Tag: book review

American imports, reviews

Recommendsday

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Borrowing shamelessly from one of my favourite things on Litsy (I’m @Verity if you’re over there, do come and find me) I thought I’d start recommending books on Wednesdays.  Some times it might be a big long post about a book I haven’t talked about before, sometimes it might be a quick bump for one I’ve written about before, sometimes it might be a book that’s topical, you get the idea.  I’m going to try and be good and post one each week, but we’ll see how that goes.  Anyway, I’m kicking Recommendsday off with The Clancy’s of Queens which tells the story of Tara Clancy’s childhood and youth in Queens.

The Clancys of Queens
Such a classy looking book (she says in a terrible attempt at a Queens accent)

Tara’s parents divorced when she was small and she spent a lot of her childhood shuttling between her grandparents’ house in a geriatric neighbourhood, her father’s converted boathouse home and her mother’s boyfriend’s house in the Hamptons.  This, unsurprisingly left her with some issues as she switched between working class, middle class and upper class communities.   Tara talks about her experiences with humour and I haven’t seen many (any?) similar memoirs.  I’m convinced that I wouldn’t have made it through the school system in Queens in one piece, but it makes for a great read.

I mentioned this book in my personal Christmas book request post after hearing about it on a lot of podcasts – and I got given it for my birthday.  As it’s in hardback it’s taken me a few weeks to get around to reading it.  But I’m very glad I did. It’s an American import, but you can get a copy from Amazon (I do hope Him Indoors didn’t pay £20+ for it for me!) or preorder the (slightly cheaper, but still fairly eyewatering) paperback.  There is an audiobook version – but it’s not available on UK Audible.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: American Housewife

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I know. I know. This is a day late. And I’m sorry. It’s been one of those weeks. Work has been quietly bonkers, I’ve been exhausted and time got away from me. Rather than rush something out to keep to schedule, I thought I’d take the extra time and do it properly.

So the BotW is Helen Ellis’s short story collection, American Housewife. These a a series of deliciously dark and funny bite-sized  tales, which I mostly read before bed. I’m not a massive short story reader, but they do make good bedtime reading because they have good obviously stopping places. And while these blackly humorous, there’s nothing here that’s going to give you nightmares. That said, Ellis doesn’t give you all the answers, some stories have distinctly ambiguous endings. Or even ambiguous middles.

Copy of American Housewife
I love the cover design – so simple and striking but appropriate for the book

I think my favourite story was the email war between two New York neighbours over their shared hallway. Or maybe the instructions on how to be a patron of the arts. Or the very unusual book club. Basically, there’s a lot of good stories here and I’m spoilt for choice.

If you fancy dipping your toe in the short story pond, this would be a very good place to start. And if you’re a short story fan, this should definitely be on your list. In fact I’d be surprised if it isn’t already. It is a hardback at the moment – and you’ll probably need to look in a proper bookshop for this (ie not the supermarket) or you can order it from Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles. It’s also available on Kindle and Kobo – at the much friendlier price of £2.99 at time of writing.

Book of the Week, books, Young Adult

Book of the Week: Fangirl

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This week’s BotW was an easy choice.  I fell head over heels for Fangirl.  I devoured it, nearly didn’t get enough sleep because of it and was annoyed when it broke two of my handbag-books rules (hardback, and at the point I was thinking of taking it to work I only had 150 pages left) so I had to wait longer to get back to it and finish it.  And we should just contemplate for a minute, why it has taken me so long to read this.   Yup. The state of the pile.  Exactly.  Hence my new shelf-reading kick (mentioned in yesterday’s post) to try and get down the pile.

Fangirl tells the story of Cath’s first year at college.  Her twin sister Wren seems to be rebelling against their previous closeness, and she’s struggling to find her own way and place on campus with out her support.  Then there’s Cath’s career as a successful Simon Snow fan-fiction author – the release date for the last book in the series is looming, and Cath has to finish her alternative ending first.  And then there’s her worries about their dad, loving and sparky – but fragile – and now at home on his own.

I loved this so much.  It tapped into some of my own experiences when I was Cath’s age.  I’m not a fan fic writer, but I was a child who spent hours in pretend worlds based on the books that I had read.  I could spend hours out in the garden during the summer, pretending I was in a series that I loved.  Then when I was finishing A-levels I fell in love with a West End show and got heavily into its online community.  I totally identified with Cath as she tried to fit Simon in with her “real” life.   And while I’m not anxious to the extent that Cath is, I am quite shy and I can remember the terror of starting university – and not knowing *anyone* – so I was with Cath as she baby-stepped her way into college life.

