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.