March 2022 book blog

Well, the good news is that I’m back in the swing of things with getting my own book ‘Ransomed Hearts’ ready for market. Of course, that means that I didn’t read much in March, but what I did read was meaty and full of delicious bloody and creepy horror. Yes, the march of time has brought me Ellen Datlow’s ‘The Best Horror of the Year. Volume Thirteen.’

Datlow’s annual anthology and Stephen King’s latest offering are pretty much the only books that automatically go to the top of the tbr pile, and I lost no time getting stuck in to Datlow’s latest collection. My review is on Goodreads, the short summary is that my favourite stories were (in no particular order) by A C Wise, Gemma Files, Catriona Ward, Steven Graham Jones, Simon Bestwick, Michael Marshall Smith, J A W McCarthy, Sarah Pinsker, Maria Haskin and Jack Lothian. I’m already looking forward to Volume 14.

And now for something completely different. Kathleen Clunan is a member of my writing group, and last year she published her first novel, The Evolution of Christie Harris. It’s unashamedly chicklit, which isn’t my genre, but Kathleen is lovely and funny and I wasn’t disappointed when I read the book and felt her personality shine through. Christie is a young art teacher who is having an eventful holiday. The first scenes paint her as a passionate and committed art teacher who wants to bring out the best in her pupils. She loves her life, her house share with her best friends, her parents, her job, but everything is going to change when a globally famous celebrity with an agenda all of her own moves in to Christie’s life and turns it upside down. It was a fun read, and if chicklit is your thing, then you should definitely give it a go.