Tag: Recommendsday

LGTBQIA+, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Pride Month 2026

veritywilde

It’s the last Wednesday of Pride month and so it’s time for some pride month reccs before it’s too late.

How to Fake It In Society by K J Charles

Cover of How to Fake It in Society

This was one of my purchases while writing the offers post and it was so much fun. Titus Pilcrow is a younger son who’s been making his own way in the world as a shopkeeper, right up until he marries a wealthy woman on her deathbed. Now he’s got more money than he could have dreamed of – and suddenly people are coming out of the woodwork to try and get a share of it. The Comte de Valois is one of them. Nico was courting the woman that Titus married until not long before her death – and he really needed that money. So he inveigles himself into Titus’s life to help him accustom himself to his new life – and to try and make some money out of it. Except that he finds himself liking Titus a lot more than he expected. I read this in no time at all – started it on the train to work, carried on reading it at lunchtime, then on the train home and finished it in the evening. K J Charles does a really good line in Adventurers – see also The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting – and I love that as a trope in romances (See also The Masqueraders) and I only wish I’d been able to pace myself and made it last longer!

The Gay Best Friend by Nicolas DiDomezio

I’ve had four goes at writing the plot summary for this – and all of them have been unsatisfactory. But basically Domenic is caught in between his childhood best friend Patrick and Patrick’s fiancée Kate who is now maybe a closer friend that Patrick. Domenic is invited to both the stag do and the hen party and both Patrick and Kate want him to be on their side and report back (or lie if necessary). Domenic is also just broken up with his own fiancé and had to cancel his own wedding. Unexpectedly at the bachelor party is Bucky, a professional golfer and possibly Dom’s replacement as Patrick’s best friend – who was meant to be playing in a PGA tournament that weekend but is “injured”. I didn’t really like any of the characters much – especially not Domenic, who is A Lot. He’s living a life he doesn’t want, not at all over his childhood issues and is such a people pleasing doormat I wanted to shake him. At least 90 percent of his problems are of his own making – and add on to that that he keeps getting drunk and spilling other people’s secrets and it’s just really hard to have any sympathy with him. I’m not going to lie, I read this in an evening, but the more I think about it, the less I like it and the more it annoys me – which is a shame because I really liked the blurb for this – and also for some of DiDomizio’s other books which I’m now not sure I want to risk!

Puck by Samantha Allen*

Cover of Puck

Puck is a reality show producer on a dating show called Homewreckers, where they specialise in putting couples together and then ripping them apart again. So when the go to their college best friend Mia’s wedding to the man Puck is convinced is the wrong guy, they decide to deploy the skills from their day job to stop the wedding. The only person standing in their way is Robyn, the maid of honour and Mia’s new bestie. This is described as Midsummer Night’s Dream inspired and yes there are two couples who Puck is meddling with so that all checks out. The problem really is that Puck isn’t really very likeable and that the romantic plot for them seems shoe-horned in as a bit of an afterthought. Robyn and Puck seem to be hate banging more than anything else as they barely exchange a pleasant word with each other. I do wonder if the romance was addd to try and expand the potential readership (we romance readers sure are voracious) because the rest of the plot definitely more well developed even if I didn’t really enjoy it.

And that’s your lot – I’m sorry it’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of whether I liked them or not, but as with so many books, your mileage may vary. The common theme between The Gay Best Friend and Puck Hard to Like Main Characters and my tolerance for that is low at the moment. But if you are better with that than me at the moment, then I think The Gay Best Friend is the one to try – it’s sort of rich people problems adjacent and Dom has at least maintained his friendships, which Puck really hasn’t.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommensday: May 2026 Quick Reviews

veritywilde

Yes I know, I know, I know. It’s the third Wednesday of June and I’m only just now publishing the May Quick reviews. But I’ve explained my reasoning – I had the early June new releases to cover and then this month’s Kindle offers were *good* – in fact there’s one spotted lats night I ought to mention – the second Nora Breen book Death at the Spirit Lounge is 99p too. But there here now and I’m sure normal order will be resumed next month!

