Janet Gordon is married, retired, obsessed with her Westlake Terrier, Rollo – and books are her passion. She reads multiple books a week across all genres and reviews them for Rest Less.
This month’s round-up features Let’s Call Her Barbie, Yoga Fix, Into Thin Air, Grace of the Empire State, Beautiful Ugly, Sword Brethren, and An Almost Perfect Summer.
Note: Prices can change often, so you may notice some variations on the providers’ websites. Prices and availability are accurate as of the 21st of January, 2025.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year – and if you’re on your own, I hope you managed to spend some time with friends. We have a long-standing friend who was widowed about three years ago. He’s without relatives in the UK and, having been friends for over 30 years, we are now his family.
We helped him move from his big house where he felt like he was rattling around on his own to a beautiful retirement village not far from us and this has completely changed his life. The retirement village isn’t cheap, but the facilities are superb. There’s a bistro with a terrific chef, a library, a visiting hairdresser and chiropodist, and all kinds of clubs.
My friend has always played bridge and he now has a group of like-minded people who enjoy regular bridge evenings together. He also teaches twice-weekly classes for those who want to learn. He’s friends with an incredible group of people, including one couple who thrive on organising themed dinner parties, theatre nights out, and so on. All in all, my friend is back to the intelligent and bright guy he was before he started caring for his wife who had early-onset dementia.
He’s also a bowel cancer survivor living with a stoma and now has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Over Christmas, he suffered an acute attack and we spent the evening in A&E with him before he was discharged. As the retirement village also has a care unit, we knew he’d be in safe hands.
So, all in all, I hope you had a great festive season. And it goes without saying that I’ve read loads and loads of great new books. So here goes…
Let’s Call Her Barbie by Renée Rosen (Kindle £8.49, Amazon £14.53, Berkeley £14.99)
Hands up all those people who played with Barbie dolls. I’ve decided that I need therapy – I never had a Barbie. In fact, I don’t remember having any kind of doll at all. I clearly had a deprived childhood! So, I was thrilled to read this (mostly) engrossing account of how Barbie became Barbie.
Renée Rosen is a best-selling American author who’s written some amazing historical novels. These include Park Avenue Summer which is set in the 1960s (it’s unbelievable that that’s history for some people) and The Social Graces, which details what life was like for the social queens of American society, the Vanderbilts and Astors.
Rosen’s latest book is Let’s Call her Barbie.

Mattel was a more than moderately successful toy manufacturer headed up by the feisty Ruth Handler and her husband Elliott. They’d also hired the charismatic former tech whizz Jack Ryan. Having spotted a German doll, Ruth had a dream to design a doll that would allow little girls to be anything and anybody they wanted to be. Eventually, she and Jack, along with Charlotte (who was responsible for Barbie’s cute wardrobe), did just that and took the world by storm.
This is an absolutely mesmerising story that’s mostly accurate, though does take some poetic license. I simply couldn’t put it down. I’ve now asked my husband to source me a vintage Barbie!
Yoga Fix by Erin Motz (Kindle £6.99, Amazon £13.79, DK Publishing £14.99)
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia many years ago. I mainly keep it under control with painkillers, but this cold and damp weather means my bones really hurt. Yoga Fix is a beautifully illustrated and easy-to-copy fitness book which is just what I need to keep my body moving.
When I was working at London Bridge Hospital, our marketing manager also taught yoga and the CEO grew quite used to wandering into the boardroom to be faced with a row of bums in the air as we all ‘downward dogged’.
I do really miss my yoga classes but, sadly, I simply can’t afford to pay out anymore, so this book is invaluable to me.

I’m devoting 15 to 30 minutes each morning to these exercises. Stand by for a new toned me.
For more yoga tips, you might like to check out our introductory guide. Or why not sign up for a virtual yoga class on Rest Less Events?
Into Thin Air by Ørjan Karlsson (Kindle £6.49, Amazon £8.99, Orender Books £9.99)
To be quite honest, I’ve always avoided reading Nordic noir murder mysteries. Whether it’s because I thought I wouldn’t be able to cope with pronouncing names and places, I don’t know, but I just didn’t fancy reading them.
Anyway, all that has changed since Orender Books sent me Ørjan Karlsson’s latest. Set in Bodo, Northern Norway, 19-year-old Iselin disappears whilst out running. Investigator Jakob Weber (and his dog Garm) are almost certain it was her boyfriend ‘what done it’. But then another woman disappears – this time on the island of Rost, 100 kilometres off the coast.

