What July Knew by Emily Koch

 

Summer, 1995.

July Hooper knows eighteen things about her mother. Like number thirteen: she loved dancing on the kitchen table. And number eight: she was covered in freckles.

And then there’s number two: she died after being hit by a car when July was small. She keeps this list hidden in a drawer away from her father. Because they’re not allowed to talk about her mother. Ever.

But an anonymous note slipped into July’s bag on her tenth birthday is about to change everything she thinks she knows about her mum. Determined to discover what really happened to her, July begins to investigate, cycling around the neighbourhood where her family used to live.

There she meets someone who might finally have the answers. July wants her family to stop lying to her, but will the truth be harder to face?

First off, a massive thanks to Vintage Books for my gorgeous physical copy, and for approving me on Netgalley for the e-arc.

I buddy read this with my pals Lucy and Bex, and once I started I felt I couldn’t stop. It was so good. 

July is this beautiful sweet 10 year old, who lives with her father, her stepmother, and step sister. She doesn't get on so great with either of them, but she tries so hard. My heart broke for July so many times throughout the story, but the last page absolutely threw me into tears. There is so much pain in the book, but July pushes through it in order to find out more things about her mum. I loved the list, I loved that she finds things to add to it, and I would have loved to do a school report about a family member. There was just so much to unravel, and it all unravels in a magnificent fashion!

As my pals have said, this story throws you back to your childhood (well if you were a 90s kid like me), with mentions of so many things I loved from back then. Its nostalgic, beautiful, and heartbreaking. I hope everyone loves it as much as I did.

Metronome by Tom Watson

 

Not all that is hidden is lost. For twelve years Aina and Whitney have been in exile on an island for a crime they committed together, tethered to a croft by pills they must take for survival every eight hours. They've kept busy - Aina with her garden, her jigsaw, her music; Whitney with his sculptures and maps - but something is not right.

Shipwrecks have begun washing up, and their supply drops have stopped. And on the day they're meant to be collected for parole, the Warden does not come. Instead there's a sheep. But sheep can't swim...

As days pass, Aina begins to suspect that their prison is part of a peninsula, and that Whitney has been keeping secrets. And if he's been keeping secrets, maybe she should too. Convinced they've been abandoned, she starts investigating ways she might escape. As she comes to grips with the decisions that haunt her past, she realises her biggest choice is yet to come.

This was a strange one. I loved the idea of it when I read the blurb, and ny reading pal told me to talk to her about it when I was finished as she’d recently read it. 

The idea of Aina and Whitney being punished for a crime by being placed on island alone, was something different to anything I’d read before. The pills had me intrigued, I wondered why they had to keep taking them. The story starts out really interesting, I liked reading the flashbacks to their lies before this, but the world sounds crazy! When you read it you’ll know what I mean.

The last maybe third of the book seemed very rushed, and I think it could have been played out a bit more. The first ⅔ were really detailed and had me hooked, but the last ⅓ just felt too quick.

Overall a good story, a really different idea. 

The Nothing Man by Catherine Ryan Howard

 I was the girl who survived the Nothing Man. 

Now I am the woman who is going to catch him...

You've just read the opening pages of The Nothing Man, the true crime memoir Eve Black has written about her obsessive search for the man who killed her family nearly two decades ago.

Supermarket security guard Jim Doyle is reading it too, and with each turn of the page his rage grows. Because Jim was - is - the Nothing Man.

The more Jim reads, the more he realises how dangerously close Eve is getting to the truth. He knows she won't give up until she finds him. He has no choice but to stop her first…

Okay, wow. This book was amazing. Aging read one of Catherine’s book earlier this year (56 Days) and enjoying it, I went into this one with high hopes, and boy were my hopes right! I’ve been scared by 1 book before while reading (The Girl in the Walls by A.J. Gnuse), but this one terrified me! I was lying in bed, 12am, pitch back, reading about this bloody scary guy creeping into peoples houses and bedrooms in the dead of night. Not a good idea! 

I finished late last night, I stayed awake until 12.45am to finish the last 40% as i just needed to get it finished and find out what was going to happen!

Jim AKA the Nothing Man, was so scary. His thoughts behind things, planning, the crimes he committed. This is some seriously scary guy. I loved Eve, and I felt so bad for her reading back on what happened to her family. The bathroom scene was so intense! 

Fantastic writing Ms Howard, you blew me away!