Wow! What a debut from Jennie Godfrey! The story focuses on Miv and Sharon who, n an attempt to forget problems closer to home, decide to try to catch the Yorkshire Ripper hence their list of suspicious things.
As someone who has the 'moors and mills running through our veins' and who was a teenager in the 70s like the two main characters, this book initially made me feel nostalgic as it reminded me of growing up in a neighbouring county. However, the underlying strands of Miv's mum's depression, the expectations on women, Thatcher's Britain, unemployment and racismm(including the NF) and their impact on the community serve as a reminder of the stark and gritty reality of life in the north.
Relationships, friendships and love and loss are key themes in the book and are dealt with sensitively and honestly. The story is beautifully crafted with every thread woven together to create a masterpiece. Thoroughly enjoyed this one - can't wait to read more by the same author. This comes highly recommended.

This is a book about Miv and some people she knows or gets to know. At nearly 12 she is growing up in Yorkshire at the time that the Ripper is murdering girls. Things are not great for Miv, she doesn't have many friends though Sharon is her best friend. Her household consists of her dad and Aunty Jean who really runs the household. Her mother is around some of the time. However she suffers from depression and is rarely seen and never heard. Once Miv does hear about the Ripper she feels she should do something about it and try and find him. She persuades Sharon that they should start a list of suspicious things about people and places and investigate them.

At the start of this book there is still a real feeling of freedom to the lives there. It may be rather industrial but people look out for each other and the youngsters can roam on their own. Over the course of the book things affect that freedom. People of far more conscious of the Ripper murders and the safety of women. However there is also a growth of National Front culture too. This affects the man who owns the corner shop and his son who is rapidly becoming friends with both the girls. The girls do investigate the people/places they put on the list though Sharon with rather less enthusiasm (for a variety of reasons) than Miv. Sometimes there are dangers…

Miv really is the main character here. However other people appear either by going on the list or because she sees them around. These do include the man at the corner shop, a librarian, a teacher, a rag and bone man and a man who helps out at the church choir meetings. I found all the characters interesting and, given the short time some spend in the tale, convincing and well created. Some of these characters have their own chapters and I rather liked this approach.

It's fair to say I liked this a lot from the start and it got better for me as it went on. There is a wonderful sense of the atmosphere of the time and era being caught well and mostly gently here. I think there's little doubt that people of a "certain age" will be able to relate to the times very well indeed! For me I loved seeing the world through Miv eyes. She sees things that I as an adult understand quite well, but which puzzle her. Sometimes she fails to see what to an adult would be very obvious. She is learning how things work and what things mean. It's great to walk that path with her. The fact I felt like that speaks volumes for the writing here. I found this powerfully insightful and understated too in the main.

The book can be quite dark at times even seeing the world through Miv's eyes. However in among all this there is some humour. Given that parts, certainly to an adult, are quite dark I enjoyed the smiles. For me this is a rare book - I have no doubt that Miv and her story will stay with me for a long time to come. While there are depths there is also tremendous warmth too. Encountering both aspects sometimes led to less than dry eyes…

My thanks to Netgalley for my ecopy of The List Of Suspicious Things. I have to say that had I been in a bookshop neither the cover nor the title would have called to me and how sad that would have been because this book is a real gem.
It is nostalgic of the era in which it is set but also nostalgic of at least my own childhood which was two decades earlier so I'm sure will resonate will others. The is a whole host of characters, all very different but all so very real all showing varied actions and reactions to the difficulties or pleasures that life throws at us all.
Finishing this book has left a hole in my life.

It’s 1979 and in the UK Margaret Thatcher has just become Prime Minister, (forever remembered by many as ‘The Milk Snatcher)’. More worryingly however, in particular for the women of Yorkshire, a monster known as ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’ was making a name for himself by routinely and viciously killing young women, thereby leaving every woman feeling terrified and vulnerable, frightened to even venture out at night. It’s against this backdrop that The List of Suspicious Things is set.