This isn’t the first of Rainbow Rowell’s books that I’ve read – I read Eleanor and Park a few years back and really liked it, but this is the next level.  I could go right back and read it all over again.  And I do now have Carry On (the story that Cath was writing) sitting on the pile – and I have Attachments on the shelf too, which I’ll be reading sooner rather than later.

I’m late to the party, but you should be able to get this *anywhere* that is selling books.  Amazon have it in their 3 paperbacks for £10 and it’s only slightly cheaper in Kindle.  Waterstones and Foyles have it too – and I suspect it’ll be in W H Smiths, maybe HMV and perhaps even some of the supermarkets still too. Go forth and read it.

Book of the Week, books, historical, Thriller

Book of the Week: Beneath a Silent Moon

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Difficult choice in the BotW stakes this week, but both options had a historical feel to them.  It was between the second of Tracy Grant’s Charles and Mélanie Fraser books and the first in Jodi Taylor’s time travelling adventure books.  And as you might be able to tell from the title, it was the Grant that won – in part because I really liked the first book in the series but I happened to read it in the same week as The Glittering Art of Falling Apart and it lost out in the BotW stakes that week.  So this – perhaps more than ever – comes with a warning about reading the series in order.  On that subject, more later.  First, the plot:

Charles and Mélanie Fraser are not your average society couple.  The Napoleonic Wars are over, but danger still lurks in the streets of London.  There’s something rotten in the Ton and the source of the answers may well be closer to them than they could possibly realise.  Assassination, espionage, and secrets in Charles’ family all add up to a fast paced, twisty and complex spy adventure.

With the end of Lauren Willig’s Pink Carnation series, I’ve been on the hunt for something to fill the Nineteenth Century set spy novel shape in my reading life.  And although Grant’s series actually started before Willig’s, I’ve discovered them the other way around.  I can’t remember how I first came across them – but it’ll probably have been an if-you-like-this-try-that from either Amazon or Goodreads (and probably based on purchasing Pink Carnations or Deanna Raybourn) and for that I am grateful!

These aren’t timeslip novels, but they do jump backwards and forwards in Charles and Mélanie’s lives – sometimes within the book, but definitely within the series –  this was the second book to be published,  but is set before the first.  And on top of that, the chronological order list on Goodreads gives it as book seven!*  But given the events of book one – about which I don’t want to say too much – I suspect reading them in order may have the most impact and will give it the most layers and nuance.

Charles and Mélanie have a complex relationship – founded in necessity, complicated by love and built on secrets.  Charles’ family is just as bad.  Possibly worse.  Add that to a murder and conspiracy and all in all it makes for a gripping page-turner of a book, with more secret compartments than James Bond’s suitcase and some incredibly devious twists and turns.  It’s not for the faint-hearted/weak of stomach in places, but it’s worth a bit of queasiness for a historical mystery this good.

I’ve already bought the next one (which is only available on Kindle) and may have put an order in for an actual copy of Book 4.  Now prices are variable on these – I’m not sure they’re all published over here (the UK), so the later titles are imports and more expensive.  But for the most part the Kindle prices are more reasonable.  The first book is Secrets of a Lady (originally Daughter of the Game) and is under £3.50 on Kindle at time of writing but nearly £10 in paperback from Amazon (although they do have second-hand copies for less).  Beneath a Silent Moon is under £3 on Kindle and only available second-hand via Amazon.  It gets even more complicated later on, but as I said, do start at the beginning…

*And to complicate things further, mid series the lead characters’ names change to Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch.  Not that I’ve got there yet, but my head is already aching!

Book of the Week, historical

Book of the Week: Jane Steele

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This week’s BotW is Lyndsay Faye’s Jane Steele, which is billed as a gothic retelling of Jane Eyre, but is a bit more loosely related to Bronte’s book than that might suggest. I heard a lot of buzz about this before it’s release – Deanna Raybourn wrote about it in her newsletter and some of the book podcasts I listen to talked about it too, so when I spotted it on NetGalley I was already intrigued enough to request it.

Jane Steele’s favourite book is – and her life has some parallels with Charlotte Bronte’s heroine – she’s orphaned, she’s sent to boarding school, she becomes a governess and is attracted to her employer.  But there’s a key difference – Ms Steele has a bit of a murderous streak.  This Jane has a few more trials in her life than Bronte’s – but she’s not going to take them lying down.

