Book review : Vienna Waltz by Teresa Grant

Vienna Waltz
Malcom and Suzanne Rannoch Historical Mysteries
BOOK 2 by Teresa Grant
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The start of this book was a bit boring to me, but then finally after a while I got into the story and I really liked it.

THE REASONS I WAS BORED IN THE BEGINNING:
1) The prologue was definitely too long and full of unnecessary details that didn't serve the mystery... after the previous reading had been fantastic, reading a boring prologue made me ill disposed towards the book and after the first chapter I already thought I didn't like it and that I would have abandoned the series.

2) Even the first two chapters failed to capture my interest: the murder of a despicable woman I didn't care that it was solved, in the book everyone was attracted to her, but the truth is that from the very beginning a selfish personality devoted to power is evident, she was a dirty blackmailer even towards those who loved her.

3) The two protagonists are married, but apart from the fact that they have a son and get along well in bed, they seem like perfect strangers and there is always an air of embarrassment between them.

... I couldn't find a reason to appreciate this book, but perhaps I was still under the spell of the previous book (which I loved) and therefore I decided to continue reading, all in all, the plot on the back cover sounded interesting:

__THE PLOT__ November 1814, Congress of Vienna. The elite of Europe ( sovereigns, ambassadors, princes and even the tsar) are negotiating the fate of the Continent after Bonaparte's exile on the island of Elba.
Suddenly one night Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked about woman in Vienna, is found murdered during an ill-timed rendezvous with three of her most powerful conquests.
Suzanne Rannoch has tried to ignore rumors that her new husband, Malcolm, is also one of Tatiana's lovers and since both she and her husband are among those summoned to the appointment and find he was the one who found the body, they decide to investigate...

WHY I CHANGED MY MIND and APPRECIATED THE BOOK
...of course, by reading the book, the reader uncovers that there are many other hidden reasons to investigate on the murder, reasons that husband and wife keep hidden to each others.

1) Investigating together, facing dangers, saving each other's lives, the two characters begin to open up to each other and we discover that actually they are deeply in love with each other but they dare not admit it openly because of their past and their fears.
The 2 main characters finally exude warmth, the reader's heart warms up, the secrets are revealed little by little, giving rise to new trust in the partner and the hope of being truly loved by the other one.

2) The characters that revolve around Malcolm and Susanne are several, many of whom really existed in history and who played decisive roles in the society of the time.
At the beginning of the book we find the whole list of characters and those who really existed are marked with an asterisk and this was very useful to me, since as I met the characters in the book, I enjoyed reading their life summary on Wikipedia, it gave me a way to have a broader view of that historical moment and that historical event and of course of those impressive people.

3) Although for a good part of the book I wasn't interested in finding out who killed the libertine princess (I was more interested in discovering the secrets of all the characters, in fact throughout the story EVERY CHARACTER has secrets to hide), in the end the killer wasn't obvious at all !!!
In the last chapters I thought I knew who the killer was, but actually it was all EVEN MORE COMPLICATED, the AUTHOR WAS REALLY INGENIOUS and THE ENDING REALLY SURPRISED ME!

I was going to give this book 3 stars, I liked it, but I wouldn't read it again and I thought maybe I wouldn't continue in the series, but then the complicated web of lies and secrets surprised me a lot, more I got fond to Susanne and Malcolm and I really wish to spend more time with them by reading book #2 in the series (although not right away), so I've rated the novel 3.8 stars and rounding up to 4.

Well, I hope I was able to express my feelings about the book in a right way, since English is not my mother tongue, if not please forgive me.

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Giveaway : Enchanting Autumn Desktop Wallpaper

A freebie for you : a cute desktop wallpaper suitable for next Autumn

Hello dear friends ! :-D

Since I started today creating graphic design to print on demand, I want to share here with you, for free, my first creation, named Enchanting Autumn.