Miv lives with her Dad, her Mum (when she’s not having one of her regular spells in hospital, having completely withdrawn from life) and auntie Jean. She caught her Dad and auntie Jean talking about moving away from Yorkshire, citing the Ripper as one of the reasons, so if Miv can discover the identity of the killer, maybe she won’t have to move away from her dear friend Sharon, and so it is that 11 year old Miv decides she’s going to catch The Yorkshire Ripper, and persuades her best friend Sharon to help her.
Auntie Jean likes structure in her life and makes lists for everything, and Miv begins a list of her own, of all the suspicious things about the people she comes into contact with, and that might lead her to The Ripper!

Gosh this is a fantastic coming of age story, and a debut novel to boot (hard to believe). Having grown up in Yorkshire I recognise and felt connected to many of the characters, this may be a small community but there is much going on and plenty of women who can’t wait to spread the gossip, but they make for amusing characters (mostly!) I also remember the level of fear that the murders generated and the impact it had on local communities. Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) didn’t just rob women of their lives, he also robbed thousands of women of their right to feel safe going about their daily lives in the 1970’s.

A heartwarming, and moving experience, and I loved it. I shall be very surprised if this debut novel isn’t a runaway success, and one that the author justly deserves.

This novel starts off as a coming-of-age-story by an individual growing up in difficult circumstances. This individual is Miv, who grows up in the late 1970s and early 1980s in a small Yorkshire community overhshadowed by the sadistic crimes of a prolific killer. Miv and her friend Sharon embark on a quest to catch this dangerous perpetrator and start looking into certain individuals in their local community. Their naïve but high-spirited school-girl investigations lift the lid on the serious issues that lurk behind the seemingly wholesome rural lifestyle, such as racism, chauvinism, domestic abuse, addiction and untreated mental health conditions. The novel manages to portray a convincing slice of life at the turn of the 1970s/80s and whilst there is no happy ending, the novel has the potential to make its readership more alert to the latent violence that only the determined combination of increased individual insight and communal activism can address. My thanks go to the publishers and to NetGalley for the free ARC that allowed me to familiarise myself with Godfrey’s work and to produce this honest, unbiased book review.

This book is a total gem!

Set in Yorskhire during the late 70s/early 80s 12 year old Miv isn’t having an easy time. Not only is the Yorkshire Ripper on the loose but closer to home her mum is suffering from depression and is absent from her life & her dad is thinking of moving them away. To distract from her troubles and to feel useful and grown up, Miv and her friend Sharon embark on a quest to catch the Ripper and start to investigate people in the local community.

I thought this was such such a clever premise and it really is brilliantly executed. Through Miv & Sharons investigation, we meet the characters that make up the local community and learn of their troubles and secrets.

Jennie really can write characters and there are so many great ones in this book. From the main character Miv to Omar at the local shop to Yorkshire itself it was a pleasure to spend time with them all.

I grew up in a small town and there were so many of the ‘personalities’ I could identify with. Miv really stands out and is a character that will stay with me. Jennie perfectly captures the uncertainty and awkwardness of adolescence when you start to discover that adults are less than perfect and begin to understand a bit more about the world while still trying to figure out who you are and how to be.

There is a strong sense of place and time in the book and although I grew up a few years later than the setting, much of it was nostalgic - the games of Bulldog, the excitement of a new lip gloss and the anti Thatcher sentiment definitely very familiar. Also a time of innocence when children played freely in the streets but also an era where adults didn’t quite want to grasp just how dangerous characters like ‘Uncle’ Derek were.

TLOST is a truly wonderful read and one that I will be recommending far and wide.

Huge thanks to Hutchinson Heinemann & Netgalley for the chance to read an early copy.

Such a unique book, I loved the plot, and oh my god the characters were so amazing!! I definitely will be recommending it!!

