If you’re anything like me you probably spent the last days of December looking at lists of books you should be reading in 2025. I’ve even made my own list of the ones I’m most looking forward to. It’s also the time of year where we choose how we’re going to track our reading and whether we’re going set ourselves a challenge. There’s the Goodreads annual challenge where you try to read even more books to meet your target, there’s Storygraph which I don’t know anything about. I do Goodreads mainly because there’s a record of what I’ve read so I can do my end of year posts. There are other ways to challenge ourselves, such as choosing to read more classics or the Agatha Christie challenge where you read through her works during the year. As those of you will know I’m struggling with my health at the moment so I decided to take a hiatus from blog tours and Squad POD activities to read by mood for a while and be free from obligations. I’m really enjoying it, even if I am missing the camaraderie of the squad at times, that excitement of all reading a book together and talking about it is hard to beat.
Some non-fiction favourites of mine.
I’m not big on New Years Resolutions, it’s the wrong time of year and too much pressure. So my only change for this year is to act on something I noticed from struggling so much this year. When I’m in a reading slump I noticed that I managed to get going again by reading non-fiction. It seemed to be a mix of memoir, humour, crime, history and fashion. Over the past couple of years I’ve been reading books by celebrities, often comedians and actors: Phillipa Perry, Lou Sanders, David Mitchell, Rupert Everett and Miriam Margoyles to name a few. I’ve read some brilliant memoirs on illness and death such as Patient by Ben Watt, Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve’s memoirs. I loved reading memoirs by comedians Lou Sanders and Fern Brady who both detailed difficulties they faced being late diagnosed with autism and ADHD. I also found myself drawn to books of letters or diaries and I’ve loved reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries but also Kenneth William’s diaries which happen to be hilarious and sad at the same time. I have a thing about the Mitford sisters and dip in and out of their letters to each other regularly. So this year I’m going to read a non-fiction book every month. Ive found twelve non-fiction books I haven’t read yet and I’m going to pick one every month to read and review. I’m excited to get started on them. I wish you all a Happy New Year and I hope you enjoy all the challenges you’ve set yourself this year.
Here’s the info on my choices:
Mind-Whispering by Tara Bennett-Goleman from Ebury
Always Take Notes: Advice From The Worlds Greatest Writers. Simon Akam and Rachel Lloyd. Ithaca Press from Bonnier Publishing
What about Men? By Caitlin Moran. From Ebury. Penguin Publishing
Unwell Women by Elinor Cleghorn. Wiedenfeld & Nicolson.
Tove Jansson Work and Love by Tuula Karjalainen. Penguin Books.
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge. From Yale University Press.
MILF by Paloma Faith from Ebury Publishing/ Penguin Random House
The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place. By Kate Summerscale. From Bloomsbury.
Want. Written by Anonymou. Edited by Gillian Anderson. Simon & Schuster UK.
The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes by Kate Strasden. Chatto & Windus.
The Untamed Thread by Fleur Woods. By Koa Press.
Jane Austen’s Wardrobe by Hilary Davidson. From Yale University Press.
Now on to Part 2 of my favourite reads this year and another eclectic mix of historical fiction, crime, thrillers and regency romance. First on the list is a book in quite a few Christmas stockings this week..
Wow! What an incredible debut this is. I absolutely consumed this book and even found myself furtively reading in the middle of the night with a tiny torch. Anna Maria della Piétro is a fascinating heroine and while not always likeable, I found myself rooting for her. Like all the girls at the Piétro, Anna Maria was posted through the tiny hatch in the wall of Ospedale Della Pietá. The author shows us the incredible splendour of Venice, a place I fell completely in love with, contrasted with it’s destitution and desperation – a state that seems more likely for women, especially those from a poorer background. The convent brings up it’s girls very strictly, according to the Catholic faith and the virtues of hard work from scrubbing the floors or working in the nursery. It is also a college of music. Each girl is taught at least one instrument with the best trying out for the orphanage’s orchestra, the figlio. Those chosen will work with the master of music and they will play in the some of the most beautiful basilicas and palazzos in all of Venice. Anna Maria’s great love is the violin and there’s no doubt she will try to become the best. Anna Maria is a bundle of youthful exuberance, fireworks, talent and ambition. She practically leaps off the page and it seems impossible for her to fail. She starts by aiming to be noticed by the master of music and after that to be the youngest member of the figlio. No sooner is one ambition fulfilled then she’s already thinking of the next. Although the music master isn’t named, you will eventually work it out and read with wonder at the thought a young girl might have had a hand in his music. Utterly brilliant.
Another book that explores authorship and women’s roles in the creativity of the past was Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name. While the title gives the clue that this is about Shakespeare, he isn’t the central figure in the story. Picoult writes about Melina Green, a modern playwright struggling to have her work recognised until her best friend decides to take a chance. To prove that there are still barriers for women writers trying to make it in NYC, he submits her play to a competition under the more ambiguous name Mel Green. The play is about Melina’s ancestor Emilia Bassano who was a published poet and also wrote for the stage in the 16th Century. As the official mistress of the man in charge of the London theatres, Emilia has access to Elizabethan playwrights and poets like Spenser, Webster and her best friend Kit Marlow. Melina is drawn in by the question of whether Shakespeare was solely responsible for his incredible number of plays? Her research leads her to believe that the ‘real’ writer might have been a woman and the evidence points to Emilia as a possible candidate. She was a Jewish woman living as a Christian, part of a family of court musicians from Italy with an incredible talent for words. She has visited all the places that Shakespeare uses in his plays, understands how to fit in at court and on the street and knows what it is to be a strong woman – could the heroines Beatrice and Viola have come from her pen? This is a gorgeous piece of historic fiction with a heroine you’ll thoroughly enjoy and a mystery that draws you into her world.
