Tag: book reviews

books

Book of the Week: The Rest of Our Lives

veritywilde

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!

reviews, romance, series

Romance Series: Women Who Dare

veritywilde

Happy Friday everyone, another week, another romance series for you today.

Beverly Jenkins’s Women Who Dare trilogy is three books set in the aftermath of the Civil War in the United States. First there is Rebel, which is set in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Civil War. Our heroine is Valinda, a transplant from New York in town to teach the newly emancipated community while she waits for her fiancé to return from abroad. Our hero is Drake LeVeq, an architect and son of an old New Orleans family descended from pirates. Second is Wild Rain which is set in Wyoming and is that rare thing: a western historical romance that I liked – so much so that I made it a BotW! And finally To Catch a Raven – which is set back in New Orleans and has a hero and heroine who are forced together in order to reclaim a stolen copy of the Declaration of Independence. Raven comes from a family of grifters, Braxton emphatically does not and as they fake marriage as part of the job they start to discover that perhaps they’re more suited to each other than it seems.

I don’t read a lot of American-set historical romances but I will always make an exception for Ms Beverly Jenkins. I love her writing and characterisation – her Blessings contemporary series is one of my favourites as you know – and she brings all that to the historicals but with interesting settings and premises that you don’t see a lot in the genre. I don’t think you have to read these in order to appreciate them – I didn’t – but you’ll probably get a better experience if you do.

They used to be quite hard to get hold of – but they’re all on kindle now, and they seem to rotate on offer fairly regularly so you can pick up the set.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Book of the Week, Children's books, children's books, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: Juliet Overseas

veritywilde

It’s Tuesday again and that means it’s review day. And today I’m back in Girl’s Own territory with a boarding school story that I picked up after one of my friends gave a talk about the author at Book Con before last. Yes it’s taken me more than two years to get to it, but that year was a particularly large haul. I braced myself and checked the photos from that one and the last one – I’ve got one left to read from the each. I should work on that…

Anyway: Juliet Overseas. The Overseas of the title is England – for Juliet is from New Zealand. She’s been sent over to go to her mother’s former school, which was actually founded by her grandfather and three of his friends, but when she arrives she discovers that things in her house have gone downhill – they’ve got a reputation for being the slack house and a severe shortage of seniors to try and pull things back together. And so of course Juliet throws herself into restoring the house to former glory with the help of hockey, cakes and some no nonsense behaviour.

This is such a good example of a boarding school story. I tend towards series because I like to see characters progress though the school (and I guess because all the early one so read were from series) but this does such a good job of setting up the school and the rules but without info dumping on you. The talk about Clare Mallory at Bristol was called “Salvation through Hockey” and although I wasn’t a hockey lover at school (more of a cricket and tennis girl) the match sequences in this are really good and show the power of a sport to bring people together.

I appreciate that this is a bit of a niche recommendation, but sometimes I do that and I’m not even sorry about it! Anyway this is going to be on the harder end of things to get hold of – specialist vendors only really or a book conference…

Happy Reading!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March Kindle Offers

veritywilde

It’s the second Wednesday of the month, which means Kindle Offers day and oh boy it’s a bumper month.

On the romance front the offers include Christina Lauren‘s The True Love Experiment, Kristina Forrest‘s The Neighbor Favor, Mhairi MacFarlane‘s It’s Not Me, It’s You, Rachel Lynn Solomon‘s Business of Pleasure and Etta Easton’s The Kiss Countdown which I still have on the to-read pile. Ali Hazelwood has a new adult book out this month but Check and Mate her YA novel is on offer for 99p

In mystery and crime it’s a good month for mysteries with vicars with both the first Grantchester book, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death and the first Canon Clement mystery Murder Before Evensong on offer. Then there’s the third Three Dahlia’s book, Seven Lively Suspects, Nita Prose’s The Maid (the third one is out in April), Jesse Sutanto’s Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers. In classic crime, Josephine Tey‘s The Franchise Affair is on offer as is another of the seasonal Agatha Christie short story collections, this time Sinister Spring.

