Best Reads October 2023

October has continued to be a quieter reading month as I’m still recovering from a relapse that started last month. I’ve not taken part in blog tours and mainly have picked and choose what I’ve read from my TBR book trolley and my pile that lives next to me in the bedroom. It’s been an eclectic mix and I’m even starting to pick up the odd non-fiction book too. I’ve enjoyed most things I’ve read but these six really are the cream of the crop.

This latest novel from C.J. Cooke was originally a NetGalley choice but I bought it as well, because I like a finished copy when I’ve enjoyed a book and I’ve bought her last three models without worrying about trying it first. They’re always good. This one was exceptional and all based on board the Arctic whaling boat the Ormen. In the present day it’s a shipwreck just off an isolated part of Iceland and about to be moved out to deeper water and sunk. We follow Dom, who is try to document the ship before it is disappears forever, but I had so many questions about why she’d chosen to do this alone. Not long after a group of three explorers also turn up to document the boat and they join Dom, living on the Ormen and measuring sounds, distances and filming their attempts at Parkour. Then we’re sent over 100 years into the past and a different voyage for the Ormen, a whaling expedition with an unusual addition on the ship. Nicky wakes as the ship is moving and soon realises she has a severely broken ankle with an open wound. She has no recollection of coming aboard, but does remember being in the park and bundled into a sack. For some reason she has been taken from her home and family by one of these rough and ready crewmen. She hopes the captain will free her, but when he refers to her as the crew’s Selkie wife she knows what she’s here for. If Nicky wants to live and return to her family, she will spend the voyage ‘entertaining’ the men in her cabin. Nicky resigns herself to her fate, but not to the strange thing that’s happening to her injured leg. Where the leg is healing, instead of soft warm skin covering the wound Nicky can see a sleek silver grey skin, almost like that of a seal. This is a brilliant bit of historical fiction and a great ghost story too. The setting is eerie and unsettling, Nicky’s voyage is horrifying and the explorers become very on edge with their situation and each other. Unputdownable!

The Hidden Years is another dual timeline narrative, set in a large mansion in Cornwall both in the 1960’s and the war years. We start with Belle who is at university in the 1960’s when she meets Gray and falls head over heels in love. Gray invites her to Silverwood, a community where self sufficiency and creativity are a way of life. Gray wants to work on his music and he wants to take Belle down to Helford, Cornwall with him. Once there, Belle experiences a different way of living but also befriends a lady in a nearby cottage who inexplicably seems to recognise her. We then go back to the 1940’s a girl called Imogen taking two boys down to their school in Cornwall, where she’s offered a temporary job as matron in the dormitory. She has a friendship with one of the teachers Ned, but there’s a spark of attraction with another school master too. When Imogen starts to volunteer as a nurse for the war effort, her relationships with these two men will cause heartache and shape her life. I loved the way she writes about how war shapes the future of these young people and how far reaching it’s influence is. This is a great read, full of period detail and local history with a central mystery you’ll want to uncover.

Alice Hoffman’s new novel The Invisible Hour is a mixture of historical fact and magic realism, including one of America’s most famous writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hoffman’s book uses Hawthorne’s book The Scarlet Letter as a basis for her story which starts with a young girl called Ivy who becomes pregnant while still a teenager. Her rich, Boston, family are horrified and reject her pleas for help, so Ivy leaves home. With the help of a friend she makes her way to a community in Massachusetts that has a very charismatic leader. Joel has been left land by his first wife and has built a religious community that makes its money from the apple orchards they harvest. By the time Ivy’s father has sent out a private investigator to find her, she is married to Joel and has a small daughter, Mia. In a separate timeline we meet a teenage Mia who is finding the restrictions of their community too hard to cope with. She has already found a way to sneak into the library and enjoy the books banned by Joel. When tragedy strikes at the farm, Mia takes a chance and runs with the help of the librarian. However, Joel isn’t very good at letting things go and Mia has left with a painting, with a very important inscription on the back. There’s jeopardy and tension all the way, but of course Alice Hoffman brings in some romance and a sprinkle of magic as Mia steps outside her time and meets Nathaniel Hawthorne. This was a feminist take on the themes of The Scarlet Letter, with a strong defence of women across history and an even stronger defence of the written word.