Banton of Paramonth by Howard Gutner*

Cover of Banton of Paramount

This is a photo heavy book looking at the career of Travis Banton who was a costume designer for Paramount and one of the most important of the Golden Age. He’s known for his collaboration with Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard among others including Clara Bow in It. I have strongly mixed thoughts on this. On the one hand I’m fascinated by Golden Age Hollywood and it’s great to find out more about a figure that I didn’t really know much about. However, I think this is going to be one of those books where having a physical copy is going to be the key to your experience and enjoyment because I had an eproof via NetGalley and the formatting on it was a real issue. There were photo captions out of order, stuff that was marked as “a rare colour photo” that was in black and white and just a general jumble at times where picture captions were mixed together with the main text and separated from the pictures they were referring too. This meant that it was hard to follow the narrative thread of the writing because you needed to keep flipping pages back and forth to match up the photos to the captions and to keep the thread of sentences. The pictures are the great gift in this though- lots of shots of beautiful outfits.

Hattie Breaks a Leg by Patrick Gleeson*

Cover of Hattie Breaks a Leg

Hattie is back and after the events of the first two books in Patrick Gleeson’s series, she’s more unemployable than ever. That’s why she finds herself stage managing a one night only play, with a huge cast, written by a first time playwright who is also directing and who seems to have no idea how any of this is meant to work. The good news is that it pays well… the bad news is that alongside this an old friend has asked for a favour and when things go wrong with that she finds herself dragged into some very shady doings. I really like this series and this is a good fun read that I finished in one day. I have a few quibbles – I wasn’t a hundred percent convinced on the favour side of the plot and I had part of the play plot figured out fairly early, but they didn’t really stop me from enjoying myself reading it. The world of the theatre is such a good one for mystery plots – and I love all the detail about the day to day of the behind the scenes that Gleeson includes in this. This is probably best enjoyed if you’ve already read one (or both) of the other books, but it will still work for you even if you haven’t I think.

Major Bricket and the Body in the Bell Tower by Simon Brett*

This is the second book in Simon Brett’s latest series, and I definitely liked it more that the first one -perhaps because I knew what I was expecting when I went in: a espionage-adjacent mystery in a less realistic world than you get in most of Brett’s other contemporary series. This has got a body turning up in the village church on Sunday morning that Major Bricket is the first to discover, and also a threat from his past resurfacing. It’s fun and pacy and felt just more established than the first one did. A nice way to pass a few hours, even if I don’t like it as much as I like (say) the Charles Paris books.

And there you (finally) have it – the May Quick reviews are sorted and just in case you’ve forgotten because it’s so long ago the May Recommendsdays were Island-set mysteries and Cold War mysteries, and the Books of the Week were Blue Devil Woman, The Wyndham Case, Call for the Dead and The Paris Match.

Happy Humpday!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: June Kindle Offers

veritywilde

I’m sorry, you’re going to have to wait another week for the May Quick Reviews, because this month’s Kindle Offers are that good. This was a really quite expensive post to write and so hold on to your wallets, here we go.

Cover of Slow Dance

So first of all there are quite a few recent releases among the offers, notably the last (sniff) Phryne Fisher book Murder in the Cathedral. Phryne books don’t go on offer that much so take advantage of it while you can. There’s also Charlotte Stein‘s recent BotW While You Were Seething, Sloane Fletcher‘s Blue Devil Woman (which is also in Kindle Unlimited), The fourth and final Emmy Lake book, Dear Miss Lake is on offer – presumably because it’s just come out in paperback, and recent BotW (although not that recent release) Rainbow Rowell‘s Slow Dance. There are a few new releases I haven’t read too including the latest Sarah Morgan Brave New Summer and Alexandra Vasti’s The Halifax Hellions.

Also on offer is Taylor Jenkins Reid‘s Malibu Rising, Jilly Cooper’s Rivals (presumably to coincide with season 2 of the adaptation), Christina Lauren‘s The Unhoneymooners, Yulin Kang‘s How to End a Love Story,Libby Page’s The Lido, Katherine Center‘s The Bodyguard, and Annabel Monaghan‘s wonderful Nora Goes Off Script which I assume is because her new one Dolly All the Time has just come out – that one is £2.49 this month. It’s Pride month (as I have already mentioned more than once) which may be why Ashley Herring Blake’s Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date, T J Klune‘s The House in the Cerulean Sea and K J Charles‘s Copper Script are all reduced.

