The List of Suspicious Things

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A book so full of heart that your own will explode with the sheer joy of the goodness of humans, even when faced with pure evil in its many guises. And on top of all that, it carries a message to women that we should remember every day. The List of Suspicious Things follows 12-year-old Miv as she navigates a 1970s Yorkshire plagued by the Yorkshire Ripper. This blogpost is for anyone in the position of querying agents/pitching their book who struggles with identifying comp titles. I know that for some writers, providing comps is like writing a synopsis; a necessary task, but one to be hated and feared. Often a book is best described as a combination of two (and sometimes three) titles in what Jonny Geller (CEO of Curtis Brown Group) calls ‘bridging’ (you can watch his You Tube here https://youtu.be/mD-uP2BsVy4). This is where you use more than one title to demonstrate the new place the book takes the reader. It doesn’t matter if it’s a ‘weird’ mix if it accurately represents your book in the best possible light. Full of humour, warmth and eye-popping honesty ... a beautiful, candid and uplifting testament to female friendship that will make you laugh and cry WOMAN & HOME

Nora-Ephron-style wit...comforting, so funny, moving... one of my favourite books ever' MARIAN KEYES Godfrey was born and raised in Yorkshire and the novel was partly inspired by her father having worked alongside Peter Sutcliffe, the man eventually charged with the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper. She is a former HR director of a FTSE100 company who left her career to write and is now a creative writing PhD student at Bristol University.

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A profound study of grief, love and friendship that will resonate with anyone who has lost someone special ... there are plenty of funny and touching moments in this beautiful novel that will make your heart soar. HEAT That’s interesting as it is easy to become unconscious to the need for learning. How do you keep yourself honest to that activity? The event brought together journalists, publishers, authors and retailers at the Hoxton Hotel in London. Well, I’m still not sure I really believe this is happening here and now. It’s always been an aspiration and so I sometimes have to pinch myself. Am I just playing at it? It’s been a complete transformation for me and sometimes I think there’s a kind of nervous, giggly girl who is trying to reconcile this leap into the complete unknown at the age of 51. Butterfield said: “I don’t buy many books anymore, I’m not really supposed to, but I only do it when I fall in love with something extraordinary and there are actually novelists here who I’ve naughtily bought. And The List of Suspicious Things is exactly that, an extraordinary novel.

The premise – does your book have a similar start point/hook as another one? For example, my debut has two young girls trying to solve a mystery (therefore one of my comp titles is The Trouble with Goats and Sheep) Writing can be arduous and terrifyingly lonely, however as we have written our novels, and both found agents during the pandemic with the support and friendship of each other. Here’s what we learned from our experiences that we thought might be helpful to others yearning for their own writing community; 1. Deadlines are your friends I'd heard a lot about The List of Suspicious Things on social media and so was thrilled to get the opportunity to read it. It's set in Yorkshire in 1979, Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister and women are living in fear of the Yorkshire Ripper. When 12 year old Miv's family begin to talk of moving down south, Miv, with the help of her best friend Sharon, is determined to find the Yorkshire Ripper so her family can remain in Yorkshire. Not using the biggest selling book of the year/decade as your only comp – it paints you into a corner and there’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance, tread it carefully.

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What a comp should do instead is give an agent a shortcut to the feel of your book in the most accurate and positive way possible. It’s a way to shine the best light on your work and I hate to go all Gen Z on you, but a comp is more about ‘vibes’ than it is about direct comparisons, and those ‘vibes’ can be about any aspect of the book, with some ideas/examples below.

This whole experience came about because I knew instinctively that I needed to do something different. I needed courage, dramatic change and a sprinkling of foolishness to make this happen but I listened to my instincts and the rest is history.Godfrey was born and raised in Yorkshire and the novel was partly inspired by her father having worked alongside Peter Sutcliffe, the man eventually convicted as the Yorkshire Ripper. Think about your book as a whole and consider the aspects identified earlier in this blogpost. Some useful prompts to think about are: For fans of Nora Ephron and Sorrow & Bliss, We All Want Impossible Things is a deeply moving, jubilant celebration of life and friendship at its imperfect, radiant, and irreverent best. Everyday leadership is far more subtle than corporate leadership. Is it a conscious or subconscious thing?