Book previews

Out Today: Paul Delamere sequel

The first book featuring Paul Delamere, Knife Skills for Beginners, was a Book of the Week last year and given how much I’ve seen it in bookstores, it’s probably no surprise that Orlando Murrin has written a sequel. In Murder Below Deck Paul finds himself on board a super yacht with an old friend, but things start going wrong when a necklace goes missing and then a guest ends up dead. I’ve got a copy of this from NetGalley and have got as far as the necklace disappearing and Paul getting roped in to do some cooking – no body yet, but I had a migraine that stopped me getting further. But so far, so good. I’m expecting this to be fairly easy to get hold of because of how well the first book has done – that paperback came out in January with a snazzy new cover and I’m pretty sure it was on the “buy one get one half price” table in at least one of the bookshops I’ve been into since then.

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Out This Week: New Linda Holmes

This is the second author from my favourite Not New Books of 2024 to have a new release in the first quarter of the new year. Linda Holmes’s third novel, Back After This, is about a podcast producer who gets her big break as a presenter – but only if it’s about her own dating life and features an influencer and relationship coach. Given that Holmes’s day job is on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, I’m optimistic that this is going to be a lot of fun with some insider knowledge (and hopefully jokes) as well as a satisfying story about Cecily working out who she is. The only question is how easy it’s going to be to get hold of it in the UK. Fingers crossed…

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Out This Week: New Julie Tieu

Cover of The Girl Most Likely To

I read Julie Tieu’s Fancy Meeting You Here back in the autumn of 2023, which was an opposites attract romance with an overstretched florist and a caterer who happens to be the brother of one of her friends. I have the follow up – with a fake relationship between colleagues on work trip – on the Kindle waiting to be read. But I’m now two behind because Tieu has a new book out this week. The Girl Most Likely too is set at a twentieth High School reunion, with the heroine attending with her former frenemy and discovering that their roles are now reversed – she’s the one without direction, he’s the one who is thriving. We all know that enemies to lovers can be a bit hit or miss for me, but I am optimistic about this one, although I really should wait until I’ve got the backlog down a bit before I buy it…

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Out this Week: New B K Borison

This week I wanted to mention that we have a new book from B K Borison this month – and it’s got Sleepless in Seattle vibes. Borison is the author of the very popular Lovelight Farms books, which I’ve read one of, but have been all over all the bookshops in the last year. First Time Caller is the first in a new series called Heartstrings. That name seems to come from the Baltimore radio show hosted by the hero of the book, Aiden who despite the fact that it’s a romance hotline is over love. Our heroine is Lucie, whose daughter calls in to Aidens show for some dating advice for her mum. I am a big Nora Ephron fan and really like Sleepless in Seattle, for all that it has some slightly stalkery vibes at times, so I’m looking forward to seeing how Borison has taken inspiration from the movie and updated it for the 2020s

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Out This Week: New Tourist Trap Mystery

January was quite a quiet month on the book release front as usual but the start of February is somewhat busier. This wee there are a few new cozy crime books out, but the one I want to mention is the latest in Lynn Cahoon’s Tourist Trap series. Vows of Murder is the seventeenth in the series about Jill Gardner, a bookstore owner in California. I’ve read five of the series – but one of the reasons that I wanted to mention the latest one today is because the other sixteen are all in Kindle Unlimited at the moment. So if you want to take a dip into the work of South Cove now might be the ideal time.

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Out this week: New Jill Shalvis

Obviously this week the big release is the new Rebecca Yarros book – which has had the big midnight opening, parties and events type release. But given that I still haven’t started that series and that everyone bookish has probably already heard about it, I wanted to mention something different – which is that there is a new Jill Shalvis out this week as well. It’s the seventh in the Sunrise Cove series which I am (still) a few books behind because I keep waiting for the ones I’m missing to be on offer and it seems to never happen! But this is a wintery entry with a heroine who needs help to find her off-grid parents who have gone missing and the only person that she can trust to help is her ex – an investigator for the Parks Service who is currently stuck at home injured. I love a second chance romance – and this sounds like a really interesting premise too so I’m looking forward to reading this when I can get my hands on it.

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Out Today: The Favourites

Long time readers will know that I am a big figure skating fan (but an extremely bad skater myself) so it may not come as a surprise to you that I wanted to mention a novel that’s out this week and features a pair of ice dancers. The Favourites is about a pair of wrong side of the tracks skaters, Katarina Shaw and Heath Roca, who captivate fans right up until something happens at the Olympics to cause the instant end of their partnership. Ten years later there is a documentary coming out about them and Kat may need to speak out if she wants her story to be heard.

I’m fascinated to read this and see how much of it is skating, how much of it is drama and what on earth the incident was. I will endeavour to report back, maybe even before the skating season is over*…

*Worlds is at the end of March so that’s possible right? Right?

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Out This Week: New Kayla Olsen

After including The Reunion as one of my favourite Not New books of 2024, it would be remiss of me not to mention that her next novel is out on Kindle today. The Lodge is about a writer who snags the job of ghosting the memoir of a former boyband member. The blurb says that she moves to a penthouse in Vermont to get the job done, but while she’s combing through her clients voicemails and documents to try and work out what happened to one of his bandmates who went missing, she starts taking skiing lessons with a handsome instructor called Tyler. As I said in the best of the year post, The Reunion was bang in the current trend for books about former teen stars – and there also seems to be a trend starting for books about ghost writers. It’s described as a cozy rom-com so I’m really looking forward to seeing what happens.

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Out this Week: Something Extraordinary

It’s the end of the year and there aren’t a lot of books being published at the moment, but Alexis Hall has a new one out this week so here we are. Something Extraordinary is the third in Hall’s Something Fabulous series and I have somewhat mixed views here. I really like a lot of Hall’s modern set books like Boyfriend Material but I really disliked the first in this series to the point where I nearly didn’t finish it. And o didn’t finish the follow up to Rosaline Palmer Takes The Cake. But these are now in KU and this one has a marriage of convenience (which is a trope I like) and Highwaymen (which I can also quite like) so I may give the series a second chance…

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Out This Week: Not In My Book

I was trying to get this finished in time for today, but I totally failed because: theatre and reading challenge completion attempts. But if you’re in the US, you can get your hands on this now. It’s comped as The Hating Game meets Beach Read, one of which I loved – the other triggered some of my issues with people behaving unprofessionally. So far this is skirting on the edge of them being too awful to each other for redemption, but I’m only a third of the way through. I will report back…