My Book Reviews for July 2025
My Book Reviews for July 2025
My Book Reviews for July 2025 comprise another bumper crop of advance copies I had the privilege of reading. I thank the authors, publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity.
I loved The Tall Man, a previous novel by this author, written under the penname Phoebe Locke. I admired the clever way she built tension with several disparate viewpoints and held out for longer than most authors before she knitted them together in a superb finale.
She uses the same strategy in Her Many Faces with equal panache.
This time her narrators are five men who are connected to a woman who is on trial for the murders of members of a private London club. They are:
the woman’s father, who still wants to believe she's innocent despite the rest of the family abandoning her;
her barrister, back in court after a breakdown, who has doubts about defending someone he suspects is guilty;
her friend from school days, at one time hopelessly in love with her and who's now gone off radar;
her onetime lover, who would rather they'd never met;
and an ambitious journalist, chasing the juiciest headlines on the case.
Each narrator addresses their chapters to 'you', the woman on trial, and builds a picture of her backstory, her relationship with each of them and the events that led to the murders.
Nicci Cloke delivers a masterclass in unreliable narration. The reader isn’t sure whether each man is being completely truthful, or whether the woman is innocent or guilty. We sense we’re not seeing the whole picture, but the author keeps us guessing for a long, suspenseful time.
Smooth, sophisticated and gripping. This has shot to the top of my book of the year contenders' list.
After a party at Cambridge University, Holly drowned with a huge dose of ketamine in her system. Her friend Cordelia never believed it was an accident and encourages a journalist, the USA-born Anna, to investigate. Anna asks her estranged British father, Seaton, an emeritus professor, to get her into the university in the guise of a wealthy student. But Seaton is old friends with the father of victim Holly's boyfriend. The boyfriend is one of four possible suspects Cordelia and Anna have identified. Nevertheless, Seaton wants the truth for Holly's family, so he arranges for Anna to assume the persona of Aria, a real-life rich American, who has disappeared from social media to enter drug rehab.
Anna's experiences undercover among the rich, overprivileged student set are revealed in an extended email / request for help to her ex-boyfriend, Reid, a police detective. It took me a while to settle into this unusual approach as I’m not used to reading a slightly arm’s length narrative addressed to 'you'. However, as the story progresses, Anna’s email makes less use of ‘you’ and mostly describes her investigation in a conventional and suspenseful way. The second viewpoint character is Anna’s father, Seaton. His story takes off the day after Anna has disappeared from her undercover life and he tries to find out what’s happened to her. He summons support from Anna’s ex, the detective Reid, and we then get chapters from Reid’s perspective as the two men search for Anna. By chapter 5, I was fully invested and I’m glad I stuck with this intriguing mystery (even though the biggest conundrum might perhaps be how none of the students suffered liver failure given their copious consumption of alcohol and drugs…) All three viewpoint characters were engaging.
Almost Nothing Happened by Meg Rosoff
Seventeen-year-old Callum has spent his summer on a disappointing French exchange. Staying with an aloof, sophisticated family undermined his already low self-esteem to the extent he didn't dare try out his limited French. Instead of coming of age and finding himself, he spent the visit in the company of the family dog, feeling invisible and miserable.
As he’s about to board the Eurostar home with the rest of his English cohort, he impulsively U-turns and, in a last-ditch attempt to find adventure, heads into Paris alone.
On a sweltering, sleepless night in the city, he gets caught up in an outrageous and uproariously funny caper involving a stolen oboe; a sultry, experienced older companion; high-value artwork; a motorcycle; a sex club; a protest demo; exotic street food; and a coachload of sightseeing Texans. (Three members of my close family have been on extended exchange visits in Europe and between us we experienced pretty much the same - except for the stolen oboe, obvs.)
The author does a great job of describing the atmosphere of the French capital in a heatwave and of conveying the clumsy, endearing angst of her protagonist.
This is billed as Young Adult, but it's laugh-out-loud funny for adults too, especially for those who've been on a stay abroad.
Much like a typical exchange visit, Almost Nothing Happened is short, wild and oodles of fun.
