Marg at The Intrepid Reader hosts the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. Each month, a new post dedicated to the HF Challenge will be created where you can add the links for the books you have read.
Everyone can participate! If you don’t have a blog you can post a link to your review if it’s posted on Goodreads, Facebook, or Amazon, or you can add your book title and thoughts in the comment section if you wish.
Any sub-genre of historical fiction is accepted (Historical Romance, Historical Mystery, Historical Fantasy, Young Adult, History/Non-Fiction, etc.)
During the following 12 months you can choose one of the different reading levels:
20th Century Reader – 2 books Victorian Reader – 5 books Renaissance Reader – 10 books Medieval – 15 books Ancient History – 25 books Prehistoric – 50+ books
I love historical fiction so in 2022 I’m hoping to reach the Medieval level, that is read 15 books.
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.
The topic this week is Most Anticipated Books Releasing In the First Half of 2022. I’ve listed these in the order they are to be released. Some of them are review copies from NetGalley. The descriptions are from NetGalley or Amazon.
13 January: The Key In The Lock by Beth Underdown – By day, Ivy Boscawen mourns the death of her son Tim in the Great War. But by night she mourns another boy – one whose murder decades ago haunts her still. For Ivy is sure that there is more to what happened all those years ago: the fire at the Great House, and the terrible events that came after. A truth she must uncover, if she is ever to be free.
20 January: The Man in the Bunker by Rory Clements – In the gripping new spy thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Hitler’s Secret, a Cambridge spy must find the truth behind Hitler’s death. But exactly who is the man in the bunker?
27 January: The Second Cut by Louise Welsh – – Thrilling and atmospheric, The Second Cut delves into the dark side of twenty-first century Glasgow. Twenty years on from his appearance in The Cutting Room, Rilke is still walking a moral tightrope between good and bad, saint and sinner.
3 February: The Locked Room by Elly Griffiths – Ruth Galloway and DCI Nelson are on the hunt for a murderer when Covid rears its ugly head. But can they find the killer despite lockdown?
3 February: A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham – Chloe Davis’ father is a serial killer. He was convicted and jailed when she was twelve but the bodies of the girls were never found, seemingly lost in the surrounding Louisiana swamps. The case became notorious and Chloe’s family was destroyed.
10 February: I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomens – Listen to my history. My adventures are worth hearing. I have lived many lifetimes and been loved by emperors, kings and thieves. I have survived kidnap and assault. Revolution and two world wars. But this is also a love story. And the story of what we will do for those we love.
1 March: The Chapel in the Woods by Dolores Gordon-Smith – Jack and Betty Haldean’s weekend in the country is disrupted by sudden, violent death in this intricately-plotted 1920s mystery. This is the 11th Jack Haldean Murder Mystery.
3 March: Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter by Lizzie Pook – 1886, Bannin Bay, Australia. The Brightwell family has sailed from England to make their new home in Western Australia. Ten-year-old Eliza knows little of what awaits them on these shores beyond shining pearls and shells like soup plates – the things her father has promised will make their fortune.
5 May: The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic – Four Friends. One Murder. A Game They Can’t Escape. DI Fleet is up against some of the most powerful people in the country as he attempts to discover the truth about what happened on the day of the game…
2 June: The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk – A beautifully crafted historical mystery bursting with wonderfully realised characters, a sense of fizzing energy that brims over every page and immersive storytelling that will take the reader from 18th century London, across Europe and, finally, to the bustling city of Constantinople.
I read Just Like the Other Girls, a psychological thriller, by Claire Douglas in November. My copy is a NetGalley review copy that I’ve had for over a year! I really should have read it earlier. It was published in August 2020 by Penguin.
Synopsis
Una Richardson is devastated after the death of her mother. Hoping for a fresh start, she responds to an advertisement and steps into the rich, comforting world of elderly Mrs Elspeth McKenzie. But Elspeth’s home is not as safe as it seems. Kathryn, her cold and bitter daughter, resents Una’s presence. More disturbing is the evidence suggesting two girls lived here before.
What happened to the girls? Why will the McKenzies not talk about them? As the walls close in around her, Una fears she’ll end up just like the other girls . . .
My thoughts:
Like the other books I’ve read by Claire Douglas this revolves round family secrets and mother/daughter/sister relationships and there are enough twists and turns that at first puzzled me, but it didn’t grip me as her earlier books did. Although it begins well and at first I was intrigued by the mystery, I thought there were too many coincidences to be credible and it was just too far-fetched. This means that the chilling atmosphere that had been built up at first faded away. Having said that I did want to know how it would end so I read on but was not surprised by the final reveal.
ASIN: B081RBYHJQ
Publisher: Penguin (6 Aug. 2020)
Language: English
Print length: 388 pages
Page numbers source ISBN: 0063138115
My rating: 3*
My thanks to NetGalley and Penguin, the publishers for a review copy.
