Tag: books

books, new releases, reviews

New release: Role Playing

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You may remember a couple of weeks ago, I had a really good week in reading and said I had come up with a plan to write about more than one of the books I had read. Well delaying the stats, here is part of that plan, because Cathy Yardley’s new book Role Playing – which I read as part of Amazon’s First Reads offer – is out today!

Since Maggie’s son left for college she has embraced her inner grump and her naturally introverted state and basically hibernated at home. But she’s worried that her son isn’t making friends at college – so he makes a deal: he’ll be more sociable more if she is too. And that is why she joins a new online gaming guild led by a healer called Otter. Just so no one gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch, but Otter is friendly and his guild seems to be refreshingly untoxic. Otter is Aiden. He’s not the teenager Bogwitch thinks he is – but a fifty year old who moved back to town to look after his (ungrateful) parents and who is using the guild as an outlet for his frustration from his family drama. He thinks Bogwitch is a little old lady, so when they meet it’s a bit of a shock. It turns out they get on really well, although everything is easier online. But will their pasts end up keeping them apart?

I really like that we’re seeing more romances with older protagonists. Maggie and Aiden make a great duo and I thought the online gaming identity confusion worked really well as a device. They’ve both got totally valid reasons for being wary of relationships and also a sensible amount of baggage for their age. It’s lovely watching them get together but also seeing them come into their own because of the confidence they gain. I read this in less than twenty four hours – and if I hadn’t had to work it would have been faster. And then I went and found some more Cathy Yardley books to read – luckily Past Verity had already bought a few…

Role Playing seems to be exclusive to Kindle on the ebook front, but it does list a paperback, although given the Kindle Exclusive situation I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it in stores, but I’ll be watching out for it.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 19 – June 25

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The heatwave continues. I feel like shouting “I’m meeeellllting” all the time it’s so muggy. But hey, that’s British summer these days. And it also usually only lasts about a week – and we’ve had that now so presumably the rain is back next week! Anyway, book wise it’s been an interesting week with some classic crime and a career novel for wannabe nurses along with some of the Wimsey continuations. So all in all, not bad.

Read:

Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh

Single Dad’s Club by Therese Beharrie

Poppy Harmon and the Hung Jury by Lee Hollis

Twice Around the Clock by Billie Houston

Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*

A Presumption of Death by Dorothy L Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh

Jean Tours a Hospital by Doreen Swinburn

Started:

The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker*

Murder in Piccadilly by Charles Kingston

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

Four e-books, three of them because I got a code for an Amazon deal on them…

Bonus photo: how can you resist some Morph models that had appeared near St Paul’s Cathedral last week

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, bookshelfies

Bookshelfie: Spare room

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Long time readers will recognise this bookshelf – it use to be the to-read shelf back at the old house.* Or at least one of the to-read shelves… Anyway, in this house (I can’t call it the new house any more because we’ve been here since before the pandemic and that’s like another lifetime) it lives in the spare bedroom and it’s a mix of stuff I don’t need very often – like the travel books – stuff I can’t bring myself to part with – like the French language stuff from uni – single issue comics, coffee table books and a small selection of books that don’t belong anywhere else or that might be of interest to anyone sleeping in that room. That’s why you can see stuff like The Night Circus, Confessions of a Southern Lady, Finn and Lady and Where’d You Go, Bernadette? on there. It’s not the neatest or most coherent – and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post it at all – but hey, I have my reputation to maintain of having bookshelves everywhere so I’ve just gone for it and leaned into the chaos of it all. I’m sure everyone has an equivalent thing – whether it’s a drawer or a cupboard stuff with oddments related to their hobbies!

Have a great Saturday!

*yes I tried to find a picture of it back then, but for some reason WordPress wasn’t showing me any… whether that’s a glitch or whether it’s because the site design has changed since then, who knows and I’m probably not going to investigate!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 12 – June 18

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We’ve been living through a heatwave this last week – which may or may not have been the entirety of this year’s summer! Still 25 plus degrees at night is hard to sleep in, and Ive been really feeling it. But there’s been some good reading in there – I’m really enjoying the new audiobook versions of Terry Pratchett and some of the summer’s new romances continue to be delightful. All in all, a good week if humid!

Read:

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett

Winter’s Gifts by Ben Aaronvitch

Death of Jezebel by Christianna Brand

Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L Sayers

Mrs Nash’s Ashes by Sarah Adler

A Crime of Poison by Nancy Haddock

Started:

Single Dad’s Club by Therese Beharrie

Piece of Cake by Mary Hollis Huddleston and Asher Fogle Paul*

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

One book in Foyles and three in the National Trust secondhand bookshop!

Bonus photo: an English country garden on Saturday.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

book related, book round-ups

Father’s Day

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It’s Father’s Day today – so Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. And for those of you who don’t have your dad around any more, I hope you’re doing ok too.

