Tag: book reviews

Authors I love, Book of the Week, cozy crime

Book of the Week: Earthly Delights

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As you may have seen from yesterday’s Week in Books, I had a bit of a strange week reading last week, having trouble settling down to books – and a few that I didn’t like.  But choosing this week’s BotW was easy – Kerry Greenwood’s Earthly Delights.

You might recognise Kerry Greenwood’s name because she’s the author of the Phryne Fisher series of murder mysteries set in 1920s Australia, which I adore and have been turned into a TV series – which I have thoughts about. This the first in her Corinna Chapman series – which is set in present day (or at least present day when they were written a few years back) Melbourne, where Corinna is a speciality baker who runs her own bakery in one of the slightly seedier areas.  The bakery is proving a success, but suddenly she’s getting anonymous letters calling her a whore, a junkie has overdosed in the alley behind her shop, there’s a mysterious but gorgeous man showing an interest in her and her shop assistants are starving themselves to try and get a role on a TV show (any TV show).  She’s determined to get to the bottom of the letters – which are upsetting and scaring her and her friends – and ends up getting sucked in to some of the other drama as well…

Although this is the first in the series, I had already read one of the later books and enjoyed it although I was missing some backstory.  This fills some of those gaps in nicely and sets up the series as well as having an excellent mystery.  Greenwood always creates great settings and quirky characters in the Phryne books – and she does the same here.  Corinna is very different to Phryne, but she’s great fun, smart and warm-hearted, just like Miss Fisher.  Her apartment building is a brilliantly quirky invention – as are many of the people who live there.

I didn’t love this the way that I love Phryne, but in the absence of a new book about the Fabuous Miss Fisher, I’ll happily work my way through these.  I’ve been waiting for either the kindle price or the second hand price to drop on this series for ages – and these have all dropped from over £5 for the Kindle edition to just over £3, which is still on the top end of what I’m prepared to pay for ebooks, but is much more doable.  I shouldn’t really be buying books, but when has that ever stopped me before.  You can pick up your copy on Kindle or Kobo (which isn’t price-matching Amazon at time of writing sadly), in paperback from Amazon (if you’re prepared to shell out £11+ for a new copy or £8+ for a second hand one) or you can trawl the second hand shops because it’s out of stock and un-orderable at both Foyles and Waterstones.

Happy reading.

Book of the Week, Young Adult

Book of the Week: The Rest of Us Just Live Here

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It was a close call for BotW this week (I like it when that happens) – with Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians deserving an honourable mention here for being utterly readable and totally cracktastic. But my favourite thing I read last week was Patrick Ness’s The Rest of Us Just Live Here.

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
My copy – which has a few marks from the commute…

Have you ever wondered what the rest of the kids were doing while Buffy and the Scooby Gang were off saving the world?  You know, the ones who voted Buffy class defender at the prom – who admitted that they knew there was something strange about Sunnydale and that she always seemed to turn up to fix it?  Or the rest of the kids at Hogwarts while Harry is busy fighting Voldemort?  The ones who aren’t The Chosen One(s)?  Well this is the book for you.  The Rest of Us Just Live here follows Mikey and his friends in the run up to graduation.

At the start of the book, it’s under 5 weeks away and weird things are starting to happen in the town.   It’s not the first time this has happened – and as always it’s the Indie kids who are fighting whatever the evil is that’s descended on town this time.  Mikey and his gang aren’t Indie Kids (you need a name like Satchel or Finn to belong) so they just see the blue lights, the zombie deer and worry that the high school is going to get blown up (again).  Each chapter starts with a summary of what the Indie Kids are up to and then you get into the nitty gritty of the daily life of Mikey and his friends.  And they have problems of their own.  Sure it’s not zombies or vampires – but alcoholism, eating disorders, Alzheimers, ambitious parents (of various types), OCD and being worshipped by cats and Mountain Lions are pretty tough too.

I’ve seen some criticism of this book for not a lot happening or being boring – but I never felt that at all.  What the kids are going through may not be as dramatic as fighting flesh eating monsters, but it’s important – and it’s relatable.  I was swept up in the dramas of what was happening in the kids lives – and I identified with them.  I wasn’t the popular kid at school and although I loved Buffy I would never have managed to be in her gang, but I did feel like I might have made Mikey’s team.

