Top Ten Tuesday: books I'd buy right this second if someone handed me a fully loaded gift card!

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists over there at The Broke and the Bookish. I'd love to share my lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

I'm very lucky as I recently received some gift cards for both waterstones and amazon as leaving presents from work so I did get to go and buy the books that have been on my Wishlist for a while but of course there are still more on there! So here goes...

1. Asking for it by Louise O'Neill

2. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson

3. Kissing in America by Margo Rabb

4. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

5. Mad Girl by Bryony Gordon

6. George by Alex Gino

7. You Know Me Well by Nina LaCour and David Levithan 

8. The list of My Desires by Gregoire Delacourt

9. The Girls by Emma Cline

10. Girls and Sex by Peggy Orenstein

So these are the books I've been fingering recently or metaphorically so, adding them to my wish lists. What's on your list?

Review: Love me Tinder by Nicola May

Dull security or risky freedom - which would you choose? 

With her marriage in pieces, shy Cali Summers is faced with this decision and hits the world of fast love on an internet dating app. 

Using room 102 in the hotel where she works as her dating 'lair', she opens herself up to a world of sex, lies, deception, as well as personal discovery and passionate love. 

With a charming F1 engineer, a handsome army officer and her adulterous ex all on the scene, a predictable love match is far from on the cards. 

Review: you know I am always excited about a new Nicola May release and I saved this one for a long flight just so I would be able to enjoy it for. Start to finish with little interruption. This has Nicola's usual mix of the real life and the comedy with just enough romance thrown in but very much a realistic experience of modern romance. I love the fact that there are more and more books coming out now about dating using dating apps and getting back into it when everyone else seems to know how it works but you don't because that is reality and I love to read about real people like me doing things like I do! So I loved the concept of this book and the real ying matched up to the premise. 

Now Cali, I found Cali a little difficult to get to like. I felt like I knew her instantly but I wasn't sure about her reluctance to let things go and move on but I rolled with it and by the mid-point of the book, I was really routing for her. There are a string of possible suitors for her and you know that means lots of hot men to ogle over, which you ow I am ok with. We also get to know Cali's ex Jamie quite well and I really did feel for him and the situation he got himself into. It was quite interesting because I also felt pretty invested in some of the secondary characters, Cali's workmates for example And best friend Annie, so you can see that Nicola may knows how to write a character, no matter how minor! 

Of course I loved the setting of this book. This author always writes books close to home in my world and so I could picture all of the places they were going and the place Cali went for dates. I was also surprised that she could find quite so many different men I  to he area! Because this is book about dating, there are some fabulous sex scenes as well, all well-written by this author and all of which I enjoyed almost as much as Calie herself. As I said in the beginning of this review, this book had a decent amount of comedy, romance and real life and it was the perfect mix and I stick by that. This is a light read and definitely something I'd recommend you pick up this summer! 

Guest Review: Summer at Oyster Bay by Jenny Hale

They say falling in love is easy. But what if you know it’ll break your heart?

For Emily Tate, returning to her charming childhood home Oyster Bay is like coming up for air after the fast pace of her city life. At the farm her grandfather built, surrounded by sister Rachel’s chatter, Gram’s buttermilk biscuits, and the soft, white sand, Emily is reminded of exactly who she is and what she holds most dear. 

When Emily starts work at elegant Water’s Edge Inn, Charles Peterson, the handsome new owner, asks for her help. He wants to expand and needs Emily to teach him the local ways, so he can convince the planning commission. Emily vows to make him fall in love with her hometown, just the way it is. 

At work, Charles is reserved and serious, yet once Emily has him kicking off his shoes in the sand and sailing across the glistening Chesapeake Bay, she sees another side to him, and their easy rapport feels like the start of something big.

But when it becomes clear Charles’s plans for the inn involve bulldozing Oyster Bay, Emily is heartbroken. Will she lose her home and Charles all at once, or can she save Oyster Bay, and give true love a chance? 

Review:Although Jenny Hale has written a good few books, this is the first one I have read. I liked the idea of the subject matter, and the book's cover as well as the title promised a lovely summery story with sun and sand. It actually proved to be a little more than that, looking at what can sometimes be sacrificed in the quest for progress. I'm afraid that the story didn't grab me from the word go and pull me right into the plot. In fact, I found it a little hard to get into. 

The main character, Emily Hale, arrives back at her childhood home after an absence of 3 years to find that it is in danger of being demolished to make way for expansion of a local hotel/resort. This situation is complicated by the fact that she has come home to work at that very hotel as events planner. The new owner of the hotel, Charlie Peterson, is convinced that the expansion is necessary if the resort is to survive and, moreover, is good for the community and local economy. He has to persuade the local authorities of this, but Emily sets out to change his mind. 

