Christie Barlow’s Love Heart Lane series has seen me through a lot of different trying situations: I read the first nine during my first bout of Covid in 2023, and I picked up this one, kindly offered to me by the publisher’s PR in March, as a gentle read during a post-half-marathon recovery. Book 14 in the series, it’s just as lovely as all the others …
Christie Barlow – “The Vintage Flower Van on Love Heart Lane”
(26 March 2024, NetGalley)
Florrie Appleton runs the eponymous flower van, taking it over from her beloved Great-Aunt Ada after doing a business studies degree. There she met sexy Tom, but now he’s inherited his own business, a property developer, and to Florrie’s horror, as soon as Ada has passed away she starts getting letters telling her to clear Ada’s cottage, give the van to the developers and, thanks to some local news networks, finds out the property developers are planning to flatten Rose Cottage and its beautiful gardens to build new houses.
Will the Love Heart Lane community gather round once again? Of course, and they have several inventive ways to help. Many familar characters from the previous books pop up to help and the warmth and community are there as we contrast a company run for love and one run for money, but also learn some social media marketing tips thanks to llama farmer Isla! And will Florrie and Tom unpick what turns out to be their mutual heartbreak after a short romance seven years ago?
There’s an enchanting epilogue which returns to Love Heart Lane 20 years later, and 25 years after the first book where everyone fights to repair the bridge washed away in a storm. We get a little update and get to say goodbye to some well-loved characters, however this does suggest there won’t be any more Love Heart Lane novels (noooo). I can’t wait to see what Christie does next: don’t leave it too long, please!
Thank you to One More Chapter for offering me this book to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Vintage Flower Van on Love Heart Lane” is published on 23 May 2024.
Huda Fahmy publishes the “Yes, I’m Hot in This” comic online and has a series of graphic novels, two of which I’ve read and reviewed here so far: “Yes, I’m Hot in This” about life as a hijabi Muslim woman in the US, and “Huda F Are You?” about her teenage years. I’m missing “That Can Be Arranged” which I will get hold of soon, and when I found out this was out, I asked The Heath Bookshop to order it in for me. When I wanted something light to read in the garden the afternoon before a big day, I grabbed it off the TBR shelf, where it had rested for less than a month!
Huda Fahmy – “Huda F Cares”
(6 April 2024, The Heath Bookshop)
It’s the end of term and Huda and her sisters’ parents have an announcement to make: they’re going to Disneyland, it’s going to be a road trip, and it’s a bonding exercise for the sisters (apart from the invisible one, who’s staying at home to go to Q’uran school).
Covering issues from how to get along with said sisters to praying in public to what to do when you make a friend who seems OK but her friends are boorish and microaggressive in a lighthearted but wholesome and respectful way, it’s a good read which provides education on what it’s like to live as a visible Muslim woman in the US and/or gives representation to women and girls who might not often see themselves in books and comics.
Another of my April NetGalley reads and I’m nearly there with catching up with these now with just one more to read and review. I was offered this one by the publisher on “Blue Monday” back in January; I loved her “Book Lovers” but ended up DNFing “Happy Place” as I didn’t like the deceit involved in the story of a couple who had broken up pretending to still be together (why, then, do I accept the “fake boyfriend” trope which this one is based on?).
Emily Henry – “Funny Story”
(15 January 2024, NetGalley)
“I know basically nothing about you, so this was a good chance to find out if your house is full of surveillance equipment.”
I blink. “Surveillance equipment?”
“Landon and I have been taking bets on whether you’re in the FBI,” she proides helpfully.
I squint at her. “And you think I’m in the FBI because …?”
“I don’t,” she says. “Landon does. My guess is witness protection.”
There’s being bad at small talk, and then there’s being so reticent that your coworkers assume you’ve recently testified against a mob boss, and I never knew how thin the line between the two was.
Opening intriguingly with a chapter heading “Wednesday, May 1st: 108 Days Until I Can Leave”, this fun novel introduces us to Daphne and Miles, whose respective fiancé and girlfriend have just left them and got engaged, leaving Daphne homeless and Miles in need of a flatmate.
