50 Books a Year - The 2025 Challenge

Book 3, The Never Game, by Jeffery Deaver. It was very good, despite going back and forth in time quite a bit.

#5. The Serial Killer’s Wife by Alice Hunter.

Book 3
Tell me Everything - Elizabeth Strout

This book is a perfect joy from the first sentence to the last, and every one in between.

I adore Elizabeth Strouts writing, she is fast becoming one of my favourite authors, and this book was beautifully written.

Some of her longstanding characters, Lucy of course. Possibly one of my all time favourite, fictional characters, Olive Kitteridge, the lovely Bob Burgess, and William, plus a lot of siblings, ex wives and children, all go to make this a real literary treat.

I guess it’s mainly about love, all kinds of love, married love, and the love that can endure when a marriage is over, parental love, not always getting it right, love between two men who come together for a professional reason, but through the kindness of one, and the need of the other form a lasting friendship, and of course, forbidden love, which has to remain platonic love, the saddest of all.

I am sorry to come to the end of this book, I feel that I know and care for all of the characters, and I strongly recommend it.

I'm going to start my first report with #4 - the other three were kindle books that piqued my interest slightly - which was A Perfect Death by Kate Ellis. This was a fairly early novel in the DI Wesley Peterson series that l had somehow missed. I enjoyed it, but it wasn't one of her best. 3½ stars.

3 The Whispers - Ashley Audrain

I picked this book up at my local library as I'd previously read the author's first book, "The Push" and enjoyed that.

Set in an anonymous city in the US, the story centres around four women the reader initially meets at an outdoor lunch party at the house of the most affluent of the group , Whitney Loverly. Mother of 3 year old twins and 10 year old Xavier who she has a difficult relationship with, she is overheard raging at him in his bedroom for stealing cookies that were to be handed out to all the children and licking the chocolate off the top of them, not realising at the time everyone could hear her through the open window, shattering her somewhat perfect image, Later her child is to suffer a catastrophic accident when he falls out of his bedroom window, in the aftermath of one of their many mother and son arguments. The story is related through the eyes of the four, and to a lesser extent their menfolk, whilst Xavier is laying in hospital in a coma, his life hanging in the balance. Whitney, her neighbour and less well off friend Blair, who somewhat envies Whitney's lifestyle, although Whitney in turn envies Blair's relaxed style of parenting to her very easy child Chloe, best friends with Xavier. Whitney doesn't really enjoy parenting, she is more engaged with running her business. The other participants are hospital doctor, Rebecca who with husband Ben desperately want a child but that eludes them as Rebecca has suffered numerous miscarriages and finally a much older woman Portuguese, Mara, who has suffered her own unhappiness which gradually unfolds throughout the story. This is very much a tale in the vein of what happens behind closed doors. I thought it was quite good. .

#2 Great And Precious Things Rebecca Yarros.
One of her military, small town romances. Cam returns to the small town that rejected and vilified him six years previously at the request of his father who is suffering from early onset Alzheimer's. One of the few people who doesn't hate him for the death of his younger brother is Willow his late brother's fiancée. I enjoyed it.

Pastoral by Nenil Shute was most enjoyable - a very sweet and chaste love story btween a pilot an a WAAF officer, set in rural Oxforshire during WW2. It gave a very good account of day to day life on an aircraft station at the time. The Kindle version had a fomatting error (all the text underlined) but after a while I got used to that and it did not spoil the book.

#4. The Whistleblower by Robert Peston. It’s set in the time of the Red general election during the end of John Major’s premiership.
A very gripping book, both very interest and repulsive on the machinations of indicators, etc.

Book 1: Tombland by C J Sansom I have just finished rereading the Shardlake series set in Tudor times. This is the last book he wrote and as he died last spring there won't be any more. This is a long book and deals with the Kett Rebellion in Norwich during the reign of the boy king Edward 6th. It deals with a murder interwoven with the story of the rebellion when thousands of the poor and working people protested against land owners enclosing land for their sheep which meant that ordinary people became unemployed or unable to support their family with a few animals kept on common land. It was a very sad time. On a second reading it was still very exciting and I was reading until 3.00 am this morning. I went to college in Norwich many years ago and it was interesting to hear about various landmarks that I knew. Well worth a read!

