Verity Reads Books (lots of them)
In which our heroine attempts to tame the to-read pile
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!
You all knew this was coming once you saw I’d been to Lagos didn’t you? I don’t go to Heathrow very often – it’s not the most convenient airport for us for where we live if we’re sorting our own holiday out, and package holidays don’t tend to leave from there if we’re doing that. So I was excited to get a look at what Heathrow had to offer. And then it turned out that what Terminal 5 had to offer was disappointing. At least at the end of the terminal we were at before we had to hustle off down to our gate.
So in the interests of completeness, these are the new book options they had – everything else was backlist or magazines, and we all know that’s not what I’m there for. So this is the paperback selection – where you can see that a lot of the last year’s big hardback releases – including stuff I liked like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and the fourth Thursday Murder Club – are not out in paperback and near the top of the charts.
That theme continues on the second paperback case – with last year’s Emily Henry, Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy and Monica Heiny in there, along with the tie-in edition of Romancing Mr Bridgerton and This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune, which I would have bought if I hadn’t already just bought the Kindle edition because it was on offer.
On to the airport exclusives, and you will see that I am already doing pretty well on the, – and a lot of the stuff that I would have bought, I already have. Like this year’s Emily Henry and the new Anthony Horowitz. This was the point where I started panicking that I wasn’t going to find anything I wanted, and I hadn’t brought a paperback with me. Not that it would turn out to matter, as I didn’t have a lot of reading time, and the time I did have I spent on the Kindle. But I didn’t know that at that point!
And this photo is awful, but there wasn’t a very wide aisle and I was crammed in and this is the best I could do. But this is the point where I heaved a sigh of relief, because The Ministry of Time was the book I was hoping to find at the airport – it’s the buzzy book of this summer and I think it has the potential to be this year’s equivalent of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow if you know what I mean. So I snaffled that, and then had to figure out what else. And I did find another one for the offer – but I’m going to tease you and make you wait until the next Books Incoming to see what!
Have a great weekend everyone – enjoy the bank holiday if you have one where you are.
I read it in April and it’s been out in the US for about a month now, but Adele Buck’s new romance Fake Flame is out in the UK today, so I’m taking the opportunity to give you a little bonus review!
Fake Flame opens with a public proposal – of the most unwanted kind. University professor Eva’s ex-boyfriend has decided that the way to win her back after cheating on her is to serenade her in the middle of the quad. Eva disagrees and finds it deeply manipulative (she’s not wrong there!) and tries to set the piano on fire. Sean is one of the firefighters called to the scene and manages to talk her down. And soon he’s offering to be her fake boyfriend to keep the Awful Ex off her back. He’s hot and sweet – but he’s also younger than Eva – but there’s something about him that makes her agree. And soon they’re enjoying spending time together – but it can’t go anywhere can it?
This is the first in a new series from Adele Buck and it’s a lot of fun. It’s a reverse age-gap, fake relationship romance, with a smart heroine who knows what she’s looking for in life, and a hero who is pretty wise for his age, but needs to work a few things out. There’s not a huge amount of conflict between the two of them until quite late on, but I actually liked it more for that – and there’s other sources of conflict going on to keep the tension going. I think if you liked Cathy Yardley’s Role Playing, then this will hit some of the same spots for you. I basically inhaled it, and I’m really looking forward to seeing what the rest of the series brings. And if you haven’t read any Adele Buck before, may I point you at my post about her Centre Stage series, which I read last year.
My copy of Fake Flame came via NetGalley, but it’s out now in the UK as well as the US on Kindle and Kobo, and Waterstones is claiming to have the paperback too, which is exciting.
Happy Reading!
Something slightly different for this week’s recommendsday, because it’s a bit of a preview type thing. There are a lot of books coming out this summer that are sequels to books that I’ve really enjoyed, and per my rules, I probably won’t be able to review them, because: spoilers. So today I thought I’d flag them now – while I’m still excited about them and before any of them have the chance to disappoint me)!
First of all, and all ready in the shops, is Displeasure Island by Alice Bell, a follow up to last year’s Grave Expectations. I was hoping for a sequel to that – but for some reason this one had gone completely under my radar until I spotted it in the airport bookshop the other weekend! It came out at the start of May, and sees Claire and her friends off on holiday on a remote Irish island, where the hotel is double booked, there are fighting ghost pirates and – per the blurb – Claire is fighting off “anxious And Then There Were None vibes” even before a murder. This sounds like a lot of fun and I’m probably going to end up picking it up at some point.
