Tag: novels

Book of the Week, books, fiction

Book of the Week: Acts of Violet

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Yes, today’s pick is the book that I stayed up late to finish on Sunday night. I have a lot of thoughts about it, not all of which I can mention here because: spoilers but it still makes it the book I want to talk about the most from last week’s reading!

It’s nearly ten years since magician Violet Volk disappeared – in the middle of her comeback show. In the intervening decade, her fans haven’t forgotten her – even if her sister Sasha wishes they would. Now with the anniversary approaching there is a fresh burst of publicity – including a hashtag where people are posting pictures of supposed sightings and a podcaster who keeps asking Sasha for an interview. Meanwhile Sasha’s daughter Quinn is doing some digging of her own around the aunt that she idolises and risks finding out some things her mother would rather stay hidden. And then there’s the fact that Sasha has started sleepwalking again. Told from Sasha’s point of view but also through transcripts of the podcast, emails and articles, you follow the run up to and aftermath of the tenth anniversary.

I have a lot of thoughts about this book – and I’m going to have to lend it to someone to read it as well so I can talk about it with them because I can’t say everything that I want to here. But the fact that I couldn’t go to sleep last night until I found out how it all ended says a lot about how engrossing it is. Margarita Montimore keeps you guessing about what was really going on with Violet and Sasha and their relationship and like the magic tricks that Violet was famous for you don’t quite know where it’s all going or who to trust. I’m going to front up and say that I didn’t love the ending, but I don’t quite know what I think would have been better!

Anyway despite that, I’m really glad that I spotted this in Foyles the other week and I don’t begrudge having paid more money than I usually do on a paperback on it – because I enjoyed reading it and I don’t think I would have come across it if it weren’t for that copy misplaced in the romance section. At least I assume it was misplaced – it’s not a romance, but I can see why the cover and format might have confused someone into shelving it there!

It’s also available on Kindle, Kobo (and on Kobo at time of writing it costs even more than my paperback did!) and audiobook which comes complete with multiple narrators to fit the different sections of the book – I had a listen to the sample and it sounds really good. I suspect you’ll need a fairly big bookshop to get a paperback copy – mine is a large format international edition and you don’t see a lot of those around usually.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Happy Place

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It’s the last week of April and I’m bang on time with a review for once – because Happy Place is actually out today. Astonishing work from me for once!

Emily Henry’s new novel is about Harriet and Wyn, who are on a weeklong summer holiday with their group of friends who don’t know that they broke up five months earlier. They’ve all been going to Sabrina’s dad’s cottage in Maine since they were students but now he’s decided to sell it they’re there for a last hurrah and neither Harry or Wyn can bring themselves to spoil it by telling everyone that they’ve broken up – especially as the others all call them the perfect couple. But as the days pass it’s clearer and clearer that they’re not over each other and pretending they’re still a couple is not helping any of it at all…

This is definitely at the women’s fiction end of the romance genre – yes, it follows the rules but it’s actually a lot about Harriet herself and her own personal growth as well as about her relationship with Wyn. It also made me cry more than once, so there’s that – Him Indoors got quite worried about me sniffling away at the end of the sofa – but by the end of the book it was worth it, even if I had a couple of minor quibbles along the way that mean I didn’t like it quite as much as I liked Book Lovers, but that was a high bar to reach!

You’re going to be able to get this everywhere – and it’s even got a nice coordinating/matching cover to the other three Emily Henry Romances. You can get it on Kindle or Kobo here and I’m expected the physical copy to be on the tables in all the bookshops, the airports and probably the supermarket too.

Happy Reading!

new releases, Recommendsday

Book of the Week: Pineapple Street

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Well as I mentioned yesterday, picking a book for today was a bit of a problem of my own making. I mean I try not to do release day posts and then make them my books of the week, but I did it with Romantic Comedy and I’m doing it again today. Romantic Comedy perhaps not a surprise because: Curtis Sittenfeld, but this – well, I had other stuff on the go last week that I thought was going to be an option for today, but it turns out, nope. So here we are. Anyway, I really enjoyed reading Pineapple Street and it deserves not to just a mention in Quick Reviews at the end of the month.

