Ben & Books

The List of Suspicious Things is an enthralling and emotional read, a charming and heartbreaking story of mystery, friendship, and the pains of growing up. As you read The List of Suspicious Things, it feels like the world inside the book begins to come alive around you. Every friendship and heartbreak that Miv experiences is laced with feeling of excitement and dread that is familiar to anyone who has suffered through the range of emotions that is an inevitability of growing up. Anxiety seeps through every page as the small 1970s Yorkshire community you are dropped into not only worries about the financial burdens of the economic situation they faced at the time, but also the unknown and menacing figure of the Yorkshire Ripper who was terrorising the county at the same time.

This is where the titular list comes in. The suspicion that infected communities in the wake of the murders committed by the Yorkshire Ripper grabs the attention of the teenage protagonists, Miv and Sharon, as they decide to make a list of all the people in their lives who could be considered suspicious, determined to be the ones to catch the killer who terrorised Yorkshire for years. As the story evolves, the list does with it, with new names added and removed as they’re discovered and investigated, a process that is represented through notes written in Miv’s notebook at the end of chapters, acting as a recap of what we have learned in the pages before. There’s a genuine feeling of progress, as new information is slowly given to the reader throughout the book, and the childish hope that they might catch the killer that the characters feel starts to become an empathetic dream of the reader too.

But The List of Suspicious Things is not about the murder mystery, it is about the people. It is about friendship and community, loss and grief, and the anxieties and pain that comes with growing up. While the list and the murders provide an excellent plot to centre the characters, the true magic in the writing comes from the relationships between the characters. As you read, the community around you grows, new and unlikely friendships are formed, characters you meet are surprisingly linked together, and families struggle to make it through the difficult times they’re living through. The heart of The List of Suspicious Things is in its characters, and every character is unique and brilliantly written, every story is told with a wonderful mix of humour and sensitivity that brings every unique character to life beautifully. The List of Suspicious Things is unapologetically Yorkshire, from the slang used by the characters to the banter they have with each other, to the point where I had to search the meanings of what characters were saying to each other at times.

The biggest strength of The List of Suspicious Things comes in its structure. Miv is the perfect example of the unreliable narrator, with the first-person narration of a child desperately trying to catch a serial killer to avoid having to move away from her friend providing the perfect opportunity for misunderstandings and mistakes through the story. Miv’s suspicion of everyone around her is a brilliant representation of the suspicion and fear felt around Yorkshire at the time of the Yorkshire Ripper’s reign of terror. This is beautifully contrasted by the chapters written from the perspectives of other characters. Written from a third-person perspective, these chapters not only give important context on the actions that make them suspicious in Miv’s eyes but also add a new layer to the feeling of community in the book as we get to see a glimpse into the complexities of their lives.

The List of Suspicious Things is a wonderfully written story of friendship and community in difficult times. Jennie Godfrey takes the fears and anxieties of 1970s Yorkshire, in the grips of economic strife and under the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper and turns it into a beautiful and sensitively written tale, full of humour and emotion, that refuses to become too heavy, despite its dark setting. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and you will not be able to put it down. When it comes to choosing my favourite books that I have read in 2025, The List of Suspicious Things will no doubt be very close to the top of that list.