You may recognise Jen DeLuca’s name from the Willow Creek Renaissance fair, but you can see from this cover that this is a new series and a bit of a new direction. The blurb seems to be promising ghosts (as is the cover if you look close enough) as our heroine, Cassie, moves to Boneyard Key and starts to investigate whether her new house is haunted with the help of local cafe owner Nick… I’m looking forward to getting my hands on this at some point when the pile isn’t quite as out of control as at the current moment!
Yes, it’s nearly the end of July, so we’re well over six months in to the year, but I’m here and I’m using this week’s Recommendsday to shout out my favourite books of the year so far, in no particular order.
But I’m going to start with At First Spite, Olivia Dade’s latest novel, which came out in February and which I read basically as soon as the paperback hit my doormat. It’s the first in a new series, and features a heroine who finds her self living in a tiny house between her ex-fiancé on one side and his brother on the other. If you go and read my Book of the Week review for this, you’ll see that it’s not all sunshine and roses for Athena, but it all works out beautifully. And I can’t wait for the next book in the series, which is currently called Dearly Departed, whenever it arrives.
Next up is a March release – Kate Claybourn’s The Other Side of Disappearing, which is a romance, a mystery and a road trip as two sisters travel across the US with a podcast production crew to try and find out what happened to the con-man their mum used to date. This also has a retired college football (the American kind) player – so if you’re after sporty-themed books this is another one – but I couldn’t include it in last week’s Recommendsday, because: statute of limitations, and also twice in a week would be boring!
And now an April release – Emily Henry’s Funny Story. And I ummed and ahhed about whether to include this because I feel like I’ve written so much about her over the years, but then I went back and checked my review and I read it in less than 18 hours, which is probably the quickest of any of the books on the list, so how could I leave it off? It’s another newly single heroine, who is stuck in close proximity to her ex, but more different to At First Spite than that makes it sound. It’s so good, and I would read it again today, if only I didn’t have so many other books on the go at once…
On to May, and a book that I bought in paperback after reading the kindle sample and then read immediately. I explain in my review of Summer Fridays why this is going to divide romance readers, but I loved it and I think it is closer to “a Novel” than “a romance”. Travel back to 1999 New York with Sawyer and spend the summer with her and Nick as she figures out what she’s doing with her life. If you’re about to go on holiday, this might be the perfect sun lounger read.
This was very nearly an all romance post – and indeed I’ve grouped them all together, but I wanted to include one other new release – Mona of the Manor. Yes, it’s the tenth in the Tales of the City series but I think it stands alone more easily than the other contender for this final place which was the final Maisie Dobbs novel, The Comfort of Ghosts. Mona of the Manor is a fill in of a portion of the Tales Story we haven’t seen – and as it’s in the British countryside in the 1990s it’s pretty self-contained. And it’s so much fun as Mona tries to make ends meet by turning the country house she’s inherited into a not-quite-a-hotel with the help of her adopted son.
And there you have it. My five favourite new books of the year so far. I think. But as ever, I’m a fickle thing, and who knows what will be the top five by the end of the year!
Oh you’re so unsurprised by this I know. I can’t keep myself. I tried to pace myself with this one but in the end, I just finished it. On Sunday evening and here we are!
As I said in last week – this is the story of Willa and Hudson. Willa is a widow and she has just moved to an island in the Pacific north west where she has inherited a house from her great aunt. Her parents want her to get a “proper” job, but she wants to try and rebuild her career as a cookery book ghost writer. Her comeback assignment is for a viral social media star who is more famous for the fact he cooks topless than his actual recipes. But no matter, she is determined. Hudson is her new neighbour. He lives on his parents’ farm, along with one, sometimes two of his grown up children. He’s a handyman and she has a house that needs work. Soon they are spending lots of time together, more than is technically necessary and it’s clear there’s something between them.
In case you haven’t worked it out, this is another romance from Cathy Yardley featuring an older hero and heroine. Both are in their 40s, both have got baggage and like Role Playing a lot of what is going on here is two mature adults figuring out that they’re into each other and then working out if that’s a thing that can work in their lives long term. There is no big external conflict here – and no real conflict between them really – so despite the sadness in Willa’s backstory (and it’s not a passing reference to her late husband, it’s a big part of her) this is actually quite low stress. You want them to get together, they want them to be together; they’ve just got a few things to work through.
So it’s a really comforting read as well as being romantic. And I also loved the setting – in real life I could not cope with living on an island, but in a book: totally. A lovely way to spend a few hours.
Anyway, I had my copy of Do Me A Favour preordered, it’s currently £1.99 to buy on Kindle but it’s also in Kindle Unlimited and also an Amazon imprint in paperback.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 