I loved this book, such a wonderfully gentle look at the 80s through the eyes of people living through the rise of the National Front and the terrible fear of the Yorkshire Ripper. I was in my twenties and in London at this time, miles away from Sutcliffe, but I can still remember the terror women everywhere had that he would never be caught.
The storyline was ace, taking in teenage angst, and the many kinds of violence that surround us, some of it invisible until we are in the middle of it ourselves. The ending... oh, what an ending. Tears at bedtime.
Go read it if you can, so recommended.

Twelve-year-old Miv is poised on the brink of adolescence – a precarious and worrisome place for any girl to to be. But in the 1970s, when the Yorkshire Ripper haunts her dreams and her family life is fracturing around her, Miv's position feels particularly insecure. To bring some certainty back into her life – and ensure her family can stay in Yorkshire – she sets about compiling a list of suspects, determined to track down the Yorkshire Ripper. But beneath this Children's Film Foundation-worthy tale of a plucky daring-do, darkness lurks. And it's closer to home and more complicated than Miv realises.
The juxtaposition of Miv's innocence and her schoolgirl-diary delivery and the truths that she uncovers about the lives around lie at the bruised heart of this book. Soon, Miv and her best friend Sharon discover more than they bargained for – not about the Yorkshire Ripper, but about the grown-ups around them, who are troubled in all sorts of ways. As they scratch the surface of everyday life, brutal racism, domestic abuse, alcoholism, infidelity and misunderstood mental health issues emerge.
This is a beautifully written story of lost innocence that recalls the 1970s in all its grubby glory, yet still manages to evoke a poignant and fragile hope. Bravo.

This is a wonderful and complex story of two young girls living in Yorkshire at a time when the Ripper was tearing the county apart.
When they decide to investigate the Ripper themselves they end up finding out more than they'd anticipated about the people in their neighbourhood.

Told with empathy, tenderness and spectacular plotting, this story is a clever social study of a time that feels so different from our modern world, and yet spotlights issues that still trouble society now.

I cannot tell you how much I loved this book and how in awe I am of how cleverly and seamlessly it has been stitched together.

If this is a debut I can't wait to read more by this author.

I could probably write a list of why I thoroughly enjoyed this book: I'm from Yorkshire (not far from Dewsbury), I was around the same age as Miv when the Ripper terrorised the streets, I too had a pretty friend who boys were attracted but she wasn't as nice as Sharon so there the similarity ends. However the main reasons are the plot, the characters and the dialogue of this great first novel.

Jennie Godfrey has drawn on her own life to produce Miv, an immature, nervous little girl who is trying to deal with the unexplained withdrawal of her mother from her life, her father's increasingly worrying behaviour and having a best friend who she is desperate to keep (without knowing she doesn't have to try at all). But Miv is not the only totally believable character - from Mr Bashir who has lost his wide, moved from Bradford and is trying to deal with the NF element that is threatening his life and livelihood or Mrs Andrews whose charming and handsome husband, Gary, is not quite all he seems to much lesser characters like Jim whose Newcastle accent makes him a target for a while after the Wearside Jack tapes.

All of these events were blurry in my mind but as the book unfolds they came back to me with startling clarity. But this is not a book about The Yorkshire Ripper it is about the people in a small Yorkshire town dealing with their own demons be they the National Front, racism, the changing nature of the streets, alcoholism, domestic violence, mental health. Lift the rooves of any street and you'd find the same problems but Jennie Godfrey has given them a voice, made them real through the eyes of Miv, whose desire to catch the Ripper is sometimes funny, sometimes ridiculous and sometimes somewhat terrifying as she tries harder and harder to keep Sharon close and her family together.

I don't think I've done this book justice with this review. It us seldom dark despite the issues revealed. Miv is a wonderful vibrant character who positively bursts off the pages as do so many of Ms Godfrey's characters. I mentioned the dialogue earlier and that too rings true. It's an art writing believable dialogue and Ms Godfrey pulls it off with aplomb.

Highly recommended. It'll keep you spellbound to the end.

