thelotusreaders

Best Reads September 2026

Posted on 4th Oct 2026 by thelotusreaders

I have genuinely struggled to read this month and I’m relieved to be at the end of it and taking a much needed break. My home is in chaos because one of the cats is seriously injured, so keeping him safe and indoors while allowing the others to roam normally is difficult. If I separate Max from Dolly he gets very vocal and upset, but if we let him free to see her we have to block off the cat flap. The girls have started to tap at the window when they went to come in, but why is it always when I have my lap tray on my knee? It’s like they can sense me writing or doing my embroidery and want to cause maximum disruption, my lap is then free for cat cuddles of course. Minka is very outdoorsy and has taken over catching vermin, something Max is famous for. Max really wants to be out but although he’s healing he’s not ready yet. The bones seem to be healing well but the muscles and ligaments need plenty of rest yet. He broke his hip joint and his pelvis in several places then in the sacral area his ligaments had become detached leaving the spine separated from the pelvis. He’s walking now and looking a lot more like his old self, just with a slightly twisted walk. My dad has been struggling with his health meanwhile mum is trying to look after him as best she can as well as spending time with grandma who died last week at the age of 93. I sat down on the last day of September to write reviews but I couldn’t think straight. My head felt like a huge ball of chaos and I get weird neurological symptoms when I’m tired or overloaded. I took Max for his anti-inflammatory injections and the vet stopped and fetched me a chair. Apparently I was rocking as if I was about to faint. I’d gone white and when I took my glasses off my pupils were moving back and forth making me feel dizzy. I’ve read way more books than the four above but haven’t typed up my reviews as I’ve found it easier to use a pen and my reading journal so there are lots more reviews and snippets of my own writing coming soon.

This historical murder mystery by the author of last year’s smash hit The Betrayal of Thomas True, A.J. West. You may have seen him on Insta travelling around book stores with his worldly belongings in a camper van. I’m not going to give you my review because it’s due on a blog tour this month, but I’ll give you a preview and some background. We’re drawn into the story of Thomas Lewin and his brother William who went to the Chittagong hills in India. Thomas was a tool of empire but as far as English dignitaries go he did make some effort to speak to local chiefs in their dialect and kept local customs. He also had a relationship with a local woman called Dari who was referred to as the ‘wife’ of the great Thangliana. Everest is his daughter, drawn into the murder of her Uncle William who was killed thirty years after their return from India while acting in the West End. Everest isn’t sure about the murder, or the man kept in Broadmoor for committing it, especially when her father kept telling her about a curse. A.J.West has taken the historical details and written a great murder mystery with gothic and mystical elements and a very forthright female investigator. I fell in love with the journal entries that cover this family’s adventurous lives and particularly one written from the perspective of William’s wife Isabel who I was captivated by. It’s also incredibly witty and packed with colourful characters. Look out for my full review coming soon.

One golden summer. One missing treasure. And a secret that binds two lives together.

Every year, Alice’s father gives her a treasure. Then on the morning of her sixteenth birthday, her final gift vanishes – along with the fragile certainty of her world. Alice runs, towards New York City and away from the memories of that last summer at the orchard where she grew up. Across the Atlantic, Tom has always felt that something is missing from his life. When he finds a long-forgotten letter, it leads him away from Sevenstones – the house at the heart of his family for generations – and towards a truth no one has ever fully told. From post-war London to 1960s New York, Alice and Tom’s stories become entwined. But will the secrets of their past bring them together, or break them apart?

I always think that the good marker of a book is when you find yourself thinking about it days later and this book brought up so many feelings! While we start with Alice’s devastating story of her early years, it was Tom’s narrative where the book came alive for me, with his early life in Dumfries and Galloway only a stone’s throw from my favourite yearly holiday destination. The descriptions are so vivid, from the hand to mouth existence of Tom and his father, their total connection with the seasons and each other. To be torn from all of that and transported to post-war London by his mother’s family feels so unjust. As Tom deals with new expectations, the fractured feel of the city and its bomb sites, we start to sense a secret behind all of this, only hinted at and never made clear to Tom. A promise was made in wartime, one that couldn’t be broken and has it’s roots in a house called Sevenstones where a key was left under a stone at the door for anyone who needed an interlude from their wartime duties. It’s a secret that follows Tom throughout his years at school and eventually across the Atlantic. Each section of this book is so evocative of its time and place and it is such an incredible example of how trauma is passed down through families. It made me think about world events that have affected previous generations of my family and why they made the decisions they did for their children.

When the skeletons of a young woman and a baby are uncovered on a long-abandoned farm in Hvalfjörður, it is clear they were buried years apart. West Iceland CID begins to investigate the disturbing discovery, aware that someone has gone to great lengths to keep the past hidden. In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door. But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while trying to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar.

Wow I love this series and at the sixth book in it just gets better and better. These cases are never tidy. There’s always something that doesn’t quite fit or can’t be explained. I imagine this is the norm in real life police work, but often detective fiction is way too cleanly tidied away. Here someone always knows more than they’re willing to say or are more involved than you imagined. Then there’s the burden of proof needed for a conviction. Then there’s how everyone in Akranes is interlinked and having grown up in a small rural town I can see how it’s easy to think we know everything about another person. The truth is that we rarely see the full picture, just our part of it coloured by our own experience. Even within families there are things people know but no one talks about, there are different versions of the family history, things we’re open about and things we bury. Even so, how far would we go to protect those we love, especially our children? Throughout this series the people of Akranes are like a wider family, burying each other’s crimes and collectively forgetting the truth. The impact of one generation’s choices affecting the next. This is the scariest truth about monsters, they don’t look like storybook monsters, they can come out in daylight and ‘on the surface they’re just like ordinary people.’ This is a dark psychological thriller, full of atmosphere and a detective who always digs deep into her cases, even when it makes her personal life uncomfortable.

London, 1911. Coronation fever. Suffragette unrest. A city crackling with tension.

