It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so here I am with some quick reviews of some books I read last month that I haven’t already told you about. I had a lot of books that I didn’t like last month, but I’ve tried to moderate myself and give you some stuff I actually did like!
Laura Clark is Away from Her Desk by Helen Russell*
Laura Clark is a 40-something HR manager, married to a golf-obsessd husband with a 19 year-old daughter who is drifting towards the end of a gap year with no idea what comes next and a mother who constantly calls on her to ask for things or complain. But one day Laura doesn’t turn up for work, disappears from her home and stops answering her phone. Gradually the people in Laura’s life find their lives descending into chaos without her there to perform the invisible labour they had all taken for granted. This is told from the point of view of one of Laura’s work colleagues, her husband, her daughter and her best friend and as you read you build a picture of a deeply unappreciated woman moving through her life without anyone doing anything for her. The collapse of everyone else’s lives is humourous to read, but actually I found this suprisingly bleak – the idea that Laura had been slogging on through all of their grunt work without anyone noticing is chilling. Luckily I thought the ending pulled it around or I might have been really quite depressed by the end!
In Dog We Trust by Beth Kendrick
Jocelyn is a town person and her mother has always told her to stay away from summer people – except for providing them with their clean laundry as part of the family business. But when she is named legal guardian for a pack of pedigree dogs she finds herself thrust into the rich side of town. But along with the dogs comes their owner’s estranged son who is determined to overturn the will…This is the fifth book in this series and I’ve read the first two and really enjoyed them and skipped a few to get to this one and it’s fine – but it’s not as good as the first two. I appreciated the subtle commentary on class but I did want to give some of the characters a bit of a shake at times. I think if I hadn’t enjoyed the previous two so much I would have enjoyed this more – I was just holding it to a higher standard!
When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden
This is a retrospective on the beloved TV series written by its creators. If you like the show, you’ll enjoy the insider information in this – I really liked learning how the show evolved from its original form into the show that we all loved. James Corden has a bad rap (rep?) as a person these days but Gavin and Stacey is a masterpiece and his rapport with Ruth is charming. If you like the show you’ll like this, but if you like the behind the scenes of how things get made, this is also interesting.
Happy Wednesday everyone. I’ve already done one set of murders set on boats, but I’m back with even more this week. And I’m not ruling out a third post in the further – because there’s the latest Three Dahlias that I still haven’t read and I’m sure I can find some more…
Death on Lusitania by R L Graham*
Set on the Lusitania in 1915, if you’ve spent any time looking at maritime history around this time you’ll know that the omens are not good for the passengers on board the voyage from New York to Liverpool, but on board is Patrick Gallagher, who in charge of getting a disgraced diplomat back to Britain. Gallagher is a former sailor turned civil servant of a fairly specific type and when another passenger is found shot dead in a locked room, the captain asks him to investigate. He quickly uncovers a range of people who could have wanted the victim dead and the countdown is on until they enter the war zone. This is a carefully constructed mystery, that moved a bit slower than I wanted it too initially until all the twists and turns really started to kick in. The pace did pick up as the end approached, but the actual ending was over pretty quickly. I liked Patrick as a character though and I’m pleased to see that there is another book featuring him because there are definitely some lose ends left about him and his personal life.
Murder Below Deck by Orlando Murrin*
This is the second book about Paul Delamare, and after the murderous events of the first book he’s been inveigled into a trip on a super yacht to help a friend write her memoirs. Except that once he gets on board things start going wrong and all is definitely not quite what it seems. I really enjoyed Knife Skills for Beginners as you may remember and was really pleased to be back in Paul’s world again. A book set on a super yacht felt like it was something a bit different but I think this plot is more far-fetched (I can’t really say why because: spoilers) but it moves so quickly that you don’t really notice that until the end when you have time to think about it. It has got a large cast of pretty unlikeable characters outside of Paul and the claustrophobia of the limited communications on the yacht really adds to the tension. I enjoyed it and will happily read a third book if it should come along.