I created this design to be printed on breakfast placemats, but in a smaller size (1920 x 1344) I also find it nice to use as a desktop wallpaper on your computer.

If you prefer, you could print it on postcard format to use it between the pages of your books as a bookmark!

@TizianaFragnerGraphic
Enchanting Autumn Desktop Wallpaper
Size 1920 x 1344

Now you may see the blurry image, but if you click on it, the clear image will open.

Of course the image I made for the placemats is much bigger (otherwise the print wouldn't look good), but here I couldn't upload it with those measurements, but it's good enough to print a postcard or to use it on your computer screen.

I hope you will enjoy it. :-)

Thanks for stopping by and have a nice day !


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Book review : A Splendid Defiance by Stella Riley

A Splendid Defiance
by Stella Riley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

5 stars well deserved, I really loved it, it's an amazing historical adventure romance !!!

I finished the book this morning and I already miss it... I miss the characters, I desperately want to keep being with them!
Definitely the best book I've read in recent years (according to my parameters of course).
This book totally involved me from the very first page to the last one, I'm not exaggerating saying that, indeed there wasn't a single moment that made me feel bored, I couldn't put it down and I neglected many other hobbies of mine because I was so engaged by this book!

I will begin by saying that it is a historical novel, with 2 invented main characters and many side characters who really existed during the civil war in England (1642-1651).

It's a story that talks about war and love, but contrary to what one might think it's not exactly a romance novel, where everything revolves around love and you read hot sex scenes, which really doesn't fit into my genre reading ( like Diana Gabaldon or similar ).

The love story begins slowly and develops very slowly against the backdrop of battles, sieges, heroic and petty deeds, political compromises, the limits of the bigoted world of those times and the courage to assert one's ideas.

There are likable characters, with a good sense of humor who cheer us up in several scenes and there are narrow-minded evil characters who really make your skin crawl.

The hero and heroine are Justine and Abbie, they belong to 2 different sides of this war: he is a Royalist officer holding Banbury castle under siege, while Abbie is the sister of a local shopkeeper, a puritan, a fanatic and despot who makes life impossible to her.

WARNING TO THOSE LOOKING ONLY FOR ROMANCE : Our 2 characters meet only a few times in the first half of the book and this could be disappointing for those purely looking for a romance novel.
We actually see war events unfold, which I promise are never boring, but described in such an interesting and enthralling way that I also passionate about those moments ( you can believe me, battles usually bore me to death, but not in this book ! )
In the first half of the book we can see the 2 main characters lives, learning to get fond of them, savoring every little moment in which they meet and in which they gradually begin to get to know each other and develop a strong feeling of affection.

Justine is a fascinating young man, not only aesthetically, but also in his winking ways, in his smile, in his raised eyebrow looks, in his ironic and joking jokes with the other officers who are also his good friends and with Abigail, in his sarcastic jokes with despicable people.
Justin is brave and despite being young is used to fend for himself from the age of 16, we don't know his past until 3 quarters of the book, but we sense that he has wounds that are hard to heal.
Justin is brilliant and successful with women, but he is not a profiteering libertine, he is a man of honor, who respects others and honors his promises and for this reason he is respected and well liked by many.

Abigail is only 18 at the beginning of the book, she lives with her family, subjugated by her brother-master, she knows nothing of the world and she is not allowed any joy, not even a small one.

She has a one year younger brother who is also her good friend and accomplice, who will also be involved in the events of the war albeit in a different way from that of a soldier.
Given her background, it is obvious that initially Abigail is an insecure and fearful girl, but still with a great desire to live and to know more about life and Justin will open the doors to a new world for her where she can sing and dance without feeling blasphemous, where having beautiful hair or admiring a dress is not a sin, where there are also kind gestures and not just blows and prayers for forgiveness.
But from the caterpillar a butterfly will be born, with an ever strong character and more aware of what it wants and ready to fight, until the end, to get it.

