Open Thread for Readers for August 2018
Misc / Need A Rec!book-pimp / Open Thread / Promotion8 Comments
Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general?
I want to rave about a rare and wonderful book by Sandra Antonelli that’s due out later this summer. At Your Service is the story of a British secret agent and his female butler, and what happens when he wakes up and smells the coffee. When international crime embroils his ultra professional, sharp-tongued butler, Agent Kitt must put all his dash and spy-craft to her cause, or risk losing Mae along with her impeccable service and divine English breakfasts. Much of the story is set in Sicily with the brooding Mt. Etna pelting ash and smoke throughout.
The dialog is crisp and biting, the plot unpredictable and the main characters’ relationship turns them both inside out. As always in Antonelli’s books, the characters are well beyond early adulthood. They are sexy and self-assured the way only people who’ve done a lot of living can be. Antonelli’s bracing prose and original turn of phrase make her one of my favorite contemporary authors. The book works on many levels: a who dunnit, a heady seduction, and a deeper exploration of “who is going to be dominant between us?”
Also worth mentioning is the wealth of Easter eggs interspersed throughout the book. I don’t want to spoil the fun of discovery, but they had me grinning ear to ear.
@Mzcue: That sounds really good! If only I wasn’t overbooked on review commitments at the moment, I would jump on it. Since I am, I’ll put it on my list of books to check out when I’m a little more caught up.
Kathleen Gilles Seidel has a new romance coming out in two days. It’s very much in the vein of her older books from the 1990s, with both the strengths and weaknesses that implies. Jennie and I will have a joint review of it up this week–for now I’ll just say that I liked it better than Jennie did.
I read and enjoyed Sarah Morgan’s first foray into women’s fiction, How To Keep A Secret. Bear in mind that Morgan is one of my favorite authors so I’m predisposed to like her stuff, but I wasn’t sure what this new departure would be like. From my notes at Goodreads:
It’s at the border of women’s fiction and genre romance, because while it is about a group of women at different stages of their lives and their relationships with each other, their romantic relationships are still front and center.
Nancy, her two daughters Lauren and Jenna, and Lauren’s daughter Mackenzie (Mack) are the women whose stories are told here. The catalyst is a sudden, unexpected tragedy in Lauren and Mack’s world, which brings them back to Nancy and Jenna on Martha’s Vineyard. Nancy and Jenna have their own difficulties to contend with, and everyone has secrets, some of which have created distances between the mothers and their daughters. Even Lauren and Jenna’s tight bond as sisters has been frayed.
There’s nothing terribly surprising in this novel, but the stories are well told and the setting is effectively portrayed. All the characters feel like real people who behave authentically and while there are a few plot coincidences, they didn’t take me out of the book. If you liked Morgan’s Puffin Island series you should like this one; it’s similar in tone and approach, but with the addition of an older generation and mature parent-child issues. Mack reminded me a lot (in a good way) of the teenage daughter in one of Morgan’s medical romances.
Two books—neither of them particularly recent, but both new-to-me—took me by surprise with how deep and emotional they were:
Penelope Ward’s STEPBROTHER DEAREST was a melancholy story of teenage lovers reunited after years and realize the spark is still there. A total “all the feels” book. (Also, I would recommend reading Ward’s sequel of sorts, NEIGHBOR DEAREST, to get the full arc of the characters.)
On its surface, Julie Kriss’s SPITE CLUB is a basic revenge romance where the hero & heroine get together after discover their respective significant others together. It seems obvious where the relationship is going, but the book has so much more to say about the double-standard in the workplace, slut-shaming, family obligations, the burden on women to live up to specific social ideals, and the exhaustion of trying to be someone you aren’t. Highly recommended.
@Mzcue: Thank you, just pre-ordered. This sounds perfect.
@DiscoDollyDeb:
Spite Club is free right now.
My guess of late summer was correct, but I found the actual date for publication of Sandra Antonelli’s romance/suspence At Your Service: September 13, 2018.