Murphy’s Law by Rhys Bowen
This is the first in Rhys Bowen’s Molly Murphy series and is a little bit of a cheat because the murder happens at Ellis Island just after Molly has got off the ship to New York, but a lot of the build up to it is on the ship. Molly is fleeing to America after committing murder in self defence. She’s also travelling under an assumed name and looking after children that aren’t hers, so being prime suspect in a murder investigation really isn’t what she needs. This also looks at the Tammany Hall corruption of the era as Molly tries to clear her name and keep her chance to stay in America. It’s a promising start to a series – I will read some more just as soon a as I get the to read pile down!
A couple of years ago now, in spring 2023 I read a pair of books about a famous person and a normal (or normalish) person – Nora Goes Off Script and Romantic Comedyby Curtis Sittenfeld. Since then I’ve read a bunch more because it really seems to be a trend, and since then we e had a positive rash of romances about campus people and normal people, or just involving famous or famous adjacent people. And I suspect the flood is not over yet because Parasocial relationships with famous people means these things sell. So for this week’s Recommendsday I’ve got a bit of a round of some of the others that I’ve read. And be warned, this is less a list of recommendations, more a survey of my reading…
The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord
The premise here is good (if a bit far fetched) – with two former best friends doing some fake dating to reclaim the narrative after their respective relationship breakups go viral – but the reality of it is that I found it a really frustrating read. Neither the hero nor the heroine seems capable of using their words ever, and almost everything about their relationship (or lack thereof) and everything that goes wrong could have been sorted with a proper conversation. Add to that the fact that the heroine is both too stupid/naïve to live as well Peak Not Like Other Girls and the hero is incapable of making a decision on his own, and the only reason I made it to the end of this was to see if her ex got sufficient comeuppance for dumping her for his reality TV show co-star. Spoiler: he did get some comeuppance, but not really at the hands of the heroine. Which given how the rest of the book had gone for her was unsurprising by that point. Deeply, deeply annoying.
Love Songs and Ferry Tales by Julie Farley
This is a famous person-normal person type romance set on an island in the Pacific Northwest. Although there were things I liked about it, the pacing didn’t feel quite right to me – the ending wrapped up far too fast and didn’t quite resolve everything that the prior narrative felt it should have done. And your tolerance for deception may impact how much you enjoy the romance as the heroine doesn’t know the hero’s real identity for quite a lot of the book (and your ability to believe she wouldn’t have recognised him). A couple of the characters are meant to be British – but you wouldn’t really know except for odd bits of (not remotely accurate*) British trivia dropped in from time to time- which as a Brit really annoyed me! Also for me her brothers tipped over from fun comic relief into meanness. So not entirely successful for me – in fact I downgraded it a star on Goodreads while writing this review when I realised how much about it annoyed me!
How to Fake it In Hollywood by Ava Wilder
Grey’s role in a long running show has just ended and she needs to give her career a boost. So she agrees to a fake relationship with a troubled heartthrob. Ethan is newly divorced, newly sober and in mourning for his best friend; but he wants to produce the last movie they wrote together so he agrees to the plan to try and get everything back on track. And obviously sparks fly. This is another where I have distinctly mixed feelings. I bought it off the back of the preview, but for me the rest of the book doesn’t live up to the promise of that. It’s a fake relationship trope which I love but there’s not enough character development and growth here for me. There are some similar issues going on with Ethan and the hero to Funny You Should Ask, but in that book you get to spend large amounts of time with later Gabe and see that he really has changed and got a handle on stuff. You don’t have that here, and I’m not sure that I actually wanted them to end up together – I think Grey deserved better or at least more time to see that Ethan really has sorted himself out. Never mind.
I also read Melissa Ferguson’s Famous for a Living a year or two back which probably falls within the scope of this post- it’s about an influencer who goes to work at a national park in Montana after her career implodes and a rugged park ranger. When you read it, it’s more a voyage of self discovery than a romance – and there’s a lot of heavy lifting on that front done at the end. Still I did want to visit the national park afterwards, even if I didn’t love the book!
