Tag: older heroines

Book of the Week

Book of the Week: Come as You Are

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It’s a new month – welcome to August everyone, and I’m back with another romance pick for this week’s BotW – and this time it’s one with an older hero and heroine and it made a really nice change after a run of early 20s heroines who read as really quite immature.

So our heroine is 46 year old Ashley, a divorced mum of a college aged daughter who is trying to keep her family’s ski hill going after the death of her father. When her mum springs the idea of employing men from the local sober living home for the season to help cut costs, she’s initially against the plan. But she goes with it and soon Madigan and his charges are moving into some of the staff cabins. Like the men who live in his home, Madigan is a recovering addict who has spent some time in jail. He went off the rails when he was guitarist in a grunge band and even spiraled even further after the band broke up. But he’s spent the last decade trying to help other people rebuild their lives the way that he has. The two are instantly attracted to each other – but they both have some issues to work through: Ashley has a cheating ex-husband who is trying to buy her mountain, and Madigan has walled himself off from relationships to concentrate on the men that he’s helping. Over the course of the skiing season they have to figure out what they have – and what they’re prepared to do keep it going.

This is the first book from Jess K Hardy that I’ve read and I really enjoyed it. I had some frustrations with Ashley’s mum and there were a few times when I just wanted Ashley and Madigan to have a proper conversation, but the romance is well put together, it’s steamier than I expected it to be and I’m enjoying seeing more older pairings in romance. If you read Cathy Yardley’s Role Playing after I recommended that this time last month, then I think you’ll enjoy this one. Obviously the outdoor life on the skiing hill is very different to the online world in that Aiden and Maggie meet in, but there are definite similarities. It’s also blurbed by Kate Claybourn – who I’ve written about here a fair few times too, so if you like her stuff, then also maybe check this out.

This one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment, which means it’s exclusive to Amazon in ebook at the moment. Amazon claims there’s a paperback version too, but I haven’t seen it in any of the shops so I suspect e-book is going to be the way to read it. It also reckons it’s the first in a series, so I’m looking forward to seeing who might feature in a sequel.

Happy Reading!

books, new releases, reviews

New release: Role Playing

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You may remember a couple of weeks ago, I had a really good week in reading and said I had come up with a plan to write about more than one of the books I had read. Well delaying the stats, here is part of that plan, because Cathy Yardley’s new book Role Playing – which I read as part of Amazon’s First Reads offer – is out today!

Since Maggie’s son left for college she has embraced her inner grump and her naturally introverted state and basically hibernated at home. But she’s worried that her son isn’t making friends at college – so he makes a deal: he’ll be more sociable more if she is too. And that is why she joins a new online gaming guild led by a healer called Otter. Just so no one gets the wrong idea, she calls herself Bogwitch, but Otter is friendly and his guild seems to be refreshingly untoxic. Otter is Aiden. He’s not the teenager Bogwitch thinks he is – but a fifty year old who moved back to town to look after his (ungrateful) parents and who is using the guild as an outlet for his frustration from his family drama. He thinks Bogwitch is a little old lady, so when they meet it’s a bit of a shock. It turns out they get on really well, although everything is easier online. But will their pasts end up keeping them apart?

I really like that we’re seeing more romances with older protagonists. Maggie and Aiden make a great duo and I thought the online gaming identity confusion worked really well as a device. They’ve both got totally valid reasons for being wary of relationships and also a sensible amount of baggage for their age. It’s lovely watching them get together but also seeing them come into their own because of the confidence they gain. I read this in less than twenty four hours – and if I hadn’t had to work it would have been faster. And then I went and found some more Cathy Yardley books to read – luckily Past Verity had already bought a few…

Role Playing seems to be exclusive to Kindle on the ebook front, but it does list a paperback, although given the Kindle Exclusive situation I don’t know if you’ll be able to get it in stores, but I’ll be watching out for it.

Happy Reading!

Authors I love, Book of the Week, fiction, new releases, women's fiction

Book of the Week: Anyone for Seconds

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This week’s BotW is the new Laurie Graham, which managed to sneak into the world without me noticing.  At least I noticed it just after it was released, so I’m only posting this 12 days after release.  Anyway, regular readers of this blog will be aware of my long-standing love for Laurie Graham’s books. Gone with the Windsors is one of my all-time favourites – and I consider it (and her) an under-appreciated gem.  Her last book, The Early Birds was a Reccommendsday pick last year and The Grand Duchess of Nowhere was one of the first books that I reviewed for Novelicious back in the day. I have most of her books as actual books and they live on my downstairs bookshelf (for easy access) and I have all the ones I don’t have physical copies of on ebook.  And a couple of them as both.  I even have two paperback copies of Gone with the Windsors.  Ahem.

Cover of Anyone for Seconds

Anyway, at the start of Anyone for Seconds, former TV chef Lizzie Partridge runs away from home in a desperate bid for sympathy and attention.  She’s fed up of her life – she’s the wrong side of sixty and ever since she lost her TV gig, after throwing chocolate mousse at the presenter of Midlands This Morning, nothing seems to have gone her way.  Her partner has left her, her mother is driving her mad, she doesn’t seem to ahve anything in common with her high-power lawyer daughter – and now her last bit of work (a magazine cookery column) has been axed as well.  Over the course of her wet week in off-season  Aberystwyth, she has a bit of an epiphany and starts to think there might be a new future in the offing.  Then her nephew’s TV producer girlfriend comes up with the idea of reuniting her with her former nemesis for a new TV show.  Is Lizzie’s life looking up?

Lizzie’s earlier adventures, leading up to the infamous mousse incident, are the subject of one of Graham’s earlier books, Perfect Meringues, which came out 21 years ago.  Those days were the tail end of the era when local TV news could make you into a big star – my local bulletin used to have its own chef, who I think did a good line in cookery demonstrations to WIs across the East of England  At any rate I’m fairly sure one (maybe two) of the recipes I copied out of my mum’s cookbook when I was first getting into cooking came from one he did for the Northampton Federation.  And pretty much every year at panto season you’ll spot a semi-familiar face on a poster who’s still managing to live off their local TV fame of yesteryear.  And this makes Lizzie and her friend Louie’s adventures terribly believable and very, very funny.

I read this book as my treat for my weekend working train journeys and it was an absolute delight.  Graham has a brilliant eye for the ridiculous and manages to skewer this sort of fading fame very well.  And Lizzie’s inner voice is pure Graham – funny, dark, sarcastic and with an observant eye on others, but not as much self-awareness as she thinks.  I could have read pages more of the exploits of Lizzie and her friends – there are definitely a few things left not as resolved as I could have wanted.  There aren’t enough books with leading ladies who are over 60, and Lizzie is definitely not a fading old lady in a twinset and pearls. She’s spunky and fun and not done with life and love yet – and anyway she hasn’t got a bank balance to sit back and retire.  And even if she had, her mother wouldn’t let her and, after all what would she do – her daughter doesn’t want Lizzie’s help as she raises her gender-neutral, sugar-free future genius son.  This was perfect book to beat my end of summer blues.

My copy of Anyone for Seconds came from NetGalley, but it’s out now in hardback, Kindle and Kobo.  I have no idea how easy it will be to find in bookshops – but you should be able to order it and I definitely encourage you to check out Graham’s books.  If you want to read Perfect Meringues first, it’s on Kindle and Kobo for £3.99 which seems to be about the standard price for all of Graham’s books at the moment – except for this new one.

Happy Reading!