I’ve been reading Alexa Martin since I heard her interviewed on Smart Bitches Trashy Books’s podcast when I was walking around a shopping outlet in Maryland five years ago. Then she was writing romances with NFL playing heroes – informed by her own time as an NFL wife, now she’s writing standalones. So this is a book that I would have preordered, ready to drop on to my kindle on release day, even if it wasn’t adjacent to one of my current obsessions – home renovation. Adjacent because Next Door Nemesis is about two people fighting to become president of a home owners association – a thing that exists mostly in my head as a problem for people renovating homes because of the rules about what you can do to the outside of your home, and the fees you have to pay. Is sounds like a really fun concept for an enemies to lovers romance and I can’t wait to read it!
It’s nearly two years since my original Enemies to Lovers Recommendsday, and I’ve read a load more since, so today I’m back with another batch!
Lets start with The Hating Game by Sally Thorne I loved Thorne’s Second First Impressions and this was her debut novel (now also a movie) which features two rival PAs at a publishing company. I have a few issues with it but in the end they actually weren’t about what I was expecting – which was that their work rivalry would push my buttons for unprofessional pranks, but it actually didn’t because they didn’t sabotage each other. Lucinda does freak out a lot though and that did get on my nerves a bit so your mileage may vary, so generally for me – not as good as Second First Impressions, but still fun and worth reading.
In Beach Read by Emily Henry, Augustus and January are maybe more misunderstood rivals than they are enemies, because he is a Serious Writer of Proper Fiction and she writes best selling romances. They’re spending the summer living next door to each other at the beach and in an attempt to tackle both of their writers blocks, they challenge each other to switch genres… Anyway, there are complicated families and a warning for parental deaths in the backstories, but this is still a delightful feel good romance where two people discover that they really like hanging around with each other and that being together makes their lives better. Swoony. Oh and Henry’s Book Lovers would also fit this genre too.
Ali Hazelwood’sLove Hypothesis got a mention in the last post on this topic, but her Love on the Brain also fits this trope – the heroine of that finds that the downside of her dream job at Nasa is that she has to work with her grad school arch-nemesis. It’s another teeny tiny heroine and Great Big Hero, but your mileage on that may be different to mine, which I think is coloured by the fact that I’m 5’10! I will never be tired of competency porn though, and Bee (and Levi) are very, very good at their jobs. I was expecting one strand of the plot to be A Bigger Thing in the resolution, but actually the whole of the end wrapped up very quickly – but it was very satisfying.
And before I wrap this up, I want to give a mention to Mia Sosa’s Worst Best Manwhich I did also touch on in my romances with weddings post in the summer but would also fit for this.
After the disappointment of the airport last week, I have actually spotted some of the Christmas releases in the wild, so here we are with this Saturday’s post!
So to start with, thank you Sainsbury’s for being super useful, and not just for decaf coffee for my mum and dad. Their chart selection has a lot of those Christmas new releases if you’re thinking about gift buying and getting some loyalty points to help you in January! Obviously the Britney Spears memoir has had huge amounts of talk, and I’ve already mentioned the Patrick Stewart book too, but they’ve also got Arnold Schwarzenegger’s new book, Dawn French’s tour tie in, Billy Connelly and one I’ve been keeping an eye out for, Phillippa Gregory’s non fiction book about women in history. And then there’s the fiction options, with the latest batch of celebrity novels and some big names like Sophie Kinsella and Sarah Morgan.
Next acrosswe have some more of the Christmas releases – I saw Michael Palin at work the other week while he was doing the promotional trail for his book Great Uncle Harry, and David Mitchell has done a bunch of the talk shows for his book about the monarchy as has Miriam Margolyes about her latest memoir. We also have a sighting in the wild of the new V E Schwab. Then there’s the usual batch of cook books, the traditional Alan Partridge book and Clare Balding. I’ve also read a bunch of Dan Jones’s history books but haven’t read any of his historical fiction yet – Wolves of Winter of the second in what going to be a trilogy – if you’re in the US, this second one doesn’t come out where you are until January.
Next up, more cook books, plus Strictly start Johannes Radebe’s memoir and buzzy autumn release Yellowface, which I have read and didn’t love but I know lots of people who have really entered it. Plus the usual batch of best seller authors like John Grisham and Jo Nesbo. Then there’s an Anthony Horowitz James Bond and Lessons in Chemistry – the adaptation of which has just dropped on Apple TV!
The next shelf was a bit patchy, so I’m skipping it, but you can see the interesting bits in the edges of this photo and the last one – so Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the S J Parris on the last picture and the Mary Berry baking book on this one! Finally, right down the end her we have some Colleen Hoover (because is it even a book selection without her at the moment!) plus a few more of the high selling, long running favourites. And then there’s the kids books obviously!
And that’s your lot for today, hourly is been at least somewhat useful as you plan your Christmas book purchasing – and don’t worry, I’ll have some recommendations coming up in the next few woods to!