Of the classic authors, there is the Agatha Christie classic The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, two Georgette Heyers – one of her mysteries No Wind of Blame and one of her romances The Toll Gate. The original Bridget Jones’s Diary is on offer (and in Kindle Unlimited), as is Erin Morgenstern‘s The Night Circus, A classic to me, Jasper Fforde‘s The Eyre Affair is on offer too – not too long now until the final book in that series arrives – and a reminder that if you’re a hardback purchaser there is an annotated edition of this one out now too.

What did I buy? Well the new K J Charles How To Fake it In Society, Martha Water’s mystery-romance And Then There Was The One, Mary Roach’s latest Replaceable You as well as Judith Mackerell‘s latest Artists, Siblings, Visonaries, all of which are 99p. And in stuff I’ve resisted (somehow) buying so far there is Margo’s Got Money Troubles which has just been adapted by Apple TV and Sofia Cousen’s And Then There Was You.

And if that’s not enough books for you, I’m sorry, I don’t know what would be!

Happy Humpday!

new releases, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Early June New Releases

veritywilde

Happy first Wednesday of the month, and usually this would be where I publish my Quick Reviews for May. However, I have read a bunch of mysteries of various types that either came out yesterday, today or are coming out tomorrow and so I’m saving the quick reviews for another Wednesday and giving you a quick review round up for them. Why isn’t this just the May Quick Reviews repurposed? Well because I read one of them in April…

Played to Death by Mike Ripley*

This is quite a hard one to describe, because it’s told by four unreliable narrators, but I’m going to give it a go. A new murder mystery play is being put on by the Hopewell Players but there are some… concerns. Pantomime Dame and local solicitor Adam Cunningham consults a local librarian (and former crime fiction editor) because he thinks it’s ripping of a lot of Golden Age mysteries. The author of said play is the producer’s father but the future of the production is in doubt when one of the actors is found dead on stage. This is written by Mike Ripley, who also wrote a number of Campion continuation novels and he’s very much using his knowledge of Golden Age mysteries in this, but with a great twist with the shifting narration. I particularly enjoyed the footnotes about which books the various bits of plot had been lifted from. I read this in one day (not quite in one sitting) and immediately went off to read one of the aforementioned Campion continuations after I discovered that his other book featuring Roly the Librarian isn’t available on Kindle. The good news is that this is – and also that it’s out today and included in Kindle Unlimited.

The French Market Murder by Greg Mosse*

This is the third book in Greg Mosse’s series set around a bookshop in a small town in Provence. The first in the series was a BotW not that long ago and I’ve read book two since then as well, but I think I actually liked this the most of the three in terms of writing style and the regular characters but I found the solution to the mystery pretty predictable – I figured out most of it pretty quickly after the body was found, which actually happened quite late on for a murder mystery. But I do really like the setting and set up for this and would happily read more, and every time I read one I think that I should go and read his other series which features a much younger Zoe as a side character to the main sleuth, although without reading them it’s hard to tell how prominent she is but they get plenty of references in these! I really do fancy a holiday to Provence now though…

A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Catching a Killer by F H Petford*

This is the follow up to 2025’s A Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Solving a Murder which was also a BotW. We rejoin Alma at the gang at the Timperley shortly after the conclusion of that book – and as a warning, if you haven’t read the first book you will find out who did it if you read this one so plan your reading accordingly – and things seem to be going well. Well that is until a guest is found dead in their bed. With the police short-staffed because of officers signing up to fight, Alma is asked to help with the investigation and she’s very willing as the circumstances suggest that the killer may be inside the hotel. The mystery in this is good, and I liked the widening of the group around Alma as well. I’m not really into spiritualism or ghosts, but these are at the end of the ghostly spectrum that I can get on board with. I read this very quickly (across about 36 hours) and I’m so pleased that there’s already a third book planned that I have it pre-ordered already. If you haven’t read book one – and bearing in mind my warnings above you should before you read this – that one is in Kindle Unlimited at the moment if you have that.

