I’m delighted to welcome you to my stop on the blog tour for ‘What Child is This?’, the fifth book in Bonnie MacBird’s excellent Sherlock Holmes series.
Thanks to Random Things Tours and Collins Crime Club for my place on the tour and copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. As always, opinions are my own.
I’ve been with Arrowood from the start of the series so I knew just what to expect in this fourth instalment – a fiendish mystery, grimy Victorian London and some great characters. Thanks to Mick Finlay and HQ for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review, plus the invitation to join the blog tour.
I’m halfway to my Goodreads 2021 target of 100 books!
With 50 (mostly) great books under my belt, I thought it was time to take stock and pick my favourites so far.
These five in particular have helped light up my 2021…
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As a life-long bookworm, I’ve made it my mission to read ALL THE BOOKS.
Everything I liked the sound of – added to the TBR. Recommended by someone I trust – added to the TBR. Interesting cover – added to the TBR.
You get the picture – a love of books and an endless TBR.
However, I do (kind of) accept that I cannot read every book.
In fact, my journey into blogging has really made me focus on the elements of books that I really love. I’ve had to really think before I request yet more books – and there are definitely things that tick the boxes for me.
So here we go – an insight into my muddled mind and the TBR that I am desperately trying to tame… I love all these things independently but where they combine is pure magic!
(Disclaimer: I still reserve the right to read randomly and at whim - that's one of the true pleasure of reading!)
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I have a huge apology to make. This book has sat on my NetGalley shelf for a long time and I should have read and reviewed it much earlier. Not least because I have missed out on reading this until now. This book was published in 2019 by Collins Crime Club, part of Harper Collins.
This is the third in Bonnie MacBird’s excellent series featuring Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. I’ve now read all four books (the latest, ‘The Three Locks’, has just been published – you can read my blog tour review here). I think they can be read in any order as, although there are some recurring characters in the books aside from the expected ones, I don’t think there are spoilers.
Continue reading ‘The Devil’s Due’ by Bonnie MacBirdIn the place of my usual WWW Wednesday post, I have my end of my end of month wrap up and a look at what is coming up in my bookish world in April.
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March Wrap-Up
It’s been a good reading month – I’ve read some great books, including a few outside my comfort zone! This month, I’ve read 13 books. I’ve struggled a bit with digital reading, so these have been mainly physical books – unusual for me and a lovely change.
My NetGalley is at 76% – this will be a focus for me in April as I really want to get back to that elusive 80%!
Continue reading March 2021 Wrap-Up and April TBRWelcome to my stop on this blog tour for ‘The Three Locks’, a Sherlock Holmes adventure, by Bonnie MacBird.
This tour is organised by Random Things Tours. The novel was published on 18th March, 2021, by Collins Crime Club.
WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted at Taking on a World of Words. Anyone can take part and it is a great way of sharing what you have just finished reading, what you are currently reading and what is next on the TBR.
Links are provided for books mentioned – thanks for supporting my blog with any purchases (at no extra cost to you!)
What have you recently finished reading?
It’s been two weeks since my last WWW Wednesday post, but you can read my February Wrap-Up here.
This looks like loads, but it is 2 weeks and a lot of finishing the last section of books!
I finished ‘Paris by Starlight’ by Robert Dinsdale with my Tsundoku Squad lovelies. This is a beautifully-imagines tale of refugees bringing their old country magic to Paris (where they aren’t exactly welcomed). The writing is lovely, but I found the pace a little slow for my tastes.
My other buddy read for February (with The Write Reads group) was ‘Cemetery Boys’ by Aiden Thomas, a Latinx tale centred around a trans boy in Los Angeles who wants to join his family in being able to release the dead into the afterlife. I found the setting of this one really engaging – I didn’t know much about beliefs around Day of the Dead before this and it is a clever setting for the story. I liked the main characters and did enjoy reading along and discussing the novel. Once the action picked up, I did really like this book – although the first part was a little meandering and it wasn’t clear where it was headed.
Since my last update, I also read ‘Nick’ by Michael Farris Smith for a blog tour – you can read my review here. This one was a hit for me based on the excellent settings – the trenches of World War I, wartime Paris and post-war New Orleans. I found myself carried along by the story created for Nick Carraway, who (after the events of ‘Nick’) finds himself in West Egg at the end of the novel and about to embark on the events in F Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’. I’d recommend reading this if you like engaging historical fiction – the literary connection to Gatsby is a bonus.