Daphne, as illustrated in the quote above, is reticent and no good at small talk so she surprises herself when she gets drunk with Miles, they RSVP to their exes’ wedding and then when Peter calls to patronise Daphne, she claims she and Miles are an item. Hilarity, but also (naturally) increasing closeness and a bit of intimacy ensues. But also we delve back into why neither likes to commit or be vulnerable.
There’s also a lovely plot line of Daphne’s growing friendship with her library colleague Ashleigh, and in fact the crisis that always happens at 80% in light novels read on Kindle is in their friendship rather than a relationship, which is refreshing. There are also lovely diverse characters, library kids with two dads and/or of variuos heritages, an older lesbian couple who run a farm … and plenty of detail about how they run the library programme, which is all building up to a Read-a-thon Daphne is planning.
The title refers cleverly to two sets of people’s stories being told in a way that illuminates their relationships, and the who book is clever and heart-warming but with some serious themes which are knitted well together.
Some Bookish Beck Book Serendipity moments with this one and “The Lifeline”: both books feature a wedding dress with pockets and both mention the Italian pudding pastry cannoli. And I’m not sure how this fits in to the Serendipities but the book starts on 1 May and I started reading it on 1 May! Thank you to Viking Books for offering me this book to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Funny Story” was published on 25 April 2024.
One of my NetGalley books published in April, I did actually read it in April at least (and I am catching up now, only one left to go!). I was kindly offered this by Orion’s PR because I’d read her first book, to which this is a sequel, “The Lido“, back in 2018; I will admit to having forgotten the characters from that but it doesn’t really matter as we’re reminded of the main point of that early on and the story continues in a different direction and with different characters, so it can stand alone or be read as a sequel.
Libby Page – “The Lifeline”
(04 January 2024, NetGalley)
Together they head down the riverbank towards the water, mud oozing between Kate’s bare toes. It’s nothing like the concrete poolside at the lido. A bee buzzes past her nose, the long grass tickles her legs, and the perfectly clear water of the lido flashes into her mind. This is certainly no lido. At the lido there was the smell of cholorine and neatly marked out lanes. Here, there is mud, leaves, mysterious ripples and an earthy smell in the air. A scuffling noise in the undergrowth makes her turn quickly in that direction.
We follow two women, Kate and Phoebe, alternately as they navigate life in a small Somerset town. Kate has a newborn baby and feels like she’s the only one who’s ever struggled with that, especially when she meets up with the local mums’ group and finds they’re all fine (apparently). Phoebe pours so much of herself into her job as a mental health nurse that her boyfriend says she has no time for him and she heads towards burnout.
Kate misses swimming in the London lido she campaigned to save, as well as her friends who are continuing without her; she sees an advert for a wild swimming group and wonders if she dares join. Phoebe comes across them at the same time and the group of disparate women bonds as life expands for both women, as does their honesty about what their lives are actually like.
Some of the material in this novel is really quite dark, although honest and authentic (and there’s a great list of helpful resources in the back of the book which is a lovely touch), but there are moments of lightness and humour, too, and the ending, with a modern twist coming part-way through, is really nicely done.
Thank you to Orion for offering me this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “The Lifeline” was published on 25 April 2024.
For April, I set an intention to read two books I had TBR by Black men who became the centres of viral news stories in 2020; I read both during the month but have a slight review lag at the moment. I reviewed Patrick Hutchinson’s “Everyone Versus Racism” last month and now we have Christian Cooper’s book, courtesy of my friend Cari who lives in New York: he’s the Black birdwatcher a White woman called the police on, using racist language, when he politely asked her to keep her dog on a lead in an area where that was mandatory. I acquired this book in February and have actually read and reviewed five of that month’s twelve print acquisitions now.
