The Spellshop - Sarah Beth Durst

So, I've now completed my first book for the brand new year of 2025 and it was The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. This is one of those hyped up, flavour of the month books of 2024, so I was curious to see how it would go.

Kiela is one of many librarians who work in the massive library that is The Great Library of Alyssium. She's not a mixer or a joiner, and her job, where she also lives as well as works, gives her the opportunity to hide away from people and be solitary amongst the books. But revolution is in the air, The Emporer is unpopular and is about to be deposed. The city is burning and that includes the library. Kiela knows she has to leave but she can't allow the books to burn. Taking what she can rescue, her and Caz, her assistant who is actually a spider-plant, escape the city, by boat, carrying several crates of precious spell books. 

Where is she to go? Well, home of course, to the island of Caltrey, the place her parents left many years ago in order to get a better life in the city for themselves and Kiela. She can barely remember it but recalls enough to know her way there by sea and to know that the family cottage should still be standing and waiting for her. And it is but it's a little dilapidated and the garden is overgrown. 

Enter, Larran, naturally a hunk, who turns up with free food and help but Kiela, being a recluse and worried about the spell books to boot, is not exactly welcoming. She thinks she can go it alone and repel all boarders until it dawns on her she now has to feed herself and that requires an income. Can she use magic to facilitate that? It's illegal, but perhaps she can cover up the fact that she's using it...

So I think the correct subgenre for this would be cosy romantasy. If you want epic fantasy, conflict, angst, death, intricate world-building, this is probably not the book for you. Although there 'is' world-building. There is magic but ordinary people are not supposed to use it. I fancy it's a bit of an evil empire but it's not entirely clear. There's an amazing library apparently but we hear hardly anything about it

It's peopled by all kinds of individuals: Kiela is blue for instance, Caz is a spider plant. There are people with antlers, a healer who can fly, a centaur, mer-horses that Larran looks after and so on. Oh... and flying cats. So it's interesting all right, but all a little bit surface. I can't help feeling there is an amazing book here waiting to get out. 'More' would've been nice.

I liked the found family aspect of it, but then that's a favourite trope of mine. There is some conflict in the second half of the book, that did pep things up a bit. You might be thinking that I didn't like this book but that would be wrong. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads because it was gentle, with interesting characters, the island was gorgeous and, you know... 'raspberry jam'! If 3.5 was available that's what it would've got, Kiela needed a good talking to in my opinion, to the point of being annoying. The spider plant had the measure of her in my opinion! I should also add that there is no explicitness in this book so it's safe for anyone to read if that's not your bag. 

I hope your first book of 2025 lives up to your expectations. Mine was 'not bad' so I'm happy. I've moved on to a historical novel now, book one of the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

 

I know a lot of people adore this series and already I can see why, beautiful writing and interesting people... I love the occasional narrating voices of the children in it. I think I might be in for a bit of a treat. 

Happy New Year and favourite books

 A very Happy New Year to all of you who visit this blog during the year, especially those who comment and who I consider to be friends. I hope 2025 will be a good one for you and yours. If, like me, 2024 was personally a bit of a shocker, due to the death of a loved one or some other trauma, then I truly hope this new year will see better things for you and new beginnings.

Books-wise I read 74 books in 2024. Much less than in 2023, partly due to circumstances of course, but I did actually plan on reading a little less last year and to take my time more over books I was enjoying. That, I feel I succeeded at and will do the same in 2025. 

First, a quick list of the five books I read in December:

70. Steeple Chasing - Peter Ross. I finished this one in December having started it in September apparently! Anyway, a delightful non-fiction book about the author's trips around the UK visiting old churches. A lot of snippets of history and a good sense of place throughout. 4 stars.

71. Murder in the Falling Snow edited by Cecily Gayford. A solid antholgy of winter based crime stories. 3 stars (3.5)

72. Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors - James Lovegrove. Three cleverly connected Holmes novellas, again with a winter theme running through. Enjoyable. 4 stars.