I already mentioned on Friday that the Lady Julia Grey series are on offer – but it bears repeating. Going further back in history, there’s PD James’s Death Comes to Pemberley at £1.79, the seventh and it looks like final Shardlake mystery Tombland is back on offer at 99p as is Philippa Gregory‘s The Constant Princess about Catherine of Aragon ahead of another joining the series in the autumn (The Boleyn Traitor about Jane Boleyn).

There’s a bunch of TV-tie in, or TV related books on offer this month too. There’s Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen which has just been turned into a TV series, as well as the first Hawthorn and Horowitz The Word Is Murder, not long after the adaptation of Horowitz’s Moonflower Murders (and not long now before the third book in that series arrives). THere’s also Enola Holmes and there are a few Julia Quinns on offer, including the final Bridgerton book, Gregory’s story On the Way to the Wedding and Mr Cavendish, I Presume,

On the non-fiction front, there are actually quite a lot of celebrity memoirs on offer too – I haven’t read these, but they all had good reviews when they came out: Pamela Anderson’s Love, Pamela, Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me, Viola Davis’s Finding Me and Lauren Graham’s Have I Told You This Already. Not quite a celebrity in the traditional sense but Anne Glenconnor’s Lady in Waiting is on offer too as is Susannah Constantine’s Ready for Absolutely Nothing.

There are also some pretty good history books on offer, like Dan Jones’s The Hollow Crown, Lucy Worsley’s Queen Victoria, and although I haven’t read this one, the Elizabeth I book in the Penguin Monarchs series – these are really good short surveys of monarch’s lives written by notable historians, in the case of Elizabeth I it’s Helen Castor.

One of my favourite Terry Pratchetts is on offer at £1.99 this month: It’s the wonderful Going Postal! GNU Sir Terry. Also on my favourites shelf and on offer are: the third Cazalet Chronicle Confusion (with yet another fresh cover, this time one that I don’t like) and the third Tales of the City – Further Tales of the City, Barbara Pym‘s Excellent Women, Daphne Du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel, the cheap Georgette Heyers continue to include Devil’s Cub,

And it was an bad month for my willpower because books I bought while writing this post included: Julian Clary’s Curtain Call to Murder, Maigret and the Wine Merchant, Very Good, Jeeves, Remember Me by Mary Balogh, BK Borison‘s new release First Time Caller, and Jilly Cooper’s The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous.

Good luck at having more will power than me!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, new releases, reviews

Book of the Week: Show Don’t Tell

veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone and today I’m back with a new release (it’s under two weeks since it came out, that totally counts as new still) collection of short stories from one of my favourite authors.

This is a new collection of short stories from Curtis Sittenfeld, mostly looking at various aspects what it is like to be a women, usually a woman in her forties, in the Mid-West of America. It’s her first full collection of short stories since 2018’s You Think It, I’ll Say It which was also a Book of the Week when I read it in 2019 (and which is probably the only book of hers I don’t own. I should fix that). Since then she’s written Rodham, her alternative history of Hillary Clinton, and Romantic Comedy which was one of my very favourite books of 2024 and which I now want to go back and read again. It should also be noted that there is a bit of overlap here with some short stories having appeared elsewhere individually or in a mini collection. But given that I didn’t write about any of those at the time I’m feeling ok about recommending this – just if you are a fan (like me) you’ll have read some before and you may want to calibrate your expectations of new stuff accordingly.

Anyway there are not enough stories about normal women, with normal lives doing things and this is full of them. As with that last collection there is just enough action to keep things moving but not so much that you don’t get to know the character. And once again Sittenfeld has picked out a few things that are happening in the world and done interesting and often witty takes on them. It’s just lovely. Really really nice. I rationed myself to make it last longer. It’s that sort of book – and you can do that with short stories if you just let yourself read one in a sitting.