And that’s your lot. You could probably add Thank you for Listening to this list, but I’ve already written about it once and this is meant to be stuff I haven’t told you about before, but I did like it more than I like any of the three I have written about here so there’s that in its favour!
Happy Humpday!
*spoilers ahead: the hero grew up in Watford which is described as “Our town is far enough outside of London to not be a commuter town. Most people work in the factories and businesses nearby” and at one point says “ Sam and I took the Tube in a couple of times in high school, but we never had enough money to do anything once we got there.” The idea that Watford is not a commuter town is absolutely laughable and that someone living there would only have been into London from there a couple of times as a teen is frankly insane. I commute through Watford every week day and it is a) only 15 miles from central London and b) inside the tfl network so is actually massive commuter area as is evidenced by the fact that my train fills to full and standing only every time it stops there. Its like saying that no one from New Jersey commutes in to New York to work. Thus I suspect that the author has never been to Britain.
As ever, the first Wednesday of the Month is quick reviews day and I’m back with three more books I read last month that I haven’t talked about yet.
Murder-Sur-Mer by Hugh Morrison
This is the third in Morrison’s Clarice and Cliff series and sees our titular leads tying the knot and heading off on honeymoon to France. Of course crime follows them there – in the form of a murdered jewel thief in their hotel room. The French police seem to them to be making slow progress and determined to look in the wrong places so they take it upon themselves to try and solve the crime. I don’t like this series as much as the Rev Shaw mysteries but this was a light, easy read even if I had the rough outlines of the solution figured out fairly early on. I don’t know if the fact that I’ve been listening to the Miss Marple series has made me a bit fussier at the moment but that can’t be ruled out as a factor in my opinion on this one. Still I liked it the most of the books I’m writing about here today – and I’ll be keeping an eye for the next one – they’re definitely a step above the J G Colgan that I mentioned last month.
The Truth About Love by Stephanie Laurens
This is the twelfth book in Laurens’ Cynster series. I’ve read the first six and then 14th as well. This one was written 20 years ago, which probably counts as an old school romance at this point and it did feel a bit like it – that or my tastes have changed, although to be fair I did start reading historical romances of this sort in around 2008 so it’s not that old school for me! Anyway our hero is Gerrard Debbington a painter who is desperate to paint the gardens of Hellebore Hall, but the only way the owner Lord Tregonning will let him do that is if he also paints a portrait of his daugher, Jacqueline. And Jacqueline is (of course) our heroine, she’s been the target of rumour and innuendo since the disappearance of her suitor and the death of her mother, and is hoping the portrait will help clear her. And of course they fall in love but also solve the mysteries. And I was much more interested in the mystery solving than I was in the romance, but maybe that’s just me. It’s a bit gothic and a lot overblown (anyone actually believe that a portrait can reveal guilt or innocence?) but as I found it on the bookshelf at the hostel I didn’t spend anything on it and and so I can’t complain too much. That said, it was a really useful indication of how my reading tastes change and evolve – it’s the first Laurens I’ve read in some years and as I didn’t love it, I took the opportunity to clear some space on the to-read shelf by checking for any physical copies of Laurens on there and moving them to the charity shop bag!
The Murder on the Enriqueta by Molly Thynne
I read this thinking it was going to be another murder on a boat story – but although the first murder does indeed take place on a voyage from Argentina to Britain, despite what you might take from the blurb the main action happens after that boat journey in London. Chief Inspector Shand is on board ship for that murder and finds himself drawn into events in London because also on board ship is the widow of Lord Dalberry, making her way to England after the death of her husband where two young cousins of her husband encounter her. In terms of plot this is as bonkers as some of the maddest of the Girl’s Own books – I’m talking C Bernard Rutley and Rita Coutts level madness here – but it’s no where near as easy to read. I’ve read two of Thynne’s other books and enjoyed them much more than this one which I can’t really recommend.
