This week’s BotW is Christina Jones’s Stealing the Show. Now Jones is a long time favourite author of mine – back since I discovered Heaven Sent via the Melissa Nathan Prize (god how I still miss Melissa Nathan. I bought everything she wrote. I cried in Tescos when I read that she’d died).
Stealing the Show is an early CJ book – and if you’ve been reading the later books in the series, this one is the origin of the Memory Lane Fair that crops up in so many. It’s a look at the life of travelling show people – and it’s a great love story. I absolutely gobbled it up. It’s maybe not as funny as some of her later books, but it’s dealing with more serious issues than they are – there’s domestic abuse tangled up in this as well as inheritance and family pressures.
But don’t let me make that sound like it’s a weighty tome that’ll drag you down. It’s totally not. It’s so much fun. If you haven’t read any Christina Jones before, this really might be a good place to start – even if Heaven Sent is still my favourite.
Accent Press have been republishing some of the harder to find Christina Jones novels as ebooks – so this is easier to get hold of than ever. Go read some of her books – you won’t regret it.
This week’s BotW Death at the Opera and also is a bit of a compare and contrast. I read of Gladys Mitchell’s Mrs Bradley Mysteries last week – this one I loved and the other I could barely get through. As I didn’t read a huge amount last week – and two of them were books I’m reviewing for Novelicious (which I can’t preempt here) – I’ve made Death at the Opera my book of the week. Death at the Opera ticks a lot of my boxes – it’s a murder mystery set in a girls school – but Mrs Bradley is a bit different to a lot of the Golden Age Sleuths. She’s going to track down whodunnit, but she’s not necessarily going to hand them over to the authorities when she does. And that’s what makes her interesting – she wants to know, but often without having a yearning for justice for the victim – she’s more detached and curious than some of the other dectectives of the time.
Death at the Opera is fulled with interesting and intriguing characters, some of whom have very modern attitudes, and a twisty turny plot that I didn’t work out until right at the end. I absolutely zipped through it and went straight on to another Mrs Bradley from the to-read pile (I picked up three from the charity shop a couple of months back) – and what a contrast that was. I really struggled with Come Away, Death. I didn’t like the characters or the setting and I found it really difficult to get into. I finished it, but only just – and only because I liked the Death at the Opera so much I was hoping it would improve. But I guess when a series is so long running there’s bound to be a few duds. Hey ho.
This week’s BotW is Charlaine Harris’ Day Shift – the second book in the Midnight, Texas series – which I think is going to be a trilogy (or that’s how it looks at the moment anyway). And yes, I know Midnight Crossroad was Botw 2 months ago. But this was the best thing I read last week excepting Janet Evanovich, and we’ve already had that discussion…
We pick up where we left off (almost) in Midnight – the same characters that are left at the end of the last book are still in situ, but there’s a strange (even for Midnight) boy who is staying with the Rev and a mysterious company has started renovating the abandoned hotel. This book is faster paced than it’s predecessor and works the better for it. Some of the characters in book one were hard to warm to because they were just *so* mysterious. Well a lot of that is cleared up in book two – although there’s still a lot of unresolved plot strands at the end of the book. And of course Day Shift has a mystery-of-the-week too – which is neat and intriguing – and works well alongside the Bigger Picture puzzle as well.
But what I really loved was the crossovers. Oh the crossovers. I mentioned in my review of Midnight Crossroad that there were some familiar faces from previous series, but in this one the guest appearances are brilliant. I can’t say anymore (as per usual) or I’ll spoil it, but I was thrilled to see some more old friends reappear – I’m the sort of reader who doesn’t like to say goodbye to characters* and so crossovers like this, and side characters from previous books reappearing in bigger roles really makes me happy. I’ve got my fingers crossed for more in the last book!
And that’s pretty much all I can say without spoiling the plot and the excitement for you. I honestly don’t know how well these would work for you if you were coming entirely new to Charlaine Harris’ worlds, but for me, I passed several happy hours reading this.
Day Shift is only in hardback and e-book at the moment, but you can get your copy from all the usual sources – here’s Day Shift at Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and on Kindle. And if harback prices are too eye-watering for you, then Midnight Crossroad is available in paperback from Amazon, Foyles, Waterstones and Kindle.
* I’m always hoping for a sequel to rom coms to see the happily ever afters, but get really annoyed when sequels turn up where the couple break up and make up to create a plot. Yes I know. A book full of happy people wouldn’t be very interesting. What can I say. I’m a difficult audience.
