My 4 Favourite Audiobooks of 2024 – Part Three

Here are my favourite audiobooks of the year Part Three.

We Begin At The End by Chris Whitaker

There are thousands of ratings and reviews of this book, so I’m not going to try and precis it. It’s been done so many times already and there is nothing I can add.

But as for my feelings – well there were so many moments when I cried. Especially towards the end. Duchess tries her best to protect her little brother Robin, but everything she does makes his situation worse. One thing she says results in the saddest moment of the whole story for me.

Sometimes she drove me mad, other times I wanted to hug her. I wanted to remove her bitterness, without damaging her strength and spirit. ‘I am the outlaw Duchess Day Radley,’ she says. And five-year-old Robin is a prince. Except she is really a vulnerable thirteen-year-old who has lost everyone who could take care of her.

For my full review click here

The Phoenix Ballroom by Ruth Hogan

I’ve read all of Ruth’s novels, a couple of them twice (almost unheard of for me). The Phoenix Ballroom is her fifth and it’s wonderful. But don’t expect something earth shattering that will change the world as we know it. This is a feel-good novel about hope and happiness across the generations. A book to be savoured when you are feeling down, a book to lift your spirits. And of course when you are already happy.

Venetia Hamilton Hargreaves has just lost her husband Hawk after fifty years of marriage. She knows she is going to be lonely, but her son Heron thinks she needs a ‘granny nanny’ to look after her. She is horrified. She’ll manage, she’s not exactly in her dotage.

For my full review click here

The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal

This is no reflection on the book, but I found it quite stressful to listen to at times. It’s because of Crawford. I want to hide behind the sofa. His plotting is just too awful. And it only gets worse. Is there no end to his scheming?

One of my favourite things about the book is the characters. First of all we have Bonnie, who has run away from her comfortable home to avoid being married off to a creepy man old enough to be her father. She goes to London where she meets Crawford, handsome and charming, he coerces her into doing his bidding, as he does his friend Rex (whose interest in Crawford is somewhat unhealthy). In fact they are little more than a couple of con artists, but Crawford has set his sights on a much higher ambition.

For my full review click here

The Story Collector by Evie Gaughan

The Lost Bookshop was one of my top five books of 2023 so it came as no surprise that I would love this one. And I did. It’s a dual timeline novel – Anna’s story set one hundred years ago, and Sara’s story set in modern times.

Anna is a young farm girl, her head turned by the son of the local landowner. But then she meets Harold, an American scholar studying at Oxford University, who is writing his thesis on the fairy stories that abound on the West Coast of Ireland. He needs someone who speaks the language to translate for him, and after much discussion, it is agreed that Anna is perfect for the task.

For my full review click here