When a policeman is found brutally murdered on the streets of Kensington, blame falls on the three women seen fleeing the scene. Their sole witness? Stephen Pike: ex-borstal boy, under-butler extraordinaire and assistant to the most unconventional detective in London, Miss Decima Stockingham. Sharp-tongued, fearless and bored of behaving herself, she’s the only one able to see that this case is not what it seems.

Aided by an invisible network of maids – their eyes and ears in every house in London – this unlikely duo must catch the killer before time runs out. But in a city dazzled by ceremony and divided by change, you never know what might be lurking in the shadows…

It’s impossible for me to start this review without declaring my undying devotion to Miss Decima Stockingham who intelligent, entitled, sweary and short-tempered. On meeting her long-suffering servant Stephen Pike, other servants from the apartments that line Kensington Gore commiserate that at least he isn’t indentured to the mad old cow in 89C. He doesn’t correct them because largely their only impression of this woman is her morning bellow for her egg and her propensity to fling books out of the window until it arrives:

“I was under the impression that boiling an egg was a quick job, but apparently you’re rearing the chicken by hand and fetching the water from fucking Spain.”

Underneath this exterior is a sharp-witted woman who doesn’t mind appearing contrary and rude if it gets her the results she needs or the information she’s seeking. This character is begging for a TV series and Olivia Coleman. Her foil is Stephen Pike, driven to distraction by her demands and her willingness to place him in dangerous situations. He’s equally comic, mainly physically, in one scene he’s lured to a union meeting at the pub which soon descends into an evening of rounds, a drunken football match, injury and a hefty hangover. He may seem ordinary to the untrained eye but Miss Decima can see a sharp intelligence, observational skill and an ability to put a pattern together that makes them a formidable team. We meet them just before the coronation of George V and Queen Mary is just around the corner. The suffragettes are ramping up their civil disobedience and taking direct action to gain the vote. The author uses this backdrop for the labyrinthine murder mystery our mismatched pair are investigating. I loved the mix of comedy, suspense and action in this second book in the series and I’m now dying to read the first.

Below is my October tbr stack.

Film Adaptations

Practical Magic 2

Posted on 1st Oct 2026 by thelotusreaders

As all my readers know by know I’m a huge fan of Alice Hoffman, since the early 2000s when I first read Skylight Confession. I then tore through her entire back catalogue and fell in love with her mix of magic realism, the north east United States and moments from history. I hadn’t realised she was the original author of Practical Magic, the 1998 film starring Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as the Owens sisters, Gillian and Sally. Sally, the more sensible sister has her life disrupted when Gillian turns up in her life, as always bringing trouble behind her. However, it’s only in recent years that she’s revisited the Owen’s family, going back to their origins in the UK with Magic Lessons. This is the first book chronologically, starting in the 1600s when wise woman Hannah Owens finds a baby abandoned in a snowy field. She brings Maria up as her daughter, passing on her wisdom and plant knowledge to benefit the women who arrive at night looking for their help. Maria soon has her own familiar and when Hannah is taken and burned as a witch she flees England for the Caribbean and then Massachusetts USA in pursuit of the lover who lies and breaks her heart. It is Maria who intends to create a protection spell for the women in her family, keeping them safe from heartbreak. The spell becomes a curse that every Owens descendant has to face: they fall in love their lover will die.

I went to see the film Practical Magic 2 last week, starring the original actresses as Sally and Gillian, plus Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest as the aunts who brought them up – Frannie and Jet. The younger generation are Sally’s daughters Antonia played by Game of Thrones Maisie Williams and Kylie played by Joey King. Once I got over the shock that Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock look younger than they did in 1998, I began to enjoy the film. It’s based mainly on the third book in the series – The Book of Magic but does allude to Maria Owens too. Gillian’s daughter Kylie is falling in love, knowing nothing of the curse that hangs over their family. Gillian wanted to bring up girls free from their heritage as witches, even though women do still queue up at the door for their help. Sally has been against this decision, keeping her promise to her sister while worrying that this secret will only bring trouble. Unbeknownst to Sally, Kylie is slowly falling in love with Gideon at university oblivious to how dangerous her emotions can be. Meanwhile Aunt Jet has heard the death watch beetle clicking all over the house and knows her time is close. Before she dies she wants to use the book of magic to free the younger generations from the protection spell that has become a curse. As tragedy strikes and Gideon’s life hangs in the balance, Kylie takes the book of magic and makes her way to England hoping to find someone who can help her break the curse.

The film has all the charm of Practical Magic and some emotional moments as Sally battles to save her daughter using the magic she’s kept from them all these years. Gillian is right by her side as they follow Kylie to England, leaving Aunt Frannie and Antonia to look after Gideon in hospital. There are some comic moments, mainly based in the difference between the sisters. Gillian is much freer than Sally, shown in short scenes like the one as they leave for England with Sally’s only luggage being a small weekend bag and Gillian’s comically large suitcases having to be lugged up and down many flights of stairs. The casting of the men in the film is very good, particularly the magic professor Ian Wright, played by Lee Pace with a quiet intensity and the chemistry between him and Sandra Bullock is off the charts. We’re introduced to him as the sisters blunder their way into his third floor flat (with all their suitcases) only to find him naked on his bed paralysed by magic. Sally covers as much of his body as she can while performing the magic to break this powerful spell. Meanwhile Gillian is quite happy to enjoy the view and tease her sister at the same time. One he’s awake he can’t believe the famous Owens sisters are in front of him and helps them to follow Kylie on her journey to their heritage, the small village where Hannah Owens was burned. There’s magic, loss, romance and laughs along the way with the sacrifice that needs to be made to save Gideon especially emotional. Films are almost never better than the book and this one isn’t, but it’s a fair adaptation of Practical Magic’s two prequels and definitely keeps the charm of the original film. I recommend the books wholeheartedly and it seems they’re doing a film tie-in repackaging The Book of Magic to match the film. If you want an easy, engaging night at the cinema then this is definitely a good girl’s night film. As always with this family I came an away wishing I was an Owens, even if it’s just to live in their incredible house!