This was a real return to form for the Strike novels after the complex and internet based case at the centre of the last book. Here Strike is running several cases, but the main investigation is of a religious organisation not unlike Scientology in it’s methods. A peer of the realm asks Robin and Strike to find his son, who has been part of the church for a number of years. They have been trying to let him know that his mother was terminally ill and would like to see him, unfortunately she has now died and he believes that the church haven’t given him their letters. We’re taken to the church’s farm and retreat in Norfolk, known as the Chapman Farm. With most of their operatives already on cases it’s Robin who volunteers to be a new recruit, offering to visit services at their London temple. Strike worries, but from Robin’s point of view as an equal partner she has the right to make these choices. However, knowing Robin’s previous trauma I was worried that the church would target and manipulate her. They agree she will identify a place on the farm’s perimeter to leave them a note each week under a rock. That way if she wants to come out, they will know. The farm sections are tense, disturbing and kept me turning the pages – no mean feat in a book of this size. As always the feelings these two have for each other will threaten to break the surface and as Robin finds herself in danger will this be the time they are honest with each other? This was a great investigation and a definite step up from the last novel in the series.

This is the third novel from Alix E. Harrow and she became a ‘must-buy’ author for me after her last. Consequently, I ended up with three copies of this after forgetting I’d ordered it and getting a copy from the publisher. We’re in the town of Eden, Kentucky, a place where industry dominates the job market and the Graveley’s power plant is the destination of most young men who stay put. Opal doesn’t want that for her brother Jasper, who she’s been looking after since she was twelve and their mother drowned in an accident. The brother and sister live in a motel room, exist on food that doesn’t need cooking and live hand to mouth. Opal has two cleaning jobs, but isn’t spending their money on their day to day expenses, or on herself. She has seen potential in Jasper and she wants him to get a proper education. Her savings are all for him to attend a private academy where he’ll flourish and be able to leave Eden. However, Opal is attracted to Starling House. She passes on her way between jobs each day and although it’s barely visible from the road, there is one light that glows in an attic room and there’s the gates, sinuous ironwork that almost looks alive. One night she stands at the gate and places her hands on the curls of the ironwork. Immediately, she feels wetness and realises her hand is cut, but on what? When she looks up, a tall, dark wild looking man has appeared in front of her with a sword. He’s magnetic and as they stare into each other’s eyes he says one word – ‘Run’. Opal doesn’t need telling twice, but will she be able to stay away? Especially when the house wants her. … A love story of swords and thorns rather than hearts and flowers, this is a perfect dark fantasy for autumn.

Val McDermid is one of my reading oversights, so I was thrilled when her latest Karen Pirie novel was chosen for one of our Squad Pod reads. We were also sent Still Life, to catch up with the story and I can now see why Val is the Queen of Crime. Karen Pirie is in charge of a cold case unit, but this case begins with a new body being pulled from the Firth of Forth. The dead man has been living in France under an alias, but strangely his artist brother went missing a few years before and is in Karen’s cold case files. Surely the two disappearances are related? I loved Karen because she’s so determined, meticulous in gathering every detail and not above getting her hands dirty. They follow the dead man’s movements during his Scottish visit and think he had a lead on his brother’s disappearance. Meanwhile, her sergeant Jason is following leads on a skeleton found in a camper van, within the garage of a rented house. Two women lived there, but the team can’t be sure at first who they body is and which woman is on the run. They have a lead to the north west of England where one of the women has lived in an art collective. So, on her own travels to France, then Ireland Karen has the help of a young recruit called Daisy. The story took us into interesting places, including Westminster and the Scottish office and how they choose their art from the National collections. I was also touched by the sensitivity Val brought to Karen’s personal life and her new relationship with Hamish, while still grieving for Phil – a fellow police officer and the man she loved. The cases are fascinating, but so is Karen and there are so many reasons to keep turning the pages. I was so sucked in by this that I read the next one straight away and then went back to the first in the series! I’m so excited to have all of Val’s back catalogue to read.

So that’s been October. Here’s what I’m hoping to read in November.