Best Books of 2025 — My Top 10 Favourites

First off I should clarify that this is a list of favourite books that I read in 2025. It is not a list of favourite books published in 2025. Although, there are two books here that do fit that description. 

Secondly, I know what my number one book of the year is, but while I did try to come up with an order for the remaining nine books it felt arbitrary. After a month of trying to rank them, I gave up. In 2024, I couldn’t even come up with a top 10, it was a top 29. I never did publish that post, because by the time I had whittled the list down to 11 books, it was February, and the moment had passed. In 2023, I was only able to get the list down to 32 books! And a top 32 books of the year just sounds mad. What I can tell you with certainty about this list for 2025 is that every book deserves to be here.

Thirdly, I have made a YouTube video to compliment this post. Where I fail at eloquence I believe I make up for in enthusiasm. You can judge for yourself. (Watch the video here.)

And now, here they are, in no particular order, the Top 10 Best Books I Read in 2025.

The Woman in the Hall by G.B. Stern (1939)

We are starting off strong with a chunky book from the British Library Women Writers collection. Lorna Blake, a professional beggar, solicits money from the select rich by calling on them at home and spinning a story that all but ensures she has money in hand by the time she walks out the door. The rush of swindling promises excitement that is lacking in the rest of Lorna’s life. Like a gambler who cannot kick the habit, Lorna goes out again, and again, dragging one or the other of her daughters, Molly and Jay, with her. Molly soon dreads hearing that they are going out “Visiting”, but Jay develops her own complicated fascination with the task.

I thought I saw where this one way going, but it turns out I didn’t have a clue. I enjoyed reading this one slowly. This is such a rich text for unpicking the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, and between sisters. But there is also a feeling of foreboding as the net tightens around Lorna, which makes this book a bit of a page-turner. Read it fast or slow, I cannot recommend it enough. (Read my full review of The Woman in the Hall here.)

Spring Begins by Katherine Dunning (1934)

I was completely swept away with Katherine Dunning’s novel, The Spring Begins. Her descriptions of setting are gorgeous. The women in this book are so well described, and you cannot help but feel for each of them. And I think she does a fantastic job of capturing the tension, unease, and vulnerability of being a woman, especially—I assume—a woman in domestic service in the 1930s.

Despite the title, this book is set in the heat of summer. The spring referred to is a figurative one alluding to the awakening of three women. Lottie is a young nurse maid who cares for the two Kellaway girls, and is painfully innocent and fearful of the world of men. Maggie, the Kellaways’ scullery maid, is more knowing of men, but perhaps not as experienced with them as Cook seems to think. The oldest of the three women, Hessie, is a spinster and governess to the two Benson girls at the nearby rectory. When her younger sister gets engaged she faces a crisis. 

I loved seeing Lottie’s love for the children she looks after, Maggie’s strong sense of self, but Hettie, turned out to be the real wonder for me. It took me longer to warm up to her, but the journey she must travel in her awakening takes her the furthest. I won’t spoil how her story progresses, but I will say it is not the only aspect of this book that took me by surprise.

I loved this book. It is not plot-y, but how the narrative alternates between these three women’s perspectives kept me glued to the page. (Read my full review of Spring Begins here.)

London Particular by Christianna Brand (1952)

This is my favourite book the British Library have republished in their Crime Classics collection. London Particular is atmospheric, thrilling, smart, twisty, and provides a good dose of humour to boot.

On a typically foggy November night in 1950s London, a couple are trying to find their way to a dying man, after receiving a strange phone call to a doctor’s surgery urging someone to come quick. They arrive at the house to discover the man has been murdered.

When Rosie’s brother becomes a main suspect, she enlists the help of family friend, Inspector Cockrill, to aid the police in their investigations. Cockie is sharp, smart, dependable, and so very likeable.