73. The Willows at Christmas - William Horwood. Toad's home has been invaded for Christmas by the Relative from Hell. Can Mole, Ratty and Badger save him? A fun read. 3 stars. (3.5)

74. Tour De Force - Christianna Brand. Book 6 of Brand's Inspector Cockrill series, wherein he's on his hols in Italy with a group of strangers. When one of them is murdered he's on holiday no longer. Closed circle murder mystery, similar in feel to the other book I read by her, Green for Murder. The group of suspects is very small and it's hard to believe any of them could've done the deed or why. 4 stars.

OK. So... ten favourite fiction books of 2024, in no particular order.

 Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky was an absolutely amazing sci-fi novel (possibly my book of the year) and I plan to read on in this series this year and read some of his other books too.

Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope. Book 3 of his classic Barsetshire series, romantic, funny, beautifully written, just a joy.

Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge. 1930s holiday romance sort of thing involving a middle-aged woman and a younger man. Set mainly on the coast of present-day Croatia. Loved it, another author I want to read more of this year.

The Girl Beneath the Sea by Andrew Mayne. Diving skulduggery off the coast of Florida. Pacy thriller that I really enjoyed.

Black Sun Rising by Celia Friedman. An unusal blend of sci-fi and fantasy that really worked for me. Great world building, fascinating characters.

The Trouble with Mrs. Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden. A historical comedy of manners, reminding me of Emma or Cranford. Joyous, I absolutely loved it. 

The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes. Children's/young adult spooky novella. Very strong sense of place and time of year, and quite creepy. 

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. Most peculiar in its ideas but this mix of fantasy and murder really worked for me. Looking forward to book 2 this year.

The Woman in the Woods by John  Connolly. Unlikely I'm going to do a 'best of' list and not include a John Connolly, if I've read one. Creepy, atmospheric, amazing back story, he never disappoints. 

Saving Missy by Beth Morrey. A delightful contemporary fiction book with an older protagonist making new friends in unexpected places. Loved it. 

So those were some of my favourite fictional reads of 2024. A mixed bunch but I see sci-fi/fantasy/supernatural have come to the fore a bit more recently and I plan to continue with that into 2025. Still loving my crime fiction though. 

I only read 16 non-fiction books this year so I may or may not do a favourites post on that. Several of those were really excellent so perhaps I might do a top 5.

Hope you're all well and here's to an excellent 2025, full of good books.

I have been reading...

So, it's suddenly turned busy. 'Well, it is Christmas!' I hear you opine. Quite right too. Plus, I changed my car, had family visiting, and took up Latin lessons with a really lovely lady tutor. And I have been reading too, just not got around to posting about said books on here, so I shall do a quick rundown in this post.

November saw me read four books. 

66. The Tainted Cup - Robert Jackson Bennett

67. As a Thief in the Night - R. Austin Freeman

68. The Woman in the Woods - John Connolly. Wherein Charlie Parker helps to find out who the body of a woman, buried in the woods, is, and what happened to the child she gave birth to. As always this was hugely satisfying in its creepiness, excellent writing and conclusion. This series 'never' disappoints and one of my personal challenges for 2025 is to get myself up to date with it. Not a hardship.

69. Pomfret Towers - Angela Thirkell. Book 6 of the author's Barsetshire series. It's a loose series and this is one I hadn't read that's been on my tbr pile for years. It's a house party scenario involving several different families and you have to work out who's going to end up married to whom. Beautiful writing and such a gentle, delightful book. A bit different from her later books, which I also love. Another author I want to read more of in 2025. 

So, that was November's books. Three of them were top-notch and one, As a Thief in the Night, a little bit average, but that's fine. 

On to December and I've read, or in one case 'finished', two books so far this month. 

