Rhoda Baxter's Blog, page 14

Book review: All The Feels by Olivia Dade

I have been waiting to read this book ever since Alex showed up at Marcus’s flat in Spoiler Alert and started talking about Lauren. So, when I saw it on Netgalley, I requested it immediately.

Alex is a film star with impulse control issues. Lauren is a psychotheapist who used to work in A&E and is supposed to be taking a well earned rest by going on holiday. But when Alex gets involved in a bar fight, his production company gets him a minder to stop him bringing any more bad PR to the sho...

Babes In The Wood by Mark Stay

Funny, atmospheric and a tiny bit scary. Perfect Halloween reading.

I enjoyed the first book in the series, so when this one popped up on Netgalley, I requested it immediately.
It’s the 1940s, there’s a war on. It’s about a year since the events of The Crow Folk and most people seem to have forgotten about it. Faye is now a proper witch-in-training. When a plane crashes into the petrol garage, Faye rescues a group of German Jewish children on the Kindertransport. When she touches one of th...

Book review: The Bookbinders Daughter by Jessica Thorne

I read an ARC of this book via Netgalley (Thank you, Bookouture for letting me read it).
First of all – it’s a book about a magic library. How could you resist that!

Sophie is in a very controlling relationship with a scumbag, when she’s offered a job at the mysterious Ayredale library … where her parents both worked … until her mum disappeared. She leaves the scumbag and goes to the library, which feels like something more than just a place where old books are kept and repaired. Plus, eve...

Book review: A Midwinter Match by Jane Lovering

Ruby and Zac both work as counsellors in job centres. When two branches are combined, one of them is going to lose their job. They end up sharing an office and competing for the the same job. Ruby is doing her best to keep her Generalised Anxiety Disorder a secret and to keep up a smiling face. Zac seems to completely at ease with the world. At least that’s how it looks until Ruby starts to realise that he has secrets of his own.

I liked Ruby and her struggle with anxiety. I can relate. [...

Book review: Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall

Book cover for Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake

I requested this book from Netgalley because I’d read Boyfriend Material last year and really enjoyed it. I was not disappointed.

Rosaline Palmer is a single mum who feels like she’s failed at life – even though she’s being a great mum to an awesome kid. On a whim, she enters Bake Expectations (which is GBBO by another name, really). The story charts her journey from being a shy and timorous newbie to a confident amateur baker, which her love l...

Book review: Isn’t it Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams

Cover of Isn’t It Bromantic by Lyssa Kay Adams

I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this book for ages. Every time I logged into Netgalley, I’d check to see if it was on. If you’re not familiar, The Bromance Book Club is a bunch of guys who meet to read and discuss romance novels in an attempt to become better husbands and lovers. I love these books (and I really wish I’d come up with this concept!)

Vlad is my favourite of the bros. He started off as the comic relief – ‘The Russian’, with ...

Book review: Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I requested an ARC of this book from Netgalley because I loved The Interpreter of Maladies.
This book follows a year in the life of a nameless narrator. She talks about the places she goes, the people she knows. No one has names, we only see what these people are to her.
The book is a series of vignettes, where we see the world through one woman. We get a sense of who she is – bookish, melancholy, lonely, not entirely likeable (but interesting...

Book Review: The Lost Girls of Foxfield hall by Jessica Thorne

[image error]

The Lost Girls of Foxfield Hall is a dual timeline story with part of it set in the present day, where Megan is trying to restore the overgrown maze behind the hall, and the other part set in WW2 where Eleanor is trying to take picture of the Green Lady (the ghost at the heart of the maze). The maze is dark and magical and one day Megan and Eleanor meet. When Megan later discovers that Eleanor went missing, just days after the time when she’d seen her, Megan has to unravel the mystery of wha...

Book review: Home on Folly Farm by Jane Lovering

[image error]

I’m a fan of Jane Lovering’s books, so when I spotted this on Netgalley, I immediately requested it.
Dora is a sheep farmer working the family farm in the North York Moors. She works hard and is scraping by. Everything changes when her spoiled sister and her equally spoiled son come to stay, bringing the son’s tutor with them. If all that weren’t enough, the tutor reminds Dora of someone she knew from her teens, where things happened that she’d really rather not remember.

There’s a lot abo...

What’s the difference between a manuscript critique and a beta read?

A few months ago, I wrote a thread on Twitter about how beta reading a book differed from a manuscript critique. It just so happened that I’d read three manuscripts that week. Two were books by established writers, which I was beta reading and one was a manuscript by a new writer, for which I was doing a critique/assessment report.

The two experiences were very different. The two beta reads I read quickly – reading them as a story and making the odd note to myself as if I came across some...