Review: The Christmas Love Letters: a gorgeous, heartwarming new Christmas romance to cosy up with this winter

The Christmas Love Letters: a gorgeous, heartwarming new Christmas romance to cosy up with this winter by Sue Moorcroft
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Maddy Austen lives in the small Norfolk village of Nelson's Bar with her daughter Lyla and her great aunt Ruthie. Life has been hard for Maddy after her husband Adey disappeared nearly seven years ago leaving her pregnant, with mounting bills, a flooded house, and no home insurance.

But Maddy pulled through and now she and Lyla survive on the rent she receives on her old cottage and her carer's allowance for looking after Ruthie who is sight-impaired and has asthma.

A few weeks before Christmas a man visits Ruthie to say that he has found evidence that Ruthie had an affair with his late father, Nigel, and that Nigel and his wide Sindy adopted the child that Ruthie had with Nigel after she was born. The man, Raff, and his sister Ffion have found the love letters which Ruthie sent to Nigel and Ffion would like to meet Ruthie.

But just when it looks like Maddy's life is coming together and she can have Adey declared presumed dead after being missing for seven years, Maddy starts receiving text messages from a withheld number, which might be from Adey. Is he still alive after all this time? Will he want half the cottage? And how will this affect her developing romance with Raff?

The trouble with romance novels is that we readers get very set in our ways and I leaped to the conclusion that Maddy's romantic interest was going to be someone else so I was not predisposed to like as the romantic lead. Even when it was clear that my initial assumption was wrong and the individual in question was not the good guy, I just couldn't get over it. To be honest, I got a lot of things wrong about this novel, which probably proves the saying that if you assume you make an ass out of you and me, I was wrong about who sent the text messages (and why).

If you like a small-town holiday romance featuring School nativity plays, Christmas markets, misunderstandings and a HEA then look no further.

I was offered an ARC by the publisher Harper Collins via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

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Review: The Good Part

The Good Part by Sophie Cousens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lucy Young is feeling a bit of a failure. All of her friends are getting on in life, good jobs, buying their own homes, steady boyfriend/girlfriend, getting married, solvent. And she's none of the above. She might be in her dream industry of TV, and she might have just got a promotion, but she still lives in the smallest room in a horrible flat share where water from the bathroom above her frequently leaks onto her bed. After a disastrous night out with her friends which ends in a row, and her having no money to get home, Lucy stumbles into a little newsagents with a wishing machine (a bit like that fabulous film Big starring Tom Hanks) and wishes that she was at the Good Part of her life, the bit where she has a home and a family and a good job.

Lo and behold, when Lucy wakes up the next morning she's in bed with a strange man, a bit older than her usual type but foxy nevertheless and surprise, surprise he's her husband! They've got two children, a big home in the suburbs, and Lucy runs her own highly successful company making children's TV programmes. The only downside? Well she's over forty, which is a bit of a shock when she first looks in the mirror. On the plus side she's got a talking car.

If you read my reviews you'll probably have a good suspicion that I love a time travel/alternate reality story and this one had the added bonus of being set in the future. I loved that Lucy's son knew she wasn't his real mummy (especially asking her his middle name - because an alien wouldn't know that but his real mummy would LOL). It was good seeing Lucy trying to cope with being a mother of two when she has no experience of children, of trying to run a company when she had only been making teas and doing photocopying the day before.

I also liked the way that Lucy was faced with the dilemma of staying or going back and what each choice would mean - that was clever.

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

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Review: Come As You Are

Come As You Are by Jess K. Hardy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Ashley is a forty-six year old divorcee with an adult child. She and her mother run a family ski resort for the local community. But they are losing money, not least because her mother invests in whatever takes her fancy, and her slimy ex-husband Chuck runs a rival resort and keeps trying to buy them out.

Her mother's latest scheme is to hire ex-cons from Little Timber Sober Living Home for minimum wage, rather than the college kids they normally hire.

Matthew 'Mad' Madigan was a famous Rockstar back in the day, but he partied too hard and was put in prison for selling heroin. Twenty odd years later he runs the sober living home and looks after the men. It's difficult to find places willing to employ ex-convicts and after the mill closed Ashley's resort is their best hope.

