Review: The Red Notebook by Antoine Laurain

Synopsis: In this bestselling novel, a bookseller pursues a mystery woman—known only through the jottings in her red notebook—through the streets of Paris.

Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street, and feels compelled to return it to its owner. Quickly ruling out the police station, which is always best avoided, he turns the contents out onto his kitchen table to see if they hold a clue. The bag contains no money, phone or contact information. But it does yield a small red notebook, full of handwritten thoughts and jottings that reveal someone Laurent would very much like to meet. From the lists of likes and dislikes, things noticed and things felt, emerges the portrait of a woman who might just be his soulmate.

But without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions? He’ll have to turn to his daughter, who helps him decode the possessions and sends him on a madcap journey around the French capital.

Meanwhile, in an anonymous hospital room, fragmentary thoughts float through the mind of a woman in a coma. She thinks she’s called Laure, and she has some strong opinions and painful memories – but will she ever wake up and get a fresh chance at life?

Soaked in Parisian atmosphere, this lovely, clever, funny novel is the perfect French holiday read!

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The story is very simple - a bookseller finds an abandoned handbag in the street and decides to find and return it to its owner. He does so by inspecting and working with the items left in the handbag, including one red notebook. Along the way the reader discovers more about the bookseller and the owner of the bag - the question remains - will they ever meet?

A little bit stalkerish - quite possibly; but Laurain turns this narrative into a charming romantic mystery. A nice little read.

A Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd

Synopsis: Once upon a time a young couple met and fell in love. You probably know that story, and how it ended ( badly). Only here’s the That’s not how it ended at all.

Romeo and Juliet are alive and well and the parents of seven kids. I’m the oldest, with the emphasis on ‘old’—a certified spinster at twenty, and happy to stay that way. It’s not easy to keep your taste for romance with parents like mine. Picture it—constant monologues, passionate declarations, fighting, making up, making out . . . it’s exhausting.

Each time they’ve presented me with a betrothal, I’ve set out to find the groom-to-be a more suitable bride. After all, someone sensible needs to stay home and manage this household. But their latest match, Duke Stephano, isn’t so easy to palm off on anyone else. The debaucher has had three previous wives—all of whom met unfortunate ends. Conscience forbids me from consigning another woman to that fate. As it turns out, I don’t have to . . .

At our betrothal ball—where, quite by accident, I meet a beautiful young man who makes me wonder if perhaps there is something to love at first sight—I stumble upon Duke Stephano with a dagger in his chest. But who killed him? His late wives’ families, his relatives, his mistress, his servants—half of Verona had motive. And when everyone around the Duke begins dying, disappearing, or descending into madness, I know I must uncover the killer . . . before death lies on me like an untimely frost.

Knives Out meets Bridgerton in Fair Verona, as New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd kicks off a frothy, irreverent, witty new series with an irresistible premise—Romeo and Juliet’s daughter as a clever, rebellious, fiercely independent young woman in fair Verona—told from the delightfully engaging point of view of the captivating Rosie Montague herself…

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I loved this rom-com set in the time of Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" - Verona in the early Renaissance period. Our narrator and heroine is Rosie Montague - daughter of said Romeo and Juliet - who now finds herself in yet another unenviable position - yet another betrothal of marriage - and one she cannot (and will not) foister on an unsuspecting potential bride (Rosie is in the habit of playing matching maker for any potential or impending suitors put forward by her parents). This suitor is suitably unsuitable ....

"... he had said he wanted me for power and revenge -power over me, I assume, but revenge? on whom? ..."

On the day of the official betrothal, Rosie suddenly finds herself enamoured by another (a gate-crasher); her betrothed - Duke Leir Stephano - cruelly murdered; and herself the prime suspect. But Rosie is no ordinary fair maid - she is intelligent, independent, obstinate, and determined to find out who killed her betrothed if only to clear her name .. not so easy when the body count is rising.

This is a very enjoyable read - the chapters are short and concise, filled with compelling and humourous dialogue, narrated by a self-deprecating heroine, peppered with themes found in many a Shakespearean tome - jealousy, greed, envy, revenge, hatred, love and ... mean girls!

I believe this to be the first in a new series - so am eagerly awaiting what fate - and author Dodd - have in store for Rosie Montague.

For the reader worried that author Dodd has taken liberties with two of Shakespeare's own characters, fear not, the Bard himself was an habitual "borrower" of other peoples' stories. A keen reader may discern that in this instance, the Bard borrowed from a poem by Arthur Brooke who himself borrowed the plot from a story by Matteo Bandello.

Blog Tour: Wicked By Design by Katy Moran

About the book 

1819: CORNWALL. 

Four women sit in the candlelit drawing-room at Nansmornow, an ancient Cornish manor house. The air is thick with unspoken suspicion and secret malice. As Hester Lamorna pours tea for her three guests, she has no idea one of them is about to rock her new marriage to its very foundations. 

ST PETERSBURG. 

