Books read in June

Heatwaves appear to be good for my reading figures. We endured a nasty one last week, temps up in the mid nineties, which for the UK is extremely unusual. All kinds of records broken, including the hottest June day ever. May it never return! I hate heat like that. I retreated indoors, lots of water, fan on, read books... and now it's over. Temps went down properly on Sunday and while it's still warm, it's 'normal' warm: that I can cope with. 

But because of the heatwave I got through nine books in June. These are they:

A Nice Class of Corpse - Simon Brett

Dead Men Don't Ski - Patricia Moyes

Cyanide in the Sun - edited by Martin Edwards

Starring Edward Woodward - Carolyn McGivern. An excellent biography of one of my favourite actors. He starred in The Wicker Man, Callan, The Equalizer etc.

Death and Croissants - Ian Moore. Cosy murder mystery, set in France. The middle-aged, male owner of a B&B, Richard, gets into all kind of trouble when a guest disappears leaving a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. A female guest insists he help her find out what happened to the man. I found this a bit silly. Richard needed to grow a backbone, all the too-ing and fro-ing confused me no end, and the intended humour was not actually all that amusing. Will probably not continue with this series.

Miss Percy's Pocket Guide to the Care and Feeding of British Dragons - Quenby Olsen

Mildred Percy is an unmarried woman in her forties who has no choice but to live with her sister, Diana. Diana 'is' married, several children, husband who hides behind the newspaper. What the married sister has done is use Mildred to bring up her kids and as a skivvy, but otherwise she goes unnoticed and uncared for. Then things take a turn when Mildred is left an inheritance by an eccentric uncle. Diana is out when it arrives and Mildred chooses not to tell her sister that the trunk is full of books and papers and a strange, oval shaped rock. Instead, Mildred goes to the local vicar for help and things go pear-shaped from there. This was one of those books that was quite a lot of fun but would not have harmed for losing 100 pages. Too much waffle and attempts at humour via Mildred's rambly cogitations. But it was enjoyable. I liked Mildred with the vicar, his housekeeper was a good character too. The wicked sister was a bit of a caricature, a bit too awful, she needed a slap quite frankly. I have already grabbed book 2 for my Kindle, wherein Mildred and the vicar head off to Wales. I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads, if 3.5 was available then that is what it would have got from me. 

 

The Rockpool Murders - Emylia Hall. This is book 3 in her 'Shellhouse Detectives' series. Ally and Jayden investigate the death of a rock-star who lived in a huge house overlooking the sea in their Cornish village. The rock-star is having a family get-together, although it is not exactly a happy family, when he's found face down in the swimming pool. Accidental death is the verdict, heart gave out after years of heavy living, but said rock-star no longer lived like that, so what happened? I have to admit that rock and roll themed crime novels are not my favourite. There's always one of the regular cast of characters for whom the pop group was part of their teenage years and he or she is star-struck blah blah blah. And so it turns out to be. 'But' Emylia Hall writes very well, and despite not taking to the theme of the book, I nevertheless rather enjoyed it. Ally and Jayden are always good value for money, the setting of a Cornish coast village is delightful, and I enjoy the background details of the lives of the regular cast: just occasionally there's a bit too much of that but that's okay. 

The Haunted Trail edited by Weird Walk (who the heck is called Weird Walk?), is a book of weird tales based on rambling holidays. There were a handful of good stories in this but it was not the best collection in this BL series that I've read. 

Defying Rome by Guy de la Bedoyere is a non-fiction book about the Romans in Britain and who stood up to them - Boudica etc. - or connived behind the scenes to depose emperors and so on. Interesting, if a little dry in places. I'd like to read his book on Samuel Pepys.

So that was June for me. Nine books, seven fiction, two non-fictions. Several stood out, the Simon Brett, the Patricia Moyes, the Emylia Hall and the Edward Woodward biography. But I have no complaints about my June reading months, overall it was a lot of fun. 

I hope you're all keeping well, enduring and managing the heat if you're in the northern hemisphere, and finding lots of good books to read.