It is more low key than many other YA high school novels and it’s not as angsty and melodramatic as them either, but it’s touching and bittersweet and in it’s own way wryly funny.  If you’ve read all the stories about the Chosen Ones and want another side to the story, then this might well be the book for you especially if you’re a teenager or a student.  After all the schools are back, the novelty of a new year and new teachers has worn off and it’s nice to be reminded that as bad as your school life is, it could be much worse.

Get your copy from Amazon, Kindle, Kobo, Waterstones or Foyles or wherever fine books are sold.  Happy reading!

Adventure, Book of the Week, reviews, Thriller

Book of the Week: The Barista’s Guide to Espionage

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You may have noticed that a week on the beach means that I’ve read a lot of books and whilst I have been bingeing a little on Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s series (and Margery Allingham to a lesser extent) my favourite book last week was Dave Sinclair’s The Barista’s Guide to Espionage.

I’ve said elsewhere that this book is what would happen if Stephanie Plum had James Bond’s baby – and according to the publisher that was what the author was going for, so big success there.

And to be honest, what more could you want.  Eva Destruction’s mistake – and this isn’t a spoiler because it’s in the blurb on Goodreads – is that her ex-boyfriend is a billionaire super villain who is trying to take over the world. So far Harry’s masterplan appears to be working – but there’s a dashing spy trying to thwart his plan – and if he can get Eva into bed at the same time as bringing Harry down so much the better.  This all unfolds slightly out of order, just to keep you in even more suspense as Eva tries to work out which side is the right side to be one – after all Harry did buy her a castle of her very own…

Cover of The Baristas Guide to Espionage
How can you not love a book with a cover like this?!

This is so, so, so much fun.  I mean, Eva blazes through this book, living up to her name with the trail of wreckage in her wake.  And Harry the Billionaire is really well done – he has enough moments of being really human that you can see why Eva struggles to side against him at time – he’s not like a Bond villain were you know the only reason he’s attracted his female hangers-on is because he’s rich*.  This unravels like an action  movie – with set pieces scattered across the world and bluffs and double bluffs galore.  I can’t wait for the sequel – and hopefully the movie.

This was another book which came to me via my Fahrenheit Press subscription – which has already given me previous BotW’s Murder Quadrille, Black Rubber Dress and Death of a Nobody as well as a bunch of other excellent books which have been in the running.  Fahrenheit Press are starting to bring out physical copies of their books, but as yet, the only place you can get this is on Kindle but it’s definitely worth £2.95 of your hard-earned money.

Happy reading!

 

*Except May Day.  I think she likes Zorin because he’s mad and lets her be violent (and he’s rich, and younger than most Bond villains).

Book of the Week, non-fiction, reviews

Book of the Week: A Kim Jong-il Production

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A nonfiction pick for BotW this week – but the story it tells is so incredible that it reminds me of an essay I wrote at university about the statement “Literature has to be plausible, history only has to be true”. And whilst I don’t remember what I wrote in the essay (although I do remember it got a first after much panicking and a session with my tutor where I learnt the “Ron” method of essay writing), this book really does prove that the truth can be stranger than fiction.


So Paul Fischer’s A Kim Jong-il Production tells the story of the kidnapping of South Korea’s biggest female movie star and her ex-husband, the country’s most famous director/producer who were snatched by North Korea as part of a plan to overhaul the county’s film industry.  But as well as the story of the kidnapping, it’s also a bit of a potted history of the two countries, the ties that bind them, that separate then and a truly mind-blowing insight into the workings (or otherwise) of the world’s most secretive state.

Now I work in news and I’m a history graduate (albeit one who did mainly European history, and avoided anything before 1066) and I like to think that I’m fairly well up on world events and current affairs, but my mind was honestly boggled by the goings on in this book – not just the stuff from the country ruled by the crazy dictator and his family, but also by the intermittent chaos and military rule going on in South Korea. I can (just) remember the Seoul Olympic Games, and it seemed incredible to me that just a few years before the country’s president was assassinated – and tanks were on the street.

