This week has been hectic and because of my eye I have been finding that by about 4.00pm my good eye is getting tired too and it is all getting blurry!  I have still got my cold and cough that started the second day after the eye Op and then Fiancée got it and also Little Lady too!  It has also been very hectic with work both ours and Eldest’s and then to top the week off our dishwasher decided to stop working!  The engineer came on Thursday and ordered the parts we need and coming back this  Thursday to fix it!  Out of all the machines we have my dishwasher is not a problem but a machine I cannot cope without is my washing machine!  That decided to have a conniption fit last night and not drain but DH managed to get it working again!!!! 

Anyway it is Book Club Friday, on Tuesday, sorry!  Because of my eye Op and not being able to read or do anything for five days except have my head down resting on my arm I did untilise my audio book app alot and got through eight books.  Some were great, some were good and a few were awful!

***** – My Five Star Reards

“Murder at Maple Grange” By Jane Bettany – Another book in the Violet Brewster Mysteries.  A Murder takes place at the very exclusive retirement home near Violet’s village and the residents ask her to help them find out who did it.  These books are really easy to read and very much in the cosy mystery section. So far there are five in the series but I believe there is a new one being published later this year.

“The Curfew” By T.M. Logan – This author is new to me and Jayne picked one of his books for our Book Club and it was good.  Mr Logan actually lives in my home town of Nottingham and sets quite a few of his stories there and I know the areas his characters are talking about in the stories.  This book starts out with Connor who goes out with friends to celebrate the end of his exams but his parents, Andy & Laura say he needs to be home by Midnight!  Andy checks at 2.00am and sees his son asleep in his bed and all is right with the World.  In the morning he gets a call from his brother that his son is missing and this starts a train of events which lead to five teenagers going into the local woods that night but only four came back out!  Curfews are fine until they are missed.  

It is a twisty thriller with the parents of the teenagers involved trying to support their children but find out what happened in the woods that night.  There is no blood, guts and gore in this it just shows how parents have to navigate parenting almost adult children who really do need their parents, even if they think they do not.

“The Soul Killer” By Ross Greenwood – I came across one of Ross Greenwood’s books on BookBeat and it was a D.I. Barton novel.  D.I. Barton has been on the force for a long time and in charge of the serious crimes squad.  He likes the people who work under him and also likes training the new Detectives assigned to his squad.  He has a happy home life with a wife, Holly, who is always trying to get him fit. 

The latest case is not a murder but a suicide but there is something about it that Barton is just not sure about. Another case which appears like an accident but Barton’s intuition tells him that it is not an accident but these two things affect one family then some remains are found and Barton and the team move in to to make an arrest thinking they have solved it, but things begin to happen and one of the team becomes the next Soul to be targeted by the killer.  

“The Dream Home” By T.M. Logan – Mr Logan again!  Adam & Jess move from their small home in the suburbs to a wonderful Victorian villa in the exclusive area of Nottingham called The Park.  It has three floors as well as a cellar and a wonderful garden right in the middle of the city which they wanted for themselves and their three children.  However the home needs renovating and whilst doing so Adam finds a hidden room and in that room are some unusal items which make no sense.  Adam loves a puzzle and starts to find out about the items, however somone has been watching and waiting to see if these items were ever found and now that they have been they will do anything to keep them from seeing the light of day.

Another good twisty thriller from Mr Logan and with a twist in the tail you do not see coming!

“The Astral Library” By Kate Quinn – My final five star read.  I love a book about books and this one did not disappoint.  Alexandria Watson, Alix for short, has spent her life surviving after her mother abandoned her as a young girl to the foster system.  She is living on the sofa at a friends apartment, has a job at the local coffee shop which she hates and the job she loves as a helper at the Boston Library she only gets a few shifts at.  Reading is her escape from her life and when she is fired from her coffee shop job and then asked to leave her friend’s apartment she escapes to the Boston Library where she also finds trouble!  To escape and give her a little peace and quiet Alix goes through a door which she thinks is to a reading room but finds herself in another Library, one where the books are moving in and out of their slots.  She meets the Librarian who is like no other and is offered the chance to live in a book and be in the story however which book will she choose?

The story goes on from there and is good.  The characters are complex but likeable and although you think the story is going one way it does go in another.  I would like to say that I am hoping for a second book and follow the story from the end but who knows.

*** – My Three Star Reads

“Beautiful Ugly” By Alice Feeney – Author Grady Green’s new book is going to be a New York Times best seller and is waiting for the call. His wife Abby is on her way home to celebrate and on a call to Grady when she sees an accident and stops to help.  Abby never gets back in to her car and in fact disappears never to be seen again!  Grady goes into a tail spin and one year later decides to move to a Scottish island to try and get his career back on track but when he arrives he sees a woman who looks just like his wife.  Is it Abby or someone who  just looks like her?

