Scribblemarks

2026 Book #16: Hotel du Lac

Book: Hotel du Lac
Author: Anita Brookner
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2 Stars

Read for a book club in January.

Edith Hope, a writer of romantic stories, and stubbornly single, has been exiled to the Hotel du Lac for embarrassing herself in front of her friends.

We don’t yet know what she has done, but we do know her thoughts as she arrives at the Swiss hotel.

2026 Book #13: The Seven Sisters

Book: The Seven Sisters
Author: Lucinda Riley
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #3 (A book you meant to read in 2025) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #28 (from a series at least eight books long).

Maia D’Apliese has just lost her adoptive father, Pa Salt. She and her five sisters (all adopted) reunite at their family home, and each of them are given a clue as to where they came from.

Maia’s clue takes her across the Atlantic to Brazil.

2026 Book #14: Holding

Book: Holding
Author: Graham Norton
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Duneen is a remote Irish village with its fair share of drama. Sergeant PJ Collins, feels himself perennially underestimated and ignored because of his weight, Brid Riordan is walking the fine line between enthusiastic drinker and alcoholic, and Evelyn Ross has spent her entire life stuck because of something that happened years ago.

When human remains are discovered and linked to a man connected to both Brid and Evelyn’s past, PJ finds himself doing serious police work for the very first time.

And a lot of secrets will come to the surface.

2026 Book #12: 84, Charing Cross Road

Book: 84, Charing Cross Road
Author: Helene Hanff
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #47 (A book told entirely through letters) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #49 (from the 800s of the Dewey Decimal System).

An epistolary memoir consisting of letters exchanged between Helene Hanff and Frank Doel of Marks & Co booksellers, 84 Charing Cross Road is a beautiful story of a platonic friendship built on a love of books, which spills out into other areas of their lives.

2026 Book #11: Project Hail Mary

Book: Project Hail Mary
Author: Andy Weir
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #9 (a book with a type-c character) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #44 (literary device: personification).

Imagine waking up alone in a strange room, with no memory of who you are or where you are. Piece by piece it starts to come back.

You are alone, you are on a spaceship, your name is Ryland Grace, and you’re humanity’s last hope.

2026 Book #10: Before I Forget

Book: Before I Forget
Author: Tory Henwood Hoen
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟 1/2

Completed this for the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #2 (a kangaroo word on the cover).

Cricket Campbell is in a rut of sorts.

She has been floating aimlessly from one thing to another, most recently an assistant at a gimmicky wellness company.

Things change when her father’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis becomes a real and looming threat.

2026 Book #9: The Eights

Book: The Eights
Author: Joanna Miller
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 3/4

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #33 (a book about college) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #51 (includes a map).

In 1920, Oxford is admitting female students for the first time.

Dora was never supposed to be here – but after she loses her fiancé and brother, she decides to take their places.

2026 Book #8: The Bluest Eye

Book: The Bluest Eye
Author: Toni Morrison
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #16 (A book less than 260 pages).

Ohio in the 1940s.

This is the story of the lives of a poor Black family – Cholly, Pauline, and their children, Sammy and Pecola.

Pecola – who is considered ugly – grows enamoured by the idea of having blue eyes like the white girls at her school.

2026 Book #7: Birnam Wood

Book: Birnam Wood
Author: Eleanor Catton
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 1/2

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #1 (A book where gardening or a garden is central to the plot) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #9 (featuring a natural disaster).

Korowai Pass, New Zealand.

A guerrilla gardening group called Birnam Wood led by ecological rebel Mira Bunting, sees an opportunity to move in, in the wake of a landslide.

However, there they encounter the mysterious Robert Lemoine, who takes an interest in what they do.

The question is – can they trust him?

2026 Book #6: Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts

Book: Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts

Author: Josie Shapiro

Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Completed this for the Popsugar Reading Challenge Prompt #39 (a book about a character who runs a marathon) and the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge Prompt #18 (provokes strong emotion)

Mickey Bloom had the makings of a misfit from childhood. Short, dyslexic and awkward, with a father who doesn’t seem to like her anymore, she discovers a strange sanctuary in the act of running.

When she runs, she is everything she thought she couldn’t be: strong, talented and a winner.

However, the world of professional running is fraught with perils: cutthroat coaches, high pressure, body shaming, and placing performance over health.