If I have a criticism of  book, it’s that it sometimes seemed to be taking a long time to get to the actual kidnapping, but given my (as I now know) woeful understanding of the wider picture and the situation leading up to the main event (so to speak) I can let Paul Fischer off the hook.  I feel like I learned a lot over the course of the book as well as being thoroughly engrossed in the story.

The Boy practically snatched this out of my hand as I fished it so that he could read it and he’s already two thirds of the way through. I guess if you already know a lot about the history of the two Koreas, this might be repeating some old ground, but if you’re anything like me, I think you’ll find it fascinating, bonkers and just a little bit scary – and very glad you weren’t born in North Korea.

Happy reading.

Book of the Week, reviews, women's fiction

Book of the Week: The Madwoman Upstairs

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This week’s BotW was a tough decision, with two books in serious contention.  But in the end I’ve picked Catherine Lowell’s debut novel The Madwoman Upstairs.  The other contender, Brenda Bowen’s Enchanted August, also gets an honourable mention – and if you’re looking for a rich people problems summer holiday book, set on an island in Maine (and inspired by Elizabeth von Arnim’s Enchanted April) this would make a good read for you – I’ve already lent it to my mum. But I digress.

My copy of The Madwoman Upstairs
This week’s fetching photo was taken on the train, where I read 300 pages in two trips!

The Madwoman Upstairs tells the story of Samantha Whipple, the last remaining descendant of the Bronte family, starting at university and trying to avoid the attention that her family name has always brought her.  She had an unconventional childhood, brought up by her eccentric father, who died in a fire, and who, it’s rumoured, left her a treasure trove of secret Bronte documents.  As far as Samantha knows, the mysterious Bronte literary estate doesn’t exist – or if it does no one’s told her about it.  Then she receives a copy of a Bronte novel, annotated by her dad, and finds herself caught up in a literary treasure hunt, set by her father.  She sets out to solve it, helped – or hindered – by her handsome but cantakerous and combative personal tutor.

I’m not a big Bronte fan.  I’ve read Jane Eyre once, tried to read Wuthering Heights several times and never made it, and gave up on the TV adaptation of Tennant of Wildfell Hall.  However I seem to be reading increasing numbers of Bronte-themed/based books – and really enjoying them.  This isn’t quite up their with The Eyre Affair, which is my all-time favourite, but I liked it even more Jane Steel (a BotW a few months back) – which was promising at the start but faded a little.  This keeps the pace going to the very end – which left me having a spoiler-filled moment on Litsy (I added spoiler tags don’t worry) because I had Thoughts I needed to put out there.  It’s really fun and quite funny – although I wouldn’t precisely call it a “a light-hearted literary comedy” as some of the tag lines would have it* – I was thinking more darkly comic in places.

I’ve already lent this out to a friend – I suspect my mum may want to read it as well, and I think this would generally be a great book to read as the schools go back, starting as it does with Samantha arriving at university.  But equally if you’re off on a late summer break, this would keep you engrossed and smiling on the plane (or on the beach).

I was lucky enough to have an advance copy which was paperback, but sadly it’s only out in hardback at the moment.  You can get a copy from Amazon, Kindle, Kobo, Waterstones, Foyles – or pre-order the paperback for a nice treat you’d forgotten you’d bought when it arrives in April – on Amazon and Waterstones.

Happy Reading

*I see the paperback cover – and the current ebook cover feels much lighter and less gothic than the cover I had, which fits with the light-hearted comedy idea much better than the one which I have.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: The World’s Wife

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I’m a bit off-piste with this week’s BotW choice – because it’s poems.  It’s not the first poetry to be BotW- because Sarah Crossan’s One was free verse – but Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife is the first poetry collection to get the nod from me.

Copy of The World`s Wife
My copy of the World’s Wife -it isn’t the latest edition which I think is prettier.

