The List of Suspicious Things is the big debut of 2024 and a book set in late 70s Yorkshire was always going to be a must-read for me. Miv is the star of the show, a soon to be teenage girl with a difficult home life who takes it upon herself to try and catch the Yorkshire Ripper. If she can do that then maybe her family won't have to leave Yorkshire and she won't have to leave behind her best friend, Sharon. The two girls, Miv extremely enthusiastic and Sharon not always quite so, set about investigating the people and places on their ever-growing List of Suspicious Things.

It's only a few months since I watched a TV show that focused quite heavily on the victims of Peter Sutcliffe and so they were on my mind as I started reading. However, I was soon drawn completely and utterly into Miv's story, which is primarily about childhood, friendship and growing up, with all the ups and downs that life throws at you.

Miv is such a plucky character, inquisitive and fiercely loyal to her friends, and I loved her narrative, even when I could see that she was about to make a dubious decision. There are also chapters from other characters' viewpoints and this is a book that is made up of richly-drawn creations, from different backgrounds and cultures. I grew to love them all, with a few notable exceptions.

The List of Suspicious Things is an evocative and atmospheric read, transporting me to a time when you had to ring your friends on their house phone and their parents would answer, when there was nothing to do but while away the days having adventures, when the corner shop was the hub of everything. It's full of spirit and warmth, it made me smile and it brought a tear to my eye. It's a fabulous nostalgic and tender book. ( )

The reading god blessed me with this recommendation - on the side of a bus. Publicity pays!

Being a canny Yorkshire lass, I rarely fork out full price for a book, and doing so on release day is never a good idea, but I did both for Suspicious Things and I'm so glad I did! Jennie Godfrey's debut novel, based on her own childhood in Dewsbury during the dark days of Thatcher and Peter Sutcliffe, is an absolute gem. Narrator Miv (short for Mavis, I finally discovered) is a Yorkshire version of Scout Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird, viewing the poverty, prejudice, racism and misogyny of the late 1970s through a young girl's eyes.

Miv's life is thrown into chaos when her mother falls into a deep depression. Unable to make sense of her own feelings, she turns her loneliness and frustration outwards, determined to catch the 'Ripper' before he can kill again. She and best friend Sharon draw up a list of suspicious people and places in their small Yorkshire town, presumably based on the author's own birthplace of Dewsbury, and set out to investigate potential suspects and witnesses - Asian shopkeepers, lonely old men, angry teachers, tipsy vicars, battered wives, vulnerable neighbours. They are mature enough to realise that most of the people they encounter are not in fact suspicious but 'trying to live their lives', yet Miv's naivete also causes her to miss a lot of subtle clues and make harmful accusations. She makes friends with shop owner Omar and his son, strikes up an unlikely alliance with a widowed rag and bone man, and comes to the rescue of a woman being abused by her husband, but also puts herself and her friends in danger and jumps to conclusions about strangers' lives.

I was captivated by the characters and story, which also reminded me a little of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, and couldn't stop reading. Although I was born in 1980, I also recognised so many of the Yorkshire traits and traditions of textile towns like Dewsbury and also Bradford, where I'm from. The bluntly spoken but loyal and loving locals are also wonderfully familiar and endearing, particularly Aunt Jean. Like Scout, Miv does grow as a character, jolted out of childhood by witnessing the challenges and cruelty of the adult world around her. I found her initial ignorance and interference hard to justify, but her growing emotional awareness of the impact her words and actions have on others eventually makes her a sympathetic and well-rounded young woman. And the final chapters broke my heart!

There is also a genuine respect for the real victims and survivors of Peter Sutcliffe behind the story. Barbara Leach, who was murdered in a part of Bradford that I pass every day on my way to work, is mentioned, and the book ends with the (inadvertent) capture of the killer in 1981, followed by a list of the victims' names in the afterword. What begins as a childish pursuit for Miv also reveals the danger faced by women on a daily basis at the time, and the impotency of the police to apprehend such a vicious serial killer - a twelve year old amateur detective might have had more luck!

There are a few niggles - the easy relationships in notoriously small minded communities, Miv's mother and her backstory, the tacked on paedophile subplot, how everything is neatly wrapped up - but I'm giving a full five stars for the best and most relatable read of the year so far! ( )