Some Like It Scot by Pepper Basham

 

First line:  I'd love to say I became famous because of my excellent writing skills.

Setting:  Isle of Mull, Scotland

The plot:  Katie Campbell is a popular travel writer known for her misadventures. Everywhere she goes something goes wrong. But she somehow always manages to turn it into something humorous and positive. But while she's happy traveling the world, there's something she's missing:  Home.  "Sometimes it's a place. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's both."  So when Katie meets Graeme MacKerrow, and the tall Scot not only rescues her more than once, but makes her feel seen, she starts to wonder if she's finally found it. But she's afraid...of falling, of failing, of not being enough. And of Graeme not loving her back.

Favorite quote:  "Love is always an act of faith because we cannae see the future...But love gives you the strength to leap, and faith gives you the vision to believe that the one you love will be on the other side to catch you."

My thoughts:  I love this book! More than a simple lighthearted romance, this is an engaging novel about finding family, finding home, taking chances and believing in oneself. Basham truly knows how to craft a story with layers and humor, depth, hope, faith and love. And her characters are so delightful. I loved Katie and Graeme and their journey. And I loved the picturesque setting. This book made me want to travel to the Isle of Mull. (And maybe meet my own handome Scot.) I found it captivating. And the ending made me smile. 

My rating:  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Happy Reading!

Snowed In For Christmas by Sarah Morgan

 

5 Things I loved about this heartwarming Christmas novel:

✷ It's set in Scotland! 

✷ Lucy Clarke gets snowed in with Ross Miller and his entire family over Christmas. 

(I love that snowed-in trope!)

✷ Nanna Jean's unapologetic outspokenness & advice when it comes to matters of the heart--"because she's 86 and not getting any younger!"

✷ The banter and loyalty between Ross and his two sisters, Alice and Clemmie.

✷ The romance, friendship, and love between Alice and Nico, Clemmie and Fergus, and Ross and Lucy. 

In tone and content, this one reminded me a lot of my favorite Rosamunde Pilcher books. It's all about family, finding love, and having the courage to speak up and tell your truth. This novel is charming and fun, and all the happy endings made me smile. 

Happy Reading!

A bookish gem...

The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan isn't really about a bookshop. It's mostly about Zoe, a single mom, and Hari, her four-year-old son, who hasn't started to speak yet. Escaping her dismal job in London, and her even more dismally expensive flat, Zoe heads to Scotland to be a nanny. Only once she's there she discovers that her three charges are the opposite of welcoming; their ramshackle estate isn't exactly comfortable or convenient; and Ramsey, their single father, is mostly absent. And Hari still isn't talking. Down but not defeated, Zoe presses on. After all, she can't exactly go back home. And soon everything around her starts to change for the better.

What I loved most about this book:

• It's set in beautiful Scotland.
• Nina and Lennox from The Bookshop on the Corner are both in it. (And Nina's pregnant!)
• Zoe is plucky, vulnerable, resilient, and witty; and her interactions with Shackleton, Mary and Patrick, the three hard-to-deal-with Urquart children, totally made me laugh.
• There's lots of talk about books and reading.
• Ramsey isn't your typical hunky hero, but in his own quiet and awkward way, he's hard to resist.
• It has a happy ending.

 

Happy Reading!

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

• an annual New Year's Eve getaway
• an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands
• a group of old college friends
• a historic blizzard
• an unexpected death
• a murderer among them

Last line of the novel:

"Perhaps it's time to make some new friends."

I was instantly drawn to the premise and the setting of this book. It's like one of those locked-room mysteries I always love, except this group of friends is snowed-in at a remote estate instead. And then, when Melody said she wanted to read it, too, I was even more excited. But sadly, it didn't end up being quite as suspenseful or compelling as I hoped. And that's mostly because of the way it's told.

Foley uses five different narrators to tell the story:  Heather, the manager of the lodge, Doug, the taciturn gamekeeper, and Emma, Katie and Miranda, three of the Oxford friends meeting up for their traditional New Year's weekend together. She also writes in first person present tense (except, oddly, for Doug's chapters), which means the first half of the story ends up being more inner monologue and angst than action. For me, the multiple POVs really slowed the pacing and made it hard to connect to any of the characters. I ended up not liking most of them. (Except for Doug.) After the first 140 pages, though, the story does pick up. And the ending is actually pretty intense.