In the long, white firelit drawing-room the victim bowed and smiled and reeled off his devoirs before the serious work of the evening should begin; within the radius of one fog-bound mile, were these seven people, one of whom was very shortly going to murder him.

This book kept me guessing through to the very last stunning sentence. 

I highly recommend picking this one up if you like character driven mysteries with intricately woven plots that will keep you reading well past your bed time. (Read my full review of London Particular here.)

The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White (1936)

This book is battling it out with London Particular as my favourite book in the British Library Crime Classics collection.

The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy.

Having seen her friends off a couple of days ago, Iris Carr is left to travel home from her European holiday by herself. While waiting at the train station, she collapses in the hot sun. Feeling ill and disoriented, she is bundled into a packed compartment as the train pulls away from the platform. She gets a cold feeling from her fellow travellers, and has the odd impression that they don’t like her. 

Thankfully, a woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy, befriends Iris and noticing she doesn’t look well, takes her under her wing. Feeling better after a cup of tea, Iris drifts off to sleep.

When Iris awakes Miss Froy is no longer sitting across from her. At first Iris assumes the woman has just stepped out of the compartment, but as time goes on, Iris’s worry builds. Iris questions her fellow passengers about the missing woman, but they all say they don’t know who she is talking about. The suggestion is made that Iris has dreamt the woman up, a side effect of the heatstroke she is recovering from. 

At first, Iris even doubts herself. But the more she thinks of all the details that chatty Miss Froy shared with her, Iris becomes certain that Miss Froy is not simply a figment of her imagination. 

Miss Froy is missing and her fellow passengers must be lying about it. But who would want to harm a middle-aged governess, who herself claims not to have an enemy in the world?

This is a beautifully written book, full of atmosphere, tension, and—a rare thing to find in a mystery thriller—hope.

If the plot sounds at all familiar that’s because this book was adapted for film in 1938 by Alfred Hitchcock under the title The Lady Vanishes. And a very good adaption it is, though much more humorous and lighthearted than the book. (Read my full review The Wheel Spins here.)

The Christmas Egg by Mary Kelly (1958)

I absolutely loved this book. I read it during the festive season and it was exactly what I wanted to be reading. Snowy, Christmassy, and thrilling! 

A Russian princess who many years ago escaped the Russian Revolution for London is found murdered in her flat. It is rumoured she fled Russia with a chest of jewels, which her grandson had seen recently, but there is no sign of the priceless gems at the scene. What follows is a compelling mystery which escalates to the dramatic climax which takes our detective to the Kentish countryside decked out in snow-covered glory.

Just thinking about the final few chapters of this book makes me want to read it again before the winter is over, and write a proper review for it while I’m at it! 

Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper (1965)

This is book one in The Dark is Rising Sequence. My friend, Mary, gifted me this book with a beautiful bookmark she had painted and three tea bags, with the suggestion that I spend a lovely day drinking tea and reading this book. One day in late summer, I did just that. 

Great-Uncle Merry meets siblings, Simon, Jane, and Barney at a train station in Cornwall, the land of King Arthur. And King Arthur just so happens to be Barney’s favourite hero. Then he finds a parchment in his uncle’s attic, an old map that will send them on a quest to find a grail. That would be exciting enough. But little do they know, they are caught in a battle between good and evil which has them lost between two worlds.

Set in summer amongst a seaside village with cliffs that plunge into the wild sea hiding caves and crevices for great adventures and intrigue. Wonderfully tense, exciting, and — the essential ingredient when good and evil are battling it out — hope. 

I loved this book so much that I was daunted by the task of trying to articulate my feelings about it. I can’t think about this book without feeling a longing to sit down with it again. Save this one for a summer day and binge it in one sitting.

Pat of Silver Bush by L.M. Montgomery (1933)

Patricia Gardiner is a young girls who lives with her family on their farm, Silver Bush, on Prince Edward Island, Canada. One day is much the same as the next on the farm, until they are not. From starting school and getting a baby sister, to attending her aunt’s wedding, through to Pat’s own first romance, she grows up and manages the changes as best she can but always comes back to her home, Silver Bush, the one place that doesn’t change. Well, not too much anyway. 

