All the Colours of the Dark – Chris Whitaker – 17.08.25

Oh my goodness! I was so enthralled by and engrossed in this book that I had several very late nights when I kept reading instead of going to sleep!

Patch and Saint are best friends from the poor end of town, and although Saint has feelings for Patch, he has a secret crush on rich girl, Misty.

One day when they are all young teens, something happens that will change all of their lives forever. Patch hears Misty screaming in the woods and goes to help her, fighting with the man who was trying to abduct her. She gets away but Patch is taken instead. Months go by, and the police would have given up the search for Patch if Saint hadn’t doggedly followed all possible leads and eventually discovered the pitch dark underground room where Patch had been held and rescued him.

Patch insists there was a girl with him in the room, a girl called Grace who he spoke with but never saw due to the darkness.

No trace of Grace is found and the police and psychiatrists think she was just something he imagined to help him through the ordeal, but he does not give up the belief that she is real and it becomes his life’s work to find and rescue her.

The ripples of this event spread through many lives, and as we follow Saint, Misty and Patch into adulthood we see how it shapes them.

I thought it was brilliant – the suspense never lets up – was Grace real? Will Patch ever find her? Will he destroy his life (and others) by following the quest so single mindedly?

The characters are well rounded and I felt real emotional ties to many of them, almost hiding behind my hands at the turns their lives were taking and willing things to go better for them.

I loved the ending and the bittersweet feel of the whole book – just great!

Elsewhere – Gabrielle Zevin – 13.08.25

This was a sweet readable book offering a novel suggestion for the afterlife – the recently deceased wake on a type of cruise ship headed for Elsewhere where they might meet friends and relatives who predeceased them. In Elsewhere you arrive the age you were when you died, and then age backward – ie. get younger until at seven days old, you are swaddled in slowly dissolving strips and launched into the river of current which takes a week to get back to earth where you are ‘born again’ as a new person.

15 year old Liz died in a hit and run collision and lives in Elsewhere with the grandmother she never met in life because she died when Liz’s mum was expecting her.

In Elsewhere there are things like the viewers they used to have at the seaside where you put in a coin and look at the distance which allow the dead to watch the living. Liz becomes obsessed partly with watching her family and partly with finding out who killed her. She has to go through a kind of grieving process for the life she left behind, and the fact that she will never be older than 15 (in fact she will get younger, so will always be a child) and the book takes us through her stages (anger, denial, acceptance etc) in quite a nice and thoughtful way.

I don’t really get the point of reincarnation as a belief if the person has no knowledge of having lived before – isn’t that just the same as one person ending and a new person beginning? Some people might disagree with me, I know – just my opinion.

A Cast of Falcons – Sarah Yarwood-Lovett – 10.08.25

I liked the first book in this series, about Dr Nell Ward, the expert in bats who stumbled across a crime scene and was implicated in a murder, because it was quirky and I enjoyed the bat ecology facts. This second book is more like murder at Downton Abbey, as Nell (who also happens to be a member of the landed gentry) is hosting a society wedding in her stately home. Too many posh people. Also, the love triangle between Nell, the policeman who arrested and then fell in love with her, and her colleague, Rav, who is also in love with her but feels inadequate to her poshness, gets quite annoying.

Plus there was hardly any ecology, with nesting owls and an aggressive falcon getting barely a mention in spite of the title. I think I have bought at least one more book in the series which was on a 99p kindle deal, otherwise I don’t think I would bother reading any more after this one.

Like a Bullet: The Paperback Sleuths, Book 3 – Andrew Cartmel (Audiobook) Narrated by: Olivia Dowd – 07.08.25

After not really liking the first book in the paperback sleuth series, I find for me at least that it has found its feet a bit and books two and three are pretty fun. I still prefer the vinyl detective series, but I quite like how Eric Make Loud and Tinkler appeared in this book.

I appears that the world of rare paperback trading is just as murderous and dangerous as that of rare vinyl record trading and our heroine must fight for her life with the help of her friendly mild mannered serial (vigilante) killer landlord.

The Forty Rules of Love – Elif Shafak – 06.08.25

I found this book interesting and strangely compelling. It follows dual stories – modern day American, Ella, who has been a relatively happy homemaker, wife and mother, even knowing that her husband regularly cheats on her with other women, until her children are grown and her daughter announces her engagement and she strongly advises her against marriage. At the same time, she takes a job outside of the home (well, actually working from home, I just mean outside of homemaking) as a reader for a publishing agency and the first book she is tasked with reading is Sweet Blasphemy, a retelling of the life of  Shams of Tabriz, a thirteenth century traveling dervish (a kind of mystical sect within Islam) and his relationship with the famous Turkish poet Rami, and we read this book along with her.

She is drawn to the religious teachings about love in this book and begins an email conversation with its author, Aziz Zahara, a man with a difficult past who found peace after converting to Sufism. Ella and Aziz form a deep connection and I did find myself itching to get back to their story even though all the deep philosophical stuff was in the Sweet Blasphemy chapters.

I had not really known much about Islamic sects prior to reading this book, and I was struck by similarities to Christian teachings and different groups’ or individuals’ interpretations of them.

I’m not sure I really liked Shams of Tabriz, he seemed a bit full of his own wisdom, especially when he agreed to an arranged marriage and refused to have any relations with his young wife (because he was above all that kind of thing) which left her horribly hurt and feeling useless in a society where wives produce children and not much else.

