My Year in Books 2024: May

I had quite a bit of my own writing to do this month, so I didn't read much for pleasure until towards the end of the month. I actually started the first book on this list at the beginning of May, but it took me a few weeks to read all of it, as I just couldn't find the time. In the final week of May, something very weird happened that meant I very quickly read three novels back-to-back, but more on that below!

In case you're interested, here are my reviews from the rest of the year so far: January, February, March, April

Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz (2024)

I started this month with the latest in a series that I’ve really enjoyed so far. Close to Death is the latest instalment in the Hawthorne and Horowitz series. The overall premise of the series is that the character ‘Anthony Horowitz’ has been tasked by his publisher to write books based on his escapades with former police officer Hawthorne. Together, they solve fiendishly complicated murders, with Horowitz playing Watson to Hawthorne’s Holmes. I’ve loved the meta-fictional fun of these books, with references to the ‘real’ author’s career scattered throughout. Close to Death is a little different to the other books in the series. In this one, rather than investigating a crime that has happened in the ‘present’, Horowitz decides to take another look at an old case on which Hawthorne advised the police. The murder is – supposedly – solved, with the culprit already identified. Horowitz’s task is to go through the case files and write it up as a narrative, but Hawthorne only gives him a little information at a time. I liked the set-up for the crime – it takes place in a small gated estate, with a cast of quirky characters. However, I’m not sure the formula works that well. The conceit (that Horowitz has to work things out as he goes along) doesn’t quite make sense, and the investigation keeps getting side-tracked by his determination to uncover the increasingly implausible secrets of Hawthorne’s identity. I enjoyed it, but it’s not as strong as the previous books in the series.

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa (2018)

Right… time for something a little unexpected. I stumbled upon a series of books by accident while I was looking up something else online. I’ve got a bit of a thing for representations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in popular culture, and I was searching for a horror book that I vaguely remember having some cool horsemen in it. Instead, I stumbled on Thalassa’s series… of erotic dark romance novels. I can’t pretend I wasn’t intrigued… erotic Horsemen of the Apocalypse? This I have to see. (And disclaimer: I do not generally read either erotica or romance.) The first in the series was available to read for free on Amazon Prime, so I thought I’d read it for a bit of a laugh. I’m sure you can imagine what happened next. I genuinely couldn’t put Pestilence down. The apocalypse in it is horrible – the premise is that the horsemen arrived on earth a number of years earlier, laid waste to human technology, and then disappeared. Now, the first rider has returned, bringing with him a devastating plague to complete the destruction of humanity. A hardy band of survivors draw lots to see which of them is going to attempt to kill the horseman and save mankind, and young firefighter Sara draws the short straw. But the horseman can’t be killed, and in his anger at being attacked, he takes Sara prisoner. Things… erm… develop from there. It’s brutal, violent, funny, sexy and utterly weird. And I’m inexplicably hooked.

War by Laura Thalassa (2019)

So, obviously, the next book I read was War. Of course it was. I bought it the second I finished Pestilence. The premise is kind of similar to the first book. After Pestilence relinquished his role in the apocalypse, his brother War awoke and returned to earth. If anything, War’s attack on humanity is even more horrific than Pestilence’s, not least because this book is set in Palestine and Israel, giving it a truly unsettling quality (and the book doesn’t shy away from reminding us that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse may not be any worse than humanity itself). However, War is a different type of romance character. Where Pestilence was an otherworldly being who became fascinated by the human experiences being with Sara offered (he is a virgin when they meet, though obviously not by the end of the book), War is more the swaggering, sexually dominant alpha male type. When he meets Miriam (the female lead), he announces that she is his wife, and we have something almost along the lines of forced-to-marry-the-billionaire erotica, except with the added horrors of warfare in all its pitiless cruelty. And zombies. This one has a lot of zombies. The romance here was less to my taste, partly because of the ‘you’re my wife now’ plot and partly because of a pregnancy storyline that took things in a different direction. It turns out, if I’m reading about horny horsemen, I want it to stay horny and not get all domestic. Who knew?

Famine by Laura Thalassa (2020)

I’d seen a couple of reviews – and there are suggestions in the first two books along these lines as well – that said Famine is the least human of the four horsemen. Reviews referred to him as ‘a psycho’ and ‘sadistic’, the only one of the horsemen who is torturing humans for his own personal agenda, rather than a straightforward divine plan. I was fairly certain this one would end my love affair with this series, as that doesn’t sound romantic or erotic to me. Well, here comes another plot twist… I just couldn’t get enough of Famine. The third horseman has returned after the previous two have left the scene to be all cosy with their new families, but the book doesn’t begin with his return. Instead, we’re several years into Famine’s destruction of the world. And his destruction is certainly crueller and more sadistic than anything that has come before. He seems to really be enjoying himself. Step forward Ana, a young prostitute who, it turns out, has met Famine before. The reveal of Ana’s previous encounter with the horseman, and the explanation for Famine’s particular brand of sadism, is beautiful, heartbreaking and devastatingly human. Their relationship is funnier and sweeter than in the other two books, and it manages to be both a slower burn and way hotter than in the previous two books. Turns out, when it comes to agents of divine destruction, I’m a sucker for a broken pretty boy with a thing for supernatural plants.

