20 Books of Summer 2025 Reading Challenge

It's that time of year again, that some readers aim to challenge themselves to read 20 books during June, July and August.  I had been keeping an eye out on Twitter for tweets about the challenge and not spotted any.  Then one day just into June, I spotted one.  It had been rebranded,  well ii had a new poster.

There was a reason for the new poster.  After 10 years of hosting the 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge, Cathy of @cathy746books on Twitter (aka as X) has decided to hand over the reins to @annabookbel and @wordsandpeace who can both be found on Twitter.

Thanks to Cathy for all that you have done over the last 10 years looking after the Reading Challenge.

This year I don't have a set plan of 20 books to read, as life is too busy to stick to a set list and I want to be able to wing it, so to speak.  I may not even get 20 books read, but I will give it a go.

As my blog post is late at being shared, I have already finished 2 books with several on the go.

Good luck to everyone taking part and if you use Twitter keep your eye out for #20BooksOfSummer.

Water in the Desert, Fire in the Night by Gethan Dick (Blog tour post)

 

Info about the book

‘Original and lyrical...unlike anything I’ve read in recent memory’ JOHNY PITTS, presenter of R4’s ‘Open Book’ and author of Afropean

‘Vast, generous, funny, resistant and alive’ VALÉRIE MANTEAU, novelist and winner of the Prix Renaudot.

‘An original and vital perspective on much more than how a world ends: on how it begins' - OANA ARISTIDE, author of Under the Blue

Gethan Dick’s stunning debut is a thought-provoking post-apocalyptic novel, Fizzing with energy, anger, fear and ultimately hope.  Water in the Desert Fire in the Night will appeal to fans of Claire Kilroy, Megan Hunter and Cormac McCarthy.  

Here is a novel about hope, wolves, companionship and resilience, hunger and gold. It’s about an underachieving millennial, a retired midwife and a charismatic Dubliner who set out from London after the end of the world to cycle to a sanctuary in the southern Alps.  It’s about packing light and choosing the right companions and trousers: What’s worth knowing, what’s worth living and holding on to your sense of humour in moments big and small. It’s about the fact that the world ends all the time. It’s about what to do next!

About the Author

Gethan Dick was born in Belfast and grew up mostly in the west of Ireland. In 2001 she moved to London to study at Goldsmiths, and also Camberwell College of Art. In 2011, she migrated to Marseille, France, and has lived there since. She has performed at Latitude, Secret Garden Party and Green Man, and her artworks have been supported and exhibited by such internationally renowned institutions as: Creative Europe (EU); Fondation Van Gogh, MAC, FRAC-Sud (Fr); Barbican, ICA, Wellcome Trust (UK); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (De); Manifesta (Nl); Eyebeam (US) and the Havana Biennial (Cu). In the summer of 2024 she participates in the climax to the two-year Ulysses European Odyssey at the YES Festival in Derry.

My thoughts

My thanks to Helen Richardson and Tramp Press for the opportunity to take part in the Blog tour of this book. 

I am around half way through the book and had hoped to finish it, so that I could do a proper review.

However, life had other plans for me!

What I have read of the story so far, I have enjoyed as I do enjoy books set in the future like this one is.  It makes you think what life would be like living in a post apocalyptic era and how you would cope if you survived an apocalypse. 

I have included two quotes below that resonated with me.

Quote 1

'It’s so fucking pathetic, the way we’re made. We think we are able to imagine what it’s like to be somebody else, to go through something that somebody else is going through, but we aren’t. Nothing touches us really until it becomes something that’s happening to us. If you were really able to imagine the horrors that people go through in their lives you would never be able to move again.'

My thoughts about the quote: I often wonder what life is like for other people, this quote resonated with me.  

Quote 2

 'Anyway, so we lost the overview. First we lost it a bit and people tribalised. The rich blamed the left, the left blamed the right, the right blamed the others, America blamed China, China blamed Europe, Europe blamed Russia, the godly blamed the godless, the godless blamed the godly, and so on and so on. But when things really went to bits we completely lost the overview. We didn’t even know who was blaming who anymore. It is hard to remember now what it felt like to think we knew what was happening: that a nation had chosen this or that, that a building we’d never seen had been blown up, that somebody we’d never met had died. It’s hard to understand why we thought any of it was important.          There were always so many people saying it was all lies any-way, I don’t know how anyone reporting on stuff managed to keep themselves motivated – except the ones who were lying, who must’ve just been excited at how well their lies were working. But then when the communications started going down, and when the electricity didn’t come back on, there was no more overview. Your understanding of the world shrank down to what you were actually living, along with the bits and pieces that you could glean from the other alive people that you came across.'

