50 Books a Year - The 2025 Challenge

11. Into The Blue - Robert Goddard
A young woman, Heather, disappears suddenly from a mountain and 50yr old Harry is suspected of killing her.
Harry spends the book trying to find out the truth.
He does find out what happened to Heather followed by many more ramifications.
I enjoyed this story, as did many others, but Amazon reviews have a few who found the writing style tedious.

12. The Bermondsey Bookshop - Mary Gibson
Based on a real bookshop set up in Bermondsey in the 1920s, this is the story of Kate, a girl who grows up being treated as Cinderella by her aunt & family and longing for her father to return from abroad.
I felt it brought the history alive with the engaging story.

13. The Agency For Scandal - Laura Wood
"An all-female detective agency righting wrongs at the end of the 19th century."
An interesting and entertaining story.

Maggiemaybe

25. The Tw*t Files, Dawn French

I’ve always avoided reading this book, not just because I detest the word in the title, but because I’ve personally thought of Dawn French as being smug and self-satisfied, as well as funny. Well, there were some very entertaining stories in the book, but I found it came over in just the same way.

I agree.
I started this book but gave up after a couple of chapters.

#21^Don't Forget to Write^ Sarah Goodman Confino.
This was another from my virtual pile of free Amazon Prime ebooks. Just occasionally there are gems amongst the meh and this is one.
The year is 1960. Twenty year old Marilyn is caught 'making out' with the rabbi's son at shul in front of the whole congregation. Her parents and his insist they must marry and the boy is forced to make an offer. She refuses and is sent in disgrace to spend the summer with her formidable great aunt, Ada Philadelphia's premier matchmaker. Ada however is quite different from expected and over the course of that summer Marilyn learns many things from this wonderful character. I really enjoyed this book.

32 Greenacres - Dorothy Whipple

There was a thread on GN sometime ago about favourite authors from the past, I think, which threw up the name of the above, I'd never heard of her, but those who'd read her seemed to really like her books, so when I found a couple of her works in the library, I thought I'd give her a try. With the exception of Agatha Christie and Enid Blyton, I'm not sure I've read any authors from early to mid century (20th) this book was published in the early 30s. I really enjoyed it, I think in many ways she must have been quite a feminist for her time. The story centres around a comfortably off middle class family, living somewhere in a suburban town in the North of England, there are mentions of long journeys by train to London for business and shopping trips. The lead character is sympathetic matriarch, Louisa Ashton, mother of 6 grown up children, married to a philanderer, who is to die half way through in the company of another woman. The story is set a few years before the 1st World War through to its aftermath and into the 1920s. It's told mainly from Louisa's perspective and that of her much loved and favourite granddaughter Rachel who over the course of the book grows from a small child to a young woman. A reoccurring theme is that of women controlled and constrained by men. When Rachel wins a state scholarship to go to Oxford, she is thwarted by her father Ambrose who is of the opinion that education is not for women, she would lose her charm and become a blue stocking, not an appealing prospect in his opinion. Ambrose is a bully of a man who controls, his wife Letty, Rachel's mother, who intermittently suffers from depression and would like a life beyond that of her housewifely duties. He takes it upon himself to take over Louisa's investments upon his father-in-law's demise and in doing so loses her money in the process. During the course of the book, there are two characters who bear children out of wedlock, one being Laura, another daughter of Louisa who marries a man she doesn't love for money and status and subsequently leaves him for her first love. Her husband digs his heels in and refuses her a divorce when a baby is on the way, although eventually he is to do so, but not before Laura has scandalised polite society. The other, Kate, who comes to work for Louisa as a companion having been cast off by the father of her child and cut off from any money by her own father for having a baby out of wedlock.

A very good read I thought.

I really like Peter May

25. The Tw*t Files, Dawn French

I’ve always avoided reading this book, not just because I detest the word in the title, but because I’ve personally thought of Dawn French as being smug and self-satisfied, as well as funny. Well, there were some very entertaining stories in the book, but I found it came over in just the same way.

#20 Long Shadows Jodi Taylor.
Book 3 in the excellent Elizabeth Cage series.
Elizabeth just wants a quiet life but she is a magnet for disaster and unusual people. She appears to be a rather dowdy ordinary housewife but she is far from ordinary. She can see people's auras (which from childhood she has called colours) but she cannot see her own and does not know who or what she is. Very good.

I have just gone back and watched the Morse series from the beginning, I agree, John Thaw is perfect as Morse, and I’d forgotten how Lewis really does play such an important role.
Just to bring in books, because after all, this is a book thread, I have read all the books, and enjoyed them.

Diggingdoris

I have read all the Morse books, but didn’t take to the character of Morse in them at all.

John Thaw brought him alive in the tv series, and made him so much more likeable and appealing, if still somewhat irascible.

Also it worked changing the Lewis character into a younger lad from Newcastle instead of the older Welsh bloke as described in the books.