My Year in Books 2023: August

I didn't get a huge amount of time for reading in the first couple of weeks of the month, but I had a few days booked off for my birthday and I planned to spend most of that time reading (partly because I was a bit poorly on my birthday so couldn't be bothered going anywhere). In the end, I read three novels this month. It's a bit weird, as I read two of them over the course of a day and a half, and then the other one much later in the month. So, in a way, it doesn't feel like I read very much at all!

If you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year so far... January, February, March, April, May, June, July

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz (2023)

You may have noticed from previous posts that I’m quite a fan of Anthony Horowitz’s mystery novels. I bought the fourth Hawthorne and Horowitz novel just before Christmas, but, as is my habit, I’ve been saving it for a treat. I decided to read it on my birthday, which means this is a borderline tradition, as I read Moonflower Murders (the book that cemented my love of Horowitz’s mystery novels) on my birthday a couple of years ago. If you’ve read Moonflower Murders, you’ll know that there’s a very special reason why someone born in August would enjoy reading it on their birthday. The Twist of a Knife doesn’t have that particular connection, but it does have a Christie-esque theatre-based mystery featuring the fictional character Anthony Horowitz. This time, Tony is preparing for the opening night of his play Mindgame, determined that he is not writing any more books about former detective Hawthorne – and he’s certainly not getting embroiled in solving any more mysteries with him. But, for all his determination, there is (of course!) a murder on the opening night. Theatre critic Harriet Thorsby is stabbed shortly after publishing a scathing review of Mindgame, and the police arrest Tony for the murder. And there’s only one man he knows who can clear his name… I enjoyed The Twist of a Knife greatly, though I’m not sure it’s the most intricate mystery in the series. It’s still a very fun read though, and apparently there will be more to come!

Girls of Little Hope by Dale Halvorsen and Sam Beckbessinger (2023)

The next book I read this month was one of the novels in my most recent Abominable Books subscription box. The cover was pretty cool, and the blurb looked like it might be up my street, so I thought I’d give this one a go next. The book is set in 1996, in a small California town called Little Hope. Three best friends, Donna, Kat and Rae, decide to kill some time by investigating some of the weird stories about their town (rumours of a lost mine, and a decade-old tragedy). They go out into the woods and find a strange cave… but only Donna and Rae return alive, and neither of them have any real memory of what happened. Kat’s mother, Marybeth, is frantic to find out what happened to her daughter, and there are extracts from Kat’s diary to help the reader understand more about life in Little Hope. HOWEVER… this is a horror novel, not a mystery novel, and so while the set-up might make us think it’s going to go in one direction, it’s a bait-and-switch. That is not the direction we’re going to travel at all. It’s probably best that I stop there, as anything else would be a spoiler. Suffice to say, you need to expect the unexpected with this one, and try to remember the genre you’re reading! I enjoyed this one – the writing is engaging and immersive, and the story is intriguing. It’s got a surprisingly charming ending too, which was unexpected!

The Murder Box by Olivia Kiernan (2021)

I got The Murder Box out of the library recently. Although it’s a police procedural, rather than a whodunnit, the blurb looked like it might be up my street. Detective Chief Superintendent Frankie Sheehan is sent a murder mystery game as, she believes, a birthday present. When she looks at the game properly though, she realizes its victim bears a creepy resemblance to a real missing person, a young woman called Lydia Callin who has just been reported missing by her flatmate. Frankie and her team investigate, and they’re drawn into the world of the ‘murder mystery game’ players. The team are also investigating a missing celebrity, Teddy Dolan, who disappeared a couple of months earlier. It’s clear early on that these cases are connected. There’s a lot to like about the premise of this one, but if I’m honest the execution didn’t quite live up to the promise. Ultimately, this is a fairly standard police procedural, with the ‘Murder Box’ stuff just window-dressing. The connections between the cases are made explicit from the start, and the focus shifts to the methods of investigation from then on (as you might expect from a police procedural). That said, there’s still a bit of mystery and a few surprises in store, and the good pacing means that it’s not a boring book to read. I don’t want this to seem like an overly negative review, as I knew from the start that it was not written in a genre I particularly enjoy!

My Year in Books 2022: December

It's my final book review post of the year, and - as quite often happens with December - it's a long one. I took a lot of books away on holiday in December, and then I read quite a lot in the week between Christmas and New Year. As you'll see, my December habit of reading either festive books or murder mysteries was strong this year!

