France's reading 2025

[France]

1. The God of the Woods - Liz Moore *****

2. The Dark Wives - Anne Cleeves  ****1/2

3. The Night We Lost Him - Laura Dave****1/2

4.The King is Dead. long live the King! Martin Williams ****

5. Cold as Hell - Lilja Sigurdardottir ***1/2

6. The Island of Longing - Anne Griffin ****1/2

7. Of Mice and Murder - Sally Smith ***1/2

8. A Dry Spell - Clare Chambers ****

9.  A Voyage Around the Queen - Craig Brown ****1/2

10. The two deaths of Ruth Lyle - Nick Louth **

11. Onyx Storm - Rebecca Yarros ****1/2

12. High Vaultage - Chris Sugden ***

13. The Wicked Boy - Kate Summerscale **** (plus a little bit).

14. Here One Moment - Liane Moriaty *****

15. Ruskin Park - Rory Cellan Jones ***1/2

16. The Fellowship of puzzelmakers - Samuel Burr ***

17. The >Lantern Men - Elly Griffiths ****

18. The Locked Room - Elly Griffiths ***

19. The Last Remains - Elly Griffiths ****1/2

20. The Wedding People - Alison Espach *****

21.  Long Island - Colm Toibin ****1/2

22.  You're A Brick Angela - Mary Cadogan & Patricia Craig ***

23. Hope I Get Old Before I Die - David Hepworth****

24. The Venetian Candidate - Phillip Gwynne Jones****

25. Whiteout - R S Burnett **

26. The Artist n- Lucy Steeds ****

27. Hunted - Abir Mukherjee DNF

28. Death at the Sign of the Rook - Kate Atkinson ****1/2

29. The Bookbinder of Jericho - Pip Williams ***1/2

30. The Road to Roswell - Connie Willis ****1/2

31. The Frozen People -Elly Griffiths ****

32. The Cannonball Tree Mystery - Ovidia Yu ****

33. Conclave - Robert Harris ****1/2

34. The Chalk Pit -Elly Griffith ****

35. You Are Here - David Nicholls ****1/2

36< The King's Evil - Andrew Taylor ****1/2

37. Murder Below Deck - Orlando Murrin ***1/2

38. Welcome to Glorious Tuga - Francesca Segal *****

39. Mrs Spy -M J Robwotham ***

40. Three Days in June -Anne Tyler *****

41. How to Age Disgracefully -Clare Pooley ***1/2

42. None of this is True - Lisa Jewell ****

43< Shadows in the Moonlight - Santa Montefiore ****

44. Business as Usual - Jane Oliver *****

45. Three Days in June _ Anne Tyler *****

46.The Spy Coast -b Tess Gerritson ****

47. Death at the White Hart _ Chris Chibnall  ***1/2

48. Spêncers List -b Lissa Evans ****

49. >The Unwilding -Marina Kemp ****

50. The Summer Guests -Tess Gerritson ****

51. <The <secret Room - Jane Casey ****1/2

52 Bad Influence -CJ Wray ***1/2

53. Kiss Myself Goodbye - Ferdinand Mount ****

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 13 by France

[Madeleine]

They've just shown the TV version of The Dark Wives, the last ever episode of Vera! It was quite good.

[France]

On 1/7/2025 at 2:59 PM, Madeleine said:

They've just shown the TV version of The Dark Wives, the last ever episode of Vera! It was quite good.

I suspect that the book is better! I'm currently listening to one of the Midsomer murders book on Audible and there an interesting prologue from John Nettles in which he says that though TV adaptations are  often very good they are rarely as good since TV can't often allow the time for nuance or character development in the way a book can.

[Madeleine]

Yes exactly, they have a time limit on a TV programme or film. Mind you some books can do with serious editing!

[France]

The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. 15 years ago the Van Laars 8 year old son vanished during a huge week long party thrown by his parents.  Now their 13 year old daughter has disappeared in almost identical circumstances.