As the book begins, you know upfront that one of the guests has been killed, you just don't know who. Which means you spend the bulk of the novel trying to figure out who among the nine is going to die and why. I guessed early on which character was going to be murdered. I also wasn't completely surprised by the murderer's identity (mostly because some of the other characters were pretty easy to eliminate). There were a few additional revelations at the end of the book that were pretty surprising though, with one last twist that was especially compelling. So, this novel definitely ended better than it began. But for me, it was still only a 3-star read. 

Even though this one wasn't quite as good as I'd hoped going in, doing a buddy read with Melody is always a lot of fun. Be sure to check out her awesome review and see what she thought of this snowed-in mystery.

Happy Reading!

P.S. Here are Melody's questions regarding this book...and my answers:

Q. All the friends in the group have gathered together for the New Year's celebrations before, what makes you think that this time is different and what really triggered the bond among them?
A. The more I got to know these nine friends, the more I wondered why they were still getting together at all, because they didn't seem to like each other very much. It was clear that they'd grown apart over the years. And I felt like they were all trying to hold onto something that just didn't exist any more. Why it all fell apart this particular weekend I don't really know, but I think it had been coming on for awhile.

Q. Like Doug or Heather, would you consider taking a job which allowed you minimal contact with the outside world? Why or why not?
A. Yes! There are a lot of remote locations (like the setting of this book) where I could see myself happily spending a year, especially if I was getting paid to do it. (And if I had a lot of good books to read!) But if it was for longer than a year, I think I'd start to go stir crazy, missing my family and friends and normal life. But for a year? I'd totally do it. Just for the experience of it. 

The Anatomist's Wife

I don't know why it took me so long to read The Anatomist's Wife by Anna Lee Huber, especially considering it contains so many of the elements that I really like in a book. For example, it's a mystery with suspense, atmosphere, and good writing. And it's set in Scotland in 1830, a time period and place that I love. But most of all, it has well-crafted and memorable characters like Mr. Sebastian Gage and Huber's most engaging of protagonists, the infamous Lady Darby, who also narrates the story. I ended up really liking this intrepid heroine. Here are five passages from the book that'll show you why:

Death was not unfamiliar to me. I had seen more than my fair share of corpses in my lifetime, and I had been quite happy to escape them for the last sixteen months. So I hardly relished the appearance of yet another one, and in my sister's garden no less. I shivered, feeling the fear and shadows stir inside me I had worked so hard to lay to rest since my husband's death.

I had never been very successful at the art of flirtation. I knew my sister was quite capable, having listened to her and Philip verbally banter with one another daily for over a year. My brother Trevor also seemed competent in the arena, if the number of young ladies in London angling for a marriage proposal from him were any indication. I, on the other hand, seemed to be missing that mysterious skill.

It didn't matter what Gage believed. I knew that I was innocent, and so did my sister and brother-in-law. All I could do was focus on what I had set out to do in the first place--protect my sister and her family by finding the real killer--and in the process, prove my innocence, perhaps once and for all.

Several hours in my studio did much to soothe my tattered nerves worn raw by the events of the last sixteen hours. The familiar roughness of the charcoal in my hand as I sketched the outline of a new portrait comforted me. Its musk of earth and ashes permeated the air, clearing away the lingering memory of blood and death. I lost myself in the sweep of lines, forgetting time and place.

I had always known that I was a solitary person. Even when wed to Sir Anthony, even while living with my sister and her family, I knew the truth. I was alone. And likely would always be. That normally did not trouble me, but lately I had begun to feel the weight of such a truth, the isolation of such a life, and it upset me more than I would have liked to admit. But I didn't know how to change that. My temperament, my talent, seemed to naturally hold me apart from others. The scandal had only exacerbated the problem.

Happy Reading!

A bookish treat...

Title:  The Bookshop on the Corner
Author:  Jenny Colgan
First line:  The problem with good things that happen is that very often they disguise themselves as awful things.
The protagonist:  Nina Redmond, a shy 29-year-old single librarian who describes herself as "the quiet one, on the sidelines, observing things through the medium of the novels she loved to read." Her world consists of books, and more books. But then they close her library and Nina has no idea what she's going to do next. Unless she opens up her own small bookshop in an old converted van...