Netgalley

The Shadows of Kensington Gore by Ross Montgomery

Posted on 29th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

London, 1911. Coronation fever. Suffragette unrest. A city crackling with tension.

When a policeman is found brutally murdered on the streets of Kensington, blame falls on the three women seen fleeing the scene.

Their sole witness? Stephen Pike: ex-borstal boy, under-butler extraordinaire and assistant to the most unconventional detective in London, Miss Decima Stockingham. Sharp-tongued, fearless and bored of behaving herself, she’s the only one able to see that this case is not what it seems.

“I was under the impression that boiling an egg was a quick job, but apparently you’re rearing the chicken by hand and fetching the water from fucking Spain.”

We meet them ten years after the Victorian era ended and the coronation of George V and Queen Mary is just around the corner. The suffragettes are ramping up their civil disobedience and taking direct action to gain the vote. The author uses this backdrop for a labyrinthine murder mystery and our mismatched pair are investigating. Historically, we can see all the signs of change that will come to England after WW1, the changes in class structure with working men wanting to form unions and enforce their employment rights. Women didn’t just want to vote but also to work, run their own finances and have rights to divorce. The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857 made divorce a civil matter but it didn’t treat men and women equally, seeing women as property. The suffragettes had very different factions within the wider movement, although Miss Decima claims to have no time for any of them, particularly those who take direct and destructive action. She believes that their antics play into the hands of men who say women are too emotional to vote. However, despite some snobbery about which class of woman should get the vote, she is a feminist. She explains women’s frustration with the status quo by pointing out the memorial statue for the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Stephen. It depicts Prince Albert held aloft by four female figures showing that women are relegated to the background.

“The world is stacked upon the unseen labours of women’.

The murder case is sensationally linked to the suffragette movement with three young campaigners, seen to leave the main march and head towards the south of Kensington Gore, situated near the Royal Albert Hall. Their intent seems to have been defacing a statue but all that’s left behind is a dead policeman and the women seem to have vanished. The police officer has had his throat cut from ear to ear and the gory details causes a sensation, as Miss Decima shrewdly observes female murder suspects are regarded more harshly than men. If they apply the theory of Occam’s Razor it’s an open and shut case but Miss Decima senses this plot is more Byzantine than first thought. Stephen is befuddled when she takes the case on, especially when she states her reasoning – ‘they’re clearly innocent.’ If found guilty the women’s actions could upset the suffrage cause for some time and have repercussions of international significance, maybe that’s worth killing for? On a more basic level she believes there is no way the woman could have physically managed to overpower and kill him. This is the case they have to prove and with her razor sharp logic, a small battalion of female investigators all called Ivy and Stephen’s ability to pick out obscure clues and patterns they will surely succeed.

There was nothing about this historical crime caper that I didn’t like. It is full of action, humour and incredible period detail. Miss Decima is a formidable woman and I could hear a definite Miriam Margoyles tone as she barks out her orders and insults: ‘put down the poker and stop being a twat’ being a favourite. The author perfectly captures the struggles and atrocities committed against women in the suffrage movement, especially by the police and prison service. Then in the next chapter we’re knee deep in the funniest union meeting I’ve encountered. Stephen is so endearing and the perfect foil for his employer. He can go where a more upper class woman can’t, although I’m sure she’d give it a good try. She knows that other servants and those lower down the class order are going to be more candid with someone of their own station. This mystery does have some links to the previous book but I didn’t have to read it to enjoy this one in its own right. The action sequence at the end, as all those old jigsaw pieces come together in Stephen’s mind is so well done I could see it all – Guy Ritchie’s directing style would be perfect for a film adaptation. Miss Decima is the closest thing to a female Sherlock Holmes I’ve read in a long time. With her three sets of teeth -“one for speaking, one for eating, one for shouting” – she’s a wonderful grotesque and an absolute joy to read. More please..

Out October 2026 from Penguin Books

Meet the Author

Ross Montgomery has worked as a pig farmer, a postman and a primary school teacher, so writing books was the next logical step. He spent his childhood reading everything he could get his hands on, from Jacqueline Wilson to Beano annuals, and it taught him pretty much everything that’s worth knowing. He has now written over twenty books for children, including THE MIDNIGHT GUARDIANS, which was shortlisted for the Costa Book Award 2021 and selected as one of The Guardian’s Children’s Books of the Year. He lives in London with his wife, a cat called Fun Bobby, and a cactus on every available surface.

Squad Pod Collective

The Treasures by Harriet Evans

Posted on 26th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

One golden summer. One missing treasure. And a secret that binds two lives together.

Across the Atlantic, Tom has always felt that something is missing from his life. When he finds a long-forgotten letter, it leads him away from Sevenstones – the house at the heart of his family for generations – and towards a truth no one has ever fully told.

From post-war London to 1960s New York, Alice and Tom’s stories become entwined. But will the secrets of their past bring them together, or break them apart?

I always think that the good marker of a book is when you find yourself thinking about it days later and discussing it – or in my case boring someone who hasn’t even read it with my thoughts and feelings. This book brought up so many feelings! While we start with Alice’s devastating story of her early years, it was Tom’s narrative where the book came alive for me, with his early life in Dumfries and Galloway only a stone’s throw from my favourite yearly holiday destination. The descriptions are so vivid, from the hand to mouth existence of Tom and his father and their total connection with the seasons. The frozen sheep they find that keeps them going all winter and the beautiful hare at the gate signalling the oncoming summer. It’s a magical place and although life isn’t easy it’s familiar, with a strong connection between father and son since the death of his mother. To be torn from all of that and transported to post-war London by his mother’s family feels so unjust. His Aunt Jenny and Uncle Henry are eccentric and not as wealthy as they once were, evidenced by the ghosts of sold paintings on the wallpaper and their diet of tinned goods. As Tom deals with new expectations, the fractured feel of the city and its bomb sites, we start to sense a secret behind all of this, only hinted at and never made clear to Tom. A promise was made in wartime, one that couldn’t be broken and has it’s roots in a house called Sevenstones where ravens nest in the trees and a key was left under a stone at the door for anyone who needed an interlude from their wartime duties. It’s a secret that follows Tom throughout his years at school and eventually across the Atlantic.

