50 Books Challenge 2025 Part Five

[Southeastdweller]

Welcome to the fifth thread of the 50 Book Challenge for this year.

The challenge is to read fifty books (or more!) in 2025, though reading fifty isn't mandatory. Any type of book can count, and please try to let us all know your thoughts on what you've read.

If possible, please can you embolden your titles or / and maybe authors as well of books you've read or going to read? It makes it much easier to keep track. Some of us like to bring over lists to the next thread- again, this is up to you.

The first thread of the year is here, the second thread here , the third thread here and the fourth thread here.

I finished Glorious Exploits.
I thought it was a bloody brilliant book.
I need to think about it before trying to write a review.

My favourite book of last year. Glad to hear you enjoyed it. I totally get your Young Offenders comparison. To me this book had the best of Roddy Doyle and Terry Pratchett- warm wit that emphasises the tragedy of the tale.

32 - The Seven O'Clock Club - Amelia Ireland. I was on board until the first big twist then it just got dafter and dafter. However buried in there were some things that made me stop and think.
Lots of people will love it....me not so much.

Reading this now. It's a page turner.

And I’ve just noticed that @EineReiseDurchDieZeit bought it too. Good to hear that it’s a page turner @Piggywaspushed .

I am a Chris Whitaker early adopter and have read all his stuff. I think he's good compared to the rest of the new thriller writer crop. A genuinely good writer.

Also: his pic is in the back of my book and he is pleasingly handsome.

I definitely think this is a marmite book!

I read and enjoyed We Begin at the End. Just dug out my review and apparently I thought it would be better if he just knew how to use semi colons!

I liked we Begin at the End too and bought All the Colours… in a previous deal. Must get around to reading it.

I’m halfway through Long Bright River and struggling to care about the central character, her sister or her little boy. It’s too reminiscent of Chris Whitaker’s books and Demon Copperhead, I think. Quite a bit of repetition too. Might DNF it.

@AlmanbyRoadtrip. I liked Long Bright River but it wasn’t a patch on The God Of The Woods

