So many books… so little time – because of scrolling? We all fall prey to distractions and interruptions, don’t we. After being humbled in 2024 when I realized that I only read 22 books that year, I was more intentional in 2025, reading 43 books (but still down from the 60-something I used to read).
One reason for adding to the list is the number of classic novels I listened to via the Sleepy Bookshelf app, in which Elizabeth the narrator puts on a welcoming and gentle voice and lolls you to sleep. I enjoyed The Enchanted April, Emma, The Secret Garden, and others because of this wonderful podcast. Highly recommend if you struggle to fall back asleep – and sleep headphones will help you stay quiet if you share a bed.
In scanning the books I read, I see a lot of 2.5 and 3.5 starts out of 5. I won’t share those with you, but offer 5 fiction titles and 1 non-fiction for you to enjoy. In no particular order…
The Maid’s Secret by Nita Prose
Utterly delightful. This is the third in the Maid series, and I marvelled at how a third book could rival the first. But it does. In fact, I think it might even be better.
There’s a back and forth timeswap aspect with Molly’s current mystery and her gran’s backstory. That’s all I’ll say as the uncovering of both work together wonderfully.
I finished it last night with a pleased sigh of contentment. I’ve listened to all three, and the narrator does so well with the voices. Feels a familiar sound…
I love that there’s never any mention of Molly’s neurodiversity, but as the reader/listener we figure it out. A massive ‘show, don’t tell’ by the author.
The Names by Florence Knapp
A fascinating novel, which traces the lives of a family through the naming of the son via three different names. It took me a bit to get into this format – I wondered how tiresome this might become – but soon was captivated (especially when I learned that the author jumped ahead in seven-year segments, which kept the story moving).
Interesting to ponder how life can differ according to what name you’re given…
TW: the novel refers to domestic abuse.
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
A stunning book with so many different first-person points of view, alternating by chapter. I’d start off the chapter with a new character wondering who in the world they were and how they would fit – suspense held, waiting to see…. It’s an effective device for keeping the reader’s interest. I really enjoyed the chapter at the back explaining how the author had been going through a building project while writing, and how the physical moving around of her space somehow unlocked a different level of creativity. Along with her toddler child removing, while she was writing, all of the post-it notes she had arranged with the novel’s structure. Which made her throw out the conventional ways novels appear, leading to her chapter of photos of items up for auction (which I didn’t think worked and wanted to skip over but I made myself read).
Haunting, lyrical, engaging, lovely… everything you might hope for from a Maggie O’Farrell novel. I picked this up at a charity shop but it’s one I won’t part with right away. I read it too fast and will allow a slower, more luxurious read in a few years (including looking up the words I didn’t know the meaning of!).
I recognize I haven’t said anything about the book itself – its characters, the plot, etc. It hops around from Ireland to the States to South America to England and in between, but she holds it all together around one main character… Intrigued? Read it!
Wish You Well by David Baldacci
An engaging novel, set in the late 1930s. What a change for the young children when their family suffers a car accident, killing their novelist father and putting their mother into a coma. They move to their grandmother’s home in the mountains of Virginia, a harsh location to exist in.
I appreciated the emotional coming of age for Lou, the young daughter, as she and her younger brother leave New York City for a farming-in-Appalachia experience. Ups and downs and perhaps too tidy of an ending but I didn’t mind…
Compelling writing. Love that it was based on oral storytelling within the author’s family.
We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman
A wrenching story of friendship, charting the last months of lifelong friends as one succumbs to cancer. Full of highs and lows; the coping mechanisms of grief when the simply unfathomable becomes reality.
I loved Ash, the protagonist, and Edie, in them seeing reflections of my own lifelong friendship with Kristen. The shared jokes over the decades; the way the friends see so many parts of each other – many that others miss.
I loved nearly everything about this book. The only niggle was really big though, the idea that a mother who had devoted herself to her child could remove herself from him for the last weeks of her life. This pushed believability too much; I just couldn’t buy it.
Other than that, a really lovely read. Five stars.
Everything Sad Is Untrue: (A True Story) by Daniel Nayeri
I so enjoyed listening to this book, especially because the author narrated it. I loved hearing his inflection on words – the way he said his home country, Iran, or how he voiced the words in Farsi. It’s an engaging account of his memories of leaving his beloved home and world as a young boy and becoming a refugee – one with a patchwork of memories. What is true? That’s a question he raises more than once, and it’s worth pondering in our own lives.
His stories, whether in Oklahoma where they found refuge or in the land of honey and jasmine, captured me. Themes of home, identity, family, personhood, and hospitality abound, among others. There are, sadly, stories of domestic abuse too. Highly recommend.
