June Roundup

Another six months done, halfway through 2017 and just one book short of being halfway through my yearly target of 100 – not bad say I.

Of course I have been compiling my Six in Six post, to be featured on this blog soon and I am looking forward to reading all of yours. It has meant I have gone back and reflected on what I have been reading and I have to confess it is certainly seems to be predominantly womens fiction, not perhaps as literary as some years but do you know what I have enjoyed the books and just simply enjoying reading.

There is a lot of going back to authors that I love and genres that I love. Which is why I was delighted to read Sarah Bennett – Wedding Bells at Butterfly Cove, having read her first at the beginning of the year and I see that there will be another by the end of the year.

Again another author I read at the beginning of the year led me to her next novel Karen Clarke – The Beachside Flower Stall. I am hoping that there will also be another one by the end of the year, no doubt Christmas dominated!

Whilst I spend my own time dealing with the vagaries of the NHS, I caught up with more doctors in Penny Parkes – Practice Makes Perfect and a lovely short story Penny Parkes – Swept Away. Again it looks like I can continue with this author and storyline in the future too.

I suppose it is almost of a soap opera quality (though far better I hasten to add) that you can continue these stories with characters and places that you grow to love.

Ali McNamara – The Summer of Serendipity, took be back to a place I had visited before and reminded me that authors can get better.

Another of my favourite things is dual narratives, where it feels like you are reading two stories that are clearly interlinked but you have no idea how, why or where. Laura Madeleine – Where Wild Cherries Grow is a fine example of this book and also one, where actually both narratives can be set in the past, in this case 1919 and 1969. It works and works wonderfully well.

A Gin and Tonic always works well for me, and over the last twelve months I have certainly investigated more of the different gins as opposed to the run of mill ones. Therefore Catherine Miller – The Gin Shack on the Beach appealed to me. With some feisty elderly folk and a matron that could quite easily have stepped out of a Carry On film this book was an easy fun read.

I do love my saga type novels and therefore I picked up Mary Gibson – Jam and Roses, probably because of the cover. For a change in setting, this one was between the wars and around the time of the General Strike, so it was great not to have war as the overarching the whole novel. A really good read and author I am now going to read more especially when one of the books is titled Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams.

A book rightly placed in the setting of the World War Two, Audrey Reimann – Flora’s War shows how some people go to extreme measures to get what they want, even if there is a war on and they should be helping others.

Here is to another month of reading what I enjoy the most.