A great love will blossom from mutual esteem and affection, not without difficulties and anguish ___ WARNING: SPOILER[ and I admit that every now and then I was afraid that there was no happy ending... but even when I realized it was going to end well, I had a beautiful final surprise and I really wasn't expecting it. ]____SPOILER END _____
Despite the difficulties and the tragic nature of the war, the atmosphere of the book is pleasant, as I have already said, there are dialogues in which the humor will make you smile several times.

The characters, even all those around the 2 protagonists, are all so well described, we manage to guess their way of being, we can imagine their faces while they talk from the tone of the dialogues.
The author is really very good both in describing historical part, both in making the reader immerse himself in the story, in the same rooms as those people.
I was able to see everything like in a film, I was able to feel myself inside that film, as if I were living there with all of them.

The slowness with which the love story develops doesn't take away anything beautiful from the book, on the contrary, it makes everything more sensual and when at the end we have a couple of sex scenes, everything is described in an intuitive, but delicate way, not at all a vulgar one.

***
This is one of those times I wish I was good at writing and conveying my feelings, it's a great book, but words just can't put it right.
-----> English is not my native language and that certainly makes my review even worse... Sorry

***
I hope I haven't said too much to take away the pleasure of reading, but it was also right to warn those who prefer more explicit romance novels, where the 2 characters would like to jump on each other from the beginning to the end of the book and where the historical context is only mentioned. Not so here.

Being Italian I don't know English history, I only knew that there was a civil war and a short republic between Charles I and Charles II, however I never found myself confused or lost in these facts, indeed it was nice to learn historical facts for unknown to me and then expand them with some web research.

Every now and then I find a book that I really like, which I'm sure I will reread and which I give 5 stars...
but no one has enraptured me like this one and if my favorites so far have had 5 stars I virtually give this one 10 stars.

It was my first Stella Riley book... I'll probably try others, but not right away, because the magic hardly repeats itself twice. :-)

The only problem is that now, any forthcoming reads won't hold a candle to it.

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BOOK AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH EDITION ONLY

Book review : Secrets on the Cote d'Azur by Neil Richards

Secrets on the Cote d'Azur by Neil Richards
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

A nice cozy mystery for those looking for pure entertainment.

The authors are an American and an Englishman, both are used to writing for cinema and TV and we see it here, in fact, both the plot and the dialogues, and the scenes are typical of brilliant detective comedies, where action, humor and great feeling between 2 partners mix in a well balanced way.

Harry and Kat, spouses very much in love and with a past as spies during the First World War, are traveling on the Train Blue that will take them on a mission-holiday on the French Riviera, the renowned Côte d'Azur.
Once they arrive, Harry's aunt asks them to help an old friend of her who is involved in a nasty and indecorous case of blackmail.

We are in the 30s and of course, as in the best Hollywood couple films of those years, here too we have a husband and wife who are handsome, rich highly intelligent, and smarter than any other villain or operative agent. Of course they are madly in love and practically perfect as a couple.

The compliment of a partner in love and the funny joke (classics of the infallible protagonists) are served with regular cadence without being too many and too few.

So if you have ever seen The Thin Man movies ( starring William Powell and Myrna Loy ) and you were a fan ( and the movies were far better than the books ), you'll be not disappointed by this series ( Mydworth Mysteries).
If you are younger and have never seen the old black and white movies, perhaps you might have seen the '80s TV series " Hart to Hart " where the protagonists are equally 2 handsome, rich and very much in love spouses, naturally smart and intelligent ... this is to give you an idea of the protagonists of this book.

The book is not as long as a novel, but not as short as novellas usually are, therefore it is readable in a short time, but it is more enjoyable than a short story.

The writing is smooth, the atmosphere light and fully describes the sparkling air that reigns in the luxurious vacation spots of the 1930s.

If everything is so perfect, then why have I only gave 3.5 ( necessarily rounded to 4 )?

1)__ Because it's "everything too perfect" and if I liked this as a young girl, now in adulthood this bothers me.
I've probably lost my ability to dream of perfection, which clearly doesn't exist.