Katie Lumsden’s second novel has the feel of Jane Austen; light, witty and full of gossip. In this comedy of manners, where class and family reputation is everything, scandal is only ever around the next corner. Amelia Ashpoint is comfortable with her life as it is. She and her brother Diggory live at home with their wealthy father and younger sister Ada in their newly built mansion in the county of Wickenshire. In the summer of 1841, it’s the start of marriage season and Amelia is 23 so her father decides he must secure a husband for her. He has hopes of Mr Montgomery Hurst, the most eligible bachelor in their social set and the owner of stately home Radcliffe Park. At previous dinners and dances, he has sought Amelia for his dance partner and they chat comfortably together at dinner. However, Mr Hurst has been secretly engaged to an unknown widow with three children, much to the shock of their neighbours. Her friends are appalled but Amelia feels nothing but relief, as she has no interest in marriage at all. Society’s big expectations for Amelia fall on deaf ears because her heart lies in a very different direction. Katie has taken all the lightness and wit of Austen, making her novel such a pleasure to read, but brings darker and more complex themes under the surface. The problem is that upon the death of their father, girls were often left at the mercy of distant male relatives and had no say over their own fate. Our heroine Amelia simply wants to achieve the best outcome for herself, knowing she doesn’t want to marry. All she wants is to live in her childhood home, write her books and to enjoy the company of her brother’s family when he inherits. Most of all she wants to have the personal freedom that characters like Lady Rose and her friend Clara sadly can’t have. You’ll keep turning the pages, hoping she can achieve it.
Dark as Night is another brilliant crime thriller from Orenda Books and is No 4 in the author’s Forbidden Iceland series. It takes two long-standing mysteries from the novels and sheds new light on everything we thought we knew. The disappearance of Àrora’s sister was the only reason she came to Iceland from the UK so when she’s contacted by a woman whose young daughter has memories of being Arora’s sister Isafold she’s curious. Usually Àrora is a straightforward and rational woman. She knows that Isafold is dead but finding her has been a compulsion for so long. How can she ignore what this little girl has to say? Her partner, detective Daniel has had a lodger in his garage conversion for a long time. Lady Gugulu leads a quiet life and makes his money performing as a drag artiste. They’ve become close so Daniel’s shocked to find his tenant has left suddenly without a forwarding address. When three men turn up, Daniel has a sense that they’re investigators or secret service. Whoever they are they mean business. Daniel enlists Àrora to look into his friend’s finances in the hope of finding his whereabouts. I love that this author isn’t easy on her heroine, we see her flaws and vulnerabilities and how they drive her actions. She’s hard to like in parts, particularly in the way she treats Daniel. Although, their teamwork is incredible and their ability to lean on and trust each other speaks volumes. Thrillers can be addictive at the time, but instantly forgettable. Here the writingis tense and addictive, but the deep and intelligent characters stay with you. I didn’t want to put this book down at any point. It is simply the best so far in a series that gets better and better.
This wonderful new novel from Tracey Chevalier captures the spirit of the Venetian islands and a heroine you will take to your heart. Orsola Rosso is the daughter of a glassmaker living on the island of Murano. She has to grow up quickly when her father is killed in the glass workshop when a flying shard from a chandelier hits him in the neck and cuts into his artery. Under her elder brother, the workshop starts to suffer a decline as he tries to pursue more artistic pieces than the consistently good tableware that was the Rosso’s main source of income. Desperately wanting to help she visits their merchant, Klingenhorn, for ideas and he sends her to the only female glassmaker in Venice to learn how to make glass beads with a lamp. Very soon she is able to create beautiful beads that Klingenhorn can sell. Orsola is a heroine that gets under your skin. She’s ambitious, fiercely loyal to her family but able to see how the workshop must diversify if they’re to survive. Chevalier shows us the magical islands of Venice and Murano through her eyes as she weathers grief, the plague, business woes and falling in love. Set, with magical licence, from the time of Casanova all the way up to the COVID pandemic this is an incredible story of a strong and bold woman who knows how to survive.
Midnight Jones works at Necto as a profiler, using her psychology training to analyse applications for universities, the military and other organisations. The company like to present themselves as an ethical firm, starting with their space age offices designed specifically to be the most comfortable work environment. Every day Midnight works through thousands of applications passing some through to be interviewed and rejecting others based on assessment data alone. Necto’s testing systems are so sophisticated, there’s nothing about the applicant they don’t know. Midnight wears a virtual reality head set that shows images as well as the applicants responses, recording everything from intelligence to levels of empathy. Then, depending on the parameters for the particular institution they’re applying to, they are accepted or not. However, on this particular day Midnight finds a candidate who isn’t run of the mill, in fact he’s a one-off. In training, a candidate like this is jokingly dubbed a ‘Profile K’- for killer; Midnight finds a man analysed as showing zero empathy. As she watches the footage he was shown she is sickened by what she sees. This is way beyond the normal films shown to illicit empathy. It’s as if the machine couldn’t get a reading, showing more disturbing and violent images to provoke empathy and disgust. Yet none comes. Unable to compute the response and where such extreme footage could have come from, Midnight decides to take this further but her supervisor Richard Baxter isn’t interested. So she goes over his head, telling his boss that she’s found a Profile K. Surely they have a duty to report him, what if he’s dangerous? What if he kills someone? Everything had to stop for the final chapters as I raced through to find out what happens. I was glued to these scenes, made all the more terrifying because the victim doesn’t have a clue how much danger she’s in. This was one of those finales where I put the book down and realised every muscle in my body was tense! This is an absolute cracker of a read and I highly recommend it.
