Review: One Last Chance

One Last Chance by Sarah Jost
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lou is a Swiss national who moved to London to teach after her boyfriend broke up with her. Nothing seems to be going right for Lou, she's single, her flatmate has moved in with another (better) friend, she can't control her class at school, her ex has just announced his engagement, and she's increasingly estranged from her younger sister Marion who is caring for their mother.

We first meet Lou as she accompanies her former flatmate to the funeral of Nick, someone Lou barely knew, having met him only once two years earlier at her flatmate's birthday. Feeling uncomfortable at being at a funeral for close friends and family only, Lou makes a series of awkward faux pas, which culminate in her passing out. But when she comes to, it is two years earlier and she is about to enter the pub for her ex flatmate's birthday drinks. At first Lou isn't aware that she has travelled back in time, but each time she returns things change, both because of Lou's agency and because of other people's actions. One constant in every time hop is that it ends with Nick's funeral.

I found this difficult to get into at first but by the end I loved it and I really couldn't tell how it would end. Initially I thought it was because the author is herself a Swiss national and I imagined that her phraseology was slightly off to a native English-speaker. However, I now realise that it was also partially to demonstrate Lou's social awkwardness, her lack of confidence which too often came across as indifference or self-absorption. In each time hop Lou learns more about her friends and family, about herself, about the way people can hide their feelings and insecurities in different ways, about love, and about heart-breaking loss.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: The Invisible Women’s Club

The Invisible Women’s Club by Helen Paris
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Janet Pimm is 72 years old. Single ever since she caught her husband cheating on her. Lost touch with all her old friends from university. Lost touch with her friends from GCHQ after a male superior humiliated her and had her sacked. Now her only solace is her allotment in the British seaside town of Hastings where she grows medicinal herbs. As should be expected of someone who worked at GCHQ, Janet is incredibly intelligent, and scarily knowledgeable about plants, unfortunately she seems to have lost all her social skills and has alienated most of the other people on the allotments through her high-handed behaviour. Her life is highly regimented, and her confidence in her own abilities is sky high.

Janet also has an annoying neighbour, Bev, who is constantly 'popping' round, suggesting they go to local am-dram shows and the like, clearly thinking Janet is in her dotage.

Then one day disaster strikes, the local council announce that Japanese Knotweed has been found in the wild flower meadow beside the allotments and the allotments will have to be closed. Desperate to save her allotment, Janet puts her formidable intellect to work and finds an unlikely co-conspirator in Bev next door. A trip to visit Janet's old GCHQ colleague in the Lake District gives the women a chance to discover more about each other as Bev and Janet agree they refuse to be invisible women over forty any more.

At first I found this difficult to get into, Janet's internal monologue was very self-important and full of Latin names for plants. When she applied for a voluntary position with the National Trust my heart sank, she'd be the sort of person who imparted dry facts one after the other, and only things she deemed to be important (ie nothing funny). However, the book soon had me in its grip and I defy anyone not to enjoy Bev, Janet, and the chair of the allotments chaining themselves together to defy the bulldozers!

A story about the power of the people, a shout out for the menopausal and the retired, a reminder of the ways in which those in power abuse that power, a love letter to plants and nature. A book about reclaiming your voice and following your heart.

I thoroughly enjoyed this.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: Indelibly Yours

Indelibly Yours by Monica Myers
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Joel Morris owns a tattoo parlour called Sailor Joey's, with his dark clothes and tattoos he looks like a sexy pirate. No matter how hard he tries, things always seem to go wrong for Joel, his aunt and uncle took out a second mortgage to finance his tattoo parlour , but he's not making any money and he can tell they are worried about their future. [Side peeve, instead of doing something about it Joel just mopes about being grumpy - how does he expect to get new customers without advertising or using social media?]

