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Books read, January
Feb. 19th, 2026 11:24 amThe War that Saved My Life was my favourite this month - I liked bits of the others but nothing that was entirely successful for me.
The war that saved my life, Kimberley Brubaker Bradley (re-read).
Havoc, Rebecca Wait.
Tragedy at Pike River Mine, Rebecca Macfie.
Heels over head, Elyse Springer.
The death of us, Abigail Dean.
Cinder house, Freya Maske.
Billy Summers, Stephen King
Every step she takes, Alison Cochrun.
The war that saved my life, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Locked away and abused by her evil mother for having a club foot, Ada’s chance for an actual life comes when her brother and his friends are evacuated to the countryside in the early days of WWII and she manages to go with them. They’re placed (reluctantly) with Susan, who is grieving the death of her female lover, and basically this remains an intensely satisfying recovery/family-building/humanising story, with horses.
Havoc, Rebecca Wait. Teenage Ida flees her and her mother’s disgrace (I think they’re in the Shetlands or the Hebrides, so lots of small-town social ostracism) by organising her own scholarship to an eccentric, failing, English girls’ boarding school (in the 1980s, which I feel I should specify given my fondness for elderly boarding school stories); but her new room mate is an arsonist, a new teacher is lying about his past, and there’s a strange epidemic of compulsive twitching and seizures slowly spreading through the school… This is black comedy, readable and well-written, and I like the girls’ plot lines. I wasn’t that thrilled about the bits from the staff povs and I did feel the denouement was lacking in punch, but I liked it.
Tragedy at Pike River Mine, Rebecca Macfie. I took my mother to see the Pike River movie, about the disaster that killed 29 miners, and got curious about some of the background; this book goes through the many, many terrible decisions made by the people who built the mine in the first place (“We’re going to be cheaper and more efficient because we’ve never built a mine before so we’re not hampered by pre-conceived ideas” was basically their approach, with a lot of doubling-down when anything went wrong - the coal-cutting machines, for example, couldn’t handle the slope and broke down multiple times per shift, but although more reliable replacements were available management were convinced that it was just the miners complaining) and the cover-up in the immediate aftermath of the disaster (I hadn’t really followed this as the original explosion was between the September and February Chch earthquakes). The movie focuses on the friendship between two women who lost men in the mine (one her husband, one her son - her other son was one of the two survivors who were able to get out after the first explosion), played by Robyn Malcom and Melanie Lynskey, both excellent as always; it does end on a surprisingly upbeat note and yet the whole thing is still dragging on legally even now (the book keeps getting updated). Thorough, but not overwhelming.
Heels Over Head, Elyse Springer. Jeremy is on track to compete in diving at the Olympics and has no time for anything or anyone else, not least the new raw talent tattooed and publicly out diver Brandon, whom Jeremy’s coach has just offered to train. They fall in love, Jeremy’s homophobic redneck family say horrible things, Jeremy & Brandon are stunning at pairs diving, Brandon quietly makes himself homeless when he doesn’t want to bother anyone about why funding hasn’t come through, Jeremy works himself up over the Olympics and feels he has to break up with Brandon etc etc. I did like quite a bit of this but Jeremy is hard work and Brandon is two-dimensional. The diving is fun? But the book ends a day or so before the Olympics themselves, which does leave one hanging.
The Death of Us, Abigail Dean. I read and didn’t much like Dean’s Girl A, in which Girl A escapes a House of Horrors (quasi religious abusive large family) only to end up having to confront her past when her jailed mother dies and leaves her the house. I liked this a bit more but I don’t think I’d read another of hers. Isabelle and Edward meet, fall in love, and make a life together - a life which is torn apart violently when they become the victims of a serial rapist (and murderer), the South London Invader. Years afterwards, the Invader is caught - Isabelle and Edward, now long separated, meet up again at court and start to work through what went wrong.
Cinder House, Freya Marske. Cinderella retelling that starts with Ella’s death, as she tumbles down the stairs of her house and becomes its ghost, bound to its physical form. Her stepmother and stepsisters learn that they can force Ella to do household chores by threatening the house, but then Ella makes a bargain with a fairy charm-seller that earns her three nights, no more, where she can leave the house, and be part of the living world again… The ghost/house bits are great and I also liked Ella, but this is pitched as queer and while Ella is bi, the grand central romance is still Ella/male prince, so I can understand the annoyance on GoodReads.