 

This book was apparently the book club choice in America last year and I can see why. It has its faults, some of the characters are very two dimensional and all the rich personages are mean, venal, self serving, duplicitous, totally amoral, weak, drunk.... it can get a bit samey, but all the same this is a fast, pacey, well written book which kept me utterly absorbed.

 

A great start to 2025 and recommended.

 

 

[France]

Anne Cleeves is definitely back to form after her last Vera book  in The Dark Wives.  A young care worker is murdered outside the place he works at and a troubled 14 year old girl has gone missing. There's a new member of the team, exuberant, slightly blousy Rosie, a nicely twisty plot and as ever a tremendous sense of place. 

 

 The Night We Lost Him by Laura Dave.  A rich businessman falls to his death off a cliff he knows well. It's assumed it's an accident but his son isn't so sure and enlists his estranged half sister into doing some investigating. It's not a particularly memorable book but I was surprised at how fast paced and addictive it was, I read it in 24 hours.

 

I was shocked at how little non-fiction I read last year so have decided to really up the amount this one. The King is Dead. Long live the King! by Martin Williams is about Edward VII , his reign, both in what he did and the social life around it, and the aftermath of his death. It's fascinating, Edward spent a very long time being refused a proper role and waiting to take the throne (remind you of anyone) and turned out to be excellent at his job. It's not overdetailed, the writing is clear and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

 

[France]

Cold as Hell by Lilja Sigurdardottir was touted as the latest big thing in Icelandic noir. Orora, half Icelandic, half Scottish, living in Scotland goes to Iceland to search for her estranged sister who has disappeared, enlisting the help of a police detective on holiday who just happens to be her sort of uncle (was married to a relation). The scene setting and descriptions of Iceland are wonderful, the story line which lacks tension less so. It may be the translator, he's a crime novelist in his own right and I read one of his books ages ago and found it uninspiring. I doubt I'll read any more in this series.

 

Anne Griffin's When All Is Said about an elderly man sitting alone at a hotel bar and toasting the five people who meant most to him in his life was one of those wonderful, quiet books where not a lot happens but you still can't stop reading and finish with a true sense of having been taken to another place.  I've had The Island of Longing, her most recent novel, for some time but didn't feel like starting it in case it was a disappointment. It wasn't.  The subject is on the face of it hardly uplifting, nearly eight years ago Rosie's 17 year old daughter disappeared from outside their house and Rosie cannot move on and accept that Saiorce is probably dead. Her obsession with looking for her has nearly destroyed her marriage and she's had a breakdown. Rosie agrees to go to the small island where she grew up in the West of Ireland for the summer to help her father run the ferry to the mainland and gradually she changes. It sounds gloomy but it absolutely isn't, I loved it.

 

A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith is a fairly run of the mill crime story. It's 1901 and the Lord Chief Justice has been found murdered in  the Inner Temple in London. The police are only allowed to enter the Temple by invitation and for discretion's sake it's decided that a barrister should investigate the death, Sir Gabriel Ward, who found the body.  It's a nice enough tale but ultimately unmemorable  .

[France]

I'm not a Royalist or an anti-Royalist either, I'm just not particularly interested in them most of the time and wouldn't have bothered with A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown if it hadn't been given to my husband for Christmas which he  passed on with a "Worth reading" comment.

 

This is not your usual biography, there are over 100 chapters ad very few of them are about the Queen directly, instead her life is told in a series of vignettes, ranging from a saccharine "biography" of a four year old Princess Elizabeth, the story of the corgies including  a full family tree from the Queen's first one, to dreams people have about her, President Ceausescu's state visit (she called him "that horrid man"), her love of racing, being painted by Rolf Harris and Lucien Freud and what she really thought of the royal yacht Britannia.  And far more. What really surprised me was discovering that she believed that her obligation to her people came from God, I thought that particular notion had gone out of fashion with Charles I in 1649.