70. Steeple Chasing - Peter Ross. 

This was pretty much what it says on the tin. A book about the ancient churches of the UK. I'm not madly religious (perhaps slightly more than I used to be) but I do love old churches. It's a thing apparently and people who trot around all over the place visiting churches in groups are called Church-Crawlers. Who knew? But it strikes me as a lovely thing to do and I wonder where you sign up! This was full of history and interesting facts with a very strong sense of place all through, especially the London sections. 5 stars, no quibbling.

71. Murder in the Falling Snow - edited by Cecily Gayford. 

This was an anthology of wintery/Christmassy murder short stories of the 'who did who in and why' variety. Not a standout collection but solid, with authors such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Innes, Gladys Mitchell and a rather good story called The Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel by L.T. Meade and Robert Eustace which I had read before but was no hardship to read again. A solid 3 stars. 

And now I'm reading this which is a three novella volume, Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors by James Lovegrove. 

Of course, no one writes Holmes and Watson like ACD, but this is not a bad effort. I've read the first novella which is a school based story about the death of a young boy at a private school. I've read a couple of books by Lovegrove and while they're not amazing, they're very readable. 

So, that's me up to date. I hope you're keeping warm and cosy and finding plenty of good books to read, Christmassy or not. It's all good. No judgement here. :-)

A Couple of short(ish) reviews

Catching up a bit today. First up, The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. It took me a week to read this and I'm not sure why, although it is quite densely written and a trifle complicated! Describing it is going to be fun...

So, the first thing to know about this book is that it's a mixed genre novel and the two genres are fantasy and crime fiction. So it's odd. (Huge understatement!) This is an organic plants/tree world. Walls of houses are made of something made from ferns for instance, you can cool your house with a kind of large mushroom... and grass, plants trees etc. are also a way of killing someone. Dinios Kol, an 'engraver' - meaning he's been altered to possess a photographic memory - and assistant investigator, is called to a house of one of the wealthy families of the region. A man has been killed by a kind of contagion using tree spores and his mutilated body is now part of a tree. (I did say it was odd...) 'Din' works for chief investigator, Ana Dolabra, an older eccentric woman who keeps herself blindfold most of the time and doesn't much like to leave her house. Engraver, Din, is her eyes and ears. It's soon transpires that this death is not the only one that's happened in this manner, recently, and Din and Ana have to travel to another, more dangerous, region to find out more. So, the back-drop to this story is that the coastal area where all this is going on is constantly under attack from Leviathans from the sea, sea-monsters in other words. The blood from these creatures is used to 'augment' the population if they so wish, change various aspects of their bodies, so you can have someone who is very strong, very intelligent or, like Din, an engraver with a photographic memory. There's definitely a Roman Empire slant as well, and some people see a Holmes/Watson relationship in the two main investigators. I personally didn't see much of that, in fact I was reminded more of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin but I think that's probably just me as I haven't seen anyone else mention it. This certainly wins the 'Weirdest Book of the Year' award for me and I read quite a bit of weird fiction. The world building in it is amazing 'but' I can't imagine it being everyone's cup of tea... very far from it in fact. But it was mine... I liked how crazy it was, I liked the back-story of the Leviathans - I'm sure there's a lot more to come on that - I liked Din and how dogged he was, not so keen on Ana and her constant swearing (couldn't see the point of it) but I can tolerate that if the story is strong enough and for me, it was. Book two is out next April and I'll be in the queue.

My second read of November was As a Thief in the Night by R. Austin Freeman, published in 1928, so rather different to the previous book!

