Monthly wrap-up – January-February 2018

This is a slight cheat as I didn’t do a monthly wrap-up for January so I’m bundling both months up in one!

January

During the long, long (long! before payday) first month of the year, I read seven novels and listened to four audiobooks:

The latter – as part of my reading goals to revisit some classic crime and to listen to more audiobooks – were all Agatha Christies, including: the short-and-slightly-late-festive-read, The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, two different versions of The Sittaford Mystery (the full book and the BBC abridged dramatisation), because it’s one of my favourites and I wanted to compare the two, and Evil Under the Sun, which in my opinion features one of Christie’s best solutions.

The novels were all ARCs and, as always, I am extremely grateful to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read these. They included three of my 18 books I cannot wait to read in 2018: the completely wonderful The Woman in the Window, by A.J. Finn, the creepily excellent The Chalk Man, by C.J. Tudor, and the innovative and clever The Confession, by Jo Spain. I also enjoyed the gripping and darkly witty Dark Pines, by Will Dean, the cosy-with-an-edge The Liar in the Library, by the masterful Simon Brett, the unique and moving debut If I Die Before I Wake, by Emily Koch, and the brilliant Her Last Lie, by Amanda Brittany.

February

Despite being on annual leave for a whole week, I read only five ARC novels (it’s a short month, though!) and two more Christie audiobooks: Mrs McGinty’s Dead and The Mystery of the Blue Train. Both audiobooks are great stories, with reliably wonderful narration by Hugh Fraser.

The five novels included two more of my must reads of 2018: the absolutely spectacular The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, by Stuart Turton, and the well-plotted The Wife Between Us, by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen. I also read the thrilling The Pact, by S.E. Lynes, the shocking The Reunion, by Samantha Hayes, and the marvellous debut, The Guilty Wife, by Elle Croft.

Other highlights for me were:

• Signing up to take part in my first Blog Tours: for This Dark Place by Claire Kittridge, The Old You by Louise Voss and The Sandman by Lars Kepler. (Thank you, Anne and Abby!)
• Writing about my love of a floor plan in a mystery book.
• Winning Caroline England’s Hotel Chocolat Gift Card giveaway.
• And winning a copy of The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder.
• On and off throughout January and February, the buns have joined us inside due to the weather, but were still able to express their #bunniesloveofreading 🙂

Hope you’ve have a good start to 2018 and here’s to more #booklove in March!