Here are my favourite ten books of 2025 Part Four, including audiobooks, of which there are quite a few. As usual a disparate selection, though somewhat heavy on the Gothic.

One Tiny Cry by Christina Delay

This was crazy bonkers at times and I loved every minute. Anything to do with religious cults is up there with my favourite genres, and One Tiny Cry is one of the best I’ve ever read. But it did get more out there as we progressed. No-one believes Darla that there is something weird going on in the town she left sixteen years ago, though as the reader we never doubt her for a moment. Nothing indicates that she might be an unreliable narrator.

I really wanted to slap Darla’s ‘best friend’ Emmie, who starts out on her side, but then starts to agree that she needs therapy for her imagined threats. And as for her other friends? As they say – with friends like that who needs enemies .

For my full review click here

The Butterfly Bush by Josephine DeFalco (Book 1 of The Butterfly Series) 

I loved Leandra as a character. I felt every sympathy for her living a life that is totally out of my experience. It’s the early 1950s, just before I was born, and Leandra is still a child. Her father was killed in the war and she lives with his parents, whom she calls Papaw and Mamaw, and her mama. She has a little brother Ray, who is a bit ‘slow’.

Everything is fine until mama starts dating, and finally decides to marry Roger, and move with him to New York. The children are understandably devastated. They don’t want to leave their grandparents, their home or the butterfly bush which means so much to them.

For my full review click here

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

Let me just say that you will need to be patient. It’s a long book which meanders along, sometimes not knowing exactly where it is going, and I occasionally struggled to follow the intertwining plot strands. So why 5 stars I hear you ask? Many reasons. The stories are richly woven, the characters beautifully drawn, and the language both masterful and poetic. And then there’s Juliet Stephenson’s narration which is always amazing.

The main strands include the story of widower Jonah Hancock, a merchant whose ship has been sold in exchange for a mermaid. At first he is horrified, but then he sees the potential. He is ably helped by his niece, 14-year-old Suki, probably my favourite character.

For my full review click here

The Household by Stacey Halls

Another audiobook, this time from Audible, and my fourth by this author. I eagerly await her next offering.

In The Household, it is 1847, when we meet a group of women who have fallen on hard times, and ended up in prison, or working the streets. Martha is the first to arrive and seems too good and innocent to be there. I was never really sure why she was, but I adored her. Then we have Josephine and Annie, who met in prison and became really close. About to be released, they are chosen to go to Urania Cottage, where they will learn skills like baking, sewing and playing an instrument. But after a while they will travel to Australia to begin new lives. Who will want to go?

For my full review click here

Behind A Locked Door by Sarah A Denzil

I shouldn’t really give this five stars as a lot of it is so far-fetched, but I adored it. In the second half, it was so exciting I had to keep listening until the end (this was on Audible). It’s got everything, murder, psychopaths, kidnapping, mystery, secrets, suspense…

Psychology teacher Lucy Foster is a single mother to fifteen-year-old Theo. His dad is in prison for drug-related offences. He was Lucy’s teen sweetheart and she hasn’t really dated since. When Lucy rescues Alice and new born baby Jess from the basement of her friend Miriam’s house, where they have been locked up, Theo becomes a bit obsessed.

For my full review click here

House of Splinters by Laura Purcell

I’ve loved all of Laura’s books, but The Silent Companions has always been my favourite. I couldn’t believe we would be revisiting spooky house The Bridge, where it was set, in her latest novel House of Splinters.

There is something very creepy about the whole concept of ‘silent companions’. Each of these strange wooden figures resembles someone who lived at the house many years before, from the murdered footman Roberts and Wilfred’s late father, to Henrietta Maria, a supposedly wicked child who committed a series of heinous crimes and was eventually killed by her own mother, Anne Bainbridge.

For my full review click here

The Clockmaker by Roxan Burley

The Clockmaker is only a short novella but I loved every minute, every page. It’s a bit Evie Woods and The Lost Bookshop, which is one of my favourite books.

I loved the character of Elenora – we know she is escaping from something or someone – but as this is a short read, we only get a gist of her back story. But my favourite character was the clockmaker himself, who appears one day after Elenora moves into the bookshop. There is something magical and unreal about him, but we don’t find out until much later on. There are lots of other unexplained happenings, like the notes that appear in the till each day with requests for specific items.

For my full review click here

The Last Orphan by Carly Schabowski

It was interesting at the end of the book to read what the author had to say about trauma, grief, guilt, and the effect of alcoholism on many of those who had survived the war. My Romanian-Jewish mother, diagnosed with agoraphobia and chronic anxiety, I now believe was suffering from PTSD following her escape from the Nazis in Vienna in 1938.

My father on the other hand, was Polish. He lived in the countryside, not in the city, and by the time the Germans had taken Warsaw, he had joined the army and was taken to a prisoner-of-war camp north of Siberia. Like some of the orphans in the book, he ended up in the UK, where he remained.

For my full review click here

Hunting Evil by Chris Carter (Robert Hunter #10)

I’m conflicted with this one, though I still gave it 5 stars. It’s again very different as it’s a sequel to An Evil Mind, but it doesn’t follow the usual pattern of the other books in the series. We still have a psychopathic serial killer, but this time he has an agenda – revenge.

Lucien Folter – Robert Hunter’s ex-best mate from university – has escaped from prison, killing a number of guards along the way. He’s angry that he spent three and a half years in confinement, but also because the FBI took away his research papers, all 53 books of them. His life’s work, detailing his emotions while killing someone.

For my full review click here

The Light a Candle Society by Ruth Hogan

As I have said before, I’ve read all of Ruth’s novels, my favourites being The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes and The Keeper of Lost Things (in that order or maybe joint first). But nothing could have prepared me for The Light A Candle Society and the emotion it stirred up in me. I listened to it on Audible and at first I wasn’t sure about the male narrator, but I grew to love him with his great voices and impressions.

Having had a busy Christmas Eve and a quick drink in the pub on Christmas Day morning, I had the rest of the day free – dinner notwithstanding. Not particularly interested in the repeats on TV, I listened to the last two hours of the book and spent most of it in tears. It’s not because of the funerals themselves – the Light A Candle Society is a beautiful idea – but because we learn so much about the people who supposedly die without freinds and relatives, and the interesting lives they had before they found themselves alone. There but for the grace of God etc…. Arthur and Captain in particular stole my heart along with crisp-eating Sailor the dog (all my dogs have loved eating crisps in the pub so I can identify).

For my full review click here