Jakob is assigned a new detective who has hidden problems of her own, and the two begin to work well together. With rumours of a serial killer loose on the islands, Jacob has his work cut out.
Wow, I couldn’t put this down – I’m a real convert. Yes, I had problems trying to pronounce the names, but I was enjoying the story so much that it didn’t really matter.
Grace of the Empire State by Gemma Tizzard (Kindle £6.99, Amazon £15.99, Hachette £15.99)
This is Gemma Tizzard’s debut novel and is an absolutely cracking read. Tizzard works as a marketing manager by day and wields her trusty laptop at night to tell previously untold women’s stories. Her second novel is set in Boston and is due to be released in 2026.
Grace of the Empire State is set in the late 1920s when the famed Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York was demolished to build the Empire State Building.
Grace and her identical twin brother Patrick are of Irish-American descent. They also have a younger sister called Connie who suffers from a lung disease that requires expensive medication to help keep her alive.

Their father was killed not so long ago in an industrial accident and they all live at home with their Mum. With rent, medication, and food to buy, they’re only just managing to get by.
Patrick is part of an experienced gang of steel riveters hired to build the Empire State Building, while Grace, having been taught circus skills as a young girl, is a dancer. Or rather she was until dwindling punters caused the club she performed in to close, and she finds herself unemployed. However, on the same day that Grace is thrown out of work, Patrick has a bad accident on the steel beams and breaks his arm. Not only is he unable to work, but his gang will also be thrown on the scrap heap with him. But then Patrick comes up with an insane plan – Grace can take his place.
I have absolutely no head for heights, so I simply can’t envisage walking along a narrow steel beam goodness knows how many feet in the air with no safety net and just an unshakeable belief in my own balance (obviously there was no health and safety in those days!). Oh wow, I read this with my heart in my mouth.
Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney (Kindle £7.99, Amazon £13.39, Pan Macmillan £16.99)
Formerly a BBC journalist, Alice Feeney is a worldwide best-selling author and her novel His and Hers is currently in production for Netflix. Beautiful Ugly is her seventh novel.
We meet author Grady as he’s on the phone with his wife, Abby, to share some good news. She tells him that she’s not far from home. As he’s talking to her, he hears her slam on the brakes and get out of her car – and then nothing.
A little while later, after having run all the way to where he heard her stop, Grady finds the car door left open and Abby’s phone still in the car, but Abby is nowhere to be found.

Heartbroken, with his writing career in freefall, Grady isn’t able to write a word. Then, his sympathetic agent offers him the use of a cottage on a scarcely inhabited island up in the Scottish Highlands. And you just won’t believe what happens next.
This is a fantastically twisty chiller thriller that’s beautifully written with heartstopping cliffhangers throughout – I simply couldn’t put it down.
Sword Brethren by Jon Byrne (Kindle £4.99, Amazon £9.95, Book Guild £10.99)
No prizes for guessing what my husband, Malcolm (the slowest reader in the world), has been reading over the holiday period! This is the first book of the Northern Crusader Chronicles which, as an ex-medieval warrior, he thoroughly enjoyed. Sadly, due to back problems, he’s currently unable to don his armour and run around in a Game of Thrones style hitting fellow reenactors. So, the next best thing as far as he’s concerned is reading about it.
Here, Richard Fitz Simon is being held captive by Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod. Alexander listens to his captive’s story and commands his scholar to help Richard write about his life.

Richard had begun training to be a squire as a young boy until he was forced to flee England. He ends up working for a German salt merchant and continues his knight’s training there. But, after he’s forced to kill an enemy, he joins a religious brethren where he gets shipped off to the Eastern Baltic. Trying hard to reconcile prayer with his religious doubts, he finds enemies everywhere. When a pagan army threatens the community, Richard’s prowess with a sword is critical.
According to my husband, this is a truly authentic insight into medieval life and training to become a knight and bear arms. He’s looking forward to reading the next in the series!
An Almost Perfect Summer by Jill Mansell (Kindle £9.99, Amazon £13.99, Hachette £16.99)
Jill Mansell is one of my all-time favourite authors and this is her 36th (!) best-selling novel.
Nella will never give any man 10 out of 10 for looks, but she’s classified Nick as a nine (high praise indeed). He always makes her laugh and when he sits with her during a long A&E stint, he’s practically perfect. The only drawback is that they live hundreds of miles from each other. Oh well.
But then Nella loses her job and she’s offered the perfect role at a holiday retreat in the Cotswolds and, yes, you’ve guessed it, Nick will be her boss – and she really doesn’t want to fall in love with her boss.

She needs a distraction and, right on cue, a Hollywood superstar comes to stay at the retreat. This is such a wonderfully warm story that’s full of Jill Mansell’s trademark humour. It’s just the thing for these cold, dark days.
For more reading inspiration, head over to the books, literature, and writing section of our website. Or, for further book and literature discussions, you might be interested in joining the thriving book club or short story club over on Rest Less Events.
Have you read any of these books? Or have you added any of them to your reading list? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below!