 

In some sections she comes over as thoroughly dislikeable, then comes a section written from a different perspective where she's kind and intuitive and opinion changes again. Craig Brown is a satirist and can be very funny, and  by and large keeps his opinions to himself though it's obvious he has little time for Prince Harry.  His section on the death of the Queen and the public reaction to it was unexpectedly moving because there was no hyperbole or mawkishness.

 

All in all it was definitely worth reading.

Edited January 28 by France

[muggle not]

Anxiously awaiting your review of Onyx Storm. I have the book on hold at the library. Yesterday I obtained Colors of the Dark from the library but will not start reading it until I finish David Baldacci's latest book, To Die For.

[France]

The Two Deaths of Ruth Lyle by Nick Louth  sounded so promising, a 66 year old woman is found murdered in the same way , in the same spot and with what looks like the same murder weapon as a 16 year old girl who was killed 50 years ago. What more they share the same name, the same birthday, the same fillings in their teeth...  That was about as good as it got.  The writing was totally pedestrian and pedantic, the author doesn't seem to like Devon very much as there's a lot about how run down the towns are and as for the police - the men seem to be mentally set back in the 70's with a degree of sexism and racism that I'm certain doesn't exist even in rural backwaters and a female detective who tells the new Muslim programmer (who goes by the unlikely name of Primrose)  that her husband married her for 'there' and cups both breasts in her hands. <The denouement both relied too heavily on co-incidence and a chapter long confession from the murderer.

 

No I didn't enjoy it and I won't be reading this author again.

[France]

 

5 minutes ago, muggle not said:

Anxiously awaiting your review of Onyx Storm. I have the book on hold at the library. Yesterday I obtained Colors of the Dark from the library but will not start reading it until I finish David Baldacci's latest book, To Die For.

Here you are!

 

Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros is the third in a series of five, I reckon just about every reader on the planet has heard of these books and has an opinion on them, whether they've read them or not.  If you don't like fantasy, don't like dragons, this definitely won't be for you but I love both, accept the love interest and slide over the sex scenes which really are too much for me (and quite a lot of other people too))

 

I think this book holds up really well, it always difficult to keep up the momentum in the middle of a series but imo she manages it particularly with developing the characters of the dragons.  There are a lot of characters to keep track of and the list of who was who in Violet's squad, their dragons and their signet (magic ability ) did come in very useful. Pacing was good and the ending was excellent (even though a lot of people on Goodreads claimed they didn't understand it. Can't think why.)

 

All in all a thoroughly good read - my only quibble is the introduction of a new character who had been playing an important role right in the last few pages who had never been mentioned before.

 

Incidentally there's a lot of stuff going around about the book being printed with missing pages, that it should have 544 and the story ends on 527.  The book is fine there are 527 printed pages and the other 17 are endpapers, title pages, acknowledgements etc.

 

 

[Madeleine]

1 hour ago, France said:

The Two Deaths of Ruth Lyle by Nick Louth  sounded so promising, a 66 year old woman is found murdered in the same way , in the same spot and with what looks like the same murder weapon as a 16 year old girl who was killed 50 years ago. What more they share the same name, the same birthday, the same fillings in their teeth...  That was about as good as it got.  The writing was totally pedestrian and pedantic, the author doesn't seem to like Devon very much as there's a lot about how run down the towns are and as for the police - the men seem to be mentally set back in the 70's with a degree of sexism and racism that I'm certain doesn't exist even in rural backwaters and a female detective who tells the new Muslim programmer (who goes by the unlikely name of Primrose)  that her husband married her for 'there' and cups both breasts in her hands. <The denouement both relied too heavily on co-incidence and a chapter long confession from the murderer.

 

No I didn't enjoy it and I won't be reading this author again.

I have this book as I'd heard good reviews.....I will try it, especially as I got it in a discount book shop and only paid about a third of the normal price for it!

[France]

40 minutes ago, Madeleine said:

I have this book as I'd heard good reviews.....I will try it, especially as I got it in a discount book shop and only paid about a third of the normal price for it!

I got it discounted on Kobo!

 

I hope you like it better than me.

[France]

Two distinctly curate's eggs here.