I also read ‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott for a blog tour – you can read my review here. This was a departure from what I expect from Alliott’s novels – it was a much darker story about a marriage that seems perfect on the surface and what happens when it ends. The mix of genres surprised me – there are elements of romance, as you might expect, but also something much grittier and with higher stakes – but I did enjoy it.
Another blog tour read was ‘The Three Locks’ by Bonnie MacBird. This is the fourth in a series of new Sherlock Holmes novels and I absolutely loved it. I haven’t read the previous books in the series, although I’ve since bought them. This is a twisty tale of a locked box, a missing girl, the world of Cambridge academia, warring magicians and a whole lot more. I raced through this in two sittings and can recommend it – my review will follow later in the month.
Then I read a short book – ‘Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting History with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great’ by Lisa Hilton. I’d previously only read Hilton’s thrillers, but knew that she also wrote academic books and was intrigued by this short volume printed by the TLS. At about 80 pages, it discusses the way that the three named women are portrayed throughout history and the notoriety that surrounds them – often for doing the same things as their male counterparts who haven’t caused such a stir! It was an interesting read.
Finally, I finished the audiobook of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams (read by Stephen Fry). The book is one that I love and it has been great to share it with my son. It has dated a bit, I suppose – the actual Hitchhiker’s Guide, which seemed so magical when I read it as a teen, could now be outdone by anyone with a smartphone and Wikipedia – but it was nice to hear it all again. Fry’s narration is good too.
My last read was ‘Last Place You Look’ by Louisa Scarr, a crime procedural about a mysterious death and some pretty unconventional policing. My review will follow as part of the blog tour later in the month. This is to be the first in a new series featuring DS Robin Butler and DC Freya West – and they are an engaging pair of characters.
What are you reading now?
Still too many books!
I have two new buddy reads for March and have started making in-roads into both.
With the Tsundoku Squad, I’m reading ‘The Islanders’ by S V Leonard and it is a lot of fun so far. It’s a kind of clever mix of ‘Love Island’ and Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’ – with echoes of Ben Elton’s ‘Dead Famous’ as people are picked off under the watchful eye of reality TV cameras. So far, so good.
The Write Reads group have chosen a graphic novel this month, ‘Bloodlust and Bonnets’ by Emily McGovern. I’ve not done much more than have a quick glance through this so far, but it looks great – a 19th century setting, plus vampires, a feisty heroine and Lord Byron have me sold!
I’m still reading the new Katie Fforde book, ‘A Wedding in the Country’. I’ve read a bit more of this since last update and am enjoying it, but unfortunately had to put it down for some blog tour books. It’s a cosy, cheery read – as you’d expect from Fforde – although I was surprised by the 1960s setting. It works though!
I’m also reading ‘How to Live. What to Do’ by Josh Cohen, a psychoanalyst who looks at life through the lens of literature. Each ‘phase’ of life is examined, with various examples from literature being clinically examined – for example, childhood is looked at by exploring ‘Alice in Wonderland’ and the experiences of the main protagonist. I’m not familiar with some of the examples Cohen is using, but it is an interesting idea and an engaging read.
What do you think you will read next?
I have a blog tour for ‘The Shadow in the Glass’ by JJA Harwood. I love the look of this gothic, Victorian story!
I am also desperate to read some more of Bonnie MacBird’s Sherlock Holmes books after reading ‘The Three Locks’ so I think they are in my near future!
Many thanks to NetGalley, blog tour hosts, publishers and authors for books in exchange for an honest review.
It has been another weird month of remote teaching and a fair amount of reading – 10 books in total. I’ve read some brilliant books this month and have some fabulous blog tours coming up, so watch this space!
Here’s what I’ve been reading this month…
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February Wrap-Up
I started this month with a big, glamorous thriller – ‘Ruthless Women’ by Melanie Blake. Taking place on the set of a soap opera off the coast of Jersey, this is packed with ambitious women, affairs, jealousy, gossip and backstabbing. I raced through it and it is definitely a lot of fun. You can read my review here.