The Pineapple Street of the title is the road in Brooklyn Heights where the Stockton family own a house. It’s not their only house, but it is the house where Cord, Darley and Georgiana grew up. Their parents have just moved out to allow Cord and his new wife Sasha to move in and the sisters have added this to the list of black marks against their new sister-in-law, which also includes being middle class, being from New England (but not in a good way) and basically not being The Right Sort. To Sasha the family seem weirdly close, full of rituals and traditions designed to exclude her and make her feel like she’ll never understand them. The sisters have other problems too – Darley is struggling to figure out who she is now she’s a stay at home mum with two kids instead of a high powered worker at an investment bank and Georgiana has fallen in love for the first time – but it’s with the wrong person.

As I said last week – sound the Rich People Problems klaxon! I love a novel about people with the sort of lives most of us can’t even conceive and this is a really good one. I read this in 24 hours – and if I hadn’t had to go to work it would have been less. As well as making you want to just keep turning the pages to find out what happens next, it’ll make you laugh, it’ll make you roll your eyes and by the end you’ll have a lot more sympathy than you were expecting for both Georgiana and Darley – and of course you’re rooting for Sasha from the start. I could happily have spent even longer with them all – but actually the epilogue is a glorious touch and a great way to send them all off. We’re starting to reach the time of year where people start to go on beachy (or at least hot weather) holidays and this would make perfect sun lounger reading.

My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s looking fairly easy to get hold of – as I mentioned last week I saw it in a store before it was even released, but I saw it in both Foyles and Waterstones in Gower Street last week and so I suspect the physical copies will be easy to get hold of – hopefully even in airport edition. And of course it’s in Kindle and Kobo too.

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, books, new releases

Book of the Week: Romantic Comedy

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Yup, I’m going there. I can’t help it. I was trying to pace myself, but I had it finished before the end of release day so it had to be my pick this week.

So as previously mentioned the plot of this is: Sally is a long time writer at a late night comedy sketch show called The Night Owls – known as TNO and definitely not SNL. She’s single but has watched the show’s actors fall in and out of love with guest stars on the show, but when her friend Danny starts dating a glamorous actress who was a guest host on the show she writes a sketch about average looking – or dorky – guys who get involved with beautiful women and how you never see the reverse and calls it the Danny Horst Rule. That week’s guest host is Noah Brewster – a music star whose romantic history (according to the gossip magazines) includes a lot of models. Noah and Sally hit it off as they work on sketches together but would someone like him ever date someone like her?

The first part of the book covers the production week of the show and then we jump ahead two years to Covid times when Sally is staying with her stepdad in Kansas City and Noah is in LA and they reconnect. It’s playing with the ideas of romantic comedy movies whilst also being a romantic comedy and following a lot of the rules that you would expect but in subtle (well sort of) ways. What I always enjoy about Curtis Sittenfeld’s books are the heroines – they’re always smart often a little (or a lot) neurotic and have interesting and not perfect lives and back stories. It’s fun just to spend time with them – but even more so when Sittenfeld is playing with something that you love – which I think is why I loved her Eligible (modern day retelling of Pride and Prejudice) so much. And this is a good one. If you follow celeb gossip in anyway you can probably work out who inspired the Danny Horst rule, but actually that’s just a device to set up everything else. I’ve read a bunch of books recently where one half of the couple is famous and the other isn’t and while a lot of them give their celebrities similar issues not all the books are good at it. And yes I realise that I’ve now recommended three of them in a very short time – but I’ve read more of them than that and haven’t told you about the rest!

I guess the main difference with this is that because it’s Curtis Sittenfeld it gets a hardback release and a photo cover (in the UK at least) rather than coming out in paperback with a cartoon/drawn cover like Nora Goes Off Script or Funny You Should Ask. But it’s actually much more similar to those in style and tone than it is to a lot of the other stuff that gets hardback releases. And that’s a good thing not a criticism. And it’s also a Reese Witherspoon pick. So that’s fun too.

Anyway, I have a physical copy of Romantic Comedy that is still on its way to me (it was a special edition for indie booksellers which has got held up in the bank holiday weekend post) but I also requested it from NetGalley before the preorder – not expecting to be approved but I was! Hence how I’ve managed to read it before my actual copy has arrived. It’s out now and available in all the stores – I saw it in Waterstones and Foyles at the weekend and it’s also in ebook on Kindle and Kobo and I’m audiobook. I suspect it’s the sort of thing that will also get an airport edition if you’re heading off on holiday and it would make a great sun lounger read.

Happy Reading!

books

Book of the Week: Funny You Should Ask

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It’s only a few weeks since I recommended Nora Goes Off Script, but I’m back with another romance that features a movie start – and I don’t care because it is so, so good. This is the book I was talking about yesterday when I talked about trying to cure a book hangover!