2)__ Also the book picks up on the usual clichés and while the first 'obvious suspect' was found to be only half guilty, the second 'obvious suspect' was the real villain behind the blackmail.

---> Recommended for fans of cozy mysteries and for those seeking leisure, light reading with pure entertainment, without strong emotions or important historical references.

( Warning : English is not my mother tongue, I hope you have managed to understand the meaning of what I wanted to express, sorry for form or grammatical errors.)

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Book review : The Splendour Falls by Susanna Kearsley

The Splendour Falls
by Susanna Kearsley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book could have been a really beautiful novel but it failed me from the 2nd chapter on and I really don't know how I managed not to abandon it.

--- (WARNING before reading: English is not my native language, so please forgive me any form or/and grammar errors)---

At first glance I was captured by the cover, then reading the plot:
a castle, a story dating back to Queen Isabella and John Lackland (Richard the Lionheart's brother), another tragic story back to World War II, a kidnapping, a contemporary love story and a group of friends investigating...
Wow! It looked like an amazing plot, something really engaging.
So I didn't rest until I found this 1992 book with the old cover (that of the new editions is gloomy and horrible), after a month of searching I finally found it and I was very happy.

The very long prologue tells of characters from a past time, Isabella locked up in the tower at Chinon and her hope of being saved by her husband King John of England.
This suggests that this story will have a huge influence on the plot of the book and that we will discover other things about it ... but it is not so and chapter by chapter other data of other historical episodes and legends are mentioned and the multiple characters all look like this unrelated to each other and no one is really put in the foreground, not even the protagonist!

The problem is that the author had so many ideas in her head that she was unable to find something to focus on and develop in a passionate way, she started at least 10 plots (or almost 10) with too many characters, some of them really insignificant and from one theme she passed to another and then another one and then another one again...
Eventually Kearsley, the author, looks for a way to tie the characters together, but it all feels like a stretch and there's no passion in the characters, they're flat.
Too bad, because if she had eliminated at least 4 characters (even better 5) and had developed the others in a better way, making them more vivid and profound, the book could have given strong emotions.

Until half way through the book nothing important happens and even later, some characters on which the author had focused at the beginning, are all ignored...it's as if while writing the book, the writer had changed her mind a thousand times about what she wanted to write and therefore continuously changed the path of the plot.
I wonder how an editor could have published a book that looks like a closet full of objects that belong to the same person but have nothing to do with the other objects.

---> I would not recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a mystery, nor to anyone who is looking for a romantic story, no romance at all, except few lines in the end.
Dialogues were flat ( especially in the first half of the book where we only read silly chatter, they were better in the second half of the book ).

As for the characters...I can't even give a definition, they were not well developed, some only hinted at (yet one of them is the one she falls in love with) others really stupid (the cousin she is looking for, who is also totally absent in the whole book except the first chapter and at the end) and insignificant and could be omitted).

The only two interesting characters:
---SPOILER ---[one is killed and the other turns out to be the killer. ] ---SPOILER END ---

The protagonist is practically dominated by the situations and chatter of others...an apathetic young woman.
I'm sure the author wanted to describe her as a very sensitive person with internal suffering...but what emerges is only the picture of an uninteresting woman.

----> I would nor recommend it to anyone who loves history and legends, too many notions included in the book and none in depth in a fascinating way.
The setting is very interesting and charming, but the writer is so willing to insert all the historical and descriptive details of the place into the novel that she mentions and tries to describe many, too many things, but actually she fails to make the reader enjoy any of them.
Maybe the writer should have written a travel guide on Chinon, then she could have told all the attractions of the place without making it into a disjointed cauldron.

---> But I really would like another author to rewrite this book, with the author's basic idea, but developing it more emotionally and making the characters more interesting and making them interact in a more sensible and homogeneous way !

