One of the fun things about being a reader today is sometimes getting the opportunity to meet a favourite author at a book event or getting to chat to them on their blog or through social networking sites. But if they’ve been dead for almost 200 years, this is sadly – and clearly! – no longer an option. You can only…
Judith Kinghorn’s beautifully-written and evocative debut novel The Last Summer was one of my favourite reads of 2012. Which might help to explain why, on the eve of her second novel coming out, I’m only now getting around to trying to do it justice in a review. The Last Summer has been marketed as a book that viewers of Downton Abbey would…
The Penny Bangle is the last in a trilogy of books following the lives and loves of various members of the Denham family. It’s a series I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading and a family who I’m sorry to have to leave behind, no matter how fitting an end The Penny Bangle is to the series. In The Penny Bangle, it’s the turn…
I must admit to having a bit of an aversion to pink. With the notable exception of the singer, P!NK, I try and avoid the colour, especially when it liberally covers a book. But I was only too happy to overcome this irrational dislike if it meant I could read another Kate Johnson novel. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Kate’s…
Having already read and enjoyed Christina Courtenay’s previous two novels, Trade Winds and The Scarlet Kimono, you’d think that I would have learned my lesson and left Highland Storms for a weekend when I had some uninterrupted reading time. But no, despite knowing that I find it incredibly hard to put one of her books down, I picked it up on…
If I tell you that Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors and has been since I was a teenager; that Persuasion is not only my favourite of all her books but one of my all-time favourite books; and that Captain Wentworth is my favourite literary hero, then you’ll probably understand why I might have been slow to flick open…
Jemima Hutton is determined to build a successful new life and keep her past a dark secret. Trouble is, her jewellery business looks set to fail – until enigmatic Ben Davies offers to stock her handmade belt buckles in his guitar shop and things start looking up, on all fronts. But Ben has secrets too. When Jemima finds out he used to…
Every so often, I read a book that catches me completely off-guard and I fall head over heels in love with it. Either it’s a random find discovered while browsing in a bookshop or it’s in a genre I don’t read very often. In 2010, Evil UnLtd: The Root of All Evil by Simon A Forward was that book. Or, more accurately, that ebook.
This is an even better read than Fairytale and I pretty much gobbled it up in one sitting. Welcome to my World tells the story of Harri, a travel agent who hasn’t actually been on holiday anywhere outside the UK yet, which is in stark contrast to her best mate, Alex, who has recently returned home to the Black Country village of Stone Yardley, after extensive travelling.
From the original quirky purple and pink cover (which has since changed for the ebook at least) and the title and blurb of Talli Roland’s debut novel, The Hating Game, I knew that this was no cosy, formulaic boy-meets-girl chick-lit romance and I was looking forward to reading it all the more because of that. I wanted a feisty heroine who wouldn’t melt into a puddle within metres of her dream man. I wanted a strong voice and some of the sharp wit I’d come to know from Talli’s tweets and blog posts and I wanted a great story in an unusual situation or setting with its own set of highs and lows, featuring characters that seemed more like real people than characters in a book. Talli delivers on all counts.