I started this book in the third week of September and only just finished it in December. This is a book that made me feel a lot. I wanted to savour it, but I also found myself not wanting to read too much at once. Big feelings are best felt in small doses, I find. I recognise that my strong feelings for this book might not be shared by others. I identified with Pat to a great extent, and at the risk of sounding a bit silly, this book and her character made me feel seen. 

In the end they found a beauty spot … a deep, still, woodland pool out of which the brook flowed, fed by a diamond trickle of water over the stones of a little hill. Around it grew lichened spruces and whispering maples, with little “cradle hills” under them; and just beyond a breezy slope with a few mossy, grass-grown sticks scattered here and there, and a bluebird perched on the point of a picket. It was all so lovely that it hurt. Why, Pat wondered, did lovely things so often hurt?

I think it’s a special book, even when compared to the many other wonderful books Lucy Maud Montgomery has written. But beyond my admiration for Maud’s ability to capture what it is to grow up as a girl who loves home and feels everything deeply, this is just a great book. It is full of nostalgia and longing for childhood, and I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that Maud explored her own feelings of longing for Prince Edward Island when she was writing this book. There is no big plot, just small moments in a young girl’s life, appreciating nature, happiness, and heartbreak, and sometimes, all of these things at once.

The Eights by Joanna Miller (2025)

Since I stopped using Goodreads, I started keeping a Books Read list. Next to each title I write a short note to myself. Usually, it’s no more than a sentence, sometimes it’s just a few words. Next to this one I wrote, “what’s next for these women???” I would love a follow up book to this one, not because I didn’t think the ending was satisfying, but because I didn’t want to be without these women in my life. 

Joanna Miller’s debut novel was an absolute treat. I found myself trying to spin out the time I got to spend with the four women in this fabulous book. Even so, the time went by much too quickly.

1920 — Oxford University has for the first time in its 1,000-year history admitted female students as full members of the university. In October, at the start of Michaelmas term, four young women move into Corridor Eight of St. Hugh’s College. Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto couldn’t be more different, but soon the unlikely quartet become the closest of friends. 

Not everyone is happy about women being allowed in the university and from the first day the foursome find themselves facing that opposition head-on.

Outside of living on the same floor at their college, these four would not likely have been attracted to each other. But the combination of living in close proximity, the common goal of getting an Oxford education, and an incident they experience just after meeting, all create the perfect circumstances to make their friendship not just believable, but feel natural and true.

What first attracted me to this book was the time and place in history in which it is set. I felt thoroughly immersed in the world of this well-researched novel. I marvelled at how many rules were imposed on the women students that were required of their male contemporaries, and the references to Winifred Holtby, Vera Brittain, Agatha Christie, and Thomas Hardy gave me a little thrill.

But what makes this book such an endearing one is the friendship that forms between Beatrice, Dora, Marianne, and Otto. I appreciated that they were never in competition with each other. These women are individually such bright lights, but together they shine even brighter.

I want to thank Kathryn (@_the_book_bug_ on Instagram) for bringing this book to my attention. After reading her review I couldn’t get the book out of my head. A day later, I pre-ordered it. (Read my full review of The Eights here.)

Love Divine by Ysenda Maxtone Graham (2025)

This book begins on a blustery day in early January in the village of Lamley Green. People are just waking up, making hot cuppas, and opening the curtains. But the curtains at 12 Holly Grove remain closed as letters of condolence are pushed through the letterbox.

Lucy Fanthrope, whose husband Nick, respected lawyer and dependable member of the church choir, died unexpectedly on New Year’s Day. The letters are variable in nature, some touching, some funny, in many the writers come across as shockingly self-involved.