Christian Cooper – “Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World”
(27 February 2024, from Cari)
Birding Tip: The fastest way to find a widely reported rarity is to look not for the bird but for the coagulation of birders already looking at it. (p. 4)
Part-memoir and part-birdwatching guide, Cooper’s structuring of this book is clever, with the first chapter titled “An Incident in Central Park” describing not the incident of racism and aggression he experienced in 2020 but the tracking down of an interesting bird on his patch. He writes with humour and exactness, bringing an everyday language to the description of birds (a Nene goose sounding like a Canada goose that’s been kneed in the groin was an early giggle) and deep emotion and respect when talking about his fellow Central Park birders – a little update at the end shows some are still going strong into their 90s.
As well as being a birder, he’s been immersed in the world of comics for a long time, talking about how the original Jewish writers and illustrators concealed their identities by changing their names, working surreptitiously himself to insert social justice issues into this world as a gay man, and he shares powerfully how comics and narratives helped him to survive his upbringing and having to keep in the closet through school.
Like Remi Adekoya, he sees racism and/or the need to have someone “other” to look down on as a fundamental flaw in the human psyche, but also discusses the intersectional difficulties of gay and Black people competing on discrimination while he is both; like Patrick Hutchinson, he tries to encourage community and togetherness through education, in his case leading bird walks for Global Majority Community people and school kids.
Like Hutchinson he sets his experience in the global BLM context; in Cooper’s case, his incident happened on the same day as the murder of George Floyd (I don’t think I’d realised that). And his perpetrator did make a form of public apology but never personally to him, as the man Hutchinson rescued didn’t contact him. He gets new opportunities, certainly visiting Alabama, the place in the US where his family originated, with a degree of trepidation.
Anyway, a generally positive and interesting book, again, the story in many ways of an ordinary man with family worries and career difficulties, but one who also wants to share his love of birds (and very good birding tips) along the way.
Well what can I say, it’s about the same as last month and has wiggled around the shelves a bit. I took six print books off the shelf and read them (one of them a Three Investigators Mystery), and I have started one more (a review book). I didn’t take any of the oldest books off the TBR and read four more of my TBR Project books (27 read and reviewed, 114 to go). I set an intention to read Patrick Hutchinson’s “Everyone Against Racism” (reviewed here) and Christan Cooper’s “Better Living Through Birding” (to review) and did, so I’m pleased about that. The Liz and Emma Read Together books are in a separate pile (top shelf, to the left) because they don’t form part of the TBR project, and the book on the top left top is a review book.
I completed 15 books in April (two with reviews to be published). I am part-way through three more (including my current Reading With Emma Read and a read that will take all year). I read all but three of my April NetGalley books during April; one of the three was acquired in April, and my NetGalley review percentage remains at 91%. I read one ebook for Kaggsysbookishramblings and Stuck-in-a-Book‘s 1937 week, which I had bought earlier in the year.
Incomings
Only four print incomings, three from the Bookshop and one on subscription:
Huda Fahmy publishes the “Yes, I’m Hot in This” comic online and has a series of graphic novels. When I found out her story about a trip to the theme park, “Huda F Cares?” was out, a bit belatedly, I had to ask the Bookshop to order it in for me. “Free Loaves on Fridays” is an Unbound book I subscribed to a while ago which is about the care system in the UK as told by people involved. The Bookshop shared that they’d sold copies of Keith Boykin’s “Why Does Everything Have to be About Race” at someone else’s event and I asked them to put me aside a copy, as I want to have some up-to-date stuff as well as the BLM-inspired wellspring of publishing I’ve been reading recently, and while I was collecting it I spotted Clive Oppenheimer’s “Mountains of Fire: The Secret Lives of Volcanoes” and couldn’t resist it.
More NetGalley ships came in.