I had trouble picking a BotW again this week – my top rated books of last week were Janet Evanovichs (and I can’t do another of hers for BotW or you’ll all think I’m insane) and a Nora Roberts that I’ve reviewed for Novelicious (I’ll post a link to the review when it goes up). So, instead I’ve gone for the fifth in Sabrina Jeffries’s Hellions of Halstead Hall series – because I’ve really enjoyed reading about the Hellions, and wanted to share it with you.
So, these are historical romances about the Sharpe siblings, whose parents died in scandalous circumstances when they were very young and who have issues tied up with that. At the start of book 1, their domineering grandmother – who holds the purse strings – tells them she’ll disinherit them if they don’t all find themselves spouses with the year. Over the course of the books we see them all find their happiness – and they investigate what really happened to their parents all those years before.
I suggest that you read the books in order – not because you’ll spoil who the other siblings end up with but because you’ll ruin the mystery plot if you don’t – and I don’t think it would be the easiest to follow that part of the book if you haven’t got the full backstory.
My favourites in the series were the first two books and I didn’t love book four, but as a whole the Hellions’ stories ticked a lot of boxes for me and gave me 10 (ish) hours happy reading – hence the BotW post on book five. There is a sixth book in the series – featuring a secondary character from the previous five – which bridges the gap between this series and Jeffries next one – The Duke’s Men (which I’ve already read one of, out of order ), which I’m going to try and get my hands on soon.
So there you go. An unusual BotW from me – and a reminder that I need to slow down on the Janet Evanovich’s to keep my reading material balanced…. You should be able to find Sabrina Jeffries’ Hellions series where ever you usually pick up your US romance novels – I read mine on Scribd, but you can also get them on Kindle and in paperback. The first one is The Truth About Lord Stoneville – and I suggest you start there.
This week’s BotW is Louise Candlish’s The Sudden Departure of the Frasers – which was my Curtis Brown Book Group book for April, but which didn’t get finished until last week because that was when the discussion was.
This has such a striking cover I know I would have looked at it in the shop, I’m not sure if I would have bought it without the Book Club
The Sudden Departure of the Frasers tells the story of Christy and Joe Davenport, who have just bought the house of their dreams in a leafy London area they never expected to be able to afford. The previous owners, the Frasers, renovated the house and then abruptly disappeared. As the Davenports settle in to their new home, Christy becomes obsessed with why the Frasers left and particularly what happened to Amber – beautiful, popular, charming and the centre of the social whirl – and why the atmosphere on the street is so tense.
This is another book that I probably wouldn’t have picked out for myself – but ended up really enjoying* – in fact, I read the vast majority of it across the course of one afternoon and evening because I got sucked in and then I Needed To Know. It’s one of those books where you can’t put it down because your brain is frantically trying to work out what has gone on and you just need to read one more page/chapter/section because then you might be able to figure it out.
One of the reasons this book worked so well for me is that the setting and the characters seem utterly believeable. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has had the fantasy that one day the dream home that you’ve always wanted will pop up on the market miraculously in your price range despite being worth oh-so-much more usually. And then obviously the old adage about “if it looks too good to be true, maybe it is” springs into your mind. Now scenarios like this usually lend themselves to horror or ghost stories (definitely not my thing) but this is neither. It’s a gripping little thriller, which will mess with your head but not leave you with nightmares about blood and gore and ghosts.**
Now I am breaking one of my own rules in writing about this now – because The Sudden Departure of the Frasers doesn’t come out until the 21st. But after a long deliberation I’ve put it up as this week’s BotW – because a) it was really good, b) if I didn’t BotW would probably be another Janet Evanovich (the obsession continues) and c) it will be a really, really good beach read, so preorder it for your holiday and you’ve one less thing to worry about!
You can pre-order The Sudden Departure of the Frasers from all the usual outlets – here is a selection of links – Amazon, Waterstones, Foyles and Kindle – and I suspect that when it does come out it may pop up in your local supermarket as it’s being published by Penguin.
* Which illustrates why I have such a massive to-read pile. I like so many different books. And if I had bought myself this, it would probably have sat of the shelf for years because of the backlog because it’s not obviously a book that I’d like. Then you’d get another of my patented posts saying that I loved it and I can’t believe how long it sat on the shelf and why didn’t I read it sooner. I know. I’m a nightmare.
** I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that there isn’t any blood or gore or ghosts. It’s not that sort of book. But you know what I mean.
