Hello! After last week’s fog of misery and gloom, you’ll be pleased to hear I’m in a slightly better place in my head. I’m not quite back to normal yet, so this is still not your normal BotW post. Instead, here’s a brief snapshot of what I read last week.
So, there was a double dose of Janet Evanovich – Steph Plum 18 and Full Tilt, one of her romantic suspenses with Charlotte Hughes. The Plum was quite a good one – not my favourite, but not quite as strangely magic-inflected as 17 so I was happy. I’m still not sure what I make of the Full series – they’re not as fun as the other Evanovich series, but I get the feeling that if I just happened across them and they were an author that wasn’t Janet Evanovich I’d feel more enthusiastic about them!
I also finished The Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard last week. This had been popping up in my recommendations lists all over the place and I mostly liked it. I thought it had a slump at about two thirds of the way through – where I started to lose faith in the outcome, but it recovered and I was enjoying it again at the end. I’m not sure if I’ll be reading the follow-ups though. But that might be because it is quite dark, and I was in a dark place last week so it may not have been ideal reading matter for me!
Then there was Death before Decaf by Caroline Fardig, which NetGalley pitched to me as “if you love Janet Evanovich, then you’ll like this” – and while it didn’t quite live up to that billing (heroine a little too stupid to live, love triangle feeling a bit forced) I can see where the comparison was coming from. A perfectly fine way to spend a few hours though.
Cathy Bramley’s latest, Conditional Love, brightened my mood a lot in the middle of the week – it’s this month’s Novelicious Book Club book – you can read my thoughts here and we’re chatting on Twitter tonight at 8pm.
My last book of the week was a Flavia de Luce – and I’m still not sure what I think of this series – Flavia drives me bonker sometimes, and the plots are a bit bonkers, but this one was really good fun.
So there you are. I can string my thoughts together enough to give you mini-reviews, but that’s about it. I’m getting there though. Next week, dear reader, next week!
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 