The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Going into The List of Suspicious Things I knew one thing about it, that it involved the true life case of the Yorkshire Ripper, who was convicted of murdering 13 women in Manchester and West Yorkshire in the UK, in the late-1970s and 1980.
I had heard that this was a personal novel for the author, Jennie Godfrey, who grew up in West Yorkshire, and whose father had actually worked with the man later identified to be the Yorkshire Ripper. I needed to read this book.
It just sounded like such a unique perspective she would have writing this book; something that few others would have. I assumed this was just a straight-up Mystery novel though, but it’s not really. It’s much more than that.
If I had read the full synopsis, I would have read that it was a Coming of Age story, but I didn’t. Luckily, for me, I love a Coming of Age storytelling style and it really worked for me here as well. So, this is more of a Historical Fiction Coming of Age tale with a real life mystery in the background.
This story is mostly told from the perspective of a young girl named Miv, who lives in West Yorkshire at the time that the community is being plagued by these vicious killings. There are small snippets from others throughout the book, but Miv is definitely our focus.
As a child, I believe she’s around 11-years old, Miv doesn’t full grasp the gravity of what is happening around her in the community, how serious the threat is, but she knows it’s something bad and frightening.
Along with her friend, Sharon, the two decide they are going to find this killer and put a stop to it. They begin digging around, finding suspicious things about the people in their community. Could one of these suspicious people be responsible for the killings?
We follow along and learn about this community, which is a bit economically depressed, with families who yeah, have issues that stem from the life stressors that come along with systemic poverty and uncertainty.
I won’t get too much further into it, as I feel like my experience with it, not knowing too much, is really the best way to experience this. It pulled me in. Miv has all the purity of childhood, thrust into pretty scary circumstances.
I feel like she was trying to bring order to that in any way she could. It was like the more she could control her circumstances, the less scary it would feel for her, which is relatable, right?
Unfortunately, she didn’t realize how much her actions could impact those around here, and we do see some of that play out. I loved learning about this community and meeting the various adults who played a part in the neighborhood goings-on.
I loved the fluidity and humanity in Godfrey’s writing and though it did feel a little slow to me at times, there’s really nothing I would have taken out of it. I just feel like it’s a bit more Literary than I’m used to reading, so I grew impatient at time with the pace.
Overall however, even though this wasn’t at all what I expected, I did end up getting fully sucked into the story and I enjoyed it a lot. I thought Godfrey did a great job of making this an immersive experience for the Reader, and the audiobook production added to that with the multiple narrators. I would recommend the audiobook format if you’re going to check this one out.
Thank you to the publisher, Tantor Audio, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I can’t wait to read more from Jennie Godfrey!!
