This has been an exceptionally good year of reading for me… book after book is being read and I am finally learning the art of letting go of the terrible, getting through the ordinary and embracing the very best ones. This book stack is one of the many book stacks I have been reading through, it is astonishing how much you can get through, just reading a chapter here and there.
My Book of the Year
I know we are only half way through the year but this was my favourite book in ages and immediately became my book of the year. So much so, that I read it and then got the audible so that I could listen with my husband as well.
The List of Suspicious Things
This was a brilliant and nostalgic read, I felt like I was in my final year of primary school all over again. This is the story of eleven year old Miv and her best friend Sharon. It is set in the eighties, Margaret Thatcher had just come into power and the Yorkshire Ripper was at large. Miv’s mother stopped speaking two years previously and her Aunty Jean had come to stay, to look after Miv and her father. There were hushed conversations about moving away. So Miv and Sharon decided to find the murderer and make the streets of Yorkshire safe again, then they won’t have to move and their friendship can continue as it is, forever.
Of course in the world of teens and tweens, this coming of age story demonstrates very clearly that friendships change and life is expected to go on. Miv and Sharon were terribly naive and got into all sorts of very real danger. There was bullying on a grand scale, there were, considering the backdrop to the tale, a fair amount of triggering situations and yet Miv soldiered on. I love her, a strong and feisty tween, with her handy notebook that she was filling with her observations. Miv noticed more than the adults around her suspected, and yet in her naivety, she just couldn’t understand it all. Honestly, kudos to the author, Jennie Godfrey that captured the heart and mind of a child so well. I loved this book, I loved the accents in the audible, and I loved the stand out superb characters in this book. There is love, there is loss, there is joy and there is heartbreak, there is crime and a mystery to solve. This book is everything. And more than that, I never really wanted the story to end, I want to know that at least for Miv and Sharon, everything turned out just fine.
A Little Armchair Travel
Island in the Sun
You can never go wrong wih a Katie Fforde, she is one of my favourite authors. The Island in the Sun, was everything that I hoped for, and easy reading all the way. That being said this is not your typical cosy Katie Fforde. The heroine in this book is a gal, Cass, who is off on a trip to Dominica, to find an ancient ruin and take photographs for her architect father, who is no longer able to travel. A friend of her father’s travels with her, Ranulph, who is looking for ancient artefacts. When they arrive they discover that the island has been hit by a hurricane and their initial plans have to be put aside to care for locals in distress. Cass is a slightly flaky character to start with, but she rises to the occasion and the state of emergency, and develops a backbone. There is of course a sweet romance, as you would expect from Katie Fforde and everyone always lives happily ever after.
Family Shenanigans
My Favourite Mistake and the entire series.
Alrighty, I received Again, Rachel to review a while back, the story of Rachel Walsh and I went back and read Rachel’s Holiday the preceding book. And then, I received My Favourite Mistake, about Anna Walsh, and I loved it… and then I discovered there is a whole series of Walsh sisters and books to read and I have been missing out for years… so this is the winter that I am listening to the entire series on Audible… from Watermelon all the way to My Favourite Mistake, and I am loving them.
- Book 1: Watermelon
- Book 2: Rachel’s Holiday
- Book 3: Angels
- Book 4: Anybody Out There?
- Book 5: The Mystery of Mercy Close
- Book 5.5: Mammy Walsh’s A-Z of the Walsh Family
- Book 6: Again Rachel
- Book 7: My Favourite Mistake
I love the Irish narrator, I love the big family of crazy grown up parents, I love the consistency of their personalities from book to book. Honestly, these characters have become part of my personal family right now and I am enjoying their company. All the books can be read independently, but for completeness, and you love a little family drama in the midst of mad and crazy life and a saga that goes on over several years and several characters then you will love these.
In My Favourite Mistake, Anna has to leave her high flying life in New York, the love of her life and her time in a New York apartment, during Covid and Lockdown, turned out to not be quite as magical as she had anticipated and trip home to Ireland and a resignation from her high flying career and the dream job of all her sisters, means that it is time for reflection and time for her to find her feat again. She does, of course, it’s lovely and may the Walsh families shenanigans continue from book strength to book strength.