This was pretty enjoyable fluff. In the best traditions of the film White Christmas, Madigan suggests putting on a show to save the resort. Ashley's ex-husband is a snake, there are lots of misunderstandings, but it all comes right in the end.

My only gripe was that Madigan doesn't sound/act like a fifty-three year old man and Ashley doesn't act/sound like a forty-six year old woman. I would say they come across as twenty years younger at least.

This was a Kindle freebie in July 2023 and is also available on the Kindle Unlimited subscription.

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Review: The Daughter of Time: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery

The Daughter of Time: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery by Josephine Tey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. This was voted the greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990 and I can see why.

Inspector Alan Grant is in hospital after falling through a trap door. He's bored and so his friend the actress Marta Hallard suggests he uses his detection skills to solve an historical mystery and brings him a number of pictures of famous people's portraits like Lucrezia Borgia and Louis XVII. The Inspector (I just can't bring myself to call him Alan) dismisses all of them until he is struck by one. He doesn't recognise the face, but is struck by the character in the portrait, the air that he is

Someone used to great responsibility , and responsible in his authority. Someone too conscientious. A worrier; perhaps a perfectionist.

Imagine his shock then when he turns over the picture to find that it is Richard III, notorious for having ordered the murder of his two nephews who were staying in the Tower of London. The Inspector shows the picture to all his visitors (medical and personal) and each of them sees something different in the portrait, but none of them suggested that his face suggested the level of cruelty and depravity that would be required to order such a thing.

Reading up on the history of the time, Grant realises that the primary authority for the widely held belief that Richard III had his nephews killed was Sir Thomas More, generally an unimpeachable source, but a man who was only eight years old when Richard III died at the battle of Bosworth field, so his account is based on hearsay - anathema to a policeman! Moreover, every book he reads seems to describe Richard III as being both a loyal, devoted brother, a wise leader, someone who was loved and respected, a peacemaker, someone who forgave his enemies. So how does that reconcile with the man who would order the murder of two of his nephews?

And so, with the help of an amiable American history student, Grant decides to investigate, using contemporaneous historical records, what actually happened to the two princes and how to reconcile the contradictory claims about Richard III's personality.

I must admit I have always found the Plantagenet dynasty and the Wars of the Roses to be an incredibly confusing period, not least because everyone seems to be called Elizabeth or Edmund or Edward or Richard and I was relieved when Inspector Grant said he too had difficulty keeping it straight in his head. At least I had seen the TV series about Henry Tudor (Henry VII) which at least allowed me to think of the actors' faces for certain characters like Elizabeth Woodville.

Anyway, Grant and his history student, Brent Carradine, uncover lots of inconsistencies and reveal a very plausible account of what actually happened to the princes. I have subsequently googled several of the sources mentioned in the book and found that they do exist and will forever be grateful to Inspector Grant for Tonypandyism and the examples given to support his argument.

Please don't be put off by the fact that this is about such a confusing time in English history, or what you know from your schooldays about Richard III, or even by the fact that all the action takes place in Grant's hospital bedroom. It is a fascinating piece of detection and truly deserved all the accolades.

My only gripe is that the Kindle version I read had a number of dreadful mistakes (including spelling Marta incorrectly) which spoilt things, so I returned it and purchased another version (still only 77p). Also I prefer the cover on this version published by Evergreen.

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Review: Murder in Tuscany

Murder in Tuscany by T.A. Williams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When DCI Daniel Armstrong retired from the Met Police in London his colleagues, as a leaving present bought him a stay at a creative writing course in a villa in Tuscany hosted by author Jonah Moore. It is debatable whether or not they knew that it was for writers of erotica :)

Dan has split from his wife of thirty years, his devotion to his job and inability to switch off in social situations were major factors and his retirement was too little too late. So this course is as much to think out his next steps in life as to learn whether he could take up writing as a second career.

His fellow students are nothing like the perverted men he imagined, instead they are mostly women. Ranging from two mature ladies from Littlehampton, a history professor who wants to write a novel about Roman orgies, a brother and sister from Canada who want to write erotica, and several more novices who want to learn how to write.