Ok, this plot is a little complicated – because the narrative is split between now and then. The then is the start of Chani Horowitz’s career. She’s graduated from her writing course, but instead of writing novels like her fiancé, she’s writing magazine articles. Then she’s asked to write a profile piece of Hollywood heartthrob Gabe Parker. He is her celebrity crush – and he’s just been cast as James Bond. The weekend she spends with him for the piece changes her life – it launches her career and also sets the tabloids buzzing. The now is ten years on. Chani is asked to revisit the subject of her most famous piece to do a second interview. After a decade being asked about that profile, and fresh from a divorce, Chani knows she should say no. But she has never forgotten that weekend – and it could be a chance to finally turn the page.

I loved this so much. So, so much. It’s got a long slow pine and so much yearning. And two people trying to figure out what is going on between them. There is a lot of drinking in the before part of the story – and the Gabe of the now section is fresh from rehab and newly sober. And unlike one of the books I read after this last week as I tried to get over my book hangover, you get to see that Gabe has grown and changed and is a different (and better) version of himself. And Chani is a great heroine. She’s smart and clever and fed up of her career being defined by one piece when she wants to do different things.

I bought this in my haul from Foyles earlier in the year – you can see it in the February Books Incoming – I started reading it in the shop and knew it was going to be good, which is why I’ve read it so soon (for me!). I finished it and immediately ordered Elissa Sussman’s next book which comes out later the year.

You should be able to get hold of this fairly easily – I’ve seen it all over the place since I bought it, and it’s in kindle and Kobo too. The only thing I couldn’t find was the audiobook on Audible but there does seem to be one on Goodreads so it may yet turn up.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Novels about the Movies

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It was the Oscars at the weekend, so what better opportunity to mention some books with movie stars or the movie industry in them

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Everyone is talking about Daisy Jones and the Six at the moment because the adaptation is out* but Jenkins Reid’s first book in what she’s called the Mick Riva universe is about an elderly movie star who wants an up and coming journalism to write her life story. I have vivid memories of starting to read this on my phone in the immigration queue at Dulles airport, but I actually didn’t finish it until months later. Daisy is the book that really broke through – probably because Reese Witherspoon optioned it – but I think Evelyn is just as good – it was a Book of the Week when I did finish it. And if you know your old Hollywood, there is a lot of fun to be had in figuring out what inspired which bits of Evelyn’s story.

The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

It’s sort of a stretch to include this because it is before Louise became famous, but I’ve gone with it because I enjoyed it when I read it a decade ago and it’s a bit different. If Evelyn Hugo is a reimagining of Hollywood history creating a new legendary star, The Chaperone falls into the real people-adjacent category. I’ve written whole posts about novelised real people, and this is sort of that, except that our real person isn’t the main character. It’s 1922 and Cora Carlisle is in charge of taking the teenaged Louise Brooks from Kansas to New York to study dance. Louise isn’t at all happy about having a woman old enough to be her mother chaperoning her on the trip and Cora has her own reasons for making the journey too. Set over about five weeks, this has prohibition New York, Louise Brooks before she was a film star and the rapid changes that were happening in society in the 1920s. I didn’t realise until I was writing this that it had been turned into a film – but it did come out in 2020 and we all know that there was a lot going on then and you couldn’t go to the cinemas so maybe that’s not a surprise, but I’ll have to look it up on the streaming services!

Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

Neely, Anne and Jennifer become best friends as young women in New York and across the course of the book climb to the top of the entertainment industry. But their lives are intertwined with the pills they take – the dolls of the title – and they cause more problems than they solve. This is a twentieth century classic – if you haven’t read it, you really should. My copy is a very pretty Virago Hardback, but as you can see the latest edition marks the book’s fiftieth anniversary, although we’re now closer to the sixtieth!

Of course there are loads of other books I could have included – I included Anthony Marra’s Mercury Pictures Presents in a Quick Reviews post a few months back, so it’s a bit soon to write another review of it, but that is set in the world of the studio system during and after the Second World War. Fear in the Sunlight in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey series is set around the production of a very real Hitchcock film in Portmeirion in 1936. Carrie Fisher used her own experiences in Hollywood to write Postcards from the Edge about a Hollywood star with a drug problem, and Angela Carter’s Wise Children also includes the twins’ experiences in the movie business

And as is traditional with these things, I have a bunch of stuff that would fit this still sitting on the to-read pile, like Blonde by Joyce Carole Oates (which Ana de Armas was nominated for in this years Oscars losing out to Michelle Yeoh), Their Finest Hour and a Half is about the only Lissa Evans novel (for adults) that I haven’t read – although I have seen the movie that it was turned into, which is just called Their Finest, and Laura Kalpakian’s The Great Pretenders, about the granddaughter of a movie mogul who strikes out on her own in the business, which I impulse bought in Foyles last summer.

