#30. Picked Without Reading The Blurb – Pine by Francine Toon (Paperback)

Sometimes I think book cover designers are not given the credit that they deserve. For me, an intriguing cover can be a reason why I choose a book, and the cover on Pine was precisely why I bought it. I think the cover is simple, but hauntingly beautiful and intriguing. Fortunately, the book was just as good as the cover, and I can see why this was shortlisted for the Bloody Scotland Crime Debut of the Year. 

“Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by forest. When a woman stumbles on to the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house. In the morning, she’s gone.

In a community where daughters rebel and men quietly rage, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when a local teenager goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.

In a place that can feel like the edge of the world, In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern Gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times..”

This is a perfect winter read; a good gothic thriller set in the wild Scottish Highlands that chills you to the bone. It’s one for curling yourself up in a blanket to read, preferably in front of a roaring fire and maybe with a little tipple of something to hand! 

Ten-year-old Lauren lives with her father in a tiny village near the Moray Firth. Her mother disappeared shortly after her birth and her father drowns his sorrows in bottles of whisky. This book reminded me of “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins – not in terms of the story – but because of the feeling of unease when reading it, and the mysterious ghostly figure seen wandering the woods dressed in a white dressing gown. 

One night when Lauren and her father are driving home, a female figure steps out in front of their vehicle. She’s unresponsive, and they take her back to their home. They give her something to eat and a bed for the night but come morning the woman has gone. Lauren vividly remembers the events of the night, but her father doesn’t, however, he is usually intoxicated most evenings so that doesn’t come as a surprise. Lauren keeps seeing this gaunt female figure, wearing just a dressing gown in this bleak, frozen Scottish landscape. Other villagers have seen the figure too, but they quickly forget they have seen her, which leaves Lauren confused and scared.

#29. Published In A Year Of The Dragon – Ten Seconds by Robert Gold (Audible)

2024 is the year of the Wood Dragon according to the Chinese zodiac. This meant that there were numerous novels to choose from in this year’s releases (let alone books from previous years of the dragon!) 

As I’ve been completing this challenge, I’ve been switching books from their initial category into a more suitable one and several of my #29 choices have ended up elsewhere. 

I noticed that Gold’s latest Ben Harper novel had been released on Audible, and as I’d read Eleven Liars earlier in the year, I decided I would listen to Ten Seconds whilst the earlier storyline was still in my memory. I couldn’t find another category to house this book, so it has ended up as my year of the dragon book choice.

“After a tense birthday celebration in Haddley, journalist Ben Harper watches his boss, Madeline, get into the car that has come to collect her. He walks home, never imagining that by the next morning, Madeline will be missing.

To find Madeline, Ben will have to return to the now infamous murder case that made her journalism career over a decade ago. A case which, Ben quickly discovers, was never as simple as it seemed.

But time is of the essence, and soon it's not just Madeline's life on the line . . .”

For me, one of the joys of listening to these novels is that they are easy to follow. I don’t want very complicated storylines for an Audible book because I want to be focused on my surroundings whilst walking, or I don’t want to be concentrating so hard on the book that I chop my finger off whilst cooking. This third novel in the series is about an hour shorter than the previous one, so it made for a quick easy listen and introduced us to plenty of characters, old and new, in another multi-layered tale.

In the previous storylines of this Ben Harper series, each case he has worked on has had a personal connection to him. In the earlier books we have visited the family history of the main character Ben and then we learnt about detective Dani Cash, his romantic “lead.” In this book we delve into the past of Ben’s boss Madeline Wilson. She now finds herself in grave danger thanks to her past investigations into crime and corruption when she was a young reporter. (It seems that if you know Ben Harper you should always keep your doors and windows locked and run if he ever asks for help!)

#26. Hybrid Genre – The Village Healer’s Book of Cures by Jennifer Sherman Roberts (Kindle)

This book was another Amazon Prime First read.  

Chosen in October 2023, the blurb sounded of a similar vein to a book I’d enjoyed called The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown. Both books feature a character called Matthew Hopkins, who in real life was a ruthless English witch-hunter and self-styled Witchfinder General. His career flourished during the English Civil War 1642-1651 and he was prevalent in the East Anglian area of England. His job as a witch-finder lasted from 1644-1647, but during those three years, he and his colleague sent more people to be hanged for witchcraft than all previous witch-finders in the preceding 160 years.  

