Just Like Heaven by Julia Quinn

Honoria Smythe-Smith is a bad violinist in a traditional family performance she does not look forward to but will smile through for kinship. She trailed around after her brother and Marcus his best friend since childhood. Now the Earl of Chatteris, Marcus sprains his ankle in Honoria’s own carefully dug hole. After they tease, they may fall in love.

I love this book. Julia Quinn has written this with her usual wit and charm. Honoria and Marcus are amazing characters and I loved reading their story. It is one of those books that would be perfect for holidays or in between serious reads. It is so easy to read and I loved every second of it. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

The Duke’s Men by Sabrina Jefferies

Dominick Manton, the disinherited younger son of a viscount, refuses to let his lot in life ruin his future success. Instead, he opens Manton Investigations, specializing in finding missing persons and employs his illegitimate half sister, Lisette Bonnaud. When they take on the Duke of Lyons’ case involving their other illegitimate sibling, Tristen Bonnard, neither realises that they are beginning something extraordinary. Because the secrets they uncover will rock the dukedom and alter their own futures until the agency becomes, by popular acclaim … The Duke’s Men.

This is such a good series. Sabrina Jefferies is a really good writer, with characters that you fall in love with. Each book (with four in total) are thoughtful, funny and engaging. They are the kind of books that make you want to know what happens next. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

The School for Good and Evil: the Last Ever After by Soman Chainani

Sophie and Agatha thought their ending was sealed when they went their separate ways. But will their story be rewritten? With the girls apart, Evil has taken over. The villains of the past have come back with a vengeance and the forces of Good are in deathly peril. Can anyone stand in the way of Evil’s deadly reign- and the Last Ever After of all?

This is a great ending to the trilogy. I love reading it. It’s a great series and one of the things that I love about it is that the line between Evil and Good is not black and white. Because of this, it kinda makes you think. Soman Chainani is an amazing writer and I really enjoyed falling into his world. Chainani wraps everything up really well. Which is nice. A good ending is really important, especially when it comes to a series. Either way, it’s a really good book. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

Book Club Reads

So on Facebook, I am a member of a few book club groups and I’ve noticed a few people asking about books for their book clubs. I thought I would recommend a few books for those who maybe want to start their own book club or suggest a few books for their own book club.

Some of my favourite book club reads are Rebecca by Daphane du Maurier, the Martian by Andy Weir, a Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman and the Chilbury Ladies Choir by Jennifer Ryan.

These were all enjoyable reads and I loved all of them.

This is the great thing about book clubs. They are able to give you a wide range of books that you would never consider reading.

Books that I would recommend for book clubs (apart from the ones above, they are excellent books) are

1) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

2)Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3)Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

4) the Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

5)To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

6) Yes Please by Amy Poehler

7) Not my Father’s Son by Alan Cummings

8) Born a Crime by Trevour Noah

9) A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

10) The Perks of being a Wallflower by Stephan Chobosky

I do hope these help. I’m also sure there are many books that I’m missing. Is there anything that you would recommend? Let me know in the comments.

A Night Like This by Julia Quinn

Anne Wynter’s job as governess to three high born young ladies can be a challenge- in a single week she finds herself hiding in a closet full of tubas, playing an evil queen in a play and tending to the wounds of the oh-so-dashing Earl of Winstead. After years of dodging unwanted advances, he’s the first man who has truly tempted her, and it’s getting harder and harder to remind herself that a governess has no business flirting with a nobleman. Daniel Smythe-Smith might be in mortal danger, but that’s not going to stop the young Earl from falling in love. And when he spies a mysterious woman at his family’s annual musicale, he vows to pursue her. But Daniel has an enemy, one who has vowed to see him dead. And when Anne is thrown into peril, he will stop at nothing to ensure their happy ending….

This is another excellent book by Julia Quinn. She is one of my favourite authors. With this book, Quinn writes with her usual wit and charm. I loved every second of it. Anne and Daniel are amazing characters and I really enjoyed reading their story. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

The School for Good and Evil: A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani

Best friends Sophie and Agatha are back in Gavaldon, living out their Happily Ever After, but Agatha is missing her prince. In a moment of weakness she makes a wish, which once more opens the gates to the School for Good and Evil. Agatha and Sophie are sucked back into the world the escaped from- but everything has changed. War is brewing between the School for Girls and the School for Boys. Can this Ever After end happily for anyone?