The latest book in Rhys Bowen’s Royal Spyness series came out this week so I’m taking the opportunity to have another little chat about how much I love this series. It’s the 1930s and our heroine is Georgiana, a cousin of the king and granddaughter of Queen Victoria (just go with it and don’t think too hard about that bit) who is trying to build herself a niche in a changing world and runs parallel to some key events in interwar history.
When I wrote about my original series I love post, there were 15 books in the series- but now we’re up to 17 and well into 1936, which is obviously a Big Year for the Royal Family – and has turned out to be a big one for Georgie too. At this point every time a new Royal Spyness book comes out, I wonder if it’s the last one and whether we’ve nearly reached a logical ending for the series. I haven’t read the latest one yet so I don’t know if it is this time – but I really hope it’s not because these are such good fun, and Georgie is such a lovely heroine that it’s always fun to spend time in her admittedly body-strewn orbit! If you take away the royal connection they’re very similar to Carola Dunn’s Daisy Dalrymple series – with a fairly innocent heroine, which makes for a lot of entertainment when Georgie finds herself among the Happy Valley set whereas Phryne Fisher (for example) wouldn’t have been shocked, but would probably have found it all very tiring!
I’ve been able to borrow these from the library and buy them in stores so hopefully if you’re interested you can get hold of some of them, although this latest is Kindle or American hardback import only at the moment.
It’s only the 8th, but it’s already Kindle offer o’clock, because I did the quick reviews last Wednesday on the 1st. It always slightly throws me when this happens, but that’s because I’m a creature of habit and I don’t like change! Anyway, on with the offers.
If you don’t want Christmas vibes yet, then Elissa Sussman‘s Once More With Feeling, one of my favourite books of the year is 99p, Jenny Colgan’s summer book from this year is on offer and The Summer Skies is the first with a fresh batch of characters too. And in excellent news for me personally, the latest Katherine CenterHello, Stranger is 99 – and I bought that one while writing this too! Also on offer is one of the new autumn romances that I keep seeing everywhere – Meryl Wilsner’s Cleat Cute. In other (relatively) new releases, the latest in Jodi Taylor’s Chronicles of St Mary’s book, The Good, The Bad and the History is 99p. Dying in the Wool, which is the first in Frances Brody’s Kate Shackleton series is 99p as well, as is Shady Hollow, the first in Juneau Black’s slightly weird cozy crime series where the characters are animals. Or are they?
I haven’t read this one, but Rhys Bowen’s latest World War Two-set novel (as opposed to her historical mystery series) is also on offer this month – it’s called The Paris Assignment and features a woman spying in France to try and avenge the death of her son.
This month’s Peter Wimsey is Gaudy Night, which is maybe edging towards my favourite at this point, even if it has probably the least Peter of any of them – and it’s notable because I know I own the kindle of Gaudy Night, but its still offering me the option to buy it so they must finally have updated the Kindle edition, which is probably a good thing as the one I have has slightly weird formatting. In other authors that I love, Curtis Sittenfeld‘s American Wife is 99p this month, as is Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont.
On the historical romance front, the Julia Quinn is On a Night Like This from the Smythe-Smith series and the novelisation that goes with the Queen Charlotte Netflix series. Tthe Georgette Heyer is The Corinthian – which is one of her hero helping a heroine running away stories. And one of the books that my Romance Facebook group always raves about, Lisa Kleypas’s Devil in Winter, is also 99p – I bought it because although I’ve read the follow up, Devil in Spring, I haven’t read the original and it’s meant to be a classic. One I have read and that I love (as you know) is the first in Sarah MacLean‘s Rules of Scoundrels series, A Rogue by Any Other Name, is 99p – and you should totally read it – check my Series I Love post for the reasons why!
And that’s your lot for this month – I hope this post hasn’t cost you as much money as it cost me
I know I mentioned a BLCC book in last week’s Quick Reviews so it’s two in a week, but I didn’t realise at that point that I was going to read another really good one so soon! Anyway, it is what it is – there were some fun books last week but a lot of rereads or authors I’ve already written about recently, so I’m just going with it…
It’s a cold evening in the winter of 1942. The blackout is in effect and passengers are stumbling their way towards the commuter trains home from London at Euston station. One of the passengers is Councillor Grayling, carrying £120 in cash that will be used to pay staff the next day. But after he gets off the train the cash goes missing and he ends up dead. But who did it? When the police start to investigate they discover that there are dark secrets among the passengers who he shared a train compartment with and that more than one of his fellow passengers might have wanted Grayling out of the way.
This is a really interesting mystery but it’s also a really atmospheric look at life on the Home Front during World War 2. First published in 1943 it’s another one of those war time books where the writers didn’t know who was going to win the war – and you can definitely feel that in the writing. There are lots of books set in the Second World War, but not that many of them (or not that many that I’ve read) where you really feel the uncertainty and fear of the population – that they really didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. There’s no hindsight or picking events because they foreshadow something else or because something is going to happen there (all the authors who send people to the Cafe de Paris I’m looking at you) – it’s just how things happened or felt at the time. The only other one I can think of that does this – although it’s not a murder mystery is Jocelyn Playfair’s A House in the Country – which also has a feeling of uncertainty going through it even more than this because at the end people are going back to the fronts and you don’t know if they’ll make it.