“In seventeenth-century England, a female healer enflames the fury of a witchfinder in this propulsive novel about murder, revenge, and the dangerous power of knowledge.

Mary Fawcett refines the healing recipes she’s inherited from generations of women before her—an uncanny and moral calling to empathize with the sick. When witchfinder Matthew Hopkins arrives in her small village, stoking the fires of hate, he sees not healing but the devil at work. Mary’s benevolent skills have now cast her and her young brother under suspicion of witchery.

Soon, the husband of one of Mary’s patients is found murdered, his body carved with strange symbols. For Hopkins, it’s further evidence of dark arts. When the whispering village turns against her, Mary dares to trust a stranger: an enigmatic alchemist, scarred body and soul, who knows the dead man’s secrets.

As Hopkins’s fervor escalates, Mary must outsmart the devil himself to save her life and the lives of those she loves. Unfolding the true potential of her gifts could make Mary a more empowered adversary than a witchfinder ever feared.”

At under 300 pages this was a quick read. I found the start of the book interesting, but as the story progressed the plot started to veer off tangent and I wasn’t sure what I was reading, a murder mystery, a story about how women were mistreated in the 17th Century, or a book about the supernatural. I know the novel is a mixed genre, but I didn’t feel the author knew where the storyline was heading, so it just became a confusing mash-up of a tale.

Mary Fawcett is a young woman who is a talented healer. She has studied the recipes of her ancestors and refined them so that she can help the weak and sick in her village. Her parents are dead and so she is looking after her young brother Tom who was born with a club foot. The other children avoid him, so his best friend is a crow he named Greedyguts. 

#24. A Cover Without People On It – The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa (Paperback)

I’m most definitely an animal person rather than a people person. I love animals and merely tolerate people. If asked, I prefer horses and cats to any other animal. I don’t dislike dogs, but I’ve always had cats. I can’t say owned, because no-one owns a cat, they make that very clear. That’s not to say they aren’t loving animals, they are, but everything is on their own terms. Perhaps that’s why I like them. You can learn a lot from a cat, if only you can be bothered to look.

“I heard this heavy sniffling sound.

Then a brush of whiskers.

When I opened my eyes, Tom was lounging on his side, gazing at me.

His black eyes were urging me to Get up!

He led me to the living room cupboard.

I’m hungry, so bring out some snacks! he said.

It was 3a.m.”

One of my favourite books over the last few years is ‘The Travelling Cat Chronicles’ by Hiro Arikawa. Even several years after reading it I get emotional thinking about it. I couldn’t remember sobbing over a book like that before. When I noticed this book by the same author in the bookshop, I didn’t think twice about buying the it. 

‘The Goodbye Cat’ has left me with mixed emotions. I think if you read a book you love, you leave yourself open to disappointment when the next one is published. I hadn’t realised it was a book of seven short stories when I bought it (I only looked at the front cover.) The various stories it tells revolve around the relationship between humans and cats, and as the title implies, each story ends with a goodbye, whether it being death or moving on in a different manner. It’s therefore essential to make sure you have a box of tissues handy!

#23. The Other Book With The Similar Plot – Murder on Lake Garda by Tom Hindle (Paperback)

As mentioned in the previous blog, this book was my friend’s holiday read which she passed to me once she’d finished with it.

I was already reading two books that I had taken with me, but one of them was a nice hardback I didn’t want ruining with sea and sand, so this seemed a perfect book to pop to the beach with. 

I wasn’t filled with much confidence as her assessment of the book was basically ‘it’s okay for a holiday read.’ By her tone, I surmised it’d be a quick easy read that wouldn’t give the old grey cells too much of a problem. Sadly, I was right, the new Agatha Christie this was not!

“One happy couple.

Two divided families.

A wedding party to die for.

 

On the private island of Castello Fiore - surrounded by the glittering waters of Lake Garda - the illustrious Heywood family gathers for a wedding to remember.

 

But as the ceremony begins, a blood-curdling scream brings the celebrations to a violent halt.

 

With the guests trapped on the island as they await the police, old secrets come to light and family rivalries threaten to explode.

 

Everyone is desperate to know . . .

 

Who is the killer?

 

And can they be found before they strike again?”