Each section of this book is so evocative of its time and place. The captures the unrest in 1950s London and attitudes towards those who enlisted to fight in the war from Britain’s colonies, now returned to settle here as part of the Windrush generation. There are Teddy Boys rioting and children playing in bomb craters, the contrast of Westminster school and forays into Portobello Market. Meanwhile, Alice’s narrative takes her from a small town in upstate New York where minds and opportunities are equally small, into Manhattan during the unrest and change of the 1960s. Living in a squat in the East Village she is part of the hippy generation, with the backdrop of protests against segregation and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Then comes the anti – Vietnam War demonstrations accompanied by the music of Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez. All seen through a haze of pot, LSD and The Beatles more psychedelic years. Alice’s generation is my mother’s too so the music, peace and love, the fashion and political beliefs are familiar and nostalgic. Tom travels to the USA to look for Alice, who he accidentally spoke to by phone briefly, for answers about his past and a woman called Teddy Kynaston who seems to be the key to the secrets he’s discovered.

Alice’s humming of Yesterday is so symbolic, with its twin refrains of the young girl running away early one morning and the parent’s lament that they sacrificed everything for her. Both young people are damaged by the generation before and there’s a definite sense of Phillip Larkin’s ‘This Be The Verse’ about the narrative – everyone always remembers the first line but forgets the second “they do not mean to, but they do’. The generation before us were messed up by their parents too, a theme that I imagine will run throughout the next novels in this series. Tom and Alice are failed by parents keeping secrets and making decisions to right the wrongs of the past that only make things worse. I felt something of Tom’s confused identity, having gone to a grammar school where many of my classmates were considerably better off than we were. I was taught to drop my accent and while I got a great education I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. For Tom the disparity is even greater and in his beautifully naive way he reminded me of Jay Gatsby, unaware of how ruthless the rich can be even when it comes to love. The parallel reaches across the Atlantic to Alice’s family and her dad’s employer, the oily and deeply unpleasant writer Wilder Kynaston. He’s wants to write from a young girl’s perspective, perhaps Daisy Buchanan’s but Alice is quite clear that no one cares about the Buchanans, they’re just as careless with feelings as Tom’s Westminster friends. Gatsby is great because of his loyalty and fierce love for a girl who doesn’t deserve his devotion, something Tom understands.

I felt so deeply angry with the Kynastons and the Caldicotts, especially as the truth of their wartime connection comes into the open. Their story made me understand why people of my grandparent’s age feel nostalgia about wartime – there was a freedom that disappeared into the 1950s and what felt like a concerted effort to force women back into their pre-war roles and behaviour. Women were flying planes up and down the country, joining the ambulance service in heavily bombed cities, working as land girls or taking on roles in the forces. They experienced a freedom in their social life they’d never had before and people took risks because they didn’t know if they’d live through the next day, never mind see the consequences. For women like Jenny, Teddy and Irene it allowed them to be fully themselves only to find themselves controlled and back in the domestic sphere and for some the consequences of being different are devastating. The author takes 20th Century events and shows their consequences in one generation of a family and I’m fascinated to see where these characters go next, something hinted at in the final chapters. As the book drew to a close I found myself hanging on through the final twists that bring us back to Sevenstones. I was so desperate for a specific outcome that when a previous character popped up unexpectedly in the final pages I swore out loud! The treasures in this story are not necessarily the trinkets that Alice carries with her or the carved house that Tom always carries in his pockets as a talisman. It’s the people they represent and the love that flows between them, even long after they’ve gone.

Out now from Penguin and part of the Sevenstones Trilogy

Meet the Author

Harriet is the author of an incredible fourteen novels, selling over a million copies and being a Top Ten bestseller as well as a Richard and Judy pick twice. Prior to that she worked in publishing, editing authors like Marian Keyes and Sue Townsend. She claims working on the reissue of the book LACE as a proud moment from her junior career.

The Treasures was released in 2025 and is the first book in a family saga featuring the Ravens over a fifty year stretch of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Last year she published her first murder mystery featuring detective Dora Wildwood, a character she hopes to continue into future novels.

She is on the management committee of the Society of Authors, fighting for better deals for authors, talking about the dangers of AI, ghostwriters, bad contracts, ghosting, royalties and other issues facing authors. She also volunteers with Inspiring the Future, aiming to widen aspiration for all children, and am an ambassador for the London Library.

Harriet lives in Bath with her family and a huge fluffy cat.

Harriet can be found on instagram as @harrietevansauthor.

Wordpress Prompts

The Eight Week Courtship

Posted on 24th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

What’s the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

I met my late husband through a magazine article. I was working with my local MS Therapy Centre and we were sent a new magazine called Pathways and inside was an article from a really attractive man – my ideal, sort of hunky but with glasses. He was being winched into the rigging of a tall ship in a wheelchair! I was so impressed. He wrote about going scuba diving in the Florida Keys and having an adventure on the high seas and how it was all possible, you just had to find the right boat. It was such a difference in style from previous magazines I’d read that focused on a cure or making life safe, it was inspiring and I thought our members would love to hear about it. So I wrote to the magazine to ask permission to put a snippet in our own newsletter and added a note for Jerzy to ask if we could use his photo. Of course I added our email address just in case he’d like to write back. I just felt something when looking at his photo and thought ‘what the hell.’

Jerzy wrote back and I got a dial up internet connection so we could email each other. We messaged for three months and then graduated to a weekly phone call. Hearing his voice gave me goosebumps. After about two months of phone calls he asked if I’d go down to Milton Keynes and meet him in person. I wasn’t sure. He tackled that in the best way, instinctively. He told me we’d keep talking but the offer was always open. I was soon on my way to Milton Keynes. I felt so comfortable with him immediately. He was impressed with the way I handled a cab driver who nearly a had a heart attack as he clumsily transferred from the wheelchair and the aftermath of him knocking a full cup of coffee on the floor. I’m not phased by much. He asked me if I’d come down again in a fortnight to go to the ballet, the Northern Ballet Company’s interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. I was transfixed by it. I loved the dramatic black and red costumes and the freedom of a contemporary ballet. Late that night we were having a midnight breakfast – scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, coffee and Buck’s Fizz – and he commented on how natural it was to have me there. I agreed, we’d been comfortable from the first day. I knew. As simple as that. I knew I wanted this person to be in the rest of my life. He said ‘would marriage be out of the question?’

