Hey Friend!
How are things?
Older Miss has made an impromptu visit home for a couple of days which is lovely. We’re currently working side by side, both tapping away on keyboards whilst Littler Miss and Little Dude are watching some nonsense next door (it’s a Minecraft video so yes, nonsense). OM keeps telling me to stop distracting her but she’s the one that keeps talking…
Anyway…
For the last few years, I’ve set myself a reading challenge on Goodreads and I’m pleased to say, I’ve already hit my target of 26 books.
Now, twenty-six sounds like an odd choice but last year I missed my target of twenty-five with a paltry nineteen books. When compared with 2024 and thirty-eight books in a year, you’ll understand my disappointment in 2025 and my joy in 2026.
So, I thought I’d share what’s been on my list this year.
These are the books I started with. I’m a big fan of historical fiction so A Girl’s Guide to Winning the War and The Book of Lost Names were instant pulls for me and I enjoyed both. The latter told the tale of ordinary people creating forged papers to allow children to escape France into Switzerland during the war. It’s amazing to me how people fought against the regime but we know so little of these stories.
Vera Wong was a must read as I loved the first book. This one, however, wasn’t as good unfortunately.
The Wedding People has been lauded by many but I really couldn’t get on board with it – it was a hard slog. It was the same for The 24-Hour Café. I’ve read a few books by Libby Page and enjoyed all of them so far. This one was tricky though. The flashbacks didn’t work for me and there were so many characters that I lost track of what their situations were and how they related to the main characters, if at all.
I really like Jojo Moyes’s books and I enjoyed this one a lot. The stories I get lost in are mostly about familial relationships and friendships with a bit of romance thrown in so, this ticked all of those boxes.
The Names was a book I picked up at the supermarket having no idea it was being talked about a lot this year. But even so, it wasn’t really the book it was offering in the blurb. I thought it would be about how a name could change a person (I’m big on names and their meanings). However, it was actually about how circumstances can give different outcomes in life – a bit like the movie Sliding Doors in that sense. It was still a good read though so I would recommend.
The Little Paris Bookshop was a hard read. The blurb gave the impression that this was a book where the bookshop owner would recommend certain titles as a remedy for people’s emotional ailments. There was a very small – tiny amount of this in the book. The rest of the story was his turmoil at not saying goodbye to his dead ex-girlfriend. There were several chapters before I even knew her name because he couldn’t bring himself to say it… I skimmed through to the end.
The Correspondent was another book I picked up without realising it’s popularity but appealed to me – a whole book of letters? Yes, please! It did not disappoint. If you like this style of writing, I highly recommend it.
Everything is Beautiful was a story to get lost in. A hoarder who thought her loving boyfriend and best friend had run away together and dealt with the pain by collecting things until she could barely move around her house. There’s more to it than that, of course, but a great idea and well executed.
You’ll see the two Clare Mackintosh books were read in the wrong order. That’s because I didn’t know Littler Miss had the first book on her shelf (yes, we all have our own bookshelves and yes, they are all full). So we swapped afterwards. I liked A Game of Lies more than The Last Party – the plotline was tighter and (a first for me), I didn’t guess who the killer was so, thumbs up all round.
I decided to give Mike Gayle another chance after reading a couple of his books where important characters were killed off unnecessarily so, in my opinion. I was staging a one woman boycott, being wary of his books. This one, however, looked interesting and I’m happy to report that I’m glad I gave it a chance.
I’ll do book reviews on a few of these over the next couple of months but would love to know if you’ve read any of the ones on my list and your thoughts!
What are you reading now? Any recommendations?
I’m currently reading The Quiet Girls by Dororthy Koomson. I’ll let you know how I get on.
Speak soon xx