Olivia Reid is a harassed single mother, running her own business, and someone who has taken care of her twin brother Nolan and then her daughter Abby for so long she is incapable of accepting help from other people. Her twin brother's wife Erin owns an erotic bakery called Sticky Treats (I feel this was probably a funny idea for the first book which got out of hand) and is just expanding into new premises, premises which Joel was hoping would save his business by placing him in an area with greater footfall. Without the new premises his business will probably fail (see my pet peeve above) and his aunt and uncle will lose their money. So all in all Joel is not happy with Olivia's sister-in-law and comes round to the building to 'have a word' but meets Olivia instead and mistakes her for Erin. Typical mistaken identity, insta-lust, prickly exchanges ensue until Joel comes to realise he is unleashing his ire on the wrong woman.

This was a pleasant enough opposites attract romance, Olivia dreams of a solid, dependable Mr Right to look after her and Abby, not realising that the hot tattooed guy could be that man. Joel is afraid of taking a chance, of falling in love, of making himself vulnerable. I fell like I've read a whole load of books very similar to this by Eve Dangerfield or Scarlett Cole and other than erotic confectionary (which I could have done without), it didn't bring anything new to the table.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: The Language of Love

The Language of Love by Minerva Spencer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Annis Bowman has been conned by a man and lost all her and her grandmother's money. She has been forced to live with her uncle and his unpleasant family in London as a sort of unpaid companion/dogsbody, she desperately needs to marry for money to save her grandmother's house.

Henry Singleton was sent to India when only a teenager, banished by his uncle for a crime he did not commit. In India he has amassed a vast fortune, and has now inherited the title of Earl of Rotherhithe following the deaths of his uncle and cousin. However, Henry despises London society and dreads the toad-eating attentions of the haut monde who will only want him for his money. So he decides to swap places with one of his employees, pretending to be the Earl of Rotherhithe's personal secretary he will accompany the fake Earl to all the society events incognito. This knocked off at least half a star, probably a full star off my review, not the plot device but the buffoon that Henry chose to swap places with, surely Henry could have found someone better? Maybe an actor?

Annis' friend (they were fellow schoolteachers together along with the other heroes/heroines in the series) helps people navigate society, she teaches Henry and the fake Earl how to behave and introduces them to society. Annis and Henry meet at her house and are immediately smitten with each other, but Annis knows she must marry a wealthy man and her uncle has already identified a wealthy banker, much older than Annis, as a suitable match.

When Annis and Henry are caught in a compromising position and forced to marry it seems like serendipity, but each of them is labouring under illusions about the other which could derail their marriage before it has begun.

This has everything you could want from an historical romance. Cruel relatives, blackmail, theft, forgery, secret identities, misunderstandings, secret passageways, detectives, faithful retainers, etc.

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Review: Between Us

Between Us by Mhairi McFarlane
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Argh! I read this and forgot to write a review which is annoying because I really liked it.

Roisin is a teacher, she is dating Joe, a writer, who has recently found success with a hit TV show (sounds a bit like Game of Thrones) which has been green-lit (lighted?) for a second series and is about to have a completely different series air. After years of supporting Joe financially, Roisin can't quite get used to the change in their lifestyles.

Joe and Roisin got together when they worked together at Waterstones (a British bookstore chain) together with a group of other people that they have stayed friends with. It's a decade since they all worked together and they are all away for a swanky weekend to celebrate Roisin's birthday, Joe's new series, and the engagement of two friends. But tensions are riding high and Roisin worries that rather than being the start of another decade of friendship, this could be the end.

Then when Roisin watches the first episode of Joe's new series it seems as though she and their friends are being portrayed on screen, and not in a good way. Is Joe's series fiction, or is he really a cheating, lying chancer like his character on screen?

This was interesting and cleverly done, is Roisin allowing her imagination to run away with her, or has Joe been gaslighting her all these years? None of their friends can believe he has cheated on her, yet so many things in his TV show resonate with things that have happened between them ...