Sconed to Death by Betty Hechtman*

This is the second book featuring a heroine who inherited a yarn shop in a small Indiana town and (temporarily) moved there from LA. Annie’s father is a high powered entertainment agent, and in tow with her is Gray, the daughter of one of her father’s most important clients and now her business partner as Annie tries to get the yarn shop ready for sale. In this book the summer residents have descended on town and Annie has a lot of balls in the air, including trying to help Toby who bakes the scones for the yarn shop’s tea room get on a reality show in the hopes that it means that any buyer for the store will keep him on as a supplier. I realise that that sounds complex, and that’s not even the murder side of the plot! There is a murder (don’t worry) which could also be an obstacle to the sale of the tearoom and so Annie is soon low key investigating that. And also navigating a potential relationship and managing Gray’s fractious relationship with her mum. When you write that plot down it’s quite a lot, even with just the bare bones that I’ve given you, but it actually (mostly) works when you’re reading it. The set up of Annie’s presence in town is pretty neat and Gray’s pampered princess life makes for some good tension in the plot and some reasons why Annie wouldn’t just be having actual conversations at various points. The writing style was a little repetitive at times -for example it was reminding me of details that it had told me just a couple of pages prior, but I do wonder how I would have felt if I had read the first book and already knew all the backstory to everything because I definitely don’t think there is anything I was missing about the first book (except for who did the murder so that’s good at least). I haven’t read anything by Betty Hechtman before, but she’s a pretty established author so I suspect this is just her style and it might just not quite be for me, but I enjoyed this enough that I would happily read some more books by her to find that out!

And there you have it – four reviews of four books out this week. I promise that the quick reviews will turn up on a future Wednesday as will the Kindle Offers.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Cold War-set mysteries

veritywilde

After Beattie Cavendish and the Highland Hideaway was a book of the Week in January, I’ve been on a little run of other historical mysteries with a Cold War or spy setting. And as you could see from yesterday’s BotW post that’s now culminated in my finally getting around to reading the John le Carré books I have in the backlog. But those of course were written contemporaneously to the events they depict (pretty much) so for this post I’m talking about historical mysteries – aka the stuff that’s been written recently but is set in that time period. And I am starting to wonder if a 1950s setting is the new trend in historical mysteries, taking over from the interwar period. But maybe I’m just spotting more of them because I’m looking for them at the moment? Anyway to the reviews:

Mrs Spy by M J Rowbotham*

As far as everyone else knows, Maggie Flynn is a widowed single mum who moved back in with her mother after her husband’s death. But she’s actually an MI5 operative, following in the footsteps of her husband whose work in the world of spies she only discovered after his death. But when she is assigned to guard a Russian defector for the day, she discovers that he knew her husband and suspects his death was because he was betrayed by someone he thought was on his side. So she sets out to discover what really happened to him while keeping it a secret from her teenage daughter who is more concerned about whether her mum can get her Beatles tickets. Maggie’s job is mostly observation and surveillance rather than derring do so when she finds herself conducting her own operations it’s a steep learning curve for her. This took me a little while to get into mostly because it took me a while to twig that it was meant to be humourous as well as murderous, but once I did I found this really readable. I liked the references to Bond films and other spy thrillers and Maggie is an engaging heroine and the good news is that this has a sequel out in the summer.

Under Admiralty Arch by S J T Riley*

This is the third in a series featuring newspaper crime reporter Robert Lynnford in the early 1950s. I read the first in the series a couple of years ago and thought that it was a good mystery albeit witha lot of plot but didn’t do the best job at explaining some of the background and details (sort of the reverse of an info dump problem!) but didn’t realise that when I requested it from NetGalley. Still it was nice to drop in again to see what’s changed. And actually there are some similar issues here – the plot is very complicated, with a big cast of characters that can get a bit confusing because there’s not a lot of detail to differentiate them from each other. But the underlying mystery is interesting and I wanted to see who did it. This is definitely going more towards the adventure-mystery end of the genre, with plenty of car chases and more than a few fights.

