2026 - 50 Books a Year Challenge

46. Men I’ve Loved Before, Adele Parks

This started off well but went quickly downhill, imho. High flying couple Neil and Nat start to drift apart when he begins to yearn for a baby and she is still adamant she never wants children. His solution, naturally, is to spend thousands at a local lap dance club and get obsessed with a stripper, and hers is to contact all the exes in her little black book to meet up with them and check that she really is with the right man. I’m sure I’ve read good books from Adele Parks, but I wouldn’t recommend this. Apart from Nat’s parents, the characters are all formulaic and unlikeable (or in the case of Karl, Neil’s best mate, 100% vile)
and are either drinking like fish or struggling with hangovers, depending on the time of day. And obsessing with sex, as in “she had firecrackers in her knickers”. I stuck with it to find out how it ended - with a gobsmacking misogynistic twist is the answer. 😂

#87. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout.

47. The Artist, Lucy Steeds

I’ve spent a happy few hours finishing this today for my reading group tonight. Not for the first time, it wasn’t my choice, I didn’t fancy it and put off reading it, just to find that when I did I loved it. The joy of reading groups!

Young London journalist Joseph travels to
France in 1920 to try to interview reclusive and dour artist Edouard Tartuffe. He ends up moving in with Tata, as he is known, and his silent niece Ettie, in their isolated home, while he acts as Tata’s model for a very prestigious portrait. The book follows the relationships between the three, and their history with other family members and loves they have lost, particularly with reference to the Great War. It’s a glorious read, beautifully written, with superb descriptions of art and its subjects, and characters so lifelike I actually googled to see if they really existed.

65 The Long View Elizabeth Jane Howard Audio

One of the author's early novels, which I'm not sure I did justice to, given the narrative moved backwards in time between 1950 and 1926 and I was listening to it in bed whilst drifting off. Essentially the story of a doomed marriage between a domineering husband and an unhappy wife.

Elizabeth Jane Howard, nevertheless a favourite author. Like many I love The Cazalet Chronicles, I've just been notified by my library that The Golden Hours is in transit. This is a book written by EJH's niece continuing the story of the younger Cazalets bringing the timeline up to the '50s and '60s. The only trouble will be, I read the books some years ago, so I'm hoping I'll remember all the characters.

48. Warm Bodies, John Marrs

This was fun, in a twisted way! Just a short novella, good for Hallowe’en. Brenda moves with her daughter and grandchildren to a chocolate box English village. She’s not accepted by the gossipy local women, and their WhatsApp group is full of innuendo and gossip about her. If they knew what Brenda did for a living, they’d leave her alone…

88. You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming.

#89. The Farmer’s Wife by Helen Rebanks.

80-Daughters of Courage-Margaret Dickinson
A 1920/30's family saga set in Sheffield during the difficult years between the wars. An insight to how families and businesses struggled.

66 The Homemade God Rachel Joyce Audio

This was an easy listen by the author who wrote Harold Fry, which I enjoyed some years ago. When Vic Kemp, 76 year old artist of some success suddenly marries Bella-Mae a conceptual artist in her 20s, younger than his four children thus throwing up a whole chain of events that will turn their worlds upside down. The newly weds decamp to Vic's palazzo in Lake Orta, Pidemont so Vic can working on his impending "masterpiece" Tragedy is to strike, a mere 6 weeks after the marriage, Vic is to drown in the lake and in the aftermath of that the four grown up children from his first marriage travel to Italy. Whilst trying to settle his estate, which it appears has been left to his new wife in its entirety unless they can find his missing will and at the same time try to recover the painting he was working on. Tensions are heightened between the siblings as old ground is mulled over and new revelations come to light.

67 Washington Black Esi Edugyan

Book club choice. I approached this book with a certain amount of trepidation, given the main theme of slavery on a Barbados Plantation, knowing the inevitability of the brutality that those terrible places harboured. However, it was a great read, aside from the violence.

As a young boy, Wash as he is referred to throughout, is selected to be taken from the hard relentless toil in the cane fields, by the cruel Plantation owner's younger brother, Christopher, known as Titch. His role thereafter is far easier as a member of the household and an assistant to his master's scientific endeavours. Titch unlike his brother is an abolitionist and altogether much kinder. Due to an incident that Titch knows Wash will get the blame for they take flight literally via a hot air balloon, untested in its initial stages of development. Titch had recognised Wash's talent as an artist which he fosters, an aptitude that is to take him far, both geographically and in how he uses it in a scientific capacity. Danger drives the plot along, as Titch and Wash make their way via an overly coincidental crash landing during a storm on to the deck of a ship en route to Virginia. On their arrival in the US, they learn there is a bounty hunter on their trail, knowing Wash's life depends on being one step ahead, their various journeys takes them far north into the Arctic where circumstances separate them. Wash, still only early teens, further journeys to Nova Scotia, where he lives until early adulthood, free but living covertly, he is to find love and through that becomes part of a scientific project, taking him to England where he is integral part of developing London's first aquarium, Ocean House. An overriding desire to find his liberator and former protector, Titch, take him first to Amsterdam and finally Morocco. I really enjoyed the book although I found the ending too ambiguous and open to interpretation and some of the settings maybe too coincidental to really believe they could have happened.

TerriBull I enjoyed Washington Black when I read it a few years ago. Some twists that stretched the imagination, but very good nonetheless.

#13 Sanctum by Denise Mina
This was published back in 2002. Dr Susie Harriet, a forensic psychiatrist, is convicted of murdering Andrew Gow, a serial killer in her care. Her husband Lachlan is convinced she is innocent and spends long hours locked in her study, going through her papers, trying to find something that will help her to appeal her conviction. The further he delves, the more questions, secrets and obsessions are uncovered. The ending is a twist which I didn’t see coming. An enjoyable read. 8/10

#74 *Smoke and Mirrors by Elly Griffiths
This is the second book in the Brighton Mysteries series and its panto season in Brighton. Two children go missing when they are planning putting on their own play, a blizzard hampers the search for them. Can Edgar and his team find them before it too late? 8/10

#75 Spiderweb by Penelope Lively
Stella is an anthropologist who has lived over the world studying interactions and familial links in small communities. She retires to a little cottage in Somerset due to some happy memories from her younger life. She slowly starts to get to know her neighbours, acquires a dog and begins to realise it’s different living as a member of a community, rather being an outsider observing it.
This was my first Penelope Lively book and, although her writing style is very good, something about this book just didn’t really do it for me. 7/10

41 Battles in Britain 1066-1746

Interesting in parts but I preferred the Tudor and Jacobite periods. In my opinion bot very well written. OH's book and once I'd finished he said he gave up on it half way through. Still it's done at last.

Thanks for your feedback on WB AliBeeee, I must admit I hadn't heard of it before.

#76 Murder in Drumbreck Bay by Aline Templeton
This the 3rd book in a series of police investigations set in the Galloway area of south west Scotland, with DI Marjory Fleming in charge. A young woman’s battered body is found deep in the forest above a tourist village. As the investigation proceeds, grudges, infidelities and lies are exposed in the community. 8/10

#77 The Heather Blazing by Colm Toibin
Eamon Redmond is a Dublin high court judge. His nature is to be remote and introverted, even with his family. As illness affects his family, he finds himself mulling on his childhood and his earlier life, while at the same time being forced to face a very different future. The writing style is good, but story didn’t really engage me. 7/10

At 77 books, I have matched my total for last year!

#90. Home Stretch by Graham Norton.