A Little Crime
The Hunter
This is the second book in the Cal Hooper series… very pleasant weekend reading. In the first book, The Searcher, Cal Hooper, a Chicago detective, has moved to a small town in Ireland to settle down and recover from a gritty life in the trenches. Turns out rural Ireland isn’t quite as relaxed as he intended it to be… and he finds himself contending with local crime as well as local politics… in Book two, The Hunter, the local town carries on as usual with the characters up to their old shenanigans. Local teenager, Trey, has landed with her feet on the ground, and has started a small carpentry business with Cal, but things start to go awry, when her father arrives in town with a “gold digger” from the city. A “Gold Digger” in every sense of the word… there is very definitely criminal intent involved and while the whole town goes about securing their future fortune… It is up to Cal to protect the townsfolk, and especially Trey’s family. This is a very slow burn, but if you love a wander around the Irish countryside and crime that unfolds under your eyes… then this is a great read. I flew through the audible, and thoroughly enjoyed it… looking forwards to the next Cal Hooper.
A Lot of Crime
Still See You Everywhere
The third Frankie Elkin novel, and I have enjoyed them all… Frankie Elkin searches, and finds, missing persons. In her first book, Before She Disappeared, she went looking for a missing teen on the streets of Boston. Book 2, One Step Too Far, she heads out on a hike to find a missing fiancé. In this book, Still See You Everywhere, Frankie is off to a remote Pacific Island to find the little sister, who by now is fairly grown up, of a serial killer on death row.
So Frankie Elkin is always a little out of her depth, she doesn’t have a fixed address, her relationships are somewhat floundering and she is a recovering alcoholic. She is a perfectly compromised hero. She is feisty… feisty and fallible, she makes mistakes but has a great heart, she is very brave but also scared of spiders… needless to say when a serial killer makes contact and says, find my baby sister… she jumps at the chance. Let’s just say two horrifically abused little girls have grown up to be severely disturbed young adults… and the older sister, the serial killer, might not be the most terrifying of the sisters. There is a lot to be believed in this one… but typical Lisa Gardner twists and turns… crime thriller and it does get somewhat gory in places.
A Poetic Novel
The Pole
This is an arty read, a serious love story in a somewhat serious setting. We have Wittold Walccyzkiecz, a polish musician with exceptional talent, all the freedom that comes with age, and not the best social skills. And then, Beatriz, a patron of the arts in Majorca, who is married to a banker, has charitable obligations and is fairly unsatisfied with all that her somewhat privileged life has to offer her. That being said, when Beatriz is first approached by Wittold she does not act on his outpouring of love, but just sees it as the infatuation of a man thirty years older than her, looking for his last romance. But she starts to think about Wittold more and more until he consumes her thoughts… this is a story of somewhat unrequited love… It was an enjoyable read and the characters, Wittold and Beatriz, stayed with me long after I had finished the book. If you are looking for an arty book and not necessarily a happy ending, then this is the perfect read.
The Bill Gates Problem
This is an excellent read, and I just couldn’t finish it. I found it disturbing on every level… it is a deep dive journalistic investigation in to the back story of Bill Gates, who under the banner of philanthropy, has gained enormous political power and used his billions of dollars, imposing ideas, self-serving “solutions,” and his leadership skills on the world at large. With a clever media team and political clout, he has carefully hidden himself and his company from public scrutiny. For one who allegedly saves lives and changes protocols for the greater good, you don’t have to dig too deep to discover the evidence for his accolades are fairly flimsy, the numbers on the ground simply do not add up. While this book needs to be read with an open mind, one cannot step away from it without realising that it is a very strong wake-up call to the world at large: “Money can in fact buy everything, power and influence and clout.” Let this book be a warning to all of us, to read between the lines, and seek the truth. If ever a book were to point out how much of life is “marketing,” if not downright lying, about life at a grass roots level, and to take responsibility for discovering the truth behind the snippets of news that we glean, this is it.
These books were all given to us for review purposes by Penguin Random House South Africa. This is not a sponsored post and opinions expressed are entirely my own.