Verdict of Twelve was a BotW in July and Sky High back in April, but generally my rate of reading BLCC books has slowed a little this year as I try to do some work on the actual to read pile and the Netgalley backlog. But I’m back now with another BLCC round up. And all of these actually feature artists – which I only realised as I added the last review, it wasn’t at all intentional but as I do like a mystery about artists I’m embracing it and changed the title of the post accordingly – it was originally the much more boring BLCC Summer 2026!
The Double Turn by Carol Carnac
Adrian Delafield used to be a celebrated painter, but these days the old man is a recluse at his home in St John’s Wood, jealously guarded by his housekeeper Miss Trimming. But when she is found dead at the bottom of the stairs, and Delafield is found badly hurt after seemingly trying to help her, the police – and some of people around the household are not convinced it was an accident – despite the fact that the house was locked tight. This is a relatively recent release, hot on the heels of the success of other Carnacs for the BLCC and it’s a really good one. This is a nice variation on the theme – Delafield is very much a relic of a prior artistic era, a curiosity that has been (mostly) forgotten. His household is fascinating – and has that staple of the mystery genre: a religious fanatic, but there is a backstory to it (more than you get in many of these!) that means you do come to understand how Miss Trimming might have turned out the way she did. Well worth a look – probably my favourite of this selection.
Death Knows No Calendar by John Bude
This is the second half of a BLCC double bill of John Bude. I did read the first one as well, but I’m focusing on the second one (which is the better one of the two). It’s a locked room mystery in an artists studio with plenty of candidates for the killer to be investigated by local retired soldier Major Boddy. This has a more adventure-y streak than a lot of Golden Age Crime, but Bude does tend towards that at times. This is listed as being part of the Inspector Meredith series, but don’t be fooled – he’s not in it, but it is apparently in the same universe as the ones that do. If you haven’t read any Bude before and you’re not wedded to reading a book about an artist, I’d start with The Lake District Murder or The Cheltenham Square Murder.
The Spoilt Kill by Mary Kelly
The artist in this one is primarily a designer of pottery patterns, so it’s maybe a little stretch, but she’s clearly doing other drawing in her spare time (you see them as part of the plot) so I say it counts! Anyway an old established pottery company in Stoke on Trent is having its designs stolen by the competition and then undercut. So they call in a private detective to investigate where the leak is coming from but while Hedley Nicholson is investigating, he finds more is going on than just industrial espionage – even before a worker is found in a vat of liquid clay. This isn’t quite in the common way of mystery books as it’s very character driven and introspective and feels noir-ish in the way it paints a picture of the Potteries and the people Nicholson encounters while he’s investigating. I think I liked The Christmas Egg more, but both are grittier and darker than many other BLCCs – and are also set in the post-war period rather than the interwar one. There is another book featuring Nicholson available in the series and I suspect I’ll read it when I get a chance.
I always think of August as being Peak Summer, but I think that’s because the whole month was summer holidays when we were at school and that sort of thing sticks with you doesn’t it? Anyway, another bumper batch of books on offer for you this Wednesday – hide your wallets!
Orlando Murrin’s second Paul Delmere mystery Murder Below Deck is on offer (still no news on whether we’re getting a third in that series) as is the third Three Dahlias book Seven Lively Suspects, There’s also Marple, the Miss Marple short story collection I mentioned in my anticipated books post the other week, my mileage definitely varied but others liked it more. The same could be said for Maggie Stiefvater‘s The Listeners which I thought had great promise at the start but then tailed off.
In things I have on the pile but haven’t read yet, there’s The Secret Lives of Murderers Wives, Kirsty Greenwood’s latest Romantic Hero, and the second in Ashley Herring Blake‘s Clover Lake series, Get Over It April Evans ahead of the release of the third book at the end of September. In things I bought while writing this post, there’s Andrew Ross Sorkin’s 1929 and the new Rachel Lynn Solomons Extracurricular, which has teacher-student stuff going on so may or may not work for me but I liked her previous stuff enough that I’m taking the chance.