In case you're interested, here are my other posts from 2022: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November

Villager by Tom Cox (2022)

I’ve read a bit of publicity for Villager, so I knew it was Cox’s debut novel, his previous writing being non-fiction, memoir and short stories. I was a bit surprised when I started reading it, though, as it felt (at first) more like a collection of short stories, loosely linked by a sense of place. And, in some ways, that’s what Villager is. The place is a fictional Dartmoor village called Underhill. Each chapter is a snapshot of Underhill at a particular time (each is subtitled with a date, from past to present to future). Alternatively, each chapter is a standalone story about a particular resident of Underhill, told in first-person from multiple perspectives. Nevertheless, this is very much a novel. There’s an overarching story linking the stories together – that of the land itself and the way it is both changing and unchanging over time (and one of the narrators is the land itself) – but there’s also a very human story about the ways in which the lives of the various narrators intersect and coalesce around the life and music of folk musician R.J. McKendree. I really enjoyed the quirky way the stories gently and gradually came together, and I also really liked the different storytelling styles used to conjure the world of Underhill, particularly the use of diaries and (at one point) an online messageboard that was so convincing it made me laugh out loud. An idiosyncratic tale that really does justice to the landscape that has inspired it.

Violet by SJI Holliday (2019)

The next book was one I stumbled upon when I was researching content for my radio show, and it looked like it was right up my street. And, on the whole, it was. Violet takes place during a journey of the Trans-Siberian Express. Two women meet up and travel together, but one of them isn’t who she says she is. Intriguing. Holliday’s book begins with Violet finding herself alone in Beijing after falling out with her boyfriend in Thailand. She meets up with another solo traveller, Carrie, who was meant to be on the holiday of a lifetime with her best friend, but her travelling companion broke her leg shortly before they were meant to make the trip. Violet and Carrie agree to travel together, but – as I’ve said – one of them isn’t being honest about who she is. To be brutally honest, it is pretty obvious from the start which one of them isn’t being honest. Violet has strong shades of another book that I’m worried about mentioning for fear of spoilers (though at least one of the blurbs on the cover namechecks it), and once you have that in mind, you can work out exactly what’s going on. Nevertheless, the book makes up for the rather obvious plotline with some wonderfully evocative descriptions of the journey Carrie and Violet take through Mongolia and into Siberia. I particularly enjoyed the first half of the book, which really focuses on the way the two women’s relationship builds as they travel.

Don't Look Back by Ben Cheetham (2018)

I bought this one ages ago, but I saved it for our pre-Christmas holiday to Cornwall, as it’s set in Lizard (and that’s where we were going). Cheetham’s novel is about Adam Piper, a writer who, at the beginning, is living in London with his wife Ella and their twin sons Jacob and Henry. In the first chapter, a horrific accident kills Jacob and almost kills Henry, leaving Adam grief- and guilt-stricken. The next chapter picks up nine months later, when Ella spots a strange advert in the paper. A woman named Rozen Trehearne is looking for tenants for her house (Fenton House) in Lizard. Prospective tenants are asked to complete a questionnaire and, not only with the successful applicant secure tenancy of Fenton House, but they will also live their rent-free for the rest of their lives. Adam completes the questionnaire and is surprised to be offered an interview with Miss Trehearne. He’s even more surprised when his family is offered the tenancy. Is Miss Trehearne’s offer too good to be true? Well, yes, of course it is (otherwise it would have been a very short book). It’s not long after the Pipers move into Fenton House that strange (and quite unsettling) things start to happen. I have to say, the ultimate explanation stretches incredulity a bit, but (as with Violet) the book makes up for it with its description of location. I particularly liked the depiction of Lizard Village on the day of the Pipers’ interview – very memorable!

Stay Another Day by Juno Dawson (2021)

This next one is a book I talked about on my radio show last Christmas, but I didn’t get chance to read it for fun until this year. Stay Another Day (as the title might hint) is a Christmas book. The McAllister siblings (twins Fern and Rowan, and younger sister Willow) are back together in the family home for Christmas, but secrets under the surface are threatening to spill out all over the turkey. Fern and Rowan have been living away from home for the past year, and they’ve each returned with a new friend/partner and a new sense of their own identity. Willow has been at home, as she’s recovering from an eating disorder, and isn’t looking forward to a big family Christmas. What I enjoyed about this book is that it’s sort of the literary equivalent of a Christmas film – not the sort of thing I’d choose for most of the year, but just right for the festive season. Obviously, I’m reading as someone older than the target audience, but that really didn’t matter. There’s a lot for the forty-something reader to enjoy in Stay Another Day, as the affectionate (but gently critical) portrayal of the newly independent nineteen-year-old twins bursting back into the family home with their ‘adult’ identities will evoke plenty of nostalgia (and cringe) in those of us looking in the rear-view mirror (or is that just me?). Ultimately, the book is both joyous and honest about Christmas, and I really enjoyed it for that.

