Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
This is billed as a cross genre hybrid of Agatha Christie and Michael Connelly – with an elderly village lady sleuth and a doesn’t play by the rules LA homicide detective whose worlds collide. I haven’t read any Chris Brookmyre before but I was lucky enough to get an advance of this – and I have got it underway so I’ll report back on whether or not it’s too hard boiled for me!
It’s Tuesday again and as I promised last week, I’m back with a Book of the Week pick – and we’re back in old Hollywood for Katherine Blake’s The Unforgettable Loretta, Darling.
It’s the early 1950s and the titular Loretta is a Brit abroad, escaping from her past in Lancashire by reinventing herself in Hollywood, not as an actress but behind the scenes in the make-up department. She’s new to Hollywood and its machinations, but she’s a fast learner and she has got some weapons of her own as she fights her way through the studio system in the hunt for success.
It’s quite hard to describe what actually happens in this, or give it a genre. It’s historical fiction, but there’s a dash of mystery in there and it’s witty too. But there’s also some sexual violence that I need to warn you about because I know that’s a hard no for some people. I love a book that features Golden Age and studio system Hollywood and this has plenty of that – with faded starlets, up and coming ingenues and plenty of awful men. If you liked The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo this has some similar vibes – but with a darker edge.
This is a relatively new release – it came out in the UK last month, but in the US last week. I haven’t seen it in the shops yet, but it may be that I’ve been looking in the wrong places because of that genre thing I mentioned – or simply that I haven’t been in a big enough bookshop. My copy came from NetGalley but you can also get it on Kindle or Kobo and on Audible.
Happy Reading!
For the second week in a row, I’m writing about a book that I finished on Monday. But it was one of two books I finished on Monday, so that gives a bit of a sense of how close to the end I was, and how hopping around my reading was last week. It’s also out this very day in the US (it came out here last month) so it’s also relatively well timed. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Tuga is a remote island in the South Atlantic, only accessible by boat at certain times of year. On the last boat in this season are Charlotte Walker, on her way to study the island’s tortoises, and Dan Zekri, on his was home to take over from his uncle as the island’s chief medical officer. What follows is a year in the life of the key characters on the island – full of ups and downs and a huge learning experience for Charlotte.
I really enjoyed this – it’s gentler than I expected but also all the characters felt very well rounded and fully formed, not just Charlotte and Dan. And this is also the first in a trilogy, which I only realised after I finished it and is good news because I wanted more! I’m trying to think of comparison books – but struggling a lot. It may yet come to me, but everything I’ve thought of so far had a lot of “it’s like one thing that this book does, but not like any of the rest of it” so I don’t think they work! And it’s so new that the Good Reads suggestions are still other new releases which doesn’t help either!
I mentioned Welcome to Glorious Tuga in my Summer of Not Sequels post and as I predicted in that I have already seen it about a lot this summer – at the airports and in the bookshops. My copy came from NetGalley, but you can buy it now in all the usual formats like Kindle and Kobo as well.
Happy Reading!
The rush of summer releases continues and this week it’s Ashley Poston’s new book A Novel Love Story. The blurb tells me that our heroine is Eileen, a romance novel lover who breaks down on her way to her annual book club retreat and finds herself in Eloraton – a small town which seems too good to be true, which may be because it’s also the setting of her favourite book series. Eileen is sure that she’s been sent to give the town a story book ending – except that there’s one character who doesn’t want her to finish the story – the grumpy bookshop owner who she just can’t place…
She’s done ghosts, last year it was time travel, and it looks like she’s doing magic – well sort of anyway. I would say I’m sceptical about it, but I was sceptical about the last two and I liked them both, so I’m actually optimistic this is going to be right up my street when I get my hands on it.
Two different Waterstones in todays post – because I can to be honest, just be glad I didn’t include Birmingham airport W H Smith – but there wasn’t anything different to these two this time – I was actually disappointed with the options I had for the holiday really.
Anyway least start with Waterstones Piccadilly. This was the week before the holiday, on the first bumper release day in June. To be honest I think the only reason I took the photo of this fiction shelf is because Mona of the Manor made the cut!
