April was strong.
Nine books. Would have been ten but just ran out of time. .
A week off work helped. Funny that. Give yourself time and things you actually enjoy start happening. Who knew.
No theme. No structure. Working way down my “to read” list. Time travel, murder, missing kids, revenge, second chances and the odd life choice that should probably come with a warning label.
Time Will Tell – Adrian Cousins
Back into the time travel madness.
Beth’s settled into the past. Or as settled as you can be when you’re technically not meant to exist there. It’s all ticking along nicely until someone starts asking questions.
And it’s always someone official.
DCI French gets a bit too interested and suddenly it’s not “this is working out alright actually”, it’s “we need to disappear immediately.”
More jumping about, more breaking things that probably shouldn’t be touched, and that familiar feeling that every fix is making it worse.
Exactly what you want from it. No messing about, just straight into the chaos.
A Bad, Bad Place – Frances Crawford
This one’s different.
Not loud, not trying to grab you, just quietly gets under your skin and stays there.
Glasgow in the 70s, and it feels tense before anything even happens. Then it does, and everything tightens.
Janey’s brilliant, but her nana… that’s the one. A little four foot something Scottish matriarch who reminded me a lot of my own nana. The kind who looks harmless until she absolutely isn’t.
Runs the room without saying much, sees more than she lets on, and you just know she’d win any argument going.
The whole community side is bang on. Rumours flying, people chatting rubbish, everyone convinced they’ve cracked it.
They haven’t.
Really, really good.
Heavy Metal Murder – Kristen Andrews
Right, reset. Chaos.
Rookie PI, one dead client, one dodgy client, a paranormal best mate and an ex who won’t clear off. Throw in gangsters, bad decisions and an 80s party and off it goes.
It’s ridiculous in places. Fully aware of it. Doesn’t care.
Flies along, doesn’t pretend to be anything it’s not, and is all the better for it.
Sometimes you don’t want clever. You just want fun.
The Ex-Wives Murder Club – Mette Ivie Harrison
This could have gone badly wrong.
Three ex-wives decide their husband needs removing. Fine. Standard stuff. But instead of calling it a day, they start thinking bigger.
That’s where it gets interesting.
It balances it well. Dark enough to have some bite, but not so dark it becomes hard work.
Also raises the slightly worrying thought that the line between a bad idea and a business plan is thinner than it should be.
Peter Tobin: Hunting Shadows – Jane Hamilton
This is where it stops being entertainment.
Properly real, properly heavy, and not something you just breeze through in an afternoon. But I did.
Anything around serial killers has always been a bit of a thing for me, so this was always getting read. But it’s not sensational, which is what makes it work.
It’s the work behind it. The digging, the patience, the moments where someone goes “hang on, that’s not right” and actually follows it up instead of moving on.
No fluff. No drama added. Just what happened.
You don’t enjoy it. But you’re glad you read it.
Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac – Gabrielle Zevin
Needed this after Tobin.
Lose a chunk of your life and try and piece it back together. Sounds simple. It isn’t.
There’s something quite uncomfortable about realising you might not even like the person you were.
Paperback as well, which made a nice change. Proper book, not staring at a screen for once.
Easy to get through, but not throwaway.
A Song of You and Me – Mike Gayle
Another paperback, another shift.
Old relationship, years apart, and that classic “what if we just…” idea that nearly always ends badly.
This is just typical Mike Gayle. No fuss, no drama for the sake of it, just solid, easy storytelling that pulls you in without you really noticing.
Never fails to impress. Just quietly gets on with it.
The Sleeping Season – Kelly Creighton
Back to something properly tense.
Missing child, straight into it, no messing about. Stakes are obvious from the start and it doesn’t let up.
DI Sloane’s got her own stuff going on as well, which adds to it without taking over.
No nonsense crime. In, does the job, out again. It’s number one of a series. I’ll get the rest.
The Book Club – C. J. Cooper
You know from the start something’s off.
New person arrives, gets into the group, fits in just a bit too well. Everyone’s friendly, everything’s fine… it isn’t.
Builds nicely, doesn’t drag, and doesn’t try to be cleverer than it needs to be.
Also confirms a long-held suspicion that not all book clubs are about books.
Overall
Nine books.
No plan, no theme, just reading what I fancied and actually having the time to do it.
Eight out of nine written by women, which wasn’t deliberate but says something about what I’m picking up without thinking about it.
Couple of paperbacks in there as well, which felt oddly satisfying. Actual pages. Who’d have thought.
Biggest difference this month though was simple. Time.
Had it. Used it properly. Turns out that makes a difference.
No overthinking. No forcing it.
Just reading, and a lot of it.
That’ll do.
Buy the Books
If anything here sounds like your sort of thing, here they are.
