Saturday Reads - 7th March 2020

I am bowing to the inevitable. Clearly, I am hardly ever going to manage to post on a Wednesday, so from now on, this is Saturday Reads.

What I’ve just finished reading:
Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms by Anita Heiss. Such a quiet book! It suits the story, but I was still startled by it. Lovely in its way, although simultaneously difficult to get through the various attitudes of the time, and the experiences of pretty much all the characters other than the whites (except Raymond). I really enjoyed this. It has a different tone to the other Heiss novels I’ve read, although I haven’t read Tiddas yet and that may well be similar to this. Less snark (not surprisingly). A really good read and I’m so glad I finally got there.

The Heiress Effect by Courtney Milan. I loved Jane. And Emily. And Anjan. Even Oliver got there eventually. (His certainty that he couldn’t marry Jane frustrated me no end.) Milan’s heroines are clearly not your average Regency heroines. (They’re Victorian, for starters, I’m pretty sure.) But the thing I love about Stephanie Laurens’ heroines - their feistiness and their refusal to do anything they don’t want to do is doubled and tripled in Milan’s books. I’m so glad I started reading her, and I’m going to have to read the Worth saga once I’ve finished the Brothers Sinister. And maybe even her contemporaries…

Craft a Life you Love by Amy Tangerine. This was definitely a good choice for a self-development read. It’s bitsy, and my copy is already full of highlighting and scribbles and it will get more of that on later re-reads.

What I’m reading now: I need to put some effort into finishing Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession. It went way onto the backburner during February.

Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff is my latest Self-Development read. It was a recommendation via Brene Brown’s books, but I’m currently finding it VERY confronting.

What’s catching my eye on the TBR:

Publicity is ramping up for the latest Sulari Gentil (number 10), which makes me feel like I need to read the next in the series (number six). Only I don’t own it yet, dammit…

And The Duke and I by Julia Quinn has arrived from the public library. Hoping to dig into that one later today.