The only thing that transpires from the book is how the writer liked this place... perhaps she should have written a tourist guide on this place, or a saga made up of several novels so that in each novel she could develop a theme and a mystery.

I'm sorry to have to give 2.5 stars rounded to 3 (only because I gave 3 stars to worse books and all in all there was potential here) but the writer did a really bad job, she had a nice starting idea for a novel, but then she wanted to put a little bit of everything in it and the novel turned into a tasteless soup!
The ending was meant to be sensational, but that too was really ill-conceived.


-- Book not available in Italian language --

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Giveaway : Free Printable August 2023 Calendar

A freebie for you : August 2023 calendar to download and print

Hello everybody ! :-D

As for last month I have prepared my planning to print for next month: August.

@TizianaFragnerGraphic
August 2023 Calendar
Size 1634 x 1264

I usually print them on sheets of paper to keep on my desk to mark my most important commitments or dates to remember and sometimes I like to print them on cardboard in a smaller format, to use as a postcard-bookmark.

If you like it, you can freely download it and print it in color. Just click on the image to get the bigger one and then download it.

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Book review : The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin

The Winter Queen
Book 1 Erast Fandorin mystery series
by Boris Akunin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I liked it very much !

I chose this book for its setting.
Most of the mysteries I read are set in England or America, the old Europe of the ancient empires exerts a disruptive fascination on me and when I manage to find a mystery that brings me back to that suggestive atmosphere, I can't resist.

___ THE PLOT___ Moscow, 1876: in a crowded park, a young man shoots himself in front of the eyes of a girl, a stranger to him, to whom he had just asked for a kiss.
An inexplicable suicide that leads to other equally inexplicable deaths.
Is there perhaps an international intrigue hatched outside of mother Russia behind those absurd gestures?
Investigating the case is Erast Fandorin, a novice investigator, but full of enthusiasm and keen intelligence.
Although he is only a rookie, from the beginning he decides to investigate further on his own and the clues will lead him to a series of daring adventures through a journey to the capitals of Europe up to England and then back to St. Petersburg.
The truth that will emerge will be shocking and full of always unpredictable events and characters.

The mystery is well thought out and both the protagonist and the characters that revolve around him are captivating, described so well in their ways that I could imagine the scenes as in a movie.

I didn't expect a "cozy mystery" from a Russian author, I approached this reading thinking about a dramatic crime, instead the whole plot and the dialogues are expertly enriched with irony and lightness, without ever being out of place.
The reading was really smooth, I read the book in its English edition and at each chapter I reread it in its Italian edition, to better understand if the feelings given to me by the 2 translations were different or the same (the original book is in Russian and sometimes the translations change the perception of the reader).

Despite the tangled mystery, some villains ( yep ! "some" not "all" ) are known from the beginning, however, each chapter reserves the reader an unexpected surprise and the action and twists follow one another without respite keeping the reader's curiosity alive.

Maybe I was expecting something more in the setting, I would have liked more descriptions of Russian scenarios in the tsarist period, descriptions of the city, palaces and ballrooms, snow and horse-drawn carriages and bells... all that part that makes you dream.
This actually didn't exist and it's for this reason that I don't recommend the book to that part of the female audience that instead seeks dances, palaces and passionate loves.
There is no background romance as is often found in cozy mysteries written by women.
I liked it a lot anyway, because adventure and fast pace are that extra something I look for in an investigative story.

There's only point I hated in the book : ___WARNING SPOILER[the twists really follow one another up to the last page and I would have much preferred that the author would spare me the last unexpected event ...
the book could have ended really well and given the lightness of the mystery, it was what I expected. The author instead preferred to play a dirty trick on both the protagonist and the reader and this disturbed me a lot! ]_SPOILER END__

As I always write in my reviews: please be understanding of my bad English, it's not my native language.

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** ------------- **
____________ LIBRO DISPONIBILE ANCHE IN ITALIANO !