This book was an absolute joy to read, which may sound strange considering the subject matter but somehow it awakened my senses, stirred my emotions and had me reading so quickly I was finished in an evening. Funke lives in Nigeria with her mother, her father and brother Femi. Their entire world is shattered one morning on their normal run to school, when their mother’s car fails to stop and ploughs directly under a lorry. The drivers side of the car is destroyed but Funke’s side is left completely unscathed. She loses her mother and brother in a moment. In his grief, her father Babatunde is inconsolable and he takes it out on Funke. How did she get out without a scratch? Encouraged by his superstitious mother he calls Funke a witch, so her aunties decide she should be sent to her mother’s family in England. Her white family. Funke is ripped away from everything she knows and sent to the mansion where her mother and Aunty Margot grew up. There, although she isn’t being hit or accused of evil spells, she feels the resentment of Margot and her cousin Dominic. They call her Kate, after all it’s easier than pronouncing Funke isn’t it? There’s no colour, bland food and where she was accused of being white in Nigeria, here she is seen as black – with all the racist connotations that come along with it in white, upperclass Britain. The only saving grace is meeting her cousin Liv, but it’s covering for her cousins that will lead to her life being uprooted for the second time. This is a novel about being in between: families, countries, The spaces between can be painful and isolating places to be and the author depicts that with such tenderness and understanding. However, liminal spaces are also freeing. Being in-between gives us the space to choose, to take bits and pieces from each place, each family and make our own identity. I found the end chapter so uplifting and it gave me hope that we can each forge our own identity, once we’ve explored who we truly are.
When Mathilde is forced to leave her teaching job in Oslo after her relationship with eighteen-year-old Jacob is exposed, she flees to the countryside for a more authentic life. It’s a quiet cottage on the outskirts of a dairy farm run by brothers Andres and Johs, whose hobbies include playing the fiddle and telling folktales – many of them about female rebellion, disobedience, and seeking justice, whatever it takes. But beneath the surface of the apparently peaceful life on the farm, something darker and less harmonic starts to vibrate, and with Mathilde’s arrival, cracks start appearing … everywhere. Toxic may seem slight but it was the perfect read for me, because the author creates such psychologically detailed characters and a setting so real I felt like I was there. Helga never underestimates the intelligence of her readers, assuming we’ll make sense of these complex characters and their backgrounds. The story is structured using two narrative voices, that of Mathilde and Johs. Johs’s narrative establishes both his family and the setting of the farm. At first his narrative seemed completely divorced from hers; life at the farm is only just starting to undergo change after the rather stifling management of their grandfather. Mathilde is a definite city dweller who seems hellbent on pushing boundaries and pursuing freedom. That search for freedom during the COVID pandemic starts Mathilde’s hankering for a. rural life and losing her job is the catalyst. I became so drawn in by these two narratives and once Johs and Mathilde are on the same farm their differences create a creeping sense of foreboding. I felt an antipathy building towards Mathilde and just one wrong move could cause this tinder box to ignite. With her lack of boundaries, that wrong move seemed very possible. I was surprised by where the ending came, although not shocked. As I took a moment and thought back, every single second we spend with each character is building towards this moment. Utterly brilliant.
I was pleasantly shocked to win a competition for the proof of Eve Chase’s novel plus a vase of my favourite flowers, peonies. All I’d done was describe what I loved about Eve’s writing: her female characters; the secrets from the past just waiting to spill out; the gothic feel and atmosphere she creates, especially around old houses; lastly, it’s the dynamics she creates between the characters particularly the mothers and daughters. In this novel she has gathered all those aspects together beautifully with an intriguing plot and such a relatable central character in Maggie. Maggie is an author, living in Paris and struggling with writer’s blog. Something from her shared past with brother Kit keeps coming into her mind. Her mother Dee Dee died from cancer recently, but her mind is drawn back to her late teenage years. Then Dee Dee was a famous model, living close to the Portobello Road with it’s antique and collectible traders. One summer morning, Maggie wakes up to find that Dee Dee hasn’t come home. Sometimes, modelling shoots can drag on into the night so Maggie isn’t worried. She takes Kit out with his skateboard and he has a fall, breaking one of the wheels. A stranger comes to their aid, introducing himself as Wolf. When his eyes lock with Maggie’s they’re the clearest blue she’s ever seen, there’s also a spark between them and for Maggie it’s instantaneous. First time and first sight love. He recognises the connection too. It’s what makes him take the skateboard back to his uncle’s antique shop and use his tools to properly fix it, just so he has an excuse to go back. These are emotional days as Maggie navigates this new feeling, but also concern for her mother who still hasn’t come home. She calls Dee Dee’s friends and they rally round but no one knows where she is. In the present day, Maggie needs to go home and ask her Aunt Cora some questions as well as catch up with Kit. Once in London she makes her way to their old house with the pink door and bumps into a man on his way out. She’s surprised to see this is a much older Marco, Dee Dee’s hairdresser. He tells Maggie he’s digging out the basement of the house and sends her into a complete panic. Maggie knows that secrets lurk in the garden of their old home and it might not be long before they’re found. This is an engrossing story with a loveable heroine and it took me back to my own teenage years.