Joel Golby’s “Four Stars” (published April) is a non-fiction quest book in which he assigns stars/ratings to all his everyday experiences. Onyi Nwabineli’s “Allow Me To Introduce Myself” (May) is the tale of a girl who pushes back against her mumfluencer mother sharing every moment of her life on social media. I was offered Emily Houghton’s “Take a Chance on Me” (Aug) because I’d read and reviewed her “Before I Saw You” and this one’s an opposites-attract romcom with a travel twist. “Determination” by Tawseef Khan (June) is a novel set in an immigration lawyers’ office where the staff have all recently moved to the UK themselves and looked intriguing. Hooray – I got Abi Daré’s new one – “And So I Roar” (Aug) – I loved her “The Girl with the Louding Voice” and this is the continuing story of Adunni from that book which I hadn’t quite realised. Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé and Adiba Jaigirdar are well-known YA writers and their “Four Eids and a Funeral” (June) is a community novel and love story about saving the local Islamic centre. I’m a bit worried there’s a cat on the cover so fingers crossed nothing bad happens (the funeral is definitely a person’s). I read about P.J. Ellis’ “We Could Be Heroes” (June) in a NetGalley email and realised it’s partly set in Birmingham, so that had to be requested, right? And finally I will admit I hit the request button on Tessa Hicks Peterson and Hala Khouri (eds.) “Practicing Liberation” (July) while I was still looking at it: it’s about looking after yourself as a social justice campaigner, which I don’t feel I am massively, so not sure how relevant it will be but might be able to share its usefulness with others.
I also bought for Kindle Nathan Flear’s running book, “Puddings to Podiums” – well, I didn’t buy it as it was on a free promotion! The cover is a bit triggering around weight loss so I’ll have to see how I review it when the time comes
So that was 15 read and 13 coming in in April, which is a MASSIVE win, right?!
Currently reading
Zeinab Badawi’s “An African History of Africa” has turned out to be dense but readable and I have to take breaks between chapters so I don’t get it all mixed up. I will have my review in with Shiny New Books soon! Emma and I are about to start our new read, Raynor Winn’s third book, “Landlines”, as we’ve read the other two together. I’m also still reading my literary quotes for the year with Ali.
Coming up
I did well with setting my intention on my print books last month so am doing that again. Kehinde Andrews’ “The New Age of Empire” is the oldest book on the TBR. Michael Cunningham’s “Day” I bought on the day of publication so I’d beter get on and read it! Corinne Fowler’s “Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain”, which is for a Shiny review, looks like it will pair well with the first of these.
I have six NetGalley books published in May, but three April ones hanging around. A romance, a communty novel, a non-fiction about mental health, another community novel, essays in Indigenous Canada and a satirical novel about living your life on social media beckon! The April ones are Emily Henry’s “Funny Story”, Rachel Kong’s “Real Americans” and
I don’t think I have any reading challenges to do this month! With the ones I’m currently reading, I have one books to finish (Emma and I are just starting our new read), a review book to finish and one to read and review and nine others to read at a minimum, which might happen!
How was your April reading? What are you reading this month? Are you doing any book challenges for the year or the month?
In my State of the TBR – April post, I set the intention to read two books from my collection I saw as a good pair to read together – both written by Black men who were part of a viral social media storm in 2020, both for taking actions that made them stand out, but one in the UK and one in America, one straight and one gay – different enough but alike enough to be interesting. And I’ve managed it – my review of “Better Living Through Birding” by Christian Cooper will be out in a few days, and here’s Patrick Hutchinson’s powerful letter to his children and grandchildren. I bought this book in May 2022 after seeing it mentioned on Hayley from Rather Too Fond of Books’ blog and out of the four print books acquired that month and shared here, I’ve actually now read and reviewed three!
Patrick Hutchinson with Sophia Thakur – “Everyone Versus Racism: A Letter to Change the World”
(29 May 2022)
If I can promise anything, it is an honest reflection of what it has meant to exist in the twenty-first century – as a black person in a world that celebrates black suppression. As a black man in a world that seems to crave black men’s blood. As a black person who is certain that compassion is the only solution to the deadly tale of racism. I am not saying that we should forgive and forget. But I believe that in our fight to move forward, we must arm ourslves with as much empathy as we do energy. (pp. 1-2)
On 16 June 2020 there was a Black Lives Matter march in London, but also a planned counter-demonstration by the EDL (the English Defence League – a far-right organisation). After the protests became mixed and tense, an image came out of a Black guy carrying a White guy to safety. What we probably didn’t know until / unless we read the book was that that Black guy – Patrick Hutchinson, father of four and grandfather of four – had headed into London with five friends, all trained in martial arts, to protect the BLM marchers and try to ensure violence that could cause further division and the movement being brought into disrepute didn’t ensue.