Happy Wednesday everyone!

*and don’t this won’t be the last time I mention Daisy I’m sure!

Book of the Week, books, romance

Book of the Week: Nora Goes Off Script

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It’s Valentine’s Day today and we have a romance pick this week. Nora Goes Off Script is probably the easiest BotW choice in ages, for reasons which I will explain later in the post and (spoiler alert) are not the fact that it’s a romance and today is February 14th!

The plot: Nora is a scriptwriter for a romance channel, but after her husband leaves her and their two children she uses their breakup to write a script that doesn’t end in a chaste kiss and a happily ever after. And it sells to a movie company who want to film part of it on location at her farmhouse. Along with the film crew comes the film’s star: Leo Vance, former sexiest man alive and playing Nora’s ex. But when the film crew leaves, Leo doesn’t. And what turns into a week for him to clear his head turns into something more, something that can break your heart…

The Goodreads blurb calls this Evvie Drake Starts over meets Beach Read, and although I haven’t read Beach Read (yet) I have read Book Lovers and have been comparing it to Emily Henry to people so let’s call that pretty accurate. It’s romantic and sweet but it’s also relaxing. Yes Leo and Nora’s relationship doesn’t go smoothly but there’s no peril, and actually Nora does that thing I love in books of figuring out who she is and what she wants and the fact that she gets a handsome man by the end is a delightful bonus not the solution to her problems. Did that make any sense? It’s like in Legally Blonde: Elle is successful by the end because of her hard work and brains not because of a relationship. Yes she ends up with Emmett but he’s not the reason why she wins the case and gets voted valedictorian*.

I bought this while writing the Recommendsday post, started it in bed on Tuesday night and read nearly 100 pages without noticing (and definitely not what I meant to do and had finished it before bedtime on Wednesday. And then I read the last 20 percent again on the train to work on Thursday. Yup. I liked it that much. In fact writing this has made me want to go and read it all over again. It’s Annabel Monaghan’s first adult novel and I am already really looking forward to her second one which is due out in June. If it’s anything like as good as this I’ll be a happy girl.

As I said last week – this is 99p on Kindle at the moment and I don’t think you will regret it. I don’t know how easy the paperback will be to find – I couldn’t see it in Foyles on Friday, but that’s not foolproof.

Happy Reading!

* this is the crux of my biggest issue with the stage musical version of the show where Elle definitely succeeds because Emmet helps her and tells her what to do. But I digress.

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Georgie, All Along

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Continuing the Kate Clayborn theme of the last few days, but I’m not even sorry about it because this was delightful and it’s new and it deserves a bigger mention than just Thursday.

Georgie is back in Virginia after years away working as a PA in LA. Most of the time she’s too busy to think about anything except the next job on her list. But suddenly there are hours and days and weeks stretching out in front of her. She’s meant to be helping her best friend – who has just moved back to their home town too ahead of having her first baby – but it doesn’t feel like she really needs Georgie. And then they find a diary they wrote in high school full of plans for the future. Are these the ideas Georgie needs to figure out who she is and what she wants? And then there is the problem of Levi, her unexpected roommate and former town bad boy and current dock builder and semi recluse, who offers to help her on her quest…

This was a really lovely, calming read – and also romantic. There is very little peril (maybe no peril?), just two people trying to figure out who they are and what they want in the world. And if you’ve ever wondered what you’re doing with your life and why everyone seems to have things better planned than you, this may well speak to you on a cellular level. I often say that I’m very lucky because I knew what I wanted to do for my job at a very young age, and turned out that be good enough at it that I’ve been able to earn my living doing it (so far!). But I don’t really have a grand plan. I’m much better at knowing what I don’t want to do, than what I *do* want to do and so I really enjoyed watching Georgie working out what she wanted from life and also the way it all resolved – and I can’t really say more, because: spoiler.