Fin and his wife Martha are travelling in South America towards the salt flats in Bolivia – an other worldly natural phenomenon where the horizon becomes endless and you’re standing in the sky. Lately they’ve struggled as Martha has been in the grip of an obsessive anxiety over the climate crisis. They are booked into a retreat on the salt flats, found by Martha and extortionately expensive, it promises a transcendent experience using salt to purify mind and body. So the couple find themselves crammed into a pick-up truck alongside Rick and Barb, a middle aged and out of shape American couple, and partners Hannah and Zoe. They are now in the hands of their driver (who doesn’t speak a word of English) and an elusive shaman called Oscar. They will spend the next few days meditating, relaxing in warm salt pools and participating in a series of salt ceremonies where hallucinogenic visions bring them face to face with their subconscious reality. Yet the final ceremony descends into chaos, Martha and Fin need to grapple with Martha’s anxiety and the moral implications of their trip. Although Martha’s preoccupations are with climate change, it only takes a few swipes of the iPad to see how war, terrorism and climate is changing the lives of those in other countries. Agreeing to the salt spa was Finn’s act of commitment, to show that he can give Martha a little of what she needs in the hope it will be enough. As horrors start to unfold will he blame Martha or will everything they’ve experienced bring them closer together? That’s if they both get out alive.
Like any good bookworm I have favourite bookshops wherever I go and with this being Independent Bookshop Week I thought I’d share some of them with you. Every single one of these bookshops is worth a visit for many different reasons and that’s the beauty of an independent bookshop. They have their own focus and place in the community, many specialise in the books they stock or have specific local interest sections. Some are a real hub and information point in their community, while others offer a great cafe alongside the books so you can lunch or have that vital piece of cake to keep your energy up while browsing. Others are beautiful little havens of peace and quiet, great for recharging and getting that library feel. Most have a smaller staff than the bigger chains so they really know their stock and are full of recommendations to add to your TBR. Some are just utterly beautiful and whimsical in their design. I’ve been a bookworm since I could read which adds up to almost 50 years of visiting bookshops and some of these I have been using for most of that time, so they’re very dear to me and yes, I do book holidays around my visits to my favourites.
Second Hand Books – Barter Books, Alnwick
I don’t think Barter Books can be beaten when it comes to second hand and collectible books. Run from the old station house at Alnwick in Northumberland you can easily spend a day in here and with an on-site cafe, that’s usually got a queue ten deep by 10am, you can take a pit-stop too. Every time we go to Northumberland, I take a bag of books I’d like to sell and on the day we leave our accommodation we go here for the day. I leave my books with the appraisers, go get a cooked breakfast and then come back to see what I’ve got to spend. Right at the back are the first editions and signed copies, then moving forward is an A-Z of fiction hardbacks followed by every subject you can think of and quite a lot you probably never imagined anyone writing about! There’s a good children’s section, crime and mystery novels where the tills are and this part has a huge mural of different authors and a little train track running above the book shelves – part can be chaotic so I keep it brief in here. Then in the entrance there’s a beautiful old fireplace, kept well stocked in winter to keep readers warm, with old armchairs where you can sit and enjoy a few pages of your latest acquisition. I meet the friendliest and most interesting people sitting here. The shelves in this front section are stuffed to the brim with fiction paperbacks and romances. This is absolutely my firm favourite when it comes to bookshops and I always look forward to my next visit.
Most Beautiful Bookshop – Scarthin Books Cromford.
While there are a few candidates for this I’m not sure they could beat this little gem in the Peak District. I used to come to Matlock Bath from being primary school age, when we would stay with my Uncle Ron and Aunty Linda who had a static caravan in walking distance of this shop. It was Mum who used to take me back then and I’ve carried on going ever since. I think it’s become more beautiful over the years. The shop is like the Tardis, with it’s endless rooms and corridors on three levels and even manages to hide a little cafe away inside. Each area of the shop is decorated differently with the music room wallpapered in old music scores and the art room filled with examples of the featured artists work. Throughout the shop there are big armchairs to sit down and look through your potential purchases. Each subject has it’s own area, with fiction just inside the entrance – when I can get upstairs ( my MS doesn’t always allow this) I start in the art room and work my way down. They also have a lovely collection of stationery and notebooks, another personal vice of mine. Situated next to the river Derwent, the views from the upper windows are beautiful. One of the best comments about this bookshop on the website is: ‘Every time I come, I’m going to spend NO MONEY – but I always do!’ Who tries to go to a bookshop without spending?? I always spend more than I want to, but I’m always happy with my diverse and quirky finds.
Why is it great?
Clever layout with subjects in different rooms
Beautiful decor and comfy reading chairs
Extensive art and music sections
Knowledgeable Staff – Cogito Books, Hexham.
Cogito Books in Hexham is a little gem. Tucked away from the main drag this bookshop is very well stocked and has great sections towards the front for gift books and children’s books – I’ve bought a lot of art and fashion books here. Plus they have all the trimmings, wrapping paper, gift boxes and cards. Then at the back it opens out into this huge room full of fiction and other subjects. It has a big chesterfield sofa for lounging, or for sitting and working out how much you’ve spent. They really know their stuff here, up to date with all the latest releases but really also good with recommendations based on your chosen purchases. I always spend more than I intend to and end up hanging around afterwards just chatting books. They’re also remarkably knowledgeable about Moomins which is always the way into my heart.
What makes it great?
Has a lovely quiet and restful feel
Has a great gift book section plus gift wrap and cards
Colourful and vibrant
Knowledgeable staff
Small but Beautiful – Atkinson-Pryce, Biggar, Scotland.
When we were on holiday in Scotland last year this perfect little bookshop was only ten minutes up the road and ideal for a bit of last day browsing. While it’s not the biggest shop I did find a lot of beautiful Virago classics here as well as the usual latest releases. It’s so pretty inside as you can see and really pushes Scottish authors and local interest books too. I could see it held lots of bookish events too for the locals. I whiled away a couple of hours here, browsing butalso chatting to the lovely friendly owners. I will make sure this is my go to shop when I’m around this part of Scotland again.
