Category: most Anticipated 2021

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing 23rd February 2021

ISBN: 9781538735183

On a platform in occupied Paris, a mother whispers goodbye.
It is the end.
But also the beginning.

Santa Cruz 1953. Jean-Luc thought he had left it all behind. The scar on his face a small price to pay for surviving the horrors of Nazi occupation. Now, he has a new life in California, a family. He never expected the past to come knocking on his door.

Paris 1944. A young woman’s future is torn away in a heartbeat. Herded on to a train bound for Auschwitz, in an act of desperation she entrusts her most precious possession to a stranger. All she has left now is hope.

On a darkened platform two destinies become entangled. Their choice will change the future in ways neither could have imagined.

Beginning on an ordinary day and ending on an extraordinary one, WHILE PARIS SLEPT is an unforgettable read.

Wow this book has some incredible reviews and I’m so lucky to have an ARC that I’m going to read over Christmas. Sarah is on a train bound for Auschwitz when she passes her baby son to Jean-Luc. He has been tasked with repairing a fault on the train, while the passengers are still on board. He takes the baby, and with his friend Charlotte he makes his way over to the USA, starting a new life on the West Coast. Nine years later, Samuel is growing up fast and Charlotte and Jean-Luc are the only parents he’s ever had. However, Sarah survived Auschwitz, and along with her husband has spent the last few years searching for her son. One morning, the police come knocking at Jean-Luc’s door. The narrative switches between 1953 and how to reconcile what has happened, to 1944 and how Sarah has survived to find her son, and what Jean-Luc and Charlotte went through to make a new life for the son they handed on a platform nine years ago. Regular readers will know about my late in-laws complicated war history. My mother-in-law had a family of half siblings in America, since her family had been torn apart in Poland. Each half of the family thought the other was lost. I can’t wait to tell you more about this book.

‘Both epic and intimate, this unexpected story had me completely and utterly enraptured. You’ll have your heart in your mouth and tears on your cheeks as it reaches its rich, life-affirming conclusion’ Louise Candlish 

‘While Paris Slept made me think and cry and rage and smile at mankind’s capacity for both beautiful, selfless love and terrible, heartbreaking cruelty. Prepare to be thoroughly engrossed in this compelling book’ Natasha Lester

‘What a book… Emotional and heartrending…absolutely phenomenal. I was on tenterhooks throughout. A wonderful achievement’ Jill Mansell

Beautiful. Powerful. Unforgettable. A stunning portrait of the brutality of war and the tenacity of love. In the tradition of Virginia Baily’s Early One Morning and M. L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans.

Publisher: Orenda 10th June 2021. ISBN: 978-1913193614

Mum-to-be Rachel did everything right, but it all went wrong. Her son, Luke, was stillborn and she finds herself on maternity leave without a baby, trying to make sense of her loss. When a misguided well-wisher tells her that ‘everything happens for a reason’, she becomes obsessed with finding that reason, driven by grief and convinced that she is somehow to blame. She remembers that on the day she discovered her pregnancy, she’d stopped a man from jumping in front of a train, and she’s now certain that saving his life cost her the life of her son.

Desperate to find him, she enlists an unlikely ally in Lola, an Underground worker, and Lola’s seven-year-old daughter, Josephine, and eventually tracks him down, with completely unexpected results. Both a heart-wrenchingly poignant portrait of grief and a gloriously uplifting and disarmingly funny story of a young woman’s determination, Everything Happens for a Reason is a bittersweet, life- affirming read and, quite simply, unforgettable.

I can’t wait to read this because I’ve experienced pregnancy loss and I know how hard it is to make sense of the overwhelming grief. People throw platitudes at you when they don’t know what to say, so I can understand how Rachel latches on to this one and can’t let go. Any reason, even the improbable, is often better than the bottomless pit of unknowing. How could this much loss and grief have no real reason? People queued up to tell me that I was young and would have lots more chances to have a child – as if the one I’d lost was merely a doll replaceable by a new purchase. I also blamed myself, because I’d been working as a counsellor at an MS charity, and had volunteered to help them price up and place stock in their new charity shop. I’d been moving boxes and bending up and down. I was convinced for months that I’d caused the loss of my baby. I always bond with a character when there’s a common experience at the heart of things. I just know I’ll be reading this with the tissues handy.

#GirlA #MostAnticipatedBooks #NewBooks2021

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: 21st January 2021

ISBN: 0008389055

‘An astonishing achievement.’ JESSIE BURTON

‘Gripping, beautifully written perfection.’ SOPHIE HANNAH

‘A masterpiece.’ LOUISE O’NEILL

‘Girl A,’ she said. ‘The girl who escaped. If anyone was going to make it, it was going to be you.’

Lex Gracie doesn’t want to think about her family. She doesn’t want to think about growing up in her parents’ House of Horrors. And she doesn’t want to think about her identity as Girl A: the girl who escaped. When her mother dies in prison and leaves Lex and her siblings the family home, she can’t run from her past any longer. Together with her sister, Evie, Lex intends to turn the House of Horrors into a force for good. But first she must come to terms with her six siblings – and with the childhood they shared.

Beautifully written and incredibly powerful, Girl A is a story of redemption, of horror, and of love. If you liked Room, My Dark Vanessa and We Need to Talk About Kevin, you will love this book.

Meet The Author

Abigail Dean was born in Manchester, and grew up in the Peak District. She graduated from Cambridge with a Double First in English. Formerly a Waterstones bookseller, she spent five years as a lawyer in London, and took summer 2018 off to work on her debut novel, Girl A, ahead of her thirtieth birthday. She now works as a lawyer for Google, and is currently writing her second novel, The Conspiracies.

Girl A sold in the UK after a 9-way auction, and also sold in auction in the US. The novel has since been acquired in 23 other territories, and television/film rights have sold to Sony. 

Abigail has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram @AbigailSDean

#Books2021 #MostAnticipated #HomeIsNotACountry #MakeMeAWorld #BookLove #BookBloggers

Release Date: 2nd March 2021

Publisher: Make Me A World

ISBN: 0593177053

Oh my goodness I can’t stop looking at this gorgeous cover! It is absolutely stunning and stopped me in my tracks as I was scrolling through Twitter. Then, once I read the premise, I knew this had to go on my TBR list for next year.

Nima doesn’t feel understood. By her mother, who grew up far away in a different land. By her suburban town, which makes her feel too much like an outsider to fit in and not enough like an outsider to feel like that she belongs somewhere else. At least she has her childhood friend Haitham, with whom she can let her guard down and be herself.Until she doesn’t. 

As the ground is pulled out from under her, Nima must grapple with the phantom of a life not chosen, the name her parents didn’t give her at birth: Yasmeen. But that other name, that other girl, might just be more real than Nima knows. And more hungry. And the life Nima has, the one she keeps wishing were someone else’s. . .she might have to fight for it with a fierceness she never knew she had.

Early reviews suggest that the author has created an incredible world around her main character, using words like ‘lush’ and ‘magical’. I’m so looking forward to a different reading experience – the book is written in verse. It also has some of my favourite themes, such as how we construct an identity for ourselves, finding our place within a family and a culture. Categorised as YA, I think this is a book that will transcend that label and be read by teens and adults alike.

Meet The Author |

Safia Elhillo is the author of the poetry collection The January Children, which received the the 2016 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and a 2018 Arab American Book Award.

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, she holds an MFA from The New School, a Cave Canem Fellowship, and a 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. Safia is a Pushcart Prize nominee, co-winner of the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 30 Under 30. She is a 2019-2021 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.