Books like Adrift — picked by fans

I really enjoy stories told from multiple points of view. Everyone has a possible motive, and this kept me feeling uncertain who to trust.

The Guest List made me feel like I was in Ireland, experiencing the surface luxuries of a destination wedding while shivering from the eternal cold and bleak weather. It’s fun to feel like you’re there, like you're making new friends and living through the mayhem as the mystery unfolds.

This addictive page-turner revolves around an extravagant hen party where bride-to-be Jen rents a luxury getaway on a private island.

The fact that the helicopter which brought the guests to the island won't be back for 72 hours ramps up the sense of impending doom and claustrophobia, this further enhanced when the wifi is cut off. I devoured the varied and well-rounded cast of characters, each with their own complex backstories, secrets, and agendas giving them a motive to kill.

When one of the guests disappears, they receive a message telling them that unless someone confesses her terrible secret to the others, their missing friend will be killed. This was such a clever idea and had me itching to know who in the group the message was aimed at.

This is the story of four best friends and their families who head to Southern France for a birthday celebration.

The setting is seemingly idyllic while the atmosphere starts off light and playful, lulling both the readers and characters into a false sense of security when in fact danger looms just around the corner.

The main character is policewoman Kate who uncovers something deeply unsettling almost as soon as she arrives in France. Logan expertly captures her escalating inner turmoil and desperation to discover the truth, while her relationships with others become increasingly strained.

I found his use of interweaving plotlines gripping, focussed on ordinary people in relationships we can all relate to, while keeping me in suspense right up to the exciting finale.

I really enjoyed this clever Young Adult whodunnit mystery centering on three families reuniting for their annual summer holiday in Cornwall.

When one of the teenage daughters goes missing following a game of hide and seek, her doting, yet secretly envious, best friend tries to piece together what happened.

The story is told between present and past events, but also through letters written by the main protagonist to the missing girl, phrased in such a way I wasn’t quite sure how much or little she really knew about what happened to her friend, which elevated the mystery.

The families are brimming with resentments, tensions & jealousies, heightening the intrigue and potential culprits, but what I loved most was the hugely unexpected denouement. A very clever twist I didn’t see coming!

Unusually for a non-native cookery writer - and particularly so for the Catalans - this encyclopedic work by one of the US's most distinguished scholar cooks has become the go-to in restaurant kitchens throughout Spain's least-conformist region.

Publication in the Catalan language of its predecessor, Josep LLadonosa's El Gran Libro de la Cuina Catalana in 1992 (translated into Spanish, but not into English) was only possible after the demise of General Franco ended a fifty-year dictatorship that followed a particularly bloody civil war.

In spite of all efforts by Spain's central government to suppress Catalunia's language and culture, her spirit lived on - not least in a very distinctive culinary habit. It's no surprise that the iconoclastic genius of Ferran Adria surfaced in the land of Guadi and Dali. And no accident that Spain's gastronomic revolution started in Barcelona.  

Laymon provides the perfect mix of psychological horror and serial killer madness in this cult novel that is part murder mystery and part survival horror. In Island, a family boat trip to a remote island goes horribly awry when someone starts offing family members one by one. It will leave you shocked and satisfied with its overwhelming tension and disturbing ending.

I’m fairly certain that in this book, Vonnegut incites an apocalypse on humanity in order to prove that human beings are worth saving—and I’m so here for it. He didn’t hold back on who would live and who would die, on what would happen to humanity. And yet, I was enthralled with the interiority and struggles of each and every character—even those that were doomed.

I particularly love non-linear storytelling because it gives us glimpses into the future, only to make us ask questions about ourselves in the present. Getting to the end only made me want to start back at the beginning so I could linger a bit longer with humanity on the brink.

The shout line on the jacket is “This will overturn everything you thought you knew about…The First World War”, and it certainly delivers. No other conflict has been so misrepresented, and for most people, their idea of it comes straight from Blackadder Goes Forth. But men did not spend months at a time in the trenches; a whole generation did not die; the generals were not cowardly, incompetent fools.

When I first began to write about WW1 for my Morland Dynasty series, I knew as little as anyone, and what I thought I knew was all wrong! By the time I was researching for War At Home, I knew a lot more, but Corrigan opens my eyes to many more subjects. Informative, well-researched, but above all wonderfully readable, this book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in what really happened, not just the made-for-tv version.

Written by an author from the English West Country city of Bristol, this story accurately captures the inequality of life in the 1970s. Fifteen-year-old Carol lives in a council estate on the edge of town. She goes to school with a farmer’s son who will inherit rolling acres. One day, she meets handsome Frankie, who is staying with his aunt in a manor house nearby.

Every reader will know louche Frankie is bad news. Carol, of course, falls for him and finds herself pregnant. So far, so predictable. What is far less predictable is the way Carol herself is sucked into crime, secrets, and lies. Forty years later, how far will she go to evade exposure? Emotional, clever, and exquisitely written, this book is hard to put down. 

What all of Joanna Nadin’s books have in common is her ability to capture the voice of her characters so perfectly they feel truly alive. The children of class 4B have that loveable lunacy I remember from teaching kids this age. That authenticity is what has kids falling off their chairs with laughter, and what makes this such a great book to read aloud. You’ll find yourself repeating catchphrases later. Rikin Parekh’s illustrations add another layer of brilliance and perfectly capture the characters and their comedy antics. Literally hilarious!

“Dad says well at least I haven’t been arrested. Grandpa says being arrested would be getting off lightly and in his day he had to walk five miles to school barefoot and eat gravel for lunch. 

Mum who works at the council says, ‘I have spent all day listening to Mr. Butterworth bang on about bollards and the last thing I… show more.