The setting for this vintage murder mystery is suburban London. The Monkhouse household consists of Harold Monkhouse, elderly, not in the best of health, his younger wife, Barbara, Monkhouse's secretary, Anthony Wallingford, and Madelaine Norris, an orphaned relation, brought up as Monkhouse's daughter. The old man is often very ill in bed and this time is no different. No one realises he's at death's door, not even his doctor, but at death's door he is and he pops his clogs. It's initially thought his various illnesses have taken him but an autopsy proves otherwise: Monkhouse has been poisoned. Rupert Mayfield is a lawyer and very close friend of the family through Barbara. They practically grew up together and suffered the great loss of a girl that grew up with them, Stella. Thus, the two are very close. So, who killed Harold Monkhouse? Mayfield consults private detective, Dr. Thorndyke, but reluctantly. He hates the thought that one of the household he's so close to has killed a vulnerable old man, but has to do something as the police have drawn a blank. Neither of them realises how complicated this case is going to turn out to be. So, I enjoyed this but gave it just an average 3 stars on Goodreads. Why? Well, it's a bit waffley for my taste. Well written, like most authors from 1920s and 30s, R. Austin Freeman knew how to put pen to paper and write beautifully. But every last thing is gone into, scientifically... and some will like this aspect I'm sure... but for me it got bogged down in too much detail. That said, the case was intriguing, there was very good characterisation, I was very invested in each every one of them and, like Mayfield, didn't really want any of them to have committed the murder. London is very much a real character in the book, good atmosphere, lots of local knowledge, so I liked that aspect too. In all, a solid read, not a 'sing from the rooftops' kind of book, but I enjoyed it well enough.

So, while the snow is coming down outside (not kidding, it 'is') I'm reading this from John Connolly, my favourite author.

 

The Woman in the Woods, like all Connolly's Charlie Parker books, is creepy and thought provoking and no author makes me shudder like him. I'm five or six books behind in this series so my plan for next year is to have a catch-up as one of my personal challenges. This won't exactly be a hardship. 

I hope you're all keeping well and warm and finding some good seasonal books to read as winter closes in.

Books read in October

I just can't believe October is now behind us and we're entering the final couple of months of 2024. (Note: I have not mentioned the 'C' word.) I did a bit better with reading last month than I did in September... 6 books read as opposed to '2' (still haven't quite recovered from that!) So, these are they.

60. Bookworm - Lucy Mangan. A fun book about the author's favourite books of her childhood in the 1980s. Not my generation but close to my daughters' so it was a nice trip down memory lane. 

61. Two-Way Murder - E.C.R. Lorac

62.  The Haunting of Aveline Jones - Phil Hickes

63. The Woods in Winter - Stella Gibbons

64. The Spy Coast - Tess Gerritsen

Maggie Bird lives quietly, running a chicken farm in a village on the coast of Maine. She hasn't always done that however: Maggie is a retired CIA agent. She's not alone, around her are a peer group of similarly retired operatives, so when a dead body is dumped on her drive one night she is not short of assistance. In fact, the police are more of a hindrance than a help but one, Police Chief, Jo Thibodeau, is doggedly determined to discover who this group are and why one of them was presented with a corpse. So the clue here is in the title, The 'Spy' Coast, but for some reason I still expected it to be more of a crime story than a 'spy' one. Naturally, it was the other way around, which would be quite obvious to all but me, but there you go... Anyway, as with all of Tess Gerritsen's books it was very well written, but I'm not a huge espionage story fan so I did struggle a little with it. Plus, it felt a bit similar to Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn, enough that it felt like I was almost rereading that, although there are quite a lot of differences. Anyone, who hasn't read the Raybourn would doubtless enjoy The Spy Coast as it is a good book, but there is considerable use of flash-back scenes, so if that's not your bag, this might not be for you. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads but if 3.5 was available, it would've got that.

65. Saving Missy - Beth Morrey.

Millicent 'Missy' Carmichael, 79, lives alone in a huge house in London. Hardly anyone she loves is around any more - husband, Leo, her son lives in Australia with his family and Missy does not get on well with her daughter who lives in Cambridge. It's a walk in the park that changes everything for her. She meets Angela and her young son, Otis, and then their friend, an older woman, Sylvie. It's not easy for Missy to let them into her life, she's prickly and a bit secretive, but they persist and eventually fostering  a female dog, 'Bob', (you have to know your Blackadder) brings about proper change. This was a delightful contemporary story, a bit heart-wrenching in parts, 'very' in a couple of others, have your hanky ready, but it's also funny and very true to life. There are flashbacks but they're not intrusive and 'fit', if you know what I mean. And it is beautifully written. My cousin passed this one on to me and I'm so glad as I absolutely loved it. 