The Queen Who Came in From The Cold by S J Bennett

In the fifth the H M The Queen Investigates series, it is 1961 and preparations are underway for a state visit to Italy on the Royal Yacht Britannia. But before the trip, there is a visit to Lancashire to accomplish. On the royal train up though a guest claims to have witnessed a murder through the window. The Queen and her assistant private secretary Joan start to investigate and find themselves tangled up in all sorts of Cold War plotting. This is the second book in the series that has been set in the past, and we find ourselves a couple of years after that previous instalment (early 60s compared to late 50s) and the world is changing fast. The Soviets are on the brink of winning the space race and there as spies being uncovered all over the place. So it’s fitting that this is a spy related story – complete with references to James Bond novels and Stephen Ward. I enjoyed this a lot – it’s a fun world to spend some time in and even better (in my mind) now we’re back in the past.

And that’s your lot for today. There was another on recent read that could have been included in this – but it would have been a bit of a spoiler for the resolution. But again, it would be a spoiler to tell you which one! But this is a very good opportunity to mention that there is a new H M the Queen Investigates coming in October called Death on the Royal Yacht which is very good news indeed.

Happy Humpday!

books on offer, Recommendsday

Recommensday: May 2026 Kindle Offers

veritywilde

It’s the second Wednesday of May and so we’re back to Kindle offers and the post that is traditionally the most expensive for me to write in any given month!

OK, lets start with a recent BotW Katherine Center’s The Love Haters, which is 99p, as is the first Tuga book Welcome to Glorious Tuga and given that book two is out in paperback next month I wouldn’t be surpised to see a price drop on that in June. There’s also the third Emmy Lake book, Mrs Porter Calling, the middle Kiss Quotient book The Bride Test and for £2.89 you can pick up Love and Other Brain Experiments which was a BotW back in March.

Also in romances that I’ve read, there’s Sarah Adam’s When in Rome which has a very Taylor Swift-figure goes to small town and falls in love vibe about it, but which was a little too New Adult for my tastes and then there is Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail from Ashley Herring Blake‘s Bright Falls series which I liked a lot more.

Among the recent releases there’s the new Kate Claybourn Paris Match, and the new Cat Sebastian Star Shipped which I would totally be buying if I didn’t already own a copy (even if the copy is at my parents. In other books waiting on the TBR shelf there’s Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, the sequel to The Maid, The Mystery Guest; S J Paris’s Traitor’s Legacy and last year’s Ashley Poston Sounds Like Love,

In mystery there is recent release A Murder in Eight Cocktails; the first Ruth Galloway book The Crossing Places; the third Canon Clement Murder at the Monastery; the Rivers of London novella, What Abigail did that Summer; the third Three Dahlias book, Seven Lively Suspects; the first in Simon Brett’s latest series Major Bricket and the Circus Corpse ahead of the release of the sequel later this month; the third Cesare Aldo Ritual of Fire; the third Grave Expectations book, The Grapples of Wrath; the first Flavia De Luce book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – presumably to coincide with the new TV adaptation and there’s also the latest Hamish MacBeth, Death of a Groom and a much earlier one The Death of a Glutton as well as the second Agatha Raisin The Vicious Vet.

In other fiction, there is Curtis Sittenfeld‘s Prep; the third Cazalet Chronicle, Confusion and The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House which was a featured review a looooong time ago (in a time before BotWs I think). In non-fiction there’s Kate Moore’s The Radium Girls; the Spinal Tap ‘memoir’ A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever; Dan Jones‘s The Hollow Crown and Ronan Farrow‘s Catch and Kill.

In things I bought while writing the post there is the first in Rhys Bowen‘s Molly Murphy series, Murphy’s Law; The Spy Who Came in from the Cold which I have been eyeing up in bookshops since the stage version was on in the West End at the start of the year; The Chinese Gold Murders which likewise I have been eyeing up in bookshops for a while; Nancy Goldstone’s The Rebel Empresses (likewise) and Mark Galeotti’s A Short History of Russia. And surely that is enough for this month…

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, Recommendsday

Recommensday: April 2026 Quick Reviews

veritywilde

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and of course you know what that means. So here I am with three reviews of some of the other books I read in April.