Eight weeks later we were married.

Random Things Tours

The Last Tenant by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir

Posted on 22nd Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

Trust can be deadly…

In Akranes, Karitas, a young single mother seeking a new start, settles in with her four-year-old son and rents a basement flat from an eccentric landlord. A cautious sense of happiness returns when she meets the boy next door. But when news breaks that a local girl has been murdered, Karitas must decide who she can trust, knowing that one wrong choice could place her and her child in danger. Detective Elma is drawn into the case, forced to navigate long-hidden family secrets to understand a killer’s motive, while trying to hold together her increasingly troubled relationship with Sævar. Dark, atmospheric and rich with psychological suspense, The Last Tenant confirms Eva Björg Ægisdóttir as one of Iceland’s finest crime writers, as a meticulous investigation and a series of unsettling discoveries draw a close-knit community towards a reckoning no one can escape…

Wow! I love this series and at the sixth book in it just gets better and better. Elma’s case is a difficult and historic one as remains of a woman are found on a remote farm next to the long-buried bones of an infant. Elma will have to wait to find out whether the two are linked and how they’ve died, in the meantime she will have to trawl through missing person reports to find a likely candidate for the woman. She finds one in a young woman named Solrun, a medical student who had been dating a local boy when she went missing and both her car and clothes were found on a beach. Now Elma must delve into her past and reopen the scars for those she knew and loved because Solrun did not walk into the sea and drown. The baby’s DNA matches hair found buried with Solrun, but she hadn’t been pregnant and the baby’s remains predate hers by some years. Confused, Elma becomes engrossed in the case that is bound to cause a stir in her home town of Akranes as dark family secrets are uncovered. We see the case through Elma’s eyes but we’re also taken into the life of a young woman called Karitas who has recently moved into town with her young son Bessi. At first glance their basement flat is small but clean and her new landlord Baldvin seems odd but kind. There are also transcripts of a young man recording his troubled relationship with his father and the disappearance of his girlfriend on to his phone. Lyrical jornal entries from a young woman book end the novel. These different narratives are just one of the reasons I love this author’s writing. It reminds me of the Shetland novels by Anne Cleeves. In a remote small towns cases become complicated because everybody knows each other and their history family history. It brings home the emotional fallout of the crime committed and the toll it takes on the detectives like Elma who grew up here and have to picture their friends and neighbours as suspects. There are twists here you won’t see coming, but they’re not there for sensation but come about because people have secrets and tell lies. In the background runs the tension between retired police chief Otto and Elma, who blackmailed her on a previous case by claiming he knew a secret about Saever.

Elma throws herself into this case, mainly working alone but with Saever close by or at home to test her theories. Otto’s claims from the last book haven’t been addressed between them and along with having a lively toddler it has definitely sewn a bit of distance into their relationship. Her concerns grow when she sees he is distracted and receiving emails or messages from a woman that he isn’t sharing with her. I love the equity of their relationship, always equally responsible for chores, cooking and childcare, with none of the angst or guilt we often read with fictional female police officers. She’s a great mum but when she’s at work her mind is on the case, endlessly scrolling what she knows so far like a fruit machine in her head until something suddenly matches. She’s so absorbed that she’s not always checking her own well-being, with her mum intervening here and there to let the couple have some time and fun. On a night of wine with friends she’s horrified to have blurted out something about the case and mentally kicks herself for being unprofessional but she has discovered something she didn’t have before – other people’s impressions of someone she’s considering.

I enjoyed the character of Baldvin, the landlord of the basement flat where Karitas and Bessi live. He’s just the sort of the elderly gentleman I’d make friends with and I’ve had some eccentric friends over the years! He comes across as harmless and lonely with monologues that drift off at tangents and become philosophical. With a typical child’s innocence Bessi forms a bond with him, mainly fuelled by biscuits and ice-cream. He’s kind to them both so Karitas is surprised when neighbour Kristofer suggests she should be careful, insinuating he was creepy around his previous girlfriend. He does mention something about Karitas’s last name, its meaning and something about three suns that seems odd. She couldn’t be so wrong about him surely? She does sometimes come home and feel that someone has been in the flat and perhaps senses the whiff of his aftershave. When Elma asks around she finds that many people find him an odd character, almost like a child himself with a strange little giggle. A story about him did the rounds some years ago, that when working at the leisure centre he touched a young girl inappropriately, but one of her friends insists it wasn’t true. It shows that ‘apparently the truth doesn’t matter’ she says, something that seems more true today than ever before.

These cases are never tidy. There’s always something that doesn’t quite fit or can’t be explained. I imagine this is the norm in real life police work, but often detective fiction is way too cleanly tidied away. Here someone always knows more than they’re willing to say or are more involved than you imagined. Then there’s the burden of proof needed for a conviction. Elma knows Solrun was chasing down a clue before she disappeared, because one of her friends mentioned she’d asked for help about symptoms and medication. It wasn’t a personal enquiry but Elma can’t see where it might fit in her death, even when everything else is explained. Then there’s how everyone in Akranes is interlinked and having grown up in a small rural town I can see how it’s easy to think we know everything about another person. The truth is that we rarely see the full picture, just our part of it coloured by our own experience. Even within families there are things people know but no one talks about, there are different versions of the family history, things we’re open about and things we bury. Even so, how far would we go to protect those we love, especially our children? Throughout this series the people of Akranes are like a wider family, burying each other’s crimes and collectively forgetting the truth. The impact of one generation’s choices affecting the next. This the genius and the darkness at the heart of this series. The scariest truth about monsters is they don’t look like they do in storybooks; they can come out in daylight and ‘on the surface they’re just like ordinary people.’

