How excited was I to read the new Olivia Dade? Well, it dropped onto my doormat while I was at work on Tuesday and as you can see it came on the train to work with me on Wednesday. This is an enemies to lovers romance where the heroine was previously engaged to the hero’s brother. And the hero is the reason the wedding didn’t happen, so that’s going to be an interesting one to try to sort out. The only problem is that when I find out how that’s done, it’ll all be over and I’ll have to wait for the next book from Dade!
Yes, yes, yes, I finished it on Monday. It would have been on the train in to work on Monday, but just as I was reading the last couple of percent as we came in on the final stretch into Euston someone phoned me, and it was the train home instead – in fact I was so near the end, I had finished it before the train had finished pulling out of the station!
This is a friends to lovers, fake dating sort of romance where our hero and heroine, Hallie and Jack, meet at a wedding, have a one night stand and then meet again on a dating app. Hallie is trying to get her life back on track after a messy breakup with her high school boyfriend and she and Jack are definitely not interested in each other so make a bet on who can find true love first. And you know where this is going.
I found this really easy to read and a lot of fun. It reminded me a lot of some of the “chick lit” romances I read back in the day and has a nice sense of humour about it. The hero and heroine are quite young, but it didn’t feel quite as New Adult-y as some of the other romances I have read recently with similarly aged couples. But once I had finished reading it and started thinking about it there were a few things that jumped out at me – Jack does some questionable things during the bit of the bet where he’s catching feelings for Hallie, and actually when it comes down to it neither of them have a lot of character beyond being hot and liking tacos. But it’s one of the books where I didn’t notice that in the moment (well except that thing that Jack did where my first thought was “well there’s the final act breakup moment set up”) and it’s funny so I didn’t care too much. But your mileage may vary, depending on how much late 90s/early 00s romance you have read and your feelings and tolerance of that.
This is my first Lynn Painter – I picked it up because it was on offer (yes the Kindle offers post research costing me money again!) and I keep seeing her books recommended. And it was definitely worth 99p, and I’ll have a look out for more from her in Kindle Unlimited as well (there’s one at the moment). It’s in Kindle and Kobo and claims to have a paperback.
So I happened to wander into the works this week, and I think they’ve had a bit of an adjustment in the books that they’re stocking. Previously, the majority of the fiction wall space would be given over to the 3 for £6 offer books – but now they seem to have a lot more new releases and books outside the offer.
So admittedly the Rebecca Yaros and the Richard Osman came out in the autumn and Heartstopper 5 just before Christmas, but House of Flame and Shadow only came out a couple of weeks ago – I know because Gower Street had that event for it. But there are three brand new books here – the Amy Lea, the Tessa Bailey and the Jessa Hastings all only came out *this week* and it’s already on the shelves. Yes there are some old books here too, but this is much newer than The Works used to stock.
And then we have the trending titles – aka stuff that’s not in the 3 for £6 – indivudually priced, no deals. There are two shelves of these and it’s all a bit mixed up in terms of genre, but someof these are pretty new too – stuff that I’ve bought new or had pre-ordered over the last year along with some of the popular warhorses of the moment (HI Colleen Hoover and all those paperback Richard Osmans)
I think you can see as well how cover design for romance is changing – so much of the cartoon pastel covers, that read as slightly YA even when they’re not. In fact Wild Fire and Icebreaker actually have a warnings on the back that they’re not for under 18s – and contain explicit content. And clearly the other big trend of the moment is Title In Huge Words with a misty blurry background. It’s sort of fascinating to see how quickly covers are changing at the moment and how the trends are evolving.
And there were two shelves of the 3 for £6 books – but unlike days of yore, they were all stacked front facing like this rather than a mix of front and piles and a fair proportion were books that I don’t remember seeing anywhere else before – rather than the old pattern which was year plus old paperbacks of romances and mysteries. In times gone by, four of the five sets of shelves would have been the offer – and one would have been the non offer books. I shall monitor the situation and see how it develops!
There’s a new Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery out this week! It’s been three years since Castle Shade came out, but in the world of Mary and Sherlock The Lantern’s Dance picks up straightaway- as they arrive in the south of France to visit Damian Adler after the events in Transylvania. That’s what the blurb tells me – and what the first few pages of the Kindle sample suggest, but I’m not sure how much more I dare read without risking buying it, and we all know the pile is huge right now and kindles of new release hardbacks are expensive. Anyway per the blurb, Damian and his family are missing and while Sherlock leaves to hunt for them, Mary remains behind and discovers crates of memorabilia and a secret to decode within. How will I resist buying this? Probably by telling myself that if I read this now I’ll have to wait years for the next one…
It’s the second Wednesday of the month so that means it’s kindle offer day and it’s a bumper crop this week.
First up, it was only was BotW a couple of weeks ago – but now Capote’s Women is 99p to coincide with the TV series that we still can’t stream over here. Not that I’m bitter about that. Also in the former BotW stakes, just from varying degrees of time ago are another few 99p deals: Ashley Poston‘s The Seven Year Slip, Annabel Monaghan’sNora Goes off Script and Jenny Jackson’sPineapple Street which is a great rich people problems novel and I think is on offer to coincide with its paperback release I think.
I read The Vanishing Half a lot longer ago than the rest, but it’s really good and stuck with me – it’s 99p too. 99p. Lissa Evans’s Old Baggage which is chronologically the first in her trilogy of related books (even if it was the last one published) is 99p and I really, really loved it.