Madonna of Darkness by Hugh Morrison

This is the latest book in Hugh Morrison’s series about Reverend Shaw, a vicar in the 1930s who also has a bit of a sideline in stumbling across murders and intrigue. This one sees him at a fete in a neighbouring village where a new vicar has been causing ructions within the community with his views. But when the troublesome minster is found dead in the church shortly after cancelling the fete he starts to investigate. This has got religious art, more of Morrison’s son than we have previously seen and quite a lot of adventure-thriller along with the mystery.

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula*

I’m reporting back in on this one as I featured it in release week. As I said in that post, I was hoping for something in the Emily Wilde, Legends and Lattes ends of the spectrum when I started reading it, but having finished it’s actually closer to the Shades of Magic ends of the spectrum. It’s not a apocalypse-end-of-the-whole-world scenario here but it is very much life and death and future of society one. It’s also got a lot more religion in it than I was expecting – I wasn’t expecting a religious inquisition and battle between church and magic type situation from the blurb either. It felt a lot like Philippa Gregory Tudor fiction-type stakes but in a Victorian setting and with dinosaurs (and Gregory does have magic in some of hers so maybe that’s fair?) and that wasn’t really what I was hoping for – and I’m note sure that’s what the blurb is selling so there may well be a mismatch of expectations of readers going in with what is delivered. There is a second book and there are plot threads left hanging, but I’m not sure I care enough to slog through it when it comes out to find out!

Mr Campion’s Fox by Mike Ripley

One of my holiday reads was a new murder mystery by Mike Ripley that’s coming out at the start of June. I enjoyed it (more on that closer to the time) and when I was looking at Goodreads I realised that Ripley has written some Albert Campion continuations and that I had some of them on the pile and went back to try one. This is 1960s set and sees Campion recruited by the Danish ambassador to observe an unsuitable man that his daughter has become entangled with. But when the daughter goes missing and the boyfriend turns up dead, Albert – along with his wife and son – are in the middle of a mystery again. This has got all the regulars that you could hope for in a Campion book and the setting was reminiscent of Sweet Danger (one of my favourites of the season) but I didn’t love the actual writing style – it wasn’t quite Allingham and I think I might like Ripley more when he’s writing as himself. I do have another of these on the pile so I will give that a go and see how that one pans out.

And that’s your lot for this month. In case you missed them the other April Recommensdays were Recent Romance reads, Non-fiction about Literary Figures and What I read on my Holiday. The books of the week were Sky High, While You were Seething, D is for Death and How to Solve Your Own Murder.

Happy Humpday!

book round-ups

Recommendsday: What I Read on my Holiday Spring 2026 edition

veritywilde

Happy Wednesday everyone. As you know now I was on holiday for nearly the last two weeks, so it seems only fair that this week’s Recommendsday is a round up of some of the books that I read on my sunlounger. You will be hearing about some of the others too, but here are the ones that don’t obviously fit in with something else that I have planned or that I thought I ought to report back on,

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

This is the fifth Thursday Murder Club mystery, and I would have read this last holiday if the last holiday hadn’t started (inconveniently) the week before it was released. Now I know that I don’t usually review later books in series because: spoilers, but we left the gang at a moment where things had changed at the end of the last book and I wanted to report back in on what the mood of the next book was. Now this is going to be slightly euphimistic (for spoiler based reasons) but I think the theme of this book for the core gang in many ways is recovery. But there’s also a really good heisty-murder mystery plot going on that keeps you entertained. I read more bits of this than I should have done out loud to Him Indoors (it’s a wonder he puts up with me) and it also made me teary eyed a couple of times. I continue to be in awe of Richard Osman – he comes up with great plots and interesting characters and knows exactly what he’s doing with how he writes his books to make them appeal to the widest possible audience, fully aware that for some (lots?) of people reading them they may be one of a very few books that person reads each year. That said if he makes many (any?) more in jokes about the casting of the movie version of the first book I might revise my opinion.