This week’s BotW is Lauren Willig’s The Orchid Affair – the eighth book in the Pink Carnation series. It’s been nearly two years since I read my last Pink Carnation book and I’d almost forgotten how much I enjoy them. One of the really good things about this series is that Willig has come up with a way to generate plots that doesn’t involve breaking up couples that you love.
My copy is the US hardback edition – which is pretty if very different from UK book covers
In part eight, we meet Laura, a governess for more than a decade, who has been recruited to the Pink Carnation’s spy network watching Bonaparte’s Paris. She’s got a post in the household of Andre Jaouen – the right-hand man to the Minister of Police. He’s part of an investigation is underway into a royalist plot – and Laura’s charged with reporting anything suspicious. But, as always, things are more complicated than they seem. Meanwhile back in the modern day, Eloise (the historian who is researching the Carnation’s network) is due to meet Colin’s mother.
This is a fun romp through Post-revolutionary France – with likeable characters and a gripping plot. There’s a great balance of suspense and romance – and although I would have liked to have seen a bit more of Colin and Eloise, I appreciate that Willig is taking her time with those two and not rushing them into things – and that more of them might have slowed the pace of the rest of the book.
My only real problem with this book was that the copy that I got is the US edition and so it was in American English – not British English – which in books like this yanks me out of the narrative abit (sometimes to Google things – like AP French). But hey, when you have a backlog like mine, and strict rules about book spending you can’t be picky. And it’s a very minor quibble really.
There’s another three Pink Carnation books I haven’t read yet – with a twelfth and final volume due this year. I suggest you start at the beginning so that the Colin and Eloise thing works best for you, but really they all work quite well on their own. Although you may not get the running jokes. The Orchid Affair is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Kindle – but I don’t think there’s been a UK edition, which can make the prices a bit.. high (hence why it’s taken me two years to get to the Orchid Affair). But the earlier books in the series did get a UK release, so you should be able to get your hands on them – I got the first couple from my local library.
***Bonus content****
Regular readers know that I like matching books. I have a couple of this series on my kindle (and the novellas), borrowed a few from the library, and then started buying. But due to the vagaries of the book market, I have three different sizes and styles of books – out of three. There isn’t a way to shelve this and make me happy.
I need to move these to the other end of the shelf, then they can be in series order at least…
I know, I know. I’m repeating an author again, but Janet Evanovich’s One For The Money was my highest rated book that I read last week – and it seemed churlish not to give it book of the week. Trouble is, as I said a week or so back, I think Evanovich may be my new obsession, so there’s no guarantee that one of her books won’t crop up here again in the near future. Here’s hoping that the to-read pile also contains lots of other really good books so that I can get some variety going on…
My retro looking Penguin edition of One For The Money
So, One For The Money is the first book in the Stephanie Plum series – which has now run to twenty-one novels – with a twenty-second due out this year. As a side point, I love discovering a series like this when it’s been going a while – it means you have lots of time with the characters and lots of things to discover, before you reach the point where you have to wait a year for the next book to come out so you can get your fix.
Anyhow, I digress. When we meet Stephanie Plum she has lost her job as a lingerie buyer for a very third-rate company. Her flat is emptying of possessions as she hocks them to make rent, and a repo man is following her trying to take her car back. Her mum sends her over to her cousin Vinnie – who needs a secretary for his bail bond company, but Stephanie ends up blackmailing him into letting her take on a case to try to make some quick cash. Trouble is the man she’s trying to bring in is her high school crush come hate figure. And he’s a cop on the run from some very dangerous people…
I laughed out loud on the train reading this – several times – drawing a level of scrutiny from my fellow passengers that I try to avoid. It’s a bit out of my comfort zone in terms of my usual type of crime novels (you’ll have noticed by now that I tend towards the cozy and the Golden Age end of the spectrum) but it’s so funny that it didn’t bother me that the violence and suspense level was a step up from what I usually read.*
Stephanie is a little bit too dependent on getting herself helped out of trouble that she’s walked herself into for my liking, but I’m putting that down to the fact that she’s walked into bounty hunting with no clue what she’s doing and without the requisite skills – which is naive and foolhardy almost beyond belief, but I went with it because the book swings along at such a pace that you only really think about that once it’s over – because you’re laughing and turning pages too fast to notice!
I put an order in for book two within 24 hours of finishing book 1 (it’s been dispatched!)and I’m hoping that as Steph wises up, she doesn’t lose the humour and fin that I’ve enjoyed so much in this first book. Cross your fingers for me!
