Here are my favourite eight books of the third quarter of 2023. One or two of these might make it into my top four books of 2023. Still a way to go. Once again only a bit of ‘crime’, as a crime novel needs to be totally unique and exceptional to make it into my favourites. So here we go.

Saving Grace by Cristina Slough

Wow! This was a serious page-turner. Exciting, twisted, full of turns of events and utterly mind-blowing.

There are two narrators – Jennifer Mack is an ambitious journalist, who has returned to her home town in Cornwall to write for the local rag. At least that’s how she sees it. Below her. What is there to write about in this sleepy, tourist-driven county? Until a body turns up in the sea. And there’s a message carved dep into the girl’s back – Grace Number 1. When a second body turns up miles away in an abandoned video store in London with Grace Number 2 etched into the flesh, Jennifer knows she’s on to something. This could be the making of her career, and the story is hers. Apart from her nemesis, Hayley, who is trying to undermine her at every opportunity and steal the story from under her nose.

For my full review click here.

The Bleeding by Johanna Gustawsson

The Bleeding is dark, very dark. Not at first, when it dabbles in rituals and spiritualism, but as the three stories of Lucienne in Paris in 1899, Lina in 1949 post-war Quebec and Detective Maxine Grant in 2002 progress and come together, it becomes increasingly scary. With a twist at the end, which as they say, I really didn’t see coming.

It’s 2002 and Maxine, partner Jules and forensic psychologist Gina are investigating a horrific murder. Ex school-teacher Pauline Caron is accused of stabbing her husband 31 times in a most violent and frenzied fashion. But why should she do that? They were a devoted couple, who mainly kept themselves to themselves. She was loved at school by her pupils. But she has secrets and they are far worse than anyone could imagine.

For my full review click here.

Salt and Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones

I’ve only ever read two books that I can compare this with, and they are She Never Told Me About The Ocean by Elizabeth Sharp McKetta and The Unravelling by Polly Crosby. They all have that same whimsical, magical unworldliness, and the first two became my top books of the year in 2021 and 2022. I have a feeling Salt & Skin will be in my top books of 2023.

It’s hard to describe what Salt & Skin is about, because it’s so much more than a story. It’s beautiful, lyrical and filled with superstition and magic. It’s about a family and their journey across the world to find a new beginning, but it’s also about motherhood, grief, love and community. It’s about the witches who were executed in the 17th century and the religion that fears them and would still persecute them if they could.

For my full review click here.

Arrietty by Abby Davies

So what if you woke up one day to find everything you thought you knew was turned on its head. Not once or twice but again and again. You can’t trust anyone. You maybe can’t even trust yourself.

Arrietty is almost impossible to review because everything is a spoiler. Suffice to say that one night at midnight her mum walks out and is never seen again. There is only her father, who won’t tell her what happened, and her little brother Eddie. Eddie is four years old and Arrietty adores him.

The story is told in two timelines – now and two years earlier. There was significant trauma in her life, but we don’t know what it was. We hear from her mum Sofia’s point of view as well as from Arrietty’s.

For my full review click here.

Scrap by Kathy Biggs

I’m including this because it’s completely different from anything else I have read this year.

It’s six o’clock in the morning and I’m sitting in bed crying. Not because I have to get up – I don’t – but because I just finished reading Scrap. Partly because I didn’t want it to end and partly because it did and it was sad, happy and emotional all at the same time.

What a book! All the main characters – Mackie, Sharon and Trev have their own back stories. They work together at Tranter’s Scrap Yard, which is where they discover the kid. He’s found in an old Merc at the top of a pile of cars, dehydrated and malnourished, because he’s been there for days. Thank goodness they didn’t crush the car.

For my full review click here.

The Graces by Siobhan MacGowan

I absolutely loved The Trial of Lotta Rae and The Graces is just as brilliant. It’s probably more my genre to be honest. Anything that includes mysticism, prophecy, alternative religions, healing, superstition etc is right up my street.

It’s beautifully written, with Rosaleen – The Rose – such an interesting character. She is so young and naive really, and it’s very easy for her to be taken advantage of in the big city of Dublin after a sheltered life in the Co Clare countryside.

The heartbreak is devastating, and brave, the subjects dealt with sympathetically and with compassion. Such tragic circumstances, which had me in tears many times. I can say no more.

For my full review click here.

The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard

Very very clever. There are so many crime novels out there, but this is in a class of its own. It’s so intricately plotted that when I had finished it, I had to go back and re-read some of it. Did it really happen like that? It’s going to be very hard to write about because every passage, every clue, is a spoiler. So this will be a short review.

We open with a young woman walking along a lane in the dark. She’s putting herself in extreme danger – she knows that – but how else can she trap the man who took her sister. How else can she find out what really happened? By using herself as ‘bait’ and hoping he’ll take it.

For my full review click here.

The Murmurs by Michael J Malone

I adored this book. I couldn’t wait to read it. Really spooky and scary, but the most terrifying part is when we go back in time to the ‘witches’ who were accused of witchcraft, forced to confess and then strangled before their bodies were thrown on the bonfire.

Annie Jackson comes from a line of women who have a ‘gift’ or is it a curse? She knows when someone is going to die and how. But when she tries to warn them, she is treated like a mad woman, even when she is only twelve years old. She can see the person dying, their faces turn into skulls, and she hears sounds and voices which are referred to as ‘the murmurs’.

For my full review click here.