The story was okay but similar to her other book I read.  The characters were weird which then made the story weird and the ending was, well weird!!  I don’t think I will be reading any further Alice Feeney books!

“Amnesia” By L.J. Ross- Two women are in a coma both of whom are special to Dr. Alexander Gregory.   He wants to help both women survive but there is a manhunt for notorious felon Carl Deere who is suspected in both womens conditions.  However what Dr. Gregory does not know is that one of the women is a killer, in retribution for a murder which happened years before, but who is it and can Gregory help?

It was okay, hence the three starrs, but I was not invested in the characters and there is a long of “talking” between the characters without moving the story forward.  I did finish the book but I was not impressed with it.

* – My One Star Read

“What Happened At No. 13” By Saskia Sarginson – I did finish this book but then wished I had DNF’d it because it really was not good!  Rosie inherits No. 13 from her Grandmother but the house is a wreck as it has not been maintained.  This house is also where her parents died and because of the Trust the house cannot be sold.  Rosie moves in but to make ends meet and try and repair the house she needs to take in lodgers.  The two people who rent the rooms have an agenda each and it is to get Rosie out of the house by any means possible.

This book was over-hyped and recommended by everyone and his dog it seems and yet the story was boring and the characters not likeable at all.  I did get to the end of it but it was more out of how is this going to end but not in an excited way.  The ending was also flat.  I will not be reading any more of her books!

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Having my Audio Book subscription saved me during the head down section of my recovery from my eye Op and although some people say that listening to an Audio Book is not reading I beg to differ, especially for someone who is blind and although may be able to use Braille I am sure the joy of just sitting back and listening to a story is priceless.  Of course it also reminds us of childhood when we had stories read to us before we could read!

I hope you find a book here that you would like to try and I will be back later in the month with some other book related posts.  I also, tomorrow, have some quilting to show you!  I know don’t faint!  I have gifted the two quilts now so can show you what I have been working on for the last six to eight months!  They are not small quilts I hasten to add; one was a King size quilt and the other was a double bed quilt so definitely large!!!

Happy Tuesday you lovely lot.  Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Who doesn’t love an excuse to buy more books?  Today is World Book Day and our Boys always loved it at Primary School dressing up as their favourite characters from books.  A lot of the time it was Harry Potter, who dominated their early reading.  Eldest thoroughly enjoyed “The Famous Five” books by Enid Blyton and went once as “Julian” and Youngest did go as Indiana Jones once, although a film character they did bring out some books too!

Chatsworth House put out a post today, for World Book Day, about what they call their curation works during the closure of the house.   One big job is to take every book off the library shelf one at a time and dust it thoroughly and put it back in its place.  That doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that there are 17,000 books in the Library itself!  We have 1240 in our sitting room and we do take them all off the shelves and dust them and the shelves when I am doing the Spring Cleaning and it always takes longer than we expect! However you can tell when it has been done.  

I am still listening to my audio books as my eye is not working yet and the right eye is getting tired because of my working so I am not able to read yet, which is why I am so glad I have my subscription to BookBeat.  

Tomorrow I am at Eldest’s to catch up on his work and then Saturday evening DH and I are at a swimming event and then Sunday we have some home jobs to do.  The weather today has been very Spring like and it feels like Spring itself may not be far behind!  At the moment March is coming in like a Lamb so it will be going out like a Lion!  Happy Thursday you lovely lot. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Yes I know it is Saturday well I think it is, I really don’t know which day is which at the moment, they are all blurring into one!  Here in the UK we have not seen the sun for what seems like months and apparently it has rained every day since January 1st and I believe them!  This week it has been grey, overcast and raining and it has been like that for days and days.  Anyway it has meant I have been able to read quite a few books, so that is definitely an upside.  

Since January I have read nine books but two were DNF’s.

*****

Firstly this was Jayne’s and my Cosy Book Club Book for January.  Ed the devoted father of Daughter Abbie must come to terms with her new Fiancé, Ryan,  and their wish to marry quickly because of her Grandmother being so ill.  However Ed has reservations that are not shared by other members of the family.  There is something just not quite with Ryan and Ed cannot put his finger on it and so begins a spiral of events which will lead Ed to do things he has only ever seen in movies but all to protect Abbie.  Can he find any evidence that Ryan is not who he portrays himself to be? 

This is a mystery but not in the traditional sense.  It is well written and the story moves along but the ending is not quite as you hope.  I gave it Five Stars.