As you could see from my photos at the weekend, this is getting shelf space on display in the bookshops, but it’s also available on Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: February Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, and I’m back with the quick reviews. And for the first time in ages I actually finished all of the books I had from NetGalley that came out last month. Who knew I was even capable of that. Anyway, here we are with a quick round up of three books – two murder mysteries and a romance – I haven’t already told you about.

Murder in the Dressing Room by Holly Stars*

This is a cozy mystery set in the world of drag performers in London. Our “detective” is Misty/Joe who discovers the body of her drag mother backstage at a club night and starts investigating because the police seem more focused on the stolen dress that Lady Lady was wearing. I really liked the setting for this – I walk around Soho quite a lot as it’s near my office, and lots of the locations were familiar to me. I liked Misty and the way you could see how her persona changed when she was Misty compared to normal life as Joe. However they were a little foolhardy/too stupid to live at times. There’s a big hanging plot thread for the next one which I’m not sure about, but overall I enjoyed this and would read more in the series if it came my way.

The Tube Train Murder by Hugh Morrison

This was another new(ish) release – that came out in early January, but that I didn’t spot straightaway. This is a new standalone mystery from the author of the Reverend Shaw mysteries, which I binged my way through last year. This sees a young woman murdered on a tube train, and the investigation taking in the residents or the boarding house where she was living while she went to secretarial college. Those residents include another student at the same college who is unhappy at the progress the police are making. The mystery is good – and the boarding house setting is well drawn. It’s in Kindle unlimited so like yesterday’s The Ten Teacups worth a look if you’re a member.

Book Boyfriend by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka*

I really, really enjoyed The Roughest Draft which I bought two years ago and was a BotW. I was then disappointed and puzzled by The Break Up tour last year – which was the husband and wife duo’s Taylor Swift inspired romance. This is set at an immersive experience based on a romantasy novel, where two work colleagues and sort-of-enemies unexpectedly encounter each other. I was hoping this would be closer to the Roughest Draft than The Break Up Tour, but sadly it’s another puzzler for me. I didn’t understand why the two leads hadn’t just had a conversation to clear the air after their initial misunderstanding, and the heroine was just really immature for how old – and established in her career – she is meant to be. Frustrating. I still have the book that came in between Roughest Draft and Break Up tour on the Kindle waiting to be read and I’m starting to worry that that first one I liked was a fluke…

And that’s the lot for this month. Given how short February is, I’m pleased with myself for even getting to free!

Happy Humpday!

Book of the Week, Forgotten books

Book of the Week: The Ten Teacups

veritywilde

Another Tuesday, another British Library Crime Classic pick. And yes I finished it this week. But no, I don’t care. It was a difficult week in new reading and I stand by my choices. Have a read of Recommendsday tomorrow and you’ll understand.

This is a locked room mystery of the most impossible type: the police receive a note that evokes a cold case, telling them to go to a house in Berwick terrace at a given date and time. There they set up a cordon – but still at the appointed time, shots ring out and a man is dead. But who did it and how? Sir Henry Merrivale is called in to try and solve the crime.

John Dickson Carr – writing here as Carter Dickson – is one of the masters of the locked room and impossible mysteries and at times in this it feels like he’s trying to outdo his previous efforts (like The White Priory Murder) by creating an even more unsolvable crime. And although I have a few reservations, this is a twisty and atmospheric read that keeps you turning the pages right until the end.

This is one of the most recent BLCC releases – it only came out in early February, but it’s in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you’re in that program. Otherwise I’m sure the paperback will pop up in bookshops that stock the British library crime paperbacks – I forgot to check for it in Foyles last week but I would be surprised if it wasn’t there in their selection.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, crime

Book of the Week: The Crossing Places

veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone. A couple of weeks back I was asking for new mystery series to read and given that I have remembered about the Stephens and Mephisto series, I thought I should try some of Elly Griffths’s modern set series. And so here we are.

