(courtesy official Cressy McLaughlin newsletter) SNAPSHOTIn a seaside village, where the winter sunset meets the sea, Daisy is coming home … When her perfect life falls apart, Daisy returns to Mistingham, determined it’s a temporary stop until she can find her feet again. She hasn’t counted on the community’s irresistible Continue Reading
Books
New releases August book review: Summer at Flora’s House by Freya North
(courtesy official author site) There is something so deeply, soul-caressingly soothing about the Flora’s House series of novellas by gifted author Freya North. Each perfectly-pitched instalment including Christmas at Flora’s House and Spring at Flora’s House, and which now includes Summer at Flora’s House – the final book, Autumn at Continue Reading
Star Trek Strange New Worlds S4 E1-2 review: “Valles Marineris” and “The Griffin Incident”
(courtesy IMP Awards) Episode 1: “Valles Marineris” Happy days! Star Trek: Strange New Worlds is back for its penultimate season and it kicks off with an episode that ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- sends the Enterprise and its crew back 65 million years! Hurrah for fiery galactic anomalies and their Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: Big Nick Energy by Kristen Bailey
(courtesy Storm Publishing) When you dive into as many romcoms, festive or otherwise, as this reviewer does, it doesn’t take too long to spot novels which have that extra special something. Maybe it’s dialogue that sounds like it might bounce out of the mouths of actual living breathing human beings Continue Reading
A torrent of TV trailers: Ted Lasso S4, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power S3, Yaga, Neuromancer + Blade Runner 2099
(via Shutterstock) Am I overwhelmed by how many TV-streaming shows are out and about and that I want to watch? YES. Do I want to keep adding to the list anyway, in the feverishly excitable hope that I will one day get to them all? Also YES. I am nothing Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: A Cozy Kind of Christmas by Ellie Alexander
If you are aficionado of festive romcoms – and if not, why not, and what did the Grinch do to your cold, dead, tinsel-starved heart? – you will be well aware that they’re all about future love. Two would-be lovers who don’t know they needed to fall in love, or Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: Highland Hearts Holiday Bookshop by Tricia O’Malley
Who among those of us who read books like others breathe and eat – to be fair we all breathe and eat but let’s just go with this overblown comparison for the sake of the review, shall we? – hasn’t dreamed of someone (very distant with their passing causing us Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: The King and the Christmas Tree by A. N. Wilson
(courtesy Allen & Unwin Australia) Since 1942, with a break between 1943-1946 and beginning again in 1947, Oslo has sent a minimum twenty-metre tall, eighty-year-old tree to Trafalgar Square in London as a symbol of the enduring bonds between the two countries, established most profoundly during the dark days of Continue Reading
Christmas in July book review: A Very Irish Christmas by Debbie Johnson
When you think of a romcom novel, you think usually of two people which is fair enough because a relationship isn’t much good if there’s only person in it. Fairly logical when you think about; but when you really dive into a romcom, what keeps you there, and keeps you Continue Reading
Why you keep buying books you don’t read – and why it feels so good (curated article)
(via Shutterstock) Author: Michelle Spear, Professor of Anatomy, University of Bristol (article via The Conversation) At busy times, I find I simply cannot read as much as I would like to. Life has a habit of filling every available hour with work, meetings, emails, chores, errands and deadlines. Standing in Continue Reading