What makes it great?
Really beautiful visual displays
Good emphasis on Scottish authors and beautiful copies of classicS
Lovely friendly owners.
Events, Books and Cake- Linghams, Heswall.
I found this bookshop entirely by accident. My mum comes from the outskirts of Liverpool so we’ve visited the city since I was a small child. When I met my husband we took my stepdaughters there too and it’s a special place for the family. A couple of years ago I was looking for a particular special edition online and found they had one in stock here. I ordered it, but had accidentally marked it as a pick up rather than for posting. I spoke to the owner on the phone and thought since we would be in Liverpool the following week we’d drive over to the Wirral and collect it. I was surprised to arrive and find it was closed for filming and there was a very panicked looking director who said he knew nothing about books. Imagine my surprise months later when I was watching a new comedy on the iPlayer and saw a whole scene playing out in this very bookshop! I love this shop so much that when we go to visit my stepdaughter at university we now stay in the village. The cafe in the shop is amazing, particularly for breakfast and traybakes. Who doesn’t like a slice of cake while they’re deciding on final purchases? The layout of the shop is really well done and there’s a great children’s section with a little train and games to play. They run a brilliant list of events with visiting authors, book groups and community events too. I also recommend perusing the charity shops nearby, because I’ve found some great nearly new books and even a couple of signed editions inside.
What’s great about it?
Colourful and easily accessed layout
Great children’s section
Excellent coffee shop on site
Interesting program of events.
My Local Bookshop
This beautiful building houses my closest independent bookshop, set in the old part of Lincoln called the Bailgate area just round the corner from the castle and cathedral. This is a tiny bookshop so can’t hold a huge amount of stock, but it always has something interesting to offer. It was from a recommendation here that I found The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern which is one of my all time favourite reads. I love the quirkiness of building and the history of this part of Lincoln so this is a great pit-stop when you’re visiting the tourist attractions. Nothing is too much trouble for the staff here and they do run a great series of author events using our local museum The Collection.
What’s great about it?
It’s my local, only 15 minutes drive away.
The historic building and area of Lincoln
Great author events and ordering service (particularly during COVID)
A Community Bookshop – News from Nowhere, Liverpool.
Situated on the very ‘studenty’ area of the city between cafes and vintage shops on Bold Street. I visit every time we’re in the city because it has a great fiction section, but also has great sections on counselling and psychology that I found really useful when I was a student. This is a left leaning bookshop with specialist sections on politics, feminism and LGBTQ+ interest. The huge noticeboard as you go in has community events, political events and local support services info for homelessness, mental health and people struggling financially. There’s an excellent section at the back with t-shirts and mugs, badges and books that are political satire and anti-Tory. There’s also an interesting second-hand section for both fiction and text books. When I go there I always feel like I’m going to learn something and read outside my comfort zone.
What makes it great?
It’s political stance and the way it supports minority and own voice authors.
The support it gives to students and it’s local community.
The sections that focus on politics, psychology and social policy.
It takes me out of my reading comfort zone
Children’s Bookshops
The Rabbit Hole is my other local independent, situated in the small market town of Brigg, North Lincolnshire. I was put onto the shop by my lovely friend Anne Cater and now I use it regularly, especially in the run up to Christmas. As you walk in the whole section is for children’s books and it’s beautifully laid out with books at toddler level, a doll’s house and a giant tiger. It’s a comfortable place for kids to browse and play where you’re not worried about them getting in the way. Up a few steps is the start of adult fiction and this ranges over a few different areas. My husband always finds something to read in the area upstairs for non-fiction, usually something around aviation, the RAF or the county’s contribution to WW2. I love that I can come here and find bookish gifts for most members of my family. They do have special editions and visiting authors, with A.J. West coming up in July. This is a lovely shop, with friendly and knowledgeable staff, and I love to support it whenever I can.
What makes it great?
The large browsing and playing area for kids.
Staff who know their stuff.
Varied subjects and genres covered.
Wonderland Bookshop, Retford.
This is another little market town bookshop situated in Retford, Nottinghamshire. This is a bookshop solely for children’s and YA books. It has a good range from picture books, to paperbacks and collector’s editions of children’s classics like Alice in Wonderland – it also had a good range of books inspired by Alice. I was blown away by the decor in this shop and the attentions to detail. The decor is perfectly Wonderland with an upside down Mad Hatter’s tea Party on the ceiling, a backwards clock above the fireplace as well as top hats, playing cards and teapots everywhere. It would be a magical bookshop visit for a small child. I also loved that they have a gift registry for children’s parties. I would have loved all my birthday presents to be books!
What’s great about it?
Specialist children’s bookshop
Amazing Alice in Wonderland decor
Where next?
So where am I planning a visit to next? I happen to love the city of York and I’m really desperate to visit the new Criminally Good Bookshop as crime is one of my favourite genres. We’re also planning a holiday around Hay-on-Wye which I’ve visited in the past but not for a number of years now. Another bucket list visit is Wigtown in Scotland, a place I fell in love with when I read Three Things You Need to Know About Rockets by Jessica Fox, which details her visit to the village when she was on a career break. She’d always wanted to work in a bookshop and flew from the USA to help out during the book festival. Since then I’ve read both of Shaun Bythell’s memoirs about the bookshop too. I’m very lucky to have a husband who is happy planning his holidays around bookshops. Why not tell me about a book shop you love in your area?