Out Now from Orenda Books

Meet the Author

Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel. Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestsellerin Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger. Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023. In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series, due to hit streaming servicesin Autumn 2026 via GlassRiver, has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in twenty-nine languages with more than a million copies sold.

Wordpress Prompts

Mr Tumnus’s House

Posted on 19th Sep 202620th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

If you could pick any fictional animal to be your lifelong companion (like a Pokémon or fantasy pet), what would it be?

Many years ago I mentioned Mr Tumnus to my friend when we were talking about children’s books. She looked delighted.

“Ooh yes! James McAvoy Mr Tumnus?” She asked with a wink.

“Er no. I just want to go to his house for tea.”

She looked mortified and I couldn’t stop laughing. I’ve never had sexual feelings for Mr Tumnus but he is the fictional creature I’d want to hang out with. In my copy of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe the illustration of Mr Tumnus by the lamp is one of the most magical scenes in literature. In fact a couple of years ago a local stately home decorated one of their rooms with a fir tree forest. You walked through a door and into the smell of pine and sounds of a forest, snow on the ground and a lamp. Then at the back of the room was one lone tree with a star on top. It really did create that childish magic.

By Amanda Clarke link at the bottom of the page

My mum bought me a painting of Mr Tumnus for Christmas and he’s perfect. He’s wearing a velvet frock coat and his very long scarf, exactly as I imagine him. We share a love of cosy homes with roaring fires, afternoon tea and books. I could imagine whiling away many hours chatting and eating crumpets, reading in the quiet of the afternoon and having a little nap after tea. I thought about this a lot when I built a friendship with my lovely friend Nigel, now sadly gone. He made contact with my then husband as part of a disability network that wanted to expand. I didn’t expect to be part of the conversation because it was meant to be business, but we just clicked the minute he walked through the door.

Nigel was an older gentleman who had sustained a spinal injury and while able to walk on crutches he did struggle with pain and other symptoms. I loved his sprawling Victorian house with its tiled floors and amazing antique furniture. He was an antique dealer and the house was a treasure hoard of art and stunning glass pieces that were lit up on glass shelving throwing rainbows around the room. There was barely an inch of wall uncovered and with antique mirrors bathing everything in a soft light it was a beautiful place to relax. He wore smoking jackets adorned with brooches and had blond very curly hair that could have been hiding a faun’s antlers. Time passed differently with Nigel as he plied me with the ‘good’ coffee, cream cakes and gossipy stories of people in town. He was the GOAT in the gay community and an absolute magnet for young gay men in a town that seemed years behind the rest of the country in terms of diversity. I often found someone sat in the big wingback chair listening to his advice. There were clocks in the house too, everything from cuckoo clocks and grandfather clocks and everything in between. The ticking and soft chiming every half hour was so meditative I used to fall asleep, as cosy as if I was with Mr Tumnus having tea.

Nigel and me at my wedding twenty years ago

For one of Amanda Clarke’s prints go to Etsy.

https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/214155734/print-titled-tumnus-by-amanda-clark?ref=share_ios_native_control

Netgalley

Love Unlocked by Cecilia Ahern

Posted on 18th Sep 202620th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

Melody has vowed never to fall in love again. Al is a hopeless romantic. So, when they quite literally bump into each other, there’s no reason sparks should fly. But the world seems a little upside down lately.

A few weeks ago, Al ordered the removal of all the lovers’ padlocks from one of Dublin’s beautiful bridges. Ever since then, couples across the world have started splitting up. And as Melody begins investigating this mysterious wave of breakups for her podcast, it seems there might be a bigger story to tell.

Together, they decide to uncover what’s unravelling so many love stories. And, in the middle of solving everyone else’s heartbreak, can they unlock their own?

For her latest novel, Cecilia has brought us to Dublin and the marriage of Joseph Plunkett and Grace Gifford, a famous love story that ended with a candlelight marriage in Kilmainham Jail the night before his execution. This tragic story is immortalised in the 1985 song Grace and the Grace Plunkett bridge is a site of pilgrimage where people represent their love with initialled padlocks secured to the bridge railings. However, this proclamation of love is having its effect on the city’s bridges, that were never engineered for the extra weight of thousands of steel padlocks. For Al this is a problem, he works for the bridge authorities and he has been tasked with checking not only how much strain this adds to their bridges but how best to manage the problem. When the advice comes it’s not great for those of a romantic disposition, the locks will need to be removed in order to keep the bridge safe. So Al orders their removal as soon as possible, not in the best frame of mind romantically he isn’t fully prepared for the response. It’s not long before podcaster and DJ Melody is in touch with him regarding the love locks, she’s been inundated with stories of people who had a lock on the Grace Plunkett Bridge and since their removal have split with their other half. Some of them very close to home. She decides she must interview the man behind this phenomenon, but this isn’t the best time for Al since his own relationship has spectacularly imploded. Melody isn’t someone who takes no for an answer and soon the pair are investigating the stories and getting to know each other. Could the unlucky lovers clamouring for answers turn into something like luck for these two heartbroken people?

This is a story I’ve come across before with a lesser known author and found the whole subject fascinating. Could removing a love lock genuinely remove the love between two people, or was it a matter of psychological suggestion? They know they can’t rule out some opportunists using it as a reason to break up without taking the blame, but the sheer amount of coincidences is spooky. Neither Al or Melody are lucky in love. Melody split up with long term partner Sam after a very public proposal she wasn’t ready for. They still run a jacket potato van together and spend lots of time in each other’s company, despite Sam’s marriage and new baby. Melody knew that it wasn’t that she didn’t want to marry Sam but more that she knew she didn’t want to marry anyone, ever. Al’s relationship with Tara ended when he discovered a long term affair with their flatmate and Al’s best friend, Walter. Now Al has been forced to move out of a house he owns and Tara and Walter are living together. Not that he’s taking this lying down. There are some downright sneaky but hilarious ways of getting your own back. One of which backfires spectacularly leading to an office confrontation that had me in the same position as Al’s assistant Natasha – almost pissing myself. In fact Natasha was one of my favourite characters throughout. Both Al and Melody need to let go of the past and grow; could the misfortune of hundreds of couples actually bring them together?