We are privy to many perspectives across the wide range of characters who live in this village. Everyone is connected in this small community both to each other and through the parish church, St Luke’s, which is currently without a resident rector and suffering through a long interregnum. 

There’s Carol, who volunteers to do the church coffee service. Vicki and Eliot who are facing the uphill battle of running a B&B. New to the village, Chantelle will stop at nothing to get her daughter into the oversubscribed church school. And then there is my personal favourite, Hugh. Newly retired schoolmaster, who lives with his dog Odo, and has every piece of his clothing on a numbered rotation.

The characters in this book are either facing loss or are going through a phase of transition in their lives. Maxtone Graham does a wonderful job of capturing how as one is facing supreme sadness and loss, life is dotted with moments of beauty and joy. 

I shed more than a couple of tears while reading this book, but I mostly giggled, smiled, smirked, and nodded along to the ridiculous, funny, endearing, relatable bits in this glorious book. I wholeheartedly loved it. Set over the course of year, starting in January, this would be a great book to pick up right now. (Read my full review of Love Divine here.)

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve a metal. Instead, let me tell you about the best book I read in 2025...

Crooked Cross by Sally Carson (1934)

I read Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross back in April, when it was first republished by Persephone Books. Even then I knew it was going to be among my top ten this year, and I was all but certain it would be in the number one slot. It’s just that kind of book.

It is a powerful account of the rise of Nazism in Germany and how it affects one family in a small Bavarian market town in the mountains south of Munich. It begins at Christmas 1932. The Klugers are happy and looking forward to the future with optimism for the first time in years. The younger son has joined the Nazi Party and the elder son who has been unable to find work soon joins up too. The daughter Lexa, is engaged to Moritz Weissmann, a surgeon with a bright future. Moritz and his father, celebrate Christmas with the Klugers and the two families already feel joined. In the new year, Hitler is elected Chancellor, and everything changes. 

Moritz loses his job at the hospital because he is Jewish, and he is unable to find another. With no money coming in, Moritz and his father are forced to move to a one-room flat. Soon Lexa’s brothers, Erich and Helmy, are telling Lexa that surely she must see that she has to give Moritz up because he is a Jew. 

All her muddled ideas and thoughts, her worries and anxieties for Moritz had a reason, a point, an ending now. This was her loyalty; this was where she had to act. This was her moment, the moment for which she must have been waiting.

This book is powerful. It’s moving. It’s devastating. Hard to believe it was published in 1934, just a year after some of the events in the novel take place, and without the hindsight of what was going to happen in Germany. This is not a cosy book, but it is so important. Everyone should read this book. (Read my full review of Crooked Cross here.)

Final thoughts

In general, I read a lot of books that are either out of print or have recently been republished, so I’m not surprised this is evident in this list. But what I was surprised about is that half the books on this list were originally published in the 1930s. And a quarter of the books I read this year were from this decade. The only decade that was close to that were the 2020s, with 22 per cent, and almost half of those books were published in 2025. I have never before tracked the publication years of the books I’ve been reading. I started thinking about it when I heard Simon Thomas from the Tea or Books? podcast talking about his Century of Books challenge. 

Like I said at the start of this post, I read so many wonderful books this year that it was very difficult to narrow the list down to just 10. I am not a decisive person and I hate having to pick favourites, because it is so definite. To state the obvious, once you pick a favourite book or top 10, you are leaving out any number of wonderful books that you may have read over the course of the year. It feels a bit harsh. Frankly, it feels mercenary to me. But I strive to champion the very best books, always, which is why I feel it is necessary to put myself through this decision making torture.

I would love to know if there are any reading stats that you like to track, or have decided to start tracking in 2026. And what was the best book you read in 2025? Or best books? I, of all people, can understand if you cannot pick just one.

Some of the books in this post were sent to me by publishers, but as always, all opinions on these books are my own. Thank you British Library Publishing and Slightly Foxed for being so generous to me in 2025.

