This is the story of Min and Cal, a contemporary romance that has a lot of parallels to historical romance, in my mind. It’s the spinster bluestoking and the rake with a heart of gold, updated to current models. First we have Minerva Dobbs – she’s single and doesn’t have much luck with relationships. I don’t know if she’s a virgin, that point isn’t mentioned, but overall she doesn’t have much experience. She’s been dumped by her latest boyfriend and is reluctant to try again, […]
A good candidate for my worst book of the year
Spoiler warning! This review will contain plot spoilers, because for me to be able to work through my various thoughts and feeling about the plot (which was quite dumb), I will need to spoil bits of it. You don’t actually want to read this book anyway, I promise, so view the spoilers as more of a favour than a problem. Ashley Claughbane is the fourth son in a noble family from the Isle of Man (or Wight – I don’t entirely remember, and I can’t be […]
Death on a train
Internationally famous private detective Hercule Poirot is on his way back to England after solving a mystery in Syria. He decides to take the Orient Express for part of his journey, only to discover that despite the train normally being quite empty during the winter season, it’s so fully booked in first class that he has to stay the first night in a second class cabin. Poirot is approached by one of the passengers, a Mr. Edward Ratchett, who claims he has many enemies and […]
Precocious 11 year old to the rescue
I am late to the Flavia de Luce train, but a random comment about the series that I came across somewhere intrigued me enough to request this book from the library. While I didn’t up loving this book, it wasn’t bad. It’s set in 1950s Britain, and Flavia is a precocious 11 year old girl who lives with her father and two older sisters; her mother passed away some time ago, but she she is far from forgotten. Her family is rather eccentric and Flavia […]