The World’s Wife is a collections of poems about the women behind famous men, or in some cases changes famous men into famous women.  It’s on the AS level syllabus these days – I think my sister studied it, although I got stuck with Wordsworth back in my day – so I’m not going to pretend to any profound knowledge or insight.  In fact I feel like I need to read them again already, with whatever the modern equivalent of York Notes is to help me get the most out of them.  But I enjoyed reading them – and I’ve been off down the internet rabbit hole afterwards to find out who some of the men I didn’t know were.

I have studied Carol Ann Duffy though – at GCSE.  In the big orange English Anthology, as well as Poems from Other Cultures and Traditions, there was a selection of poems from 3 poets – Simon Armitage, Ted Hughes and Duffy – and you had to study one of them.  Carol Ann Duffy was the one we had to do.  Towards the end of our two years, a local theatre held a GCSE poetry day – with a selection of the featured poets on stage reading from their works and answering questions.  And Ms Duffy was one of them – she read a few poems (I can’t remember which) and was generally very tolerant of 1400 teenagers’ questions she’d probably heard a hundred times before*.  My friend’s question wasn’t answered and at the interval, she wanted to see if she could get an answer, so dragging me with her, we scoured the theatre for the green room, and found it and waited for Ms Duffy.  My friend was much braver than me and she did all the talking, but Ms Duffy was friendly and gracious towards the two of us – and we even ended up with an address to write to her if we had any more questions.  I kept the scrap of paper it was written on for years – although I’ve lost it now – and have never forgotten my brush with the now Poet Laureate.

*Not all of the others were!

 

Chick lit, cozy crime, crime, historical, holiday reading, romance

Summer Reading Recommendations 2016

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So you’ve read my Comfort Reading Picks post, now you want the Beach Reads don’t you?  Well, here we go…

Eligible

Curtis Sittenfeld’s retelling/reworking of Pride and Prejudice is my top pick for the beach. I was lucky enough to get my hands on an advance copy of this before it came out here in May and had to restrain myself from raving about it straight away.  It’s part of the Austen Project and it’s so clever.  Sittenfeld has taken P&P and rather than translating it direct to the current day, she’s thought about what the modern equivalent of the books situations might be.  So we have Lizzy the magazine writer brought home by her dad’s health scare,  Jane the Yoga Instructor, Bingley the Reality TV star (and doctor) and Darcy the neurosurgeon.  Kitty and Lydia are crossfit obsessed Paleo fans and Mrs B is a kleptomaniac desperate to marry off her nearly 40 year old oldest daughter. I thought it was brilliant – funny and smart and spot on.  I lent it straight to my mother – I wasn’t sure if she’d buy into the changes the way I did, but she loved it too.  Perfect beach reading – it’s a hardback, but I’m hoping there’ll be airport paperback copies too if you’re buying en route.  If not: Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles, Kindle, Kobo.

Sidney Chambers and the Forgiveness of Sins

If you’ve been watching the ITV series, you may already have read James Runcie’s books about Grantchester’s vicar.  I prefer them to the TV version and I particularly like their episodic nature – each book has several mysteries, some (most) involving deaths and some which don’t.  As you work your way through the series you see Sidney grow and mature.  He’s 32 in the first one – which is set in the 1950s, and by the fourth one we’re into the 1960s.  I haven’t read book five yet – because it’s only out in paperback, but if you’re looking for a series to read while sitting in the garden enjoying the British summer, a visit to Grantchester might be an ideal option for you.  I think it would work best if you start at the beginning of the series, but the latest paperback (Forgiveness of Sins) should be fairly easy to find in the shops at the moment. Forgiveness of Sins: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Waterstones, Kobo.  Shadow of Death: Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Waterstones, Kobo.

Fahrenheit Press

Ok, so this is a second crime recommendation – and a much broader one.  Go have a look at Fahrenheit Press’s catalogue.  There will definitely be something that you’ll like.  I’ve already picked Black Rubber Dress, Murder Quadrille and Death of a Nobody as Books of the Week, and I could have added others to that list.  I have their subscription – and I have several books waiting for me to read on my Kindle – including more Sam Jones which I’m saving for a holiday binge.  There’s thrillers, more cozies, historical and pretty much every other type of crime there, all with a slightly different perspective.  I defy you not to find a beach read there – and more are being added at a rate of knots.  They’ve only just started bringing out actual physical books – so the best way to find them is to search for Fahrenheit Press on Amazon – or check out their website.

