My Year in Books 2023: July

Time for my July post about what I've been reading for fun recently. It's been a busy old time, but there are still four books on this month's list, so that's not too bad!

In case you're curious, here are my posts from the rest of the year so far: January, February, March, April, May, June

And here are the books I read in July...

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett (2022)

I’ve been saving this one for a treat, as I read Hallett’s novel The Appeal last year and absolutely loved it. I deliberately didn’t read anything about The Twyford Code beforehand, as a lot of the fun of The Appeal was going into it without any expectations, and I was hoping that would be the case with Hallett’s next novel. Like The Appeal, The Twyford Code uses an unconventional but very engaging storytelling technique. Here, the narration is presented to the reader as a series of transcripts of audio recordings made by a man named Steven Smith who has recently been released from prison. Steven recalls an incident – a mystery, really – that happened when he was at school, and his recordings narrate his determined quest to solve the puzzle. The mystery revolves around the eponymous code – a puzzle allegedly buried in the books of children’s author Edith Twyford. While Twyford’s work has fallen out of favour for its outdated views and style (and the comparison with Enid Blyton isn’t subtle), some people believe that her books contain coded messages that, if deciphered, will lead to… well… that depends on who you’re listening to. Steven has realized that what happened in his childhood has a connection to the Twyford Code, and so his audio recordings describe his attempt to solve the puzzle. I’m being very circumspect, because there’s a lot more going on here than you might think. And it’s wonderful, so I don’t want to spoil it in any way!

Bournville by Jonathan Coe (2022)

The blurb for Bournville intrigued me, as it promised a sweeping look at Britain in the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, but through the prism of a single family in a single location. The setting is the model village of Bournville, which sits on the edge of Birmingham and was created by the Cadbury family to house workers at their chocolate factory. Because I didn’t know much about the book before I started reading it, I wasn’t quite prepared for the format the story takes – though I very much enjoyed the format! The story follows the family of Mary, who we first meet in a prologue set in 2020, as a grandmother who communicates with her family via Skype at the outbreak of the COVID lockdown. We then go back to 1945 to see Mary as a child at VE day, before dipping in and out of Mary’s life over the ensuing decades, dropping in on her family at key moments (e.g. the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, the 1966 World Cup). Mary isn’t the protagonist as such, as we see very little from her perspective. Instead, we see snippets of the lives of her nearest and dearest, and the effects of social change (both big and small) on them. What I loved about the book is the ordinariness of the lives depicted. There are no huge twists here, but rather a poignant presentation of the beauty and significance in even the ‘smallest’ of lives.

The Brighton Mermaid by Dorothy Koomson (2018)

This is the first book by Dorothy Koomson that I’ve read, but it won’t be the last. I loved the way this book was written, and the narrative style was absolutely to my taste. However, it was the premise that grabbed me in the first instance, as I have a real soft spot for cold case stories. The cold case in The Brighton Mermaid dates to 1993, when two friends, Nell and Jude, discover the body of a young woman on Brighton beach. There are chapters set in the 1990s, which cover the immediate aftermath of the discovery, but also the disappearance of Jude shortly afterwards. We then switch to the present day (sort of) to see Nell as she approaches the twenty-fifth anniversary of the two incidents, obsessed with finally solving the two mysteries. I say ‘sort of’, because there are also some chapters set at other points in the intervening years, so you do need to pay attention to the date at the beginning of the chapter to follow the sequence of events. I’ll admit that there were elements of the solution that stretched credulity, but that really doesn’t matter here, as this is such a well-written book with such a compelling central character (and some intriguing secondary characters) that I could accept a few larger-than-life villains who are quite easy to spot. The narration of The Brighton Mermaid is fragmented by design, but there’s still a real sense of pace and momentum to the storytelling. Highly recommended.

The Sanctuary by Emma Haughton (2022)

Next up was another library book. I chose this one because it promised a locked room mystery in an unusual location. The blurb said that the story was about Zoey, a young woman who wakes up after a night of partying in New York to find herself in an unknown location, an isolated white building in the middle of a desert. The building seems to be completely deserted… and then the screaming starts. I have to be honest and say that this was a bit misleading. While all of that does happen, it’s in the first chapter, and by Chapter 2 all of these mysteries have been cleared up. Zoey isn’t in a deserted building, but in a rehab centre (admittedly it is in the middle of the desert). The mystery isn’t really the screaming, but rather it’s the reason why Zoey has ended up at an elite and expensive facility with no memory of the journey. There is a murder part way through the story, but this is just one part of the ‘what the hell is going on?’ storyline, rather than the only focus. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy The Sanctuary, just more that I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t actually a locked room mystery (an isolated location isn’t the same as a locked room). The story’s well-written, and I enjoyed the character of Zoey, who’s deliberately unlikeable but also strangely sympathetic, but it’s more of a thriller than a mystery in the end.