January Buddy Reads! #BuddyReads #Tbr

Good morning everyone and happy weekend! I love a good buddy read. Not only do they make me read books I might not otherwise pick up but they also give me the opportunity to discuss the book with some lovely bookish friends which I always enjoy.

This month I have two buddy reads a classic book, The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy, which I must admit I hadn’t heard of before, and a historical fiction book The Rose Code by Alice Quinn. I think I started The Rose Code before but didn’t finish it so I’m excited to read it this month.

Are you doing any buddy reads this month?

The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy

THE DUD AVOCADO gained instant cult status on first publication and remains a timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living. It is, as the GUARDIAN observes, ‘one of the best novels about growing up fast’.

Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It’s the 1950s, she’s young, and she’s in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he’s single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted “citizens of the world”; an entanglement with a charming psychopath; and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn’t come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence?

The Rose Code by Alice Quinn

1940, Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire.
 
Three very different women are recruited to the mysterious Bletchley Park, where the best minds in Britain train to break German military codes.
 
Vivacious debutante Osla has the dashing Prince Philip of Greece sending her roses – but she burns to prove herself as more than a society girl, working to translate decoded enemy secrets. Self-made Mab masters the legendary codebreaking machines as she conceals old wounds and the poverty of her East-End London upbringing. And shy local girl Beth is the outsider who trains as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts.
 
1947, London.
 
Seven years after they first meet, on the eve of the royal wedding between Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, disaster threatens. Osla, Mab and Beth are estranged, their friendship torn apart by secrets and betrayal. Yet now they must race against the clock to crack one final code together, before it’s too late, for them and for their country.