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*****

I actually listened to this on BookBeat whilst I was working the other week and it was very good.  Monday morning four people get into an elevator in one of the many high rises in New York City to go to their different floors.  The buttons are pressed and the doors close but the elevator does not stop on any of the floors and just keeps going until it reaches the very top floor where it stops.  The four people cannot get the doors to open and then the elevator drops all the way to the bottom.  Tuesday morning another building, another elevator same thing.  Wednesday morning the same and what appeared to be a tragic accident on Monday has turned out to be a serial killer who is killing people at arms length.  Can Detectives Borgue and Delgado find who is doing this before the body count rises?

First book of Lindwood Barclays I have read and it was well done.  The story moved through the book and was easy to follow their progress of the case to the end with the twist as well.  I again gave it Five Stars.  

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*****

You will see that I first read one of Jane Bettany’s books last month, “Murder on Bluebell Hill” and I really enjoyed it.  They are in the Cosy Crime section of the bookshop and I can honestly say very Agatha Christie.  They are, like her books, not very long but the characters are good and there is generally only one murder and our heroine “detective” Violet Brewster generally finds out who done it with a twist.  They are very easy to read but that does not detract from the stories.  There are currently five in total in the series and I believe a new one is being written.  They areally are very good and of course gave them Five Stars.

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*****

I read this over three days!  It was that good.  Beth is waiting for her Husband, Tom, to get home from work.  She has fed, bathed and put their daughter to bed and is waiting in their expensive kitchen in the cottage they have renovated for him to get home.  There is a knock on the front door and Beth rushes to it ready with a string of abuse and especially as he has also forgotten his keys.  But it is not Tom it is a Detective and some Police officers and they want to talk to Tom.  It is about his old girlfriend from ten years ago and Beth cannot understand why they want to talk to Tom.  As the weeks unfold and more information comes out Beth begins to wonder if she ever knew her husband really at all.

It really is a good book and you do become invested in their lives and as Beth finds out more so, dear reader, do you.  However the twist at the end is very good and that is all I am going to say!

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***

This is my Three Star read for February so far.  I was again talked into buying this by Bookstagram and I am beginning to think that I should not take any recommendations from there at all!  This is about the fourth book I have had this happen to me so am really beginning to think I need to trust my own judgement and not listen to anyone else!  However, of course, that is what I am doing here!!!!!!  It is a conundrum!

Eden Fox and her husband have moved into their forever home, Spyglass, in the seaside village of Hope Falls.  The house needed a lot doing to it but they have managed to update it.  Eden has even had time to go back to her first love of paining and that evening she is having a local exhibition of her work.  She decides to go for a run, to calm her nerves, and sets off on her usual path.  She gets back home and her key will not open the door, when she knocks a woman comes to the door who looks a lot like her and dressed in her clothes.  Eden cannot believe her eyes and demands to know who she is, then her husband, the man she has been married to for a long time, comes to the door and asks this other woman, who he calls Eden, what is wrong.  Eden is confused and demands to know what is going on and the Police are called.  They believe her husband and this woman and Eden has no phone, no idea how to prove who she is, what is she going to do?

To be honest with you I got a littl confused with this book, especially with Eden and Eden and them talking about the situation.  I was never sure which Eden you had talking.  It was okay and some of it was predictable.  The twist at the end was okay but the ending did feel like it was all being wrapped up in a little bow for you.  I think it is one of these books which has been over hyped again, especially by people who have had advance copies sent to them and “LOVED” it!  I have read better!

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*

If I could I would have given this no Stars, oh wait I can here but not on my Goodreads account!  I love a good Fantasy book and I love the building of the world and this book is going to be a series.  However Ms Parker I think swallowed a dictionery and thesaurus and then every sentence decided to fill said sentence with twenty words where five would have done.  Example : “So close I’m struck with a smoky musk pinched with the smell of freshly split stone, softened with notes of something buttery.” I mean what does that even mean?  and every single sentence is like that!  I got to page 50 of 576 and I could not read it anymore!  I really wanted to like it but it was actually unreadable.  I honestly do not know how some of these books get published!

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*

This was another book that did not deserve even one star!  The premise was a good idea ish!  Librarian Anne Adams who lives in Scotland loves her job but then is involved in a serious car crash which kills her twin brother and Anne was driving.  She spends months in hospital recovering and her parents blame her entirely for his death and although she goes back to live with them to continue her recovery they basically ignore her.  Anne cannot go back to the Library and looks around for a new job and finds it cataloguing a private library at Winterbourne on a remote island on the west coast of Scotland, but not all is as it seems!

I started to listen to this on BookBeat but I could not stand it!  The Narrator was particularly dour and to be perfectly honest I did not like the character of Anne, her parents or the story so I DNF’d this too!  

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Looking back so far on February out of the nine books I don’t think I have done too bad by DNF’ing two of the nine!  I still have some books on my shelf that I have bought because of recommendations from Bookstagram but I am going to go through my shelves and have a long hard look at all the books and assess whether they are staying or going.  However certainly with “When The Moon Hatched” you would not have known how bad it was until you started to read it!

