Helen Matthews' 3 favorite reads in 2023

I bought this book several years ago, but it was 700 pages long, so it stayed on my shelf until I got tickets for the play in London and decided to read the book first. I was spellbound. The book is disturbing (child abuse, self-harm, suicide attempts) but superbly written.

The author's style reminds me of Donna Tartt. Four young American men of different ethnicities, backgrounds, and sexual orientations meet at high school. The novel starts as a coming-of-age story but follows the characters into middle age and beyond. The author brings New York vibrantly to life. Readers get insights into their friendship and how unintended cruelty almost breaks their bond. All four men struggle with burdens from childhood, but the central character, Jude, who was abandoned as a baby and brought up by monks, has suffered unspeakable horrors.

The darkness is only hinted at in the opening chapters, giving us breathing space to invest in the characters' lives before the worst is revealed. It's a wonderful book but not recommended for anyone who has suffered trauma or is easily upset.

Sarah Vaughan's novels cover current issues impacting women and dissect them to expose the truth. I was pulled into this story, following the main character, Emma Webster, a member of parliament, as her life unravels. She's trying to do her best as a mum and a professional woman but makes terrible choices. Is she telling the truth about the death of a tabloid journalist she knows?

Emma's daughter is bullied at school, and when she gets involved, she makes things a hundred times worse. Meanwhile, she's on the receiving end of trolling and threats sent to women MPs. Her marriage has broken down, so she has a risky relationship that almost destroys her. The lack of support from some other women is chilling.

The courtroom drama, where barristers, experts, and witnesses have their own agendas, is convincing. I listened to Reputation as an audiobook while recovering from minor surgery, and it held my full attention. I was gripped and finished it in three days.

This is a sequel to Lisa Jewell’s previous novel, The Family Upstairs, but can be read as a standalone. In the earlier book, a creepy stranger worms his way into the home and lives of a wealthy Chelsea family. His children and theirs are systematically isolated from the world and brought up under an abusive cult-like regime. All the adults die in the end, and a suicide pact is suspected.

The sequel, The Family Remains, takes place some twenty years later when a bag of bones washes up on the shores of the River Thames and is linked to the earlier deaths. Perhaps it wasn’t suicide but murder? The story is kept fresh through the introduction of new characters, including the investigating officer DCI Samuel Owuso and Rachel, a woman who was in an abusive marriage with the ex-husband of Lucy, one of the now-adult children of the Chelsea house.

We discover how the lives of the children have unfolded since escaping from that house of horrors. All the links between the characters are gradually revealed after a series of twists, some guessable, some not. Lisa Jewell is uniquely brilliant at inspiring our interest in the nasty, evil characters and the flawed, normal ones and keeps us turning the pages.