Summer of '76 - Isobel Ashdown

50%

28.07.26

It's set in 1976, you know. 1976! Yes, 1976! Can you tell? Can you tell? Are there enough irrelevant pop culture details and political references and endless updates on the heatwave (which actually sounds quite mild compared with 2026's brutal summer) to hint at it being, you'd never guess, 1976? And let's add so much background description that readers might not notice the flimsy, predictable plot.

It Should Have Been You - Andrea Mara

48%

06.04.26

A very silly story that depended too much on coincidences, miscommunications and misunderstandings, with only its Irish setting to lend it some interest.

Exiles - Jane Harper

 56%

17.11.23

The story's main character wasn't so much the detective as the lovely small-town Australian setting which, intriguing as that was for a Brit like me, made it not very thrilling for a thriller and not very mysterious for a mystery. Although the plot unfolded agonisingly slowly, I did keep on reading, which was something, but came away with a sense of it being a deeply conservative tale of people unable, or unwilling, to make a life away from the town they were born in.

The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - Joanna Cannon

59%
26.10.17

I found the first half in particular distractingly overwritten and a little slow. The 10-year-old narrator was unconvincing as a child, yet the narrative might have worked better if it had only been from her point of view. Otherwise, readable enough and gained some momentum towards the end.

Sweetland - Michael Crummey

65%
25.04.16

A strange, evocative book that begins as a story of a community and becomes a fable of individualism. The unusual writing style was well judged and appropriate, laying itself out slowly and able to support the increasing weirdness of the protagonist's experiences until the inevitable ambiguous ending.

[I liked this cover best despite the misspelling of the author's name!]