Billy Summers, Stephen King. Billy was a (US) sniper in Iraq. Now he kills for money - only bad guys - and he’s just taken one last job, which involves going under cover in a small town where he will live in a quiet suburban house and spend each day sitting in an office (with a convenient view of a key building), writing his memoir. Billy takes pains to ensure people think he’s a lot stupider than he actually is, to fly under the radar, but the process of writing his memoir is forcing him confront his real identity; and then he endangers his cover by rescuing a young woman who’s been drugged, gang-raped and dumped on the roadside. This is solid King as crime-writer (although every so often there’s a mention of the Shining, as the characters take to the relevant mountains), and I always enjoy his pacing. Billy’s relationship with Alice doesn’t always work for me (and surely she has some other friends, even if she’s estranged from her family?).
Every step she takes, Alison Cochrun. Overly responsible Sadie gets the chance to escape her family business responsibilities when her sister, a travel blogger, is unable to walk the Camino de Santiago due to injury. Turbulence on the flight over leads to Sadie coming out to the hot queer woman sitting next to her, convinced that she is about to die without ever really grappling with her own sexual identity, but then they don’t crash, her sister has failed to tell Sadie the tour is explicitly queer, and the hot queer woman, Mal, is also on it. Mal offers to be Sadie’s hot gay mentor EVEN though she’s secretly attracted to Sadie and I’m sure you can see exactly where this is going (the “I’ve never kissed a woman, show me” is okay but by the time Sadie was ordering Mal to have sex with her because otherwise she never would I was having significant boundary issues). I don’t know why Cochrun consistently writes characters with the emotional maturity of teenagers (Sadie is supposed to be 35) but in many ways this would have worked much better for me if they’d been early 20s at most and also if Mal wasn’t secretly the incredibly rich heir to a Portuguese winery empire. I did like bits of it and I did have to have a pastel de nata (okay, two) from the local Portuguese tart makers after reading, but I do wonder whether I should keep trying with Cochrun.
The war that saved my life, Kimberley Brubaker Bradley (re-read).
Havoc, Rebecca Wait.
Tragedy at Pike River Mine, Rebecca Macfie.
Heels over head, Elyse Springer.
The death of us, Abigail Dean.
Cinder house, Freya Maske.
Billy Summers, Stephen King
Every step she takes, Alison Cochrun.
The war that saved my life, Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Locked away and abused by her evil mother for having a club foot, Ada’s chance for an actual life comes when her brother and his friends are evacuated to the countryside in the early days of WWII and she manages to go with them. They’re placed (reluctantly) with Susan, who is grieving the death of her female lover, and basically this remains an intensely satisfying recovery/family-building/humanising story, with horses.
Havoc, Rebecca Wait. Teenage Ida flees her and her mother’s disgrace (I think they’re in the Shetlands or the Hebrides, so lots of small-town social ostracism) by organising her own scholarship to an eccentric, failing, English girls’ boarding school (in the 1980s, which I feel I should specify given my fondness for elderly boarding school stories); but her new room mate is an arsonist, a new teacher is lying about his past, and there’s a strange epidemic of compulsive twitching and seizures slowly spreading through the school… This is black comedy, readable and well-written, and I like the girls’ plot lines. I wasn’t that thrilled about the bits from the staff povs and I did feel the denouement was lacking in punch, but I liked it.
Tragedy at Pike River Mine, Rebecca Macfie. I took my mother to see the Pike River movie, about the disaster that killed 29 miners, and got curious about some of the background; this book goes through the many, many terrible decisions made by the people who built the mine in the first place (“We’re going to be cheaper and more efficient because we’ve never built a mine before so we’re not hampered by pre-conceived ideas” was basically their approach, with a lot of doubling-down when anything went wrong - the coal-cutting machines, for example, couldn’t handle the slope and broke down multiple times per shift, but although more reliable replacements were available management were convinced that it was just the miners complaining) and the cover-up in the immediate aftermath of the disaster (I hadn’t really followed this as the original explosion was between the September and February Chch earthquakes). The movie focuses on the friendship between two women who lost men in the mine (one her husband, one her son - her other son was one of the two survivors who were able to get out after the first explosion), played by Robyn Malcom and Melanie Lynskey, both excellent as always; it does end on a surprisingly upbeat note and yet the whole thing is still dragging on legally even now (the book keeps getting updated). Thorough, but not overwhelming.
