This year has been extremely busy and I can’t believe that 8 months have already flown by. I continued reading books into 2022 with the same level of enthusiasm and only just realised that I haven’t found the time to write about it. I skipped it in my recent life update post. So, here’s a quick post to tell you what’s come across my desk, or Kindle which is where I do most of my reading.
As of this post, I have completed 40 books since the start of the year. This has significantly exceeded my rather low target of 30 which I had set because we were expecting our little princess. However, I’ve realised that this enabled a bit more reading time as it took priority over Netflix. I’ve since updated this to 50 which will be ambitious as I’ve never read that many till date in a single year. I’ve also read almost all days of the year except two.
I am a big fan of series and I continued those into 2022. In particular, I’ve caught up with all the Harry Bosch, Vera Stanhope and Jack Reacher series. I also finished the Jon Reznick and the American Ghost series.
Have you read any of these? Would love to hear your views. Also note that the links to Amazon contain my affiliate code.
American Ghost series
Written by J.B. Turner, this series tells the story of a covert operative Nathan Stone who is an assassin for the Commission with an agenda we learn about through the series. In his “last” mission, he’s both hunter and prey. However, there wouldn’t have been much of series if he did get hunted. He manages to escape and over a few books turns the table on the Commision.
It’s a relatively well written series. There is quite a bit that strays far from the realm of realism, or does it?
William Warwick series
This is a new series by Jeffrey Archer who has consistently churned out books almost every year. This one tells of the adventures of William Warwick, a young, eager detective who rises through the ranks as he solves a series of cases in each book. The writing in consistent with Archer who has never failed to deliver. The new book will be out soon, but I’ll likely wait a bit for the price to be a bit more respectable before I purchase it!
Mania and Bamburgh by LJ Ross
Mania is the fourth book in the Alexander Gregory series and Bamburgh is the 19th book in the Detective Ryan series. In Mania, Alex investigates the death of a famous actor teaming up with DCI Hope, a potential love interest? While Bamburgh continues the story of Melanie who is hellbent on finding her sister’s killer. This one has been written a bit differently as Ross reveals the killer quite early in the book.
I’ve long been a fan of LJ Ross and the only book I didn’t like is her Summer Mystery series which felt like a weird romantic mystery so I’m going to stay away from that series.
Jon Resnick series
This is another series by J.B. Turner with several more books. Like Nathan, Jon is also a covert operative and assassin. However, in his last mission, he feels something is off with the assignment and ends up teaming up with the FBI to set things right.
Each book is a standalone story, although you do have some linkage between them. In one of the books, Turner does make a random link to the Commission which did throw me off vs the timeline of the American Ghost series!
Three Hours
This was a random purchase when I saw Kindle was running an offer on the book and it was well rated so I decided to give it a try.
Written by Rosamund Lupton, who I haven’t read before, it tells the story of a school under siege in rural Somerset – the least likely place for something like this to happen. Overall, I think it was well written, although at some points of time I felt the pace could have been picked up a bit.
The Unspoken: An Ashe Cayne Novel
This was an Amazon First Reads purchase I did in September 2020, but like with many of these purchases, I never got down to reading it until now.
This was Ian Smith’s first foray into detective novels and is the first of two books in the Ashe Cayne series. I really enjoyed the writing style and the suspense Ian maintained throughout the book. And, being a fan of series, I also purchased the second book which I am currently reading at the time of this post.
As always, I am curious to hear your thoughts if you’ve read any of these books.