Murder on the Bernina Express by J G Colgan

This is a much less enthusiastic review I’m afraid, but I’m putting it in here because I read this after having recommended (ish) Colgan’s Christmas novel back in December. This is a murder mystery thriller set on a train travelling Switzerland on the eve of the Munich Conference of 1938. While the train is stopped on a famous viaduct (for weather reasons) a man on board is murdered. The murderer can only be someone on board, but the Swiss police can’t get to the train. And so the investigation is conducted remotely – with the train’s conductor (and eventually some of the passengers) enlisted to help. This is a great premise, and I think there’s a good plot in there. But it’s really let down by continuity issues, contractions and poor editing and proof reading and feels like it was published in a rush to try and follow up on that first book. In my review of that I said that it was readable but didn’t stick the landing, this is less good than that – I found myself having to go back and read sections more than once because I thought I had missed a piece of information or because something didn’t make sense. I think there is still potential here but the author really needs to take a bit more time over the process and do at least one more editing pass before they put things out – I’m not sure if I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt to read another one after this one, which is a shame because I think there is promise there.

Betrayal by Tom Bower

Last holiday I read Andrew Lownie’s Entitled, so this holiday I bought this year’s “big” royal book and to be honest it was a bit of a disappointment. I get that Meghan and Harry are a couple that seem to inspire strong reactions and so perhaps the writers just cater to one side or the other but that’s not what I want. I want something that feels at least like it’s trying to be even handed and came to a conclusion after doing the research (rather than finding the data that backs the author’s hypothesis up) but maybe I’ve just read Gaudy Night and it’s discussion about sound and unsound scholarship too much and this is popular non fiction. That said, the Lownie felt more rigorous than this for sure and it’s a similar market. But perhaps the principals on both sides of this are so entrenched that as an author your sources are either one side or the other and that’s it. I remain convinced that at some point there will be a good book about this whole saga though.

That’s your lot today – Happy Humpday!

book round-ups, non-fiction, Recommendsday

Recommendsday: Non fiction round up – Literary Figures edition

veritywilde

It’s been a while, so for this Wednesday’s post I have a non-fiction Recommendsday for you. And as promised yesterday, it sort of ties in with D is for Death a little bit which is a delightful coincidence that I didn’t really realise when I started reading D is for Death after I finished Square Haunting last week – which was the last book I needed to finish reading to finish this post off!

Square Haunting by Francesca Wade

This is a group biography of literary and academic women who are loosely tied together by having lived in Mecklenberg Square. The most celebrated of the five is Virginia Woolf who is the final of the five, but the one that I was most interested in (unsurprisingly) was Dorothy L Sayers – who was living in Mecklenberg Square when she created Peter Wimsey. I’ve written about my love of Sayers’s Gaudy Night before, but the problem at the core of that book, can a woman have her own life and intellectual pursuits and identity and be in a relationship, is a key theme running through this whole book too. The early 20th century was a time when a woman’s right to an academic education was still a matter of debate, and several of the women in this book were at the vanguard of the fight. I found some of the lives more interesting than others (as is always the case) but definitely wouldn’t have heard of or known anything about some of the women without having picked the book up because of the Sayers of it all. Definitely worth reading and one of the more successful group biographies I’ve read. And just to tie it back to D is For Death, here’s a link to a podcast where Harriet Evans and Francesca Wade are talking about Gaudy Night. You’re welcome.

Five Love Affairs and a Friendship by Anne de Courcy

Cover of Five Love Affairs and a Friendship

Anne de Courcy turns her focus on Nancy Cunard in this one. Cunard was an heiress (her father was one of the shipping line Cunards) and was part of a pre-Great War literary circle and then went on to spend the 1920s deeply enmeshed in the literary movement in Paris. She was a muse to many writers of the time – some of whom were also her lovers – and set up her own literary press, before going on to fight racism and fascism. She led quite a sad life in many ways – and this book doesn’t shy away from that, but it’s a really interesting read and a good look at the Parisian side of the roaring twenties. I’m not sure it’s your best place to start with de Courcy though – if you haven’t read any of her books before I might start with The Fishing Fleet or Chanel’s Riviera.