So that was my reading October. A nice mix of crime and creepiness, some good seasonal reading and an excellent contemporary novel. I'm a happy bunny.

At present I'm reading this:

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett is a fantasy novel that is also a crime story. It is weird. Even for me, Queen of the Weird, it is weird.

I'm also still reading this:

This one is a beautiful read so I'm taking my time reading about the ancient churches of the UK.

I hope you're all enjoying your autumn reading and keeping well?

The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons - #1970Club

So, this week is the week of the 1970 club which is being hosted by Simon at Stuck in a Book and Karen at Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings.

The idea is to read any book that was published in 1970. (The challenge runs twice a year and a different year is chosen each time.) I usually try to read one book for the event and this year it was The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons.

 

It's the 1930s and Ivy Gower cleans house for socialite, Helen Green, for a living and is fairly stoical about her life, although, rather than live in London, she would far rather live in the country. When she gets a letter telling her of an inheritance from her great uncle, she has to take it to Helen to make sense of it because she thinks it might be a scam. But no, Ivy is now the owner of a cottage way out in the Buckinghamshire countryside and wastes no time in quitting her job and moving. Before she goes though she rescues (steals) a badly treated dog from her neighbourhood and foists it onto Helen while she organises her move. 

The cottage, miles up a lonely track, is barely habitable with a hole in its thatched roof and wildlife (mice, pigeons, cockroaches) running amok indoors. Undeterred, Ivy is in her element, she can sleep by the fire with the dog and she certainly doesn't need people to make her life complete. But the locals find her, despite her being so isloated and as anti-social as they come. And Ivy gets a reputation because of her empathy with animals, that of being a bit witchy with gypsy blood, as one of her close ancestors was, in fact, a gypsy. And then her life takes a turn as a 12 year old boy, Mike, turns up on her doorstep and like all her other rescue animals, she takes him in too.

So, this is my first Stella Gibbons it turns out... I thought I'd read one other but when I checked, it was by someone else entirely. Anyway, The Woods in Winter was published in 1970 and has a 1970 element to it towards the end. But the book is about the changing world of the 1930s and the breaking down of class barriers after World War One.

Ivy is the star of the book but others feature too. The Carteret sisters from a well-off family run a tea shop in the village but only want a certain type of clientele and are doing it for a lark. Angela Mordaunt, living with her high maintenance, snooty mother, who secretly wishes she could marry and move out but thinks she's too old and unmarriageable. Helen Green, in love with a bit of a bounder and keeping it a secret from her friends, the Carterets. And the boy, Mike, not terribly communicative but a genius artist in the making. And there're other bit-part players who all come together to make this a fascinating ensemble cast story. 

The sense of place, the cottage on the edge of fields with woods climbing the hills all around, was utterly gorgeous. But already things are changing with talk of developers and that creates a bit of a melancholy feel to the book, it's definitely a 'days gone by' novel. For me, Ivy's story ended rather abruptly. The ending isn't unhappy exactly but I suppose I wanted a bit more from it. I also found Gibbons' depiction of people in general to be a bit too unsympathetic, but that could just be me. In general I enjoyed the book a lot, it's quirky and atmospheric, funny, has a superb sense of place, and definitely appeals to that sense of 'leaving civilisation behind' that a lot of us have... you can keep the mice and the cockroaches though!

A couple of autumn/winter reads

Judging by my first two fiction books of October, I'm thinking this month could be a good one for reading. It's my favourite month, book-wise, as I do tend to specialise in spooky reads or crime fiction if I can. For many years I did Carl's R.I.P. 'Halloween' themed challenge but stopped when he stopped. I didn't stop reading the books though. 

Anyway, first up is a vintage crime yarn from the BLCC series of books. Two-way Murder was one of the last crime stories that E.C.R. Lorac wrote before her death in 1959, in fact it wasn't published in her lifetime, but in 2021.

