My 10 Favourite Books (July-December 2022 Edition) || Book Lists

Last year I read so many different books, trying new genres and being surprised by a few new ones too!

This list includes all my Books of the Month for the second half of 2022, with the four extra books that blew my mind.

It’s true that the thriller genre usually takes the lead when it comes to loving books, but there were a couple of surprise entries on this list that stood out.

All the links to my reviews are added to the title section of the books, just in case there’s a book that stands out to you that you want to read.

You can also have a look at my reading challenge for 2022 that I added links to in case you’re looking for more reading suggestions. The first half of 2022’s favourite books can also be found on the blog here.

The Whisper Man by Alex North – JULY BOOK OF THE MONTH

After the sudden death of his wife, Tom Kennedy believes a fresh start will help him and his young son Jake heal. A new beginning, a new house, a new town. Featherbank.

But the town has a dark past. Twenty years ago, a serial killer abducted and murdered five residents. Until Frank Carter was finally caught, he was nicknamed “The Whisper Man,” for he would lure his victims out by whispering at their windows at night.

Just as Tom and Jake settle into their new home, a young boy vanishes. His disappearance bears an unnerving resemblance to Frank Carter’s crimes, reigniting old rumors that he preyed with an accomplice. Now, detectives Amanda Beck and Pete Willis must find the boy before it is too late, even if that means Pete has to revisit his great foe in prison: The Whisper Man.

And then Jake begins acting strangely. He hears a whispering at his window…

We Can See You by Simon Kernick

You have it all. Success, a beautiful home, a happy family.

Until, in a heartbeat, it’s gone.

We’ve kidnapped your daughter, and we know everything about you. Including the dark secrets from your past you thought were forgotten.

We tell you not to contact the police – and that we’ll know if you do. Because we can see you.

And now you know this is no ordinary abduction. It’s worse. Within hours you’re on the run, with only one thought in your head: That you will stop at nothing to get your daughter back.
Even murder…

The Last Lie Told by Debra Webb

Legal investigator Finley O’Sullivan searches for evidence the police overlooked, wading through secrets, lies, and betrayal to find answers. With the unsolved murder of her husband still very much on her mind, Finley must confront her own personal trauma on a daily basis. Lies are part of her livelihood, but they’re also the reason she can’t get justice for the man she loved.

When a man imprisoned for murder recants his confession, claiming he cleaned up the mess for his girlfriend—the victim’s own daughter—Finley takes on the case. She discovers the victim had identical twin daughters… and the sisters have very different accounts of the crime.

As she dives headlong into the twins’ traumatic past, Finley will have to contend with her own demons to get to the truth—before it’s too late.

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor – AUGUST BOOK OF THE MONTH

In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.

In 2016, Eddie is fully grown, and thinks he’s put his past behind him. But then he gets a letter in the mail, containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank . . . until one of them turns up dead.

That’s when Eddie realises that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – SEPTEMBER BOOK OF THE MONTH

The Handmaid’s Tale is a novel of such power that the reader will be unable to forget its images and its forecast. Set in the near future, it describes life in what was once the United States and is now called the Republic of Gilead, a monotheocracy that has reacted to social unrest and a sharply declining birthrate by reverting to, and going beyond, the repressive intolerance of the original Puritans. The regime takes the Book of Genesis absolutely at its word, with bizarre consequences for the women and men in its population.

The story is told through the eyes of Offred, one of the unfortunate Handmaids under the new social order. In condensed but eloquent prose, by turns cool-eyed, tender, despairing, passionate, and wry, she reveals to us the dark corners behind the establishment’s calm facade, as certain tendencies now in existence are carried to their logical conclusions.

My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga – OCTOBER BOOK OF THE MONTH

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.

The Unpredictability of Being Human by Linni Ingemundsen

Meet Malin, a fifteen-year-old who sees the world differently. Malin knows she couldn’t change much about her life, even if she got to play God.

Her dad would still yell all the time – especially as Malin is still friends with Hanna, the girl she met shoplifting. Her mum would still say a glass of wine is good for her heart – and Mum needs it, with Malin’s brother, Sigve, getting into trouble all the time.

And Malin would still be Malin. Because she can’t be anybody else.

After the Fire by Will Hill – NOVEMBER BOOK OF THE MONTH

The things I’ve seen are burned into me, like scars that refuse to fade.

Father John controls everything inside The Fence. And Father John likes rules. Especially about never talking to Outsiders. Because Father John knows the truth. He knows what is right, and what is wrong. He knows what is coming.

Moonbeam is starting to doubt, though. She’s starting to see the lies behind Father John’s words. She wants him to be found out.

What if the only way out of the darkness is to light a fire?

Annelies: A Novel of Anne by Frank David Gillham

In 1945, aged sixteen, Anne Frank walks out of the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and into a new life as a survivor of the Holocaust. Returning to Amsterdam, she is reunited with her beloved father. Yet Anne feels like a ghost. In the city where she and her family were betrayed, Anne struggles to let go of the horrors she witnessed, to forget the cruel death of her mother and her sister Margot. She dreams of being a writer, but how do you carry on when you’ve lost everything you once were?

To create a new life for herself, a life of freedom as a woman and a writer, she knows she must transform her story of trauma into a story of redemption and hope.

Everland by Wendy Spinale – DECEMBER BOOK OF THE MONTH

London has been destroyed in a blitz of bombs and disease. The only ones who have survived are children, among them Gwen Darling and her younger siblings, Joanna and Mikey. They spend their nights scavenging and their days avoiding the deadly Marauders-the German Army led by the cutthroat Captain Hanz Otto Oswald Kretschmer.

Unsure if the outbreak has spread but desperate to leave, Captain Hook is on the hunt for a cure, which he thinks can be found in one of the surviving children. He and his Marauders stalk the streets snatching children for experimentation. None ever return.

Until one day when they grab Joanna. Gwen will stop at nothing to get her sister back, but as she sets out, she crosses paths with a daredevil named Pete. Pete offers the assistance of his gang of Lost Boys and the fierce sharpshooter Bella. But in a place where help has a steep price and every promise is bound by blood, it might cost Gwen more than she bargained for.