I hope you lovely lot have had some time to read and the weather where you are is better than here in Derbyshire at the moment, although we have seen the sun today which was glorious, it was very cold but sunny!  They have forecast some snow overnight of course!    My eye Op is still down for February 23rd at the moment and I will be utilising my BookBeat account for the week afterwards, especially where I have to have my head down for 45 minutes of every hour!!!!  

Have a wonderful week and I am aiming to get back to posting most days now that everything has settled down a bit. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Happy Valentines Day Too!

This is why this week has been so, so busy!  Little Lady has arrived safe and sound weighing in at 8 pounds, although after an emergency C-section due to her being so comfy, she was not coming out after twenty four hours on the labour ward!  Mom is doing very well even though she is sore and tired of course but so far she is being very good for the new Parents.  All the four legged friends have seen her and they are not too sure she is much use yet for playing and throwing tennis balls for them!  As per the new Parents wishes this will be the only photo of her  but I can tell you she has dark hair like her Mummy!

They came home on Tuesday evening and I have just lost count of what day it is this week!  I did go to Eldest’s on Wednesday working and yesterday got home jobs done which was a relief.  I have a basket of ironing to do this evening as DH is out all evening and all weekend at the County swimming championships at the 50m Pool.  However having got all my jobs done I am able to spend the weekend quilting!  I am hoping I will be able to show you some pictures soon.

Despite the chaos I have managed to keep up with our work too and not got behind which is a relief as I hate being behind with things be it work or home!  

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Susie’s Friday Book Club Extra!

*****

As promised at the beginning of January I wanted to move to doing two book posts per month and here is a book I finished a couple of weeks ago!  I am always on the lookout for a new Author and sometimes I pick a book up and reading the blurb looks good and then, having read half of the book, do not like it!  It is always diffiult and I suppose this is where your local Library is a great help with the try before you buy.  

When I was a little girl my Parents and I went every week to our local Library, above, to pick our books for the week.  It was Saturday afternoon and I loved spending a couple of hours in the Library and picking my books for the week and handing over my tickets.  As I got older the Children’s Library which was the windows on the left of the building did not hold my interest and as I was quite an advanced reader I was allowed to have main Library tickets and then I got six tickets, so I could get six books out!  I did develop a passion when I was a young teenager for the romance novels but then I also discovered the murder/mystery books, mainly Agatha Christie and loved every one of them.  So I used to alternate between murder/mystery, historical fiction, romance and the occasional gothic horror!  

Anyway I found the above book on BookBeat and listened to it whilst I was at Eldest’s work and then listened to it on the way home in the car.  

Monday Mornings can be bad but for these four people getting into an elevator in the middle of Manhatten it is going to get a whole lot worse.  They each press a button for a different floor but one by one each floor goes past without the elevator stopping to let them out.  It reaches the top of the building when it does stop and no pressing of the buttons can get it to open the doors or move.  Suddenly it begins to fall and none of the safety systems kicked in, it did not stop until it got to the bottom when the ground finally stopped it.  

It was a terrible accident but when Tuesday arrives and another elevator in another Manhatten skyrise falls to the bottom , Wednesday the same and for one of the most vertical cities in the World people were starting to avoid using any elevator.  The Police are not convinced there is any foul play but then a body is found on the Highline with no fingers and no face and whilst investigating that they find he was an elevator repair man!  How does this relate to the deaths over the last three days and can the Detectives assigned to the case stop them before any more deaths?

It was a really good book.  The story moved through quite well and the characters were well rounded without there being too much information where you get confused as to who is who etc.  The suggestion of who had done the evil deed does not come out until the end and it is a very good twist.  No blood, guts and gore in it either for those that do not like that sort of thing.  

I really enjoyed the Book and gave it five stars and I will now be looking out for more of Mr Linwood’s books.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I will see you here next week.  DH is away all week at a business exhibition so I will have a few hours free on my own this coming week and I am hoping to catch up on all those little jobs that get put to one side!!!

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Coco the other morning when it was very frosty!

Here in Derbyshire we have been lucky with the weather and although it has been very, very cold we avoided the heavy snowfall although there was some in the north of the County but we have had some very hard frosts and ice!

Well as I write this I am a week late with Book Club (!) and it is now January 16th where did that go?  At this rate it will be December again soon and Christmas.  

I have been catching up with our work and Eldest’s work, which is now done, and home jobs of course.  We are still waiting for the arrival of the baby but Fiancée’s Due Date is January 22nd so very near now, although she was hoping that the baby would arrive a little sooner. As long as it is not like my Boys who were both ten days late!  However as we all know they come on their time not ours!  I will let you know when it happens.  

