Book Review: The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris by Evie Woods

Okay, so I loved Evie Woods’ last book, The Secret Bookshop, and I was looking forward to her next, The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris. The thing is, it turns out this isn’t her next book but a previous one, a good decade old. And I hate to say it, it shows. When I first read it I couldn’t understand how the author had produced a book that fell so far short of her best and now I understand: it was because to was written way back on Woods’ learning curve as an author. 

I think that’s a pity, because I was expecting more of what I knew her to be capable of. All the elements that made The Lost Bookshop so good were there — in particular the magical realism and the setting — but they didn’t work as well. In the book, Edith Lane (who is thirty, though at different points feels anywhere between fifteen and fifty) leaves Dublin to take up a new job in a bakery in Paris but ends up in the town of Compiègne instead. Here everything proceeds exactly as you would expect. After a rocky start she makes friends, meets a handsome man with whom she has a misunderstanding, wins over her grumpy old employer, uncovers the bakery’s family mystery, solves the owners financial problems, and there you have it. 

It’s a slender plot, but slender plots done well are immensely readable. in this case, the longer the book went on the more predictable it became. Corporate bad guys, feisty incomer winning over the crusty old local, local support campaign for a much-loved but struggling institution goes viral, villain’s epiphany… It had nothing new or even fresh to offer, except perhaps a nod to Marcel Proust. And I was slightly surprised about that, since Edith (the heroine) makes such a bit fuss of not knowing anything about anything, so finding her reading classical French literature didn’t really stick. 

This feels really mean, and I want to emphasis again how excellently Evie Woods can write, but this particular book just didn’t work for me. The whole was less than the sum of its parts and certainly less than the quality of its predecessor. It was a light easy read and I loved the setting, but the characters were flimsy and the magical realism, which should have held the book together, came and went rather than being the thread that held the book together. 

It’s a light read, pleasant and unchallenging, but it’s definitely not one of the authors best, I’m afraid. 

Book Review: The Winter List by SG Maclean.

The Winter List is a historical thriller set in post-Restoration England, against a background of suspicion, mistrust and revenge. Charles II is on the throne and determined to take revenge upon those who signed his father’s death warrant: one by one they are arrested, imprisoned and killed. As the search for the regicides proceeds, there are some who take the opportunity for personal revenge. 

I read this book on the recommendation of a friend and it’s one I’m unlikely yo have picked up for myself. More fool me. It’s a period of history I’m not familiar with and yet was immediately drawn in to the setting. From Samuel Pepys’ London the story moves swiftly to York where Lawrence Ingoldby lives with his wife and family, concealing his connection to one of the most wanted of Cromwell’s men. 

As the Ingoldbys remain blissfully unaware of danger, Anne Winter and her maid Grizel are on a mission to find out whether Lawrence’s friend Thomas Fairly is a traitor to the King. Among the snickets of York Anne and Grizel are not the only hunters — and Fairly not the only one hunted. 

Beautifully written, with its characters fabulously drawn, the book twists and turns like a serpent in its death throes, full of heart-in-mouth moments and, at the end, a deadly twist. 

A Lady’s Guide to Mischief and Mayhem by Dianne Freeman

 

It’s confession time. I first got my hands on a copy of this book back in the summer of 2020, ahead of its publication, and I did read it, but I never reviewed it. It wasn’t because it was bad. Looking back at the clutch of outstanding books I intended to review, I see they all date back to that point in 2020 when lockdown restrictions were lifted. From spending all day reading I was able to go out and socialise, go shopping, do things. And so I forgot the books. 

Belatedly, I’m going through them again and rereading them so I can review them with them fresh in my mind. This matters, because I’d forgotten, until I came back to this book, quite how much I enjoyed it. It’s a well-worm genre, the Victorian upper-class detective, but it’s none the worse for that. In this case out heroine Frances , the widowed Countess of Harleigh, is navigating the hasty marriage of her sister, Lily, when a series of accidents appear to get ever closer to Lily’s groom-to-be. Meanwhile Frances’ likeable and capable beau, George, is on the trail of villains and lends a helping hand. 