Anyway, that aside there are plenty of people who wanted Grayling dead as he’s not a particularly likeable sort of person and the book takes you around the carriage as Inspector Holly investigates the case and tells you the backstories behind each of them. I found myself having quite strong opinions on who I didn’t want to have done it which is always good I think. Raymond W Postgate didn’t write a lot of mysteries – in the forward to this it suggests that may be his first one, Verdict of Twelve, was so well received that it was hard to follow. I haven’t read Verdict of Twelve (yet) but if this is the less good second novel it must be really blooming good!
I read Somebody at the Door via Kindle Unlimited (which also includes Verdict of Twelve at the moment, so I think you know I’ll be reading that soon!) but as with all the British Library Crime Classics they cycle in and out of KU and when they’re not in they’re also available on Kobo. And they’re all in paperback, which you can buy direct from the British Library’s own online bookshop here. They do often have offers on the BLCC books (like 3 for 2), although they don’t seem to at the moment.
Him Indoors is on a jolly to the Med this weekend and kindly helped me out with some photos from the airport bookshop – bless his cotton socks he only sent me three, and it’s all fiction, but he’s trying and working out what he took photos of has been fun!
So we have biggest books – which is a very strange mix of stuff, but appears to be mostly classics, literary fiction and a few odds and ends of other bits and bobs – including that latest Richard Osman in the airport paperback.
Now I’m not going to lie, this doesn’t look very different from the selection when I went away in September – which is a maybe not a surprise – because he’s gone for the actual paperback fiction shelves – not the airport special editions – so its the big authors and big paperback editions – Lessons in Chemistry, older Thursday Murder Club, Coleen Hoover, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and the Monica Heisey which appears to have been the big paperback release of the autumn – which surprised me because the hardback only came out in January.
And finally, even more paperback fiction and along with more of the same from the previous shelf, I see new Sarah Morgan, All the Light We Cannot See – which has a Netflix adaptation out this week, Babel by R F Kuang which seems to be popping up more places now that Kuang’s Yellowface is doing so well, the Secret Diary of Charles Ignatius Sancho and the new Janice Hallett Christmas mystery. From the glimpse of the airport non-fiction shelf next to it, it appears to have lots of the Walter Isaacson Elon Musk book and new Future of Geography book and potentially not a lot of the Christmas memoirs *but* Him Indoors might not have noticed them for photos – or understood the difference…
So what have we learned? Don’t rely on the airport for your big autumn memoirs, and that despite living with me (and reading some of my airport format purchases) I’m not sure Him Indoors notices that books come in different sizes!
It was a long list last week, and there were a couple of options for this post, but I settled on To Swoon and to Spar because it’s really fun and it’s been a while since I picked a historical romance!
Viscount Penvale has spent his adult life trying to buy back his family’s home in Cornwall. When his uncle finally agrees to sell it to him, there is one condition: Penvale must marry his ward Jane. The two meet and although first impressions aren’t the best, both agree to a marriage of convenience. What Penvale doesn’t know is that Jane has been spending months persuading his uncle that Trethwick is haunted so that he would move out, and she’s going to use the same tactics to try and rid herself of her new husband. What could possibly go wrong?
This is the fourth book in Waters’ Regency Vows series, and Penvale was a side character in the other book in the series that I’ve read and given how close he seems to his friends I assume also the two that I haven’t, so I suspect I’ve read the series you’ll have some feelings about him already. And of course the faux haunting made it a good book to read in the run up to Halloween. It rattles along nicely and the plot has enough turns to keep you wondering what will happen next. I had a few minor niggles with some of the language choices – at one point Jane is surprised Penvale is still hungry as he’s eaten “an entire rasher of bacon” at breakfast – and I’m not sure Jane really would be surprised that Penvale hadn’t read a novel, but I enjoyed it enough that I let it off. Although I suppose as I’m mentioning it here, I haven’t really have I?! Anyway, there is a fifth book in the series coming next year and I’ll keep an eye out for that, and if any of the two I haven’t read come my way I wouldn’t say no to reading them.
My copy of To Swoon and to Spar came from that trip to The Works, so it hasn’t even been on the pile for very long which is unusual for me, and means you should be able to get hold of the paperback fairly easily I think. And it’s also available in Kindle and Kobo.
A really busy week in reading. Lots of books read – and lots of different genres. The audiobook re-listen is now deep into Albert Campion, which is fun. And we’re nearly at the end of October which means all the usual things for the blog this week.
Bonus photo: this is the curtain call (they said we could film and photograph it) at the Coliseum on Wednesday for the final night of the ENO’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. My first Gilbert and Sullivan and it was really good and muchfunnier than I expected – not least becausesomeone from my favourite comedy theatre company was in it!
*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 