Down to Book Club and what I have been reading at the start of the new year.  I did get quite a bit of reading done over the Christmas Holidays as we were quiet and it was great, so although it was the end of the year I am putting them into January as the hooks were so good.

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*****

Not only is the cover of this book absolutely stunning the story is good too and I gave it five stars.  Lillian Delaney is an apprentice book binder in Oxford in 1901.  She takes on her first commission and while she is at her Patron’s home she finds a book which has been burnt in amongst a delivery sent to him.  He gives it to her and Lillian is fascinated with the book.  When back at the workshop she starts to take it apart to repair it when she finds a letter which tells the story of a forbidden love but it ends on half a page and Lillian is determined to find out who the woman is writing the letter and what happened to her.  Lillian sets off on a journey of discovery which takes her to London and other book binders and to several bookshops to try and find the books that the first letter was put in.  Along the journey she meets peopole who help  and others who want to kill her!  

I really enjoyed it.  I love historical fiction anyway, but this was so different to anything I have read for a while so I think that helped.  

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*****

Of course my most favourite of genres is crime/mystery books but sometimes I want something which is not too heavy, so the genre of cosy crime I usually find something to read there.  This book was in that pile.

Violet Brewster has moved to Merrywell, Derbyshire from the city for a new start in the country.  She is running her own marketing business in the village and loving meeting her neighbours and made friends with other business owners.  Violet has a meeting with the owners of the local garden centre to sort out some marketing but she finds him distraught holding the body of his wife by ofn the the diplays of plants.  Violet bends down to see if there is a pulse but sadly she has passed away.  The police arrive and suspect that she slipped on the wet paving stones and banged her head but the more they investigate the more they realise she was murdered, but who did it?

I absolutely loved the story, it was easy to read, it flowed well but did not get bogged down with too much detail on the characters or the story.  Jane Bettany has written four more Merrywell books so I will be looking out for them.  

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***

This book looked like a good one but half way through I sort of lost interest in it!  Grace meets Jack in the park where she is with her sister Millie who is Downs.  Jack dances with Millie and Grace is impressed with his kindness.  As she gets to know him he is the man she has been waiting for; he is kind to her and Millie, he has a very good job as one of the top Barristers in London and when he proposes to her she accepts without a second thought!  However she should have had that second, third and fourth thought!

On their wedding day, Millie falls down the steps of the Registry Office going in and Grace is distraught, she wants to call the wedding off but Jack says no and they should carry on as Millie is taken to hospital with a broken leg .  Millie tells Grace that Jack pushed her but Grace thinks it is just shock until she gets to her Honeymoon destination and finds out that Jack is not kind.  She tries to escape but he has her under his tumb now, will Grace ever be free and can she save Millie?

The story was okay but the story of Grace trying to find a way to escape went on too long without any movement in the story.  When you get to the end of the book the ending is predicatable and a little light on explanations which is why it got three stars from me.

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*****

This was Jayne’s pick for our Cosy Girls Book Club November/December 2025 and it was great and well deserved Five Stars.

Neve is managing the Stardust Lake Hotel on a snowy covered island in Scotland with her brother.  However she is remembering her lost love, Oakley Rey, who loved being with her on the island but left to pursue his dreams of acting when he got a part on a TV show filming half way around the world.  However as Christmas approaches and the hotel guests begin to arrive for the Christmas and New Year Festivities it also brings Oakley.  Neve has a secret and she wants to tell Oakley but is scared of how he will react and she does not know whether she should in light of the success of his show?  Whilst she is coming down the stairs at her cabin she collapses and falls down the stairs and blacks out.  Oakley helps her brother to get her to the mainland via the company helicopter but will Neve be okay and what about the secret?

I loved the story, it was not too sugary and they all sort it out by the end of the book.  It is a very gentle read but the story does move along very well.

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                            *                                                     *****

These two were my choice for December as they were two short volumes as it was Christmas.   

Murder in Advent – It is the Festive season and Litchester is getting reading for carols by candlelight at the Cathedral but there is also an argument happening about the sale of the 1225 copy of the Magna Carter that the Cathedral owns to help pay for the upkeep.  So instead of harmony and the best of the Festive season there is murder and secrets abound.

I got to the end of it but should have DNF’d it !  It was just boring it was rather like reading the Parish Council Minutes!  I honestly don’t know how some books get published!

The Christmas Guest – Now this was a completely different book!  This is a classic Country House murder mystery!  Ashley Smith is working in London and is quite lonely being so far from her home in the US, when her classmate invites her for Christmas at their Cotswold Manor.  She records everything in her diary and is excited to have a traditional English Christmas and she also gets to meet her friends twin brother, Adam.  However when Ashley arrives at the Manor House she realises that things might not be as they seem and will she avoid being caught up in the murder?