***If you got something out of this post, please consider subscribing to my blog. You can find the email sign up on the right hand side at the top of this page (on desktop version only), or click on the link here. You will receive a confirmation email in your inbox (or possibly your junk folder). Once you click to confirm your email address you will receive an email notification whenever a new blog post goes up. And, of course, you can unsubscribe at any time. Feel free to email me if you have any trouble subscribing, or if you just want to chat about books. I would love to hear from you! Whether you subscribe or not, I’m thankful you are here.***

Fear Stalks the Village by Ethel Lina White

Ethel Lina White’s The Wheel Spins is one of my favourite British Library Crime Classics, second only to London Particular by Christianna Brand. I was very excited to get my hands on another of her books. Don’t let the autumnal colours of its cover mislead you, White’s 1932 novel, Fear Stalks the Village, is set at the beginning of summer in an idyllic English village. But like The Wheel Spins, White manages to wreak havoc amongst the peace and tranquility. This one is dripping with atmosphere and it is just so well executed. 

The village was beautiful. It was enfolded in a hollow of the Downs, and wrapped up snugly— first, in a floral shawl of gardens, and then, in a great green shawl of fields. Lilies and lavender grew in abundance. Bees clustered over sweet-scented herbs with the hum of a myriad spinning-wheels. (13)

The village sounds aesthetically pleasing, but what of its residents?

[T]here was no poverty or unemployment in the village. The ladies had not to grapple with a servant problem, which oiled the wheels of hospitality. If family feuds existed, they were not advertised, and private lives were shielded by drawn blinds. Consequently, the social tone was fragrant as rosemary, and scandal nearly as rare as a unicorn. (13)

With no railway station, and a London bus that does not stop in the village, but outside it, it is not surprising the place gets few visitors. The birthrate is stagnant and apparently no one dies there, either. No one leaves, and no one comes. It is an extremely close knit community. Which is why when the villagers get inundated with a slew of poison pen letters, it is so very unnerving. The thought that it must be one of their own sending the letters turns neighbour against neighbour. Trust is broken. No longer is the village a place of hospitality and friendliness. Because how can you feel safe inviting your neighbours into your home when you can’t be sure a traitor isn't among them?

The heart of the village is sick and everything that has made this place special is at stake. Despite the idyllic appearance of the village, everyone in it has a secret they would rather keep hidden. And when the shame of having your darkest secrets revealed becomes too much, people are bound to get desperate. With one person dead under mysterious circumstances, the body count is only going to increase as the tension is ratcheted up and up, until it reaches the breaking point.

Everyone from the “queen of the village”, Miss Decima Asprey, the to the local gentry, the Scudamores, to the Rector are sucked into the drama. When things get too unbearable to go on, the Rector gives a thundering sermon, denouncing the secret enemy, but seeing the sermon has had no effect—besides an increase in donations—he goes to visit the Squire. 

The two men consider consulting with local police, essentially Sergeant James. But as the poisoned pen writer may very well be a woman, as the Squire says, “Probably is. The place is stiff with them” and both the Rector and the Squire do not like the idea of a woman getting arrested, the Rector makes an alternative suggestion.

“I have a friend, Ignatius Brown, one of the idle rich. He rather fancies himself as Sherlock Holmes. He’s not so clever as he thinks he is, but he’s keen, and he should be more than a match for anyone here. Shall I ask him down?”

“No,” said the Squire. “We don’t want any amateurs. I’ll instruct James.” As he spoke, he caught his wife’s eye. Her lips were pursed and she first nodded violently and then shook her head vehemently.

The Squire knew, from experience, how to interpret these conflicting signals, for, suddenly he changed his mind. (127)

Even in this serious moment, we see White’s wonderful sense of humour.