I’ve read a lot in this genre and I think this book benefits hugely from taking itself seriously. There’s sometimes a tendency for authors to mock the period and the class from which they have chosen their sleuths and victims, but in this case I felt all of the characters were properly fleshed out and therefore both believable and enjoyable. There were plenty of twists and turns and, while I remembered one or two from my previous reading, I remained pleasantly surprised by the way the plot turned, without resorting to silliness. All in all I felt thoroughly engaged and definitely enjoyed reading it for a second time. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Kensington Books for a copy of this novel in return for an honest review. 

Review: Storm Sister by Lucinda Riley

The Storm Sister, second in the Seven Sisters series (try saying that after a few drinks!) follows the same pattern as the first and I imagine the others, too. After the death of their billionaire father his adoptive daughters are given clues to their heritage and learn about their back stories. 

The series has been really well-received: The Storm Sister, which is the story of Allie, the second sister, has over 37,000 reviews and averages 4.6* on Amazon so it's clearly struck a rich vein of readers. I liked the first one, The Seven Sisters, very much indeed and already have book three lined up …but I find myself taking a slightly heretical view. 

I love Lucinda Riley. Her stories are terrific. They typically feature young women from a variety of backgrounds but all supremely talented in at least one way; they encompass billionaire lifestyles, glamorous settings, romance, danger, tragedy… They have it all. The writing is page turning. The characters are real. You can escape so easily into a different world and resurface from it only when you’re ready. They are perfect holiday reads.

But they’re long books, 700 pages or so, and each tells two complete but separate stories. The Seven Sisters was so chunky it hurt my ageing wrists to hold it so I borrowed the second from the library on audiobook, and this led me to a shocking revelation. Because the book is so long, and because the loan is time-limited, there was no way I was going to get through 20 hours or more and finish it. So I started skipping. I effectively cut out the story of Allie’s great-grandparents and discovered that…the book worked as well, if not better, with a single story than with two. 

The thing is, most of my interest in the first two books was in the present. It’s in the sisters’ relationships and their adventures as they try to unpick their own stories, the love and loss along the way. In The Storm Sister, which sees Allie rebuild her life after a tragedy that had me in tears even though I could sense it coming, I felt I didn’t need the full detail of the second story to make the first complete. 

It’s actually a bit of a bargain, two books in one, and I feel a little bad for having skipped so much, but the truth is I didn’t feel I missed much by not reading/listening to the whole thing. I also have a slight concern that by the time we get to sister number six, the formula might have run its course. 

I'm going to read the next in the series (The Shadow Sister) but, as I discovered it's even longer than this one, maybe I'll wait until I have very long period of dead time to occupy...

Book Review: Abraxus Elijah Honey by Ella Ruby Self

After almost five years I am reviving my book blog, though I don't know how long I shall keep it up. For the past two years I've posted about every book I've read on X, but the self-imposed restriction of keeping my reviews to a single post has proved frustrating, so it's time to expand. Some books, of course, are very much love-and-leave (or-loathe-and-leave) but others require more thought, so here I am once more. 

And so to my first book of 2025, Abraxus Elijah Honey by Ella Ruby Self, published by Northodox Press. (Disclaimer: I am also published by Northodox.) It's fantasy, which isn't a genre I'm particularly consumed by, though I will dip my toe in if something particularly appeals and this, with its historical setting in nineteenth century west Wales and its themes of mythology and the sea, definitely caught my fancy. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it. I can't say I loved it, as it felt very long and very dense, but I was absorbed by the characters and the setting. There's a huge and complex tapestry of folklore underlying it, some of which I recognise and some of which I looked up (both the names of Abraxus and his boat are derived from cultures far from Celtic lands). There will be others, I am sure, that have passed me by. This reimagining of mythology is something I love in fiction and I was reminded, among others, both of Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings and of Will from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising series -- a compliment, should you doubt. 