I gave it five stars because again it was not a long book but there is a lot packed into it and it had that wonderful Christmas feel.  Definitely one for your shelf.

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I hope you have found something in here that you would like to read and are having a great January and start of the year.

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

I did rather well with my Reading Aims in 2025.  I re-did my Goodreads account at the start of the year and used that to track my reading as well as my Book Journal too.  Last year for the Reading Challenge I chose to try and read 50 books and actually read 55 so for this year’s Challenge I chose to read 100 books! 

Now there has been a lot of controversy about people saying they are going to read 100 books this year but why?  Like book reviews it is all subjective.  Someone may only read five books this year, whereas someone else will only read 1 and of course there are some who will read more than 100.  It is up to everyone to set themselves whatever goals they like and we should, quite honestly, keep quiet about it!  It is like if you put a review of a popular book up and say you do not like it, people come at you about it.  That is the whole point of a point of view, you are not going to like some books and the ones you do like someone else might not like them.  This is the joy of reading.

The book that I did not particularly like is being talked about at the moment, “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden.  It has now been turned into a film.  I read the book last year along with another of Ms McFadden’s books.  Firstly the plots are the same and in both books I read there as an “ick” factor!  They were also both predictable even with the twists and by the time you got to the end there were some plot holes.  Now that is my opinion and I know there are a lot of people who love her and her books, 

*****

Of my 55 books last year I had 23 which were Five Star Reads and here they are :

The majority of thm are crime/thrillers which I love as a genre but mixed in are a few different ones; “The Secret Christmas Bookshop” is very much a Christmas read and “A Funny Story” is very much a summer chick book read.  All of them have been reviewed by me for our Friday Book Club in 2025.

To pick my favourite five star read out of the books above is hard as they are all so good, hence the five stars but if I am really pushed my favourite of the year would be “The Wartime Bookshp”  This is definitely a cosy mystery but also about women coming together during WWII and helping each other in an English Village that although far from the war is still affected by it.  There are more books in the series and I am intending on getting them.  

*

Here are my 1 Star or DNF books of 2025:

Not too many as I try very hard to not get books that I don’t absolutely love.  However these nine caught me out, although Where The Crawdads Sing was Jayne’s and my Book Club Book, I could not get on with it at all.  The top four I just did not like and DNF’d them.  Yellowface was just dreadful!  The characters were not likeable and the premise was just out there. 

I really wanted to love The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and it is a series of three books which I had all three.  However I got half way through it and it was so boring.  The story was not there are all and the characters were doing everything at a snails pace so that was DNF’s and the other books went with it.  

Verity I was told to read by everyone as they loved it, could not put it down etc.  I read it and finished it but by the end of it I wanted to kill everyone of the characters!  None of them came out of the story in a good light and the whole story was just slightly yuck!  I have since read on line other reviews about Colleen Hoover’s books and they are all written in the same way so I will not be reading any more of hers!

I have saved Message Deleted for last as I cannot believe that this book was ever published!  K.L. Slater needs to do more research as she had police doing things in this book that they would never do!  The story was confused and quite frankly did not know how to end which when it came it was rushed and a mess!  I did not DNF’d it but wish I had, it was one of those books that I was hoping would get better but it never did and to add to all this characters were thin and not likeable at all.  I will never buy another of her books.

Thnere were a lot of other books, 23 exactly, in between the  Five Stars and One Star with all different ratings most of which have appeared on our Friday Book Club.  I hope you have enjoyed  this look at the books I read in 2025. 

Hugs & Love, Susie & Coco xx

Well one of my Aims at the start of this year, as in most years, was to increase my reading.  I don’t know about you but I do go through phases of reading non-stop and then only reading a bit a day and of course there is the inevitable reading slump which seems to affect everyone at some point.  I have also got myself out of my reading slump by listening to books through the BookBeat App when I am working.  This has definitely helped and some of the books have been really successful and others not so much but that happens with hard copy books too.  

Anyway onto the books I have read and listened too in November 2025 so far;

Thisa is a hard copy book which I started last month and have about twenty pages left.  It is about the three Dahlias and them investigating a murder at the Castle in Scotland where they have been invited to  the wedding of their dear friend and the Laird of the Castle.  The castle gets cut off by a bad snow storm and also loses power and then the murder happens.  Not only is a young woman dead but she is wearing the wedding dress and a diamond necklace which had gone missing!  Why and who did it?  It is a gentle read with no horros in it and I have thoroughly enjoyed it.  Just waiting to see who the murderer is!!!!

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This is one of the hard copy books I am not sure of!  I sort of liked it but then the more I got into the book the more I did not like the main character at all!