When the Rector had gone, the Squire turned to his wife. Although he usually bullied her, there were times when he followed her advice; for, if the Squire had no positive virtues, he had some rather good faults. (128)

The village is full of interesting characters. There is Joan Brook, who is a companion to Lady D’Arcy, and lives about a mile outside the village with her. We meet Joan at the very start of the book as she entertains her friend, a novelist visiting from London, with a walk through the village. As they take a leisurely stroll through the village, the friend comes up with salacious stories about each of the villagers that are directly contradictory to the people that Joan knows them to be. For example, “the highly respectable married couple […] are not really married to each other, but living in sin”, the Rector throws “bottle-and-pyjama parties with some very hot ladies from town”, the doctor is poisoning his wife, and the tea-totalling local novelist, Miss Julia Corner, is a secret drinker (18, 19, 21). 

I think White is a great writer. She draws complex characters, creates a tightly woven plot that centres around a compelling mystery, and takes “a perfect spot” and turns it into a prison (13). All of this she manages, while writing genre fiction that is also literary. For example, one would take for granted that the title Fear Stalks the Village is figurative, instead White turns fear into a physical presence that lurks in the shadows, that enters gardens, and rooms, when least expected. I found it to be an unexpected technique, but effective. After all, fear is a visceral reaction felt in the body, why not give imbue it with life by giving the bodily presence it already has?

[P]oor Miss Corner unconsciously applied the match which blew up her party.

[…]

“Well, Decima, anything fresh about your anonymous letter?”

Miss Asprey raised her heavy ivory lids.

“No,” she replied. “It is best forgotten.”

“No idea as to who wrote it?” went on Miss Corner, unabashed.

“No.”

Miss Corner suddenly exploded into a fit of laughter. “Perhaps I could make a guess,” she said.

As though her words were a signal, the dark blotch, huddled in a corner of the garden, quivered into hideous life and mingled with the other guests.

With the entry of Fear, Miss Corner’s party was practically killed, for its spirit had soured and died. The continual hum of conversation was now broken by sudden awkward pauses. Immaculate men and elegant ladies stood in the usual little clusters, but each one gave the impression of whispering to his friend, while he tried to overhear his neighbour. For the same thought was in every mind.

‘There is someone here who has slandered a good woman. I may be the next victim.’ (79-80)

Miss Corner, the local novelist, may have “applied the match”, but Fear, “the unbidden outsider” had “slunk outside the gate, awaiting its opportunity to steal inside” (79, 71). I think this image of a “dark blotch” which “quivered into hideous life and mingled with the other guests” is so visceral. There is more than one traitor amongst these people, and the invisible one may be even more dangerous. After all, they can close their doors to their neighbours, but Fear is able to slip in unnoticed.

If you have visited this blog before, you know I love reading mysteries. But I really struggle with how much to share in my reviews. I don’t want to say too much, and I definitely do not want to spoil anything for anyone who has not yet read the book. But I also really want to dish! Especially when it’s a book I really appreciated, by an author that deserves all the praise she can get. Just know that I want to tell you everything about this book. I want to discuss it in depth. But I won’t. It wouldn’t be fair to you, the person who, I hope, is going to be inspired to go out and get your hands on a copy of this book.

After reading, and now reviewing this book, I feel I need to reassess my list of favourite British Library Crime Classics. This one may not have knocked London Particular out of first place, but I fear it will knock another title out of my top five.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of Fear Stalks the Village for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White

As she listened to the gush of words behind her, Iris was again perplexed by the discrepancy between Miss Froy's personality and her appearance. It was as though a dryad were imprisoned within the tree-trunk of a withered spinster. (78)

Ethel Lina White’s 1936 novel, The Wheel Spins, attracted Alfred Hitchcock’s attention and in 1938 it was made into the film The Lady Vanishes. Before I had read the book, I thought the film had the better title. But now, I believe the film just has the more obvious title, and while that perhaps makes it more suited to cinema, The Wheel Spins is the superior choice for this novel. 