The Crossing Places is the first in Griffiths’s series about Dr Ruth Galloway, who is a forensic archaeologist and professor at a university in Norfolk . This first book sees her called in by the police when a body is discovered in nearby marshland, where she has previously worked on an Iron Age excavation. The investigating officer, chief inspector Nelson was hoping that the body is that of a missing child who vanished a decade earlier. But when a second child goes missing Ruth finds herself drawn into a decade old investigation into the disappearance of a small child.

So I think I have maybe been ignoring these because the covers are quite dark and bleak and thinking they were going to be more psychological than I can cope with. But actually they’re not. This is maybe slightly darker in terms of the actual crime than Ann Granger, but no worse, although I would say that Ruth’s personal life looks set to be more complex than those are. I enjoyed this and read it fast – and then tried to figure out how to get the next one (the answer ended up being Waterstones Carlisle as Bookcase only had Stephens and Mephistos second hand and a much later book in the series new in Bookends. And this is a completed series, so if I keep enjoying them I can binge my way through, book budget permitting.

I bought this on Kindle – and it was on offer – but this should be super easy to get hold of in a bookshop with a sensible crime selection.

Happy Reading!

*I bought other stuff in Bookcase, don’t worry

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Murder in the Afternoon

veritywilde

Breaking all my own rules this week with the only Kate Shackleton mystery I haven’t read yet, which I’ve read extremely out of order which is not the best idea but which has a very good murder plot.

Kate is called in to investigate a death at a quarry in a Yorkshire village. Two children went to get their dad after a days work and the elder finds him dead and they run for help. But when they return the body is missing and the local police are more inclined to believe that Ethan has left his wife Mary Jane after an argument. But Mary Jane believes her daughter Harriet and pleads for Kate’s help and Kate is unable to resist. What happened to Ethan – who was a union organiser and had also fallen out with his best friend who was about to sell his farm and move away.

This is the third in the series and as well as having a good and twisty mystery also sets up some of the running plot strands in later books which I had sort of wondered about but would have wondered more if I had realised how many books I had (or hadn’t) read in the series. Like Dandy Gilver these are historical mysteries that have darker solutions than you might expect from the covers – and I sort of like them more for that because of the variety and inventiveness of them – and because Agatha Christie and the actual golden age books are sometimes darker than you remember them being – Sleeping Murder, Artists in Crime, Nemesis – they all have grim bits in them.

Anyway – these are easy to get hold of, I don’t think the series is over so there may be ebook offers next time a book comes out whenever that may be. Any bookshop with a reasonable crime section will have them – I think that’s where I got this one.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, mystery, new releases

Book of the Week: Death Upon a Star

veritywilde

Happy Tuesday everyone, this week I’ve got a review of one of last week’s new releases for you – so points to me for being timely for once!

It’s 1939, and Evelyn Galloway is a script supervisor who has just arrived in Hollywood. She’s a script supervisor and she’s got a job working on Alfred Hitchcock’s new movie, Rebecca. Soon she’s on the film lot and mixing with the stars and crew. When she meets one of her favourite actors, she’s delighted to find that he’s actually a nice person and they arrange to meet for lunch. Except that he never turns up – and is then found murdered. When the stories in the papers don’t match up with what she know, Evelyn decides to start looking into the murder herself.

This is the first in a series – and there’s a bit of mysterious backstory going on here as well as the mystery plot. This is right in a part of history when I think mystery stories really work and Hollywood is a fun setting for something like this. There are some real people in this in minor roles, and there are some bits that are inspired by real people or stories that you can spot too if you’ve read a bit about golden age Hollywood. It’s not ground breaking, but it is a nice easy and relaxing read that is a fun way of spending a few hours. I would happily read the next one in the series if it passed my way.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it came out last week and it’s available now in Kindle and Kobo.

Happy Reading!