You should be able to buy your copy of One for the Money from the usual suspects – Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles – although I haven’t been able to find it on Kindle or Kobo.
* And it’s not much worse, really, than some of the crime-y thriller-y sections that you get in some of Charlaine Harris’s novels.
This week’s BotW changed on Sunday afternoon – which is quite last minute for me. As is usual by that stage in the week I had a novel in mind as my favourite of the week – and had even got as far as thinking about what i was going to say (but not as far as drafting it!). Then I picked up Janet Evanovich’s Wicked Business which I’d borrowed from the library the previous day…
My hardback library copy
This is the second book in Evanovich’s Lizzy and Diesel series,* following a cupcake baker with special powers and her mysterious and supernaturally gifted partner in crime. I’m clearly missing some of the back story, because I’m pitching up in a well established universe midway through a series which I think is a spin off in its own right. But golly I had a ball reading this and I’m residing the urge to go out and buy a whole load more of Evanovich’s books. I read this in one sitting, curled up under the blanket on the sofa, ignoring the rest of the world! It perfectly fitted my state of mine after doing a nightshift on Saturday night.
They’re not at all the same thing really, but this reminded me of the feeling that I get from reading a good Charlaine Harris novel. But funnier and with less biting! Several people have recommended Janet Evanovich to me at various points and if they’re all as much fun as this, I think her books may be my next obsession. And that is not good news for reducing the to-read pile because a new obsession always ends up with me going on a buying binge…
* I thought it was the first, but the books were listed in reverse order in the front and I didn’t notice, which is stupid of me because Evanovich’s other series has numbers in the titles!
Well here we are, in a first for Verity Reads Books, I’m part of a blog tour. Isn’t this exciting! Today I welcome Jenny Oliver to the blog. She’s going to tell you why she loves the arrival of Spring, and then I’m going to tell you what I thought about The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café – which is the first book in her new Cherry Pie Island series. So, over to Jenny:
Hurray it’s Spring!
Every season I think, ‘This is my favourite season!’ So naturally, right now, I’m thinking that Spring is my definite fave. Here’s my rational…
1. What could be better than a bright yellow flower with a trumpet that costs less than a pound a bunch? They’re happiness in a vase. Right by my parents’ house in Cornwall there are daffodil fields and I think I’m right in saying they leave them to bloom the first year after planting. Last year it was amazing to see this huge yellow field of happy little flowers.
2. This is not to say that I don’t love winter food – stews and casseroles and lasagnes – but I really love a good salad. I’m talking about crispy lettuce, maybe a bit of rocket, and some tiny new potatoes, crispy bacon, feta and lemon juice. Eaten sitting on our back step (because we don’t have a garden) with a glass of really lovely white wine.
3. The smell of the air when you walk out the door in the morning. The warmth of the sun mingling with the cold of the night, the scent of cut grass and daffodils and the sound of birds and cars and people getting up and starting their day happy because it’s not raining or cold!
4.Not wearing a coat! Don’t get me wrong, I really like my coat but after months of wearing it non-stop it’s a pleasure to walk out the house in only a jumper.
5. The knowledge that summer is just around the corner…
Thanks Jenny! Now on to my review…
Dandelion Café tells the story of Annie’s return to island that she grew up on to take over the family café. Annie’s got some issues, and she’s not thrilled to be back on Cherry Pie Island where everyone remembers (and won’t let her forget) her youthful mistakes and misadventures. But it does have the added bonus of Matt-the-millionaire (not the cliche that it sounds, trust me) who she had a massive crush on when she was at school.
Jenny Oliver manages to get a lot of plot into a short book, but it never feels rushed or forced. I got swept away in the world of the island and was rooting for it all to turn out right in the end. And for Annie’s brother to end up getting a dunking in the sea!
I read this on the way home from a nightshift (the last of three), desperately needing some light relief that wouldn’t overtax my frazzled, sleep-deprived brain. The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Café put a smile on my face (helping counteract the purple dark circles) and perked me up nicely. It also didn’t send me into the simmering rage that some partworks/serialisation-y type things do by ending on a cliff hanger which I can’t find out the resolution to for weeks/months/years.