So if you want a charming romance that will make you swoon-y happy but without making you anxious, then this may well be it. My copy came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in various formats: in Kindle and Kobo in the UK – it looks like the paperback option is the US version (at the moment at least).

Happy Reading!

Book of the Week, reviews

Book of the Week: Carrie Soto is Back

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I know, I know. I’ve already mentioned this a few times, and it was on the reading list for a while, so why is this book of the week now I’ve finally finished it? Well firstly, take a look at it: it’s a hardback. And that should explain why it’s taken me a while to read – I don’t take books in my work rucksack these days because I have a laptop in there but I especially don’t take hardbacks around because they get so battered and also hardbacks are just harder to read than paperbacks are – speaking as an integrate eat-and-read person, you cannot read a hardback while you eat your lunch!

Carrie Soto was the best tennis player in the world. When she retired at the end of the 1980s, she had the all time grand slam record. But just six years later, that record is about to be broken- so she decides to make a comeback to take back her crown and prove that she’s the best of all time. But being the best tennis player in the world is much harder when you’re in your late 30s and harder still when it feels like no one wants you to succeed.

Carrie is not a sweet and fluffy tennis player: the media nicknamed her The Battleaxe basically because she did things that in a man would have been celebrated, but women aren’t meant to do. Like saying you’re going to crush your opponents. And admitting that you were targeting an opponent’s injury. And her singular focus means that she’s not always easy to like as she creates a world where it’s her against everyone else – but you’re shown her history and her family so you get why she is the way she is and you’re hoping that someone will come along and break through her protective shell.

Carrie popped up as a secondary character in Malibu Rising and it’s amazing how much you end up rooting for her in this, given what she was up to in that. Taylor Jenkins Reid has said that is the final book in this particular universe and this is another story about a woman who is unapologetic about her ambition and wants to live life in her own way and on her terms. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the themes across the four books – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, Daisy Jones and the Six, Malibu Rising and this – and that’s sort of where I’ve come down: they all look at women challenging the status quo in some way, but they’re all very different stories and told in different ways. Like the first two books, there is a lot here where you can pick which real life tennis players have provided some inspiration for various people and the world feels so real by the end of it you can’t quite believe that none of it is real. Excellent, engrossing reading – perfect for a sun lounger, if only you don’t buy the hardback version!

You should be able to get this basically anywhere. Seriously. I think it’s been front and centre in every book shop I have recently featured. And of course it’s in all the ebook formats too.

Happy reading!

Book of the Week, reviews, romance

Book of the Week: The Dead Romantics

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Did I finish this on Monday? Yes. Am I still writing about it? Absolutely. After the dumpster fire that was my late September I’m giving myself a pass on a lot of things. Anyway, this is fun.

Florence is a ghostwriter with a problem: after a messy breakup, she doesn’t believe in love any more – but she still has a book she has to finish and her new editor won’t give her an(other) extension. Then she gets a call from her mum: her dad has died and she needs to go home to help prepare for the funeral. But she’s been running from her small home town for a decade and she’s still not ready to deal with her issues with it. And then on her first night home, there is a knock at the door: it’s her editor. Except he’s a ghost and he doesn’t know why he’s there either.

Now regular readers will know that I’m not a paranormal or spooky reader usually. But I really liked Ashley Poston’s Beauty and the Geek series, I’ve heard a lot of hype about this and it was 99p and my defences are low at the moment so I couldn’t help myself. And I’m so glad I did. This is fun and funny and I loved Florence and her family and their funeral home and quirky ways. And Ben is lovely too I will admit that I was worried about whether there could be a happy ending (because he’s a ghost!) but I shouldn’t have been because it just works. And bonus points for the surprise Mulan reference.

We’re coming up to Halloween (I mean it’s October!) and if you want something seasonally appropriate but not scary or overly paranormal, this might well be the book for you. Especially if you like romance novel’s getting name checks. And if you’ve read the Beauty and the Geek series there are some Easter eggs for you too. Just delightful. Yes it made me cry, but if it hadn’t there would have been something wrong right? And it was worth it if you know what I mean.

As I said earlier, this is 99p on Kindle at the moment and it’s the same on Kobo. It came out in June so it’s still relatively new – but I haven’t spotted it in any of the bookshops yet* but Foyles have click and collect copies at the moment so I clearly haven’t been looking hard enough and you might be lucky.

Happy reading!

*and yes I did go back through my Waterstones Piccadilly photos, and no I didn’t take a picture of the P section of the romance shelves to double check