My Top 10 Books of 2023 – Part Four

Here are my favourite ten books of the fourth quarter of 2023. One or two of these might make it into my top books of 2023. Once again only a bit of ‘crime’, as a crime novel needs to be totally unique and exceptional to make it into my favourites. 

There are ten this time – it’s been a good quarter – but then hey ho I make the rules! And they are in no particular order.

I normally post on the 1st January but I won’t finish any more books by then so the list won’t change.

I’ve not included any audio books in this list as they have their own post.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods

I love this book so much. It’s gone straight to the top of my favourite books of the year – maybe even the decade. I kept thinking it reminded me of the books of another author, but it was only towards the end that I remembered who that was – Menna Van Praag.

Magical realism is one of my favourite genres, though occasionally it disappoints, because there are books which fall too much into the fantasy genre. The Lost Bookshop, however, is perfect.

For my full review click here

So Now Go Tell by Susan Sachon

This started out as one thing and then became another. Poor Jenny is at a loss, divorced, and now made redundant. Then she collapses, and when she wakes up she can’t see. It used to be called ‘hysterical blindness’ I think, which sounds like the kind of nervous disorder that got women locked up in an asylum 100 years ago. It’s now referred to as a ‘conversion disorder’. Yes I googled it.

Surprisingly, she’s soon offered a job managing an old Tudor pub in the middle of nowhere, but it comes with other responsibilities. The pub used to put on plays as part of its Shakespeare Festival every summer. Now I am a massive Shakespeare fan, ever since I was taken by my primary school to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed by the Oxford University Players in the grounds of Alveston Manor, Stratford-Upon-Avon, when I was about eight years old. I was mesmerised.

For my full review click here

Everyday Folklore by Liza Frank

And now for something completely different.

Did you know that house spiders are rather partial to classical music and are said to descend their webs to listen, only to climb back up when the movement has finished? That’s no more Classic FM for me then. Anyway, I’ve chosen the following graphic because I was born in November. Nothing to do with those horrible eight-legged spawn of Satan.

Everyday Folklore is not a book that you would sit down and devour in one go like a novel. It’s a book to dip into, return to and savour. I’ve picked out a few of my favourites, like Goat-e-oke and flaying a corpse (the former is doable, the latter will have you locked up, probably permanently). I have had so much fun with this. I highly recommend it.

For my full review click here

The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams

The Dictionary of Lost Words is one of my favourite books this year. I never believed another book could match it, but it did. The Bookbinder of Jericho is set in the same location – Oxford – and the main characters, twin sisters Peggy and Maude Jones are the next generation. It’s 1914 and the girls work in the book bindery, folding and stitching. The work is repetitive, but what keeps Peggy going is having a peak at what she is binding, ‘bind the books, don’t read them,’ she is told. Every now and again the folding or stitching are not up to par and Peggy can take the pages home with her. She wants more.

For my full review click here

13 Doors by GJ Phelps

I just love this book. It’s like a series of short stories, all joined together by Joe’s past and his current life. Having been made redundant from the newspaper where he has worked all his life, he decides to hold vigils in haunted locations (not just houses) and write a book about his experiences. Each vigil becomes more terrifying as he opens himself up to the spirits of the long departed. And for some reason, he is more open than most people.

His mother and his friends are worried about him, because following the tragic death of his father he went off the rails, earning him the nickname Mad Bax at school, and eventually putting him in a mental hospital for six months. He claimed to have experienced something terrible in the catacombs in a cemetery (I recognise the cemetery in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter), and they won’t let him out until he admits it was all in his imagination. But was it?

For my full review click here

The Stargazers by Harriet Evans

The book is written in three timelines though Iris’s childhood only features fairly briefly. Mostly it’s about Sarah as a child in the 1950s, living with her sister Victoria, and their mother Lady Iris Fane. Their father Henry Fox (the girls have his name Fox, but Iris has reverted to her maiden name of Fane), appears to be totally absent.

Then we have Sarah as an adult in the 1970s, married to Daniel (who is lovely but would annoy me if he was my husband) and their life in a crumbling house in Hampstead. It’s a house they can’t afford and Daniel’s attempts at DIY always end in disaster. After a childhood in a crumbling mansion, I am surprised that Sarah wants to live here, but then I suppose for her it’s normal. Daniel invites his bohemian friends and half the neighbours to drop round all the time and Sarah can’t cope. I’m not sure I would be able to.

For my full review click here

Upstairs At The Beresford by Will Carver

Upstairs At The Beresford is the sequel to The Beresford, except it’s actually a prequel. It’s darkly funny, but not in the way The Beresford is. There is still a lot of the author’s musings and philosophising, but less of the googling how to dispose of the bodies, chopping off the fingers and toes to get rid of the prints, and using drain cleaner to dispose of the digits.

In a way Upstairs is much darker, but less embarrassingly laugh out loud funny, in that twisted way that Will Carver does so well. The residents all have their reasons to end up there – it’s cheap, but it’s also a place to hide your secrets.

For my full review click here

His Favourite Graves by Paul Cleave

This is probably one of the cleverest books I have ever read. Don’t imagine it’s a straightforward crime drama. It’s full of twists and surprises, at times veering towards the unbelievable, but it’s so convincing, that you go along with it.

Everyone has an agenda, and everyone is capable of the most heinous of acts if pushed far enough. But is your own behaviour justified when the victim is also a killer and abuser of the worst kind?

Recently, teenager Freddy Holt went missing and was never seen again. Then a boy named Taylor Reed threw himself off a roof and died. Ruled a tragic suicide, following constant bullying. Lucas Connor isn’t popular at school. People think he’s weird. So they stuff him into a locker and padlock him in. But instead of being rescued, he’s abducted. His father calls the police, but they are sceptical at first. Till they find the locker has been forced open.

For my full review click here

Swimming For Beginners by Nicola Gill

I felt really sorry for Loretta at work. She’s not weird, she just likes to keep herself to herself and get on with her job. She’s not interested in the inane gabbling of her colleagues. She doesn’t want to ‘swim with the dolphins’ as her prat of a boss refers to being a ‘team player’. Then when she decides she needs to be more sociable, he says she’s taken her eye off the ball. We could all have told you that would happen.

In the meantime, however, she’s at the airport waiting to catch a flight to New York for a very important presentation. Her promotion may depend on it and she needs to prepare. But that’s when she meets six-year-old Phoebe, who can talk for England without pausing for breath. Phoebe’s mum Kate is similar. Then Kate asks Loretta to watch Phoebe for a few minutes while she goes to the toilet, but she doesn’t return. And that’s when the story really begins.

For my full review click here

Yule Island by Johana Gustawsson

You often read a synopsis which says that the book is full of twists and turns. Except you guess most of them. Or an ending you won’t see coming, though you do. Well, what can I say! Yule Island is as twisty as they get and you really won’t see what’s coming.

At one point, about three quarters of the way through, I thought what the hell? What just happened? Then there’s another twist and then another, until the whole story is turned on its head. Because you made an assumption and it was wrong. And then another, which was also wrong. When you realise, you think ‘of course’. But the clues are so well hidden, like Gustav’s secret tunnel. We trust the characters we are supposed to trust and dislike others because we are led that way. It’s so cleverly done that I was really shocked.

For my full review click here