Oyster Bay is a lovely old property built by Emily's late grandfather, and is full of memories for her and her grandmother, who lives there still. Emily's sister, Rachel, also lives nearby with her husband and sweet four-year-old daughter. In addition to the house, grandfather also built a barn and a boat, and there are lovely descriptions of the surrounding area, set on Chesapeake Bay. Emily is understandably attached to everything about the property, even though, or perhaps especially as, she has been absent for a while. 

Unfortunately, I really didn't like Emily. She behaved really badly at times - more like her young niece than a grown-up with a responsible job. I think Charlie was a strange character as well. He was supposedly a hard headed business man, but put up with all sorts of behaviour from Emily (his employee in the end of the day), allowing himself to be led here and there as she attempted to convert him to her way of thinking. The way in which Charlie resolves the whole situation is ingenious and ever so romantic, but even that I found lacking  in credibility. 

All in all, I found this book a bit of a disappointment. The story trundled along and didn't excite my imagination greatly. It did make me want to dip my toes into the water of Chesapeake Bay though, so it wasn't all bad. 

Guest Review: How to Find Love in a Bookshop by Veronica Henry

Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in Peasebrook, a picture-postcard Cotswold town, is a dream comes true for booklovers. Everyone who enters falls in love with something.

But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open and the developers are circling. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention her customers, for whom the shop is a comfort, a meeting place, a lifeline.

There's Gary, a stable lad for a nearby trainer, who buys books to read to Nikki, who is lying in a coma. He spends every spare hour at Nikki's bedside, never giving up hope that she will come round.

Betty, who runs a supper club from her tiny cottage, has a huge crush on a man she met and then lost in the cookery section, somewhere Auguste Escoffier and Marco Pierre White.

Mrs Norris repeatedly 'forgets' to pay for her books - and Emilia never has the heart to remind her. But Mrs Norris isn't quite as forgetful as she pretends ...

And then Emilia meets Dexter, local jack-the-lad, who is looking to improve his English so he can better himself. He buys all Emilia's recommendations, and together they re-discover all her favourite authors. But Dexter has a secret, and is not all he seems...

Review: As a massive Veronica Henry fan, I was very excited to learn that her new novel was on its way. I thought that the title was quite intriguing. I actually listened to it as an audiobook whilst driving from Yorkshire to the north of Scotland, and good company it was. 

The story does revolve around a bookshop as the title suggests, but more than just one person finds love due to their connection with that single emporium. The shop in question is located in the quaint-sounding little town of Peasebrook, in the Cotswolds. It was owned by a gentleman named Julius Nightingale, who sadly passes away at the beginning of the story, leaving it in the hands of his daughter, Emilia. It's not very healthy financially, but she is keen to make a stab at running it in memory of her beloved father. As well as Emilia's story, we also meet a variety of other local inhabitants, all of whom have their own interesting subplots. The one thing that they all have in common is a love for the sadly deceased Julius. There is the family who own the local am or house, and their daughter, who is due to be married to a fairly questionable character, although the much nicer sounding gardener also has his eye on her. Other friends of Julius include Marlow, a keen musician, a retired lady who helped him out in the shop towards the end, and a local school teacher, Thomasina, who unusually also runs an exclusive one-table restaurant in her house. We also meet a young couple who have moved to the country to escape the rat race, but have they done the right thing? Everyone is ready to help Emilia in her struggle to keep the shop open. 

I really enjoyed this story. I found all of the characters likeable and believable, with the exception of Alice's creepy boyfriend of course. There was good depth to the storylines of each character and I really couldn't foresee how things were going to play out. The book's lovely cover depicts the bookshop at night with the lights streaming out, enticing the reader in very successfully. 

I would heartily recommend this as a good book to add to your holiday suitcase or just to read while relaxing in the garden. I'm sure it will pull you into Nightingale Books right from the start. 

My Starbucks Story

So many of you may have seen on twitter that one of the reasons I am visiting Seattle is to go to the original Starbucks. You may also have seen that when I visit a new Starbucks I haven't been to before AND BUY SOMETHING I check into it and count it. Here's where that all started... (I know I have mentioned this before but I wanted to mark the momentous occasion of visiting the original one somehow!)

So a whole ago, a freind of mine asked if I knew how many different branches of Starbucks I'd been to. I think I had checked in on face book to one in another area. Like me, he had been to New York and seen the sheer volume of Starbucks there. There are also a lot of Starbucks in London and I was living near London at the time. Apparently I wasn't working very hard at the time so I had a free moment to take to the Starbucks website and list all the Starbucks I had been to WORLDWIDE. Although there are lots in New York and many other cities I have travelled to, I do have a good memory and do tend to 'sit in' when I go to Starbucks and so I was able to remember the various branches I had been to based on the towns, cities, airports and service stations I had been to. 