And if that’s not enough, I don’t know what would be!
It’s the first Wednesday of the month and you know what that means – it’s Quick Review o’clock. So here we go with three reviews of books I read last month that I haven’t already talked about!
Unselected Journals of Emma M Lion by Beth Brower*
It’s 1883 and Emma M Lion has just arrived back in London to take up residence at her home. But there are obstacles in her way as this first volume of her journals from Lapis Lazuli House details. This is novella length and very amusing – but leaves you with a lot of questions about Emma’s backstory, which presumably get answered in the following volumes. It’s a great way to make you read more and more, but sometimes when you’re reading it and missing great dollops of information so that you can decide what’s really going on I did find myself being a little cynical about the drip-drip of information. But the fact that I’ve gave it four stars on Goodreads shows you how much I enjoyed it despite that slight side-eye! Apologies for the terrible photo – I read it on NetGalley but I also spotted it in the wild while I was out in Bath last week!
How To Lose a Lord in Ten Days by Sophie Irwin*
This was… not what I was hoping for. I should have been more literal with the title’s equivalence to the romantic comedy of a similar name and been more prepared for the prank war that ensued between the heroine and hero for most of the book. It was too cringe-embarrassing for me and I ended up really disliking the pair of them because of it. And I’m still not sure by the end what they actually saw in each other beyond someone to play tricks on, and as that’s not what I think of as a successful relationship I didn’t really buy the ending. I liked Irwin’s first book, liked the second one less and then this one less than that. Her next book is an “official” Georgette Heyer novel (which is why I read this one now) and now I have a slightly trepidatious feeling about that – but here’s hoping it’s more like A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting than what has come since.
Broadcast Murder by J G Colgan
This is my third Colgan – and I was hoping this would be closer to The Christmas Alibi than Murder on the Bernina Express, but alas it’s the latter. The idea is good but more work is needed on several fronts. Firstly, I had the murderer spotted too early, secondly it needs a bit more research and thirdly it needs a better edit. In fact the thirdly could maybe be the firstly because if you had a good editor they’d spot some of the issues and flag them so they could be fixed. Because some of them are small (but careless) – like the white line that’s at the bottom of the cover design (that I’ve cropped off in my photo) and some of them are small but annoying like this one which I maybe the only person it annoyed but again: “The lift was old. It had the kind of brass fittings that spoke of a time when even functional objects were expected to be beautiful, and the kind of creaking, groaning movement that spoke of a mechanism that had been in constant use for longer than anyone cared to remember.” Why is it annoying? This is a book set in 1937, the lift in question is in Broadcasting House, which opened in …1932. So if you know, it lifts you out of the story and makes you read everything else more critically. So in summary: promising but needs more work before it’s released to the demanding masses (like me!) especially given the British-Library-Crime-Classic-alike cover style.
Happy Wednesday everyone, and I’m back today with another post of first books in mystery series, to follow on from last year’s dedicated mystery series post and to a lesser extent this post which does at least have a non mystery in it too. As you know I’m always looking for my next bingeable series to add to my lists as other series finish, which can go either way (I’ve read – or tried to read – some real dross over the years) but with all of today’s series I’ve read at least one more in the series already.
Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
This is the first in a (now long-running) series about Guido Brunetti, a Commisario of police in Venice. This was actually written in the early 1990s – but it doesn’t feel dated in style or the actual mystery, it’s just the lack of mobile phones and references to lire, marks and a character who may or may not have been an actual Nazi that remind you that this is thirty years old. Anyway, in this first in the series, Brunetti is investigating the death of a renowned conductor who dies in his dressing room of cyanide poisoning in the interval of a performance of an opera that he was conducting. I really loved the portrait of Venice in the book (this was written a few years before I visited Venice as a child and I loved that) and the characters are all really well drawn and developed. It’s perhaps a little bit darker than the sunny orange cover and mass market mystery size would have you believe – but not so grim that I wouldn’t read more of them if they came my way. I picked this up in Judd Books by the way, which is a total example of what I meant in that post about discovering something completely new to you.