Dan can't help but notice that their host, Jonah is a heavy drinking letch, he ogles several of the female guests, even fondles one of them all under the nose of his wife Maria and sister Millicent. Despite the course being touted as being taught by Jonah the actual lessons are given by Millicent and a woman called Serena who has had several novels published. He also notes that there is something suspicious about Will and Rachel the brother and sister from Canada.

When their host is found dead after lunch, stabbed through the heart with a silver dagger he was awarded for one of his novels, almost everyone is a suspect. Apart from Dan who was visiting Commissario Virgilio Pisano, an acquaintance of one Dan's colleagues, delivering a bottle of scotch.

The plot thickens when the pathologist finds that Jonah was not only stabbed; he had also ingested a lethal dose of cyanide, and a non-fatal dose of Oleandrin. Was one person responsible for all three attempts or could the villa house three separate would-be murderers?

I enjoyed this, I have seen other reviews which complain about the way in which Dan objectifies Charlotte with references to her short skirts etc. I didn't get that vibe at all. In fact, I thought T.A. Williams was a woman until I came to write this review. I saw Dan's remarks (internal) as more the awakening of an interest in a woman other than his wife and how he was surprised by suddenly noticing her attractiveness on a personal basis rather than objectively as he would have done when he was married.

I liked this, although the luscious descriptions of the food and countryside dud have me googling the price of cottages in Tuscany and thinking about booking a holiday LOL. Some of the reveals were a little predictable, but others came as a surprise. I will definitely read the next in the series.

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Review: The Recipe for Happiness

The Recipe for Happiness by Jane Lovering
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Seren is a live-in housekeeper and cook at an older person's drop-in centre in a small Yorkshire village. Her brother Andrew and his husband Greg are constantly trying to get Seren to come out of her shell and meet people (men) but she's comfortable with staying close to home, using her culinary skills to cook for the rambunctious guests, even if their palates reject anything remotely different (like adding cheese to mashed potato). The trouble is, Seren never goes anywhere other than shopping in the local shops and visiting Andrew once a week. Truth be told she's scared of getting lost.

Then one day a new employee joins the drop-in centre. Ned is a general handyman, but his eyes suggest a bigger story. Seren worries he could be homeless, or at least living in his car, or maybe he's just been released from prison. Initially prickly towards each other, these two lost souls develop a tentative friendship. But it takes Seren's accidental adoption of an abandoned dog for her to start expanding her horizons.

OMG the angst! Ned had angst, Seren had angst, arguably Andrew had angst. I do get that maybe it takes two broken souls to coax each other into a better life but really did there have to be this much angst?

I genuinely had no idea where this was going. At one point I suspected that Ned was actually the dog in disguise (or vice versa)!

Anyway, I liked it but I didn't love it. I could have done without the recipes and I felt it ended a bit abruptly.

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Review: The Remarkable Rise of Amanda Appleby

The Remarkable Rise of Amanda Appleby by Trish Morey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amanda Appleby thinks she's living her best life. As they celebrate her plastic surgeon husband Rufus' 50th birthday in their forever home which she has totally renovated surrounded by friends and their two children. Then Amanda stumbles across Rufus and the belly dancer she hired as entertainment entertaining themselves in a very adult way on her bed.

Everything she valued crumbled into dust, especially when it turned out Rufus had mortgaged the house to the hilt and sold the London flat to subsidise his share of a loss-making horse-breeding syndicate. Walking out of a marriage after 25 years with only £78,000 to show for it is devastating, luckily Amanda still owns the tiny fisherman's cottage in St Ives that belonged to her parents. Once a holiday home it's now her permanent home.

Having spent 25 years being a homemaker and mother, with just the occasional bit of volunteering at a charity shop Amanda is pessimistic about her chances in the job market, until a boozy night with her next door neighbour watching Fifty Shades Darker gives her the idea of self-publishing a novel on the internet about achieving the highest selling price for a house and downsizing - two things she has just done with some success. Writing tongue-in-cheek, eg talking about throwing out your ex with the rest of the clutter, the book soon becomes a success, Amanda gets an agent and a publishing deal for a second book.

