Tag: quick reviews

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: November Quick Reviews

veritywilde

Happy first Wednesday of the month everyone. It will be no surprise to you that two of my quick reviews this month are books that ticked off missing states in this year’s reading challenge! Without further ado, here are the reviews.

The George Eliot Murders by Edith Skom

College professor Beth Austin is off to Hawaii for a vacation during her term off teaching. At the resort on the island she takes part in a tennis tournament and comes into contact with some of the hotel’s highest spending guests. When a woman falls from a balcony, everyone thinks it’s suicide or an accident, but Beth isn’t convinced. And then another body is found and she starts investigating for real, with the help of two friends that she’s made at the resort. This is as bit of a strange one because it was first published in 1990 and is quite dated and of its time in some ways, but actually in others it feels more modern. I also didn’t think it needed the Middlemarch tie-in, but I get that that’s the conceit of the series and so it has to be there. I’m not massively familiar with Middlemarch (I think I read the book after I watched the TV adaptation in the mid 1990s!) so it also didn’t really make a huge amount of sense to me either! But I liked Beth as a character and the mystery was good with a neat conclusion. I wouldn’t rule out reading more of these, but given that I picked this up from a bookswap bookcase I suspect I won’t be come across them any time soon!

Death and the Final Cut by G M Malliet

I wanted to report back in on this one because I mentioned it when it came out earlier this month. A reminder of the plot: an actress is found dead late at night in the Round Church in Cambridge, which is being used at the set of a Viking epic movie. As St Just investigates it becomes clear that there is plenty of conflict among the cast and crew and reasons why a murder could have happened. Despite having missed three books in the series, it was pretty easy to pick up the threads of the main characters and the mystery itself is pretty good interesting and I really like the Cambridge setting. I’ve got back and bought one of the ones in the series that I’ve missed to try and fill in some gaps.

Animal Attraction by Jill Shalvis

This is the second in Shalvis’s Animal Magnetism series which is set in the town of Sunshine, Idaho. Our hero is Dell, the town’s vet and the heroine is Jade, currently working as his receptionist after having mysteriously appeared in town one day. Dell knows that Jade has a secret – she’s overqualified for the job that she’s doing and doesn’t want to let anyone into her life. Jade has always said her time in town is temporary, but as the deadline from her family to leave approaches she realises that she doesn’t want to go. Jade has some trauma in her back story which is a fairly major plot point, but it never gets as far as romantic suspense and there are plenty of cute animals and a kind and sensible hero to even that out.

And that’s your lot for this month – the other Recommendsdays in November were First in Mystery series and Dysfunctional Families and the BotWs were Murder at World’s End, Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge, Buffalo West Wing and Death in High Heels.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: September Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the start of October today, so I’m back with the Quick reviews for September, and stats will pop up later in the week. And September was quite a ride on the reading front. It really has. I’ve read some good stuff and some less good stuff, I’ve struggled with books for BotW at some points, but I’ve ended up at the end of the month with plenty of books on the list to chose from to talk about here, but I’ve decided that this month it’s a follow up special…

Chris at the Kennels by Patricia Baldwin

It’s been a while since I did a Girl’s Own book, and a year since I did my post about Girl’s Own career’s books, and so I’m popping this one in here as a follow up. This is another evangelical career book – so Chris finds God while she carries out an apprenticeship at a kennels. Because in the 1960s it seems that breeding dogs and showing them and doing a little bit of boarding for other people’s dogs was enough to pay two salaries as well as supporting the owner. Chris is a twin and grew up on a farm, but instead of staying on at school and trying to get into university she wants to leave and work with dogs. I have no idea how accurate this is on a life of a kennel maid front, but I enjoyed seeing what drama Baldwin had found to keep the plot moving and break up the dog care info! Additionally, unusually for the Baldwins that I’ve read, Chris’s religious awakening happens from reading the Bible and from the other kennel maid’s scepticism about religion, rather than a religious person coming in and converting her!