Out yesterday in the US and who knows when in the UK is The Guncle Abroad, the sequel to Steven Rowley’s The Guncle, which I loved when I read it and started me off on buying all of Rowley’s books (except Lily and the Octopus because I think that’s going to be way too sad). The sequel finds us rejoining Patrick as he heads to a family wedding in Italy, in a very different place professionally from where he was at the start of the first book. He’s also nearly fifty, and out of favour with the kids, who a struggling to adapt to their new normal.
Next up, and out in a couple of weeks is How to Solve Murders Like a Lady by Hannah Dolby. This is a second book featuring Violet Hamilton, after last summer’s No Life for a Lady. This finds Violet hard at work as a lady detective, but when the body of a woman is found on the beach, her efforts to investigate are thwarted at every turn for some reason. The first in this series has been consistently in Kindle Unlimited for the last few months, so it may be that this one is too at some point in the near future.
And of course there are lots of longer running series that have fresh books out this summer, but I’m sticking to the actual sequels today, so that’s your lot.
Happy Wednesday everyone!
This was the other book that came out the week before last – and so they’ve both now been BotW picks. So that’s two new books in a row, two romances in a row – although this one is set in the past – and two books I’ve been looking forward to that haven’t let me down!
It’s 1960 and baseball player Eddie O’Leary is having the worst time of his life: after being trading to the New York Robin, his swing has vanished and he doesn’t know how to get it back. On top of that all his teammates hate him after comments he made on TV after finding out he was being trading live on air. Mark Bailey is an arts writer, except that recently he hasn’t been writing much at all. So when he’s assigned to ghost write a weekly column for the city’s most notorious baseballer, he is distinctly unenthusiastic. But when he meets Eddie he finds someone who might be as lonely as he is and there’s a definite pull between them. But it’s 1960 and Eddie is a professional sportsman, and Mark doesn’t want to be anyone’s secret (again) so nothing can happen right?
This is in the same world as Sebastian’s earlier book We Could Be So Good which was also a BotW pick here. That was set at the same newspaper that Mark works at – and you’ll see some familiar faces here if you’ve read that book too. This is a grumpy-sunshine type story and is very, very slow burn for some very valid reasons for the characters, but it’s very satisfying watching these two figure out their stuff and get their acts together. I read it across two evenings – and would have read it faster if I didn’t have to do actual work.
My copy was on Kindle, but it’s also on Kobo and in paperback.
Happy Reading!
Oh I’m cheating. You know it, I know it and I don’t really care. I finished this on Monday but I read more than half of it last week and it was one of those preorders that dropped onto the kindle so a review is timeline and yah boo sucks I’m doing this!
Gretchen Acorn is a fake medium, except she’d like to think she’s an ethical fake medium – because she tries to leave her clients in a better state than she found them, even if she is being paid for her services. When one of her wealthiest clients asks her to go and help her bridge partner by stopping the hauntings that are stopping him from selling his goat farm, she expects to be working with an OAP. But what she gets is Charlie – handsome, young and absolutely convinced that she’s a fraud. Which of course she is, except that as she’s leaving the farm she meets her very first real ghost, who it turns out has been causing havoc at the open houses to protect Charlie from a curse. Now all Gretchen has to do is convince Charlie not to sell – but how can she win over someone who had her pegged as a fake at first sight?
As regular readers will know, I have a somewhat chequered relationship with books that feature the paranormal or supernatural – in that I can never really work out which ones I’m going to like and what it is that I do like in them. But Mrs Nash’s Ashes was one of my favourite books of last year and I reminded myself how much I had enjoyed The Dead Romantics and put on my preorder despite my issues above. And I’m so glad that I did. This is funny and charming and, yes, quirky but not so quirky it made my teeth itch and its also funny and has enough darkness in it to counter act a possible overload of sweetness (goat farmer! Medium! Con artist! Ghost!).
It’s got some dementia in it, so if you’re dealing with that in your life at the moment approach with care, and Gretchen spends a lot of the book keeping everyone at arms length for reasons that absolutely make sense – and at times it was so touching it brought some tears to my eyes. But I came out the end with a big smile on my face – and convinced that Gretchen and Charlie were perfect for each other, which is quite a feat based on their first meeting!
My copy was a Kindle edition, but it’s also on Kobo and in paperback. Mrs Nash’s Ashes was in all the shops last year, so I’m expecting this to be too.
Happy Reading!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 