3 Stars

Best for:
Fans of the genre.

In a nutshell:
Jane Finn has some important war-related documents. Unfortunately, she has been missing for years, and even though The Great War is over, those documents are important. However, through a few seemingly random interactions, friends Tommy and Tuppence end up trying to track Jane down.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
I’ve been enjoying her books and plays, and so placed holds on whatever the library had, and this was the first to become available.

Review:
I didn’t enjoy this as much as the The Unexpected Guest, but it was still an interesting read. I think one of the challenges for me was that there were quite a few characters that I had some trouble recalling exactly who was who, and how they were related to each other. I also knew I had to accept the premise of these important documents about the war, but it was hard to understand exactly why they mattered so much since the war was over, so the sort of … desperation everyone had to get a hold of them didn’t make tons of sense to me, but I have a feeling I just misunderstood or didn’t catch the part where it was explained.

As usual, there were a few twists in the book, but unfortunately one of the main one’s I had figured out very early on in the book. Probably just a lucky guess, but when it was eventually revealed, instead of feeling like ‘oooh, go me, I figured it out,’ I felt a bit disappointed. Not what one hopes for in a book. I did, however, enjoy the language. Most of the books I read are at most 20 years old, but this book was written over a century ago, so it’s interesting to hear the word choice and the style of speaking.

This was Christie’s second ever book, so I can see why it might not be one I enjoyed as much as others, but it was still worth the read.

4 Stars

Best for:
Cat lovers. Those who enjoy a slightly melancholy, but also hopeful, look at everyday life.

In a nutshell:
Five individuals seek assistance from a mysterious clinic.

Worth quoting:
N/A

Why I chose it:
My sister gave it to me for Christmas. She knows me well.

Review:
I read most of this book in one sitting – where I am, 2 January is also a holiday, and I enjoyed the return of sunny weather by sitting indoors devouring this sweet book.

The book is broken down into five stories, featuring six cats and five humans who are in need of some help in their lives. One hates his job and says he wants to know how he can just get on with it as he needs the work. Another is a sexist man who feels diminished at work and in his home. The third is a woman who is dismissive of her young child’s concerns. The fourth is a woman who runs her own company and is tired of being the only one who does everything the ‘right’ way. Finally, the last is a woman who has lost her own cat.

Each person finds their way to the clinic via recommendation, but not directly – it’s always a friend of a friend’s cousin or someone they run into at work who recommends the clinic. And the prescription is always the same – a cat, for a week or two. And the cats do help – but perhaps not in the expected ways.

Two days ago I celebrated the 13th anniversary of ‘gotcha’ day of our two rescue kittens. We moved them across the world with us, and they are the center of so much joy (the cuddles! The playfulness despite their age!) and frustration (the puke! The multiple visits to the vet each year!). They’ve been in my life for nearly a third of it, and it’s wild to even imagine them not being here. I love when a book like this can capture how important cats can be in the lives of their caretakers.

2 Stars

Best for:
I cannot imagine anyone other than a new Lewis Hamilton fan finding this book interesting.

In a nutshell:
Lewis Hamilton shares his journey to Formula One, ending at the end of his very first season as a Formula 1 driver (so 1985-2007, essentially).

Worth quoting:
“But I do not want to be the Tiger Woods of motor racing – just being the Lewis Hamilton of motor racing will be cool enough for me.”

“It is mostly mental energy that you are losing; you must try not to empty ‘the bottle’ of your own energy to keep everyone else happy.”

Why I chose it:
This was my partner’s Christmas gift to me this year (we always just do a gift for the home, and then exchange one book on Christmas Eve) because I have somewhat recently gotten into F1, and my favorite driver is Hamilton.

Review:
It is unfortunate to start out with such a critical review for 2025, but I am still happy I read this book because I did learn some things about Hamilton. For those of you who aren’t aware, Lewis Hamilton is the 7-time World Driver Champion of Formula 1 (and should have been an 8-time champion, but that’s a whole other story). He’s also the only Black driver out of 20 on the grid, and the only Black driver in the history of the sport (out of 805 drivers). He’s outspoken about a lot of issues such as racism and LGBTQ+ rights. Of course, he’s also (now) a multi-millionaire.

Like a lot of folks, I came to know F1 via Drive to Survive, a documentary on Netflix. But I didn’t learn about the series until maybe its third or fourth season, and I didn’t start actually watching F1 in real earnest and following it until I think 2023, when we realized our Now TV subscription included live coverage of all the race weekends. Now, my partner and I are all in. As an early birthday present my partner gave me the giant LEGO Mercedes F1 car, which took awhile to build and is, frankly, so cool. We spend race weekends watching practice, qualifying, and of course the race. When my sister and her partner were visiting over the summer, we basically forced them to watch the British Grand Prix, which was especially amazing as Hamilton won it. I play football (soccer) on Sundays, so often I’ll miss the race and will come back to the changing rooms to see a play by play series of text messages so I still can experience it. And yes, I’m aware of the negatives of F1 – the sportswashing, the politics, the money.

With all that as preamble, this was the perfect book to get for me in theory, but unfortunately it is not a well-written book. I think the responsibility for this lies with the editors and the ghostwriter employed to tell Hamilton’s story, because it reads basically like a bunch of interviews strung together and edited only to remove any sense of drama from it. Hamilton was 22 at the time it was written, and he is not a writer. I’ve mostly only read sport autobiographies written by women (Megan Rapinoe, Hope Solo, Abbie Wambach, Caster Semenya) – but whether those were ghost-written or not, they were definitely better than this one. I even wondered if it was perhaps a young adult or even child’s edition but no, it seems to be just the standard copy that was printed.

The book follows a linear time line after the introductory chapter, and gets into Hamilton’s young life and how he got into karting and then professional driving. There are interesting parts about his young life, his education, and his relationship with his family, given his parents divorced when he was so young. He credits his father with so much of his own success, but there are a lot of allusions to how hard his father was on him.

Because I wasn’t watching F1 during Hamilton’s start, I didn’t know much of anything that happened during his rookie year (like, th fact that he nearly won the World Driver Championship that year!), and that section of the book flowed a bit better. He covers most of the races, and addresses the ‘Ferrari issue’, which I didn’t know about and had to look up online before it was explained. I also wonder how Hamilton feels about some of the things he shares now that many more years have passed – talking about how cool it was to meet P Diddy (yikes), and giving over a paragraph to how much he enjoyed being on a talk show with David Cameron and how he wasn’t really into politics (double yikes). But also, like, what 39 year old would look back at every decision he made at 22 and think ‘yep, totally nailed it’? Certainly not me…

So far I’ve read two F1 books, and neither has really been great. I’m not sure if its the quality of the (ghost) writers, or if folks just haven’t figured out how to write a compelling motor sport book, but I think a biography would probably be more interesting to read than this memoir, at least while Hamilton is still a driver. If he decides to write a complete memoir after he retires, I will certainly read that, though hopefully he’ll work with a better ghostwriter and team.