I've read hundreds of books — one made me turn the pages faster than any other

I’ve read hundreds (probably thousands) of books in my life and am always looking out for the next one. Getting your book choice right is important — it’s an investment of time and money and you can’t just abandon it if you don’t like it, like you can with a series on Netflix.

I love reading. It’s such a simple and inexpensive joy and the perfect way to wind down in the evening before going to sleep, instead of endlessly doom-scrolling through social media or the news, which is not only unproductive but can also be stressful and make it much harder to go to sleep.

In fact, a 2021 online study conducted over social media asked 496 participants to read a book in bed before sleeping and 496 participants to not read a book before sleeping. After a week, 42% of the readers felt their sleep improved. Only 28% of the non-readers reported better sleep. And another 2021 study suggested that reading for a short time before bed may help you stay asleep longer.

Reading can also strengthen your brain, increase your vocabulary, ease stress and there’s even evidence that it can protect against age-related cognitive decline and help you live longer. Reading to children before bedtime also has many benefits, including many of the same ones for adults mentioned above — you can read one writer’s 10 favourite children’s books here.

I love reading both fiction and non-fiction. Non-fiction is an amazing way to increase your knowledge and experience in so many ways and I love everything from history to autobiographies and self-help books — you can read my 10 favourite books from the last 10 years here. For more book recommendations, reviews and news, click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter, The Bookish Drop, on Substack.

Fiction, meanwhile, is a great way to de-stress, calm your mind and get lost in another world for a while. And I recently picked up a book from an author I’d not read until recently. Lisa Jewell is a major fiction author from the UK and her books have sold 10 million copies in more than 30 languages. She has been writing for decades but I had not come across her books before. She got her first book deal in 1997 but it’s in the last decade or so that her books have started selling millions of copies.

In fact, she credits one of the stars of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills for catapulting her to fame in the US. During lockdown, the star started a book club and one of Lisa’s books was her first pick. It went on to sell two million copies in the US and led to her being able to renegotiate her book deal and sign a seven-figure deal in 2023.

And it’s exactly that book that’s the one I think I read faster than any I’ve ever picked up before. I’ve just finished it and I could barely bring myself to put it down — to the point that I was staying up far too late at night and probably depriving myself of sleep instead of helping myself sleep more soundly.

The book is Then She Was Gone. It held on to number one slot on the New York Times Best Sellers for two months and is soon to be adapted into a film. The 2017 thriller tells the story of Laurel Mack, a mum who is grieving after the sudden disappearance of her youngest daughter, Ellie.

Years later, with Ellie’s disappearance still a mystery, she meets a handsome and seemingly perfect man in a cafe and goes on to start a relationship with him. Then she meets his nine-year-old daughter and the first thing that strikes her is how much she looks like her missing daughter. From that point on, I was completely and utterly hooked and could not turn the pages fast enough.

Jewell’s easy and fluid writing style helps enormously — it’s totally readable without being simplistic and her characters are believable even within the shocking and extraordinary plot lines. You can buy it on Amazon here or at Waterstones here.

Then She Was Gone was actually the second Lisa Jewell book I’ve read. I started it immediately after I finished the first, which had been recommended by a colleague. That one, The Family Upstairs, was also a brilliantly entertaining page-turner revolving around a young woman who unexpectedly inherits an abandoned mansion in Chelsea and sets about discovering why it has been boarded up all these years. The website Marie Claire ranks it as Jewell’s best book, though I would have to say I preferred Then She Was Gone.

You can buy The Family Upstairs on Amazon here and on Waterstones here.

Either way, I thoroughly recommend them both and I’ve already bought my third Lisa Jewell book, The Night She Disappeared, which I’ll be starting as soon as it drops through the letter box. You can buy that on Amazon here.

For more book recommendations, reviews and news, click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter, The Bookish Drop, on Substack.