My Year in Books 2024: January

A new year and a new set of book review posts. I read quite a bit in December, but actually I've been struggling a bit with reading for fun again. I've got plenty of books on my to-read pile, but I've been find it hard to find the time and the concentration for reading them all. I'm hoping this will get better as the year goes on though.

That said, I did read two amazing books in January!

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett (2023)

I’ve absolutely loved all of Janice Hallett’s books, so I was definitely looking forward to this one. I got this one out of the library on a recent visit, and as I had a day off I decided to read it all in one go. Like Hallett’s other books, this one has a quirky narrative format and tricksy storytelling style. It’s not quite as tricksy as The Appeal and The Twyford Code, and so it’s slightly easier to work out what you’re looking for and where the clues are in this one. The story is about a true crime writer, Amanda Bailey, who is tasked by her publisher with looking into the case of the Alperton Angels, a cult who committed mass suicide seventeen years ago. The so-called Alperton Angels had planned to sacrifice a baby prior to their deaths, but this plan was thwarted and the baby – along with its teenaged parents – were removed from the scene. No one knows what happened to the baby afterwards, but now that it will be reaching eighteen years of age, Amanda thinks this might be the angle she needs for her book. Unfortunately, an old colleague/rival, Oliver Menzies, is also writing a book on the case, so Amanda has to try and stay one step ahead of him. Of course, this being a book by Janice Hallett, things aren’t quite what they seem. I really enjoyed this one, though it didn’t quite beat The Twyford Code for me. Very engrossing story though!

Five Minds by Guy Morpuss (2021)

I read Morpuss’s second novel Black Lake Manor at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023, and really enjoyed it. I don’t know why it took me so long to read his debut novel, but I’m glad I have done now. The story is set in the near future when an undefined totalitarian regime has stepped in to control overpopulation and depletion of resources. Human beings now have a choice of how to live: be a worker (live your life as normal, but work for it), be an android (have your consciousness downloaded into an artificial body with a lifespan of 80 years), be a hedonist (enjoy your life without having to work, but only with a lifespan of 42 years), or join a commune (five minds inhabiting one body, enjoying 5 lifespans). This is the story of a commune made up of Alex, Kate, Mike, Sierra and Ben, who are each conscious for 4 hours a day, controlling the body that they all share. So far, so Black Mirror. But Five Minds is actually so much more intriguing (and the mind-bendy sci-fi context is very light-touch). It’s a mystery novel told through multiple narrators who can never co-exist or communicate with one another. Someone is trying to kill off members of the commune, and it’s possible one of the members is a traitor – but how can they ever work out the truth, if they each only get four hours at a time? This is such a good book – highly recommended.

Countdown to Christmas: Day 19

Still on holiday in our little cottage at The Lizard!

Twilight Walk

This evening, we went for a twilight walk to the cliff edge near the cottage. There's some really dramatic rocks there that looked amazing in the evening light (though it got very dark very quickly so we had to be careful).

Rudolph Millionaires Flapjack

Rudolph Millionaires Flapjack from Flapjackery in St Ives!

Christmas Pudding (Stage 2)

So we steamed the Christmas pudding for 8 hours today and had a bit of a surprise when it was done. Turns out, although I have a number of skills, judging how much baking powder to add to plain flour when we don't have any self-raising is not one of them. We have a very puffy pudding.

Tullibardine Whisky

More nice whisky tonight. We had a Tullibardine tasting set, which was another present from my little brother's recent trip to Scotland.

Escape from the Museum

And another escape room game tonight. This time, we escaped from a museum.

The Christmas Appeal

After another successful escape, I settled down to read The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett, accompanied by Candy Cane tea from Bird and Blend.

Advent Tea

Behind Door No. 19 in my Bird and Blend tea calendar... Champagne Supernova (their Manchester blend)!

Advent Jewellery

And behind Door No. 19 in my Avon jewellery calendar... silver loveheart earrings!

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.

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. 22

Last night of my holiday, and I spent it with The Appeal by Janice Hallett and some Mozartkugeln (a birthday present from my mother-in-law).

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