Island Calling by Francesca Segal*

I mentioned that this was coming out back in June and now I’ve read it, I am reporting back. I really think you need to have read the first one to make the most of this but it is part two of a trilogy, so that’s not really a surprise. But for me, having enjoyed Welcome to Glorious Tuga, it was lovely treat to return to the characters and the great setting and get another slice of island life. This time we have the addition of Charlotte’s bossy mother unexpectedly arriving on the island. There is some peril here, but it never feels too awful so it’s a charming and relaxing read. As far as I can tell there’s no news yet on a date for part three, but if it follows the pattern of this one, it should be next summer sometime.

The Paris Spy by Sarah Sigal*

And I’m also reporting back in on this one which came out a couple of weeks ago. The follow up to The Socialite Spy takes Lady Pamela More to Paris on the eve of WW2, and back into the orbit of Wallis Simpson, now Duchess of Windsor. I didn’t think this was as successful as the first book because it has a less defined task for Pamela to do, and it also covers a much wider and more chaotic time. It continues to follow fairly closely to what I have read about the antics of the Windsors after the abdication, so it feels pretty accurate on a history front, I just think it’s trying to do too much and doesn’t always resolve things as successfully as you want, although I suspect there’s a third book in mind… and I did enjoy this enough that I would read it though if there was!

That’s your lot today, but a reminder if you need it that this month’s books of the week were: The Last Supper, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, Breakneck and Entitled.

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: August Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s a bit of a NetGalley special this month, with all three reviews coming from there albeit some more recently than others because oh boy I’m so behind. And every month I say I’ll do better, but every month I’m choosing between making the physical pile smaller or reducing the NetGalley list, and the actual pile is in my eyeline from the sofa and so… well. Maybe this month is the month. Anyway, to the reviews.

A Schooling in Murder by Andrew Taylor*

Let’s start here, because this one came out in the US yesterday (it came out here in the UK back in June). This is a murder mystery set at and around a girls boarding school during the tail end of World War Two. One of the teachers left school for the holidays and never came back – the school thinks she’s done a flit, but actually she’s dead and her ghost is lingering around the grounds trying to find out who murdered her and how to expose her killer. I’ve read and enjoyed books in Taylor’s Marwood and Lovett series, and enjoy both murder mysteries and school stories so I was hopeful that this would be in my reading wheelhouse. However I found it quite hard to get into, with very slow pacing and a large cast of pretty unlikable characters to try and get to grips with. I kept going because I did want to find out who the murderer was, but by the end I was more frustrated than satisfied – for reasons which are pretty hard to describe without giving spoilers. So I’m chalking this up as a not for me, more than anything else, although I find myself thinking back on it with more fondness than I had when I was actually reading it!

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann*

Agnes and her friends live in Sunset Hall, as a sort of commune of old people pooling resources so they can stay independent. At the start of the book one of the residents is dead in the garden and just as they’re figuring out what to do about it, a policeman turns up because one of their neighbours has been shot. So they decide the solution to their dead body is to work out who killed their neighbour and pin the murder on them. Except it’s really a lot harder to do than they expect. I finally got around to reading it after seeing the sequel in a bookshop last week and nearly buying it before I remembered I’m not meant to be buying sequels when I haven’t read the first one yet and pulling my finger out. And… I liked the blurb for it more than I enjoyed reading it. I found the writing style really hard to get into and I don’t know if that was the translation (it was originally in German) or just the author’s style, but that combined with the shifting point of view and uncertainty about what was real and what wasn’t just made it a not for me. Which is sad because a group of feisty senior citizens and a murder has often been a thing that I have enjoyed. Hey ho.

Any Trope But You by Victoria Levine*

Romance author Margot’s career has just exploded with the leak of her secret alternative unhappy endings that she has written for all of her novels. She decides she’s going to reinvent herself as a crime writer, and her sister books her into a wilderness retreat to try and get her started. But when Margot arrives in Alaska she finds the ranch is run by a handsome doctor who has given up his cancer research to return home and care for his injured father – it’s like she’s walked straight into a romance novel… This is leaning into romance tropes by amping them up to 11. And I respect that. For me my issues with it fell into two categories: the exaggeration of the trends made the heroine really really annoying to me (she is willfully and wildly unprepared for her trip to Alaska and really refuses to take instructions or listen almost to a too-stupid-to-live level), and I wanted there to be more fun in the fact that this is happening. I wanted it to be more of a fun romp but actually it’s taking itself quite seriously. And given how many of the current crop of romance novels seem to be writing exaggerated tropes with a completely straight face, that meant it didn’t really seem that different to everything else to me. But it did tick Alaska off my 50 states challenge for the year!