My thoughts about the quote: This is so true, it's so easy to blame others for what is happening.  No one whether individual or a Country likes to accept the blame and suffer the consequences, they prefer to pass the blame on & on & on.

I look forward to finishing the story and sharing my review of it on my blog in due course. 

City of Sinners (Harry Virdee #3) by A.A. Dhand

 

From Goodreads

It is an ordinary Yorkshire morning, cold and miserable.

The streets are not yet busy. Police cars hurriedly pull up in the centre of town, but none of their lights are flashing and the sirens are silent.

A body has been found, elaborately and painstakingly positioned to send a message. But what message? And to who?

It’s DI Harry Virdee’s job to find out. But Harry doesn’t know that the killer is watching him, that the killer is coming for him.

Because this is personal.

My thoughts

I first came across this when I watched Virdee the TV series and then found out that it was based on a book.  I had to read the book even though I had seen and enjoyed the TV series.  Having seen the series didn't detract away from the book, as it was only loosely based on it.

I enjoyed this story and look forward to reading more of the books in this series.  I felt that the author portrayed the lives and the interactions between the characters of the criminals, the victims and the police well.  It shows that many religions and races of people have prejudices against each other.  

I doubt reading the first two in the series after having read the third in the series will be spoiled at all.  Keep your eyes out for reviews of them in the future once I have read them.

Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell

 
From Goodreads

A creative re-imagining of the short life of Emily Brontë, one of England’s greatest writers

Isolated from society, the Brontë children spend all their time inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape she loves and no longer able to immerse herself in the fantastical world of Gondal that she and her younger sister Anne have created, she is simply unable to function.

As a child, Emily witnessed a rare natural phenomenon. After weeks of rain, the peaty soil on Crow Hill became so sodden that the earth exploded. Since then, her life has been dogged by tragedy and repeated failures. Her sisters are desperate to escape their unsatisfactory work as governesses and now the life of her brother Branwell, the hope of the family, is in turmoil. To the outside world, Emily appears taciturn, unexceptional; but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment, ready to burst forth. As the pressure on her grows, another violent phenomenon is about to take place, one that will fuse her imaginary world of Gondal with the landscape Emily loves so passionately, and which will change the literary world.

My thoughts

' Cold in the earth - and fifteen wild Decembers.

From those brown hills, have melted into spring:

Faithful, indeed, is the spirit that remembers

After such years of change and suffering!' 

I enjoyed this story and am more than happy to give it a 4 stars or 8/10.  This was a local Library Reading group read.  Sadly, not all the group enjoyed it as much as I did.  

This was a fictional story based on the Bronte family and their lives, told from the perspective of Emily Brontte.  Whilst it may not be factually correct in every aspect and this was possibly one of the issues that my reading group had with it.  Things like that don't always bother me as we have non fiction books to cover the facts.  I read a book for it's own merits.  This one did draw me into the bleak and harrowing lives that the Bronte family had. 

At times I felt as if I was on the Yorkshire moors with them when they were out walking.  The author knows how to draw you in and make you feel that you are there along with the characters.

I have included a couple of quotes below that made me think for different reasons. 

Quote

'Remember when we read Paradise Lost for the first time? How compelling we found Satan, though we knew we shouldn't. We fought among ourselves to read those passages! I've always believed that Satan must have set out to be a good angel but could not help himself, it was not in his nature. I want my hero to be just as bad and compelling. If he cannot have what he wants, then the whole world must pay for his pain and suffering.'

Well I suppose that that is one way of looking at how Satan developed into the person he is portrayed to be and what a way to think of how to develop your character in the story..

FINALLY, this quote below resonated with me as I often have similar thoughts.  I often wonder what things will be like when I am no longer alive.

'I struggled to conceive of a world in which I no longer existed, every thought and feeling inside this me-shaped container of flesh and bones, gone. Life could end with the snap of a bone, one misfire of a heart, and yet mine had seemed unending, unbreakable.'

This book is definitely worth reading if you ever come across it.

The Drift by C.J. Tudor

 

From Goodreads

Hannah awakens to carnage, all mangled metal and shattered glass. During a hasty escape from a secluded boarding school, her schoolbus careened over a hillside road during one of the year's heaviest snowstorms, trapping her inside with a handful of survivors, a brewing virus and no way to call for help. If she and the remaining few want to make it out alive, with their sanity--and secrets--intact, they'll need to work together or they'll be buried alive with the rest of the dead.