 

I had high hopes of High Vaultage by Chris Sugden which is apparently the novelisation of a very successful podcast he has ben running. It's a steam-punk world where Even Greater London stretches over the whole of the south of England, Queen Victoria is largely machine due to repairs done to moving parts after repeated assassination attempts and Clara Entwhistle and former Inspector Fleet (former because he was shot, declared dead and then repaired and it's going to take years to get his death revoked) are trying to get their detective agency going. 

 

This looked great fun, it won the Wodehouse prize and Chris Sugden has been compared to both Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. Sadly he isn't anywhere near either. Parts of the book were funny, but not funny enough and the non-funny bits dragged. It became an utter slog.

 

The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale was a lot better and the good bits far outweighed the slow parts.  In June 1895 Robert and Nattie Coobles, brothers aged 13 and 11, told their neighbours their mother had gone to Liverpool to look after a sick relative and went to Lords to watch cricket. Their father was at sea and the boys asked a family acquaintance to stay with them for the time being.  Then people started noticing the smell...

 

There isn't much mystery about the murder itself, not about who did it though the details of what really happened probably differ from the official line. The descriptions of police procedure, trials, the way the law operated, the behaviour of the press, the startlingly humane regime at Broadmoor were fascinating, the problem is that Kate Summerscale is in love with her own research and can't resist displaying it. For instance there's far too much detail about the cricket match and how many runs were made etc but the biggest problem was with Robert Coombes' later life which wasn't particularly relevant. Yes, as a boy he committed a heinous crime for whatever reason but he wasn't the first one to reform and a couple of chapters would have covered his afterlife, instead it stretched to over 60 pages. So brilliant on parts, saggy in others but still very interesting.

[France]

For me Liane Moriaty hasn't written a really good book since the compulsive Big Little Lies, but oh boy is she back on form with Here One Moment.  On a flight from Hobert to Sydney an elderly woman stands up and predicts the age and kind of death for everyone on the plane. A psychic or a nutjob? Then the deaths start. The story arc follows the woman and what took her to that place and several on board as they either ignore her prediction or try to change fate.  It's full of twists that keep you guessing all the way to the final page and isn't predictable.

 

Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.

[France]

It's been too long since I did a catch up!

 

 I probably wouldn't have bothered  with The Wedding People by Alison Espach which is described as Romance by the publisher if it hadn't been for the Guardian saying it was a book to read in 2025.  Yes, there is romance but basically it's a whip-smart social comedy and very funny in places. Phoebe arrives at a luxury hotel intending to spend her last evening looking at the view, eating oysters and drinking champagne before ending it and finds out she's the only guest in the place not there for a week long wedding. Without meaning to she  gets involved with the bride and the rest of the party and everything gets busy. Clever, well written and charming. 

 

 

 Long Island by Colm Toibin is a follow up to Brooklyn which I absolutely loved.  It's 1976 and Eillis, is in a marital crisis and goes back to Ireland with her two children for her mother's 80th birthday while her husband decides what to do. And there's still a lot of unfinished business from when she made her sudden return to the States 20 years before. As ever Toibin's writing is sublime and Eilis is a fascinating character but this book lacks some of the punch of Brooklyn, possibly because it's revisiting some  of the same ground.  Even so it's still one of the best books I've read this year. 

 

[muggle not]

I cannot find "All the Colors of the Dark" on your reading list??

[France]

23 hours ago, muggle not said:

I cannot find "All the Colors of the Dark" on your reading list??

I rad it in October last year.

[lunababymoonchild]

On 4/23/2025 at 7:13 PM, muggle not said:

I cannot find "All the Colors of the Dark" on your reading list??

It’s here: All The Colours of the Dark

[muggle not]

5 hours ago, France said:

I rad it in October last year.

That is a pretty good reason. 😀

[France]

 

 Hope I Get Old Before I Die by David Hepworth is definitely one for the older generation who can actually remember Roger Daltrey singing about how he hoped to die before he got old or their children who discovered that their parents' tastes weren't too bad in some respect. For those who aren't already familiar with music from the 60s and 70s this story of the remarkable longevity of some of the groups and artists (and we aren't just talking of the Rolling Stones) will not mean much.