Dinah Marshall meets up with her old Oxford University friends for a weekend away but she was not invited the first time round, she was invited because one of the other friends could not make it.  So Dinah knows she is second best.  It does not help that she did not finish University with her friends but that was another story.  They are staying in a fabulous home in one of the Home County villages whilst the owners are holidaying abroad.  To Dinah this home represents everything her life is not, her small flat would fit into the sitting room and her job at the local cafe does not provide her with much money.  She becomes obsessed with the owners of the home and starts to stalk them, putting herself on the fringes of their group and then miracle of miracles she gets drawn into their group, but it will end in murder.

Dinah is not a likeable person and the more you get to know her the more you don’t like her but then she has to put up with a very pushy younger sister who treats her like her third child and a mother wo does not care about her at all, she is seen as just a nuisance and her sister has spies reporting on Dinah’s behaviour to her!  Therefore you begin to feel sorry for her but then she does something and you are right back to the you could quite cheerully smack her!!!  This is where I got to with this book and at the end it is a bit of a mess.  Would I read another one  of Ruth Irons books?  Probably not but I did give it four stars.

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I gave this Four Stars as well because again I was not sure about the story and again the ending was not quite right!

Two couples, one bad decision a death and a cover up!  Kirsten and Nick are driving home after a weekend away in Devon when they are involved in an accident and a man is killed.  Instead of calling the autorities they decide that they will cover it up including taking the dog that the man was walking!  

Amy & Greg have been married for ten years and are expecting their first baby together.  When Greg fails to come hom from a short dog walk Amy begins to worry and calls the Police, their friends and his parents.  The Police first think that Greg has left because of his life changing, baby on the way, his business is slow, been married for ten years.  However Any knows that Greg would not leave her and something is wrong but they cannot find him or their dog Rusty.  Amy decides to investigate his disappearance herself and vows to get justice and if she cannot get justice then it will be revenge!

The story wa good although in parts slightly annoying.  There is a twist in the end but then the final bit is a bit far fetched so hmm.  Definitely one I would not read again.

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*****

This I listened to whilst doing a job on Thursday and finished it on Thursday as well!  I loved it!  If I could give it more stars I would!

DI Barton is about to retire but he is not sure if he actually wants to.  His loving wife Holly has put up with so much over the years and now their children, one at University and one about to go, are older he wants to give Holly time to do what she wants to do for a change.  However there is one last case he needs to deal with before he leaves and it is an unusal case.  Firstly he has to help his young neighbour who has been abandoned by her husband with their almost one year old son.  He finds her stood in her living room with no heat or lights on and a knife in her hand.  She has not done anything but she is stood looking into the distance, her son is safe upstairs in his cot.  He taks her and the little boy home and Holly moves into high gear getting her warm and feeding the baby.  He knows they are safe.

The same thing cannot be said for a member of the local Book Club.  He and his wife went home after the meeting at the beginning of December and whilst he was in his study have a nightcap whisky he falls to sleep never to wake up.  It is assumed he died of a heart attack until the Pathologist finds no heart disease.  DI Barton and his team take on this last case to find the murderer before he strikes again, although he may already have done so.

This story is well written, DI Barton and the characters are very likeable and he goes about his investigation without any fanfare but does so in a way where he gets answers without too much stress.  It is funny in places and there is no angst in it.  All in all a great read with a good ending.  There are several of the DI Barton books so I am now able to go back and read the others which is always a bonus finding a new set of books!

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As we are going into the third week of November, the third “Ber” Month, I have got out my “Christmas” books which I love to read at this time of year, all those cosy Christmas books with the odd Christmas murder thrown in!!!!  I will let you have a list next month.  

I have also started to listen to this on my Book App.  I have seen a lot of recommendations for Riley Sager books and as we know what one person likes is not always liked by someone else and this may be the case with his books!  I am 20% of the way through this and will be listening to it whilst I am cleaning but the Narrator, Stephanie Cannon, her voice is a little hard to listen to!  She comes across as a little girl playing dress up!!!  I will contine to see how it goes but not sure yet!

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That is my round up for November.  December is looking good as I got quite a few Christmas books on my TBR shelf from last year.  As the nights are drawing in fast, it is now dark by 4.15pm, it is the perfect time of year for reading by the fire.  Hopefully by the end of today I will be able to finish my book and then start another.  I hope you lovely lot are able to find time to read over the weekend. 

Hugs & Love Susie & Coco xx

As you, who have followed me for a while now, know I love crime/thrillers as my book of choice but being a Gemini I also love fantasy books, historical books, the very occasional romance book and novels too!  So you could say any book.  However it has to be the right book!!

