Monthly book reviews – 5 gripping reads - Rest Less (2024)

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.

Hello readers! I hope that you had a great May bank holiday weekend – I certainly did!

On bank holiday Friday, 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, on Monday, 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 inevitable happens when Jean, who’s purchased a beautiful home in the South of France and is desperate for kindness and love, begins 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.

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!

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 of the window. It’s quite scary really.

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.

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 immediately 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.