This is part of the weekly meme over at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer, where book bloggers can share the books and blogs they have written. ‘It’s been another really busy week’ is becoming rather an ongoing theme…
Robbie travelled down late Sunday night after a stint on the river as he had an audition tape that needed filming on Monday. It took most of the day, but we managed to have it completed with him travelling back to Cambridge before I had to leave for Northbrook to teach my Monday evening class.
On Tuesday evening, Sarah Palmer drove us to The Kew Bookshop to attend the launch party for Lesley Thomson’s latest book The House With No Room, which is set at Kew Gardens. This is the latest book in Lesley’s successful crime series The Detective’s 
Daughter and if you enjoy reading well written crime with interesting spiky characters and a steady build-up, then track it down – ideally, I suggest you start with The Detective’s Daughter – see my review here.
It’s been a good teaching week, all the sessions went off well – particularly Tim’s lesson. It is such a relief that we now have a solid plan in place regarding his exam goals for the next year.
I’ve enjoyed my reading this week, although I only completed two books. However they were both very enjoyable and utterly different. They were:
The Obsession by Nora Roberts
I had only read one other book by this very prolific author, but have seen a lot of enthusiasm for this latest offering on the book blogs I follow, so when I saw it on the library shelves, I scooped it up. I have written a review, which will be posted in due course.
Change of Life – Book 2 of A Menopausal Superhero series by Samantha Bryant
When I saw the cover and read the blurb of this offering on NetGalley, I couldn’t resist it. I had assumed it would be a knockabout farce, but in actually fact it is a straight superhero adventure, solidly embedded in the sub-genre – featuring women of a certain age instead of the fit young things we are used to seeing flitting about the skies and tossing cars around. I really enjoyed it and will be posting my review of it shortly.
I managed to continue editing Breathing Space and during the week, my writing group also helped me fillet and gut my blurbs for all three books in The Sunblinded Trilogy, so they are suitably punchy. Now that I’ve half term week ahead of me with no teaching obligations or related admin to deal with, I’m hoping to have completed the third draft of Breathing Space by this time next week.
My posts last week:
Sunday Post – 22nd May
Teaser Tuesday – Change of Life – Book 2 of A Menopausal Superhero series by Samantha Bryant
Review of Plantfall by Emma Newman
Review of The Witches Revenge – Book 2 of the Beaver Towers series by Nigel Hinton
Five SFF That Made Me Laugh – Part 1
Other interesting/outstanding blogs that have caught my attention during the last week:
Discussion: Realism in Books – Characters. Metaphors and Moonlight. A fascinating discussion about just how irritatingly plausible we want our main protagonists to be by Kristen Burns.
Markets for Your Fiction – how to locate them. A comparative analysis by The Earthian Hivemind. Stephen has produced a very handy guide if you have speculative fiction to submit.
On Losing Faith. Zen and the Art of Tightrope Walking. Viv Tufnell’s searingly honest account of her current despair.
Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: A Spotlight on David McCall Johnston. Science Fiction Ruminations. Joachim Boaz regularly features the amazing covers produced during the last century for science fiction books – but these are exceptional.
If you are also enjoying the Bank Holiday weekend, fingers crossed it stays fine… In the meantime, thank you for taking the time to visit and chat – I always appreciate it and hope you have a great reading and blogging week.
Brainfluff 
The launch party looks like fun…great photos, too. I hope you love The Obsession as much as I did. Enjoy the week, and thanks for visiting my blog.
The launch party was fun – Lesley is a lovely, warm person and I’m thoroughly enjoying the book. Yes – I loved The Obsession and will be reviewing sometime soon:). Thank you for swinging by.
Change of Life looks fun and it’s nice to see a more mature protagonist- glad to hear that was good. I would think from the cover too that it would be humorous, kinda neat that it’s not.
I love a lot of old sci fi cover art so I’ll definitely check out your link on that! Enjoy the long weekend.
Thank you Greg:). Yes, Change of Life is certainly something different – though a shame that YET AGAIN I started off with the 2nd book in the series! Let’s hope the weather stays fine for tomorrow.
Oh that launch party looks like fun! I haven’t read anything by Nora Roberts, I need to change that. Have a great week!
Yes, the launch party:). Yes, I really enjoyed The Obsession and would recommend it. Hope your week is a good one, too.
The launch party looks like a lot of fun! I haven’t heard of this mystery series but I’m adding The House with No Rooms to by TBR. I’m glad you enjoyed The Obsession. I’ve been a fan of Nora Roberts for ages but for the last 5 years or so I’ve been underwhelmed by her books. I was really pleased with The Liar – her romantic suspense from last year – and was hoping that Obsession would be as good and that sounds like the case. Have a great week!
I’ve only read Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts, but I thought this compared very favourably. I liked the way the protagonist was depicted – I found I really cared for her. As for Lesley Thomson – she isn’t everyone’s cup of tea… She is all about character and location, so the story is quite twisty with a relatively slow pace. I would start with The Detective’s Daughter which is the first in the series:).
Nora Roberts is a great author though I prefer her as her alter ego JD Robb!
Have a great week!
My husband is also a huge J.D. Robb fan – I haven’t yet got into this series of books. Thank you for swinging by:).
Ooh I’ve never been to a launch part but it sounds fun! I’m glad you also had a good teaching week *and* enjoyed both books you read 🙂 Plus it sounds like you were super productive, fixing up your blurbs and everything! Probably far more productive than my week was lol. Have a wonderful week!
I’ve been lucky enough to have been invited to several launch parties:)). This was a lovely evening. And it’s a great relief to finally feel positive about the blurbs. Have a great week – hope you don’t find yourself an internet outcast, again!
It sounds like you had a busy week this week!
The launch party looks awesome, I haven’t been to one but it sounds like fun.
It sounds like you had a really productive week with teaching and editing 😀
Jordon @ Simply Adrift
It was a bit full-on, so I’m looking forward to a week without teaching or related admin to just focus on my own writing:). Have a great reading week and thank you for visiting.
Dagnabit! I have Samantha Bryant’s 1st book that I need to read! I need to get crackin’ on that so I can read book 2. 🙂
Ah… someone who reads series in the RIGHT order! I’m nudging 60 – and I STILL can’t get the hang of it, lol…
It sounds like you had a great week, Sarah. And bookish events are always fun. 🙂 And it was a holiday weekend for you, too? Today (Monday) is Memorial Day here in the States, so we’ve had a long weekend as well.
Best of luck with Breathing Space edits this week!
Yes, it’s a Bank Holiday week-end – has been since forever, as far as I can make out… We now also have May Day at the start of the month, as well. Thank you – I’m about halfway through Breathing Space at the moment. Hope you have a good week, too:).