This month's list has a few more books on it than average for this year, mostly because we had a few days away with plenty of opportunity for reading. I read five books for fun this month, and all of them were library books too.
In case you're interested, here are my posts from the rest of the year so far:
January,
February,
March,
April,
May,
June,
July,
August
The Book of the Most Precious Substance by Sara Gran (2022)
This book was a library book that I got out a couple of months ago but didn’t get chance to read at the time. Fortunately, with us having a few days away with no wi-fi (or even electricity), I had the perfect opportunity to catch up with some library books. I chose this one because it has a ‘mysterious lost book’ plot, and that sounded like fun. The book in question is seventeenth century occult text, rumoured to be the most powerful text of its kind. It’s actually – as we quickly discover – a book on sex magic and, as you can imagine, it offers the user unimaginable power but at a sinister price. Antiquarian bookseller Lily finds herself embroiled in a search for one of the (possibly) remaining copies of the book, teaming up with a book collector named Lucas who is both attractive and kind of unsettling at the same time. Together, they travel around various locations, following leads, meeting people who have (or claim to have) tried to use the book, and learning the secrets of sex magic along the way. The story isn’t particularly original, and it treads a lot of the same ground as other stories about apocryphal occult texts (it’s very
Ninth Gate in places). But there’s a nice twist with the ‘precious substance’ element, and I really enjoyed the ending, though I suspect that won’t be too everyone’s tastes. Overall, I think I would have liked more sense of peril on the quest though.
The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson (2022)
As we were staying in a cabin in the woods, this next one seemed perfect. I haven’t read the
Truly Devious trilogy, but the blurb on this one assured me it was a standalone, so I decided to give it a go. And I can confirm that it works as a standalone, and while there are a few references to the preceding trilogy, the book doesn’t suffer from not knowing the details. The story is a YA cold case mystery. Amateur detective Stevie Bell, fresh from having solved the ‘Truly Devious’ case at her high school, is contacted by the owner of Sunny Pines camp. The campsite – formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls – was the site of a grisly crime in 1978, when four counsellors were brutally murdered in what became known as the ‘Box in the Woods’ murders. The case was never solved, but now the site’s new owner wants to make a podcast about the murders to try and finally find the solution. Stevie, along with some of her friends, arrive at Sunny Pines and begin their investigation, in what turns out to be a very engaging and satisfying mystery. I enjoyed the fact that, despite this being a YA with teenaged protagonists, all the older characters felt completely realistic for their respective ages (although I had to do a bit of maths when I started to suspect one character, as I didn’t think he could be the age he’d have to be for it to make sense!).
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (2020)
Another library book for our cabin the woods holiday, but something a little different. I was completely hooked on this one from early on. It’s a mind-bendy multiverse story with a really engaging central character, and Johnson’s writing just had me immersed from the first few chapters. Cara – the protagonist – is a ‘traverser’, one of the people who travel between worlds learning about the different iterations of Earth. The one rule of multiverse travel here is that it isn’t possible to traverse a world where another version of you is alive. For this reason, successful traversers are often from poorer backgrounds, as that means their doppelgängers are less likely to have survived to adulthood (one of the really thought-provoking bits of worldbuilding in the book). Cara, who was born in the wastelands, has very few surviving doppelgängers, so she is able to go to a lot of parallel worlds. The story follows Cara’s work for the Eldridge Institute and her prickly relationship with her handler Dell. But there’s a lot more going on than it appears at first glance. I did guess the first big reveal, which comes a few chapters in, but I had no idea where the story was going to go after that. And then one of Cara’s doppelgängers on another world dies in mysterious circumstances, and I really had no idea where the story was going to go! This book is full of surprises, but it’s such a compelling story that I couldn’t put it down.
The Surf House by Lucy Clarke (2025)
Back home again, and another library book. This one was a thriller – marketed as a ‘destination thriller’, which I think means that the setting is one of the main selling points. In this case, the setting is Morocco, partly Marrakesh and partly an isolated little village up the coast from Marrakesh. The protagonist, Bea, is working as a model but walks out on the photoshoot without any real plan as to where she’s going to go or what she’s going to do. When she’s mugged in the street, a woman called Marnie kindly intervenes and offers Bea a place to stay at the eponymous ‘Surf House’, a guest house for… obviously… surfers. Bea settles in well, learning to surf and recovering from both her ordeal in Marrakesh and her unhappiness from her modelling work, although Marnie’s partner Ped is somewhat less welcoming. However, Bea soon discovers that another young woman, Savannah, disappeared from the Surf House the previous year. Savannah’s brother Seth arrives to find out what happened to his sister, and things unravel from there. This was quite an enjoyable read. The baddie is pretty easy to spot, and it’s hard to swallow just how naïve some of the characters are (particularly Bea), but the story unfolds at a good pace with just enough mystery to keep you turning the pages. I also enjoyed the descriptions of Bea learning to surf – and learning to love surfing – as it was surprisingly satisfying to see her character develop in these moments.
Five Bad Deeds by Caz Frear (2023)
And another library book…
Five Bad Deeds is a domestic noir, and I picked it up because the premise looked interesting. The protagonist is Ellen, a supposedly ‘good’ wife, mother, neighbour and citizen, who lives in her dream home in a nice little village with her husband, teenage daughter and twin sons. One day, seemingly out of the blue, Ellen gets a letter threatening to expose her for her ‘bad deeds’. Ellen not only has to work out who might have sent the letter, but also what those bad deeds might be. There are some quite nice moments in the book, particularly as it’s clear early on that Ellen isn’t quite as nice or quite as beloved as she believes. However, she isn’t a
bad person in the slightest – just a somewhat self-absorbed, mildly thoughtless one. As Ellen reflects on the potential ‘five bad deeds’ that might have led to the sinister letter, we learn a bit more about her relationship with her husband and – more importantly – her daughter Orla. It’s clear that Ellen has made some dodgy choices in the past – and continues to make them in the present – but it’s really hard to see whether that justifies the hatred that drips from the anonymous letter or, as is probably expected, the escalation of the campaign by its sender. Sadly, I’m not sure I completely bought the big reveal in the end, although there were a couple of clues planted earlier in the story. Not a bad read though.