There are some loose ends left at the end of this book – don’t get me wrong – and I need to find out what happens to them, but the main plot of this part of the series is resolved at the end, and the next book in the series is set up neatly – with the prospect of keeping track of how Annie gets on as the next story unfolds. And since reading Dandelion Café, I’ve been back and found a Jenny Oliver book that had been sitting in the Kindle backlog for a while (I’m not looking to see how long – I don’t want to know!) and read and enjoyed that too.
The Grand Reopening of Dandelion Cafe is available now from the usual e-book based outlets. My copy came from NetGalley – but I liked it so much I’ve shelled out my own money to pre-order the next in the series!
This week’s BotW is the new novel from Eloisa James – who is one of my favourite historical romance authors. Four Nights with the Duke is book 8 in her Desperate Duchesses series. My first Eloisa book was Desperate Duchesses 3 – Duchess by Night – which I stumbled across at the library back when I still lived in Essex (so 5+ years ago) and when she returned to the series to add a 7th book last year I was thrilled. Although I’m still really annoyed that we only got a UK paperback release of books 1 – 4 – I had to buy 5 and 6 from the US to read them as they weren’t on Kindle at that point – and then the paperbacks started again with 7. And of course none of them match…
The Historical Romance bookshelf – three difference sizes across the same author in some cases. Your basic nightmare.
Four Nights with the Duke is the second story in the second generation of the Duchesses – which appears to be subtitled “Desperate Duchesses by the Numbers”. Four Nights tells the story of Mia and Vander. Mia needs to get married (no, not because of that) and the only person she can turn to is a man she swore that she would never marry (and he was there when she did the swearing). Vander definitely doesn’t want to marry Mia – after all her father was his mother’s mistress and he’s still Very Angry* about that. But Mia has a rather incriminating piece of paper that means that he’s going to have to do it, or lose everything. So he offers her a deal – he’ll marry her, but he’ll only spend 4 nights a year with her (if you know what I mean) and she’s going to have to beg him for them…
Now that sort of set up is totally my sort of thing** – this is a plot device that totally floats my boat – the spouses at war/married because we had to trope is one of my favourites – right up there with fake engagements and you’ve been like a sibling to me until…x. Not an accidental pregnancy in sight (yay!). Add to that the fact that Mia has an alter ego as a romance novelist and I’m in historical romance heaven. And Eloisa James is such a safe pair of hands. There’s never an anachronism that I can spot, or a jarring word (except when I’ve got the American editions with the Wrong Spelling) or something that seems just too improbable – even for romance.
I read this practically in one big gulp on Easter Sunday – pausing only (with less than 50 pages remaining) to go to the big family meal at my auntie’s in the evening – and if I could have put off leaving to finish it, I would have done. The only problem with that is that I’ve now got to wait a year until there’s another one, and I think I’ve practically read the whole of the Eloisa James back catalogue now – as evidenced by the Kindle folder and the romance folder…
The Kindle folder for Eloisa James books is three pages long
Having read some Historical Romance recently that I was less than crazy about – and a couple of books that weren’t as good as I was hoping they would be as well, I was really pleased that this totally lived up to the hype that I had given it in my head. It’s not my favourite in the series (a toss up between a Duke of Her Own and Duchess by Night) but it’s still really, really good. If you’re not a historical romance reader – and want to see what the genre is all about, Eloisa James along with Julia Quinn and Sarah MacLean are the authors I recommend as starting points (they’re also the authors that keep hold of after I’ve read them – as you can tell from the romance shelf).
You can get your copy of Four Nights with the Duke from all the usual sources – it’s got a paperback release – so Amazon, Waterstones and Foyles are all stocking it – and you never know, it might even make it into WH Smiths and the supermarkets too. And obviously, like me, you can buy it for Kindle or ebook.
And in the interests of full disclosure, I bought my copy of Four Nights – but I am in Eloisa’s fan outreach-y group on Facebook. But I’m posting this because I loved the book – not because they told me to.
BONUS PICTURE: Another brilliant example of the difference between UK romance covers and US ones…
* Sorry, I was watching Pretty Woman over the weekend – and writing that sentence made me think of this quote: “I was very angry with him. It cost me ten thousand dollars in therapy to say that sentence: “I was very angry him.” I do it very well, don’t I? I’ll say it again: I was very angry with him. “Hello, my name is Mr. Lewis, I am very angry with my father.” Although obviously Vander is angry with his mother and Mia’s Father, not his father. But still. It’s a good line.
** The Smart Bitches would call it my catnip. I’m not sure whether I can pull off calling something my catnip. I think I might be too British/dull/self conscious.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 