Cinderella meets All-of-a-Kind Family in a new book I loved and recommend. Elinor Hayward, the lovely and intelligent daughter of a prosperous factory owner, is thrilled when she and her father are invited to a New Year’s Ball in early 1910. Even better, she meets an attractive young man, Frederick Coombes, son of an earl, who is not just friendly but clearly interested in her:
It was stupidly easy to fall in love with Frederick; I got halfway there that very evening. But I’d like to point out, before you decide I must have been soft in the head, that I was nineteen, he was the first man ever to pay attention to me, and he was very, very charming.
Although February is a short month, there were some outstanding reads, especially The King’s Messenger, Slow Bomb at Dimperley, and The Spy Coast - links to those reviews are below.
Historical Fiction
Slow Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (2024). A soldier returning to his ancestral home after WWII finds new responsibilities and little in the way of practical help from his family as he copes with death duties and ennui in this amusing story. My review.
An anticipated reunion in the Hamptons turns deadly after a practical joke in this novel by bestseller Burke. May Hanover, a lawyer living in NYC with her fiancé, has been looking forward to and yet dreading a weekend get-together with her two closest friends from summer camp. They were very close once but she hasn’t spent time with them in person for years.
The sun was shining brilliantly and the hedgerows in the lane I had just left had been covered with half-open hawthorn. It was the third of May and I was in Wales, my mother’s country. Wales! I, Catrin Drury, aged just eighteen, was alone and entirely free for the first time ever, with a map in my hand, a few necessities on my back, and the future somehow fluid and unseeable.
It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is the 2023 Booker winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch.
I got Prophet Song from the library this week for Reading Ireland 2025 as it is about an Irish family and takes place in Dublin (as I plan to read it I avoided spoilers).