Here's my list carried over
1 A New Doctor At Orchard Cottage Hospital. Lizzie Lane.
2 Intense Desire. Kris Kassidy
3 Stumbling Stones. Bonnie Suchman
4 Courage For The Clark's Factory Girls. May Ellis
5 Letters from the Ginza Shihodo Stationery Shop. Kenji Ueda. Trans. Emily Balistrieri
6 All The Broken Places. John Boyne
7 Dark Times For The Clark's Factory Girls. May Ellis
8 Alpha Beta Gamma. Malabika Ray
9 Fracture. Elyse Hoffman.
10 The Vengeance of Samuel Val. Elyse Hoffman
11. Black Fox One. Elyse Hoffman
12. Until We Meet. E.V Radwinter
13. I'll Never Cry Again. Roberta Kagan
14. Sweet Pear. Jessica Butler.
15. Adiel and The Fuhrer. Elyse Hoffman
16. The Hangman's Master. Elyse Hoffman
17. Wild Lilacs. Jessica Butler.
18. The Ballroom Girls. Jenny Holmes (no review written)
19. The Train That Took You Away. Catherine Hokin
20. Sara, My Sara. Florence Wetzel
21. Butterflies. Phill Featherstone
22. Here Lyeth. Johanna Frank
23. Murder by Letter. Carmen Radtke
24. The Family Next Door. Charlotte Stevenson
25. The Family Behind The Walls. Shari J Ryan
26. Datonga. Martin Smalley
27. Invocation. Aileen Erin
28. On The Ledge. Naomi Clarisse.
29. The Look of Death. C C Gilmartin
30. The Little Island Flower Stall. Tilly Tennant.
31. Wolf-blessed. John O’Donnell.
32. Lunar. Chloe Openshaw
33. The Zone of Interest. Martin Amis (no review written)
34. The Red Magus. Natasha Joy Price
35. Tangles. Kay Smith-Blum
36. The Girl who Saved Them. S.E Rutledge
37. Aristotle for Novelists. Douglas Vigliotti.
38. Family Affairs at the Orchard Cottage Hospital. Lizzie Lane
39. Matritto/Motherhood. Ameena Tabessum
40. Shadow Runner. K.J. Fieler
41. The Promise She Made. Julie Hartley
42. Hitler, Stalin Mum & Dad. Daniel Finkelstein
43. Finding Home in Hartfell. Suzanne Snow
44. End of a Century. Paul Carnahan
45. Witness to the Revolution. Kiersten Marcil
46. False Tidings: A Fool’s Errand. Stephen J. Grant
47. The Trips. Pat Murray
48. Ballet Shoes. Noel Streatfeild.
49. Artificial Agent. J.W Jarvis
50. A Portion of Malice. Lloyd Jeffries
51. Because You Asked. A.E Bennett
52. Gone in the Storm. B.R Spangler
53. Lost Soul. Theresa Van Spankeren
54. The Curlews Scream. Annette Leigh
55. Edith's Story. Edith Velmans
56. Mother Of The Bride. Quinn Avery
57. A Measure Of Rhyme. Lloyd Jeffries
58. The Hunt for the Peggy C. John Winn Miller
59. The Babylonian Chronicles. Henry Sipes
60. A Child Far From Home. Lizzie Page
61. The Bracelet. Diane Clarke
62. Killing Lily. Jilian Gardner
63. The Wartime Nursery. Lizzie Page
64. The Wartime Mother. Lizzie Page
65. The Tiger Curtain & Other Stories. Paul Marriner
66. The School That Escaped The Nazis. Deborah Cadbury
67. Beyond the Sea. Nina Purtee
68. Life Gets In The Way. Chris Husband
69. The Secret of Ruby's Lighthouse. Kristin Harper
70. The Hero Virus. Russell Dumper
71. Three Little Lies. Danielle Stewart
72. Dominion. Ray Star
73. The Walls of Totterum. Benjamin Kamphuis
74. Touchpaper. David Dodds
75. Shaken. Jill Amber Chafin
76. Where The Crawdads Sing. Delia Owens
77. Who Served Well. Lawrie Johnston
78. Sunrise On The Reaping. Suzanne Collins
79. Newer. Robyn Abbott
80. The Return of Frankie Whittle. Caroline England
81. The Spanish Daughter. Soraya Lane
82. Sister, Liar, Suspect, Sleuth. Lisa Nicholas
83. The Wartime Chocolate Maker. Gosia Nealon
84. The English Wife. Anna Stuart
85. Rembrandts Promise. Barbara Leahy
86. The Shining Men. Nicky Heymans
87. I seek a Kind Person. Julian Borger
88. Barley Sugar. Jack Charles
89. Three Children in Danger. Marion Kummerow
90. Remembering Demons. J.Cornelius
91. The Seven O'clock Club. Amelia Ireland
92. The Art of Life. S.L Russell
93. Operation Fools Mate 48. ML Baldwin
94. The Game. Danny Dagan
95. Crossing Paths. Nina Purtee
96. The Tangled Mane. Charlie Tyler
97. Constructing Churchill. Jon Hartless
98. The Countess and the Nazis. Richard Jay Hutto
99. The Bridge to Always. Lynda Marron
100. Finding Sarah. Nina Purtee
101. Moroccan Sunset. Nina Purtee
102. The Einstein Vendetta. Thomas Harding

And my latest reviews.
103. Kill Call. Jeff Wooten
Jude has inherited the gift of prophetic nightmares from his dad. Which sounds cool, but actually means he sees people's murder before it happens. He's been trained to take a life for a life and kill the killer before they kill. Only the nightmares are through the killers eyes, so he doesn't know who they are. Seeing the murder of Hanna in a nightmare, Jude is sent on his first mission, to catch her killer. But she rescues herself and the killer gets away. Jude is now on a mission to work out who it is and stop them before they come back.
This was really enjoyable. I love a good murder mystery, and the whole prophetic nightmare thing made it slightly different to the usual.