I really loved Melody. She’s quirky, edgy, funny and a bit neurotic – but all the best people are… right? She’s beautiful in an offbeat way and knows exactly what she wants, her pizza ordering at Al’s flat is a great example:

“We are ordering two separate pizzas because we are two unique individuals who have different tastes, desires and goals and who know our own minds”.

Perhaps keeping their connection loose and undefined gives them both the space to properly get to know each other. Melody has relied on Sam (and still does if she’s honest) but that can’t continue. Even her mum isn’t available this time and needs space of her own. This means she gets to know Al with no expectations or barriers and actually opens up. She can’t sleep well at night without someone there but Al supports her to try. He’s there listening on the end of the phone while she does her bedtime routine and it’s strangely intimate despite the distance between them. He’s encouraging her to stand on her own two feet and she’s allowing herself to be vulnerable with someone she’s attracted to. She recognises that important ritual of going to bed with someone, not in the sexual sense, but seeing each other without a mask. It’s when we’re our most authentic self, trusting someone enough to fall asleep in their presence when we’re so vulnerable and sharing each other’s day, our worries and fears. My husband always says it’s the absolute favourite part of his day. Al on the other hand could do with learning to lean on someone, especially in this situation where he works with the man who’s betrayed him. I loved the scene with his fellow rowers, literally being part of something bigger than himself again and working as a team. It breaks the dam he’s built to hold his feelings and he finds himself both relieved and surprised by their reactions.

I found myself rooting for this couple and aside from their romantic potential I hoped for Melody’s podcast with unlikely friend Prunella to take off. Their shared visit to Joseph Plunkett’s jail cell was moving and gave a depth to the story they were telling. I could see them thinking about what Grace’s story could teach them. I could also see how Melody’s fear of being alone was linked to her absent father, something that can have a devastating impact on women’s later relationships. The space she gets from Sam and from her Mum allows her to make a connection between how she feels when alone and an incident from the past. Her chat with her mum’s partner Dave during their split really cements their own relationship. He leaves her his record player and the memories it evokes bring real revelations about how she thinks in a negative way and misses the positives in her life. This book left me feeling like no love is perfect, but it isn’t meant to be. It left me happy, hopeful and so privileged to have a man like my husband even if he does drive me up the wall at times.

Out now from Harper Collins

Wordpress Prompts

I Like Big Books ….

Posted on 16th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?

I think blogging may have ruined my enjoyment of the bigger books. I used to love immersing myself in books that could double up as doorstops, but since I started blogging I’ve found it more difficult. Blog tours and commitments to blogger groups or book clubs have to take priority over my own reading. At first I did lots of blog tours, mainly to get to know other bloggers and organisers and I’ve made some lovely friends. It was also a good way of getting used to receiving proofs and to refresh my skills. Reading and reviewing to a deadline felt like something I hadn’t done since university and I still get so excited when bookmail arrives. I was so grateful, to Anne Cater particularly, who took a chance on an unknown and very green blogger right at the beginning. Mood reading had to take a back seat and even then it’s been shorter novels because of the short time I had between deadlines. It’s so easy to be influenced by the bookstagram treadmill and get caught up in followers, the latest proof or trend in book stacks or flat lays and forget why you started this in the first place – sharing the books you love.

Long novels take time. I need to set aside a few hours to really pick up the threads of a story and fully immerse myself in its world. I have tried to read longer novels by reading in short sessions between my other commitments but it’s too difficult. Either I don’t get long enough to really connect with the story and lose heart or I get confused between the two novels. It’s one novel at once for me these days. I have a pile of long novels waiting to go but they have to wait for holidays when I have no other distractions. Here are three long novels I’ve read more than once.

I LOVED this beautiful book by Jodi Picoult exploring the theory that Shakespeare’s plays were written by a woman, Emilia Bassano. At 540 pages it’s weighty but such an easy read that I was able to finish it on a birthday weekend away in Port Sunlight. Emilia struggles to be taken seriously as a playwright, instead she’s expected to marry and stay at home. Despite this she keeps writing, takes a lover and yearns to get her words on the stage – maybe if she finds a man willing to be the ‘face’ of her work she will finally hear her words on the stage.

In modern day New York, student playwright Melina Green finds that even in the 21st Century her words will struggle to make the stage, when the power is held by men. Inspired by the life of her ancestor Emilia Bassano, Melina takes a lesson from history, and submits a play to a competition under a male pseudonym . . .

As Melina discovers more of Emilia’s extraordinary life in Elizabethan England, she is determined to right the wrongs of the past – and finally tell her story.

Two women – centuries apart – are both forced to hide behind another name.

But can either make their voices heard?

Depending on the edition, Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell comes in at between 782 and 1024 pages so it’s a whopper! This book gave me the feeling of being a child again and luxuriating in the detail of this fantastical novel. With an incredible opening where the statues of York Minster come to life, it’s soon clear to the reader that lengthy description is the only way to bring magic to life. My favourite sections include the terrifying ball where the fairy gentleman takes Mr Norrell’s resurrected woman every night and the scene on the beach where a grounded ship is recovered by the incredible spectacle of sand horses summoned by Mr Strange. Amazingly it never feels like a slog.

The year is 1806. Centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation’s past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange. Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.

Coming in at 864 pages this is a brick of a novel and I adore every last page. It’s one of my all time favourites and its heroine, Sugar, may be one of my literary heroes.

Gripping from the first page, this immense novel is an intoxicating and deeply satisfying read. Faber’s most ambitious fictional creation yet, it is sure to affirm his position as one of the most talented and brilliant writers working in the UK. Sugar, an alluring, nineteen-year-old whore in the brothel of the terrifying Mrs Castaway, yearns for a better life. Her ascent through the strata of 1870’s London society offers us intimacy with a host of loveable, maddening and superbly realised characters. At the heart of this panoramic, multi-layered narrative is the compelling struggle of a young woman to lift her body and soul out of the gutter. The Crimson Petal and the White is a big, juicy, must-read of a novel that will delight, enthral, provoke and entertain young and old, male and female.