 

David Hepworth is a music journalist who has written several other books on the music of the same period and is a funny and clever author who obviously loves his subject without being too dazzled by it.  I've read other books by him and think he stretched out  his material a bit too much in this book but even so his style made it a good read and a lot of what he wrote about was fascinating - especially if you already like the music. And I'd never realised what an all round nice guy Bruce Springsteen is.

 

 

Death at the Sign of the Rook by  Kate Atkinson , the sixth in her series with private detective Jackson Brodie, seems to be a bit f a Marmite book.  People either loathe it because it isn't a conventional detective novel and think it's too slow or love it. I'm in camp no 2.  It does start slowly with a murder mystery weekend at a decaying country house, then going back in time a little to when Brodie is called in by the children of a recently deceased woman to trace the disappearance of a picture from her bedroom, but Atkinson is such an entertaining writer that for me the lack of initial pace didn't matter.  She juggles a lot of themes, some of them preposterous but all in all this was huge fun.

 

[France]

I was looking forward to The Frozen People by Elly Griffiths which is the start of a new series involving time travel and, I imagine, a dual time lines theme with the Victorian and the present day impinging on each other. The main character Ally, a feisty, single parent, who goes back to Victorian times is well rounded and appealing, the problem lies with the modern story and Ally's son where the plot is just plain silly to the extent I put the book down a couple of times with an exasperated 'That wouldn't happen!'. (I've noticed before that Elly Griffiths s better at characterisation than plot.)  That said it was a fairly pleasant read with definite hope that once she gets into her stride this series might become something good.  I'll give the next one a go.

 

Ovidia Yu  is, according to the blurb on the back of the book, Singapore's best selling detective novelist.   Hmmm. The Cannonball Tree Mystery is well worth reading because of the setting, Singapore during the war under theJapanese occupation. Su Lin is half Japanese, half Chinese, and is this book the fifth in a series, she is working in the mansion of the Japanese commander.  I enjoyed her, I enjoyed the descriptions of Singapore and the life at the time a lot but the plot was far too convoluted and the pace rather slow.

 

[Madeleine]

I'm looking forward to The Frozen People as well, I've read other dual time line books where the historical part has been much better than the modern story.  I've just started the latest of her Brighton Mysteries (formerly Mephisto and Stephens mysteries), I wasn't  that keen on the last one so I hope this one is better.

[France]

A round up of three absolutely top class reads, all very different.

Welcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal is the sort of book I might have avoided if it hadn't been recommended as one of the Guardian's books of the year as the idea of Charlotte, an introverted vet going to a remote Pacific island supposedly to do research but actually in search of her father and getting drawn into island life sounded a bit twee. In a less good writer it probably would have  but this book is a delightful surprise, funny and charming (and quite informative about eco systems too). It's part of a trilogy and I'm really looking forward to no 2.

 

Three Days in June by Anne Tyler It's the day before Gail's daughter's wedding, she's just walked out of her job, her ex turns up -with a cat - and her daughter is having a crisis.  The book is short, almost a novella and goes to prove that Anne Tyler may be over 80 but she's  still at the top of her game.  For me this is one of her very best.

 

Business as Usual by Jane Oliver  I'd actually read this years ago but it was returned to me last week and thought I'd see if I enjoyed it as much the second time round.  I did. Written in the early 1930s it's an epistolary novel, Hillary Fane, independent, well educated, has decided to work for a year in London while her rising doctor fiance finishes his exams in Edinburgh.  She gets taken on a clerk in a thinly disguised Selfridges and quickly rises upwards because she's bright, adaptable and creative. The letters she writes home to her parents and increasingly pompous fiance have a wonderful voice and are interspersed with memos to do with her work.  Some of it is very amusing and there's a strong streak of feminism running through it too.  It's well worth tracking down a copy (I'm pretty sure there isn't a Kindle version).