The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (2019)

I’m reading this series out of order, but that doesn’t seem to matter. I read A Line to Kill, the third in the series, back in May, and I really enjoyed it. This month, I read The Sentence is Death, which is the second in the series. (I still haven’t read the first one, by the way.) Have to say, I have no idea why it’s taken me so long to read this series. I fell in love with this book from the very first page – I think I liked it even more than A Line to Kill. The premise of the series is that ‘Anthony Horowitz’ (the fictionalized version of the author who serves as the series narrator) teams up with a former police officer called Hawthorne to solve puzzling crimes. The series is very meta – in the second book, ‘Anthony Horowitz’ is in the process of writing the first book in the series – and chock-full of references to Horowitz’s actual writing career. This book starts with a just beautiful description of filming of an episode of Foyle’s War that’s a treat for fans of the series (like me!). But, the series is more than just a gimmick. These are really good murder mysteries, with great clues and some wonderful red herrings. In this book, Hawthorne and Horowitz have to solve the baffling murder of a high-profile divorce lawyer. There are some very clever touches here, one of which made me shout out loud when realization hit. Highly recommended!

The Gift by Louise Jensen (2021)

This is one that I picked up on the charity bookshelf at my local supermarket. I’m not sure why I added it to my festive reading pile (as it was quite clear from the blurb that the titular ‘gift’ was definitely not a Christmas present). I think I just knew that I’d want a bit of a change of pace at some point during our holiday. Jensen’s novel is a domestic thriller. The protagonist is Jenna, a young woman who is given a heart transplant. Against all instructions, Jenna makes contact with the family of the donor, who she discovers was a woman called Callie. Jenna comes to believe that Callie’s death – supposedly the result of a car crash – wasn’t an accident at all, and that there’s something suspicious going on behind closed doors in the family, particularly with Callie’s sister Sophie. This was a pretty quick and easy read, but I don’t think it’s one that’ll stick with me. The pacing and style are just right for the genre, but the story itself is pretty overblown and implausible. Character behaviour and motivation is generally hard to swallow, and the overall plot relies on a fairly ‘out there’ theory and a hefty dose of cliché. As a result, it’s quite difficult to really get behind Jenna’s story, or even to really connect with her as a character. It’s not a bad book by any means, and Jensen’s writing really isn’t bad. However, I’m not sure it was really for me.

Murder on the Christmas Express by Alexandra Benedict (2022)

This is a book I talked about on my radio show Christmas Special this year, but I wanted it to read it for fun as well. On the surface, this book looked like it was tailor-made for me. A locked room murder mystery set on a train that gets stuck in a snowstorm at Christmas? Sounds perfect. It also sounds a lot like a mash-up of Murder on the Orient Express and Mystery in White, so I was curious to know how Benedict managed the balance of homage and originality. Unfortunately, the book doesn’t really live up to its promise. The mystery here is the death of an influencer (and then a subsequent murder that I won’t spoiler here), who is a passenger on board a snowbound sleeper train to the Highlands. Fortunately, one of the other passengers is a recently retired police detective, Roz Parker, so at least there’s someone there who can manage the crime scene until help arrives. The problem, for me, was that the mystery is actually quite insipid. There are a few decent clues, but comparisons to Agatha Christie are overstated. The Christmas and train angles are also downplayed, as most of the interactions between passengers take place in the ‘Club Car’, which could just as easily be a bar. Overall, Murder on the Christmas Express focuses on personality, character and motive, rather than means (there’s a handwave of the ‘locked room’ element later on), and so the puzzle itself didn’t really work for me.

Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2016)

Back in August, I read Moonflower Murders, and loved it. I don’t know what it is with me reading Anthony Horowitz’s series out of order, but Moonflower Murders is actually the second book in a series, so I thought I should probably go back and read the first one. As with the Hawthorne and Horowitz books, there isn’t a massive problem with reading the series out of sequence, as the later books don’t have too many spoilers for earlier instalments, though if you’ve read Moonflower Murders then you’ll know what the case is in Magpie Murders. Susan Ryeland is an editor, working on the latest (and last) murder mystery novel by the somewhat difficult author Alan Conway. Susan reads the manuscript, but the final chapter is missing. Before she can get hold of it, the author is found dead. Conway’s death is ruled a suicide, but Susan begins to suspect there’s something fishy going on. As with Moonflower Murders, this is a story-within-a-story; the reader gets to read Conway’s manuscript in full as Susan reads it. Not only are we invited to solve the puzzle of Conway’s death, but we also have the puzzle of his novel to ponder as well. I fell in love with this novel – I think I enjoyed it even more than Moonflower Murders (though it’s a close thing). It’s such a perfect piece of mystery writing, with spot-on clues and a reveal that made me laugh out loud. Highly recommended, particularly for Agatha Christie fans.

