The Book Post - January

What's been on my bookshelf ...

On the third Friday of each month, my stunning book club buddies and I host a bookish link-up - What’s On Your Bookshelf - and here’s what’s been on my bookshelf (or, rather, off my bookshelf and in my hot little hands) over the last month.

Fiction Reads

Peril in the Cotswolds and A Cotswold Christmas Mystery , by Rebecca Tope

I’d read the first 14 Thea Osborne Cotswolds mysteries some years ago. A quick flick through Goodreads (thank goodness for Goodreads) was able to tell me just how long ago – 2017. Time, does, as they say, fly by oh so quickly.

Back then I loved the adventures based in Cotswolds villages, and I loved looking for landmarks from the villages I’d visited. Then … I don’t know what happened, but I stopped reading them.

In December I picked up two – Peril in the Cotswolds (no. 15) and A Cotswold Christmas Mystery and … I enjoyed them, but I no longer felt as though I liked Thea. I think it was a me thing.

Christmas at the Little Paris Hotel, by Rebecca Raisin

Turn a tumbledown Paris hotel into a perfect boutique, bookish retreat, and have it open for Christmas? What could possibly go wrong?

When Anais receives a near-derelict Paris hotel in her divorce settlement, her first thought is to tidy it up and sell it immediately. All she wants is to move on and forget her disaster of a marriage ever happened.

But selling it proves impossible, so she has only one option: to make it gorgeous and open by Christmas... when her funds will almost certainly run out.

She's not counting on the grumpy American bar-owner next door, Noah, coming and interfering at every moment though. Nor is she expecting to find a mysterious room - which holds the key to a one-hundred-year-old secret - about a woman who chose love against the odds.

The last of my Festival of Festive Reads for 2024, I wanted to like this one more than I did. I’m a sucker for anything set in Paris, yet … I think what this one was missing was the Christmas in the title. Sure, it was set at Christmas, but there it ends. Nevertheless it was a good read.

Forever Yours, by Debbie Johnson

Gemma knows perfectly well how one moment can change your life forever. That's why, for two decades, she's lived life by the rulebook.

But this year, everything is different. The beloved daughter she gave up for adoption all those years ago is about to turn eighteen - and that means, there's a chance of being found.

For the first time in her life, Gemma can no longer run from her secrets. And she begins to realise that when everything is falling apart, love can be found in the unlikeliest of places.

I finished my 2024 reading year on a high with this one. Heartwarming, heartbreaking, and completely hopeful, this one has all the feels. Read with tissues handy.

This was my read of the month.

A Year of New Adventures, by Maddie Please

It’s time for Billie Summers to have an adventure … but it might not be exactly what she expected.

Billie Summers has always been quite content in her little cottage in the Cotswolds. Sure, half the house hasn’t been renovated, but what’s the point when it’s only her? Working part-time at her uncle’s bookshop and planning writer retreats with her best friend allows her to pay the bills. What more could anyone want?

That is until Oliver Forest, the bad boy of the book world, turns up to one of her retreats and points out that Billie hasn’t done anything very adventurous. Couple that with her best friend falling head over heels and beginning to drift away from their Friday night wine and dinner plans, Billie is starting to wonder if it isn’t time she took control of her life.

So she starts a list: get fitted (properly) for a bra, fix up rest of house, find a ‘career’ and well, get a tattoo … Her life might just get the makeover it needs, too bad irritating and far-too-attractive for his own good, Oliver keeps showing up …

I really loved the premise of this one, but while I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it. Maybe I’m getting grumpy in my old age. Maybe the character of Billie reminded me a little too much of myself. Maybe I wanted to slap her around the face when she wailed about how overweight she was at 65 kgs … what I would do to be back at 65 kgs. Tbh though, I think what I missed was the chemistry between Billie and Oliver. I love the Grumpy/Sunshine trope, but … it fell just a tad short for me. The smallest of tads.

Wild Scottish Knight, by Tricia O’Malley

Opposites attract in this modern-day fairytale when American, Sophie MacKnight, inherits a Scottish castle along with a hot grumpy Scotsman who is tasked with training her to be a magickal knight before the Kelpies wreak havoc on the people of Loren Brae.

You might recall how last year I inhaled Tricia O’Malley’s Wild Irish Heart series, well, I think I might just be about to do the same with her Enchanted Highlands series.

Scotland ✔️

Kelpies (the mythical sort) ✔️

Men in kilts ✔️

The Classics

Book Club

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

I really enjoyed this Victorian Gothic horror novel.

Dorian sold his soul to the devil when he wished that the portrait his friend Basil had painted could take all signs of age and depravity from him, leaving him as youthfully beautiful as he was on the day the portrait was painted.

While this is about good and evil, it also made me wonder just what you’d do if you could give into your temptations knowing that there would be no lasting consequences.

It also sent me down numerous Google rabbit holes as I sought more information about Oscar Wilde and his life.

Next we’re reading The Alchemist by Paul Coehlo.

The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway

If I said that this book was about an old bloke who went out fishing in a rowboat and stayed out there a bit longer than he’d intended, you’d think I was having a laugh.

This, however, is so much more than that – it must be, it won the Nobel Prize for Literature. To tell you more would be to give it away.

I’d wondered what all the fuss over Ernest Hemingway was about – now I know.

Non-Fiction

A Moveable Feast, by Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the twenties are deeply personal, warmly affectionate and full of wit. Looking back not only at his own much younger self, but also at the other writers who shared Paris with him - James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald - he recalls the time when, poor, happy and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation.

It was on my to-do reading list this year to read something by Ernest Hemingway – and look at that, a tick in the box. I literally was in Paris, sitting in the corner with a cocktail, watching it all unfold and listening to the strains of La Vie en Rose.

How to Eat 30 Plants a Week, by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall

30 plants may sound a lot, but in Hugh's expert hands it has never been simpler to achieve your health goals and approach everyday cooking with delicious, nutritious meals full of easy wins to increase your plant intake, whatever your dietary requirements.

Pioneering gut-health guru Tim Spector's introduction explains why racking up the plant power by eating a variety of 30 plants a week will give your body more of the nutrients you need to feel great, have renewed energy and reset your microbiome.

Much more than just fruit and veg, plants also include nuts, seeds, pulses, grains, herbs, spices, chocolate and even coffee.

Packed with people-pleasing plant-only dishes alongside a few well-chosen meat and fish options, and helpful tips, tricks and easy swaps, with Hugh to show you the way, you'll soon be getting in your 30 plants, and more, week after week.

I reviewed this in this week’s Excess Baggage blog post. Spoiler alert though - it’s actually easier than you think …

Your turn…

Deb, Donna, Sue, and I would love you to share what you’ve been reading … you’ll find the link up here - or just drop it in the comments.