What do I mean by the right book?  Well, although they say “do not judge a book by its cover” I do.  If the cover does not look right or I don’t like it then generally I don’t like the book itself.  I know that is perhaps shallow but it has stood me in good stead with my choice of books.  This is part of what I am going to tell you about.  Audio books.  The App I am using, and it has been very good, is BookBeat.  They have varying Memberships and depending upon how much you want to use the App depends upon the cost.  I am on the top amount because I am using it quite a bit but they do a try out for 30 days free.  I tend to listen to the Books when I am at Eldest’s working there and it has been really good and I also listen to them on the drive home tool

Now this was the book I was reading and listening to on our October Friday Book Club and I had just started it.  Well It was a little slow to start with but I thought it would pick up when Liv got to the Library and then meeting Evar.  It didn’t!  It was dreadful, it was boring, the characters were flat and they never seemed to get anywhere.  The story was just about them being in the Library and doing well not a lot.  Mr Lawrence kept referring to things but nothing ever happened.  So I got to page 480 out of 576 and then DNF’d it!  The worse part; it is Book One of a trilogy and I also have the other two books and all three are now in my donate pile!  Can I tell you what a huge disappointment this was and I loved the cover!

This is my next book that I am reading, not listening to.  Now this book is another story in a series of The Dahlia Stories, which I have not read before., so I will be able to go back and read the others.  Rosalind, Caro & Posy are used to playing the part of Dahlia Lively Detective in films but they have discovered a talent for investigating real life crimes.  They are all invited, with their partners, to a high society wedding at Christmas in a Scottish Castle and no sooner have they arrived when a dead body is found on the beach beneath the castle wearing a very expensive diamond necklace and a wedding dress!  Will the wedding be called off or can the three lady “detectives” solve it and help the bride and groom?

I have only just started this but so far it is giving very cosy, blanket and cup of tea vibes, not forgetting Coco curled up next to me. 

Now I listened to this over two days and gave it five stars!  However if you are not in the mood for a trial, especially based in the British legal system then you may find this borning.  However as it is the field I worked in for ten years  it brought back so many memories and I could follow all the ins and outs of it. 

A retired teacher  leaves his home on New Year’s Eve to buy a bottle of champagne for him and his wife to toast the New Year in as their original plans were cancelled due to the weather.  Whilst he is out he comes across three male 17 year olds who attack him and he loses his life.  All three are charged with Murder and the three Defence Barristers are busy trying to defend their Clients whilst blaming the other two for the murder.  The Preosecuting Barrister is busy trying to prove that all three did it but the evidence starts to show a different story.  Over the course of the chapters we get to hear from all the defendents and their back stories until we get to the conclusion of the case and the Jury retire to consider their verdict.  There are a few twists at the end of the book.

I really enjoyed it but as I say a few people have said that they found it boring and basically too much talking!

Finally I come to  “His and Hers” by Alice Feeney whose books I have seen around but never read any of them. Again I listenend to this one and began it on October 12th and finished it on the 15th.  I did give it five stars as I did think the story was good and the narration of the male parts was done by Richard Armitage.  Now if you don’t know who he is, he played Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbitt and he does have a very distinctive voice!

Anna Andrews is a newsreader for the BBC News Lunchtime programme, a job she has been doing since the previous news anchor went on maternity leave and then got pregnant straight away after the first baby.   So Anna has enjoyed a few years in the top spot.  This has been her salvation after a traumatic few years when her marriage to Jack ended in divorce.  He was busy with his job as a DCI in the Police and then there was their daughter.  Her colleague comes back to work and Anna is transferred back to being a roving reporter and her first assignment is back in her childhood village of Blackdown and where all her problems started.  A woman is found dead in the woods and as Anna begins to report on it she discovers it is an old school friend of hers and Jacks and then Jack is suspected of knowing something about the death.  Can they prove tht he had nothing to do with it and find out who the actual killer is?  

My only complaint of this book, and I was talking to DH about this, is that I guessed who the baddy was by the middle of the book!  Now is this because I have read so many thriller/crime books over the years that I have become so habituated to these stories?  I got to the end of it and although I did enjoy it, I also felt a little flat when the ending came with a sort of shrug of the shoulder!  What I am also concerned about is, is it because I am listening to these books instead of reading them?  Do you not gain the same enjoyment listening to a book as you do from actually holding the book and reading it?  I am going to see how this goes with the book I am currently reading as opposed to the one I am currently listening to!

I am going to get some reading done this weekend, along with my quilting and a few other home jobs which need finishing too.  The weather is forecast to be not very nice with a possible storm coming through on Sunday, but Coco and I will be tucked up at home and DH will be at the swimming pool.  Hopefully it will have passed over by the time he needs to pack all the equipment up!  

Have a wonderful Literary weekend you lovely lot.

Hugs & Love, Susie & Booky Coco xx