Gifts by Laura Barnett (2021)

Time to switch from murder mysteries back to Christmas books. The next book I read was another one I talked about on last year’s radio show, but that I wanted to enjoy properly afterwards. I didn’t get chance to read this one last year, so I saved it for this Christmas instead. Gifts is set the year it was published, 2021, and it is quite direct about its context. The Christmas described is the first Christmas after lockdown, as people were tentatively trying to rediscover normality in the COVID19 pandemic. The book’s conceit is that twelve people are looking to buy the perfect Christmas present for someone in their life. Each chapter is a near-standalone short story, in which the gift-giver reflects on their relationship with the receiver, and the reasons why they are choosing them a gift. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ‘gifts’ of the title aren’t really the main focus. While there are a couple of chapters that dwell a little more on the search for a specific item to be bought (and the shopping that takes place), the stories generally focus on far less materialistic concerns. It’s the relationships between people that matter here – whether it’s a newly divorced father and his teenage daughter, or a carer and her client, or old friends reunited and tentatively considering romance – Gifts offers a series of vignettes that underscore the need to recognize and value those arounds us. As such, it’s pretty much a quintessential Christmas book!

Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith (2020)

Okay, so this wasn’t the plan at all. I bought The Ink Black Heart as soon as it came out (in fact I pre-ordered it), but then never quite got round to reading it. My plan was to read it in the week between Christmas and New Year. But then, feeling tired after an epic Boxing Day walk, I decided to watch the new TV adaptation of Troubled Blood. It was great – I love the Strike TV series – but it really hit me how much they’d had to cut out or streamline to fit the story into the TV format. I expected that, of course. The book’s over 900 pages long, so there was no way the whole thing would fit into the TV format (even with the extra episode this story has). It’s hard to explain, but I really missed the things that had been cut for TV, and before I knew it I’d decided to reread the book again. And I’m glad I did. It’s by far my favourite of the Strike novels – although I’ve thoroughly enjoyed all of them. The cold case storyline means that there’s a different sense of pace to this one, and the clues are expertly done. Even having read it before and watched the adaptation (so the killer was by no means a surprise), it was a joy to reread this one. It’s such a rich and complex murder mystery, and I actually felt sad when I finished it (for the second time!).

The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith (2022)

After I finished my reread of Troubled Blood, I went straight into The Ink Black Heart. I read them both in under a week, so it’s safe to say I couldn’t put either of them down. The Ink Black Heart is even longer than Troubled Blood, but I’m in two minds as to whether it sustains its long length as well as its predecessor. It’s also a very different type of story from the rest of the series. Robin Ellacott is approached by the creator of a popular YouTube/Netflix cartoon, Edie Ledwell, who wants her to investigate the identity of a prolific and abusive internet troll. Robin turns the case down, but shortly afterwards Edie is murdered, and Robin (and Strike) are hired by other interested parties. The main reason this book feels different from the other Strike novels is that the reader is party to certain information that the detectives never see. The story is peppered with transcripts of chatlogs from an internet game, a fandom-produced response to Edie’s cartoon, which was co-created by the notorious troll at the centre of the case. Having a head-start on the detectives feels weird, and the world of anonymous trolling means there are some reveals that we would never have worked out, no matter how many clues we had. Nevertheless, this is a fun read – Galbraith (aka Rowling) paints an unsettlingly plausible online world, and the ultimate reveal of the murderer has a beautifully Christie-esque quality that I wouldn’t dream of spoiling.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 17

And another belated Christmas blog from me. Still a lot of stuff to post about, so I'll keep going till I get to Day 24!

Advent Tea

Day 17 of my Bird and Blend Tea calendar was Strawberry and Pomegranate!

‘The Trials of Christmas’

The next Christmas chapter I read from Ronald Hutton's Stations of the Sun was 'The Trials of Christmas'.

3 Minute Santas

Although we were on holiday this week, the show had to go on. My Hannah's Bookshelf Pre-Christmas Special (which is a selection of festive flash fiction called 3 Minute Santas) went out today on North Manchester FM.

Bakewell Mincemeat Flapjack

While we were in St Ives, we bought some lovely festive flapjacks from Flapjackery. Today we had the Bakewell Mincemeat one.

Magpie Murders

I read Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz while we were away. I loved this book so much, I was genuinely gutted when I finished it.

Surviving Christmas

Tonight we had a double-bill of festive films, starting with Surviving Christmas!

Four Christmases

And our double-bill of 'no one should go to Fiji at Christmas' films concluded with Four Christmases!

Countdown to Christmas: Day 14

I am determined to publish all my Countdown to Christmas blog posts, even though it's taken me until New Year to write them. I think my stubborn completist streak has kicked in. Anyway, here's another day of festive stuff from our pre-Christmas trip to Cornwall.

Advent Tea

Day 14 of my Bird and Blend Tea advent calendar was Birthday Cake (a tea I drank quite a lot of back in August)!

Christmas Earrings

Today's festive earrings were little gingerbread houses.

Muddlebox Cocktail

Somehow, we've managed to fall very far behind with our Muddlebox cocktail subscription boxes this year, with some sitting in the cupboard for far longer than intended. This seemed like a good time to catch up a bit! This box was from March (can you believe it?), and it was a Mai Tai!

Chocolate Fudge Cake

Bit of festive baking today. It looks a bit wonky on this picture, though it wasn't quite that bad in real life! (And it didn't taste wonky, if I do say so myself!)

