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 The Other Side of Paradise, A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering, One Perfect Couple, Zero Days, and The Mercy Chair.
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 June, 2024.
Hello readers! I hope that you had a great weekend – I certainly did!
My husband had an appointment at St Thomas’ Hospital on the Thames Bank. With the sun shining, rather than going straight home on the Central Line afterwards, we went for a walk and caught the Thames River Boat to the O2 pier in North Greenwich.
We were lucky enough to get seats right at the front and my husband – a former London black cab driver – entertained the tourists by pointing out and describing everything we spotted (including facts about the original London Bridge). As a bonus, we got an over 60’s discount, so, in effect, it was buy one get one free.
Then, whilst my son and his family decamped to a cottage on the Norfolk coast, my husband and I stayed at home. He did some gardening while I sat in a comfy chair and read…
The Other Side of Paradise by Vanessa Beaumont (Amazon £14.99, Kindle £9.99, Magpie £20)
Set just after the end of the First World War, this is such a sad and poignant read. Jean Buckman is a young and innocent American heiress who comes over to England for ‘the season’. Her mother, the formidable Elizabeth, whose husband is American Ambassador to the Court of St James, has instructed her to find a husband.
Jean finds herself strangely attracted to the enigmatic Edward. He’s inherited an enormous estate in the North of England, but is struggling to cope with the guilt of inheriting as the second-born son. With Elizabeth’s connivance, and a great deal of money, Edward and Jean are married. But Jean finds married life almost impossible – and as for marital relations, that also seems impossible since Edward positively refuses to share her bed.
The inevitable happens when Jean, who’s purchased a beautiful home in the South of France and is desperate for kindness and love, has an affair with a writer and journalist called David. When she falls pregnant, Edward agrees to remain married, but practically never talks to Jean’s son, Alfie. Eventually, Edward and Jean also have a second son.
Jean’s journey through life and her experience of motherhood is so lonely and sad – and so beautifully written – that I found myself in tears, with the realisation that this is how so many women in that era lived.
A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray (Amazon £10, Kindle £9.99, Hutchinson Heinemann £18.99)
Having cheered myself up with a cuppa and a Magnum, I thought I’d see if I could be a trainee burglar. However, I soon discovered that this book wasn’t about being a burglar, but being what Al (the narrator) called an ‘interloper’.
This is a wonderful read. Al has spent years honing his craft as an interloper. Nominally a professional photographer, he has no intention of buying or renting a place to live, choosing instead to ‘borrow’ all kinds of houses – from luxury, second-home cottages by the sea to regular terraced homes waiting for probate to be granted. He also has his regular fail-safe houses.
We meet Al after he’s completely messed up a stay at a luxury house.
He’d watched the owner leave in a minicab for a few weeks in Dubai, but when the owner returns having forgotten his passport, Al, who’d been enjoying a cuppa and a rest, has to vacate in a hurry.
Totally flummoxed by this, AI decides to head for a fail-safe home that time forgot in North London, only to find it’s now inhabited by three other interlopers – Emily, Elle, and Johnny. With nothing better to do, and notwithstanding the fact that he fancies Em, they join forces – and so the fun begins.
This comedic mystery thriller is such a terrific read – I loved it!
One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware (Amazon £14.15, Kindle £11.99, Simon & Schuster £18.99)
Still sitting in my comfy chair, watching as my husband slaved away outside, I moved onto two compulsive novels by Ruth Ware. I hadn’t read anything by her before (though I’ve since downloaded quite a few of her back reads) and started with One Perfect Couple.
The premise is simple – six couples will be chosen to be mixed and matched for a reality show on a deserted island. Nico, a part-time actor whose biggest triumph was a part in Holby City, somehow persuades his very home-loving and kind-of-ordinary girlfriend Lyla to attend the audition. And nobody is more surprised than Lyla when she and Nico are chosen.
They expect to meet the other couples when the boat drops them off on the island ready for filming. But, instead of being met by the producer and crew on a fully equipped island, they’re dropped off on a truly deserted island.
What follows next is a triumph and shows the way people behave when civilisation goes out the window. It’s quite scary really.
Zero Days by Ruth Ware (Amazon £3.66, Kindle £3.99, Simon & Schuster £9.99)
An even more thrilling read is Zero Days. We’ve all heard of ‘secret shoppers’ – shoppers who request odd items from sales assistants to test their customer service skills. Well, in Zero Days we meet Jack Cross, a penetration tester who’s hired by companies to hack into and test their security systems.
The book opens with Jack breaking into a company’s IT security room. She’s bluetoothed up to her husband Gabe who’s safely at home monitoring Jack’s progress and guiding her through the computer program.
It’s difficult but, eventually, Jack gets it done. However, she’s set off an alert. Managing to outrun the security guards, she rounds the corner to get into her car, only to find herself running into the arms of another guard and being taken to the nearest police station.
Normally, Gabe has it set up so that the company owner is well aware of the test. But Gabe, who up until 10 minutes ago had been talking into Jack’s ear, isn’t picking up her call.
Jack is forced to phone her ex – a brutal cop that she’d tried to prosecute for assault. She’s freed and eventually finds herself at home – dog-tired and almost unable to think having been awake for well over 24 hours. But what’s happened to Gabe?
Oh my goodness! What a terrific, edge-of-the-seat read.
The Mercy Chair by M.W. Craven (Amazon £8.27, Kindle £11.49, Constable £8.99)
One of the most eagerly anticipated releases this year is the latest Washington Poe/Tilly Bradshaw thriller from M.W. Craven. The Mercy Chair is the sixth book in the series.
While each novel can be read as a standalone, if you haven’t tried this truly fantastic series, I really think you’d be best starting off with the first one, The Puppet Show. There’s actually a great offer on Amazon for the six book set if you’re a thriller fan.
Poe has been ordered to talk to a therapist by his boss who can see how disturbed Poe is following the conclusion of his latest case, which was the most disturbing of his career. He sits down to talk his therapist through his trauma – Poe can’t sleep and, when he does, he’s plagued by terrible nightmares of pecking crows (in fact, a murder of crows).
Told in a series of flashbacks between Poe and the therapist, Poe’s called into the office of the National Crime Agency and told that his work is going to be surveyed. Immediately suspicious of the guy doing it, Poe asks for the man’s name. When told that it’s Linus, he dubs him Snoopy and proceeds to treat him as an intern.
Poe is called to a site where Cornelius Green, a charismatic cult leader, has been found stoned to death at the Lightning Tree. At the post mortem, Estelle (Poe’s sparky and beloved wife-to-be) finds a series of strange tattoos on the deceased’s body and not even the brilliant analyst Tilly knows what they mean.
The plot, the language, and the characters all conspire to make the Poe novels totally compelling reading. And those of you who belong to social media reading groups may well find yourself chatting to the author, Mike.
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.