A former detective, Meg awakens to a gentle rocking. She is in a cable car suspended far above a snowstorm and surrounded by strangers in the same uniform as her, with no memory of how they got there. They are heading to a mysterious place known only to them as "The Retreat," but when they discover a dead man among their ranks and Meg spies a familiar face, she realizes that there is something far more insidious going on and begins to use the skills from her former life to interrogate her fellow passengers.

Carter is gazing out the window of the abandoned ski chalet that he and his ragtag compatriots call home. As the years drag on, the view of pine forests and mountaintops has become wallpaper. Together, they manage what they can to survive--mostly manufacturing vaccines against a deadly virus in exchange for life's essentials. But as their generator begins to waver, the threat of something lurking in the chalet's depths looms larger, and their fragile bonds will be tested when the power finally fails-for good.

The imminent dangers faced by Hannah, Meg and Carter are each one part of the puzzle. Lurking in their shadows is an even greater threat-one that threatens to consume all of humanity.

My thoughts

My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this story in exchange for an honest review.

What has happened?  A group of apparently disconnected events happen at a similar time in different places.  As the characters are trying to cope with what has happened to them individually and as the story progresses the characters all appear to have one goal in their sights and that is to survive events happening around them.  No one is sure who they can trust or if anyone can be trusted.  

This was a solid 4 star read from this reviewer.  Another great read by this Author, she sure knows how to grab the reader and write a great story. If you enjoy stories that take you out of your comfort zone, then this may be the book for you.  It is a mix of post apocalyptic meets horror.  To be honest these are genres that I love reading and I look forward with baited breath, to what she writes next for us to devour.

Bring them on ......

Potions & Proposals (Village of Foxford #1) by Kate Callaghan

From Goodreads

In the mystical town of Foxford, tenacious translator Lucinda Hawthorne is on the brink of assuming the prestigious role of High Priestess. However, fate has a mischievous twist in store for her: an unexpected coven gathering reveals that her lifelong nemesis, Benedict Matherson, is also nominated for the esteemed position. They are presented with a grave ultimatum: either become magically bound to one another on All Hallows’ Eve… or risk a fateful vote that could strip them of everything.

Both fiercely independent and driven by their unwavering desires to lead, Lucinda and Benedict reluctantly agree to the binding ritual. Unfortunately, the spell Lucinda’s family casts to thwart the coven’s plot misfires with surprising consequences, and the pair find themselves magically intertwined in ways they never could have foreseen.

With the shadow of All Hallows’ Eve looming over them, the veil between love and hate blurs. Could it be that amidst their rivalry, they will unearth a hidden longing to remain united? Together, they must confront their demons and discover whether they truly desire to be parted after all.

My thoughts

My thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a gentle cosy story of a developing relationship of sorts between two hugely independent characters both striving to achieve the same goal in the mystical town of Foxford that they both live in.  As fate has plans in store for Lucinda and Benedict, that neither of them had envisaged ~ what will they decide to do?

I enjoyed this story and found it pure escapism, which was just what I needed.  Sometimes, it's great to be able to disappear among the pages of the book that you're reading and forget about what is happening in your world and immerse yourself in the world of the characters in the story.  This is what I was able to do when I found myself in the world that Lucinda and Benedict lived in.  With some twists and turns along the way it was a great story.

I will look for more books by this author.  

Fluke by James Herbert

 

From Goodreads

Fluke is the moving story of a dog with the memories of a human, with the signature twisting plot James Herbert is famed for. A dog wanders the streets, compelled by a ravenous hunger. Hunting a prey he cannot not define, driven by a primal instinct he cannot ignore. He is more than he thinks, more than he can remember and in the depths of his brain the memory of what he once was is clawing for release.

My thoughts

I was a huge James Herbert fan in my teens, way back when Adam was a lad.  I remember fondly reading the Rats trilogy (there's now a graphic novel, which makes it 4 books in the series now) and having nightmares of a sort about rats and what he wrote about them in his books.

I originally read Fluke years ago and I am reading it again for a Reading Challenge.

This cover reminds me of the cover of the original copy that I read. It was published in 1978.  

Whilst I didn't remember all the story, there were parts of it that did start to come back to me as I kept reading. 

Telling the story of a dog that is given the name of Fluke.  Fluke is not all he at first seems to be and as the story progresses, things start coming back to him.  He can remember at the back of his mind that he has been a human in the past, is he right?

There is so much that I could write about the story in this review, but to do so, would spoil it for others  wanting to read the book.