This is another excellent book in the series. I do think it is so much darker than in the first one, but you also really want to know what happens. There are times when you are thinking ‘oh, crap’. But it is a gripping, well written book and I absolutely love the story. I do have to admit all the secret keeping gets a bit annoying, but I still enjoyed reading it. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Here is a novel, glamorous, ironical, compassionate- a marvelous fusion into unity of the incongruities of the life of the period- which reveals a hero like no other- one who could live at no other time and in no other place. But he will live as a character, we surmise, as long as the memory of any reader lasts. It is the story of this Jay Gatsby who came so mysteriously to West Egg, it his sumptuous entertainments, and of his love for Daisy Buchanan- a story that ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism, and is infused with a sense of the strangeness of human circumstance in a heedless universe.

What a book. It is engaging, well written and a interesting book. One of the cool things about this book is that at the start you, as the reader, are maybe a little naive. But as you read more, you become a little more disillusioned. There is a reason that it is a classic. I loved every second of it. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

Breakfast with Tiffany; An Uncle’s Memoir by Edwin John Wintle

Edwin Wintle was a successful, urbane professional whose life, at forty, was very comfortable. He had reached the point when he looked around at his well ordered, unfettered existence and wondered “is this all there is”. After a desperate call from his sister at her wits end, his street wise 13 year old niece Tiffany- a writhing ball of adolescent anger, comes to live with him. If he felt he needed a shot in the arm, what he got was proved more like electroshock therapy. Breakfast with Tiffany chronicles the newly minted family through a year of tumult and drama, as instant parent Uncle Eddy watches his best laid plans go awry.

Weirdly, this is the kind of book I think every new parent or anyone who wants to be a parent should read. It is witty, engaging and makes you realize that having kids is both worthwhile and slightly crazy. I really enjoyed watching Eddy and Tiffany interact. It also makes you realize that teens have their own wisdom and adults sometimes forget that. Either way, an excellent book and one that is worth reading. I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Waterstones

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Reilly

Maia D’Apliese and her five sisters gather at their childhood home, ‘Atlantis’- a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Genova- having been that their beloved father, who adopted them as babies, has died. Each of them has been handed a tantalizing clue to her true heritage- a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Once there, she begins to put together the pieces of her story and it’s beginnings. Eighty years earlier in Rio’s Belle Époque of the 1920s, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into the aristocracy. Meanwhile, Hector de Silva Costa is devising plans for an enormous statue, to be called Christ the Redeemer, and will soon travel to Paris to find the right sculptor to complete his vision. Izabela- passionate and longing to see the world- convinced her father to allow her to accompany him and his family to Europe before she is married. There, at Paul Landowski’s studio and in the heady, vibrant cafes of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same.

This book kinda makes me want to go to Rio. Having said that, there was something about this book that was off for me. I think I figured it is because of Izabela. I don’t know what it is about her but I just did not like her. Lucinda Reilly is a great storyteller, enough to keep me going at any rate. I also got the second one so that I can see what she does with the rest of the series. Reilly also does some research and it really shows in the story (James Joyce even gets a mention). I would definitely recommend it and I hope you enjoy it.

Links to book:

Amazon

Book Depository

Easons

Waterstones

Summer Days

So, today in Ireland it’s sooo hot.

Ok so it’s like 20’C, but considering that a normal in this country is about 13-15’C maybe less.

Either way, books need to be read.

For me, I have to admit I tend to go for the happier books. Even during the winter months, I’d rather go for the ones with the happier ending.

There are exceptions. Me Before You and Perks of Being a Wallflower are two that come to mind.

Anyways, books for summer days.

Authors like Stephanie Laurens, Sophie Kinsella and Julia Quinn would provide you with light hearted reads and sometimes will even make you laugh.

For those that maybe want a more serious fictional bent, authors like Dorothy Koomson, Martina Reilly and Sarah Dessen would be great. These all make you think.

Crime fiction authors that are good would be the likes of James Patterson, Martina Cole and Robert Gilbraith.

The likes of David Eddings, Patrick Rothfuss and Robert Jordan would be good fantasy authors.

After that, it is up to you and what you like to read that would be perfect for your sunny day.

Is there is anything that you think I’ve missed? If so let me know in the comments.