A slow start to the week, but actually in the end, I didn’t do too badly. Still a lot of books on the ongoing pile – but I’m blaming the building work for that!
Read:
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol 2 by Ryan North
This Heart of Mine by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Hortense and the Shadow by Nathalie O’Hara
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Blood Will Stream by Nick Bryan
Started:
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop by Annie Darling
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Still reading:
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Two ebooks bought – but that’s it. So a bit better behaved from me!
Well, the combination of four nights away from home for work and then a lot of work on the house means not a lot read. As predicted really. What wasn’t predicted was the mass of books that I’ve got on the go at once because I’m so tired and my brain’s not working properly…
Read:
Nursing a Grudge by Diana Orgain
Rush Jobs by Nick Bryan
The Case of the Poisoned Chocolates by Anthony Berkley
Miss Seeton Quilts the Village by Hamilton Crane
Trapped in the Bargain Basement by Nick Bryan
Started:
The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Two actual books bought and one ebook. Never mind.
Oh the chaos. The first phase of plastering is done. And as I went to the MotoGP on Saturday and Sunday (it was amazing) I didn’t get caught up on my reading at the weekend either. But I don’t care! Or at least I’m trying not to. Decorating starts next weekend, so expect more of the same next week. Hey ho.
Read:
Heaven, Texas by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett
Holiday in the Hamptons by Sarah Morgan
Calling You Home by Daniela Sacerdoti
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North et al
Started:
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
No books bought though – although one preorder did turn up. But that’s already been accounted for in the list, so it doesn’t count this week!
I’ve got renovations and building work on the mind at the moment – I wonder why – and so this week’s #Recommendsday post is about books featuring renovations or building projects. Let’s start with some murder mysteries.
These are the boxes of books that went off to storage *after* the book cull...
First, a classic: Sleeping Murder by Agatha Christie. New Zealander Gwenda and her husband have just moved into her new house, but as she starts to modernise it, all she does is uncover the house’s history. As far as she knows, she’s never been to England before, so why does she have a creeping dread every time she uses the stairs – and why are all the things that she wants to do to the house, features that the house used to have? It’s creepier than many of the Miss Marple books – and although it’s very good, it’s not my favourite of the Miss Marple stories, but I think that might be partly because the copy that we had at home when I was little had a cover with a pair of knitting needles stuck in someone’s head.
That would be this cover, and it still freaks me out.
The fourth book in the Aurora Teagarden series, The Julius House, has a big renovation project in it when Roe’s husband to be buys her a notorious house where a family disappeared from some years previously. Roe is an amateur sleuth, fascinated by real life murders she can’t resist trying to figure out what happened to them. Houses feature a a few of the books in this series: in book two, A Bone to Pick, Roe inherits a house from a friend, and in book 3, Three Bedrooms, One Corpse, she has a go at selling real estate and keeps stumbling over corpses.
Not quite a renovation, but Karen Rose Smith’s Caprice de Luce series features a house stager who solves crime. I’ve only read one of them – but as house stagers are something we really don’t have in the UK, I found her job fascinating, even though I had a couple of quibbles with the mystery. I have more in the series on my Amazon watch list though, so I liked it enough to want more.
Now, on to romance…
I’ve mentioned Jill Shalvis a few times recently, but the first book in her Lucky Harbor series – Simply Irresistible – features a heroine who is trying to renovate and relauch her late mother’s guest house. It’s a romance – and her contractor is her love interest and it’s fun and romantic and everything that you would expect from a Jill Shalvis novel.
Among Katie Fforde’s novels, there are a couple that have renovation projects – including Practically Perfect, where the heroine is an interior designer who is doing up a tiny cottage to showcase her skills and slightly tangentially one of my all time favourites of hers, Stately Pursuits – where house sitting turns into an attempt to save the house from redevelopment by getting it into a state where it can pay its own way as a historic home (and venue) open to the public.
And a couple more to finish:
I read Nick Spalding’s Bricking It a couple of years ago and laughed consistently the whole way through. It features two siblings trying to renovate a house they’ve inherited from their grandmother, with the added complication of taking part in a reality TV show. It’s got a cast of hilarious secondary characters and I loved the live TV scene – even though my inner broadcasting nerd (hello day job!) wasn’t sure if it would actually have been able to go down the way it did. Writing this has made me wonder why I haven’t read more of Nick Spalding’s stuff since.
And down here and not with the cozies because I’ve mentioned this series recently already, but the sixth Meg Langslow mystery, Owls Well That Ends Well, sees Meg start the renovations to the big old Victorian house that is such a centre piece for the rest of the series.
If after all that you want more buildings in books, I wrote a #Recommendsday about books with amazing houses back at the end of May.
Send me your suggestions for more renovation books in the comments or on Twitter – I’m @WildeV.
As suspected, real life intruded on reading time this week, so not a huge amount read compared to some weeks. Hey ho, I’m sure it’ll sort itself out in the wash.
Read:
Designer Dirty Laundry by Diane Vallere
The Adventuress by Tasha Alexander
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey
Intrigue in Capri by Ashley Weaver
Death Around the Bend by T E Kinsey
Started:
Hollywood Homicide by Kellye Garrett
Rotherweird by Andrew Caldecott
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
One book and seven ebooks because there were a whole bunch of deals. Oops.
Slightly rejigged posting schedule this week – if you’re looking for this week’s BotW post, click here to read about Derek Farrell’s Death of a Devil (or here for my interview with him) but normal service will resume tomorrow for Recommendsday.