104. We Are Not Anonymous. Stephen Oram
     A near-future sci-fi set in climate flooded England. Beth and Naomi are members of Resist and Regain, who's mission is to bring down Kai, leader of the tech elite who experiment on children to make a "better" future.
     I struggled with the time skips in this one. People met, then 2 pages later were planning marriage and babies. I thought a simple "X months later" type thing would have helped. But overall it was an interesting idea about how climate change and technology could (hypothetically) change the world.

105. All Our Yesterdays. Guy Hale
     A bold. The prequel novella to The Croaking Raven which I read last year. Set in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1930s, a group of actors take to the stage. But it seems some of them will stop at nothing to be the best. It's really hard to explain how funny Guy's books are, seeing as they are about murder, but they make me laugh out loud. And they are full of Shakespeare references if that's your kind of thing.

106. Ordinary Saints. Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin
     Another bold. Jay is bought up in Ireland, by very Catholic parents. Which is difficult as she comes to realise she is gay. Hey older brother is training to be a priest, when he is killed in a tragic accident, incidently the same night Jay has her first gay kiss. I'm not sure if it was meant to imply that Jay blamed herself in someway, because she didn't seem to. Years later Jay has moved to London, wants nothing to do with God or the Church and is pretty low contact with her parents. And then her brother is nominated(?) For a sainthood.
     For a devout novel this was astounding. I really got a sense of a young woman grappling with her sexual orientation, faith, a brother who everyone thought of as perfect, and just everything really. Loved it.

107. Hidden in Plain Sight. Julie Brill
     The true story of Julie's Father who grew up Jewish in Nazi occupied Belgrade. This was fascinating, and hardly anything is recorded about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia/Serbia. But it was also quite confusing at times. Probably because the history of Yugoslavia/Serbia isn't one I know much of. I also was hoping for a little more about exactly how her Father 'hid in plain sight' but seemingly they just moved to a family farm and no one ever even seemed to look for them.

108. Searching for Jakup. Roberta Kagan
     Book 2 in A Million Miracles, (book1 was I'll Never Cry Again, which i read earlier this year) After his son Jakup is stolen from the Ghetto, and his wife is shot escaping, Pitor is hiding and trying to find Jakup whilst taking revenge on the Nazis. Whilst Roberta writes stories of love and hope, I do wish someone would check them for accuracy. In this one Rudolf Hess is at a party in 1943 which is impossible. And Jakup manages to impersonate a Nazi officer by using his papers, which would have had a photo on so I'm not sure they'd have stood up to scrutiny.

109. A Fresh Start at Polkerran Point. Cass Grafton
     Book 4 in The Little Cornish Cove series. One of those easy read, you know what you get romances. These fill a need for a nice gentle read I find. In this one Kate and her daughter Mollie move to Polkerran. There's a music and arts festival on the brink of collapse, new friends to be made, and of course a romance.

110. And It All Makes Sense In The End. Adam Blue
     This book was weird, and I'm not sure if I'd recommend it or not! Teenage twins, whose names I've forgotten, go to stay with their Grandpa in his chalet in the woods. They know there'll be no phone signal and not a lot to do. Then they go for a walk and end up in another world full of characters who wouldn't be out of place in Alice in Wonderland, and weird foods that should be in Willy Wonka. They have a bit of an adventure and then go home. I'm not sure what age this is aimed at (not 40!), 12-15 maybe. Possibly slightly younger, although it has the occasional swearword.

111. Open Your Eyes. Heather Fitt
     Another bold. This felt very topical with all the stuff about the Netflix series Adolescence in the media, althoughthis book was written before that came out.
     
