I'll be honest, I was intially drawn to this book because it was on a shelf with a full collection of other titles from the same author and publisher, all in the same style but in a rainbow of colours, and I had to be talked down from clearing the shelf because they looked so beautiful together. This is the second Allison and Busby book I've bought, and the other - Unmarriageable - is also stunning, so mad props to their cover designers. They're smashing it out of the park.
This is the Heyer that I've been trying to find for ages, and every time I end up picking up Charity Girl instead and get frustrated. It's a similar set up of sorts, a young country gentleman in an impulsive mood stumbles across the poor cousin of a local family, and offers her shelter. Except in Friday's Child, the gentleman in question is in a bad mood because his childhood friend just turned down his proposal, so he decides to elope with the young waif he has acquired.
I've been extremely excited about this book basically since finishing the last one. It's been a while since I've stumbled across a series as it was publishing where I had to literally wait a year between each book.
Hello, can I interest you in some delightful gay romance, as a period novella, with some snappy dialogue, a mystery, and a bit of smut? Of course I can, the world is pretty miserable and you want nice things. You deserve it.
Asimov has become known as one of the greats of science fiction literature for decades. His catalogue is vast, and his awards collection equally so. He had a reputation for writing "hard" SFF, which always made me feel a little uneasy about starting his books, as someone who is not always super comfortable with hard SFF.
The premise of this book fascinated me when I heard about it - a murderer who was unquestionably guilty, but who has been completely silent since the murder.
I stumbled across The Island of Dr Moreau by H.G. Wells and thought it was wonderfully chilling. I never got around to reading The Time Machine, however, and given as lockdown has presented me with a lot more reading time than anticipated, I thought I'd seize the opportunity.
My dad and I didn't generally overlap on our reading tastes very often. He was always disappointed I couldn't get through Lord of the Rings, while I was shocked at his distaste for "that Pratchett man". There were a handful that we shared. The Incredible Journey was one, and Lord of Light was another.
Shamefully, I hadn't actually read any Ray Bradbury before picking up this book. In fact, while I knew the titles of some of his works, unlike Stephen King I didn't have any real knowledge of the content of any of his book either.
This book has always ranked fairly highly for me among Heyer's work, largely because it is the sequel to These Old Shades and therefore gave me more of my favourite characters. I don't think that Heyer has done many sequels, so this makes it fairly unusual...
