December 2025 Reading

You’ll have to wait a little longer for my Best of 2025 list (I'm having a hard time narrowing it to ten) but here is my December reading:

Suspense

The Charity Shop Detective Agency by Peter Boland (2022). Several months ago, I started listening to this mystery about three friends who volunteer at a charity shop somewhere near Dorset. They are upset when a favorite client is murdered and decide to (somewhat ineptly) help the police with their investigation. When my library canceled its Hoopla subscription, I was left stranded mid-story and it took quite a while to find a print copy from ILL. Probably not worth the effort but I hate not finishing a book.

The Fake Wife by Sharon Bolton (2023). When a complete stranger joins Olive at a hotel restaurant, she is unnerved but sufficiently dissatisfied with her life that she goes along with it, only to find herself kidnapped. While Olive tries to figure out what is happening, her MP husband declares her missing and the police try to find her. This was a multi-layered story with flashbacks and plenty of twists. I liked the two police working on the case best.

The Night of Fear by Moray Dalton (1931). A Christmas house party, a blackmailer, a game of hide and seek gone wrong – all entertaining elements for a Golden Age of Detection Fiction mystery featuring two detectives I had not previously come across. My review.

The Snow Lies Deep by Paula Munier (2025). In this seventh mystery about Mercy Carr, she is obsessed with making her baby’s first Christmas memorable. Several murders make sure the adults surrounding this child will not forget it! Luckily, there are many pairs of willing arms for Mercy to hand off baby Felicity so she can do some sleuthing. I read this quickly so I could give it to my sister for Christmas so the review will come later.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (2025). It seems like it’s been a long wait for book 5 in this delightful series and the author slyly acknowledges this in Chapter 1 when Joyce says:

It’s been a while since I wrote, I know that. I’m ever so sorry.

You must have been wondering where I’d got to? Run away to the Bahamas with a police dog handler perhaps? That is actually a dream I had the other night. Then I woke up because Alan was barking at a squirrel he’d seen out the window.

Joyce’s daughter is getting married, and after the wedding the best man tells Elizabeth someone is trying to kill him and asks for help.

Murder While You Work by Susan Scarlett, aka Noel Streatfeild (1944). This was a delightful WWII story about an outgoing young woman beginning an assignment at a munitions factory. She is warned about the house to which she has been billeted – and soon a murder has taken place and Judy is right in the middle of it. Luckily, the nice young man she met on the train is willing to help her investigate. This is Streatfeild’s only adult mystery and I thought it was great. Dean Street Press has brought 12 books back into print and I have read four.  I'm saving the rest! My review.

An Innocent Spy by Laura Wilson (2008). On the one hand, this was an unusual and gritty WWII novel about an unhappily married young woman who falls for a wrong ‘un and infiltrates a group of British fascists. On the other hand, it must not have been extremely memorable because when I finished I saw that I had read it exactly 13 years ago! I didn’t know whether to be annoyed with myself or with the author. I did think it was well done so compromised by requesting the second!

The Vanishing Place by Zoe Rankin (2025). This was a very disturbing book about family growing up off the grid in the New Zealand bush. The main character escaped as a teen but returns when an old friend contacts her to say a child has appeared who looks exactly like her, forcing Effie to relive old trauma and quite a bit of new trauma. This was a real page turner but there was too much abuse and torture for it to be enjoyable.  

Fiction

The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903). As previously mentioned, this was an unexpectedly (to me, at least) violent book set in the 1890s Yukon about a dog kidnapped and forced to become a sled dog. It is not until Buck develops a vicious nature that he can learn to survive but it is very unpleasant to witness. This was my book group’s December choice.

We All Live Here by Jojo Moyes; narrator, Jenna Coleman (2023) (audio). Lila is trying to surmount the humiliation of a bestselling book about rekindling the romance in her marriage that coincided with her husband leaving her for a mother at their daughter’s school. She has also lost her mother, had her stepfather move in and start cooking dinners no one wants to at, her birth father reappears after many years, and now the other woman is pregnant. Add dating to the mix and Lila’s life is amusingly out of control.

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp (1930). Ann’s family is known in the county for being brilliant and eccentric, and she has always felt untalented in comparison. But now that she is an adult, it occurs to her the steady and reliable appeals to her, if she can break free of the habits of a lifetime. My review.

Time of the Child by Niall Williams (2024). This is meant to be a heartwarming story about an Irish community at Christmas and an abandoned baby that brings the taciturn doctor and his daughter closer together. I enjoyed it but thought we had to wait a long time for anything to happen and I wasn’t convinced communications between Dr. Troy and his daughter, Ronnie, had improved by the end. Still, it make for a good discussion with my fellow law clerks, now meeting just once a quarter after we lost our beloved judge earlier in the year.

Historical Fiction

Christmas with the Queen by Hazel Gaynor and Heather Webb (2024). This is a holiday romance that uses Queen Elizabeth II’s annual Christmas radio address as the backdrop against which a young BBC reporter reconnects with a friend who is now part of the royal kitchen. I enjoyed the book but found the depiction of the Queen and Prince Philip very unconvincing, more like a People Magazine impression. My review.

The Star and the Shamrock by Jean Grainger (2019).  A desperate Jewish mother in WWII Berlin sends her two children to a distant relative in Britain, hoping they will be safe.  Elizabeth has been lonely and reserved since her husband died at the end of the last war.  Fostering these two children brings new meaning to her life – and new friendships.  My review. 

Romance

It Had to Be You by Eliza Jane Brazier (2025). Two contract killers, Eva and Jonathan, fall for each other while on assignments to kill one another, leading them on a dangerous cat and mouse game. Is it a thriller? Is it a romance? Is it just an excuse for lot of descriptions of the characters having sex throughout Europe? Who on earth recommended this to me?

Overdue by Stephanie Perkins (2025). Mild-mannered librarian Ingrid and her long-term boyfriend are taking a one-month break to date other people. But what happens if one of them doesn’t want to get back together as planned? Getting away from Cory turns out to be a way for Ingrid to figure out who she is and what she wants out of life, whether or not a man is involved. A bit too much angst but very funny and full of quirky characters. My review.

Juvenile

Sally's Summer Term by Dorita Fairlie Bruce (1950). Long before I found the GirlsOwn group, fellow fans of boarding school stories, I came across this lovely first edition with slightly torn dust jacket at the Bryn Mawr Bookstore in Cambridge and snatched it up. Somehow I had never read it, probably because it’s the third in a series. Sally is a Canadian attending St. Michael’s, a boarding school in Scotland. 

A flood causes Sally and several of the girls to lodge temporarily at a local hotel where she witnesses a plot involving a friend’s father. There is also a vengeful girl using cricket in an attempt to embarrass the school, which isn’t - cricket.