     Liam is a teenager (17 IIRC) and a virgin. Shocking I know. Turned on and humiliated by the people he thought were friends, he ends up in the dark world of incels online.
     Meanwhile Frankie is a journalist, who definitely isn't into feminism. Until a spate of rapes locally lead to the police telling women they should probably stay home at night. Reclaim the night and various other true things are mentioned. And then it all comes to a scary conclusion where the incels blame the women (obviously) and the women refuse to be silent.
     
     I loved this. And whilst Liam is obviously a 'bad guy' there's so much at play that leads to that. Complicated emotions i found.

112. Maelstrom of Malice. Karen Taylor.
     This is part of a series which I've somehow read the prequel of, this last book but not the one in between. I don't think that mattered though. Set in Cornwall in 2022, there's crimes aplenty. Murder, blackmail, you name it, it's there. I enjoyed this, but there are some stupid typos/spelling mistakes. And at times I forgot who was who. But overall a good read.

In addition to the books others have mentioned, I bought:

David Lodge's Campus Trilogy for 99p - his Rummidge University books (including Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work
Lynn Knight, Miss Burnham and the Loose Thread - I just read this via Netgalley, a historical novel set in the 1920s, featuring an investigation into romance fraud 100 years ago. Lynn Knight has edited Virago short story anthologies and written a memoir of her family I enjoyed and a couple of other non fiction books I think sound interesting.
Joseph O'Connor, The Ghosts of Rome #2 in series set in WWII Italy - I liked this more than some other readers here did.
The first book by Simon Mason in his Finder series, Missing Person Alice
Paula Hawkins, The Blue Hour (previously read, library loan)
Chris Mullin, An Error of Judgement - journalist and ex-MP's book about the Birmingham Six
Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City - NYC memoirist - I've had one of her books TBR for ever and have others in the last couple of years. Daunt Books has recently republished this but this appears to be the US edition on Kindle.

My mum's parents died in 1990 (grandfather) and 1995 - I have a few books from his shelves - an Arthur Miller play which was one of my A level English Lit texts and a few books which I've read several times, but I also have a two volume biography of Rosa Luxemburg which I've not read yet, and a couple of novels by New Zealand writers.

When most of my books were still at my family home with my mum, she did sell a book my grandfather gave me on the secondhand market (I think this might have been pre-internet), a book by Philip Larkin about jazz which I think Larkin gave him. I might have clung on to it but I'm not sure that I would have read it but she gave me the £100 that someone paid for it.

Oh, and I have some very old books inherited from my great grandmother - I think she died in 1976 - I've read a 2nd edition of Through the Looking Glass many times as a kid, and a 1940s Puffin Book edition of a book about an American family who move to the Soviet Union written by an American Communist. I have also have my step grandfather's school prize Shakespeare - all the plays in three volumes awarded to him over 3 separate school years. I used to read it when I was a kid but don't look at it that regularly these days.
A 19th century pocket "Almanac" - some sort of reference book, that was in this box of treasure, also includes two letters in copperplate, sent to a young child at boarding school in the 1840s. Sadly I'm not very good at deciphering old handwriting, but my mum and I did read them together many years ago.

None of these books are going anywhere.

Edith's Story by Edith Velmans is bolded by* *@BlueFairyBugsBooks - I bought it for 99p in the deals (and it's listed as a Virago Modern Classic). It's about a child who survives the Nazis.

@BlueFairyBugsBooks I love the sound of Ordinary Saints. Adding that to my TBR.
@elkiedee thank you- I had missed the Ghosts of Rome and have just picked it up

1 Suggested in the Stars by Yoko Tawada. Translated by Margaret Mitsutani
2 Your Wish is my Command by Deena Mohamed
3 The Fraud by Zadie Smith
4 After Midnight by Irmgard Keun. Translated by Anthea Bell.
5 Mrs Granby's Secret or The Bastard of Pinsk by Eleanor Farjeon
6 Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo
7 Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
8 The Joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta

My reading is way down this year because of TCOMC readalong. I have enjoyed it a lot but DH now thinks he can now say 'isn't it the greatest novel ever' whenever I mention a chapter I enjoy 🙄.