Figgy Pudding Liqueur

This was a nice little festive tipple I'd be saving for a pre-Christmas treat: Figgy Pudding Rum Liqueur from Riverside Craft Spirits.

Scrooged

We watched Scrooged tonight, another of our regular festive films.

The Sentence is Death

I do like to save murder mystery books for this time of the year (as well as ones set in Cornwall or at Christmas), and so the next book I read was The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz (and I LOVED it).

My Year in Books 2022: August

Well... here's a turn of events... after months and months of reluctantly publishing posts with a single book on them (two at most), my August post has TEN titles! Famine or feast, I guess. By way of explanation, I had a week off work in August, and I'd planned to just spend it at home, recharging my batteries. Also, five of the books on today's list were rereads. But then again, five of them weren't!

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

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

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas (2020)

I borrowed Catherine House from my local library last month, but I only finished reading it this month. The blurb for this one is cryptic, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. And even now that I’ve read it, I’m not sure what genre I would say it is. The eponymous Catherine House is a prestigious – though somewhat secretive – university that selects its students carefully and makes them an offer they can’t refuse (namely free tuition and accommodation for the three years of their degree). In return, Catherine House asks its students to give themselves entirely to their studies, not leaving the university at all during their time there and renouncing everything from their former lives, including their friends and family. The protagonist is Ines, a troubled young woman who is running away from some pretty dark experiences, but who has no real inclination towards the idiosyncratic courses of study. I’ve read a few other books that use ‘archaic place of learning hides sinister secrets’ as a premise (most recently Madam by Phoebe Wynne), but Catherine House was quite different. I enjoyed the slow-burn descriptions of the university itself, as well as the claustrophobic intensity of Ines’s experiences. The devil is really in the detail here, and Thomas uses some subtle techniques to develop the madness of Catherine House (hint: watch the descriptions of food as the book progresses!). Catherine House is off-beat and sinister in all the right ways, and its ending is… well… let’s just say questions remain!

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz (2020)

This next book was also from my local library. Despite being a fan of his television work (Foyle’s War and Poirot specifically), I only read my first Horowitz novel earlier this year. I saw this – which is a bit of a hefty tome – and thought it might be a good one to read on my week off. And wow – I was so right about that! Moonflower Murders is the follow-up to Magpie Murders, though you don’t need to have read the first book to enjoy the second (and there aren’t any spoilers for the previous book, as far as I can tell). Editor Susan Ryeland has left the publishing world and now runs a hotel in Crete with her partner. Out of the blue, a couple (also hoteliers) ask for her help with a mystery. Several years earlier, there was a murder at their hotel. One of the staff was arrested, but they now suspect the police got the wrong man. A novelist – Susan’s star novelist who was murdered in Magpie Murders – wrote a book that their daughter believes reveals the true killer’s identity. But their daughter has disappeared without revealing what, exactly, she read in the novel. What I loved – loved – about this book is that you follow Susan’s investigation up until the point she decides to reread the novel, and then you read the entire fictional novel yourself to find the clues! As ‘story-within-story’ novels go, this one is incredibly ambitious, beautifully written and a lot of fun.

Six Stories by Matt Wesolowski (2016)

If you’ve read some of my previous review posts, you might have seen me talk about Wesolowski’s Six Stories series. I’m a big fan of this series, so I was delighted when I got the sixth book, Demon, in one of my monthly Abominable Books subscription boxes earlier this year. I’ve been saving Demon for a treat, and since I was on holiday for a week (and it was my birthday), it seemed like the perfect time to read it. But then I decided I should reread the other five books first… so the next few reviews are of rereads before I got to Demon. Six Stories is the first book in the series, and so it’s the one that introduces the concept and style that I love so much. Six Stories is a fictional podcast, hosted by the enigmatic Scott King, which looks at cold cases. Each of the podcast episodes covers a different ‘story’ connected with the case, and then at the end Scott King asks listeners (meaning that Wesolowski asks readers) to make up their own minds about what might have happened. In the first book, the case is the death of a teenager a couple of decades earlier. The body of Tom Jeffries was found at an outdoor pursuit centre a year after the boy was reported missing. Scott King speaks to six witnesses (or does he? there is a bit of a twist with this one) to hear their stories and piece together the truth.

Hydra by Matt Wesolowski (2017)

Continuing with my series reread… Hydra is possibly my favourite one of the series, and it has a bit more of a punch to it than Six Stories. The first book introduces the overall concept – including the way possible supernatural explanations will be woven into each of the ‘episodes’ – but it’s really with Hydra that the series properly finds its feet. I was totally blown away by this one when I first read it, and fortunately it did hold up to a reread. The case in this one is that of Arla McLeod, a young woman who brutally murdered her family several years earlier. At first glance, it might seem like this is an open-and-shut case – there is no question that Arla committed the murders, and the explanation for her actions appears to be ‘paranoid schizophrenia’ – but there is so much richness to the story that unfolds, it’s hard to do it justice in a mini-review. Taking in various odd niches of internet culture (including Korean and Japanese challenge games, and old-school trolling), plus moral panics about dark music (via Wesolowski’s fictional ‘bad boy’ musician Skexxixx), Hydra handles its subject material with sensitivity and nuance that’s really second to none. When it comes to the Six Stories series, I came for the quirky format and unreliable narration, but I stayed for the depth and complexity of the explorations of darkness. Although Six Stories hints at some of the series’ underlying concerns, Hydra expands on these in original and thought-provoking ways.