Amanda's new agent is of the shark variety and soon has her appearing on chat shows and being interviewed by women's magazines, but when she finds herself a contestant on a Blind Date-type dating show for the more mature person she realises she and her agent may not be reading from the same agenda. When Amanda refuses to parrot the cheesy lines the scriptwriter has written, instead making it very clear to the audience that she is not interested in dating an insurance salesman from Scotland, the audience loves her and the show gets record ratings. The show decides to capitalise on the success of Amanda's appearance and decide to end the series with a viewers' choice of contestants, but this time they want to ensure that Amanda is chosen to draw viewers in to the second series where they will show the outcome of the date. So they stack the odds and get the grumpy scriptwriter, a frustrated author called Jack, to be the male contestant, on the proviso that he picks Amanda, by bribing him with a three day trip to Santorini as the prize.

Can three nights in Santorini turn enemies into lovers, or at least friends?

Meanwhile, Amanda's agent has signed her up as a blogger for a man-hating website and is pushing hard for her next book to be about revenge, whereas Amanda feels her first book was cathartic enough and can't summon enough venom to suit her agent. Is she just a one-hit wonder and what will Amanda do to further her career.

I really enjoyed this. Its nice to have a fifty-year old MC, even if TBH she could just have easily been thirty or forty years old, no embarrassing hot flushes for her. The story could have gone in several ways, but as befitting more mature MCs there was no histrionic misunderstanding. I will look out for the previous book in this series.

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

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Review: To Love and Be Wise: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery

To Love and Be Wise: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery by Josephine Tey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well that didn't go the way I was expecting. After the last book which barely featured Inspector Grant I hoped that this one would feature him a bit more. And it did at first.

Inspector Grant goes to a noisy literary party to meet his friend, the actress Marta Hallard. Whilst there he sees an extraordinarily attractive young man loitering on the outskirts looking a little lost and introduces him to their hostess the author Lavinia Finch as the young man, Leslie Searle, is looking for her nephew Walter Whitmore, a famous radio broadcaster. In the way of the fabulously wealthy, Lavinia invites Leslie to spend the weekend at her country pile in Orfordshire (Oxfordshire?) to meet Walter, since they apparently share a mutual friend. After Lavinia bought her gothic monstrosity she sparked a bit of an exodus such that the small village houses any number of artistic types, including Marta, a dancer, a playwright, and a writer.

Leslie is a famous American photographer, spending half the year photographing celebrities on the West Coast and the rest of the year photographing nature. His presence in the small village acts as a catalyst, despite impeccable manners he seems to be a catalyst, causing dissent and discontent wherever he goes. Despite his growing concern that Leslie is becoming too close to his fiance, Walter agrees to co-author a travel book with Leslie, but partway through their journey Leslie disappears after a spat with Walter in the local pub. Has Leslie left of his own accord? Did he fall into the river on his way home? Was he pushed? Given the delicate nature of the investigations and the celebrities, the local police call in Scotland Yard and Inspector Grant finds himself looking for a missing person. But throughout the investigation Alan can't help but feel like he's being shown a game of smoke and mirrors.

After the first third of the book where Inspector Grant is mainly conspicuous by his absence, although the reader does get treated to motives for all of the key players to want to kill Leslie, once Alan is called in we are treated to his usual methodical investigation with the occasional flash of inspiration (or gut feeling). As I suspected in one of the earlier books, Alan comes from some wealth and has inherited enough to never have to work again, which perhaps explains how he hobnobs with actresses and meets the aristocracy on equal terms.

As with all the previous mysteries, I feel that there are lots of things which the reader doesn't see/hear which help to uncover the truth, very much of the fantastical Sherlock Holmes type of investigation rather than showing the reader all the clues so that they *could* guess the truth.

I think I'm going to give myself a break, a palate cleanser if you will, before starting what has been described as the greatest crime novel of all time - at this moment I remain sceptical.

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Review: The Franchise Affair: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery

The Franchise Affair: An Inspector Alan Grant Mystery by Josephine Tey
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, what a peculiar novel. How this can be billed as an Inspector Grant mystery when he barely appears in the book and definitely has no hand in solving the mystery I cannot imagine!