The Wheel Spins opens with Iris Carr on holiday in the mountains somewhere in Europe. Her friends and herself have made general nuisances of themselves during their stay, and destroyed the tranquil setting that no doubt would have attracted the other guests to the location. Iris, who, by the end of the trip, has grown tired of her friends, happily waves them off at the train station. Glad to see the back of them, she is looking forward to some quiet time in the remaining days of her holiday.

Her solitude becomes a bit too real when she gets lost in the mountains without food, water, map, or the means of asking directions. Because as well as not knowing the language, she is unable to tell the one person she comes across the name of the village where she is staying. So when it comes time for her to return home she is starting yearn for company, though she is barely able to acknowledge this herself. When one of her fellow guests, a vicar’s wife, extends an olive branch, Iris snaps it in two, making it perfectly clear she is not interested in making nice.  

Iris was awakened that night, as usual, by the express screaming through the darkness. Jumping out of bed, she reached the window in time to see it outline the curve of the lake with a fiery wire. As it rattled below the hotel, the golden streak expanded to a string of lighted windows, which, when it passed, snapped together again like the links of a bracelet.

After it had disappeared around the gorge, she followed its course by its pall of quivering red smoke. 

[…]

Once again she was flooded with home-hunger, even though her future address were an hotel. Mixed with it was a gust of foreboding—which was a legacy from the mountains.

“Suppose—something—happened, and I never came back.” 

At that moment she felt that any evil could block the way to her return. A railway crash, illness, or crime were possibilities, which were actually scheduled in other lives. They were happening all around her and at any time a line might give way in the protective square in her palm. (45)

Previously, she had been told that the lines on the palm of her hand formed a protective square, which Iris has been willing to believe keeps her from harm. Her experience in the mountains is the first time Iris has felt the weakness in her belief. Iris is coming to feel how vulnerable she is as a woman travelling in a foreign country without friends and not speaking the language.

While waiting at the station for the train that will start her on her journey home, she collapses and we begin to wonder if Iris’s feeling of foreboding wasn’t warranted. She wakes up not knowing how much time has passed. Overcome with panic that she has missed her train, she struggles to get up. But she is forced to rest and drink something. Still feeling ill and disoriented, she is bundled onto the train, a porter aids her in squeezing into a packed compartment as the train pulls away from the platform. She gets a cold feeling from people in the compartment, as though they don’t like her. But that doesn’t make any sense. They don’t even know her. It’s not like they could have talked to anyone from her hotel. Thankfully, a woman, who introduces herself as Miss Froy, befriends Iris and noticing she doesn’t look well, takes her under her wing. Feeling better after a cup of tea, Iris drifts off to sleep.

When Iris awakes Miss Froy is no longer across from her. At first Iris assumes the woman has just stepped out of the compartment for a bit—a trip to the lavatory or the dining car would explain her absence—but as time goes on, Iris’s worry builds. The train is full to the brim, so she couldn’t have simply changed compartments. When Iris finally gets to the point of questioning her fellow passengers about the missing woman, they all say they don’t know who she is talking about. The suggestion is made that she has dreamt the woman up, and Iris herself admits that she was suffering from heatstroke. Could she have hit her head when she collapsed? Iris even begins to doubt herself, at first. But the more she thinks of all the details that chatty Miss Froy shared with her, Iris knows Miss Froy is not simply a figment of her imagination. She was too unexpected. Too unlike the person she appeared. She may have looked middle-aged and dowdy, but she was almost girlish in her behaviour and vocabulary. 

“Oh, isn’t all of this fun?”

Her pleasure was so spontaneous and genuine that Iris could not condemn it as gush. She stared doubtfully at the faded old gold plush window-curtains, the smutty tablecloth, the glass dish of cherry jam and then she glanced at her companion.

She received a vague impression of a little puckered face; but there was a sparkle in the faded blue eyes, and an eager note in the voice, which suggested a girl.