Book 55, Darkness Rising, by A.A.Dhand. I think it`s the first Virdee book, I really enjoyed the TV series. But this book isn`t very thick, I read it in a morning.

37-The Wench is Dead-Colin Dexter
Morse is in hospital and is given a book about a murder on a canal in the 1800s. He spends his recovery time working out who the murderer is.
I didn't enjoy CD's style of writing, though I'm a great fan of the TV series.

38-The Housemaid's Secret-Freida Mc Fadden
An unputdownable thriller so I shall be looking for more books by this author.

#37. The Murder At Redmire Hall by JR Ellis,

Book 54, The Northern Lady, an historical novel by Anna Jacobs, very much enjoyed.

36-The Kiss-Santa Montefiore
Delightful novella. Madison is the child born from a one night stand, When she turns 18 she gets to meet her real father and his family.

Book 53, Think Twice, by Harlan Coben. I enjoyed it, but I tend to enjoy most of his writings.

35-Property of a Noblewoman-Danielle Steel
An abandoned safe deposit box is opened to reveal a bundle of letters and photographs, and priceless jewellery. A search for the owner reveals a secret.

23. A Spark of Light, Jodi Picoult

Set at an abortion clinic targetted by a gunman. The stories of the various hostages, the gunman and some of the anti-abortion demonstrators are discovered by means of flashbacks. I must say I found it a little long-winded at times, but it’s a good book. Having listened to the endnote where the author describes how she researched the subject by interviewing dozens of people and even witnessing three terminations, I’m full of admiration for her work ethic! The statistics regarding the number and types of attacks on similar clinics in the States are horrifying.

34-Dead Man's Footsteps-Peter James
A skeletal woman's body is found in a storm drain, meanwhile, a grim discovery is made in Australia. Is there a link to the businessman who was lost at 9/11?

Book 20
The Beatles - Hunter Davies
Love anything Beatles, so enjoyed this.
I think because Hunter Davies wrote the book, whilst being with the Beatles, and he also had access to all of their parents, friends and school mates, that this book is in a way careful, quite rightly he seems to have respected his sources.
I preferred the Craig Brown biography, but to be fair, as almost everyone involved has since died, he didn’t have the same restrictions.
It is almost unbelievable now to remember those heady days of Beatlemania, I was in junior school, but was completely caught up in it, just waiting for Paul to realise I was all he ever wanted.
I still love the music, still love their story, their brotherhood, before it started to fall apart
Enjoyed

I just discovered this group! Am storming thdu the year a book a week. As a favour to myself for an easier read I just read Goodnight Mister Tom. Michelle Magorian. A childrens book really but a lovely piece of historical fiction and beautifully moving.

31 Someone in the Attic - Andrea Mara

I enjoyed the writer's last book "No one Saw A Thing" which prompted me to pick this one up at the library when it was in the crime promotion section. Julia, a successful business woman, has come home to Ireland from previously living in San Diego for about 20 years. Having left there under a cloud when her adolescent daughter has a serious falling out with a school friend the ramifications of which appear to have stalked her across the Atlantic causing both mother and daughter ongoing anxieties. Also relocating with the two children is ex-husband Gabe who Julia enjoys an amicable relationship with, in co- parenting their two children. Spooked by an online video of a masked man climbing out of what appears to be the attic in their new house, she is left unnerved how this could happen in the upmarket, gated community where the family are living? About to meet up with a couple of her, oldest and closest friends for an evening drink, one, namely Anya, doesn't arrive. Prior to Anya getting ready to go out she has been soaking in her bath when she hears a noise from the ceiling upstairs, the attic hatch swings down and there's the masked man. A minute later she appears to have drowned in her bath. Someone wants revenge, what's the back story that links the two friends? being targeted by a malevolent intruder?. Therein hangs the tale. A middle ranking, in the somewhat far fetched thriller genre, I wouldn't put it in the same category as some of Lisa Jewell's, but reasonable.

Book 52, The Family Remains, by Lisa Jewell. A good story, but rather a lot of to and froing timewise, several different people involved.

I loved The Survivors, FGT. In fact, I have enjoyed all the books by Jane Harper, set in Australia. Would recommend strongly.

Great recommendation Sparklefizz I will put it on my Kindle this evening. At present I’m enjoying ‘The Survivors’ by Jane Harper!

21. What Alice Forgot, Liane Moriarty

Alice comes round after a nasty fall at the gym. The trouble is, as far as she’s aware she never goes to the gym and she’s worried about her unborn child. But she’s not pregnant and things ain’t what they used to be. Alice has lost years of her life, doesn’t know her new friends or that she’s a mother of three and estranged from her beloved husband. It’s an interesting journey as her memories return.

22. Where There’s Fire, Jodi Picoult

This is a bit of a cheat, as it’s just a short story about a psychic pursued by a vengeful spirit. It had me looking under the bed that night before I got in it.