And finally, a quick reminder of the Books of the Week this month which were The Celebrants, The Art of Catching Feelings, A Star is Bored and The Wombles at Work, and the Recommendsdays which were Norfolk-set books and Short Stories.

Happy Humpday.

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: March Quick Reviews

veritywilde

So the problem with a massive binge on one author – and one series – is that it doesn’t leave a lot of other things to write about. And so here we are, with a two book children’s book review special for the quick reviews this month. Which makes it three classic middle grade books in just over a week after Juliet Overseas the other week!

Gemma by Noel Streatfeild

This was a Carlisle acquisition and is a later Streatfeild talented children story. And I love this sort of thing. There is ballet in this – but it’s not the key focus. The Gemma of the title is the daughter of an actress, who has herself been a child star. But she’s reached the awkward age and the parts have dried up. Her mother however has been offered a part in a tv series and sends Gemma to stay with her sister and her husband and their children. Gemma has never lived a normal life – but her cousins are not what she expects – they musical in various ways and are quite happy to add Gemma to their lives and try and help her adjust. It’s charming.

A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley

This is one of my Bristol purchases from last summer after the talk about time travel and time slip stories for children. I read Alison Utley’s Little Grey Rabbit books as a child, but never this. Traveller in Time is set in the 1930s when a group of children visit their aunt at her farm in Derbyshire and one of them, Penelope finds herself slipping back in time to the sixteenth century when the house was owned by Francis Babbington, who is at the centre of a plot to try to free Mary Queen of Scots. It’s quite a quiet novel in terms of action but it’s very evocative of the the two time periods – and you know your history, you will feel sympathy for Pen as she knows what is to come.

And that’s your lot this month. The good news is I only have a couple of Ruth Galloway books to go, so next month I should have more choices…

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: October Quick Reviews

veritywilde

There are not many of these this month I’m afraid, largely because I’ve read a lot of books from series, including a complete re-read of Lily Bard, but also because I read a few things that I didn’t like and don’t really want to write about either! But you’ve got two, so that’s something, and they’re both non-fiction, so maybe I should say it’s a non-fiction special and style it out? Except I’ve told you that now so it doesn’t really work does it?

Murder: The Biography by Kate Morgan*

This is a really interesting and incredibly readable look at the legal history of the crime of murder in England and how the statute has developed and evolved over time. It picks out the key cases that have shaped the law’s application – some of which you will have heard of, others you may not. If you’re a reader of crime fiction, this is really interesting – as you can see the development of things that you’ve seen in classic murder mysteries but in real cases. It also includes the development of corporate murder and manslaughter statutes and their success (or lack thereof) in the latter half of the twentieth century. Interesting and thought provoking.

Unruly by David Mitchell

I saw someone somewhere describe this as “Horrible Histories for grownups” and I think that’s not a bad comparison. This is a look at the Kings and Queens of England from King Arthur until the death of Elizabeth I from the comedian and actor (and history graduate) David Mitchell. It’s quite sweary at times and it’s full of pop culture/modern day references which I think is where that Horrible Histories comparison comes from, but I think it’s also got some comparators in the podcast world – with things like You’re Dead to Me and Even the Rich – as well as some stand-up comedy that goes on. I enjoyed it, and I learned a few things – mainly because it focuses on the early kings more than the later ones who are the ones I usually read about!

And there you go, that’s your two – they wouldn’t make bad Christmas books if you buy those for the people in your life and Unruly is in proper paperback now (as opposed to airport paperback like my copy) too so it’s more stocking sized now as well.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: May Quick Reviews

veritywilde

As you may have realised, May has been a really busy month – and I’ve already written about a lot of the new-to-me stuff that I’ve read this month, so only two books here this month in the quick reviews.