The Crichel Boys by Simon Fenwick

paperback copy of The Crichel Boys on a sun lounger

This is a group biography of Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Eardley Knollys who bought Long Crichel Rectory in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. Later they are joined by Raymond Mortimer to form a sort of surrogate family and literary Salon (per the author) that lasted across the rest of the century. I’d never heard of this before I saw the book, but they seemed adjacent to the sort of inter-war Bright Young Things set that I’m always fascinated by (and have read a lot about at this point) so I gave it a go. The big problem for me is that there’s not actually enough to say about the core four (so to speak) so it has to expand out to the rest of their circle. And while that does include Nancy Mitford, Cecil Beaton, various Bloomsbury-set types, Benjamin Britten and more, in doing that there’s a lot of jumping backwards and forwards in time as you get sections on various people and it starts to get very confusing. So not entirely successful, but not a disaster either – Square Haunting definitely worked better!Almost the best thing about it for me was the passing mention of Gervase Jackson-Stops and Horton Menagerie – which is just down the road from where I grew up.

Happy Humpday!

Recommendsday, romance

Recommendsday: Recent Romance Reads

veritywilde

It’s Wednesday again and today I’ve got three reviews for you of romance novels that I’ve read in the last little while. These are all new – or relatively new – releases. The is the newest because Alisha Rai came out last week and the Jeevani Charika is the oldest and came out in November.

Enemies to Lovers by Alisha Rai*

Sejal’s got some issues: her parents were on both the wrong side of the law, also each other and sometimes her. This means that there are also some unsavoury people after her and she’s been trying to lie low. Krish’s brother has gone missing, and he’s pretty sure Sejal’s crime family have got something to do with it. So he does what any self respecting brother would do: pretends to be an FBI agent and persuade Sejal to help him find his brother. This means an epic cross country road trip where a grudging truce starts to seem like it’s turning into something else. I have a mixed record with career criminals but I love a road trip novel and I’ve really enjoyed some of Alisha Rai’s other series (including the complicated characters in the Forbidden Love series) so this was a no-brainer for me to read. However – it is the second in a series and I hadn’t read the first so I think I would have got more out of it if I had. That said it’s a twisty romantic-suspense that’s at the less scary end of the spectrum with really interesting and complicated protagonists who are both hiding plenty of things from each other and from themselves. It took a bit longer than I was expecting for me to get into it, but I did enjoy it a lot.

How Can I Resist You by Jeevani Charika*

Vidya is on a work trip to Waterloo Bay. Or at least that’s the main reason that she’s there. The other reason is that her sister came to a work party and hooked up with one of Vidya’s colleagues and can’t remember who and as the sensible sister Vidya is trying to find out who it is – based on a vague description and a shoulder tattoo. One of the suspects is Leo – handsome, furstrating and above all a colleague. This is a fun rom-com with a buttoned up rule following hero and a heroine who feels like she’s always trying to fix her sister’s problems. This took me a little bit to get into, I think because of the involvement of a trope that I don’t love (which I can’t tell you because it’s a spoiler) but it’s only a tangential thing mostly and once I got into it I was properly up and running. I liked the work trip setting – all the worrying about the HR issues that are thrown up by trying to see a colleague’s tattoo on a part of their body that is usually covered by clothing from Vidya and from Leo’s side the fact that Vidya’s a colleague and he’s been burnt by that before. Also there’s a seagull. This is the fifth book by Charika that I’ve read and although The Winner Bakes It All is still my favourite, this is pretty good too.

Falling for the Rabbi by Jennifer Wilck*

Josh is a Rabbi whose grandmother has got a matchmaker involved to try and find him a partner. Except when he turns up on the first date that the matchmaker has arranged she has bought her best friend along with her – a best friend who happens to be the same person who is buying his grandmother’s house. Emma is buying the house so that she can fulfill her dream of starting her own business and opening a bookshop. The two of them have more chemistry than Josh does with his actual date, but are there too many obstacles in the way for them to have their happy ending. This was my first actual Harlequin-Harlequin romance in I don’t know how long and I thought the premise was really promising. However it felt a little 2D in the execution – the side characters felt very black and white and you didn’t really get to know a lot about Josh or Emma’s inner life beyond her issues with trust and his with change. Now I would say that this is partly a limitation of the format, except that I’ve read some really good Harlequin/Mills and Boons that managed to flesh out the characters and conflicts really well – and this is a Harlequin special edition, so I think it actually has more pages/word count at it’s disposal than some. Still, it’s always nice to read a romance with a bookshop owner and it was a perfectly find way to pass a few hours.

Happy Humpday everyone!