Some things I saw coming, others I was completely wrong about. This kept me intrigued all the way.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: The White Lady

The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Miss Elinor (Linni) White (actually De Witt) is a half-Belgian/ half-British woman living in a small Kent village in a 'Grace and Favour' cottage. She keeps herself to herself and is known locally as the White Lady. Little do her neighbours know that she served in the Belgian resistance in World War I whilst only a teenager and was a member of SOE in World War II. Despite the war being over, Elinor still keeps looking over her shoulder, obsessing over being watched and having multiple entries/exits to her home.

One day Elinor's peace is shattered when the young couple with a small child who have moved into the village from London are visited by the husband's brothers. He is the son and grandson of scions of a notorious South London crime family, the Mackies, and his family want him to do another job for them. Elinor is enraged that these men could hurt a woman and child and decides to interfere, getting in contact with her former SOE colleague and lover who is now a senior detective in Scotland Yard.

Told in flashbacks to World War I and World War II from Linni's 'present day' of 1947, this is a meticulously researched historical novel, as I have come to expect from Jacqueline Winspear. However, the risk with a novel spanning three time periods is that the focus is unclear, they are like pen and ink sketches, lacking the finer details and this is how I felt about this novel. So for example we saw a lot of detail about petrol rationing and cups of tea, but lightly skimming over Elinor's SOE experience.

Also, I could see where this was going from quite early on but it relied upon someone explaining the whole thing to Elinor, who just happened, by coincidence, to link the two stories together - a deus ex machina if you will.

I was going to write a puzzled comment about how this is the third book I have read about Belgium in WW1 in less than a year and went to remind myself of the facts and I see that one of the other two books was also written by Jacqueline Winspear In This Grave Hour and featured the Belgian resistance group known as La Dame Blanche, did she find the research so fascinating that she felt compelled to use it in another book?

Overall, I loved the writing (as always), but I felt it lacked a bit of edge, the ending was closer to a cosy mystery with everything neatly tied into a bow than I am used to with Jacqueline Winspear.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: Love Will Tear Us Apart

Love Will Tear Us Apart by C.K. McDonnell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hannah Willis, Assistant Editor of The Stranger Times has left without warning and returned to her cheating, lying, scumbag ex-husband. To top it all she has also decided to spend some time at a celebrity New Age retreat having colonic irrigations and doing hot yoga. Meanwhile, the Editor, Vincent Banecroft is desperately trying to get the resident ghost to help him speak to his wife, who Vincent is convinced isn't really dead. There's a mysterious and omniscient new Assistant Editor put in place by the newspaper's enigmatic owner, and a former anonymous source of the weirdest and wackiest conspiracy theories has apparently gone missing. Yes it's another instalment of Manchester's oddest weekly newspaper.

I think I am finally getting into the swing of these books, there are multiple plot lines which all intersect in the end to bring things together. Yes, I am a little disappointed that there wasn't a You-Know-What hidden in caves beneath Manchester but the 'truth' was just as good.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: The Secret Shore

The Secret Shore by Liz Fenwick
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Professor Meredith (Merry) Tremayne was a Cambridge geography professor and map expert until she was drafted to the Admiralty to help with the war effort. When her mother goes missing from their home in Cornwall her enigmatic boss Fleming sends her to Cornwall to look for her, but also to assist two teams of special forces training in the area and to report back to him on why they seem to be a perpetual loggerheads.

Whilst investigating her mother's mysterious disappearance, Merry becomes close to an American called Jake who has voluntarily taken Canadian citizenship in order to fight, leaving behind his former career as a journalist. However, Merry chose her career over love and marriage years ago and she doesn't see herself changing that decision, not matter how attracted she might find herself to the impossibly good-looking man.

Soon Merry realises that the Admiralty are planning an invasion of France, and her map=making skills will be essential to that effort, helping to pinpoint exactly how and when the offensive should begin, what sort of sand is on the beaches, what sort of footwear the soldiers should have, high tides, underwater rock formations etc.