Murder at the Fitzwilliam by Jim Eldridge
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This is the first in a mystery series set in the 1890s, where our detective is former Detective Inspector Daniel Wilson, who helped investigate the Jack the Ripper murders when he was a police officer. Now retired, he’s working as a private enquiry agent and is called in to investigate after a body is found in the Egyptian collection at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. As well as a hostile police officer, he also has to content with Abigail Fenton, an archaeologist who cataloguing the museum’s collection and found the body. This is a pretty easy read, there are a few twists to the mystery as the body count rises although I had the culprit worked out relatively early on. I would read more of these if they were in Kindle Unlimited – but at the moment only this one is.
Scot Free by Catriona McPherson
This is the first in a contemporary, American-set murder mystery series from Catriona McPherson, of Dandy Gilver fame. Our heroine is Lexy Campbell, a fish out of water transplant from Scotland to California. She made the move because she’d fallen in love but now, mere months later, she’s divorced and heading back home, just as soon as she clears one of her counselling clients of murdering her husband. This has a lighter and more humorous tone than her historical series – I think it’s aiming for Steph Plum sort of vibes. I’m not sure Lexy is a great counsellor, as she seems pretty clueless about her own personal life but it was fun enough that I’ve read the second one since reading this. How many more I read may depend on whether they turn up in Kindle Unlimited though!
After doing Books with Sports earlier in the year and first sports romances post back in 2024, I’m back with a sequel because we are now deep into the Summer of Sport – England play Argentina tonight for a place in the World Cup Final on Sunday, the Wimbledon finals were last weekend and the Commonwealth Games start next week – I’ve got two sports romances for you too. And it’s only two because the reviews are slightly extended, because I had *a lot* to say!
Abby Offsides by Anna McCallie*
This is about an American social media manager who runs away to the UK and gets a job working on a Premier League club’s social accounts. The club is basically Liverpool (but it’s called Mersey) and soon Abby’s forming a friendship with the club’s latest signing – Lachlan – who is returning to the club he grew up at. When she has to move out of her flatshare, she moves into his spare room, but is it really a friendship or is there chemistry for something more? I think this is going to be a divisive one – and it’s worth noting that the blurb and cover are very different on the UK and US version. The UK cover is the one above – the US one is the one below.
The US is more women’s fiction coded, but the UK one has a very different sell and blurb – including on NetGalley where I got it from. And the difference is something so fundamental to the plot that I might not have requested it if I didn’t know about it – and that is that the hero is married. This isnt me Toones in the UK blurb, but the US one does has a reference: “despite the nagging guilt she feels about Lachlan’s mysterious wife who didn’t relocate with her husband.”
I’m not a hardcore no cheating in my novels person, but it’s a tricky line to tread. And the problem is that this is trying to tread it with a heroine who met the hero in the workplace, and is not acting at all professionally – beyond the wife issue, Abby is also keeping it a secret from her bosses that she’s living in his flat and to top it all off she’s working in sport, which is an area where women struggle to be accepted and treated as equals and has been told by her boss that they’re not interested in employing people who want to be WAGs. And yet, there she is. Oh and the whole reason she’s in the UK in the first place is because her fiancé cheated on her… I think under normal circumstances – with any other conflict at the centre of it – this would have been a book where I would have read it, and then realised afterwards when I was trying to analyse it that I had more issues with it than I thought. But because I was already analysing and thinking about the cheating issue I was reading with a more sceptical and critical lens than I might otherwise have been. But your mileage on this may vary depending on whether you were expecting “a novel” or “a romance”. This came out at the end of June and it’s 99p on Kindle and Kobo this month – so if you want to read it and tell me what you think, the outlay is small!
