Over the past 10 years I have read in excess of 1100 books and have been compiling my top ten books since 2015.
Here’s a selection of the books that made me… THINK! … but I absolutely LOVED them and gave them all 5 stars.
Small Great Things – Jodi Picoult
When a newborn baby dies after a routine hospital procedure, there is no doubt about who will be held responsible: the nurse who had been banned from looking after him by his father.
What the nurse, her lawyer and the father of the child cannot know is how this death will irrevocably change all of their lives, in ways both expected and not.
Small Great Things is about prejudice and power; it is about that which divides and unites us.
It is about opening your eyes.
The best books make you see differently.
This is one of them.
Perfect People – Peter James
John and Naomi are grieving the death of their four-year-old son from a rare genetic disorder. They desperately want another child, but, when they find out they are both carriers of a rogue gene, they realize the odds of their next child contracting the same disease are very high.
Then they hear about geneticist Doctor Leo Dettore. He has methods that can spare them the heartache of ever losing another child to any disease – even if his methods cost more than they can afford. But surely a healthy child is worth all the money in the world?
His clinic is where their nightmare begins.
They should have realized that something was wrong when they saw the list. Choices of eye colour, hair, sporting ability. They can literally design their child. Is this what they really wanted? Now it’s too late to turn back. Naomi is pregnant and already she knows something is very wrong . . .
Curvy Girls Club – Michele Gorman
Meet best friends Pixie, Ellie, Katie and Jane. Fed up with always struggling to lose weight, they ditch the scales and start a social club where size doesn’t matter. At the Curvy Girls Club, confidence is the new black. Soon it’s the most popular place to be – having fun instead of counting carbs – and the women suddenly find their lives changing in ways they never imagined.
But the club can’t stop real life from messing things up. Will these best friends manage to stick together through thick and thin?
The Herd – Emily Edwards
Two best friends
Elizabeth and Bryony are polar opposites but their unexpected friendship has always worked. They’re the best of friends, and godmothers to each other’s daughters – because they both trust that the safety of their children is their top priority.
One little secret
Little do they know that they differ radically over one very important issue. And when Bryony, afraid of being judged, tells what is supposed to be a harmless white lie before a child’s birthday party, the consequences are more catastrophic than either of them could ever have imagined.
Every parent’s worst nightmare . . .
Differently Normal – Tammy Robinson
If it doesn’t break your heart, it isn’t love . . .
For Maddy, life is all about routine. It has to be, to keep her autistic sister happy and healthy. With just Maddy and her mother as Bee’s full-time carers, there’s no time in Maddy’s life for complications like friends, let alone a boyfriend. So when Maddy meets Albert, the last thing on her mind is falling in love.
Albert has resigned himself to always being a disappointment to his strict father. But then he meets Maddy, and gets a glimpse of what being part of a functioning family can be like – and the tremendous sacrifices people will make for the ones they love.
But are Maddy and Albert willing to make the biggest of sacrifices for each other? Some things, they are about to discover, are outside of their control . . .
The New Woman – Charity Norman
Luke Livingstone is a lucky man. He’s a respected solicitor, a father and grandfather, a pillar of the community. He has a loving wife and an idyllic home in the Oxfordshire countryside. Yet Luke is struggling with an unbearable secret, and it’s threatening to destroy him.
All his life, Luke has hidden the truth about himself and his identity. It’s a truth so fundamental that it will shatter his family, rock his community and leave him outcast. But Luke has nowhere left to run, and to continue living, he must become the person – the woman – he knows himself to be, whatever the cost.
Last One at the Party – Bethany Clift
December 2023. The human race has fought a deadly virus and lost. The only things left from the world before are burning cities and rotting corpses.
But in London, one woman is still alive.
Although she may be completely unprepared for her new existence, as someone who has spent her life trying to fit in, being alone is surprisingly liberating.
Determined to discover if she really is the last survivor on earth, she sets off on an extraordinary adventure, with only an abandoned golden retriever named Lucky for company.
Maybe she’ll find a better life or maybe she’ll die along the way. But whatever happens, the end of everything will be her new beginning.
This is How We Are Human – Louise Beech
Sebastian James Murphy is twenty years, six months and two days old. He loves swimming, fried eggs and Billy Ocean. Sebastian is autistic. And lonely.
Veronica wants her son Sebastian to be happy … she wants the world to accept him for who he is. She is also thinking about paying a professional to give him what he desperately wants.
Violetta is a high-class escort, who steps out into the night thinking only of money. Of her nursing degree. Paying for her dad’s care. Getting through the dark.
When these three lives collide – intertwine in unexpected ways – everything changes. For everyone.
A topical and moving drama about a mother’s love for her son, about getting it wrong when we think we know what’s best, about the lengths we go to care for family … to survive … This Is How We Are Human is a searching, rich and thought-provoking novel with an emotional core that will warm and break your heart.
Three Hours – Rosamund Lupton
THREE HOURS TO SAVE THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE
In rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege.
Pupils and teachers barricade themselves into classrooms, the library, the theatre. The headmaster lies wounded in the library, unable to help his trapped students and staff. Outside, a police psychiatrist must identify the gunmen, while parents gather desperate for news.
In three intense hours, all must find the courage to stand up to evil and save the people they love.
Remember Me – Charity Norman
A heart-rending, thought-provoking tale of a close-knit community ripped apart by its local GP’s disturbing, fragmented revelations as he succumbs to debilitating memory loss – revelations that cast new light on an unsolved missing-persons case and which throw the lives of those closest to him into unfathomable turmoil.
They never found Leah Parata. Not a boot, not a backpack, not a turquoise beanie. After she left me that day, she vanished off the face of the earth.
A close-knit community is ripped apart by disturbing revelations that cast new light on a young woman’s disappearance twenty-five years ago.
After years of living overseas, Emily returns to New Zealand to care for her father who has dementia. As his memory fades and his guard slips, she begins to understand him for the first time – and to glimpse shattering truths about his past.
Are some secrets best left buried?
This is How It Always Is – Laurie Frankel
This is how a family keeps a secret . . . and how that secret ends up keeping them.
This is how a family lives happily ever after . . . until happily ever after becomes complicated.
This is how children change . . . and then change the world.
This is Claude. He’s five years old, the youngest of five brothers, and loves peanut butter sandwiches. He also loves wearing a dress, and dreams of being a princess.
When he grows up, Claude says, he wants to be a girl.
Rosie and Penn want Claude to be whoever Claude wants to be. They’re just not sure they’re ready to share that with the world. Soon the entire family is keeping Claude’s secret. Until one day it explodes.
Laurie Frankel’s This Is How It Always Is is a novel about revelations, transformations, fairy tales, and family. And it’s about the ways this is how it always is: change is always hard and miraculous and hard again, parenting is always a leap into the unknown with crossed fingers and full hearts, children grow but not always according to plan. And families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever.
The Girl in the Green Dress – Cath Staincliffe
Can you really keep your child safe?
What if who they are puts them at risk?
And what if they have blood on their hands?
Teenager Allie Kennaway heads off for prom night, cheered on by her dad Steve and little sister Teagan. But Allie never comes home, beaten to death in an apparent hate crime because of her transgender identity.
As police investigate the brutal murder, a crime that has appalled the country, one parent is at her wit’s end with her son’s behaviour. Are his outbursts and silences hiding something much darker than adolescent mood swings? And if her suspicions are correct, then what does she do?
Another parent fights tooth and nail to save his boy from the full force of the law. But if he succeeds then Allie and her family will never get the justice they deserve.
A groundbreaking story of love and hate, loyalty and betrayal, in a world of change.
