My Top 8 Books of 2022 – Part Three

Here are my favourite eight books of the third quarter of 2022. I should have published this at the beginning of the month but I am in Gran Canaria and to be honest, what with the sunshine, the sea and the vino, I totally forgot. Apologies all round and here goes.

Still Water by Rebecca Pert

What a stunning book. Beautifully written and so emotional. How it triggered my own personal memories, the parallels with my childhood and my mother’s mental illness (*see below); the fears of it being inherited, genetic.

Jane is not always the easiest person to like. She works in a mind-numbing job in a salmon processing factory. All she has to do is chop the heads off the fish. She lives alone in a run-down caravan even though she owns the cottage nearby. It has too many memories and has been left to fall to pieces. She has a lovely boyfriend called Mike whom she loves dearly, but he knows little of her past life. She is very closed about her childhood. We know it was traumatic and her problems revolved around her mother’s progressive illness and the death of her little brother.

For my full review click here

All About Evie by Matson Taylor

All About Evie is the first ‘real’ book I’ve read in years, as opposed to reading on my Kindle. Somehow it makes more sense. I have a big yellow hardback with a picture of Evie on her spinning chair and Oscar the basset hound in the bottom right hand corner. I even have an Evie postcard as a bookmark.

I read The Miseducation of Evie Epworth twice (something I almost never do) and it became one of my favourite books of all time. In All About Evie we are reintroduced to Caroline and Digby plus Mrs Swithenbank, but we also meet a whole new cast of characters from the two Nicks at Right On!, lovely Lolo and his dog Oscar, budding fashionista Genevieve, ghastly Griffin and many more. And Evie is introduced to opera, though it’s a bit more Victor Borge than Mozart, all plinky plonky music and lots of shouting. It’s actually Puccini’s La Boheme. Something easy to start with, break her in gently.

For my full review click here

The Daves Next Door by Will Carver

How can I pigeonhole this book? Metafiction? Postmodern? Self-reflexive? God only knows and in this novel God is the unreliable, omniscient narrator. At least I thought so. Only the narrator realises he’s not God. He’s the would-be terrorist.

This is such a hard book to review. It’s not just about what happens to individual people, but why and how they are all connected, even though most of them have never met each other. The suicide bomber rides the Circle Line every day, waiting for the exact right time to detonate. Asking questions like Am I God? Am I dead? Will I blow up this train?

For my full review click here

Don’t Leave by Pru Heathcote

I loved this book. I read it in about three sittings and would have read it in one go if I had been on holiday. And I would NEVER have guessed the reality of what was happening in a million years.

Following the tragic death of Jane and Peter’s young daughter Angela, Peter decides that it would do Jane good to give up work for a while and spend some time in a cottage by the sea in a remote location off the coast of Northumberland. They will be away from everyone and everything and Jane will be able to come to terms with her loss.

For my full review click here

The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais

Who would have thought this book would make me cry? But it did. I’m not saying when or why. It also made me laugh and want to be a witch (some would say that’s not such a far leap). So excuse me a second while I pop my broomstick away in the cupboard, consult my personal grimoire, and let us begin.

There is so much I loved about this book. The witches – Ursula, Queenie, Ivy, Tabby, Jezebel and Ruby – plus 15-year-old Persephone and Tabby’s familiar, an elderly crow named Widget. I must also mention that Persephone has a dog called Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t know who she was, though I assumed she was a real person. I apologise. I’m making myself sound really ignorant, but although it’s no excuse, I am in the UK.

For my full review click here

Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson

I adored this book more than I can even put into words. Everything about it, everyone in it and there’s even a cute terrier called Pierrot (I hope the name isn’t a spoiler but I think I need a dog called Pierrot).

Nellie Coker is the head of an empire. She runs five somewhat dodgy nightclubs with the help of her children – Niven, a romantic figure who fought in the Great War, the enigmatic and clever Edith, glamorous Shirley (I can’t read about Shirley without imagining someone I work with who shares her name and is about as glam as it gets), equally glamorous Betty, and budding author Ramsay. We also have 14-year-old Kitty but she’s a pain in the neck, though it’s not really her fault. Where Nellie got the money to start up her business remains shrouded in mystery, but we can guess it wasn’t legal.

For my full review click here

The Crooked Little Pieces: Volume 1 by Sophia Lambton

Wow! Just wow! I never expected this. It’s a true work of literature. The language is beautiful – the story engrossing.

It starts with half-Dutch and half-German twin sisters Anneliese and Isabel aged six living with their father Professor Josef van der Holt in Switzerland. He is a neurologist, but his ideas are considered old-fashioned. He forms a platonic relationship with another neurologist called Sara, but it does not develop.

For my full review click here

Beneath The House of Sin (DCI Mike Saxby #1) by David Field

It’s like two separate books in one and the first two in a series, which I guess it is. I actually could not put this down, but not just because of the story but because I loved the characters. All of them, but particularly DCI Mike Saxby, his wife Alison, young police officer Cathy who reminds Mike of his daughter and keeps feeding him yoghurt so he can lose weight (orders from above ie Alison) and even boring Dave Petrie. Or Paperless Petrie as he is known, because he never does his admin. Mike is known as Paddington for reasons that will become clear and marmalade keeps turning up on his desk, usually on toast.

For my full review click here