Afterwards, when she was trying to collect evidence of what she believed must be an extraordinary conspiracy, it was this discrepancy between a youthful voice and a middle-aged spinster, which made her doubt her own senses. In any case, her recollection was far from clear, for she did not remember looking consciously at her companion again.

The sun was blazing in through the window, so that she shaded her eyes with one hand most of the time she was having tea. But as she listened to the flow of excited chatter, she had the feeling that she was being entertained by some one much younger than herself. (73)

I just loved this book. Everything is against Iris, not least of all herself. For a person who is bored and doesn’t do much of anything, it is easy to imagine that she has never gone out of her way for anyone in her life. Frankly, as privileged young woman, she has never had to. Ethel Lina White does a fabulous job of laying the groundwork for Iris’s character, so by the time Iris gets on that train, we have a good idea of what she is like and what she would do in most circumstances. 

One of her fellow passengers, a young man offers to help, but he is as sceptical as everyone else about Iris’s claim that Miss Froy has disappeared.

“Have I got it right?” he asked. “Is this Miss Froy a complete stranger to you?”

“Of course.”

“Yet you’re nearly going crackers over her. You must be the most unselfish person alive. Really, it’s almost unnatural.”

“But I’m not,” admitted Iris truthfully. “It’s rather the other way round. That’s the amusing part. I can’t understand myself a bit.’

“Well, how did it start?”

“In the usual way. She was very kind to me—helpful, and all that, so that at first, I missed her because she wasn't at the back of me any more. And then, when every one declared I dreamed her, it all turned to a horrible nightmare. It was like trying to explain that every one was out of step but myself.”

“Hopeless. But why had you to prove that she was there?”

“Oh, can’t you understand? If I didn’t, I could never feel that anything, or any one, was real again?” (123)

If Iris had been travelling with even one other friend she would not have worried herself about Miss Froy. She likely wouldn’t have treated her disappearance with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders between pulls on her cigarette. And this begins to explain why I think The Wheel Spins is such a fantastic title. It is only by chance that a selfish person like Iris takes any interest in Miss Froy’s disappearance. As more and more of her fellow passengers plead ignorance or claim the woman didn’t exist, Iris realises that if the situation were reversed and something were to happen to her on that train, no one would do anything about it, except for Miss Froy. She feels sure Miss Froy would have caused a commotion and searched until she was found, because Miss Froy showed her a kindness when she needed it most, and Iris is sure Miss Froy is that sort of person. With each spin of the wheel, the fate of Miss Froy is put into question. Will the wheel of fortune spin in favour of Miss Froy, or not?

The wheel is part of “the great machine” which is capable of catching people up in one of its revolutions (183). This great machine might be the wheels of the train that can bring a person safely home, or not, which we can see from Iris’s feeling of foreboding in contrast to other characters in this book who also view this train from their windows and interpret the image with hope and anticipation. This intertwining of the unpredictability of Fortune’s Wheel with the wheels of the train conflates the idea that on this train ride fates will be decided and all of the passengers take a turn at spinning the wheel that decides the fate of Miss Froy, and Iris’s fate, too. 

The wheel was still spinning for her.

And since their fates were interlinked it was spinning also for Miss Froy. (180)

Wheel imagery continues to appear in unexpected places throughout this book. At one point even “the drone of masculine voices” make a drumming sound “like the hum of a spinning wheel” as they decide a woman’s fate (225).

This is a beautifully written book, full of atmosphere, tension, and—a rare thing to find in a mystery thriller—hope. If you pick up one British Library Crime Classic this year, I highly recommend choosing this one.

Oh, and here’s a small spoiler, but I anticipate it will offer comfort to some, so I have decided to share it. This is a mystery with only the passing mention of a murder, but no actual murder on the page. The Wheel Spins is a very rare book, indeed.

Thank you to British Library Publishing for kindly sending me a copy of The Wheel Spins for review. As always, all opinions on the book are my own.

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