50 Books a Year - The 2025 Challenge

27-The Cornish Hotel by the Sea-Karen King
A delightful easy to read romance, set in a family run hotel.

Book 39, The Island Murders, the 3rd in my little stack by Rachel McLean.

Sparklefizz, I really didn’t think I was going to like it to start with, but I gradually got drawn in and I quite enjoyed it.
I’m in agreement on Crow Lake though, love Mary Lawson

Book 38, The Clifftop Murders, the 2nd in a series set in Dorset, by Rachel McLean. Not deep and meaningful books, but easy to read and very enjoyable.

Book 18 Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

I have read this before but someone mentioned it a few pages back and I decided to give it a 2nd read .... and enjoyed it just as much as the first time.

Set in a very remote and rural place in Canada, Crow Lake is home to the Morrison children who are orphaned at a young age, and this is the story of how this tragedy affected them and what happens as they grow up and live their lives.

Even though I had read it before, I had forgotten a lot of what happened and was gripped by it.

I can highly recommend it. 10/10

Sara1954

Book 16
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo-Taylor Jenkins Reid

First of all, I think this book would make a great film, some good old fashioned Hollywood glamour, and some very interesting characters.

It’s as the title says, Evelyn Hugo, claws her way to Hollywood stardom, she’s beautiful, extraordinary, and she marries seven times, rarely for love

I don’t want to spoil it, so will just say the love of her life was none of them.

There are some lovely characters, Evelyn is complex, determined, ruthless, but fiercely loyal, and often kind

I liked it, possibly not as much as some of the reviews I read, but it was something different, and I would recommend.

That's interesting, Sara1954 because I didn't enjoy it much.

#15 The Elias Network Simon Gervais.
Caspian Anderson is a translator for the United Nations but he has another identity, he is also a government assassin code name Elias. His latest assignment is in Switzerland. Casper's girlfriend Liesel, a German national working in New York as an accountant, calls him boring but she doesn't know who he really is and she has secrets of her own. This was one from my virtual pile of free Amazon Prime ebooks and I didn't really expect much. I was wrong it was a really exciting read and I enjoyed it very much.

Book 37, The Corfe Castle Murders, by Rachel McLean. This is the first in a series of 9 set in Dorset. I`ve just purchased the first 6 books.

Book 16
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo-Taylor Jenkins Reid

First of all, I think this book would make a great film, some good old fashioned Hollywood glamour, and some very interesting characters.

It’s as the title says, Evelyn Hugo, claws her way to Hollywood stardom, she’s beautiful, extraordinary, and she marries seven times, rarely for love

I don’t want to spoil it, so will just say the love of her life was none of them.

There are some lovely characters, Evelyn is complex, determined, ruthless, but fiercely loyal, and often kind

I liked it, possibly not as much as some of the reviews I read, but it was something different, and I would recommend.

Book 36, The Wrong Daughter, by Dandy Smith. 2 sisters, aged 10 and 13, are alone at home, the 13 year old is kidnapped by a stranger, 16 years later a young woman turns up claiming to be the missing girl, but the younger sister doesn`t believe her.

26-Turning Point-Danielle Steel
Four specialist doctors go to Paris to work with their French counterparts on a mass-casualty programme, where they have to make hard choices, that become a turning point in each of their personal lives.

I really enjoyed The Island, but that’s the only one.

Oh, I quite like Victoria Hislop`s books. The only one, so far, that I haven`t liked, is Cartes Postales from Greece, I found it slow and boring.

#17 The Island by Victoria Hislop. This multi million copy book has been around for 20 years, but I never really fancied it. It appeared on a charity bookshelf so I decided to take it on holiday.
Fundamentally, this is the story of lives and loves of those affected by leprosy and the Greek leper colony on the island of Spinalonga, off Crete. It’s set in the 1930-50s. The story surrounding the impact of leprosy and banishment was very affecting, as well as interesting and informative, however, I found the writing style and the romantic entanglements off putting. I don’t think I’ll bother reading any of her other books. 7/10

Just finished “The island of Missing Trees” by Elif Shafak
And “when and Where” by Anita Shreve.
The first was really interesting, mostly about the partition of Cyprus, the complications of marriage between a Turk and a Greek Cypriot.
The latter is ok.

