My Week in Books – 29th June 2025

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On the blog last week

Tuesday – This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic was Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2025.

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. I also shared my review of the Sir Walter Scott Prize shortlisted Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon.

Thursday – I published my review of Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid.

Friday – I shared my review of SPIT by David Brennan.

New on my shelves

The Blazing Sea (The Whale Road Chronicles #8) by Tim Hodkinson (Head of Zeus via NetGalley)

Einar and the Wolf Coats have angered most of the kings of Northern Europe. With England no refuge, their only solution is to set sail across the Whale Road.

A chance encounter with a slave trader leads them to Muslim Spain, but what starts as a joyous homecoming for one of the crew ends in the Caliph’s infamous dungeons.

The Mediterranean proves a perilous sea. Byzantine warships roam, armed with liquid fire that can torch man and ship alike. Viking mercenaries and pirate lords alike spill blood for gold or glory.

With a chance to retake his stolen kingdom of Orkney, Einar must first save an innocent life… and risk his own and those of his crew once more.

The Coming Fire by Greg Mosse (eARC, Moonflower Books)

First came the darkness. Then the storm. Now Alex has no choice: it’s time to face the fire.

Following a fighter jet crash in the Haitian hinterland, special agent Alex Lamarque is taken captive by a violent, drug-addled gang, the only authority in this lawless territory.

Unknown to Alex, his lover Mariam Jordane has escaped the deadly flood of her home valley in the Pyrenees. But Mariam, along with Alex’s mother Gloria, is trapped on the wrong side of the world, facing a crescendo of dangers: the AI viruses crippling the digital state; the breakdown of law and order; and unexpected, terrifying news from a Paris observatory.

Four thousand kilometres to the south, in the remote Sahara, the consequences of the cataclysmic events at the Aswan dam continue to reverberate throughout the world.

With the woman he loves presumed dead, his mother in danger, and no hope of rescue, Alex must tackle his greatest challenge yet: break free from the gang, uncover the truth, and finally face the perpetrators of the global conspiracy that’s seemingly hellbent on destroying the world. Can he – and the people he loves – escape the coming fire?

What I’m currently reading

I’m continuing to listen to the audiobook of Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson from my 20 Books of Summer list, I’m reading One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter from my NetGalley shelf and a review copy, Green Ink by Stephen May.

Look out for…

  • Book Review: The Mare by Angharad Hampshire
  • Book Review: A Beautiful Way to Die by Eleni Kyriacou
  • Book Review: One Good Thing by Georgia Hunter
  • #6Degrees of Separation
  • My Top 5 June Reads

Book Review – SPIT by David Brennan

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About the Book

Welcome to the village of Spit, where Danny Mulcahy is losing the run of himself, and where, as he and his friends dream of escaping, an unexpected death sets the rumour mill into motion.

Suffering an unexplained, perpetual banishment the Spook of Spit is watching everyone and everything – nothing goes unnoticed. Bearing witness to the village’s half-truths and suppressed secrets, fragments of its own dark and obscured history are unveiled.

As events spiral out of control, the past, present and future are set to collide. Can there be redemption for past deeds? How do you escape when you are fated to remain? What does it take to break free from the confines of Spit?

Format: ebook (279 pages) Publisher: époque press
Publication date: 17th June 2025 Genre: Literary Fiction

Find SPIT on Goodreads

Purchase SPIT from époque press

My Review

‘I once inhabitated the body of a dead dog for two weeks.’

From its opening line you know you’re about to enter a strange world of the author’s imagination. SPIT is a story that marries the struggles of everyday life in an Irish village with the challenging nature of the unending afterlife.

Much of the book is narrated by the ghost of Spit. If it isn’t a contradiction in terms, he’s having an existential crisis. Apart from occasional fragments of past events that come to the surface, he cannot recall who he was in life – although he thinks he might have been a bard – or why he is tied to the village of Spit. ‘It’s only in my dreams I can leave Spit.’ But then by his reckoning he’s been dead over six hundred years so perhaps the memory lapse is to be forgiven.

The ghost is the unseen witness to everything that goes on in Spit, able to remain invisible or take other forms such as a goat (one of his favourites) or, memorably, a wasp in a marmalade jar. He is often the unseen, sole companion of the dead or dying, and is drawn by some invisible force to significant events. However, much like the spirits in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, he is powerless to intervene to change the course of events. ‘I can see them, feel them, taste them, be them even, but I can never alter the nature of their fates. This is my curse.’ His whispered advice goes unheeded and his conversations are by definition one-sided. It’s a lonely life, an eternally lonely life. I have to admit, the ghost was my favourite thing about the book.

Danny Mulcahy is on a metaphorical road to nowhere, drinking himself into oblivion. To be fair, he’s not alone because much of the life of the village is centred on its pubs. ‘Mondays, Tuesday, long days, in the half darkness, the men of Spit know how to drink, day to day, generation to generation.’ Danny’s got to the point where after a night’s drinking he experiences blackouts leaving him with no memory of what he might have done or how he got to the place he wakes up. Inconvenient when one of your best friends dies in mysterious circumstances.

Danny has a troubled relationship with his father, the local police sergeant, who considers him a failure. It’s an assessment Danny shares, to be fair. Family meal times are a silent affair imbued with a constant sense things could kick off at any minute thanks to his father’s short temper. Danny’s life is not a neverending downward spiral though. There are times when his future looks brighter: a period of sobriety and a relationship with a much admired young woman from the village. Only the ghost is witness to the rather gruesome activities she gets up to when alone (or so she thinks). Spit is like a whirlpool that is constantly trying to drag you down and only the strongest, most determined will survive.

SPIT is an unusual book – in a good way. I enjoyed its acutely observed portrait of human failings and its dark humour. But do remember the words of the ghost of Spit: ‘If you wake up screaming in the middle of the night haunted by some nightmare then I’m likely to be sitting on your chest looking into your eyes.’

My thanks to Sean at époque press for my digital review copy.

In three words: Imaginative, intense, witty
Try something similar: Villager by Tom Cox

About the Author

David Brennan won the Frank O’Connor Mentorship Bursary Award in 2016 and in 2017 he was longlisted for the Colm Tobin Award. He was one of the winners of the Irish Novel Fair in 2018 with his debut novel, Upperdown, which was published by époque press in June 2019.

David lives and writes in China and SPIT is David’s second novel.