Skip to main content

Miss Blaine's Prefect and the Vampire Menace #LoveBooksTours



I'm pleased to be on the blog tour for this book today. 

Blurb

The intrepid librarian Shona McMonagle, erstwhile Marcia Blaine Academy prefect and an accomplished linguist and martial artist, finds herself in an isolated French mountain village, Sans-Soleil, which has no sunlight because of its topography. It’s reeling from a spate of unexplained deaths, and Shona has once again travelled back in time to help out.
Forging an uneasy alliance with newly widowed Madeleine, Shona is soon drawn into a full-blown vampire hunt, involving several notable villagers, the world-renowned soprano Mary Garden – and even Count Dracula himself. Will Shona solve the mystery, secure justice for the murder victims and make it through a deathly denouement in the hall of mirrors to return to present-day Morningside Library?

Review

The book begins with Shona McMonagle finding herself in the past not knowing when or where in the world she is, but finds a note saying "Remember you must die"........ after stepping out of a coffin. So begins the mystery!

Shona is definitely her own woman and it was nice to have a heroine who was in the 50+ age bracket for a change. Goodness what a fabulous school Marcia Blaine Academy must be as Shona can turn her hand to anything and knows no fear. When I began the book I was wondering if she was going to be more of a Johnny English character. But I was wrong, as she can take on an assassin not only with bare hands but also with her acerbic tongue. Fearing she had been cast to the past by Miss Blaine with no safety net, I was reassured when Shona tried to spend to freely and her purse became firmly shut! Miss Blaine it would appear did have her back.

Keen to establish she is Scottish and not English, her witticisms were unparalleled in my reading experience. She also has a ready knowledge of history which was an education in itself. Not to mention the clarification provided around vampires.

Having read Jasper Fford I can see why the author has been compared to him, she has the same quirky, other world presence in the book. This is the second book in the series - however, I had not read the first one and the book can be read as a standalone.

If you are looking for an escapist read which has been written with intellect and wit, then this is the book for you. I miss Shona already and look forward to meeting with her again.

I'm giving this fabulous book 5 out of 5 stars. My thanks to Love Book Tours for the invite to the blog tour.

Author

Olga Wojtas is an unconventional – and very witty – writer of postmodern crime fiction whose surrealist humour has been compared to the likes of PG Wodehouse, Jasper Fforde and the Marx Brothers. Her debut novel, Miss Blaine’s Prefect and the Golden Samovar, has been published in the UK and US to great critical acclaim – being longlisted for the inaugural Comedy Women in Print Prize 2019, shortlisted for a CrimeFest Award, and named as one of the best mysteries and thrillers of the year by Kirkus.
A journalist for more than 30 years, Olga was Scottish editor of the Times Higher Education Supplement before she began adding creative writing to her portfolio. She won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award in 2015 and has had numerous short stories and several novellas published. Olga lives in Edinburgh, where she once attended James Gillespie’s High School – the model for Marcia Blaine School for Girls, which appears in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, the novel that inspired the Miss Blaine’s Prefect series.
Buy Link 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Those leaving a comment on any post on this blog do so in the knowledge that their name and blog link are visible to all who visit this blog and by providing their comment they have published their own personal details on this blog and also consented to our use of that personal information for that specific purpose.

Popular posts from this blog

The C Word - An anthology of murder, mystery, death & destruction

  Great to be on the book tour today for this book today especially as 100% of all royalties from The C Word will be donated to NHS Together Charities. Description So, what do writers do during Lockdown? They create murder, mystery, death and destruction of course! The C Word is a collection of short stories collated during the COVID-19 pandemic to raise money for NHS Charities Together. A plethora of wonderful stories created by a wide variety of writers, each with their own unique style. Some you will know already and some we’ve yet to introduce you to. However, we’re sure you’ll want to hear from each and every one of them again as we leave 2020 behind us. With contributions from Steve Mosby, Sophie Hannah, Elly Griffiths, Sarah Hilary, Rob Scragg, Trevor Wood and many more. Review A great collection of short stories and certainly written for our times. Some of these stories were a little too dark for my usual reading tastes, but as they were short I stuck with them. There could...
1 comment
Read more

The Ghost Cat - Alex Howard

  Description Early morning, 1902. In a gloomy Edinburgh tenement, Eilidh the charlady tips coal into a fire grate and sets it alight. Overhearing, a cat ambles over to curl up against the welcome heat. This is to be the cat's last day on earth. But he is going to return... as The Ghost Cat, a spirit-feline destined to live out his ghostly existence according to the medieval proverb of "The Cat with Nine Lives" - For Three He Plays, For Three He Strays, For Three He Stays. Follow The Ghost Cat as he witnesses the changes of the next two centuries as he purrs, shuffles and sniffs his way through the fashion, politics and technological advances of the modern era alongside the ever-changing inhabitants of an Edinburgh tenement. As we follow our new spirit-feline friend, this unique story unearths some startling revelations about the mystery of existence and the human condition and provides a feel-good read full of charm for any fan of history, humour and fur-ridden fun. Revi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

Description THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. YOU DON'T KNOW HER. BUT SHE KNOWS YOU. Rear Window  meets  Gone Girl , in this exceptional and startling psychological thriller Review I must be one of the last people to read this book. I did apply for a review copy but unfortunately wasn't successful. I then waited for the book to come down in price which it didn't - so I decided I would buy it and read it straight away! I'm sure it will be a film and before anyone gives away what happens I felt I really needed to get it read, so it jumped the TBR queue. There is not much plot outline from the publisher as you can see in the description above, so there wasn't a lot to go on when I began to read the book. First of all the book jumps around date wise - past and present and also between the main characters. I did have a little trouble remembering who was who and which time frame we were in - but that soon settled down. I also had to re-read the beginning because I th...
3 comments
Read more