moment for the fact that my pick this week is a book that came out last week so I am actually topical and sort of on time for once. Lets mark it, because it happens less often than it ought to, considering the number of advance copies I have of things!

Cover of I Shop, Therefore I A,m

I Shop, Therefore I Am is Mary Portas’s second memoir – I haven’t read the first, but I think this picks up where the first one ends – with Mary starting a new job in charge of window displays at Harvey Nichols. During her time there (which starts in the late 1980s), it transformed from a department store somewhere mostly patronised by older ladies from the Home Counties and in the shadow of their neighbour down the road Harrods, to a headline making store at the cutting edge of the fashion industry.

I grew up watching Absolutely Fabulous (not quite when if first came out, but not *that* long after that) and part of the joy of reading this is getting to see the impact that that show had on the store. But it’s also fascinating to see the mechanics of how the shop worked at a time which (in hindsight) was basically the heyday of the high street. I worked in retail for my first Saturday job was in a clothing store, but the behind the scenes of that was nothing like this – I was at a much lower level but also the clientele was very, very different. I also really liked Mary Portas’s writing style and her voice. She balances the day to day of what she was doing with fun gossipy insights into high fashion and celebrity. And she also seems incredibly normal and down to earth with it that it’s easy to forget that she was moving in really high powered circles until she suddenly mentions how upset they were when Princess Diana died because they all saw her in the store all the time, or when she gets Naomi Campbell to do her instore fashion show.

This is a really good read that would work whether you remember the time that Mary is talking about or not, but I think you’ll get different things out of it depending on whether you remember the time before internet shopping or not! It would also be a great Christmas book for someone who is interested in fashion.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it came out last week and I’m expecting to see it in all the bookshops ahead of the festive rush, especially because it made a bunch of the anticipated book lists earlier in the year. And of course it’s also in Kindle and Kobo.

books

Books in the Wild: BLCC display

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Not going to lie when I saw all of these in Waterstones Piccadilly it made me really quite happy. And of course it made me wonder how many of them I have read. And then I started writing it and realised there were a few more I had on the pile and a few I had read but not written about so if I could just do that the post would be better. And then suddenly it’s three months later. Ahem. Anyway after having finally finished and posted the BLCC roundup that that that started (slowed by several of them ending up as Books of the Week rather than round up post fodder), here we are.

And so here we go… One the wall from clockwise top right we have He Who Whispers (read but haven’t written about), The Lost Gallows – haven’t read, Capital Crimes, Murder in the Mill Race, The Hogs Back Mystery,then two more I haven’t read (yet) It Walks by Night and Miraculous Mysteries.

Let’s start on the back row and work left to right going forward: Guilty Creatures – which I haven’t read; The Ten Teacups, The Edinburgh Mystery – haven’t read, Murder in Vienna; Death of a Bookseller; Capital Crimes again, Murder as Fine Art and Post After Post-Mortem. One the second row: The Wheel Spins – which I haven’t read but which is the book the Hitchcock movie The Lady Vanishes is based on, Tour de Force, Metropolitan Mysteries, Blood on the Train, Quick Curtain, The Cornish Coast Mystery, The Notting Hill Mystery which is one of the very first murder mystery books and which I read nearly a decade ago and Crimes of Cymru which I haven’t read and doesn’t seem to be on Kindle which may explain why that is. And on the front row The Widow of Bath, Someone from the Past, The Lake District Murder, Castle Skull, The Corpse in the Waxworks (haven’t read), The Hogs Back Mystery (again), Murder Underground (one of the very first BLCC I read) and Tea on Sunday.

And there were even more… so here we go again with the table – this time just the ones I haven’t already mentioned: Port of London Murders, Who Killed Father Christmas, Dramatic Murder, Final Acts, Death of Anton, Murder at the Manor, London Particular, Serpents in Eden, The Mysterious Mr Badman, Family Matters, Surfeit of Suspects, and Murder by the Book.

And the other side of the table: Death on the Riviera, The Theft of the Iron Dogs, Quick Curtain, The Death of Mr Dodsley, The Sussex Downs Murder, The Chianti Flask and Seven Dead (read but not written about).

And finally – and this time just the front facing ones that I haven’t already mentioned: Continental Crimes, Settling Scores (read), The Port of London Murders, Crook O’Lune (read), The Z Murders (read but not written about), The Spoilt Kill, The Murder of My Aunt, The Santa Klaus Murder, Mr Pottermack’s Oversight, Scarweather, Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm, and Death of Anton.

Phew. Honestly, I’m pretty pleased with my hit rate on this front, but it has given me a shove to finish a few things off that I have had kicking around on the kindle and on the shelves and also made me aware of a bunch of books in the series that I didn’t know about. Expect a(nother) BLCC post in the near future I think….

Book of the Week, first in series, historical, mystery

Book of the Week: Death and the Conjurer

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Another mystery book this week, this time a new to me author writing mysteries set in the 1930s.

In Death and the Conjurer, a celebrity psychiatrist is found murdered in his study – but the door was locked and there seems to have been no way for anyone to have committed the crime. The Scotland Yard detective calls in magician turned sleuth Joseph Spector to help solve a seemingly impossible murder.

And this really does seem to be an impossible one. The solution when it comes is clever and well worked out and as the book says the clues are there, even if I didn’t believe it when the book said that! Inspector Flint and Spector are a good duo – they both have their strengths so it feels like a pretty equal relationship rather than a stupid cop and a brilliant amateur. It’s also the first of three so there are two more for me to read now too.

This one is in Kindle unlimited at the moment and so if you’ve got a membership it’s worth a look.

Happy Reading!

books

Book of the Week: The Rest of Our Lives

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Pinch, punch, first day of the month etc to you all – and watch out for April Fool’s jokes today. I used to enjoy going through the newspapers on April first to try and spot the joke stories and adverts. I have a long ago memory of one for a car company (BMW I think) boasting about a new feature on their cars that would turn the oven on from the car to help you with the dinner prep when you got home. I remember how outlandish it seemed at the time – and now here we are in the smart home era with devices of all sorts controllable from your phone – should you want to. Anyway, to today’s book…

The Rest of Our Lives on a book display in Foyles

The Rest of Our Lives follows Tom, who drives his 18-year-old daughter to college in Pittsburgh – and then keeps driving. Various aspects of his life are not going to plan and he drifts himself into a road trip to try and escape. Years earlier when his wife had an affair, Tom had decided that when their youngest child left for college he would leave the marriage – and that moment has now arrived. But it’s also arrived at a moment when he’s just been suspended from his job after his students complained about the politics of his law class, and he’s got a health issue that he’s busy ignoring but from the descriptions you get of it, he really shouldn’t be.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect from this from the blurb – it could have been a Rich People Problems novel but it’s actually more of a mid life crisis novel. Tom’s in denial about his health, doesn’t want to tell his wife about his work situation or to deal with the underlying issue in their relationship so he finds an excuse to up and run. He doesn’t seem to have anyone in his life that he can talk to properly about things, so you see him find excuses for what he’s doing to the people he meets – right up until the point that he can’t any more. It’s not a long book, but it’s got a lot going on and leaves you with some things to think about as it deals with male loneliness, morality and mortality. It doesn’t have the level of resolution that I get from my regular reads of mystery and romance – but I enjoyed it never the less and it’s a thought provoking read that I think would work really well for book clubs and people who like to read book-club type books.

The Rest of Our Lives came out last week. My copy came via NetGalley, but as you can see I’ve already seen it in the shops, so you should be able to get hold of it ok. And of course it’s also in Kindle and Kobo for £3.99 at time of posting, which is pretty good for a new release hardback.

Happy reading!