He was, however, less judgey of outcast groups in society as other religious types of his era (and probably every era!) which was nice.

The Pull of the Stars – Emma Donoghue (Audiobook) Narrated by: Emma Lowe – 03.08.25

From the writer of Room this is a very different (although, now that I think about it, similarly claustrophobic) novel. It’s historical fiction set in Dublin during WWI when a deadly flu epidemic ravages the city and people die within hours of contracting it.

The novel takes place over just two days and mostly in a hastily set up ward in the hospital for pregnant mothers who have the flu, from the point of view of Nurse Julia Power, who due to staff shortages is left in charge of the ward with just an untrained volunteer, Bridie, to help her.

The flu is very serious in pregnant women causing premature labour and often death of either or both of mother and child and Julia feels overwhelmed trying to help these women through terrible ordeals.

The minute by minute detailing of all that goes on in the ward from making beds and changing bed pans to graphic descriptions of labour and medical emergencies feels like one of those single shot shows about nights in emergency hospitals or other traumatic events.

Also Julia lives with her brother who came back from the war shell shocked and unable to talk.

Over the couple of days Julia formed a deep bond with Bridie, the young volunteer and learns about her own sad backstory from being born in an unmarried mothers home and kept by the nuns as basically slave labour.

The book was pretty gripping and certainly emotional and an interesting look at that period of Irish history.

(The title refers to the fact that the word Influenza comes from an Italian phrase meaning the influence (or pull) of the stars because ancient doctors believed flu was cause by astral effects.)

The Great Alone – Kristin Hannah (Audiobook) Narrated by: Julia Whelan – 29.07.25

Oh, I was really gripped and totally invested in the lives of Leni Allbright and her troubled family – dad, Ernt, returned from time in Vietnam including time as a prisoner of war and totally wrecked with PTSD and Mum, Cora, who does her best and stands by her man even as he gets more and more obsessive and violent and controlling of her.

When they move to Alaska, Leni finally feels at home in the tiny school where she meets her first true friend and the love of her life, Matthew.

The Alaskan scenery and harshness is beautifully described as is the close knit community looking out for each other who become Leni’s extended family. But, hoo boy, does poor Leni have to go through a lot of hard tragic life experiences. An emotional rollercoaster this certainly is, and in the hands of a less accomplished writer this may have strayed into melodrama, but it was in fact perfectly pitched to tug at the heartstrings and push the reader to the brink of anxious tension before everything is masterfully resolved.

I very much enjoyed it.

Murder on Line One – Jeremy Vine – 28.07.25

Well, they say you should write what you know, so it makes sense that radio talk show host Jeremy Vine would write a whodunnit set in and around a local radio station with the main character a talk show host.

There were many things that I liked about the book – I liked the pathos of the main character suffering through grief and guilt after the death of his son, and his relationships with colleagues, his ex-wife and his new blossoming romance.

However, I thought the whodunnit aspect was just so glaringly obvious I couldn’t believe all the characters could not have worked it out sooner. Hmmm.

Hagseed – Margaret Atwood – 22.07.25

I had this book on my kindle for quite a while before I got around to reading it, thinking it would be a bit of a chore, like reading Shakespeare, but actually, when I finally got around to it, it was very readable and fun.

It is a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (a play that I am not that familiar with, although the book explains the plot quite well so that wasn’t a hindrance to my enjoyment or appreciation). A washed out over ambitious actor is ousted from his theatre position and ends up teaching a Literature class in a men’s prison where he has the inmates perform a retelling of a Shakespeare play every year, which they re-write themselves in modern American parlance (like a mirror to the novel itself!).

When the people who turned on him and fired him from his previous role themselves rise through the ranks of politics and visit the prison (not knowing who the teacher is as he works under an alias) he plots a way to get his revenge on them.

I enjoyed the book, I think it was quite short (it’s hard to tell with a kindle book – lol!) at least it didn’t take me long to read it, or the reading flew in, so, if like me you are put off – don’t be, read it, it’s fun!

Just One Thing: How simple changes can transform your life (Audiobook) – Dr Michael Mosley – 23.07.25

Just One Thing: How simple changes can transform your life

I listened to this series of short ‘things’ that you should do to make yourself a bit healthier (according to the sadly deceased Michael Mosley) while out walking my dog or running so I could feel quite smug whenever the ‘thing’ involved being outside or exercising!

I’m writing this about two weeks after I finished the book, and I’ve already forgotten (to my shame) some of the things, although I have also remembered some – for instance, on my dog walks I now divert slightly from my previous route to walk through more woodland because nice Dr Mosley told me about the beneficial chemicals given out by trees in woodlands that can make you healthier if you breathe them in. I did for at least a week try standing on one leg every time a used my chuckit to hurl the dogs ball across the (what we call) ‘chuckit field’ for time it took him to run after the ball and bring it back. I’ve stopped that now.

A lot of the stuff I already knew – like avoiding processed food and sugar and not eating after dinner time to have a longer fast period. I tried incorporating beetroot into my diet, but I just don’t really like it.

My hubby Paul is about to retire (two weeks and counting!) and we’re excited to try learning a new language or new skills with all the extra free time we’ll have (I’m already early retired) which was another ‘thing’ recommended.

I am sorry that Michael Mosley passed away because he came across as a very nice man, and he went to a lot of trouble to make himself healthier. It seems like such a waste.