They did their job, having already saved a car load of EDL demonstrators from being sat on or worse, they rescued a man from almost certain death who never got in contact to say thank you, and then Mr Hutchinson was afforded the opportunity to write a book, which he did with writer and poet Sophia Thakur, which was published in 2020. In some ways, it’s the autobiograpy of an ordinary man – but when before the outpouring of publishing of global majority people’s words and lives did we get to read about an ordinary, decent Black man’s life?
Written in the form of a letter to his descendents, he envisages a post-racism world but also runs us through the realities of life as a Black guy in Britain – stop and search, racism, health inequalities, Covid inequalities, carefully placed through his own history. But he’s also big on compassion, restraint and doing people a good turn, on how a baby’s smile can cheer a whole crowd of people. In an interesting echo of “Biracial”, he shares that his joint English-Jamaican identity gives him more of everything and he talks about the good in Black British culture, the supportive atmosphere of the barber’s, of community and family.
He shares about small social movements for good, from the theatre organisation offering cheap seats to the organisation he jointly set up with his friends, UTCAI (United to Change and Inspire) to help young people in his area of South London. Here’s where it sometimes doesn’t pay to read books a while after they were published or I bought them (though I partly do it with social justice books to keep sharing after the initial fuss and wellspring of publishing has died down): when I went to make a donation to UTCAI, noting it was because I’d read this book, the current team returned my donation, advising me that Mr Hutchinson was no longer associated with it. Of course I then returned my donation to them for being so incredibly decent!
Anyway, an inspirational and interesting book, showing the tangible good that can come from a viral social media post.
I was offered a copy of this by the publisher, and the email said it was for fans of Black Cake, The Girl with the Louding Voice and My Name is Leon: I can understand this, as it’s a lovely coming of age story about a resilient teenager carving her own way in the world like all of those, but with its own differences.
Ishi Robinson – “Sweetness in the Skin”
(24 November 2023, NetGalley)
I feel the tiniest little stab somewhere in my side at the idea that my poverty is an adventure for her, but eventually I smile back. Maybe, I think, it won’t be so bad. Maybe she’ll see me for who I really am and I can stop pretentding. Maybe this will be a good thing.
Pumkin lives in a small house half way between the near-slums and the good areas in Kingston, Jamaica, able to go to a good school because her Aunt Sophie pays her school fees, but feeling like she has to hide that she lives in a tiny house with her grandmother, her mother who wants little to do with her and resents Sophie and her sophisticated aunt who’s also teaching her ways of hiding who you are, working at the French embassy and dreaming of moving to France.
When Sophie gets her dream, she promised to send for Pumkin, but Pumkin’s mum turns on her and refuses to let her take the exam she needs, no good at standing up for her when things go wrong at school. But Pumkin has a secret weapon: two, actually – her ability to make friends and her ability to bake. Surrounded by found family and adding people to it, notably a rather scary teacher at a French language school she needs to attend to get her exam, she bakes her way to having the requisite savings and gathers folk around her who can help her when the going gets tough. Will she make it to France, and does she need to?
I was worried this was going to be a simple bootstraps out of shameful poverty story – but it’s not, she sees the value in her roots, laughs at a posh friend who can’t cope visiting her and is not ashamed of herself – or that she’d find a White boyfriend to help her – again, no, just a variety of different Jamaican friends, including older women and a lovely guy who’s just a lovely guy and nothing else. There’s an underlying strong message about colourism and class, Pumkin’s mum having darker skin than Aunt Sophie and thus being less favoured, and class distinctions being harsh.