This one has got the book I went for – the final Maisie Dobbs The Comfort of Secrets which was new that day, as was Death in le Jardin but there are also a few here I hadn’t seen before, like Everyone on this Train is a Suspect and The Book of Secrets. Then there are the ones I’ve read like The Antiques Hunters Guide to Murder and The Potting Shed Murder.
And then this is the upstairs window display in the fiction section of Waterstones Gower Street this week – it’s got some of the same stuff as that first photo from Piccadilly, but it’s also got The Ministry of Time, which I have on the pile and got nominated for the Waterstones Debut Fiction prize this week, as did Glorious Exploits on the far right.
Have a great Saturday everyone
L
Now I haven’t read this one and so I can’t tell you if it’s another Tinye Heroine and Giant Hero, but there is a new Ali Hazelwood out this week. It’s another STEM romance – this time it’s a biotech engineer who gets caught up in a hostile takeover. Apparently this is also her spiciest yet as well. I’ll try and remember to let you know when I think when I pick up a copy – which I’m sure won’t be that far in the future knowing me!
Last week was a bumper week of new romance releases, and Annabel Monaghan’s new book was one of them. And this choice may not be a surprise to those of you who study the reading lists each Monday.
Ali’s mum died two years ago, a year later her husband left her and she’s been trying to keep her head above water ever since juggling her kids and her career as a professional organiser. But the first time she put proper clothes (ie not joggers and a baggy t shirt) on in months to take the dog to the dog park she meets a man who she is fairly sure is flirting with her. And the more she gets to know Ethan, the more she likes him. But he’s only in town for the summer, so it’s just a summer romance – isn’t it?
As you may remember, I really loved Nora Goes off Script – but I didn’t like Monaghan’s follow up last year the same way. This however was a lovely return to what I wanted. It’s pretty low stakes and low conflict between the romantic leads, but there is plenty of stuff to work through for the heroine to get her happy ending. And I was rooting for her the whole time. My only real complaint is that I wanted more comeuppance for Ali’s ex husband for being so horrid and dismissive of her. But she’s definitely the winner in the end – and she does it for herself too, not because Ethan makes it happens for her – which is my biggest gripe with the Legally Blonde musical vs the film and I can rant at you about that all day if you set me going!
I had a copy of Summer Romance pre-ordered (although I also got approved for it on NetGalley on release day!) and it’s out now on Kindle and Kobo for your summer enjoyment.
Happy Reading!
As if you didn’t know this was coming from my post on Thursday. I mean. Unless the sample was a total swizz this was odds on for the pick today. And here we are, and I feel fully justified in my decision to impulse purchase this in paperback after reading the aforementioned sample, which turns out to be up until page 47 of the paperback.
It’s the summer of 1999 and Sawyer is living in New York with her fiancé Charles. They’re getting married in the autumn and Sawyer is working in publishing, he’s got a job at a law firm – but he’s working ever longer hours, which he says is on a big case, but which Sawyer suspects may be linked to his co-worker Kendra. When Kendra’s boyfriend Nick reaches out to her about his suspicions, they meet up – and don’t get on. But when he finds her online to apologise, the two start to develop a friendship – as they spend their summer Friday afternoons together while their partners are working. They’re just friends – but what happens at the end of the summer.
I think this book is possibly one which should have “A Novel” on the front of it – because the signalling I get from the cover is that it’s a romance and I described it as such in my post on Thursday, but I think this is going to be a divisive one in terms of genre. And that’s because as you can tell from that plot write up, our central characters are in a relationship with other people at the start, and that is a state of affairs that does continue for a while (I can’t tell you more than that without spoilers) and that is going to violate some people’s no cheating rule. Now given that it is right there in the blurb that this is the case, you should be going in forewarned, but I’m mentioning it anyway.