First and Forever by Lynn Painter
Duffy is a huge fan of her local NFL team, but she’s become enemy number one with the fans after she shoved the team’s mascot away from her for being a creep. She goes on to a TV show to try and clear her name – only to find herself face to face with Connor Cunningham, the team’s star player. The team is on a terrible run, but Connor is their star – and desperate to stay with the team who he suspects are going to trade their best players away as part of their rebuild plan*. So when the team ask him to take Duffy out on a date after their TV appearance generates some good press – he just can’t tell her what’s going on. You know where this is going.
This reads a bit new adult, and Duffy is a bit Not Like Other Girls as well as oblivious, but I’d rather have Duffy than Abby from the last book. A simple conversation could have fixed the issues in their relationship and Duffy’s family are terrible to her in a sort of oblivious way rather than a mean one, but it’s pretty readable and non-toxic NFL romance. Do I prefer the Chicago Stars series? Yes. But is it better than any of the Tessa Bailey Sports romances I’ve tried? Also yes. This is a pretty new release – it came out at the end of May and it’s also 99p on Kindle and Kobo at the moment, so again it’s not a big outlay and I liked this more than I liked Abby Offsides, so this one is more of a recommendation than the other one.
Also, this is a great opportunity to tell you that if you read that last post and remember me mentioning a massive hanging plot thread in the Simone Soltani book that the third book in that series, Crash Into You, comes out in August and is about the driver at the centre of that hanging plot thread – so we finally know that Zaid suffered two broken wrists which is not as life threatening as the first book implied (although definitely potentially career threatening) unless I’m missing something mega. Given that I didn’t love Cross the Line and the blurb for this says it’s also a pregnancy plot, I will probably give this one a miss – but that may well be right up some of your streets.
On the books I’d like to read front, Playing for Keeps by Alexandria Bellefleur which came out in January, is sports adjacent – featuring Poppy, a publicist for an NFL quarterback and Rosaline, the publicist for a popstar whose two client start a romance (yes, it’s also Tayvis adjacent) and I’ve got The Open Era on the Kindle although I’m not sure that’s actually a romance-romance for all that it’s recommended for “fans of Heated Rivalry and Challengers”.
Happy Humpday!
*This is an actual thing that NFL teams do try when they’re doing really, really badly – the Miami Dolphins seem to be currently trying it for the second time this decade!
It’s the second Wednesday of the month, and while we swelter through another heatwave (at least it’s July this time I guess?) it’s time for some Kindle deals.
Lets start with some of the ones that I bought while writing this post Kills Well With Others by Deanna Raybourn, which is the sequel to Killers of a Certain Age, which is 99p and I think for the first time. The third Castle Knoll book – How to Cheat Your Own Death – which only came out in April is 99p too, as is Uniform Justice by Donna Leon which is is the 12th in the Commissario Brunetti series which I’ve just started reading. And I also bought The Final Problem, which is a murder mystery set on a Greek Island whee an aging actor most known for playing Sherlock Holmes finds himself investigating a death and Murder at Canterbury Cathedral by Jim Eldridge whose Museum Mysteries I’ve been reading recently.
A couple of my favourite Georgette Heyers are 99p this month – Venetia and These Old Shades as is What Happens in London from Julia Quinn‘s Bevelstoke series. And Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Casting Off is 99p too – this is my favourite in the Cazalet series I think (because it ties everything together so well) and I actually saw someone reading a paperback copy of this on the train last week and it made me *so* happy.
In stuff I haven’t read but that sounds interesting, there’s Hannah Bonham-Young’s Out on a Limb about a friends with benefits that turns to more in what I suspect is a pregnancy plot, I also bought Father Material which is down to 99p just a month after release, and First and Forever by Lynn Painter and The Lives and Deaths of the Princesses of Hesse which is a biography of four of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters. And surely that’s enough for this month. I hope your wallet has fared better than mine did when I was writing this.
