3.6 AVERAGE


Lovely book. So many characters. Grace and Tilly are adorable. A grown up Harriet the Spy. I wish I'd kept a chart in the beginning to keep track of the characters and their house numbers.

A charming read. Part man at the helm, part curious incident, with added custards creams and angel delight. The disappearence of Mrs Creasy during the 1976 heatwave is making the residents of the Avenue very fearful that their secrets will be revealed. Two 10 year olds, Grace and Tilly, decide to spend their summer searching for the missing woman and God. A very exciting debut novel.

I liked this book. It isn’t really my usual read but I thought it was easy to read and the story was interesting. It’s written in the style where large and small events are given the same importance which lends a sort of dreamy quality to the book where you’re not sure what is real. I thought the author captured the endless childhood summer really well and the casual racism was also pretty spot on from my experience. It’s definitely worth a read

I picked this one up at the library because the title caught my eye. Conceptually, I loved the idea of two girls trying to solve a mystery while the adults all have secrets from the past get stirred up. However, some parts were a little slow, and there was no real payoff in the end. It was an okay book, but I was a little disappointed.

3.5 stars

I enjoyed this book. In my memory, I suspect it'll get grouped together with The Casual Vacancy because it has a similar setting of a neighborhood/street in an English town, and the plot revolves around how everyone knows each other's business a little too well. This story was extra charming because it's largely told from the perspective of a spunky 10-year-old girl who is trying to solve a mystery (that really isn't that much of a mystery) on her street. I felt some of the plot machinations were a bit predictable and corny, but overall a sweet and engaging story.

Poetic writing, but basically the book was about stupid people doing stupid things while agonising over even stupider things they did 9 years ago.

Not what I expected!

This was our bookclub this month and honestly I was hoping for a good mystery. Grace and Tilly search for God in hopes to find the missing Mrs creasy. It was more about how hot that summer was and gossip. Struggled to finish this one.

A little bit To Kill a Mockingbird, a little bit Harriet the Spy, a little bit dark British mystery, and then all its own story.

Not into it.

Part coming-of-age story, part mystery, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is a quirky and utterly charming debut about a community in need of absolution and two girls learning what it means to belong.

England, 1976. Mrs. Creasy is missing and the Avenue is alive with whispers. The neighbors blame her sudden disappearance on the heat wave, but ten-year-olds Grace and Tilly aren’t convinced. As the summer shimmers endlessly on, the girls decide to take matters into their own hands. Inspired by the local vicar, they go looking for God—they believe that if they find Him they might also find Mrs. Creasy and bring her home.

Spunky, spirited Grace and quiet, thoughtful Tilly go door to door in search of clues. The cul-de-sac starts to give up its secrets, and the amateur detectives uncover much more than ever imagined. As they try to make sense of what they’ve seen and heard, a complicated history of deception begins to emerge. Everyone on the Avenue has something to hide, a reason for not fitting in.

In the suffocating heat of the summer, the ability to guard these differences becomes impossible. Along with the parched lawns and the melting pavement, the lives of all the neighbors begin to unravel. What the girls don’t realize is that the lies told to conceal what happened one fateful day about a decade ago are the same ones Mrs. Creasy was beginning to peel back just before she disappeared.


A lovely book, beautifully written and full of wit, wisdom and charm. It just escapes 5 stars because at times I got confused between the characters and the least said about the end the better...