For my part, I couldn’t put this down. I thought it was incredibly well written and really evoked a specific time period – pre-mobile phones, dial up internet – and place. I could have spent another 100 pages with Nick and Sawyer wandering around New York, and I thought the way that their relationship developed was nuanced and at times messy in a way that real life can be – especially when you’re in your early 20s and figuring yourself out but also have big life events hurtling towards you. I thought it was brilliant – and I hope Suzanne Rindell writes more in this sort of area, because I liked The Other Typist, but I loved this. And now I want to buy Three Martini Lunch and see where that fits into to the spectrum between the two!
Summer Fridays is out now. It’s 99p on Kindle today – which is a massive drop from when I read that sample on release day last week and I would absolutely have bought the ebook if it had been that at the time I read the sample – so this sounds like your sort of thing (and bearing in mind that warning) then it’s totally worth that. It’s £3.99 on Kobo and it’s also in paperback as you know. I couldn’t spot any physical copies in Foyles when I was in there yesterday, and Waterstones isn’t claiming ot have Click and collect copies, so you’re probably going to have to order it.
Happy Reading!
Honestly this post has made me laugh. I had a whole thing written about this book and I was just waiting for it to publish so I could grab a good picture of the cover. And then I read the whole sample while I was doing that and had a whole conversation with a friend about whether I could break my rule about how much I pay for kindle books to buy it so I could keep reading. The verdict was no, so I bought the paperback instead which hopefully I’ll get so I can read this over the weekend. And yes, the paperback was more expensive than the kindle but it’s a real thing I can own forever if I want. Anyway, this is a new book from the author of The Other Typist, but where that was historical suspense-y, this is a romance novel being described as “You’ve Got Mail for a new generation” and if that and my poor impulse control doesn’t convince you to buy it then I don’t know what will!
After last week’s post with the notable sequels this summer, it seems only fair to also do the other books I’m looking forward to this summer – or expecting to see all over the place – because it’s nearly June and a lot of them are about to appear.
Let’s start with Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal, which is out on June 6, has a tortoise on the cover and is about a zoologist who takes up a fellowship on a remote island ostensibly to study an endangered species, but actually also because she has a secret that connects her to the island. It has blurbs from Marian Keynes, Nick Hornby, Jessie Burton, Naomi Alderman and more so I feel confident in predicting you’ll be seeing this around a lot this summer.
Another book I’m confident to predict is going to be all over the place is the new novel from Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians. Lies and Weddings follows a former model and future earl with a cash flow problem and on the hunt for a rich woman to seduce at his sister’s wedding to solve it. But nothing goes to plan and the write up promises money, murder, sex and lies in locations like Hawaii, Marrakesh and Beverley Hills. Expect to see this on a lot of sun loungers from late June.
Heading into July, I think Chris Brookmyre’s The Cracked Mirror might be the poolside book for the crime readers. The blurb promises a mashup of Agatha Christie and something more hard boiled as an elderly lady who solves murders in her village crossed paths with an LAPD homicide detective who will do whatever it takes to get to the truth. I’m interested to see this – although given my reading preferences I’ll need it to be closer to the Marple end of the gruesome scale!
In August we have a new Rainbow Rowell novel which is always exciting. Slow Dance is the story of star crossed best friends who everyone thinks should be together except each other. Emma Straub and Gabrielle Zevin have blurbed this one if that helps you figure out where we’re at – but it feels like it’s been a while since a proper Rowell adult novel so I’m excited.
And finally jumping back to the near future and something that I’ve already started, there’s a new novel coming from Kirsty Greenwood in late June. I used to review (occasionally) for Kirsty’s old site Novelicious in the early days of this blog, and she writes romantic novels that are also very funny. The Love of My Afterlife has a heroine who wakes up in the waiting room for the afterlife only to run into the most handsome man she’s ever met – and he seems to be into her. Then whoosh – he’s gone again and Delphie is offered a ten day return to earth to try and get him to fall in love with her and win a second chance at life. I’m about halfway through as I write this and it’s so much fun!
And that’s your lot – but I’m fairly confident that even if you don’t read them yourself, you’ll spot at least a couple of these four out in the wild over the next few months!
Happy Reading everyone!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 