Anyway, quieter week of reading last week, but I was quite busy in real life (I know, what a pain) and that got in the way. We’ve got some building work coming up at home, so I fear this week may be quieter too, but I’m telling myself that a bit less reading time is worth it to have the work done at home…
Read:
Death of a Devil by Derek Farrell
Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich
Blue Flame by Jill Shalvis
One Snowy Night by Jill Shalvis
Rescuing Dr McAllister by Sarah Morgan
Started:
The Adventuress by Tasha Alexander
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
I was really quite well behaved this week – and didn’t buy anything. A miracle has occurred. And as the books are about to be packed into boxes, I’m hoping I can resist the urge to buy more until I have an actual bookshelf to put them on again. Of course that doesn’t help with my ebook buying problem, but you know, baby steps!
If you looked at what I read last week (and the week before) you’ll have noticed that I’ve been on a massive Susan Elizabeth Phillips kick and so it’ll be no surprise to you that this week’s BotW is one of them. It took a quite a while to pick out which one was my favourite, but in the end I plumped for Match Me If You Can.
This cover is a little bit retro, but don’t let that put you off.Annabelle is a matchmaker. Or at least she wants to be a matchmaker. She’s taken over her grandmother’s old business and rebranded it to move it away from OAPs towards over achievers. Now all she needs is a suitably overachieving client to find a match for to make her name. Heath Champion has worked his way up to turn himself into a sports agent known as the Python. Annabelle has decided that finding him a wife is going to be the client that makes her name. It doesn’t matter that he’s already got a contract with Chicago’s top matchmaker, Annabelle is sure that she can do better…
All of the Susan Elizabeth Phillips books that I read last week were from her Chicago Stars series, which centres around a (fictional) American football franchise. I don’t read a lot of sports romances, partly because they’re mostly about American sports and secondly because they often feature unreconstructed Alpha heros, which are not always my thing. The difference with these is that all the women are strong, capable, professionally competent and not sitting around waiting to be rescued by the big old man. In this, Annabelle is struggling to get her business off the ground at the start – but not because she’s incompetant, she’s just trying to break into the market. She’s got a plan and she’s executing it. She’s also got an awful family of overachievers trying to persuade her to do their bidding rather than what she wants to do – but she’s sticking to her guns.
In fact, the only bit of the book that didn’t work for me, was late on and revolved around her family – and a lack of resolution of the issues/recognition of how she felt from the hero – but that was a minor blip in a sparky, fun romance which rattles along. This also has some appearances from previous couples in the series, which is always nice if you enjoyed reading about their romances and sets up the next book in the series (which I had actually read first!). With a Phillips book, there’s always a secondary romance going on as well – and this one was a bit different to the usual. I wasn’t sure that I was going to like it at first, but by the end, I was totally won over.
I’ve read four Chicago Stars books in less than a week – which suited me perfectly: satisfying romances, interesting characters that are linked but definitely not the same plots with different names, a bit of humour and not too much angst. Or at least not unrelenting angst. The angstiest of the four was Dream a Little Dream – and even that won me over, despite my dislike of traumatised widows and small children.*
Several of the Chicago Stars books are on offer on Kindle at the moment – including the latest in the series First Star I See Tonightfor £1.99, which is much nuts and far more fun than you’d expect for a book which includes Middle Eastern Princesses in its blurb! Match Me If You can is a reasonable £2.49 on Kindle or under £3 if you want a second hand copy of the book from Amazon or you could try Natural Born Charmer– which started me off on this kick last week – for the same prices. Any of these is well worth a look if you want to dip your toe into this sort of book.
*I often find them to be aiming for winsome, but actually irritating plot moppets.
Check it out: I finished one of the long runners this week! My still reading list is reducing. It’s the little things you know. Anyway, a good week of reading, dominated by one author. And to be honest, I would have bought more Susan Elizabeth Philips to read, if I wasn’t on a ActualBook buying ban (because we’ve got building work due to happen at the house and everything has to be packed up) and more of the Kindle editions were cheaper…
Read:
The Twelve Clues of Christmas by Rhys Bowen
Kick by Paula Byrne
Dream a Little Dream by Susan Elizabeth Philips
Match Me If You Can by Susan Elizabeth Philips
First Star I See Tonight by Susan Elizabeth Philips
The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf by Nick Bryan
Lord of the Wings by Donna Andrew
Started:
Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich
Blue Flame by Jill Shalvis
Still reading:
The Greedy Queen by Annie Gray
Wise Children by Angela Carter
Two ebooks bought – First Star I See Tonight as part of the SEP binge and then These Old Shades on ebook because it was only 99p and I wanted to have an e-copy as well as a paper one. So that doesn’t count really. And as I’ve already read First Star… that means a net addition to the to-read pile of… zero. So I’m counting that as a success.
A shorter BotW post this week, because you’ve already had three great books from my reading last week in my Summer Reading post! But I finished Picture Miss Seeton on Sunday afternoon and wanted to give it a mention.
I do love a stylised cover. As long as you can get a matching set!
A retired art teacher, Miss Seeton witnesses a murder after leaving a performance of Carmen. Despite only getting a shadowy view of the killer, she manages to draw a picture that enables Scotland Yard to identify him. Soon she’s facing peril in the rural cottage she’s just inherited, where the villagers are also taking an interest in the new arrival.
This really scratched my itch for cozy crime with added humour. Miss Seeton is a wonderful send up of elderly lady detectives. She’s impossible to shock, utterly unflappable and practises yoga in her free time. She’s always one step ahead of the police and always manages to be in the right place at the right time to pick up the vital clue. I found the switching points of view occasionally a bit jarring or confusing, but I forgave it because I was having so much fun reading about Miss S’s adventures. It was a perfect book to read while recovering from nightshifts.
I’m fairly sure I’ve seen some Miss Seeton’s at the library (or maybe in the discount bookshop) so I suspect I may be reading more of her adventures in the near future. Picture Miss Seeton is available on Kindle and Kobo and should be available (probably to order) from all the usual sources.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 