 

So, what is my issue with this book that I didn’t have with ‘The Guest List’? Well for starters I worked out who had been murdered after the first two pages…even though we hadn’t been told who had died (in two pages you haven’t been told much to be honest!) Secondly, we go back in time to two days before the murder, just so people’s back stories can be laid out before us. As soon as one of the characters said their name wasn’t short for anything, I thought, oh I imagine it is, and I wondered what the other variations of that name were, so as I ploughed on reading, I realised which one it was. The author has tried to incorporate alternate narratives to add to the tension and possibly sow seeds of doubt, but for me, the red herrings in the book turned out to be more of a pink-footed goose chase… and I’m not talking Fuchsia Pink here, more of a Blossom or Baby Pink. At least the ending made sense, if predictable, so not all was bad. In honesty, I kept reading because it was part of the challenge and to see whether my assumptions were correct. Just call me Jane Marple!

As a beach read goes, it was enjoyable enough and the setting I was in enhanced the experience. I might have been in Montenegro, but I was sat on a beach with a mountain range looming up before me, which reminded me so much of my holiday by Lake Garda several years ago. Coincidentally, I stayed in Malcesine where this book is set, and I have visited the castle where the wedding took place. The castle is actually on the mainland, but it does house a museum and a wedding was in full-swing  when we visited; the happy couple having their photos taken in the most idyllic surroundings.

#22. A Plot Similar to Another Book – The Guest List by Lucy Foley (Paperback)

This was originally going to be my “#7. At Least Four Different POV” read, however, whilst on holiday my friend finished reading “Murder on Lake Garda” and then handed it over to me.

As she told me the premise of the book, I couldn’t help but think it sounded like a very familiar story…in fact very similar to the previous book I’d just read! Now a murder on an island is not a new idea, indeed Agatha Christie did just that in great style with “And Then There Were None.” The first book I read for this challenge, “Daisy Darker” also features people stranded on an island where a murder takes place, however, both ‘The Guest List’ and ‘Murder on Lake Garda’ feature a WEDDING and MURDER on an island where there is a mystery to be solved!

"Each has a secret

Each has a motive

Off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year 

Old friends

Past grudges

Happy families

Hidden jealousies

Thirteen guests

One body

One guest won’t leave this wedding alive..."

The book starts in the middle of the story, where the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater has just taken place. This seems rather apt seeing as the focus of events takes place on an island in the middle of the sea!

The wedding guests are celebrating in a marquee as a storm starts raging across the island, the intensity of the tempestuous wind causes the electrics to short circuit and for a moment the guests are left in darkness. When the generator begins to operate and the lights come back on, the guests hear a terrified scream emanating from the darkness outside…

#21. Written By A Ghostwriter – There’s a Hole in my Bucket by Royd Tolkien (Kindle)

This is another of my forgotten Amazon First Reads – this time from July 2021. I picked this book because of the Tolkien name, but I knew it wasn’t going to be anything like the Lord of the Ring books due the difficult and sensitive subject matter. I did think it would be a harrowing but interesting read and would be treated with suitable gravitas. I was wrong.

 

“Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand.

Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: fifty things he wanted Royd to do after his death. His first task? Mike wants his mild-mannered brother to trip up on his way to the lectern to deliver his eulogy. What follows is a set of emotionally charged tests that will push Royd firmly out of his comfort zone.

This is the story of Royd’s journey to accomplish a challenging, humorous, and often heart-breaking list of unknown tasks that chart the brothers’ lives from childhood to adulthood. But above all, it is a story of the sibling bond, of grief—and of treasuring every moment.”

 

Due to the subject matter, I really wanted to be more positive about this book, but I found it hard to keep engaged reading, so I could only read a couple of the short chapters each evening until I eventually got to the end. The 357 pages seem to go on forever.

I cannot imagine how hard it would be to watch my adventurous brother become ill, health gradually declining, desperate to find an answer from doctors to what is wrong, only to finally be told it was Motor Neurone Disease. It doesn’t bear thinking about, and I wouldn’t wish that sort of suffering on anyone, but this book just feels like a self-indulgent bit of therapy cashing in on the Tolkien name.

It is clear from the book that Royd and Mike loved one another dearly but were very different people. Mike might have been the younger brother, but he would tease Royd mercilessly and always push that little bit further; whether it was how high he could climb a tree or how high he could throw himself out of an airplane, Mike always had to get the better of Royd who didn’t share the same bon homie as his brother, he seemed happier with his feet on the ground with a cuppa.