What Cathy Read Next...

On the blog last week

Monday – I published my review of Sister Rosa’s Rebellion by Carolyn Hughes.

Tuesday – My take on this week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Authors Who’ve Appeared At My Local Literary Festival.

Wednesday – As always WWW Wednesday is a weekly opportunity to share what I’ve just read, what I’m currently reading and what I plan to read next… and to take a peek at what others are reading.

Thursday – My guest was Susan Ekins, author of Hoodwink!: A ‘true’ medieval whodunnit.

Friday – I shared my book club’s thoughts on The Kellerby Code by Jonny Sweet.

Saturday – I published my sign-up post for the 20 Books of Summer 2025 Reading Challenge.

New on my shelves

Our London Lives by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic Books via NetGalley)

1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away.

Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another’s sight, always on one another’s mind, yet rarely together.

Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she’s ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.

Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid (Polygon)

A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run with her three companions – a healer, a weaver and a seer. The men hunting her will kill her – because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. She is no lady: she is the first queen of Scotland, married to a king called Macbeth.

As the net closes in, we discover a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. At the heart of it is one strong, charismatic woman, who survived loss and jeopardy to outwit the endless plotting of a string of ruthless and power-hungry men. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

What I’m currently reading

I’m reading Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon, listening to The Book of Days by Francesca Kay – both books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction – and reading My Name is Emilia Del Valle by Isabel Allende from my NetGalley shelf.

Look out for…

Book Review: Days of Light by Megan Hunter
Book Review: My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

Cathy at 746 Books has handed over the baton of the 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge to two new hosts: Annabel at AnnaBookBel and Emma at Words and Peace. Thank you, Cathy, for hosting what has become one of my favourite reading challenges for the past ten years. Put your feet up now and read a book… or twenty.

The #20BooksofSummer2025 challenge runs from Sunday June 1st to Sunday August 31st. You can find all the information you need about the challenge here where you can also sign up to participate. It’s where you can also grab the wonderful new logos to use on your sign-up post, updates and reviews. Plus there’s a bingo card if you want to make things even more challenging.

Every year I approach the challenge high on ambition and usually low on likelihood of success. But, hey, it’s supposed to be a challenge, isn’t it? I’m aiming for the full 20 books, targeting the oldest physical books in my TBR pile, quite a few of which – sadly – have appeared on previous years’ lists.

Being a stubborn old so-and-so, I like to stick to my original list and not take advantage of the option to swap books in and out. However, I am going to allow myself the freedom to DNF at the 25% point if I’m not loving a book. (I rarely DNF books usually.) I have audio versons of the two biggest books and I’m hoping this might help me get through them.

If I DNF a book, it’s going to the charity bookshop. If I finish it but didn’t absolutely love it, it’s going to the charity bookshop. That should mean lots of space created on my bookshelves. Win/win.

Links from the titles will take you to the book description on Goodreads. I’ll update them with links to my reviews when I’ve read them.