Despite her killings, Jane is an attractive and appealing heroine with reasons (mostly) for acting as she does.  I was concerned before I read this and early on in the book that I wouldn’t be able to get past the fact that she was killing people, but it really wasn’t an issue.  Jane’s actions are (mostly) quite understandable – and not without consequences for her.  She’s fairly self-aware – although the reader suspects she’s not as well informed about some things as she thinks she is – and chafes at the restrictions and limitations places on her by Victorian society.  She’s smarter than most of the men around her during the first half of the book and it’s interesting and entertaining watching her work out how she can extricate herself from the situations she is forced into.

Considering I read Jane Eyre for the one and only time when I was about 9 and – whisper it quietly – have never read Wuthering Heights*, I seem to have read a lot (proportionally) with Bronte re-tellings or influenced books (and I have The Madwoman Upstairs sitting on the to-read pile so it’s not over yet!).  And while I didn’t love this the way I love Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair** it is really good fun.  I liked the portion of the book before Jane arrives back at Thornfield the best – possibly because it’s quite hard to keep up the fast-paced, wise-cracking action when you introduce a love interest and try to work out a resolution where the problem of your heroine being a murderess isn’t an issue!

Not quite as brilliant as you expect from the first 50 pages, but nonetheless pretty darn good, Jane Steele is out in the UK in what I suspect from the price is the giant airport sized paperback and in the US in hardback.  A cheaper (smaller?) paperback edition is due in the UK in November Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle or Kobo.

* I do know what happens though.

** But Thursday Next is a very high bar and has a lot more going on than just Jane Eyre.

Book of the Week, new releases

Book of the Week: Somewhere Inside of Happy

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A paperback copy of Somewhere Inside of Happy
This week’s attempt at an artistic photo has floorboards and sheepskin

There were two strong contenders for this week’s BotW crown – the latest Daisy Dalrymple mystery (which I’ve only just got around to) and Somewhere Inside of Happy, but as Anna McPartlin’s latest was released last week (I was lucky enough to be sent an copy in advance) and I really did love it, the funky yellow book takes home the prize.

Somewhere Inside of Happy starts with Maisie Brennan standing on a podium, about to address an audience on the twentieth anniversary of her son. Then we go back in time to find out what happened to her beloved Jeremy, as well as what her life was like before he disappeared.

You may remember that The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes reduced me to tears on a train, so this time I took precautions while reading this – no public transport.  However it did leave me in tears (subtly I hope) in my youth hostel dorm room as I finished it.  This is a tear-jerker in the very best sense.  You go into this knowing that Jeremy is dead – it’s on the back cover – but you desperately don’t want it to be true.  Watching how the story unfolds is a total rollercoaster as you get to know the characters and their backstory and their close family unit.  I was alternately desperate to know what had happened to Jeremy and desperate not to know because once you know then he is definitely dead and the family will never be the same again.

But don’t go thinking that this book is a downer. It’s not. It is funny and warm and life affirming. It shows the power of love and what people can achieve even in the face of great adversity. It shows the importance of family – whether it’s the one you’re born with or one you find and make for yourself. I may have an aversion to sad books and be devastated that Jeremy died, but I’m so glad I read it and I know I’m going to be recommending it to so many people. It’d make a great holiday read – as long as you have some big sunglasses to hide your tears behind!

Get your copy from Amazon, Waterstones or Foyles – but I’d expect this to be front and centre in the supermarkets and WH Smith stores – on on Kindle or Kobo.

Book of the Week, books, non-fiction

Book of the Week: As If!

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Tricky choice this week – I’ve already waxed lyrical about The Night that Changed Everything in the Easter post, where I also mentioned Jolly Foul Play which I’ve now finished and is part of a series I’ve already written about in various places (like here, here, and here).  And my other favourite book last week was Broken Homes – book three in the Peter Grant series  which I wouldn’t suggest you read as an introduction to the series and I’ve already written about Rivers of London and Body Work.  So, I preface this by saying, go and read Wells and Wong if you like school stories, Peter Grant if you like magic and detective series and The Night that Changed everything if you like romantic comedies.

That all out of the way, the BotW has to be As If! An Oral History of Clueless.  This is the inside story of the classic teen movies – with contributions from pretty much everyone involved – mostly from interviews given to the author.  If you’re my age, you may have watched Amy Heckerling’s film on fairly hard rotation through your teenage years.  Cher and Dion’s adventures through Beverley Hills are both funny and strangely universal despite their mega bucks wardrobes and swanky life style.

If you love the movie then this is a fascinating insight into how it got made, what was going on behind the scenes and what it was like working on the book.  I found it fascinating – although I found that the style of putting in chunks of quotes from each contributor made it feel more like a stack of research notes in places rather than an actual book coming to conclusions.  If you’re not a mega fan of the movie, then this probably isn’t going to be your bag – unless you have and interest in the behind the scenes machinations of Hollywood and the process of making a film.