The Highlander

This is about as close to an Old School Historical Romance novel as you get in new books these days – and does all the best bits of those late 80s and early 90s books, but without the rape and rapey bits I find so problematic.  This is not subtle.  It’s big, it’s melodramatic, it’s very Scottish.  I recommended The Highwayman last year – and this isn’t quite as good as that, but it is very good.  It has governesses and secret identities – which I like – but also an asylum (which I didn’t like and might be triggering for some) and a subplot with a brother which I didn’t like.  I know that sounds a bit less than enthusiastic from me – but it’s not – I kept turning the pages and I was engrossed.  Worth a look if you like your romances Gothic with brooding damaged Scottish heroes.  Amazon and Kindle are probably your best bet for this, as although Waterstones lists the two earlier titles in this series, it doesn’t have this one there yet.

So there you go.  My Summer reading suggestions.  Slightly later than planned (sorry) but hopefully still in time for the summer.  And if you’re still at a loss – I’ve stuck to books I haven’t recommended before, so don’t forget The Little Bookshop of Lonely Hearts, Sunset in Central Park, The Tumbling Turner Sisters and Jane Steele which would all be great to read on the beach.

Book of the Week, fiction

Book of the Week: The Canal Boat Cafe

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This week’s BotW is Cressida McLaughlin’s latest novel, The Canal Boat Café.  With the exception of this, I had a bit of a lacklustre week of reading last week – so I was glad to have something that I enjoyed and could actually recommend!

Paperback copy of The Canal Boat Café
Say hello to my garden table and my copy of The Canal Boat Café!

Summer Freeman returns to the waterside village of Willowbeck after her mother’s death to sort out her mother’s narrowboat, the titular Canal Boat Cafe.  Summer has been avoiding returning to the boat, but the family friend who has been keeping it going has run into some difficulties and needs Summer to take the reigns.  Soon she and her dog Latte are moving on board and making new friends as Summer tries to work out what her future holds and what part the canal plays in it.

This originally started out as a four part ebook story, but is now out in proper paperback format.  It’s still split into sections and there is a little bit of repetition of previous events, but as I was in the post-nightshift, too little sleep, too many hours at work haze it didn’t bother me because my concentration span was so shot!  What it doesn’t have are the big, jarring cliff hangers that you often get at the end of sections in these novelisations – the sort of thing that are designed to get you to buy the next part to see what happens, but are then resolved within a few pages.   And that is definitely a good thing.  That’s not to say that there isn’t drama – because there is, but it happens at the point that it needs to happen for the story – not at where a part needs to end.

Summer and her friends (and not friends) have distinct characters and problems and points of view and the canal makes for a really appealing setting for them all to play out.  It’s a lovely summer read, ideal for sitting out in the garden enjoying the sunshine – and it will probably make you want to go for a walk down the canal towpath, or even go on a holiday on the waterways.

You can get your copy of The Canal Boat Café from Amazon, Kindle, Foyles, Kobo, Waterstones – or like me from a large supermarket with a name that begins with T.

Book of the Week, new releases, romance, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Sunset in Central Park

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This week’s BotW is Sarah Morgan’s latest book – Sunset in Central Park.  This is the second book in her new series – about three young women who leave Puffin Island (the location of her previous series) for the bright lights of New York and a career in events management.

This is Frankie’s story – and Frankie is extremely wary of relationships after watching the fallout from her parents’ divorce when she was a teenager.  She avoids emotional attachments to anyone except her two closest friends – who she works with – and garden designer Matt, one of her friend’s brothers and the owner of the brownstone where they all have flats in Brooklyn.  She’s determined to keep their relationship strictly platonic, even though he makes her insides feel a bit odd, because all relationships end and she wants to keep him in her life.  But what she doesn’t know is that Matt’s been crazy about her forever, but has kept quiet because he knows how fragile she is.  But as he finds out more about her hidden depths as they work together on a project, the sparks fly.  Will he be able to convince her to take a chance on what they have?