Half a world away, Hester's impossible and charmismatic husband, Jack 'Crow' Crowlas, will be caught up in a chess game of sexual manipulation, played out across the sumptuous ballrooms of St Petersburg. All Hester and Crow hold most dear will be tested to the limit and beyond: their love for each other and their child, and for Crow, the loyalty of his only brother.

Here is an extract from the book:

Shouting to those of his men still on horseback, Crow called on them all to dismount. If he could not reach the Deliverance by sea, he must reach her from Carn Du itself: there was nothing to do but to send a rope-team into the water, himself at the fore. There was just a chance that men could be pulled from the water so close to the wreck, even if the gig could never reach them without also being smashed against the rocks with those waves rising like great whales. Whisking the coiled rope from his saddlebag, Crow slung it over his shoulder and sprinted to the narrow, winding path that led away from the beach and up towards the cliff-top, along to Carn Du itself. He snatched at handfuls of broom to steady himself, careless of the needles tearing into the palms of his hands. Once he reached the cliff-top, wind tearing at his face, his hair, he saw waves and spray smashing against the cliffs, against the rocks, and the spars of the Deliverance again, still sliding beneath the waves, with now only two figures clinging to them.

‘Run!’ Crow shouted at the men behind him. ‘With me, come on!’ And where in hell’s name were Castlereagh, Mulgrave, Vansittart or any of the others? Peers of the realm still asleep in bed, leaving servants and fishermen to save lives? Reaching the outcrop of Carn Du itself, the heap of vast grey rocks rearing up against a sodden sky, Crow tore off his coat and jacket and unshouldered the rope. He lashed it around his waist with swift expertise, leaving one long end for his men to belay him with, and the rest to throw. This he coiled for now, and slung over his shoulder. Looking again, there was but a single man still clinging to the yards of the Deliverance. Squinting through spray and rain, Crow saw that the survivor was not even a man, but a boy. If he climbed down the seaward face of Carn Du as far as he could, there was a chance he could toss the rope to him, and failing that to anyone still clinging to wreckage below even as it was flung at the rocks. Amid the thundering roar of the surf and the hideous crunch of wood against rock as the top spars of the Deliverance were smashed against granite by the force of the ocean, he shouted to Hughes to take up the belaying end of the line.

‘My lord,’ Hughes said, his face rigid with emotion, rain streaming down his dark skin from grizzled, short-cropped hair, ‘if you will permit me to speak? This is suicide. The waves are too high – you’ll be washed away yourself.’ 

Crow turned to his assembled servants and tenants, rain-soaked, hair splattered across their faces as they passed the rope from one man to the next. ‘What then must I do? Stand here on my own land and watch people die? Just for Christ’s sake don’t let go of the line.’

He ran light-footed to the great carn; he had climbed down it many times as a boy, clinging to fissures in the rock and leaping from narrow, algae-speckled ledges into the ocean twenty feet below, and he had clouted his young brother for doing the same too, but even then there had not been waves almost as high as the rock itself. Amid the roar of water and the groan of failing timber, Crow glanced over his shoulder as he climbed and saw the boy still clinging to a spar like kelp splattered against the upright timber of a jetty. What remained of the mast leaned at a heart-stopping angle. Wave-soaked, Crow clung to the rock, the rope taut above him, digging into the spare flesh of his midriff through his wet shirt. One boy out of a crew of seventy: was that really to be all? Another wave crashed into him, and he dug the fingers of one hand into a fissure in the rock, grasping a heaven-sent handful of sprouting marram grass with the other as he yelled over his shoulder at the boy, ‘Hold on.’ Crow could see now that he was really very young, perhaps only eight or nine, his face familiar – one of the many urchins one saw on the cobbled streets of St Erth. Crow knew in the same instant that the child was losing the will to hold on, that he was too cold, and too afraid, his face white and pinched with exhaustion and terror.

About the author 

Katy Moran is a Carnegie nominated author, she write high-octane Regency romance, which include, muskets, gunpowder, Cornwall and Russia. She writes that when she is inspired by a new place ‘Regency England, Cornwall, Russia, the ancient palace of Fontainebleau — I want to actually be there. I want to take you there too, in the company of complex characters that you will fall a little (or a lot) in love with on the way.’

Alyss Morgan Gives Romance and Adventure a Medieval Twist in Her New Book

From WebWire:

Mystery, romance, and adventure come together in the masterfully written story by Alyss Morgan, “Blackwater Castle.” Set in the medieval period, where kings, knights, and castles flourished, readers will get to experience that golden age in human history once again. Alyss craftily revives the interest in castles, knights, and damsels who may be in distress for the millennial readers.

“Blackwater Castle” is a good book for readers seeking new twists to romance, adventure, and mystery stories. Alyss deftly incorporates historical settings, authentic descriptions of medieval towns, people and way of life. Readers will get to enjoy following the story from start to finish in the hopes of wanting to know what will happen with the adventure that Sir Guy is embarking on in “Blackwater Castle.” Readers will get to know that there is more story about a place than meets the eye. To unravel that mystery, Sir Guy must dig deeper into the facts and details that transpired in the castle that sits on his new land – Blackwater Castle. The characters and the settings are delightfully interesting adding to the appeal of the story.