One sure way to entice us bookworms is to write a book about books and this one has all the warmth, friendship and female empowerment we would expect from a Faith Hogan novel. It’s like receiving a big warming hug, but in book form. Our central character is Joy and we meet her at a hugely traumatic point in her life. Joy lives in Paris with her husband Yves Bachand, a well-known art dealer who has made the career of many a new struggling artist. Joy has a very successful career of her own in public relations. Everything is turned upside down when Yves suffers a massive heart attack and in his dying moments manages to tell Joy he has a daughter. Over the next few weeks as Joy starts to comes to terms with losing her husband, she’s also trying to get her head around his dying words. Could he possibly have been unfaithful? The whole idea adds a new level of devastation because Joy and Yves couldn’t have children of their own. Their solicitor approaches Joy about an unusual request in his will, he has bequeathed a painting he owned to a girl called Robyn. When Joy returns home she goes into Yves’s office where the painting hangs and studies it, trying to see what he saw in this particular work of the Seine. Joy takes in the muddy coloured water, the litter and the green surroundings and thinks it could be a river anywhere. There is nothing to suggest this is the Seine that lovers travelling to Paris dream of walking along. Where are the honey coloured stones, the lampposts and the bridges? It takes time for her to notice anything about it she likes, but there is a streak of light that catches her eye in the top corner. The more she looks at it the more she wonders whether it was this glimmer that kept bringing Yves back to the painting. A promise that the grey cloud would lift and the sun would break through changing the whole scene to something altogether more hopeful. In this moment she makes a decision, she will travel to a Ireland and put this painting in the hands of Robyn herself.
We’re back in the gorgeous coastal village of Ballycove, where our other main character Robyn lives. Robyn has a small bookshop, with largely second hand books on various subjects from rare birds to trains. It’s been just ticking over for several years and while Robyn’s family own the building, including her flat above the shop, she has taken over the stock from it’s previous owner Douglas who has retired. To say the shop is a little tired is an understatement and it really needs some pizzazz to bring it back to life again. Yet it is lovely in it’s own way with it’s floor to ceiling bookshelves and their carvings of animals, little rooms for every subject and a darling little children’s section in a small nook. Although Robyn has put the stock onto online book sites she isn’t exactly turning a profit and she wonders if she’s made a big mistake. Her grandfather Albert suggests that she hire someone or find a volunteer to do a few hours in the shop to free Robyn up for business planning and working on her vision for the shop. Into this scenario walks Joy, renting the flat above Albert’s and hoping to stay for only a couple of weeks in order to pass on the painting. She can see that it belongs with Robyn as it was painted by her mother Fern. Joy both welcomes and dreads meeting Robyn and definitely her mother. If she can do it quickly, almost like ripping off a band aid, she can get the painting handed over and be back on a plane to Paris in no time. However, she hadn’t factored Robyn into the equation. She walks past the shop twice plucking up courage and when she does finally walk in she’s so taken aback by this girl who looks so much like Yves she could only be his daughter. Stunned into silence, Robyn’s chatter takes over and she assumes that Joy is there to apply for the position she advertised in the window. In her stunned state Joy doesn’t argue and soon she is Robyn’s new book assistant. Joy walks away wondering what on earth she’s done and how she’ll cope if Robyn’s mum turns up before she leaves.
I really enjoyed the women in this novel, especially Joy who is so resilient and generous with her time, her emotions and her heart. I felt like Ballycove worked it’s usual magic, but Joy matches it, bringing her enthusiasm and joie de vive to the bookshop. She’s using her professional skills of course, but there is just that touch of enchantment about her too. She’s like a bookish Mary Poppins, thinking up events and little touches to brighten the place including a toy train track which is one of my favourite parts of the brilliant Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland. Yet it’s the fact that she’s giving her time and expertise freely to her husband’s secret daughter that makes her all the more extraordinary. Yet I think she gets something special from Robyn too. Robyn allows her to spend time with someone with the characteristics and mannerisms of Yves and in a sense it seems to comfort her that he’s still here in the form of this shy, bookish girl. I also think Robyn balances some of the grief Joy went through when they lost their own baby who would have been a similar age. I was waiting to see what would happen when Robin’s mother Fern arrived. Would Fern immediately know who Joy was and what would it do to her relationship with Robyn? I felt sad that Joy might lose everything she’s built in Ballycove and the sense of family she’s enjoyed with Robyn and her grandfather. There’s a lovely little romantic subplot and a lot of personal growth on Robyn’s part, particularly the unresolved emotions around being bullied at school. The word that always best describes Faith’s writing is charming. It’s like making new best friends and although her stories are emotional and raise serious issues, they are always uplifting too. This felt like a lovely warm hug in a book and added lots of ideas to my imaginary future bookshop.
Meet the Author
Faith Hogan is an award-winning, million copy best selling author. She is a USA Today Bestseller, Irish Times Top Ten and Kindle Number 1 Best Selling writer of nine contemporary fiction novels. Her books have featured as Book Club Favorites, Net Galley Hot Reads and Summer Must Reads. She writes grown up women’s fiction which is unashamedly uplifting, feel-good and inspiring.
Her new summer read The Guest House By The Sea is out now and it’s a great big welcome back to Ballycove for her readers.
She writes twisty contemporary crime fiction as Geraldine Hogan.
She lives in the west of Ireland with her family and a sausage-loving Labrador named Penny. She’s a writer, reader, enthusiastic dog walker and reluctant jogger – except of course when it is raining!