I was thinking about some of my favourite dads in books for today’s post – and threw the question out to my little sister who suggested Mr Bennet from Pride and Prejudice (mainly for the comebacks not the actual parenting), Bridget’s dad from Bridget Jones’s Diary and Arthur Weasley from Harry Potter, all of which I can get on board with. I’d add Sam Vimes from Discworld to the list – in several of the Watch books he worried that he wasn’t a “good” man, in his early days he was a drunk, but he’s devoted to his son, Young Sam, and comes home every night to read Where’s My Cow to him – which when you know Vimes is quite a big turn around.

I’m also going to throw Thursday Next‘s dad into the mix – ok so he’s travelling through time hiding from the Chronoguard, but he drops in on Thursday whenever he can and tries to help and offer her advice when he can. Technically not their dad but their guardian, I’m still going to include Arthur from The House in the Cerulean Sea because he will do anything to keep his kids safe. On the same front, Mr Tom from Goodnight Mr Tom gets the nod from me too – after all he does adopt William – and by the end of the book William is calling him dad. Obviously the traditional choice in any list of great dad’s in books is Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, so you can take that one as read.

What I will say is that in writing this, I realised how many of my favourite books have dead or absent dads, which is a bit of a concern – but then the dead parent is a big thing in children’s books of a certain age – and often the drama in a historical novels is generated by the death of a father and the impact it has on the family – see Calamity of Mannerings most recently, but also a lot of the Georgette Heyer heroines and a lot of the more recent historical romance heroines too.

Which dads would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

Have a good Sunday everyone.

books

Series Redux: Rivers of London

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This is a week late, but I’m blaming it on the fact that my preordered copy didn’t get delivered on time (don’t get me started), but the latest Rivers of London novella is out so this seems like a good time to point you at my series I love post about everyone’s favourite police wizard, Peter Grant. Except that the new novella is actually not a Peter PoV story – it’s Agent Reynolds and I’m very excited to read it. I’m planning on it being my treat this weekend…

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Kindle Offers

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It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and that means Kindle offer time – and it’s actually quite a good crop this month, I mean I bought a few when I was writing this as well as spotting a lot of old friends!

One of my favourite reads of the year so far The Three Dahlias is 99p, I think because it’s just come out in paperback – and we’re not far away from the sequel arriving now either. Also arriving in the not too distant future is the new book from Ashley Poston – the last one Dead Romantics (a former BotW) is 99p too. I mentioned The Cazalet series only the other week when I was talking about World War Two set novels and this is your chance to read the series because the first one, The Light Years, is 99p. Fingers crossed that the others follow!

A couple of the buzzy recent (or recentish) romances are 99p as well – A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches. My mileage with magic varies, so I’ve downloaded the samples of these, with the intention of trying to read them before the month is up. I may or may not succeed with that! The new Alexandria Bellefleur is 99p too – The Fiancée Farce – which is in a new series (I think) for her.

In the Taylor Jenkins Reid universe, Malibu Rising is 99p, I assume to coincide with Carrie Soto‘s arrival in paperback. Magpie Murders is 99p again (or maybe it’s still) because the TV series is about – if you haven’t read it, it really is very good and so is the sequel, and I really hope that we get another one. I read Great Circle earlier this year – I found it a bit of a slog until (at least) the half way point, but then it picked up, but as you know I often struggle with award nominated stuff, so if you’re better at that sort of thing than me, you may love it and 99p for 600+ pages is a bargain.

I read Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees well before I started this blog, but I keep meaning to reread it because it has just been adapted for the stage and had a run at Almeida theatre – which I suspect may go into the West End at some point. Dissolution, the first of the Matthew Shardlake novels is 99p – I keep meaning to read some more of these Tudor-set mysteries, I definitely have at least one on the Kindle…

In the Discworld, Guards! Guards! is £1.99 – I’ve been relistening to the City Watch series over the last few weeks because there is a new audiobook version with Jon Culshaw and it really is a treat. And obviously it has Errol in it. I’m nearly done with my relisten to all of the Peter Wimsey novels (and it’s been really good) and one of my favourites is the 99p offer this month – the seaside-set Have His Carcase, which is one of the ones with Harriet Vane. We’re still waiting for a date for series three of Bridgerton, but if you need a Julia Quinn fix, The Sum of All Kisses, from her Smythe-Smith series is 99p This one is a forced proximity, enemies to lovers romance. If you’re building your Georgette Heyer collection, Sprig Muslin is 99p and it’s one of the lesser spotted favourites – older heroine who has been left on the shelf but who has been secretly in love with someone for years. Another of my favourites, These Old Shades, is £1.52 but in the weird out of copyright editions and it’s sequel Devil’s Cub is £1.99 in a normal edition..

I bought a couple of books while writing this – the aforementioned Alexandria Bellefleur, plus Jane Ridley’s George V biography.

Happy reading everyone!

Book of the Week, books, new releases, romantic comedy

Book of the Week: The True Love Experiment

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I said yesterday that I hadn’t decided what I was writing about today, and this did take a bit of thinking about. Luckily I came up with a really good plan that means I can write about more than one of them, and today you get the new Christina Lauren which I absolutely devoured on Sunday.