I would have enjoyed this book far more if I hadn't found Merry to be an extremely irritating character. She was both devastatingly beautiful and incredibly talented, with an irritating habit of repeating herself over and over again about how we don't read maps, we read into them - and no, I still have no idea what that means. Also, Merry frequently tells herself and everyone around her that she will never fall in love or get married or have children which is frankly laughable when all she does is moon about Jake.

I feel that the author's detailed descriptions of the Cornish countryside and the many, many, many rowing trips Merry undertook were intended to immerse the reader in her life and embed them in the historical time. Unfortunately it was wasted on me and I felt the plot suffered because of all the extraneous details, I just wanted the prose to hurry up and do something. Also, the great input that Merry had into the invasion of France just seemed to get lost in the wittering about mice and the myriad sub-plots which didn't seem to go anywhere (eg Fleming's love life and Merry's landlady's love life, there's a much bigger one but it's a bit of a spoiler so I won't mention it). Now I get that in real life there are multiple dramas going on which may or may not be relevant to your career or love life but did they really add anything to the story (other than length)?

Overall, I would have preferred the novel to be shorter and tighter and not have all these side issues that went nowhere. I would also have liked to have learned more specifics about exactly what Merry did for all those months in Cornwall, as I didn't get a real feel for her contribution.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: Hate at First Sight

Hate at First Sight by Lizzie O'Hagan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Kate is a data analyst for the upmarket clothing brand Poster, she's detail-orientated, always prepared, and obsessed by the data. She and her fellow back-office nerds/geeks hang out in the basement while the beautiful people work on the tenth floor. Until the company needs to downsize and the geeks are forced to come up to the tenth floor. To add insult to injury, there's a promotions freeze and Kate is way overdue for promotion to Director. Her only hope is a new project for which she has been volunteered, a microsite to widen the brand's appeal to zoomers. The only downside (well TBH there is no upside) is that Kate will be forced to work with the stunningly good-looking, happy-go-lucky, Harry, who almost kissed her at the office party five years ago, and Cally, a social media influencer, the firm's new Innovation Director who just happens to be the daughter of one of the CEO's best friends, nepotism is at work people.

Kate, Harry and Cally have very different ideas for how to develop the microsite and bicker constantly, but beneath the bickering are Harry and Kate rekindling their feelings?

I was enjoying this, it was a very typical romance with the mean pretty girls, a normal slightly geeky girl and the hot guy. Nothing amazing, but a fun read. Harry was the weak link for me, all the way through he seemed to want to keep the relationship with Kate on the downlow and generally seems a bit wet. Also, while I understand why Kate was angry about their near-kiss, I didn't understand why he was.

Anyway, it all degenerated for me towards the end when it suddenly all became Kate's fault, Cally trying to exclude her from the project - Kate's fault, Kate having to go to France for work on her friend's birthday - Kate's fault, Kate being royally shafted by Harry and Cally - Kate's fault, Kate being passed over for promotion time and time again - Kate's fault, all the catty comments and being ignored - all in Kate's imagination. Over and over again. No-one else was at fault for anything, no-one else had to go round begging for other peoples forgiveness. When an author does this it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like they dislike their main character, or indeed women in general. I think for this to work both parties need to have been at fault in some way and this was all Kate.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.



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Review: This Charming Man

This Charming Man by C.K. McDonnell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second book in the series about a Manchester newspaper called The Stranger Times which reports every conspiracy theory, alien abduction, werewolf sighting, ghost haunting, and generally anything a bit woo-woo. Unfortunately, in the first book they discover that much of what they have been reporting is not, in fact, garbage, but actual events caused by supernatural beings who have been hidden in plain sight. However, the one thing that everyone agrees is that vampires do not exist. Unfortunately, someone has forgotten to tell the vampires, as one has just jumped in front of a bus and killed himself.