Heels Over Head, Elyse Springer. Jeremy is on track to compete in diving at the Olympics and has no time for anything or anyone else, not least the new raw talent tattooed and publicly out diver Brandon, whom Jeremy’s coach has just offered to train. They fall in love, Jeremy’s homophobic redneck family say horrible things, Jeremy & Brandon are stunning at pairs diving, Brandon quietly makes himself homeless when he doesn’t want to bother anyone about why funding hasn’t come through, Jeremy works himself up over the Olympics and feels he has to break up with Brandon etc etc. I did like quite a bit of this but Jeremy is hard work and Brandon is two-dimensional. The diving is fun? But the book ends a day or so before the Olympics themselves, which does leave one hanging.
The Death of Us, Abigail Dean. I read and didn’t much like Dean’s Girl A, in which Girl A escapes a House of Horrors (quasi religious abusive large family) only to end up having to confront her past when her jailed mother dies and leaves her the house. I liked this a bit more but I don’t think I’d read another of hers. Isabelle and Edward meet, fall in love, and make a life together - a life which is torn apart violently when they become the victims of a serial rapist (and murderer), the South London Invader. Years afterwards, the Invader is caught - Isabelle and Edward, now long separated, meet up again at court and start to work through what went wrong.
Cinder House, Freya Marske. Cinderella retelling that starts with Ella’s death, as she tumbles down the stairs of her house and becomes its ghost, bound to its physical form. Her stepmother and stepsisters learn that they can force Ella to do household chores by threatening the house, but then Ella makes a bargain with a fairy charm-seller that earns her three nights, no more, where she can leave the house, and be part of the living world again… The ghost/house bits are great and I also liked Ella, but this is pitched as queer and while Ella is bi, the grand central romance is still Ella/male prince, so I can understand the annoyance on GoodReads.
Billy Summers, Stephen King. Billy was a (US) sniper in Iraq. Now he kills for money - only bad guys - and he’s just taken one last job, which involves going under cover in a small town where he will live in a quiet suburban house and spend each day sitting in an office (with a convenient view of a key building), writing his memoir. Billy takes pains to ensure people think he’s a lot stupider than he actually is, to fly under the radar, but the process of writing his memoir is forcing him confront his real identity; and then he endangers his cover by rescuing a young woman who’s been drugged, gang-raped and dumped on the roadside. This is solid King as crime-writer (although every so often there’s a mention of the Shining, as the characters take to the relevant mountains), and I always enjoy his pacing. Billy’s relationship with Alice doesn’t always work for me (and surely she has some other friends, even if she’s estranged from her family?).
Every step she takes, Alison Cochrun. Overly responsible Sadie gets the chance to escape her family business responsibilities when her sister, a travel blogger, is unable to walk the Camino de Santiago due to injury. Turbulence on the flight over leads to Sadie coming out to the hot queer woman sitting next to her, convinced that she is about to die without ever really grappling with her own sexual identity, but then they don’t crash, her sister has failed to tell Sadie the tour is explicitly queer, and the hot queer woman, Mal, is also on it. Mal offers to be Sadie’s hot gay mentor EVEN though she’s secretly attracted to Sadie and I’m sure you can see exactly where this is going (the “I’ve never kissed a woman, show me” is okay but by the time Sadie was ordering Mal to have sex with her because otherwise she never would I was having significant boundary issues). I don’t know why Cochrun consistently writes characters with the emotional maturity of teenagers (Sadie is supposed to be 35) but in many ways this would have worked much better for me if they’d been early 20s at most and also if Mal wasn’t secretly the incredibly rich heir to a Portuguese winery empire. I did like bits of it and I did have to have a pastel de nata (okay, two) from the local Portuguese tart makers after reading, but I do wonder whether I should keep trying with Cochrun.
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