24 Butcher - Joyce Carol Oates

I only picked this book up at the library because I really rate the author, but it wasn't a very pleasant read. The setting is New Jersey, mid 19th century. Dr Silas Weir is an elementary self taught gynaecologist, a bad one, assigned to a women's asylum where he practices his quasi medicine on the poor women who have been incarcerated there. This is a time some ten years prior to the Civil War and before the emancipation of slavery in the Deep South. Dr Weir residing in a northern state like many of his contemporaries around him being an abolitionist consider themselves to inhabit the high moral ground. Although from this book it would seem that most of a certain class have indentured servants who fare only slightly better than those sold into slavery. In much the same way the indentured servants are also sold and can be whipped within an inch of their lives and discarded once they have fulfilled their purpose to an employer, to somehow survive on the mean streets. It's into the setting of a mental asylum, that many women former servants were to find themselves, offered up for grotesque experimentation on various parts of the body, but in particular Dr Weir's speciality is women who had suffered internal injuries during childbirth. Like many male psychiatrists Dr Weir was also prone to relate his women patients mental state to the female internal reproductive system. In particular he is drawn to one patient, a young and strangely beautiful, mute girl by the name of Bridget Kinealy. Being of Irish extraction and like those around her deemed to be of a lower class depending on ethnic roots so considered most suitable for the Dr's experimental and often unsuccessful surgical procedures. Throughout the book, given his own queasiness at the sight of blood and guts and the fact that he was revolted by the female body anyway, somehow I couldn't help thinking he wasn't really cut out for the surgery he practised, as crude as it was mid 19th century. However, the worm turns and the outcome for Dr Weir is somewhat macabre although he does manage to survive what is meted out to him by a lot of very angry women. I'm not sure how much of the story JCO embellished, Dr Weir did exist, but I think there was some poetic licence in her writing. Not a read I would recommend.

#29. Burden Of Truth by Jack Cartwright.

#14 Dark Light Jodi Taylor.
This is the second in a really enjoyable supernatural thriller series. Elizabeth Cage is a young widow who just wants a quiet life but Elizabeth can see people's auras and seems to be a magnet for strange and dangerous people and events.

Book 15: Maxwells Zoom by M J Trow- Another entertaining murder solving by the school master during Covid.!

A couple of books with the common theme of women dependent upon their guardians; one was chosen by my DD, and the other recommended by Women and Home magazine.

The Fair Botanist by Sara Sheridan. A young widow travels to Edinburgh to reside under the care of her husband's distant cousin. When she arrives she understands she is to be the carer of an elderly aunt, but gets some relief from the fact that the estate is right next to the new Botanic Gardens, and she happens to be a watercolourist with experience drawing plants. Some excitement is coming to town with the visit of King George IV and the expected flowering of a rare aloe that only blooms every 30 years.

Isola by Allegra Goodman. In 16th century France, noblewoman Marguerite is orphaned early, whose guardian uses all her inheritance to fund his voyages to the new world. She eventually travels with him to New France, but forms a romantic interest with his secretary and they are both abandoned, along with her maidservant on an island in the Gulf of St Laurence. Based on a true story, it relates the hardship she went through and eventually survived and returned to France.

both very good reads. I need something a bit light and fluffy now!

I love the Michael Bennet series.
Book 35, Persons of Rank, by Anna Jacobs. I love my thrillers, but like an occasional romance as well. This wasn`t a long book, but I enjoyed it.

25- Cross Hairs-James Patterson & James Born
The 16th in the Michael Bennett series. A sniper is killing at random, or is there a link between the victims?

Book 34, Every Move You Make, by C.L.Taylor. A group of people are being stalked, so decide to stalk in return.

#28. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.

Book 15
The Unseen- Katherine Webb

I like Katherine Webb, I did enjoy this book, but I felt it dragged a bit in the middle, probably a bit longer than it could have been.

Another dual time line, 1911 and 2011
Cat is a servant, but not your average servile young girl, her father is the gentleman of the house, she is educated and feisty, and finds herself involved in the woman’s suffrage movement, subsequently imprisoned, where she goes on hunger strike and is force fed in the most horrendous manner.

Upon her release she is sent to a rural vicarage, where she will be maid to a young couple, the vicar and his wife. Into their lives comes, Robin Durrant, a young and beautiful man, who is determined to prove to the country the existence of elementals, fairies.

The vicar is totally charmed by Robin, all but abandoning his still virgin wife, who is becoming more and more despairing. Then Robin hits on a plan, blackmailing Cat to be his accomplice in a massive scam.

Then in 2011, Leah a young journalist is invited to Belgium by the war graves commission, to research a soldier from the first world war, well preserved, and with two letters on him, Leah is to try and find his identity with the flimsiest information, of course, she does.

There is a lot more to this tale, some very likeable characters, dark obsessions, a love story, I enjoyed it, just didn’t like the ending.