Changeling by Matt Wesolowski (2018)

The next book in the series is Changeling, which goes in a different direction (though still exploring some of those underlying concerns). This time the case is that of a missing child: Alfie Marsden was seven years old when he disappeared from his father’s car one Christmas Eve, and no trace of the boy has been found since. Scott King is contacted by someone claiming to be a ‘friend’ who encourages him to feature the case as one of his podcast series. His coverage begins with interviews with people who knew Alfie’s parents before the boy’s disappearance, and when I first read the book I had an almost instant distrust of the narrative that was being told by the interviewees, which was heightened by being ‘primed’ not to take things at face value by the previous books in Wesolowski’s series. Obviously, on rereading, you go into knowing what you should and shouldn’t trust, but this just makes the story being constructed in the initial interviews feel that much more painful. As with Hydra, there’s a real punch to Changeling. Yes – there is the story of Alfie Marsden (and the resolution of that element made me cry both times I read the book), but there’s also another story, related to the missing child, that lingers with you for longer. Again, the sensitivity and here is really what holds your attention. Life – in all its dark, murky complexity – is far more unpleasant, and far more compelling, than anything the supernatural can offer.

Beast by Matt Wesolowski (2019)

On to Beast now, which is the one I read most recently as I originally read the series slightly out of order. In many ways, this is familiar territory if you’ve read the previous three. Scott King takes on another case – the death of an up-and-coming YouTube star in a small town in north-east England. As in Hydra, the case in Beast isn’t actually a cold one. Elizabeth Barton was found dead in a derelict town (known as the ‘Vampire Tower’) on the edge of the town in 2018. Her killers were immediately apprehended and are serving life sentences for her murder and the mutilation of her body (which was decapitated). Once again, this feels like an open-and-shut case, but Scott King is determined to see it through, to see if he can uncover an explanation for why the young men would do something so macabre. The book weaves together vampire folklore, socio-economic commentary and some internet and urban legend touchstones (I particularly enjoyed the ‘Who put Lizzie in the tower?’ graffiti that echoes ‘Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?’), but ultimately – as we’ve come to expect from the series – the underlying themes start to emerge. There’s a bit of bleakness to the end of this one, particularly in the case of one character (no spoilers!) who, it would seem, never really stood a chance. But as well as the bleakness, there’s more Gothic wildness to Beast than the previous instalments, including some wonderfully evocative descriptions and set pieces.

Deity by Matt Wesolowski (2020)

Deity was the book that originally introduced me to the series. I remember when I got it as the featured book in one of my Abominable Book boxes – I knew straightaway that this was the series for me. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this a million times before, but I’m a sucker for unreliable narrators and narratives, and so I was instantly intrigued by the series concept. Rereading the series in order this time, I’m not sure Deity has the same sort of punch as Hydra and Changeling (or, to a lesser extent, Beast), but it’s still got a lot to hook you in. Scott King investigates the case of legendary pop star Zach Crystal, who died in 2019 in his enigmatic mansion in the Highlands. Part of the fun of Deity – even more so than with the other books in the series – is spotting the pop culture tales that may have inspired the fiction. I also enjoyed the return of Skexxixx, and the development of this character, which (thankfully) moves him further away from the real-life ‘shock rocker’ who I’ve no doubt was an initial inspiration. As with Beast, there are some fabulous descriptions of place here, but that’s really something that’s run through the series since Six Stories. The juxtaposition of unimaginable wealth and fame with the struggling families of Zach Crystal’s fans is very well done too. In the end, there’s more of an ‘urgh’ than an ‘ouch’ at the end of Deity but variety’s no bad thing!

Demon by Matt Wesolowski (2021)

And so to Demon… Another thing you may have noticed if you’ve read my other review posts is that I sometimes don’t read blurbs before I start books. Sometimes I think it’s just better to go in without any preconceptions. Given how much I love this series, and how excited I was to read Demon, it probably goes without saying that I didn’t read the blurb or any of the marketing beforehand. So I was totally unprepared for where this one was going to go. The case in Demon is the murder of a child in the 1990s. The boy was killed by two other children, who were sent to secure units to serve out their sentences before being granted lifelong anonymity on their release. It has to be said, this is a pretty bold move from Wesolowski. The fictional case covered in Scott King’s podcast bears some similarities to the real-life inspiration (which, I’m sure, can be in no doubt), but it’s also substantively different in a lot of ways, and I think this was a sensible move. It allows Wesolowski to create a fiction – one which includes his now-trademark supernatural elements undercut by sensitive social commentary – without accidentally romanticizing what is still a very raw and painful story. However, it has to be said that Demon differs in some significant ways from the rest of the series, particularly in the ending. No spoilers, but it’s a very good conclusion, and really the only one that could be reached.