The Shadows of London, which is sixth in the Restoration mystery series about James Marwood and Cat Lovett is 99p – I’ve read this one and a couple of others in the series but with some gaps – so I can vouch for the fact you don’t need to have read all of them for it to make sense, and in fact if you don’t like on page sexual violence, you should probably avoid the first book in the series completely.
In series watch, this month’s cheap Terry Pratchetts are Night Watch at £1.99 and in his non-Discworld stuff The Long War from the Long Earth Trillogy he wrote with Stephen Baxter is 99p: The Georgette Heyer isUnknown Ajax is 99p as is the Bridgerton adjacent The Sum of All Kisses by Julia Quinn. And in Peter Wimsey it’s the second Peter and Harriet book Have His Carcase which is 99p – one of my favourites as you know, featuring the death of a dancer at a large coastal hotel. It’s actually better to read than listen to, on account of a section of code breaking that is really just a string of letters read out loud as an audiobook!
And that’s your lot – it’s a potentially expensive post depending on your reading tastes – I got off quite lightly writing it but I did also get four or five samples while I was writing this so I may yet regret saying that!
I mentioned this on release day the other week, but I really did enjoy it and the list was short last week, so here we are…
When Paul Delamare’s old friend Christian inveigles him into teaching a course at a Belgravia cookery school in his place, he doesn’t expect to end up as the prime suspect in a murder investigation. But that’s what happens when after the first night of the course a body is discovered. And of course it doesn’t help that Paul taught a knife skills class in the first day and everyone knows that chefs are short tempered don’t they? Except that Paul’s pretty sure there are some people with secrets among the people at the school and that they had much better motive and opportunity than he did. And as the course continues alongside the murder investigation, he tries to solve the crime and avoid being arrested for murder himself.
I really liked this. I was hoping it would be good and fun, and it actually exceeded my expectations. And a lot of that is because Paul is a much more interesting character than you expect from the blurb so it makes a change from the usual cozy-crime sleuths. The actual murder mystery plot is also good and plenty twisty enough for me although I’ll admit to having some doubts about the solution. This is written by a cookery writer so it has recipes as well as the murder and .I really liked them too – I know a lot of American mysteries have recipes but they’re often not ones I actually want to cook and of course the measurements are all wrong (how much butter is a stick anyone?) but with these ones I did think “oh that sounds nice”. I hope there is a sequel – there was certainly enough left hanging when it comes to Paul’s life to sustain another book with him at the centre…
My copy came from NetGalley, but as you can see from the photo it’s out in the shops now and should be fairly easy to get hold of in hard copy as well as on Kindle or Kobo.
A bit of a change today, because I’ve realised that I need some new series to read! I’ve finished some recently, and I’m up to date with a bunch of others, and my usual method of wandering “if you liked this, try this” type spaces doesn’t seem to be writing as well these days. If you were to order me for a reading why that is, I would say my theory is around the inclusion of TikTok sensation in so many book descriptions at the moment, which seems to be serving me a very disparate group of books, rather than getting romance suggestions from romance books and cosy crime from cosy crime. So, if you have found a a good series that you think I would enjoy binging, let me know!
After the disappointment of the airport the other week, I was in Waterstones this week and finally there are some new books starting to appear – or at least books I hadn’t seen before…
Firstly there’s a new group biography from Paula Byrne. I haven’t read much Thomas Hardy – although I have visited some of his houses – but I’ve read and liked several of her previous books like The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym, Kick, and Mad World so it maybe that I end up picking this up at some point too.
The new Kiley Reid is also out now too. Such a Fun Age was such a sensation I’m interested to see how Come and Get It does – the cover is very pretty but it did strike me how different it is from that previous one.
I don’t think this is that new (last summer for the hardback I think) but it is in a time period that I’m interested in – this is about a former cinema director who travels across Europe with his family who include a member of Oswald Mosley’s party and a communist. I’ll have to do a bit more research before I read it because it has the potential to be grim as anything but I’m quite interested.
Speaking of Oswald Mosley adjacent fiction – I hadn’t realised Jessica Fellowes’ Mitford mystery series was still going, but apparently it is and this is the final one. I keep meaning to go back and give these another try, but the tbr pile is so very huge it just hasn’t happened yet…
And finally there was a big old display of the new Sarah J Maas – freshly released that day and which Gower Street had opened at midnight for which is why I mention it because it gave me such vivid flashbacks to my younger years!
Instead of a series post this week – and because it came out yesterday and I read it the other week, today I’m doing a quick review of the new Her Majesty The Queen Investigates mystery – because even though it’s the fourth in the series it can absolutely be read standalone. And that’s because this time it’s entirely set in the past. It’s 1957 and the Queen is still adjusting to being in charge, and Britain is still adapting to the post war, post colonial world. Then two bodies turn up on Chelsea and there’s a connection to the household. So of course she takes an interest and tries to find out what happened. This time she’s helped by a young secretary, working at the palace after an interesting war and busy trying to deal with the ‘men in moustaches’.
I said in one of my earlier posts about this series that I wondered how this series would carry on – and maybe this is the answer – going back and doing more historical-set mysteries. Because this was pretty good. There is plenty of palace manoeuvring along side the mystery and it keeps you reading to find out what happens there as well as who did the crime. Fingers crossed there’s more where this came from.
It’s new book Thursday again and I’ve got a new murder mystery to mention. This features chef who gets roped in to teach a residential cookery course in Belgravia. But when someone ends up dead on the first night Paul needs to solve the mystery himself so he doesn’t get blamed. I’m well underway in this and I’m enjoying it so far – and Orlando Murrin is a cookery writer and chef himself so it has recipes and some of them look really good!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 