What a phenomenal piece of work. I loved Miv, Sharon, Ish, Austin, Aunty Jean and Mic’s mum.
Whilst this book is set around the toe of the Yorkshire Ripper, his crimes aren’t glorified, his victims are remembered.
Yorkshire is a character all by itself and lends itself really well to the story.
There’s something infinitely soothing and special about the Yorkshire accent and people.
I think Miv was my favourite character though, I too, love chip scraps - the first place I ever tried them was in Filey in 2017. We don’t tend to have chip scraps in the land locked East Midlands.
Jennie has written a fantastic book and I was gripped from the start. Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers #Netgalley

Set against the story of the Yorkshire Ripper, The List of Suspicious Things is an absorbing and emotional read that manages a perfect balance of quirky and tender. I absolutely loved it

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time and was lucky enough to receive a copy from the publishers. Where do you start? First I’d like to say to the author, Jennie Godfrey that she written a book which is sure in years the years to come be a classic. A text used for schools as it covers so many subjects that children don’t fully understand, but are so aware of the grown ups and their reactions – In The List of Suspicious Things we have racial tension, mental health, alcoholism and child abuse, serious strands written from the perspective of Miv as she approaches her teens.

Jennie weaves the central theme, Miv and her best friend Sharon and their quest to find The Yorkshire Ripper, with beautiful language and an ease that lets you settle back and read. A born storyteller, Jennie introduces the reader to the central characters, all deftly drawn and as real as people in your own life. I loved so many of them, especially Helen the librarian, and Omar who ran the corner shop. The setting of a small industrial Yorkshire town is perhaps the biggest character of all, wrapping its inhabitants into pride in living there, and as the ripper’s crime toll grew, so did the fear. Familiar but long forgotten gems make you smile. Fruity lipgloss, phone boxes and coins, board games and food.

There are a multitude of emotions in this book, happy and sad. I felt myself smiling and wiping a tear (always the sign of a fantastic book), and all of it told with such authenticity and authority, a superb coming of age story.

The List of Suspicious Things, Jennie Godfrey

I found this book quite an emotional read. Whether it is because I can relate to the era that it was set in, but the author captured the time and the characters perfectly (for example, most children at that time wore their clothes until they were too small or wore out). She focuses on friendship and love, loneliness, domestic violence, racism factually, yet sympathetically.

The book is set in the late 1970s, at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper murders. Miv, a lonely little girl with a challenging homelife makes a wish that she will find the Yorkshire Ripper so that she, her dad, her mum who doesn’t speak anymore and her auntie Jean don’t move away. She keeps a notebook and in it writes lists of potential suspects, many of whom she ends up befriending.

I really like the author’s writing style, it’s quite strong, but gentle. This is a debut novel…I can’t wait to read more of Jennie Godfrey’s work. I have thought about this story since finishing it and won’t forget the characters in a hurry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for a copy of this book, I rate it 5 stars.

A really wonderful read. Beautifully written and very well constructed. I loved how the story unfolded. The two young girls trying to find the Yorkshire Ripper by keeping a list of their suspicions was a little scary at times.. It was a beautiful story of true friendship, love and a dreadful loss. The twists and turns made this a real page turner. I loved all the characters and liked how their stories unfolded. It just got better as I read it.

‘There’ll be trouble at t’mill’, there sure will Aunty Jean. It’s 1979 and Aunty Jean is in full flow about Margaret Thatcher being elected Prime Minister, she’s not happy about the “milk snatcher“, it’ll spell the end for Yorkshire that is if the Ripper doesn’t do that first, our own homegrown West Yorkshire bogeyman. Not that Miv entirely understands what’s going on, especially about his victims, after all, she’s only eleven but when 19-year-old building society clerk Josephine Whitaker from Halifax is killed, she takes more notice as she’s not that many years older than her. The dark cloud of the Ripper looms large over Yorkshire, especially to the west. When it’s mooted that Miv’s family may leave Yorkshire, cricket and all, she is determined to stay especially for her best friend Sharon. What if …. what if… she could solve the murders? So she starts to make a list of the suspicious things she notices around her and ropes Sharon into her investigation. This stunning debut is told over a period of about 2 to 3 years by Miv with alternating chapters from the adults around her, offering some illumination of sharp eyed Miv’s observations.