My thoughts:  This is a novel about books and reading, and daring to follow your dreams, AND it's set in Scotland where the men are 'boys' and the women are 'lasses'. What's not to love? I've never read Jenny Colgan before, but I'd definitely read her again. This book is a delight, from Nina's early mishaps driving the van, to the slightly motley yet oddly engaging assortment of characters she meets along the way, to her own unexpected romance. There's even a dog named Parsley. The whole thing is a lot of fun. In fact, I think I'd happily live in this book if I could. I didn't even mind the predictable bits. I just lost myself in the Scottish landscape and enjoyed each and every page. So, if you like bookshops and happy endings, give this one a try.

Happy Reading!

Similar read:

Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica A. Fox

Shiver by Alex Nye

5 signs your house might be haunted:

flickering lights

pockets of extreme cold

strange creaks and murmurings in the hallway

footsteps when no one is there

ghostly laughter

In Shiver by Alex Nye, Samuel Cunningham and Fiona Morton discover a secret staircase behind the library fireplace that leads to a dead end in the tower of Dunadd House. Their passage not only disturbs the dust, but the two ghost-children hiding there. Eliza and John died in 1604. But now they're awake, and Eliza is feeling very much alive. Samuel and Fiona, along with Fiona's two older brothers, are determined to find out what's hiding at the end of the secret staircase, and why Eliza and John are haunting Dunadd House. But they might be treading on dangerous ground. Because...

"Ghosts are best left to themselves."

So why did I check this middle-grade fiction book out of the library? Because it's set in a haunted house in Scotland. And I love Scotland...and I also love haunted-house stories. But Shiver isn't just a ghost story. It's also a mystery. And there's a blizzard. And a hidden room containing buried secrets from the past. And an adventure. And Samuel and Fiona, and Fiona's brothers, Sebastian and Charles, are very fun characters. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a well-written, satisfying ghost story. And the perfect October read.

Happy Reading!

Eleventh Classic of 2014...

     "I have frequently told you, and the holidays just past have convinced me, that my prime has truly begun. One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full....One's prime is the moment one was born for."

 "Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life."

So speaks Miss Jean Brodie, a 'progressive spinster' and teacher at the Marcia Blaine School in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the 1930s. She surrounds herself with a small circle of eleven-year-old girls, 'The Brodie Set', presumably to mold them in her image as they grow up, but mostly to have a captive audience for all her stories and grand ideas. She's unconventional and energetic and I wanted to like her, but mostly I found her imperious, judgmental, and completely self-centered. Sadly, I didn't find much to like in any of the Brodie girls either, but maybe that's because of Spark's narrative style which is a bit aloof and removed. What a disappointing read!

I've read a few of Muriel Spark's other novels--books I quite enjoyed--but I didn't like this one at all. I was expecting something funnier and more warm-hearted, but The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is not a feel-good novel; in fact, this book left me feeling cold. At least it's short and I was able to finish it quickly. I wish someone would tell me why people like this novel so much. I just don't see it. With my apologies to Muriel Spark, this is one classic I won't be reading again. 

Happy Reading (some other book)!

 

A Real-Life Scottish Fairy Tale...

"What if I took all the imagination and creativity that I poured into my screenplays and invested it in my own life?"

 This is not a book about rockets (even though the author once worked for NASA). It's a book about asking yourself, "What if?" and following your dreams no matter how impractical they seem. It's a book about Scotland, and a very cool second-hand bookshop--reasons enough for me to read this book as I love both books and Scotland! It's part travel memoir, part adventure, and part romance. And it made me wish I could trade places with Jessica A. Fox.

"...the Holy Grail is not the treasure but the dream, like the carrot before the horse. It's the impulse that gets you off the couch and propels your journey. The problem arises when you don't allow your dream to change."

Jessica is a 26-year-old film-maker living and working in Los Angeles when she has a dream that propels her to take an impulsive trip to Wigtown, Scotland's National Book Town. There she meets Euan, the owner of The Bookshop. Wigtown feels surprisingly like home to her and Jessica soon finds herself falling in love with it...and with Euan.

"All the best parts of this adventure, after all--Euan, Eve, Deirdre, Edinburgh and all that I adored about Wigtown--had been outside the possibilities of my imagination."

I really enjoyed reading about this Scottish book town. Scotland is such an amazing place...I'd love to go back someday and make my own pilgrimage to Wigtown. If you're into travel, bookshops, and following your dreams, definitely read Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica A. Fox.