Oh, and I read W&P after it went to America with me as a student, came home, moved around the country with me then sat on my TBR shelf for ~25 years before I read it and loved it in my mid 40s. I think I wouldn't have appreciated it as much if I'd read it at 20. Persephone Books are wrong.

Thank you southeast.

I completely fell off the last thread. My reading has been quite slow although I have managed to keep on track with The Count of Monte Cristo.

Bringing across my list:

#1. Small Bomb at Dimperley - Lissa Evans
#2. James - Percival Everett
#3. Five Little Pigs - Agatha Christie
#4. Spook Street - Mick Herron
#5. Shy Creatures - Clare Chambers
#6. Hangman Island - Kate Rhodes
#7. Blaming - Elizabeth Taylor
#8. Strange Sally Diamond - Liz Nugent
#9. The Thirteen Problems - Agatha Christie
#10. The Wizard of the Kremlin - Giuliano da Empoli
#11. The House on the Strand - Daphne du Maurier
#12. The Photograph - Penelope Lively
#13. Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
#14. Witness 8 - Steve Cavanagh
#15. The Eighth Hour - Linda Segtnan
#16. Kitchen - Banana
#17. Towards Zero - Agatha Christie
#18. Three Act Tragedy - Agatha Christie
#19. Paper Cup - Karen Campbell
#20. The Ink Black Heart - Robert Galbraith
#21. The Seven Dials Mystery - Agatha Christie
#22. The Good, the Bad and the History of Jodi Taylor
#23. The Very First Damned Thing - Jodi Taylor (novella)
#24. Just One Damned Thing After Another - Jodi Taylor
#25. A Symphony of Echoes - Jodi Taylor
#26. When a Child is Born - Jodi Taylor (novella)

Very behind on reviews - will post those separately.

Interested to see what everyone makes of All the Colours. I found it sagged a lot in the middle and got a bit bored by it.

14. Seven Deadly Sins: My Pursuit of Lance Armstrong by David Walsh
The story is getting on for 15 years old now and I'm a lot more cynical. But this takes me back to the shock I felt when - spoiler - Armstrong went on Oprah and confessed all, or most. It wasn't that people, even me, didn't know that professional cyclists doped - everyone simultaneously knew and had no idea. I'd read French Revolutions by Tim Moore, which seemed very funny at the time (late 90s) but is shot through with the assumption that yeah, most of the riders dope. That acceptance is what David Walsh took a stand against, the belief that it wasn't OK for an entire sport to wink at comprehensive doping programmes and at the same time respond with sanctimony AND personal bullying AND lawsuits on anyone who threatened to break ranks.

Also a rollocking good read. A bold on its own terms.

After the discussion of Precipice the other night, I placed a couple of reservations, confident that I'd have a few months to wait and catch up with other books... I should know better but this set new records. I'd put a hold on the hardback copy on my dp's library card, and was #10 in the queue for several copies - it has been out a little while. But I thought a Robert Harris book will probably be quite hefty - books which publishers expect to market to male readers are. There's a paperback "on order", it will take a while. Reserved on my library card in the early hours of the morning. Guess what showed up as available yesterday afternoon! Clearly no one else had requested the "on order" paperback yet.

Obviously as it came up on daily deals, I cancelled both reservations.

Ooh, thanks @elkiedee, I’ve just bought the Rummidge trilogy. I’ve re-read Nice Work a few times but haven’t read the others since the 80s.

DM’s house is full of books inherited from grandparents and great-grandparents which I need to sort through one day. Including a complete set of Cassell’s History of England dating from about 1880 and the Young Ladies Compendium which gives advice on the layout of calling cards and what to wear for gymnastic exercise (bloomers and petticoats I think). Plus a million books about cricket.

*None of which I am ever going to read so maybe Persephone are right in my case.

When I was a child we loved reading my Dad's old Children's Encyclopedia (publish in the late 1940s) which stated very confidently that man would never go to the moon.

ETA, that was in response to the Young Ladies Compendium comments.