Next up was the latest in the crime series featuring DI Gina Harte – ‘The Broken Ones’ by Carla Kovach. I have read and loved so many of these books and this one is brilliant! Tense, action-packed and downright scary in places! Although it is Book 8 of the series, it would also work as a standalone, I think. This book is published tomorrow and my review will be on the blog then.
Then I finally finished the absolutely brilliant ‘Maiden Voyages’ by Sian Evans. It took a while because blog tour books kept getting in the way, but I absolutely loved this non-fiction book about women whose lives were somehow linked to the transatlantic shipping crossings between (approximately) World War I to the start of the jet age at the end of the 1950s. There was glitz and glamour, but also amazing accounts of bravery and some fascinating life stories. My review is here but this is my BOOK OF THE MONTH!
Heading back onto my usual turf, I then read serial killer thriller ‘Dog Rose Dirt’ by Jen Williams. This will be heading your way in July so a review will follow nearer that time, but it is definitely one to keep an eye out for!
At this point in the month, I then panicked that I had a lot of blog tours at the end of February and start of March that I hadn’t read the books for yet!
My first blog tour read was ‘Old Bones’ by Helen Kitson, a gorgeously-written story about three older women living in a small village who in many ways feel that life has passed them by. When human remains are found in a nearby quarry, well-hidden secrets begin to surface. I found this one really compelling – you can read my review here.
The next blog tour book was ‘Seven Days’ by Michelle Kidd, an absolute page-turner of a police procedural. I raced through this one, the second in the series to feature DI Jack MacIntosh (I read the first, ‘The Phoenix Project’, for a blog tour last year). My review is here.
Then I read ‘The Shadowy Third: Love, Letters and Elizabeth Bowen’ by Julia Parry. This is a brilliant non-fiction book about Bowen’s affair with Humphry House (the author’s grandfather) and the third point in the love triangle, Madeline House (the author’s grandmother). The book is packed with insights into all three figures, plus thoughts on writing, legacy and storytelling. I didn’t know much about Bowen before this, but found it really interesting. My blog tour stop is next week so look out for this one.
My final blog tour book was ‘Nick’ by Michael Farris Smith, a prequel to F Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ which explains how Nick Carraway came to be in West Egg for the events of the classic novel. This was a compelling and vivid novel which took the reader through World War I Paris, the trenches and post-war New Orleans. My review will follow next week.
To end the month, I also finished two books that I’ve been reading with various blogger groups on Twitter. The Tsundoku Squad and I read ‘Paris by Starlight’ by Robert Dinsdale and I also read ‘Cemetery Boys’ by Aiden Thomas with The Write Reads book club that isn’t a book club!
Both of these were enjoyable in their own way – I liked the magical setting of Dinsdale’s book and the fascinating Latinx community and culture in Thomas’ novel. I probably wouldn’t have picked either of these books up independently, but am glad to have read them, even if I found the Paris book quite slow sometimes.
A busy month for reading and quite an eclectic set of books!
March TBR
As usual, I have a lot of books that I’d love to read this month. I never predict accurately, but here goes…
In March, I have blog tours for the following:
‘Behind Closed Doors’ by Catherine Alliott – I usually love Alliott’s books and am looking forward to this story of a woman sorting her life out after the end of her difficult marriage.
‘The Three Locks’ by Bonnie MacBird – I love a Sherlock Holmes story and this one looks fabulous!
‘The Shadow in the Glass’ by JJA Harwood – anything labelled as a Gothic fairytale has me on board, especially one with a Victorian setting!
‘Last Place You Look’ by Louisa Scarr – this is the first book in a new crime series to feature DS Robin Butler and DC Freya West. I love a police procedural so cannot wait to dive in to this one.
My ‘book club’ books for this month are ‘The Islanders’ by SV Leonard (Tsundoku Squad choice and looks to be a cracking crime novel) and ‘Bloodlust and Bonnets’ by Emily McGovern (The Write Reads choice – I haven’t read a graphic novel in years so am looking forward to this!)
There are also many, many NetGalley books waiting for me – so we shall have to see what I actually manage to read!
With thanks, as always, to blog tour hosts, publishers and NetGalley for granting me access to advance copies of books in exchange for honest reviews.