White lies. Dark humor. Deadly consequences… Bestselling sensation Juniper Song is not who she says she is, she didn’t write the book she claims she wrote, and she is most certainly not Asian American–in this chilling and hilariously cutting novel from R.F. Kuang
June Hayward and Athena Liu were in the same year at Yale and both debuted in the same year in publishing. Yet that’s where the similarities end. Athena is picked up immediately in the world that’s always looking for the next big thing. Stories about basic white girls just aren’t cutting it any more, so Athena is a cross genre literary darling. Her death is a freak accident that allows June an opportunity, she acts impulsively and steals Athena’s work in progress. Her work is an interesting novel about Chinese labourers and their part in WW1 helping the British and the French. Could she perhaps edit the manuscript and submit it to her own agent? Would it be wrong to start a new pseudonym? Enter the ethnically ambiguous new novelist June Song.
This was a brilliant inside look at issues and timely arguments within the publishing industry. In the past couple of years I’ve seen the question of authentic voices rage back and forth, especially interesting to me when it comes to writers with disabilities and the way disabled characters are written. Is it more important that a marginalised story is told or is who tells it the vital issue? This can be especially urgent when it’s a previously untold story or a hidden part of history. June has so much success with the book, but struggles to protect her secrets. One wrong word could expose her, so how far will she go to protect her new identity?
I’m always fascinated with books where I don’t like any of the characters because it usually means I’m learning something. I think some readers are uncomfortable with this. Athena is the wronged party and should therefore be ‘likeable’. In fact racist or more accurately model minority thinking means that a Western audience might expect the Athena to be sweet, pretty, docile and diligent just because she’s Asian. The qualities are positive, but allow no room for difference unlike the endlessly unique white characters created every day by Western writers. Huang broaches the idea that the industry’s criteria for deciding which Asian writers to publish is based within this flawed expectation. There’s also an issue around the type of subject matter chosen by publishers. In the wake of George Floyd’s death a lot changed in the publishing industry and we all talked a lot about diversity, but when I think of the subject matter of books I’ve read from ethnically diverse writers, particularly African American or Black British writers, they have all contained sexual abuse, violence or intergenerational trauma. Can we say this is a true reflection of the experience of people from those communities? Or do publishers expect this type of story from black writers and favour publishing them over other narratives? Do we only accept marginalised voices when they’re saying things we expect, things that make us comfortable because they echo our ideas about that particular community?
June truly believes that she’s becoming the minority in the writing world. That unless you’re a BIPOC writer you can’t get a look in from agents and publishers. The focus is on ‘own voice’ fiction and no one wants to hear from yet another white girl. I thought about the controversy around the book American Dirt when reading this. Writing is all about imagination and an author can imagine anything. An author can also research anything, but is research enough when you’re attempting to write from the perspective of someone with a disability, or someone LGBTQ+. I have to mention the proliferation of books from a neuro-divergent perspective by writers who have experience in this area, but who aren’t neuro-divergent themselves. I can understand the concern about it, but I’ve also really learned from some of these books and been led to other reading so I could educate myself. Where does ‘own voice’ writing end? Are we saying that a male writer can’t write in the voice of a female character? Writing is all about creativity so if we can only ever write from our own viewpoint wouldn’t it get a little boring? Should publishers accept a manuscript from a white writer who’s writing outside their own experience, if they are inundated with own voice manuscripts of equal merit?
“She’s using the pen name Juniper Song to pretend to be Chinese American. She’s taken new author photos to look more tan and ethnic, but she’s as white as they come. June Hayward you are a thief and a liar. You’ve stolen my legacy and now you spit on my grave’.
I loved that this book addressed those big issues, but it was also entertaining, delicious and disturbing in equal measure. I really enjoyed the ins and outs of the publishing world and the gossipy social media ‘blow-up’ feel of the book. Then there were moments that were more uncomfortable and challenging. It addressed what a lonely job it is to be a writer and how that isolation magnifies other aspects of being an author such as the negativity of social media and the perils of comparison. I wasn’t sure about June but that meant her character stayed with me. On one hand I felt she deserved to be exposed, but when I saw the reality of that I felt really bad for her. This was such a clever novel, so complex, full of amazing contemporary issues and always entertaining.
Meet the Author
Rebecca F. Kuang is the #1 New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of Babel, the Poppy War trilogy, and the forthcoming Yellowface. She is a Marshall Scholar, translator, and has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford. She is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
From listening to blogger’s conversations over the last couple of weeks I’ve learned a lot about reactions to this book and it seems to have completely divided readers. Maybe all bookworms can be divided into Lauras and Roaches – I certainly found a few clues about which on I was, so that made me smile at my own ridiculousness!
“I knew she was a bookseller as soon as I saw her. She wore a green beret, the colour of fresh pine needles, and a camel raincoat like a private detective in a film noir. Over one shoulder, the grubby straps of a shabby tote bag. It was decorated with a quote in a typewriter font, and although I couldn’t quite read it, I knew what it would say: Though she be but little, she is fierce, or Curiouser and curiouser, or Beware for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”
Brogan Roach works at a small London branch of Spines – the ubiquitous high street bookshop. She pretty much runs her own workday, keeping a close eye on her precious true crime section and sneakily reserving books, but secreting them in the staff room to read later. Things are about to change though, when a new team move in to pick up sales and improve the store. They’re like bookshop troubleshooters. Sharona is the manager and her team Laura and Eli are very experienced booksellers, eager to help the public and make sure the pyramid displays are perfect. Laura Bunting is just one of those people born to work with the public. She has an easy manner, quick to smile and engage customers in conversation, magically able to sell the book of the month. People warm to her immediately, but she hasn’t warmed to Roach.
“Laura Bunting. Her name was garden parties, and Wimbledon, and royal weddings. It was chintzy tea rooms, Blitz spirit, and bric-a-brac for sale in bright church halls. It was coconut shies and bake sales and guess-the-weight-of-the-fucking-cake.”
