September got off to a slow start I thought when I hadn’t finished a book until the 7th. I may have a skewed sense of accomplishment but ah well.
Dead Lions by Mick Herron. The second book in the series about the disgraced, but unfireable MI5 agents at Slough House. I think I liked this even better than the first one.
Jackson Lamb – the ruler of the Slow Horses is still a disgusting jerk but just because he’s at Slough House doesn’t mean he’s easily taken advantage of. It’s not only incompetence that lands you there.
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid. This book is really good. That cover though … yeah, not a fan.NFL stars Shane and Ilya are rivals on the ice and lovers off of it and I didn’t know I would be here for a sport centred m/m book, even less a *hockey* one, but here we are. And I may or may not be thinking about getting the other books in the series as well.
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh. This has been on my ”Want to Read” list on Goodreads for a long time now and I honestly don’t know why I waited. Folklorist Henry Silver comes to Green hollow in search f a Green Man but he finds only woodsman Tobias Finch. It was so cute and thrilling and that cover! *heart eyes emoji* I have started reading the second part of the duology already.
Drowned Country again by Emily Tesh is the second and final part in the Greenhollow Duology. Henry Silver is still in Greenhollow and feeling sorry for himself after the events in the first book. Tobias has left him and he is quite at a loss for what to do about it when his mother summons him to Rothport to help her search for a vampire. Also – Tobias is in Rothport. Henry accepts.
This cover is even better!
Belgravia by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame. I started reading this back in the spring because the first chapter of the book was free on Kobo. I remember not liking the writing style but now that I picked up the rest I don’t know what I had issues with. I like how this mixed a historical event (the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussles just a few days before the battle of Waterloo) and built the intrigue from that. I also liked how you could see the threads of the plot converging and I thought I knew how it was going to resolve itself but since we are dealing with Fellowes here, the writer of all the plot twists in Downton, I couldn’t really be sure.
I guess when he doesn’t have to deal with actors who want to move onto other things he can make the plot go as planned and not veer off into a ditch …
The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan is the first in a new romance series set in the ficticious town of Wedgeford. The mains are Chloe and Jeremy and they are both delightful and so sweet and both so stupid. I loved this book as I’ve done with pretty much all Courtney Milan books I’ve read. I’m torn about the author’s notes – I sort of wish I had read them first because a lot is lost by not knowing the Cantonese and Hakka words for things mentioned in the book. And it’s not like we’re not getting a HEA anyway – it’s a romance after all – so reading them first would maybe have been better. I’ll never know.