It's the night of the hunt ball and the great and good have all gathered to let their hair down. Solicitor, Ian Macbane, is down from London hoping to be reacquainted with Dilys Maine, the most beautiful girl in and around the town of Fordings in the south of England (Hampshire or Sussex was my thought.). He gets a lift from Nick Brent, across the hills, where it's incredibly foggy that night. Ian comes back with someone else as Nick has persuaded Dilys to let him give her a lift home. She has to leave early so that her autocratic father does not know she's been out. Unfortunately for them they find a dead body in the middle of the lane and Nick tells Dilys to go home over the fields and pretend she wasn't with him. He goes to find a phone at the home of Michael Reeves, a man from a rough family, whose sister disappeared last year, but gets hit over the head by persons unknown for his trouble. This is really quite a complicated murder mystery, involving as it does several plot threads and a lot of secrets, some of which the reader is aware of, some not.  Who is the dead man? Was it a road accident or was he murdered and dumped there? You will need to keep your wits about you as there's a lot going on in this novel. This is not one of the 46 Inspector MacDonald stories, the two detectives here are Waring and Turner, the former into a more routine, police procedure type of detecting and the latter taking a more psychological approach. Lorac concentrates on Turner as he tries to get inside people's heads and discover their secrets. I had no clue until the end who had done the deed and how it had been achieved. The sense of place was very strong, the foggy, dark night on the South Downs, the overall English autumn/winter feel of the proceeding days of the investigation was excellent and one of the best things about the book in my opinion. If you're looking for a seasonal crime read you could not go far wrong with this.

Next, I moved on to The Haunting of Aveline Jones by Phil Hickes. I saw this Young Adult novel recommended in a Booktube video by Celeste at A Reader's Alamanac. 

Twelve year old, Aveline Jones, is on her way to Malmouth, a small fishing village on the south coast of England, to stay with her Aunt Lilian. She usually lives in Bristol with her mum but her mum's been called up to Scotland as her elderly mother is ill. Aveline is not enthused by having to spend the October half-term with an aunt she doesn't know very well and the state of the village doesn't help her mood, it's off-season and deserted, and the weather is 'stormy' autumnal (sounds lovely!) Add to that some rather creepy looking stuffed scarecrows all around the place and poor Aveline is not optimistic about the next week. Her mood is lifted somewhat by the discovery of a second-hand bookshop in the village, run by Mr. Lieberman and his nephew, Harold. Aveline heads for the shop in the hope of finding some new anthologies of her favourite genre of books: ghost stories. And find some she does, one book in particular catches her attention - it features stories of local folklore and hauntings. Inside the front cover someone has signed their name: Primrose Penberthy. To her surprise Aveline also finds that the same pen has completely scratched out the final story in the book, The Lady and the Waves. Why? Aveline realises she has a mystery on her hands when something is revealed about the fate of Primrose Penberthy. So this book is probably Middle Grade rather than Young Adult, but truthfully I think it would appeal to any lover of a good ghost yarn. I was surprised at how creepy and atmospheric it was for a book aimed at younger teens. The author sets the scene of a lonely, wind-swept fishing village in a stormy October very well indeed. I've actually experienced the setting he uses and he is spot-on. I don't think he says where it actually is but my gut feeling is Cornwall although Dorset gets a mention too, so you can make up your own mind. I found the book strong on characterisation, I liked that Aveline was not some trendy teen in the making with an attitude to match but a reader and lover of old books and bookshops. That makes a change from all the stroppy teens and pre-teens you read about. Aunt Lilian, Mr Lieberman, the old lady who was an expert on folklore, they all felt very real. It's a short book that packs a good creepy punch and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, enough to buy the next two books to read this autumn and winter.

So, an excellent start to my October reading, both books with a very strong sense of season and place, which are two of my favourite things, and I feel fortunate to have such good luck. I hope you too are enjoying some good seasonal reading if that's your thing.