The Appeal by Janice Hallett (2021)

Demon left me a bit reflective, so I wanted something a little lighter next. I borrowed The Appeal from my local library, and (as is sometimes my way) I didn’t read the blurb properly. I got the impression it was a straightforward murder mystery, possibly with a courtroom element, and so I felt like I knew what I would be getting. I was wrong! And I’m very glad about that, because The Appeal is an absolute joy, and it was great to be surprised. This is a great one to go into without any prior knowledge, because then your experience of reading mirrors the experience of Femi and Charlotte, the two characters through whose eyes we see the story unfold. Femi and Charlotte are law students, and, as we discover in the WhatsApp messages and email at the beginning of the book, they’ve been given a bundle of documents to read by their supervisor. The students are given no information as to what the documents relate to (and so neither is the reader), they’re just ask to read through them and work out what’s going on. It turns out, the documents are (mostly) a series of email exchanges between various members of an amateur dramatics society. What’s the story behind the emails? And what can this have to do with a legal case? Ah well… that’s what Femi and Charlotte (and you, the dear reader) have to work out. Ambitious, original, very entertaining, and a great companion to Moonflower Murders.

The Cottingley Cuckoo by A.J. Elwood (2021)

The next book I read this month was from my Abominable Books box back in December. I didn’t realize until I started to read it that A.J. Elwood is also Alison Littlewood, and so I have read one of the author’s previous novels (Mistletoe). To me, it is quite clear that Mistletoe and The Cottingley Cuckoo were written by the same person, so I’m not totally sure about the distinction between pen-names. But this isn’t a criticism! The things the two books share were all the things I really liked about Mistletoe, particularly the slightly uncanny narrative voice and the deceptively-domestic-but-actually-quite-horrifying storylines. The main character in The Cottingley Cuckoo is Rose, a young woman who dropped out of university when her mother became ill, and who now works in a residential care home for older people. One of the residents is an enigmatic and unsettling woman named Mrs Favell. The other staff leave Rose to deal with Mrs Favell, who begins to draw her into a story of fairies and changelings. I loved the way the horror – and make no mistake, this is a horror novel – grows at a slow, claustrophobic pace, almost to the point that it becomes unbearable. I also very much enjoyed the use of fairies as horror in the book. It’s not easy to do (given the twee, cute character of modern ideas of the fair folk), but it’s done exceptionally well in Elwood’s book. No spoilers, but I absolutely loved the book’s ending as well.

Tiny Birthday No. 10

I enjoyed the first day of a week off from work by reading Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz, accompanied by Violet Cream tea from Bird and Blend Tea and some violet creams. A little tiny birthday all of my own.

(This is how I'm celebrating my birthday this year - see here for the reasons why.)

My Year in Books 2022: May

This is a bit of a disappointing post to write. Once again, there's only one book on my list for the month, and I'm posting it terribly late. I still seem to be having a problem reading for pleasure. I've read quite a few other books this month, but they were all for review or research. When it comes to just reading for fun, I'm still a bit stuck to be honest. Possibly (I'm not sure), part of the problem this month was that I got bogged down in a book that I just wasn't that into. I don't know if that was the book's fault or mine, but I've reluctantly decided to set it to one side for June to see if I can find something that sparks my interest a bit more. Sadly, it's not the first time I've done that this year, which isn't like me at all.

I don't know if this is an aftereffect of lockdown, or just a symptom of being really tired and busy. I hope it passes soon though.

Anyway, if you're interested, here are my lists for the rest of the year: January, February, March, April

A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz (2021)

I bought this for the setting more than anything else. I like island mysteries, but I can’t remember reading one set on Alderney before. I also can’t remember if I’ve read any of Horowitz’s other novels, but I’m a big fan of his TV work (specifically Foyle’s War and his work on Poirot – which should come as no surprise!). A Line to Kill is the third book in his Hawthorne and Horowitz series. I haven’t read the other two, but that wasn’t a barrier to enjoying the book at all. Because of the conceit behind the series, there were quite a lot of references to the earlier two cases, but Horowitz avoids both spoilers and plot points that require some prior knowledge. The series features a character called Anthony Horowitz, a novelist who has previously worked as a TV writer, and who has now turned his hand to crime writing. This is an incredibly self-referential set-up! Horowitz (the character) is on Alderney with his detective muse, Hawthorne, to attend a literary festival and promote the first book in the series, The Word is Murder, ahead of the publication of the second book, The Sentence is Death. But wouldn’t you know it? shortly after the guests arrive, the festival’s sponsor is found dead. A Line to Kill is a lot of fun. I enjoyed the self-referentiality, and the use of the setting was nicely done. The influence of Agatha Christie is noticeable, but it’s definitely not derivative. I enjoyed this one.