It’s a fairly pricey paperback – so unless you’re a super-fan if may be one for your local library – but here it is on Amazon, Kindle, Waterstones and Foyles.

cozy crime, detective, fiction

Book of the Week: Death of a Cozy Writer

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Back on the cozy crime for this week’s BotW with G M Malliet’s first St Just mystery. I’ve read a couple of Malliet’s Max Tudor series before – dishy vicar with a Past in rural village – which I’ve enjoyed so I was interested to read more from this author.

Sir Adrian Beauclerk-Fisk is a best-selling mystery writer, who delights in tormenting his adult children by constantly rewriting his will.  Then he announces his engagement and the whole family gathers to “celebrate”. But when his eldest son and heir turns up dead, suspicion, greed and malice run riot in the house.  Detective Chief Inspector St Just and Sergeant Fear must try to track down the killer before someone else ends up dead.

The whole Beauclerk-Fisk family are hugely dislikeable and this adds a certain something as you read about their machinations (some subtler and cleverer than others).  There’s also a lot of references to classic crime – so if you’ve read a lot of Christie you’ll enjoy that too.  Sir Adrian has distinct Luther Crackenthorpe tendencies and is stuck writing books about a detecting spinster who he has grown to hate and tried to kill.  His writing methods and plot accuracy (as described) also feel like a bit of a comment on someone too.

DCI St Just features less in this than I was expecting, so you don’t really get to know him massively, so I’d need to read another book in the series to make a proper judgement, but he comes across as quite well – fairly inoffensive, not overly flamboyant or extravagant – and obviously as a police officer he has a perfect right to be investigating the crime which was not the case in one of the other cozies I read recently which didn’t work anywhere near as well.

It’s not perfect, but it is a fun mystery with a good few twists before you find out who actually did it.  Get your copy from Amazon or on Kindle.  My copy was second hand – but I have seen some of Malliet’s books in store in The Works too.

Book of the Week, Children's books, detective, new releases

Book of the Week: Nancy Parker’s Diary of Detection

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Oh I do love a good children’s detective yarn – and I had two to pick from when I was selecting my BotW this week.  I went with Julia Lee’s latest – because it’s out on Thursday and doesn’t feature any murder – so I think I can give it to my 7-year-old niece who has the right reading age, but who can’t cope with too much peril!

Nancy Parker's Diary of Detection
Perfect reading for the train to work ahead of a nightshift!

Nancy Parker is 14 and has just left school.  She gets her first job – as a housemaid to the  rather glamorous Mrs Bryce. It’s not her dream job (who dreams of cleaning at 14!), but its more exciting than she expects as soon the whole household is living in a rented house at the seaside.  There are parties, talk of movie-making, a reputed air-ace but also a cook who seems to be hiding a secret, a string of burglaries and chores – lots of chores.  Nancy teams up with two other children from the neighbourhood to try and work out what is going on.

The book made up of a combination of extracts from Nancy’s journal (given to her as a leaving gift by her school teacher) and a third person narrative – which covers what the other children are up to.  It’s fun, engaging and fast-paced.  As someone who loved all of Enid Blyton’s mystery series (but particularly the Five Findouters) this really worked for me and filled that gap.  And unlike those Blyton stories, this books shows the range of experiences in the 1920s – Nancy would only have appeared in one of those as the maid providing the picnics for the other children.  And there’s also nice nods to the other realities of the 1920s like shortages of men for women to marry and women having to give up their jobs to returning soldiers.

As an adult, I figured out what Mrs Bryce was up to quite early on – but that’s because I’ve read a lot of the grown-up versions of this sort of story, but I think for a young reader it would be a fun, thrilling and non-threatening mystery.  I love Robin Steven’s Wells and Wong series and also enjoyed the second book in Katherine Woodfine’s Clockwork Sparrowbook last week (the other BotW contender) but they are definitely a level up from this in the scares and peril – which isn’t a bad thing, but it does mean that you need to be  bit more mature to be able to cope with them.  I’m desperate to give my niece Murder Most Unladylike – but murder is quite a big deal for a 7-year old – at 10 I was terrified by some of the Miss Marples*.   But Nancy Parker’s adventure feels like a new equivalent of a Secret Seven or a Famous Five – which is A Very Good Thing.

I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance proof – but you can get your copy from Amazon, Kindle, Waterstones or Foyles.  I don’t know if it’ll be in the supermarkets – but it feels like it might as the Katherine Woodfine was.  Happy Reading!

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.