I came to a number that was in the region of 150, all this after his innocent Faceboook comment! And from then on, I started checking into a new Starbucks whenever I went there and bought something. Initially I just checked in on Facebook and then I discovered four square and started checking in on there. I now use swarm and only use that for checking in to Starbucks so I can easily keep track of them. 

So today marks the 250th brach of Starbucks I have visited. The original Starbucks in Seattle. I can't tell you how excited I have been about this and I knew that it needed to be a significant number. I came very close to the number, but knew I would probably grab a few Starbucks on the journey to Seattle and so left myself a few short. I eneded up not going there on my first day in Seattle just so I could top my number up until I reached 249 because the journey didn't actually allow me to visit many Starbucks due to delays and security etc. 

Just because I have reached 250, I'm not going to stop checking into Starbucks now, I'll just have to decide where I want my 300th branch to be! 

 

Geek Girl: Head Over Heels by Holly Smale

Harriet Manners knows almost every fact there is.

She knows duck-billed platypuses don’t have stomachs.
She knows that fourteen squirrels were once detained as spies.
She knows only one flag in the world features a building.

And for once, Harriet knows exactly how her life should go. She’s got it ALL planned out. So when love is in the air, Harriet is determined to Make Things Happen!
If only everyone else would stick to the script…

Has GEEK GIRL overstepped the mark, and is following the rules going to break hearts all over again? 

Review: I love a Geek Girl book, you know I love Harriet Manners, this book was the usual mix of fun, frolics and fashion in a way like you've never seen it before that you can come to expect from a Holly Smale Novel (I'm already reading the next one!) Harriet is Harriet and she really was classically herself in this novel. Her group of Freinds, as well as her family, have expanded and so it was really interesting to see how all the new characters react to each other and gel together. I really enjoyed seeing Rin come into the group and explore how she got on with Toby and Nat and Jasper. There was also another member of the group who turns out to be not quite what Hariet expected her to be. Harriet's younger sister also plays a major role in this novel, which was really fun, I hope she's going to play as big a part in future novels too! 

Of course this novel has some modelling in, why couldn't it, and you know that that means favourite character of mine Wilbur is involved too! I love Wilbur and he has a bit of a crisis on his hands in this book, but never fear, Harriet is here! I really enjoyed the fact that Harriet seems to have a bit of a transformation when it comes to modelling in this novel, it has been lovely to see her evolution, when it comes to the fashion industry across the books and the series as a whole and this book feels somewhat final in that, but I'm sure it won't be! 

Of course there were some laughs in this novel, there always are where Geek Girl is involved! I have to say, it seems a little more serious than previous novels, perhaps because Harriet and the gang are growing up, I laughed less but I still laughed! In terms of whether you could read this books as a standalone or not...I really don't think it would work as well as some of the earlier a as standalones. There is mention of other characters and events that have gone before and so I think you would really need to have read the others in order to enjoy this one. Finally, just a nod to some of the locations that Holly Smale has Harriet Travel to in these novels, fabulous, just fabulous! I'll let you read for yourself where she gets to go to in this one! 

A fab read and a must for Harriet fans old and new! 

My summer plans

So those of you who have been following the blog for a while will know that I have a massive reading and blogging surge during the summer holidays. If you know or love someone who workers in a school then you will know that the end and the start of term are particularly busy times and so reading or blogging tends to take a dip round about then, the surge in read in the summer allows me to catch up on books I want to read but also catch up on reviewing them so I have plenty schedules for the start of term.

Now this summer is going to look a little bit different. I'm planning on a great American road trip followed by a big move across the Atlantic and so I don't know how much reading I'm going to get done but.....a massive but.... I'm not going back to school in Spetember. In Spetmeber I will not be working, I will be sorting out all the stuff one needs to sort out when one moves to another country at the other end but I will also be able to do some reading and....some writing! 

That being said, I will also be sharing with you some of the exciting times I have on my holiday and some of the stuff I learn bookish and otherwise, during my first few weeks in the states...

As you read this now, I will be in Seattle. As many of you know, I am a massive Starbucks fan, so you will all know why I am going to Seattlle! I check in to any new Starbucks I meet (and buy something from) and I'm planning on the original one being my 250th check in! 

We are also going to do some of the sites in San Francisco, including Alcatraz so I'm excited about that. We're driving down the west coast and taking in some of the scenery and some of the wildlife and ending up in San Diego. If any of you want to know about anything in particular, or any of you have hints, tips, places to eat, places to shop then please let me know! I'll try and post as much as possible and keep an eye on my Twitter/Instagram/snapchat to see more!