And if that isn't enough, the editor has sacked the plumbers so there are no lavatorial facilities, someone is trying to kidnap one of the staff, the editor and Grace have come up with a new swearing system, and assistant editor Hannah is trying to keep it all together.

I felt that this sort of lost its way in the middle, although in the end everything came together and I could understand why the story had meandered off into the various sub-plots because it all made sense in the end I did struggle a bit.

People are comparing this to the late, great Terry Pratchett which I think is over-egging things, I'd say more Pratchett-adjacent. But if you enjoy very British swearing (think of calling someone a one-ing five), extreme sarcasm, and the supernatural then I think you will like this series.

I received an ARC from the publisher vie NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: An Off-Piste Christmas

An Off-Piste Christmas by Julie Houston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Holiday novella in which Harriet Westmoreland, her family and friends take a skiing trip to Italy. Probably only for fans of the series, otherwise the incestuous (not literally) relationships between the party would be frankly unintelligible. Also, reading these books out of sequence I keep thinking 'oh is this the book where 'that' happens to Amanda' - so far no it isn't LOL.

Anyway, lots to unpick, a private jet, secret baby, teenage romance, learning difficulties, ex-lovers, adoption, fisticuffs (honestly, that is the only word for such a very British fight), mature romance, and Enid Blyton.

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Review: Looking for Lucy

Looking for Lucy by Julie Houston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow, there is so much to unpack here, I don't know where to start.

Clementine and Lucy are twins, adopted at birth. Clementine was the 'good twin' and had a great career as a chef in front of her when she had to give it all up to look after her daughter Allegra. Now she lives in the middle of the red light district, barely making ends meet as she studies for a degree in hotel management and waitresses to pay her bills. Lucy was the rebellious twin, things escalated and now Clementine can't find her, she hopes that living on Emerald Street she might run into Lucy one day.

Then Peter, one of Clementine's regular customers at the restaurant, proposes after a short courtship. Clementine doesn't love him but he is kind, adores Allegra and welcomes the two of them to his beautiful home. He even has two children of his own from a former marriage. Also through Peter she meets local businessman and entrepreneur David Henderson who is so impressed with Clementine's cookery at a dinner party that he asks if she would be willing to cater for dinner parties he holds for overseas clients periodically. Could this be the break that Clementine deserves?

Interspersed with Clementine's story and her search for Lucy is also the story of their birth mother Sarah, both when she got pregnant and gave the twins up for adoption and in the present day where she is married to the unfortunately named Reverend Roger Rabbitt and has three other children.

But all that is just the tip of the iceberg, and I don't want to say anymore because it could be spoilery. It was a cracking good read, spoiled only slightly by the fact that I have read some of the later books so I knew some of what would happen to Clementine.

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Review: The Little Board Game Cafe

The Little Board Game Cafe by Jennifer Page
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Emily and her mother always dreamed of owning a small café selling good old-fashioned cakes and soup and sandwiches to the local community. When Emily's boss (who also happens to be her fiancé) makes her redundant, she begins to hop to make her dream a reality, even if the only vacant café in her price range is a scruffy, deserted, ugly café in a cul-de-sac away from the main run of shops and cafés.

Initially afraid to take a risk Emily buys a one-year lease on the café and starts about making it her own, but aside from one elderly Polish gentleman who turns up at eleven o'clock every day for a cappuccino and a cake, she has no customers. It appears the vendor may not have been entirely honest about the profitability of the business and Emily risks losing the small inheritance she received from her mother, until local GP Ludek asks if the local Board Games group can use the café one Friday night when the pub they usually use has an event. Suddenly the café is reinvented as the Little Board Game café.

This was a cosy romantic read, very reminiscent of some of Jane Lovering's early Yorkshire romances. There was a bit of angst, but no real villains, a sweet romance and a bit of personal growth. I liked it, but I didn't love it. 2023 the year of three and a half stars continues.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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