The List of Suspicious Things - Jennie Godfrey - ★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Jennie Godfrey

NARRATORS: Joanne Froggatt, Mark Noble, Asif Khan, Gemma Whelan, & Simon Harvey

GENRE: Coming-of-Age Historical Fiction.

PUBLICATION DATE: February 15, 2024

RATING: 3.75 stars.

In a Nutshell: A coming-of-age historical fiction with elements of mystery. Character-oriented. Child narrator, which is an unusual but interesting choice for this storyline. Interesting characters, slow-ish pacing, great use of time period and location. Too many themes. Mostly bleak, though there are many glimpses of joy and hope. A good debut. Recommended, but don’t read this as a crime mystery.

Plot Preview:

1979, Yorkshire. Twelve-year-old Mavis, known to all as ‘Miv’, isn't happy about how things are in her life. Her mom suddenly became sick and stopped talking, her father has been struggling to keep things going so his somewhat-stern sister has moved in to help out with Miv. But now, because of the unidentified serial killer murdering young women in Yorkshire, her father has decided that it would be safer to move out of town. As far as Miv is concerned, this is simply not acceptable. She cannot leave the town she has spent her whole life in, nor can she leave her best friend Sharon. So she makes a simple decision: she will locate the serial killer so that her father doesn’t have to worry about her safety anymore. She already knows from newspaper reports that the serial killer has to be someone ordinary whom people know. Taking Sharon into confidence, Miv makes a list of all suspicious people and things in their neighbourhood. Thus begins Miv’s quest for the truth, which, like all truths, turns out to be far more complicated than anticipated.

The story comes to us in two parallel threads, one from Miv’s first-person perspective and every alternate chapter from various other characters’ third-person perspectives.

Bookish Yays:

🤩 The author's foreword, mentioning the inspiration for this book and paying tribute to the victims and survivors of Yorkshire Ripper. The parting note names all victims. I appreciate this attention given to victims.

🤩 Miv as the main character. Not always likeable, but almost always convincing. She is somewhat naïve, so her coming-of-age angle is interesting. The Capricorn in me loved her diligence in list-keeping. 😁

🤩 Miv’s first-person narration, which sometimes reminded me of Scout Finch’s innocent rendition of the dark events in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’. But unlike young Scout, Miv is almost a teen, so she has a greater understanding though not complete awareness. Her foreshadowing is also interesting.

🤩 Sharon, for her wonderful friendship with Miv and for all her other attributes. Loved everything about her!

🤩 The use of an actual serial killer’s crimes as the foundation of this story. The killer isn't from my time or place, so it was creepy to learn about him. At the same time, I like how there aren’t too many details about him. No glorification of the killer!

🤩 The plot structuring with alternate chapters coming from the third-person perspectives from other characters. Quite a clever way of filling in the gaps for events Miv doesn’t experience personally.

🤩 The other characters, all so complex in various ways. Not everyone is as they appear and not everything is black and white. There are several loveable characters and several ‘slappable’ ones as well. Omar, the shopkeeper of Pakistani origin, was probably my favourite of the lot.

🤩 The Yorkshire setting and the representation of the small-town community. Feels very authentic.

🤩 The 1970s era. Seems true to life, with several references to the pop culture and lifestyle choices of the era.

Bookish Okays:

🤔 The bravado of the main character in doing risky things alone. I'm usually not a fan of books where children do dangerous things without informing or taking the help of adults. Then again, this isn't a middle-grade book, so it won't set the wrong example to any child.

🤔 The pacing is mostly on the slow side, which is understandable as the book is character-oriented. However, the second half is more unsteady; it starts slow and repetitive but as the final quarter draws nearer, it turns rushed and wild. There are too many things happening, but not everything is convincing. One particular event is shocking though. I didn’t see it coming so it somewhat skewed my experience in favour of the book.

🤔 The budding love story resulting from first crushes. I don’t like stories with overly-young characters getting into relationships, but I appreciate its innocent portrayal in this book. There’s never much stress on the physical, even if the connections seem sudden. (Not insta though.)

Bookish Nays:

😕 The usual problem of debut novelists: too many themes! The kitchen sink of themes is virtually bursting at the seams, with most of the common dark themes in fiction being present in this book.. This can be pardoned to some extent as we see multi-character POVs and their tracks have separate topics. But it still feels like too much when every single character Miv interacts with has something bad going on in their life. All this also worsens the feeling of bleakness.

😕 Miv’s mother’s arc is poorly developed. There was so much more that could have been done with her mental health issue. A part of this knowledge gap can be forgiven because we get the story in Miv’s first-person POV, so what she doesn’t know, we also don’t get to know. But the instant turnaround is so abrupt, so unrealistic and so unbelievable that I don’t feel like forgiving anything.

🎧 The Audiobook Experience:

The audiobook, clocking at 10 hrs 49 mins, is narrated by Joanne Froggatt, Mark Noble, Asif Khan, Gemma Whelan, and Simon Harvey. One narrator is for Miv’s first-person POV and the other narrators voice the third-person POVs from multiple characters. Having so many narrators is an excellent choice as it helps us keep the tracks straight in our head. All the narrators are really competent and read wonderfully. At the same time, I wouldn’t recommend this to audio newbies as it gets somewhat tricky to keep all the characters and POVs straight.

Overall, this debut turned out to be a pleasant surprise, though it wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. A child narrator offering insights into adult happenings, a parallel narrative structure from multiple perspectives, and the use of an actual crime to create this fictional but fairly realistic version – all work in favour of the book. While it is not a perfect novel, it is a compelling debut. I would definitely like to read more by this author.

Recommended to readers who enjoy character-driven historical fiction and adult stories coming from child narrators. There are several dark topics in this book, so do check out the trigger warnings online if needed.

My thanks to Tantor Audio for providing the ALC of “The List of Suspicious Things” via NetGalley. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the audiobook.