With some borderline distressing scenes (nothing as bad as in “The Girl with the Louding Voice”) this was on the whole a lovely, positive read which was also realistic in the hard work Pumkin put in and the sometimes strained relationships with her friends and family.
Thank you to Penguin Random House for offering me a copy of this book to read via NetGalley in return for an honest review. “Sweetness in the Skin” was published on 11 April 2024.
Emma gave me this book for my birthday in 2023 and when I heard that Robin Ince was coming to do an event at the Kings Heath Music and Book Festival, organised by The Heath Bookshop among others, I picked it off the shelf to read. Come the event, last Thursday, I hadn’t quite finished it – as I wanted to take it to get it signed anyway, I sat there slightly self-consciously in the audience before he started and finished it off! Out of the seven books I received for that birthday, I’ve read and reviewed five, not bad! And of course it counts towards my TBR project, too.
Robin Ince – “Bibliomaniac: An Obsessive’s Tour of the Bookshops of Britain”
(21 January 2023, from Emma)
An excellent combination of a book about bookshops and a “quest” book, we read about Ince’s journey by public transport and the odd lift around over 100 bookshops in the UK in 100 days. There’s a section on each town and we also get to hear about the charity shops of the area and what he buys, and his increasingly heavy bags of books he drags around – very familiar from my trips to Hay, or, to be honest, my own high street on occasion.
I marked up references to the bookshops I knew, including The Edge of the World in Penzance, the Hospice charity shop in Stratford and The Cinema Bookshop in Hay. There appears to be a new one in my own town of origin! He does an event in Birmingham (and has a bit of a funny turn on the confusing roads) but has to do it at ThinkTank (which has a bookshop?!) because The Bookshop wasn’t open then, so it’s lovely he returned there for this event (he also bought a copy of this book in The Shop and a little pile in Oxfam Books, sadly none that I’d donated there myself!).
There were laughs – being in Stratford and getting trapped in inventing punning shop names; he apparently still gets tweets with ideas, years later – and poignant moments as he spends time with his elderly dad in lockdown: his dad passed last year and the event was on what would have been his birthday so there was sad stuff among the funny and science bits, although as he said we’re the better for talking about such things. A bit of a scattershot review, sorry, very entertaining and worthwhile as a guide to bookshops to find in various towns; his events are a blast of associations and chains of thought but he seems like a lovely chap and gave my friend a hug during his signing at the end when she got sad about lost dads.
More retro fun off the side pile though it never seems to get any smaller and I’ve already counted the trilogy while having two in it left to read. I’ll admid that I read the first of these in March and can’t remember an awful lot about it …
William Arden – “The Secret of Phantom Lake” (No 19)
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
There’s a chest with a secret sprung loaded protective device, a pirate on its trail and the first of two times the boys get locked in a bout in this trio of reads. A ghost town full of perhaps actual ghosts, a professor, a mysterious Scotsman and a love story mean the book is packed with incident but it all makes sense in the end.
M. V. Carey – “The Mystery of Death Trap Mine” (No 24)
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
Another book by M. V. Carey featuring the brave girl character Allie Jamieson Carey being a woman seems to have inspired her to add this excellent character. Off the boys go to Allie’s uncle’s Christmas tree ranch in New Mexico, where a neighbour has a mine and there’s a really chilling bit where they find an actual body. Another older female character provides clues and red herrings. This copy is notable for the back matter, with ads for Bytes Brothers novels I immediately wanted to collect (anyone read them?) and a Spectrum programming guide that matches its 1980 reprint date:
William Arden – “The Mystery of the Dancing Devil” (No 25)
(22 November 2012, charity shop)
Alerted by a small girl to a series of odd thefts, the boys are shocked to discover a terrifying dancing “devil” might not be the usual illusion things turn out to be but an actual being! Arden locks us in a boat again (is this a theme of his?) We’re enmeshed in the lives of the itinerant folk who dwell around the town (but in a positive way) and there’s an interesting point about one of them being passionate about returning Indigenous art to the people it came from, a modern theme in a 1970s book!
You can read about my first, second and third sets of these books via the links.
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