Titolo: LA REGINA D'INVERNO. recensione in italiano:

La regina d'inverno
I misteri di Erast Fandorin Libro 1
di Boris Akunin

Mi è piaciuto davvero molto !

Ho scelto questo libro per la sua ambientazione.
La maggior parte dei mystery che leggo sono ambientati in Inghilterra o in America, la vecchia Europa degli antichi imperi esercita su di me un fascino dirompente e quando riesco a trovare un mystery che mi riporta a quell'atmosfera così suggestiva, non posso resistere.

___ LA TRAMA ___ Mosca, 1876: in un parco affollato, un giovane si spara davanti agli occhi di una ragazza, a lui estranea, alla quale poco prima aveva chiesto un bacio.
Un suicidio inspiegabile che porta ad altre morti altrettanto inspiegabili.
Dietro quei gesti tanto assurdi si nasconde forse un intrigo internazionale, ordito al di fuori della madre Russia?
A indagare sul caso è Erast Fandorin, un investigatore alle prime armi, ma pieno di entusiasmo e acuta intelligenza.
Sebbene sia solo un novellino, sin dall'inizio decide di investigare più a fondo da solo e gli indizi lo porteranno ad una serie di avventure rocambolesche attraverso un viaggio nelle capitali d'Europa fino in Inghilterra e poi nuovamente a San Pietroburgo.
La verità che soprirà sarà sconvolgente e ricca di avvenimenti e personaggi sempre imprevedibili.

Il mistero è ben congeniato e sia il protagonista che i personaggi che si avvicendano attorno a lui sono accattivanti, descritti così bene nei loro modi di essere ceh riuscivo ad immaginare le scene come in un film.
Non mi sarei aspettata un "cozy mystery" da un autore russo, mi sono approcciata a questa lettura pensando ad in crime drammatico, invece tutta la trama e i dialoghi sono sapientemente arricchiti di ironia e leggerezza, senza mai risultare fuori luogo.
La lettura è stata davvero scorrevole, ho letto il libro nella sua edizione inglese e ad ogni capitolo lo rileggevo in italiano, per capire se le sensazioni date dalle 2 traduzioni erano diverse o le stesse ( il libro originale è in russo e talvolta le traduzioni cambiano la percezione del lettore ).
Mi sono piaciute entrambe le traduzioni, anche se ho trovato quella italiano con un linguaggio più obsoleto, ma forse è dovuto al fatto che è una vecchia edizione, mentre di quella inglese ne avevo una più recente.

Nonostante il mistero intricato, alcuni cattivi li conosciamo già dall'inizio, tuttavia, ogni capitolo riserva al lettore una sorpresa inaspettata e l'azione e i colpi di scena si susseguono senza tregua tenendo viva la curiosità di chi legge.

Forse mi aspettavo qualcosa di più nell'ambientazione, avrei voluto maggiori descrizioni degli scenari russi nel periodo zarista, descrizioni della città, palazzi e sale da balli, neve e carrozze trainate da cavalli e campanellini... tutta quella parte che fa sognare.
Questo a dire il vero non c'è stato ed è per questo motivo che non consiglio il libro a quella parte di pubblico femminile che invece cerca balli , palazzi e amori appassionati.
Non esiste una storia d'amore di sottofondo come spesso si trova nei cozy mystery scritti da donne.

A me è piaciuto molto ugualmente, perchè avventura e ritmo veloce son quel quid in più che io cerco in una storia investigativa.

Unico punto che ho detestato nel libro ___ ATTENZIONE SPOILER
i colpi di scena si susseguono davvero fino all'ultima pagina e avrei tanto preferito che l'autore mi risparmiasse l'ultimo evento inatteso ...
il libro avrebbe potuto terminare davvero bene e data la leggerezza del mystery, era ciò che mi aspettavo. L'autore invece ha preferito giocare un tiro mancino sia al protagonista che al lettore e questo mi ha disturbato tantissimo !
FINE SPOILER

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