Book 4, Dance to the Death, Shirley Ballas`s follow up book. Better than the first, but still not great.

4-An Orphan's Hope-Kitty Neale.
I really enjoyed the 3 previous books in the Battersea Tavern series last year, so just had to read no.4. There are some very colourful characters again, with this following the story through the early 1950's. Winnie Berry is the widowed landlady who is always helping everyone, even when she is experiencing tragedy in her own life. An insight into life in that era.

Book 4
The Paper Palace -Miranda Cowley Heller
A deeply emotional love story that follows one day in the life of Elle Bishop as she navigates the unravelling of secrets, lies and a very complex love triangle.
I struggled with the first few chapters but then I became immersed and gripped. I'm sad to have finished but onward to the next one

#3 Kane Dick Wybrow.
This was one from my pile of Kindle cheapies and I really didn't know what to expect. Kane is a wolf who is bitten by a man and becomes human except at different phases of the moon he turns into a dog! He is seeking the man who bit him and a way back to his pack. He cannot drive or read very well so he enlists the help of a young woman he calls 'sad girl'. It's bonkers but I enjoyed it. First in a series but I probably won't seek out the next one.

Leelaylo, I really enjoyed The Paper Palace, something a bit different

#2 Go As A River by Shelley Read I absolutely loved this book and was quite upset when I finished it. It’s about a young girl growing up in an all male household in Colorado in the 1940s and how she has to learn hard lessons in life without a mothers guidance.
#3 The Maid by Nina Prose - similarities here to Eleanor Oliphant. A quick and easy read.
#4 The Firemaker by Peter May

#6. A Death In The Parish by Richard Coles.

Leelaylo and Sara1954 I really enjoyed The Paper Palace too.

#5 was The Fair Botanists by Sara Sheridan. Set in Edinburgh 1822 when the new botanical gardens are opening and the king is rumoured to be planning a summer visit. Widowed Elizabeth arrives in Edinburgh from Richmond, to live with her late husband’s elderly aunt. She becomes fascinated by the new botanical gardens that border her new home and offers her services as a botanical artist. She meets Belle there and the two become close friends, but Belle is keen to keep her real identity and the reason for her interest in the gardens secret. But secrets come out and consequences can be great.

I live a 10 minute walk from the Edinburgh botanic gardens and am a frequent visitor. It was an absolute pleasure to read about this period in the garden’s history, as well as the early years of the Edinburgh New Town and the lives of those living in what is now my local area. The story itself was interesting, though tied up perhaps a little too perfectly. 7/10

The River We Remember by William Kent Krueger.
from the publisher:
In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by a shocking murder, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances

I really enjoyed this book, and will look for others by this author.

Book 5, A Dance for the King, by Anton du Bek. It`s the latest in his series about the Buckingham Hotel, and I`ve loved every one of them.

Alibeee, The Fair Botanist seems just the type of book I enjoy, so thank you. I will see if my local library has it.

5-Entwined -Lynda la Plante.
I've enjoyed lots of her books, but after 80pages, I've given up on this one. There was so much descriptive text that I didn't think was necessary to the story. So maybe I should have carried on but with so many books on my shelf to read, I didn't want to waste time on a story that doesn't grab me. Apologies to Lynda's fans.

Book 2: The Secrets of Saffron Hall by Clare Marchant
A historical novel set in Norfolk in the time of Henry 8th.
Eleanor's and Amber's stories have some common themes although 500 years apart. There is quite a lot which stretches the limits of belief. A room left locked and untouched for 500 years? A prayer book left there all that time wrapped in a cloth but still readable? Latin translation using an app?
Very readable but we virtually know what happens on the first page. The rest is filling in the details

5. One Day, David Nicholls

One of those books that everyone was talking about years ago, but I never got round to. I’m glad I have now, as I enjoyed the story of Emma and Dexter so much. I’ve just tried the first episode of the Netflix series based on it though - again, late to the party - and wasn’t immediately dragged in. I should have kept to my usual rule of reading the book after watching the drama, as imho doing it the other way round usually disappoints.

Maggiemaybe, i think the Netflix series needs a bit of perseverance, it improves as it goes along, I nearly abandoned it, but was glad I didn’t.