The characters were real and warm: I loved the relationships between the very different twins, Eli and Tias, and the way in which the stranger Abraxus and the innkeeper Smythe came to care for them with their father dead and their mother largely absent. I loved the setting and the mystery. 

Perhaps I have one or two niggles. I thought some of the more abstract chapters were hard to follow and, on a more practical note, I think I identified a plot hole when a character writes and receives letters despite being in a village that is completely cut off for months. (How did that happen? Carrier pigeons? It's never explained.)

Overall, however, I enjoyed it. The many joys of this book far outweighed its very minor flaws and I reached the end with an enormous sense of satisfaction at the ending, and a hope that perhaps there might be more to come from these characters and this author. 

Abraxus Elijah Honey is available as paperback and ebook, direct from Northodox Press or from Amazon. 

Book Review: Murder at Enderley Hall by Helena Dixon

I did enjoy Helena Dixon’s Murder at Enderley Hall. A cosy historical mystery is right at the top off my reading wish list at the moment and this one delivered.

It took me a while to get into it, and I wonder if that’s because I haven’t read the first book in the series. The first few pages threw a lot of information at me and I wasn’t quite able to sort it out until the story had moved on a little; but that’s the risk of being late to the party. I did feel, though, that we didn’t really need to know everything that happened in the previous murder mystery and the references to them had me expecting that one character, in particular, would turn up in this book. (They didn’t.)

So, the story. In search of secrets in her past, Kitty Underhay heads to Enderley Hall to meet her relatives for the first time — but the elderly Nanny who might be prepared to tell her is soon found dead at the bottom of the stairs. And so, with the help of her handsome not-quite-beau Captain Matthew Bryant, Kitty has a mystery to solve.

Once I got to Enderley Hall and became properly engaged in the story, the book really galloped along. I enjoyed the characters, especially the sparky relationship between Kitty and Matthew, and the period details. The book is well-written and has all the hallmarks of a traditional country house mystery yet with a refreshing modern touch. It’s the first book by Helena Dixon that I’ve read, and I’ll be reading more.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Book Review: A Letter From Munich by Meg Lelvis

I love a mystery, I love a historical connection and I love a dual timeline story. The blurb for Meg Lelvis’s A Letter from Munich ticked all of those boxes and, while I did enjoy it, it somehow failed to deliver. 

The book is the story of ex-Chicago cop Jack Bailey, who travels to Munich to seek out the story behind a letter written to his father at the end of the Second Word War. Jack has a back story of violent bereavement, in the loss of his wife and daughter 12 years earlier, and he’s travelling with his mate Sherk (of German extraction) whose wife is going through cancer treatment. With Sherk’s help, Jack tracks down the woman who wrote the letter, Ariana, and discovers the truth about his father. And that’s it. 

This is the problem I had with the book. The plot was very slender indeed. There was one twist, which was hardly difficult to spot, and too much of the rest of it was Sherk repeating back in English a conversation he’d just heard in German (Jack, as the running joke goes, doesn’t speak any other language than his own) or Renate, Ariana’a sister, narrating the story (rather than the reader being taken back, as it were, live). Of course, if a reader doesn’t know anything about the liberation of the concentration camps that might be a help in pushing the story on, but if you do, then it feels like padding. I felt very much removed from the story, rather than involved in it.

The book is filed under historical fiction and women’s fiction, though it doesn’t fit neatly into either of those categories — especially given the dominance of the male leading characters. It felt more like a mystery but not much of one. I enjoyed the banter between Jack and Sherk, I liked the almost travelogue-like descriptions of their German trip, and some of the historical background was fine, though I thought there was too much of it. 

But, as I say, I expected more plot, and even in the end it petered out. 

Thanks to Netgalley and Black Rose Writing for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.