Lips Like Sugar by Jess K Hardy

This didn’t make it in to the Summer of Sequels post, because it actually came out in February and it just took me a while to get to it. Also it’s not really a sequel because it’s a romance series so it’s a fresh couple that are linked to the one in Come As You Are. Anyway, we’re back in the same town in Montana – but this time our heroine is Mira, bakery owner and mum to a teenage boy. Our hero is Cole, grunge-band-drummer turned music-studio-owner. It starts as a fake date to Madigan and Ashley’s wedding, but obviously it turns into something more. It’s lots of fun and really easy to read – and hopefully setting up for a third because there’s a big old loose end dangling I think – although it’s would be a bit of a pivot for the series.

Cut and Thirst by Margaret Atwood

Every now and again, Amazon pops up with a new short story from Margaret Atwood and I rush out to read it. I have a somewhat mixed record with her novels but I really like her short stories. This one is about three older women who are plotting to take revenge on the men who did one of their friends wrong years ago. It’s just dark, and funny and delightful. If you’ve got Kindle Unlimited, then this is really worth a read.

And that’s it – like I said, only two reviews this month but hey, what can I do. There have been some other great books in May that I’ve already written about – so if you’re not caught up on my reviews of Happy Medium, Mona of the Manor, You Should Be So Lucky and The Reunion, go check them out as well as my Recommendsday post about Books with Ghosts.

Happy Reading!

Recommendsday

May Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the first day of June – but it’s also a Wednesday so it’s time for some more quick reviews. This is a somewhat shorter post than usual this month (who knew that was even possible) because I’ve already talked about so many of the books that I read that weren’t rereads. But I have still managed to find some books to talk about! However I would say this is very much a post of books where I have a but in my thoughts about them!

Jumping Jenny by Anthony Berkeley

So this was one I started when I was working on the British Library Crime Classic post and didn’t get finished in time because I got distracted by rereading Vicky Bliss! Anyway, this is another Roger Sheringham mystery (the next in the series after Murder in the Basement in fact) and is quite hard to write about without giving more spoilers than I should. Roger is attending a fancy dress house party where the theme is murderers when the horrible wife of one of the other guests is found murdered. Berkeley enjoyed playing with the genre and genre conventions – and if in Body in the Basement you spent a lot of the book trying to find out who the body is, in this he is playing with another aspect of the genre. I didn’t find it entirely satisfying and it’s not quite playing fair with the rules of the time either and that’s about all I can say – but if you read it you’ll probably be able to work out what my issues are. Aside from the spoilers issues, I’m not sure that Berkeley really liked women, but there are quite a few like that from his era so that’s not entirely unexpected.

Set on You by Amy Lea*

I read this in an incredibly busy week of new books so this got skipped at the time because I didn’t love it the way that I loved Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting or Book Lovers. Crystal is a successful curvy fitness influencer, Scott is her gym nemesis. But when her grandmother announces she’s getting remarried, it turns out that Scott is about to be part of the family. In the run up to the wedding the two grow closer, until the internet threatens to tear them apart. This is a romantic comedy where I liked the characters and I liked some aspects of the way their romance unfolded – but the start of the novel where they’re irritating each other didn’t work for me – and some of the resolution of it didn’t work for me either. But we know I have issues with pranks in novels (see previous reviews for some of the early Christina Laurens) but in between there was flirty, romantic fun with a main character who has more going on that just the romance, and a hero who is just about adorable once you find out what he is really like. Also I really liked the extended families. I will definitely watch out for more from Amy Lea.

Hotel Magnifique by Emily J Taylor*

I also just wanted to give a mention to Hotel Magnifique – which was not for me but I’m sure will suit other people. Jani and her sister get jobs at the magical Hotel Magnifique because Jani thinks it’s the way to a better future for them and an adventure as it moves from place to place each day. But behind the doors of the hotel, things are not what they seem and soon Jani is fighting to free herself, her sister and the other staff from the Magic. I was hoping for something similar to the Night Circus but YA and although it starts like that, it’s not how it carries on. I found the heroine quite hard to like, the magic is hard to understand and it all gets a bit brutal. The closest I can get for a description is the closest I can get is Dystopian YA Magic. And that’s still not quite right. I see some people comparing it to Caravel but it’s hard to tell without having read that. This has reminded me thatI really do need to try and read Caravel…

And that’s your lot. It’s a bank holiday here tomorrow, but you’ll get your stats as usual.