This challenge, hosted by Andrea at Carolina Book Nook runs from January 1, 2022 to December 31, 2022.
Read a book in any format (hard copy, ebook, audio) with a title that fits into each category. Creativity for matching the categories is not only allowed, it’s encouraged!
Click on the links below for more examples and info about the categories.
It’s a challenge that looks deceptively simple because ‘all’ you have to do is read six books from six categories – but each year there is at least one that that takes me nearly all the year to find. This year it looks like there are two – the first two! I have plenty of titles to choose from for the other categories, but not for the first two.
We’ve come to the end of Bev’s Mount TBR Challenge, so it’s time for the final checkpoint!
I began the year aiming for Mount Vancover – that is 36 books and I made it, ending the year by reading 40 of my TBRs, although I haven’t managed to review each one. These are the books I read:
My thanks to Bev for hosting Mount TBR 2021. And so on to Mount TBR 2022
Books must be owned by you prior to January 1, 2022. No library books. Any reread may count, regardless of how long you’ve owned it prior to 2022, provided you have not counted it for a previous Mount TBR Challenge. Audiobooks and E-books may count if they are yours and they are one of your primary sources of backlogged books. You may count “Did Not Finish” books provided they meet your own standard for such things, you do not plan to ever finish it, and you move it off your mountain [give it away, sell it, etc. OR remove it from your e-resources].
There is no page limit–if it was published as a book, it counts. No single short stories–but collections of short stories do count. And you do not have to review the books you read.
There are a number of different levels to choose from:
Pike’s Peak: Read 12 books from your TBR pile/s Mount Blanc: Read 24 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Vancouver: Read 36 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Ararat: Read 48 books from your TBR pile/s Mt. Kilimanjaro: Read 60 books from your TBR pile/s El Toro*: Read 75 books from your TBR pile/s (*aka Cerro El Toro in South America) Mt. Everest: Read 100 books from your TBR pile/s Mount Olympus (Mars): Read 150+ books from your TBR pile/s
and for now I’m aiming to climb Mt Vancouver, which is to read 36 books and hope to move up to the higher levels if I can.
And it’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate atBooks Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
The chain this month begins with Rules of Civilityby Amor Towles, a book I haven’t read. Set in New York in 1938, it begins, appropriately for today, on New Year’s Day.
Myfirst link is to another book by Amor Towles – A Gentleman in Moscow – another book I haven’t read, but one that is on my TBR list. Both books have received rave reviews, so I’m hoping they aren’t over hyped! The Times describes it as ‘A book to spark joy’. I do hope so.
My second link is The Kill Fee by Fiona Veitch Smith, the second book in the Poppy Denby Investigates series. It’s historical fiction is set in London in 1920 with flashbacks to Russia in 1917, beginning with an episode in Moscow in 1917 as an unnamed man in a bearskin coat enters the house of an aristocratic family to find a scene of carnage.
Moving from Moscowmy third link is via the name Poppy. This time it is the author’s name, Poppy Adams and her book, The Behaviour of Moths. I thought this was a brilliant book! It’s the story of two sisters, Ginny and Vivi. Vivi, the younger sister left the family mansion 47 years earlier and returns unexpectedly one weekend. Ginny, a reclusive moth expert has rarely left the house in all that time.
My fourth link is to the word ‘moth’, but this time used as a name. Moth is Raynor Winn’s husband and their story is told in her book, The Salt Path. Despite finding out that Moth has a rare terminal illness, the couple decided to walk the South Coast Path. He had been diagnosed with a brain disease for which there is no cure or treatment apart from pain killers and physiotherapy. It’s not just the story of their walk, but also about their determination to live life, about overcoming pain and hardship, and the healing power of nature.
Myfifth link is via the place, Penzance, which is one of the places the Winns went to on their walk. Penzance is the setting of W J Burley’s crime fiction novel, Wycliffe and the Cycle of Death. Wycliffe is mystified by the murder of Matthew Glynn, a respectable bookseller who was found bludgeoned and strangled and there are plenty of suspects, including his brothers and sister and their grown-up children.
My sixth link: is to another bookseller, Marc Amos, a rare book dealer who owns a secondhand bookshop in Martin Edwards’ Lake District murder mysteries, featuring DCI Hannah Scarlet, in charge of the Cumbria’s Cold Case Team. Amos is her partner and in The Serpent Pool George Saffell, one of Marc’s customers, is stabbed and then burnt to death amidst his collection of rare and valuable books.
My chain started in New York and travelled via Moscow, and in various periods of time and places in England, ending up in the English Lake District. It links together historical fiction, nonfiction and crime fiction.
Next month (February 5, 2022), we’ll start with a book that topped Best of 2021 lists, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.
Let’s hope this new year will be a happy and healthy one and for those of us who love reading, may we all enjoy lots of good books!
BooksPlease 