This is romantic, fun and satisfying.  You know where it’s going, but it’s so much fun watching the characters work through all their issues to come to a happy conclusion.  Sarah Morgan has created a great group of strong competent women and is busy pairing them up with the men they deserve – equally strong and competent, and who compliment the girls – who definitely don’t need a man to complete them or fix their lives.  They can fix their own lives and problems, but the men will support and help them as they do it.  I did want to give Frankie a bit of a slap at times, but I always understood why she was behaving the way that she did.  I think I preferred the first book in the series slightly* – but that’s because I’m more of a Paige than I am a Frankie.

Copies of two Sarah Morgan books
I don’t have a paperback copy of Sunset in Central Park, but I do have other Sarah Morgans!

If you asked me, I would probably tell you that I don’t like contemporary romances, but that’s because when people say contemporary romance I think of billionaires and secretaries, doctors and nurses, nannies and lonely widowers, secret dukes and princes, secret babies and accidental pregnancies – none of which float my boat. I like smart heroines getting a happy ending – and if the books have a touch of humour, so much the better.   Thinking about it – and looking at the downstairs keepers bookshelf – there’s a lot of contemporary romance there – the sort of books that 10 years ago would have been called chick lit.  I don’t like chick lit as a term – but women’s fiction is too broad a description – so they probably would fall under the contemporary romance banner.

I only started reading Sarah Morgan because I met her at Sarah MacLean’s London tea-party and got given a free copy of one of the Puffin Island books (although I then went out and bought the first in this series and read that first after hearing Sarah Morgan talk about it on Smart Podcast, Trashy Books at the end of May) but it turns out that her latest books are exactly what floats my boat.  There was a sampler for Eva’s book at the end of this one and it left me desperate to read a Christmas-themed book – in July.  And you know my feelings on starting to read about Christmas too early.

My copy of Sunset in Central Park came from NetGalley – but you can get a copy from Amazon and Kindle (actually cheaper in book form at the time of writing) and I suspect possibly in supermarkets and other bookstores.  Don’t be put off by the Harlequin logo on the spine – if you are, you’ll be missing out.  I’m off to mine more of Sarah Morgan’s back catalogue – although I’ll never get through all of it and some of them are medical romances…

Happy reading!

*I read Sleepless in Manhattan the same week that I read The Rogue Not Taken or it would probably have been BotW that week.

Book of the Week, Fantasy, graphic novels

Book of the Week: Ms Marvel

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As I said yesterday, it’s been a tough decision about what to pick as BotW this week.  In the end I settled on Ms Marvel, because it was my favourite thing that I read last week, even though I don’t always have a lot to say about graphic novels/comics when I write reviews.  But then as I’m thick with cold and cough (in July! I know! So ridiculous) perhaps its the lurgy blocking my creative juices.  Lets stick with that.

 So, Ms Marvel.  I am not up on the Marvel Universe – I’ve seen a few films (they didn’t have Ms Marvel or Captain Marvel in them), but then who hasn’t, but I think this may be my first actual Marvel Comic.  I believe – although I may be wrong – that this is a reboot of an earlier character, but I haven’t read any of the earlier stuff so I don’t have the full back story.  But then I don’t think it affected my enjoyment not knowing any of the rest of the history.

 So, the story.  Kamala Khan is a Pakistani American teenager in Jersey City.  She’s Muslim and her parents are very protective of her.  She chafes at some of the restrictions placed upon her by her family – and ends up with superpowers after an incident at a party she sneaked out to.  In the first trade – No Normal – she gets her powers and starts to get entangled with the Inventor (who we assume is a villain).

I enjoyed this – Kamala is fun and multi-dimensional and she has real-life as well as superhero-y conflicts in her life.  The supporting characters are also great and I learnt a few things as well  but in a subtle way.  It ends in a bit of a cliff-hanger and I’m fairly sure I’ll be buying Volume 2 when I next get to the comic book shop.  I’m not putting any links to buy – because I want you to go down to your comic bookstore and do it there.   Find your local comic book store here.