Robert Blair is a comfortable forty-year old solicitor in the small town of Milford. He is senior partner in his family's law firm and his life is totally predictable. Until recently he was very happy with his life but just lately he feels a mild concern that this is all there is. Late one afternoon, just as he is about to leave he gets a call from Miss Marion Sharpe, a relative newcomer to Milford, requesting his assistance. Initially believing it to be a traffic summons (something he does not deal with as a general rule), he is intrigued when she tells him that Scotland Yard are accusing her and her widowed mother of imprisoning and beating a fifteen year old girl, trying to force her to become their maid.

The girl, Betty Kane, presents very well, she describes the house and its contents very well and identifies the room she says she was locked in for a month before she managed to escape. Her story is very plausible and she seems a credible child. However, much of her descriptions would fit any large house and the police initially decide not to take any further action. However, Betty's brother is incensed and tells her story to a sensationalist newspaper which then prints pages and pages of accusations against Marion and her mother and the incompetence of the police. The inflammatory article grabs the attention of the public and they start to visit Franchise House in their bus-loads, shouting abuse, and defacing the property. Robert realises that he must discover the truth of where Betty really was for the month she was missing, otherwise Marion and her mother will be hounded for the rest of their lives.

This was a good detective story. However, the amount of vitriol that was spouted about various women in this book was distasteful. There was sneering about a farm labourer's daughter's clothes and her implausibly white teeth. Marion on several occasions tells Robert she wants to punch and generally beat up Betty, indeed there was some comment to the effect that she was someone who should get used to be punched a lot. Bettys mother was similarly portrayed as a monster, Robert's kindly Aunt Lin was painted as a religious dimwit, etc, etc.

Also, it was interesting that some of the quack notions attributed to the Archbishop are now the way we think about things, eg that the Irish were oppressed by the British (there were better examples but I can't think of them now).

As with the previous novels, there is a lot of casual racism, this time about the Irish - but it is of its time.

One other thing, I find it difficult to know precisely when these books are set. I thought the first book was set after WW1 because it was published in 1929 but I suspect the later books may be set after WW2, although Inspector Grant appears not to have aged.

Anyway, I have just started the next book and Inspector Grant is front-and-centre so all is good with the world.

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Review: Talk to Me

Talk to Me by Jules Wake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars.

Olivia has been in love with her friend Daniel for years, just when she thinks they might finally be getting together he ends up with her gorgeous flatmate and work colleague Emily. Emily is beautiful and very high maintenance, and she may have told Daniel a teensy little fib about Olivia seeing a married man - it's a hot button for Daniel as his mother had an affair so he is totally disgusted that Olivia could do something like that.

Although Olivia and Emily work for the same advertising and marketing company their jobs couldn't be more different. Predictably Emily works in the fashion and make-up section while Olivia works in the construction team, spending most of her days slogging round construction sites talking to beefy guys in Hi-Vis jackets.

Olivia's family are convinced that she is still pining for her scummy ex and won't listen when they say she's over him (because obviously she can't tell them that she's pining for Daniel who knows her family really well), so they guilt her into going on a speed-dating evening organised by a cousin. When Emily gets wind of the speed dating event, which is taking place in a swanky hotel, she invites herself along and, despite dating Daniel ticks three boxes for guys she's like to see again.

As others have said, as a romantic comedy this works really well, but introducing a stalker (one of the rejected speed-daters) into the mix threw the balance of the novel off and it didn't seem to know whether it was a rom-com or a thriller.

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Review: Warrior's Hope

Warrior's Hope by Rebecca Zanetti
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hope Kayrs-Kyllwood is an anomaly, the only known female vampire she can visit dream worlds but can't heal herself and is no stronger than a human. She is the Lock in the prophecy of how to kill the immortal evil Ulric, along with the blood of the three Keys and The Seven. Now all grown up, she is the strategic leader of a small group of Realm warriors rescuing Enhanced women before they can be kidnapped by the Kurjans.

There has been a love triangle practically all of Hope's life between her best friend, half-demon Paxton and the heir, now leader, of the Kurjans, Drake. Hope believes her fate is to bring peace between the Kurjans and the Realm with the help of her childhood friend Drake.

And so it ends, after sixteen novels did Rebecca Zanetti deliver the goods, or like so many others did the series end with more of a whimper? Let me put you out of your misery, it was spectacular! There are epic battles, betrayals, many, many betrayals, surprises and a deeply satisfying resolution of the Ulric problem.

LOVED it.

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

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