Category: Fiction

bute?

Posted on by Greig

Wildflower Bay

Rachael Lucas

Super uptight Isla loses her job as top stylist in a chic Edinburgh salon. In the aftermath she allows herself to be talked into to taking the reins of her Aunt’s hairdressers shop while she helps look after her newborn grandchild. Finding herself on an isolated island (a fictional version of Bute) the confirmed city girl finds herself making friends and having fun for the first time in ages.
I liked this one OK but the relationship between Isla and her pensioner friend was so much more interesting and involving than the eventual love story.

Rating: B-

oceanographer?

Posted on by Greig

True Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop

Annie Darling

I received this book for review from Netgalley.
Verity runs admin for the Lonely Hearts Bookshop. An introvert dreamer with a bad break up behind her she’s invented a fake boyfriend to stop the well meaning interventions of her friends into her dating life. Nearly caught out in her lie she relies on the kindness of a stranger to divert her friends. Turns of the stranger thinks the idea of fake dating is a great one and proposes they be each others fake dates for the summer.
Fun book that was total catnip for me. As I’ve said before the ‘fake dating’ trope just works for me. The lead character is easy to root for and the world around the leads is well drawn. The only thing that spoils it is just how dumb the lead male is about his ‘one true love’. I could get it if she was a decent human but she’s just spoilt and awful.

Rating: B

review?

Posted on by Greig

Until Love Do Us Part

Anna Premoli

Super rich upper crust Defense Attorney and middle class ‘Irish’ Assistant District Attorney carry bad blood from college into the courtroom. The resultant petty squabble finds the two sentenced to community service. They slowly learn that the other person isn’t quite who they thought they were.
This is one of the most forgettable books I’ve ever read. I honestly had to check on Goodreads to remind myself of the plot after only a couple of days. Forgettable it may be but I still liked some of the back-and-forth dialogue. Still definitely the weakest of the three Premoli books I’ve read.

Rating: C

breeding?

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Love To Hate You

Anna Premoli

She’s the daughter of organic farmers who grew up to be a tax lawyer and he’s the titled heir to a family business empire that has decided to become an economist instead.
Separated from working together because their relationship is so poisonous they find themselves forced to join forces at the insistence of an important client and things take a turn for the interesting.
I only read this second Premoli book because the preview at the end of You Drive Me Crazy was so up my street. A proper enemies to lovers via fake dating story will always hit my buttons even when it’s as basic as this one.

Rating: B-

seoul?

Posted on by Greig

You Drive Me Crazy

Anna Premoli

Maddison works in mergers at a corporate bank. She’d much rather be set free to shop using the money of whichever rich guy she can snag.
She applies for a transfer to the bank’s New York office and instead finds herself being sent to Seoul.
Shocked by the culture clash and her stern new boss (and next door neighbour) she begins to grow as a person and to take a chance at real love.
The characters in this are pretty cardboard and the plotting incredibly by-the-numbers but occasionally the dialogue crackles into life enough to be enjoyable.

Rating: C+

publisher?

Posted on by Greig

Romancing Mister Bridgerton

Julia Quinn

This is a really enormously enjoyable piece of historical romantic comedy.
Penelope Featherington is the perpetual wallflower of the London Set and has had a lifelong crush on Colin Bridgerton – her best friend’s brother. When a scandal erupts around notorious gossip columnist Lady Whistledown the two are involved in the mystery and pushed together.
I’m not a huge fan of historical romances but this is a really well written and thoroughly entertaining slice of romantic fiction. Funny and emotionally involving I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who likes romantic comedies.

Rating: B+

na?

Posted on by Greig

Hold Me

Courtney Miilan

A very enjoyable slice of contemporary romance that basically does the whole ‘Shop Around The Corner/You’ve Got Mail’ plot with Physicists and science bloggers.
Unusually among the romance novels I’ve read this one has a very diverse cast none of whom are defined solely by their ethnicity, identity or whatever.
I much preferred it to the first in this series.

Rating: B

claremont?

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The Collapsing Empire

John Scalzi

This is easily Scalzi’s best book since Zoe’s Tale.
The story is set in the Interdependency which is a collective of planets controlled by aristocrats and guilds and connected by a FTL network called the Flow. We arrive to find this fictional world in the midst of political upheaval and finding itself on the brink of disaster. Unusually for a book with many point-of-view characters I enjoyed spending time with all of them. It has to be said, though, that Kiva Lagos is my favourite. I definitely want more of her in the rest of the series.
Indeed the only real flaw of the book is that it feels very much like the set up for a series. I can’t wait for the next one to come out so Scalzi’s got me hooked already.

I should note that I read an advance copy of this book provided by NetGalley

Rating: B+

webfence?

Posted on by Greig

Attachments

Rainbow Rowell

I’ve not made the quickest start to my reading this year. A health issue has meant that I really couldn’t concentrate on story for any length of time for the past few weeks.
To get me started I decided to pick out an easy read, something that I’ve read before.
Attachments is a novel about people working for a newspaper in 1999 and early 2000. It’s a sweet tale of female friendship between a film critic and a subeditor told epistolary style through emails which are read by the poor IT guy who has to check for abuse of the Internet by employees. There’s a believable but always fundamentally creepy romantic relationship that develops between the IT guy and the film columnist. After all he’s read all sorts of things about her life without her knowledge or consent.
It’s not as good as later books by the author but it is enjoyable and as I say it’s an easy read.

Rating: B+