A few other long reads..

Netgalley

Hollow Bones by Jodi Picoult

Posted on 7th Sep 20268th Sep 2026 by thelotusreaders

I reach up and unravel my braid. When my hair is loose and whipping around my face, I take the red ribbon I’ve woven through it and press it just beneath my mother’s etched name, underlining. She was here. She was mine.

When Molly Fitzgerald was two months old, her mother went to a morning appointment in downtown New York.

Like so many who left their homes on September 11^th, 2001, Molly’s mother never came home.
Now Molly saves lives for a living, running a department for when disasters strike.

Molly and her husband Jesse―a police polygraph expert with his own fractured family―have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world.

But then Molly’s whole world is turned on its head. She’s spent her life preparing for catastrophe. But nothing could prepare her when a disaster strikes too close to home.

In this powerful novel, Jodi Picoult tells an epic story of the lies we tell ourselves, the plans we design to protect ourselves at the worst moments, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

A new Jodi Picoult novel is always cause for celebration in my house and this was devoured in just two days. She has a knack of drawing in the reader immediately with a casual conversational style. I went in with no blurb so I didn’t know which way the story was going and was surprised by the different direction. This is the story of a family caught up in events beyond their control as the world processed one of those events that splits history into a before and after. The shock of 9/11 was felt the world over and everyone has a story of where they were when the planes hit the World Trade Centre. I was in Milton Keynes and I’d been married to my late husband Jez for six weeks. A few days previously he’d flown out to Cape Cod to attend a family wedding, planned long before we met. I stayed home and started university, but I also had my mum staying with me. I’d dropped her in the town centre, came home for a brew and switched on the television to see the second plane hit the south tower and I was transfixed. Then it hit me. When was Jez’s internal flight from Boston to Washington? I didn’t know. I remember scrabbling through paperwork and even ringing his secretary to see if she had it, but nothing. By the time a jet hit the Pentagon I was sure I’d lost him. Between my mum and my sister-in-law Jenny in New Zealand we tried to keep calm, but no calls were going through to his hotel or their mobiles. I’d been so happy in our honeymoon period that I hadn’t thought to ask where he was and when. Finally at around 9 o’clock that night, his cousin Joanna rang me from her honeymoon to tell me they were ok. They left Dullas Airport in Boston twelve hours before the hijackers and had been eating breakfast at IHOP when the pentagon was hit close to their hotel. I was lucky.

The author has also written a flashback section that goes back and takes us through Eloise’s story. We meet her twin sister Adie who wears the white ribbon – a link to The Scarlet Letter perhaps? Eloise’s story isn’t an easy read but I identified with her upbringing in an evangelical church and the spiritual and emotional harm such environments can have on developing teenagers. Eloise had plenty of reasons to run away and she kept running. She’s an artist and uses her art to express her emotion. The significance of her chosen medium – mosaics- is clearly recovery, painstakingly placing broken pieces together to create a bigger, beautiful picture. At art college she creates a large heart with an anatomical heart placed within it using white grout to define its shape. Called ‘Love Thyself’ the piece seemed to signify romantic love but with the reality of love deep inside, a recognition that love isn’t easy but needs action not just pretty words. Despite having empathy for Eloise I did also feel for Evie, Eloise’s best friend at college who falls in love with Adam before she introduces him to Eloise, only to see them fit together as if meant for one another. Evie isn’t perfect, but she stepped in and held Adam and Molly in the aftermath of 9/11 and has been an incredible stepmum. Eloise might have been Adam’s great love but there’s no doubt that Evie’s great loves are Adam and Molly. There’s a huge twist within the book that I hadn’t expected at all, taking it in a completely different direction to what I was expecting. It was so unexpected I had to go back and read a few pages for it to make sense, but from that point on I was gripped. As always this is one of those books that made me think, about chance and destiny and whether there’s ever a right time for something. It made me think about the lives we don’t live – what if Jez had been on that earlier plane? What if I’d gone to the US with them?

Lastly I want to say how brave Jodi Picoult is. At a time when she is the most banned author in school libraries she continues to write about those hot topics that stir up interest and even anger. Here I felt she used her reputation to throw the reader a couple of curveballs – when I realised Molly was pregnant I wondered if she was going to revisit the controversial subject of abortion or babies with special needs, but she surprised me by going in a completely different direction. Taking on 9/11, a seismic event in everyone’s memory, is going to bring criticism her way but she doesn’t let it stop her. Taking on Evangelical Christianity is something that needs to be done a lot more because it should be treated as a cult. We can see the current effect it’s having on politics in the curbing of women’s rights and policies to end an equality people in minority groups have had for most of the 21st Century. Finally she uses Molly’s job in disaster preparation to criticise the current US administration! When I met Jodi Picoult over ten years ago now she told me that it’s the issues in her books that come first. If it stays in her mind a few days she knows it might be worth researching and then finally she hears the characters voices. Here she’s taken different criticisms of the Trump presidency and directly attacked his choices for important roles within government and cuts in spending. I love that she’s still speaking truth to power in her work. This is a timely novel about the world we live in since 9/11 but also how a family face personal loss inside such an international tragedy. It’s also a beautiful look at motherhood and how mums sacrifice themselves for their children in small everyday ways, but also in big life-changing ways too.

“I reach up and unravel my braid. When my hair is loose and whipping around my face, I take the red ribbon I’ve woven through it and press it just beneath my mother’s etched name, underlining. She was here. She was mine.”

Meet the Author

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty-nine novels, including Mad Honey, Wish You Were Here, The Book of Two Ways, A Spark of Light, Small Great Things, Leaving Time, and My Sister’s Keeper, and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page. Picoult lives in New Hampshire.

Follow Jodi Picoult on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter: @jodipicoult

Hollow Bones is out in the UK on 5th November from Penguin