As I said in my post on release day, The True Love Experiment features Fizzy, the best friend from The Soulmate Equation. Fizzy is a romance author suffering from writers block. Her fans are clamouring for her next book, but she’s just realised she’s never been really in love and now she can’t get past a meet cute in anything she writes. Connor Prince wants to make documentaries, but the small production company she works for has just pivoted to reality TV (there’s more money in it) and now he needs to produce a TV dating show or look for another job, which will probably mean moving away from his daughter. He decides Fizzy should be the heroine of his series after a chance encounter, she decides she’s going to teach everyone who looks down on romance novels and reality TV a lesson. Only trouble is, how can she fall for any of the heroes on the show, if she can’t stop thinking about the show’s producer?

Oh boy. This is so good. So good. I ate it up in one giant sitting, not even putting it down to eat my pizza for dinner. Fizzy and Connor are an absolute delight. There is snark and witty banter, there is just having sex to get it out of their systems (such a fun trope) and seemingly no way that these two can end up together without it being a professional disaster for one or both of them. And it’s just such a nice world to spend time in – awful parents aside; all the characters are a delight and it’s lovely to see River and Jess again along with lovely Juno and Connor’s adorable daughter Stevie. There’s boyband concerts and romance in jokes and I was so happy with how it turned out but sad that it was over too. Just lovely

So that’s pretty much an unqualified rave from me, which is why I’m bending some rules and recommending a Christina Lauren book again so soon after The Soulmate Equation. And I should say that this summer is shaping up as a good one in the romance stakes. I’ve read a few duffers, but the new books from Elissa Sussman, Annabel Monaghan and Curtis Sittenfeld have lived up to expectations and I have high hopes for the Ali Hazelwood too. And then there’s the Cathy Yardley I read last week – of which more in the not too distant future, I promise.

The True Love Experiment is out now in paperback, and I’ve seen it in bookshops of varying sizes although not in a supermarket yet, but I’m hopeful. And of course it’s in Kindle and Kobo too.

Happy Reading!

books, stats, The pile, week in books

The Week in Books: June 5 – June 11

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Well that was a bit of a week. Surprisingly so. I went to an RTS even about staging Eurovision (which was fascinating), a weekend in London for a house party (which was fabulous) and a morning at the dentist (which was horrid). And that last meant that I definitely treated myself to reading some of the new romances I had waiting on the shelf. And I also treated myself to two new houseplants. But I’m meant to be telling about about the books, not about my growing plant acquisition problem. I think I know what I’m writing about tomorrow. I think. But there are several options which is always a nice position to be in!

Read:

Ms Perfectly Fine by Kate Callaghan*

Buried in the Country by Carola Dunn

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

Role Playing by Cathy Yardley

Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan

Final Acts ed. Martin Edwards

The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren

Started:

Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

Death of Jezebel by Christianna Brand

Still reading:

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasdin*

The Empire by Michael Ball*

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd

One ebook bought – and I should have had two preorders arrive (the new Andrew Cartmel and the new Rivers of London) except that wherever Amazon think they delivered it to, it definitely wasn’t my letterbox…

Bonus photo: making a change from houseplant photos, here’s Olympic park from the Elizabeth Line on a very hot and sunny Saturday.

*next to a book book title indicates that it came from NetGalley. ** indicates it was an advance copy from a source other than NetGalley.

books, historical, mystery, series

Mystery series: Cornish Mysteries

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Happy Friday everyone, I hope you’re all having a good week and have a delightful weekend planned. Allow me to usher you towards it with a post about a 1960s-set cozy crime series!

It’s the 1960s and Eleanor Trewynn is a retired widow who is living over the charity shop she’s running in a Cornish village. Her niece Megan is a police detective who has recently transferred to the local force and now finds herself with a commanding officer who doesn’t really think female officers are a good idea. There’s an artist living next door and a cast of side characters who work in the charity shop. Eleanor and her husband lived all over the world working for a charity and this life experience means that she can handle almost anything and is used to trying to solve problems. And thus you have all the ingredients for a satisfying mystery.

As I’ve mentioned before, I really like Carola Dunn’s other mystery series – the 1920s-set Daisy Dalymple series. I don’t love these quite as much, but they have good puzzles to solve and an interesting premise and it’s nice to read a series set in the 1960s – there are lots of interwar historicals, and some immediately post war and 1950s ones, but not as many sixties ones. Yes Inspector Alleyn gets into the 1960s, but none of them are my favourites, his age is getting a bit fuzzy and Ngaio herself was in her 60s when she was writing them. There are only four of these which is a shame but I’ll take what I can get in these cases.

My copies all came from various bookshops – I read most of them when they first came out a decade ago, but the last one came out a year or two later (as you can tell by the non matching cover…) and I hadn’t seen it in the flesh (or at least I don’t remember seeing it) until I spotted it in Gower Street Waterstones the other week when I was on that little buying spree. What a fortunate circumstance. They’re also on Kindle and Kobo.