You know when you just know a book is going to be huge, that a talented new author has burst on the scene?? Well, here we have it. First of all, the characterisation is exemplary. I love Miv and she’s an unforgettable character and yes, you could say she’s obsessive but she’s only looking for distraction from difficulties at home. Miv has good instincts even if she doesn’t entirely understand what she sees which is certainly true at the start when her naivety is clear to see but not at the end. Her friendships are a thing of beauty especially with the lovely Sharon, the “Terrible Twosome” and their friendship is wonderful. It isn’t all plain sailing by any stretch as they witness some cruelty and meanness that beggars belief but sadly is all too believable. All the characters spring to life, even the ones you’d rather didn’t.

The hunt for the evil Yorkshire Ripper inevitably means there are some dark themes and the storyline also includes racism, bullying and some domestic violence too. It captures West Yorkshire to perfection especially in the context of the late 70’s and early ‘80’s with its derelict satanic mills of Blake’s poem, with its ghosts of the past, the attitudes and gossip of a small town with firmly entrenched views. You definitely feel the tension and fear of the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, I was in Yorkshire at the time though not the West, but we all felt the fear. Yet, despite all the obvious darkness, there’s Miv, wonderful Miv. You watch her grow up and you just know she’s going to be a fine young woman and one you’d most certainly want to know.

This is a superb coming of age story cleverly entwined with the mystery of the identity of a serial killer, it’s a story of unbreakable friendships, a life that is better just for knowing that person and the strength we derive from them. It’s beautifully written and I will not deny I have tears rolling down my face at times, this book is truly an experience and one to savour. It isn’t hard to imagine this will be one of the smash hits of 2024. Highly recommended, obviously!!

With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Random House U.K., Hutchinson for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

There was something very special about this book which I can't quite put my finger on. Was it the juxtiposition of the naive voice of Miv, at 12 years old not quite understanding what the adults around her are all hiding? Was it the delightful, if slightly fraught, friendship with Sharon, Miv's anchor that kept the reader from falling knee deep into the horrors of the Yorkshire Ripper killings setting for this story? Was it for me, a child of the late 70s and early 80s, a reminiscence trip into territory that should have been a time of playing and joy and innocence but which was tarnished by the knowledge of how evil adults could be? Suddenly no longer allowed out after dark, adults reminding you that you must stay with friends at all times, tell people where you are going, The curtailing of freedoms, as some characters initially trapped, relinquish their shackles in the story is a piece of genius. Ultimately it is a story of community, empathy, growing up, and learning that nobody is quite what they seem, for better or for worse. I bloody loved it.

This is a wonderful book and I loved every line of it. The depiction of childhood love, friendship and growing up was beautifully and cleverly done by giving Miv's childish point of view (PoV) in one chapter followed by a chapter giving the PoV of the adult that she's been musing about. This was such an excellent way of progressing the story and giving a background to the violence, sexism and racism of the times which were hidden under the surface of family lives. All of this under the shadow of the Yorkshire ripper who was dominating the news with his horrific murders.

Miv's coming of age is beautifully described as she grows up gradually over the course of the book, her friendship with Sharon is beautiful, and the whole background of the late 70s and 80s is very accurately portrayed. It is a stunning book and perfect for a book club as there's so much to talk about, so many things to discuss. I couldn't recommend it more highly and it's five stars without a doubt.

A deceptively light book, "The List of Suspicious Things" by Jennie Godfrey is giving off serious Joanna Canon vibes, along with "Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine" and "What July Knew". If you like this style then I'd strongly recommend this stunning debut. Set in the late 1970s, Miv sets about trying to solve the Yorkshire Ripper case. A wonderful story about friendship with background hits of racism, abuse (child and domestic) and more. Don't let this put you off, it's told in such a great way. One to remember for years to come.