When Joseph discovers his son has been involved in a hit and run, his first instinct is to protect his child. The straight-A student is destined for medical school. Joseph reasons that the number of people Max will save as a doctor outweigh the one death the boy has caused in an unfortunate accident.
Joseph takes charge of disposing of the body. Despite being wracked with revulsion and guilt, he puts the incident behind him, safe in the knowledge he’s done the right thing for his family.
That’s until a second corpse appears…
Joseph’s narration is visceral, claustrophobic and at times darkly comedic. Occasional chapters were from the viewpoints of the first victim’s brother and the first victim’s girlfriend. Despite the horror they presented, these chapters served as a useful palate cleanser after time spent with Joseph’s increasingly desperate thoughts and actions.
Here is my review of Sam Lloyd’s previous novel, The People Watcher.
From the blurb: After years as Hollywood's horror It Girl, Scream queen Quinn is sick of the tabloids and the off-screen drama. She's decided to make one last film, before quitting. All that stands in her way is leading man Teddy James, a Reality TV star with absolutely no talent. When they stumble - literally - across a dead body on set, everyone believes it's a tragic accident, but Quinn's not convinced. She offers Teddy a deal: acting lessons in exchange for his help investigating. And as Teddy and Quinn dig deeper, she begins to wonder what's most at risk here - their lives, or her heart?
This is a lively, well-written genre mashup - a murder mystery on the set of a horror film, all wrapped up in a spicy RomCom.
College student McKenzie attends the funeral service for her mother, a world-famous author who has died suddenly. The author is mourned by her publisher, agent and adoring fans, but less so by McKenzie. After the funeral, McKenzie receives the first of several beyond-the-grave notes from her mother. Gradually, she realises they are pages from her mother's diary that refer to a dark secret from her teenage years. McKenzie and her best friend EJ, a handy IT expert, set off on a quest to discover the truth about her mother's past (though they seem less concerned about who is tracking McKenzie's every move and delivering the notes). The writing is pacy and fluent, and McKenzie is a rounded, engaging character whose search uncovers all kinds of twisted craziness after the midpoint.
Circle of Liars by Kate Francis
Seven students travel by bus to a school camp. But the location is a dilapidated and abandoned motel and their host is an unseen and sinister character who is intent on holding the teenagers to account for a fatal fire.
Every hour, the mystery avenger forces the students to select the guiltiest among them to step outside the white circle around the motel and be killed.
Which one will be left alive and why?
Ideal for fans of Young Adult thrillers with Christie's And Then There Were None vibes.
El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott
Although elements are in place for a thriller/mystery – three sisters, one teenage daughter, a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and a brutal murder – this is more of a slow-burn literary novel about family dynamics and is likely to appeal to fans of that genre.
From the blurb: An exclusive black-tie birthday party. A sprawling mansion with a dark past. A body falling from a cliffside balcony onto the starlit outdoor dance floor. One of the guests is dead, and another is a killer - but who is the hunter and who is the prey?
Partly told in an arm's length narrative style and partly like stream of consciousness writing, this is ideal for fans of suspense stories set in a possibly haunted house.
Described by author Louise O’Neill as Lord of the Flies meets Love Island, this novel places 20 beautiful young people in a compound – away from the catastrophes of a near-feature outside world. They pair up, face bizarre challenges and gain useless rewards. But what is the ultimate prize? And what happens to those eliminated on the way? The story is told from the viewpoint of one contestant, Lily.
Ideal for fans of an unusual but topical premise and traditional, past-tense, first-person narration.
In 1999, six recent graduates work for a psychology professor on a revolutionary new dating website. Twenty-five years later they gather for a reunion dinner to remember the late professor. But what really happened back then? What secrets does each dinner guest hold? And how many of them will get out of the dinner alive?
With a large cast of characters, dual timelines and twists, the book is another solid, straightforwardly told suspense story from this bestselling author. Fans of Mark Edwards know what to expect and won’t be disappointed.
This book will be published on 31 July 2025.
I hope you enjoyed My Book Reviews for July 2025. I’ve already got some stunners lined up for August so please pop back next month to read the reviews.