Laura and Roach are incredibly different characters anyway, but the rot sets in on a poetry evening. All the staff go, but Laura is performing. Her poetry takes the killer out of the murder narrative. She performs found poetry created from serial killer narratives, but telling the story of the women instead. Roach seems to miss the point though and as Laura comes off stage she greets her with excitement as if she’s a fellow true crime enthusiast. She wants to engage Laura in a debate over whether adding the violence she’s omitted might make the poems more exciting, or appeal to a larger audience. This would be fine if they were both enthusiasts, but they’re really not. For Laura, this is personal. Years before, Laura’s mother was the victim of Leo Steele, a prolific strangler. Laura hates true crime because it always tells the killer’s story. The whole point of her poetry is to right that wrong so she becomes furious when Roach misses the point. Other than that the pair just don’t click, not everyone does. Laura is the type of bookworm I know and love – she has the tote bag with the literary quote and all the book paraphernalia that signals to others she’s a bookworm. Roach sneers at this, she loves her genre but she seems to be reading exactly the same book throughout. It’s unforgivable when Roach re-inserts the violence and torture into Laura’s poetry, especially when it ends up published online. She has no concept of how much pain this will cause Laura, both personally and professionally. Laura’s full of memories of her mum that have nothing to do with her death or her killer and she thinks of her every time she walks to work.
“I think about the rhythm of my feet on the cracked path and about Patti Smith in New York, and of Joan Didion in Sacramento, and how each footstep is another connection between me and my neighbourhood, the streets on which I learned to ride a bike, where I walked hand in hand with my mother, and that despite all the pain, and the loss, and the grief, I’m tethered to Walthamstow because she still exists in the fabric of it, a ghost imprinted on every familiar sight. She knew these streets, these trees, these bricks, these bollards. These paving stones remember the bounce of her running shoes. I still can’t quite bring myself to walk past her old shop, even though it’s changed.”
Laura takes opportunities to dig at Roach and the genre she holds dear, but on Roach’s end there are sinister acts of sabotage. I found them disturbing, targeting Laura’s very sense of self. Both women are vulnerable in their own way with binge drinking and destructive sexual encounters shown as symptoms of low self-esteem. Laura’s encounters with Eli are particularly painful and indicative of relationships we settle for when we’re young and unsure of ourselves. Roach seems to have the confidence to embrace who she is, but is constructing her entire identity around her true crime fandom. There’s clearly either a jealousy or deep obsession where Laura is concerned. Is it Laura’s charm, her easy way with customers, her talent? Or is this much darker, an obsession with Laura’s proximity to a real life true crime story? Instead of seeing Laura’s work as an inspiration and a starting point for her own creative path, she decides to steal it. She even reasons that it isn’t theft, because many writers use other works in their own process. I was gripped, waiting to see if this would go further. I was unsure whether Roach even had her own identity, an idea of her authentic self, or whether this was another aspect of Laura she was willing to steal.
The book is fast paced and so addictive I read it in two short bursts over a Friday night and into Saturday morning. I was bleary eyed, but had to know. The title alludes to a death and I needed to know who would die and whether it was murder. Ironically, I found myself intrigued by the potential killers, just like any true crime fan. I loved the author’s sarcastic jibes about the book world and couldn’t help but laugh, even when I recognised myself. I thought she captured the loneliness of living and working in London as a young woman, especially in a relatively low paid job and the poor housing they find affordable. Locked in a solitary, damp flat with only books for company is a breeding ground for mental health issues, with heavy drinking used to self-medicate. It was tense towards an ending that could only be devastating for someone, but who? This was a brilliant debut thriller, that kept me rapt throughout.
This was one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read, with a mix of history, mystery, philosophy, magic and erotica that was most unexpected. Lily Albrecht is a writer turned book dealer who lives in a farmhouse in upstate New York. Several years ago she met husband Abel, the love of her life. Abe was a brilliant man, a writer and professor who inspired others and drew friends and colleagues to their home as guests. Then he started to forget things and after spending a fortune on neurologists, tests and treatments she’d come to accept that Abe was not getting better. It was like a form of dementia. He was now using a wheelchair and was completely mute, and Lily was left grieving for him while he was still alive. With full time nursing care from Awe, Lily is able to travel into NYC to run a stand at a book fair. It’s there she runs into Lucas, a librarian and book dealer friend, and it’s through him that Lily first hears of the book.
They are approached by a third party who knows someone willing to pay upwards of half a million dollars for the book. Some of the most wealthy book collectors in the world tend to covet books about magic or sex. Dissatisfied with the paltry millions they have, they want to look at ancient ways to manipulate and accumulate power. This book has both, something Lily jokingly refers to as ‘sex magic’, but as she listens to how the book works she does feel a stirring. Sex is something she and Abe had to lay aside a long time ago. She’s used to early nights, flannel pyjamas and a bed to herself. She wouldn’t consider herself sexy, but as she sits with Lucas and they talk about the steps to the magic of the book. It contains a symbol, something that’s not quite a circle and not quite a triangle. The first step requires the sweat from a woman’s neck and from there each step requires a bodily fluid elicited during sex. The final step is to anoint the book with the most precious substance – a substance that a woman produces at her most aroused. Once all the steps are complete, the pair will receive the thing they most wish for which is usually money and power beyond their wildest dreams.
Finding this book takes them on an erotic odyssey from New York to LA, the humidity of New Orleans, then on to Munich and Paris. Lily and Lucas will find the book, convince the collector to sell it to their buyer and hopefully make a lot of money. They will also embark on a sexual relationship with no boundaries and no restrictions and neither tells the other what they’re hoping for from the book. Of course the money will be incredible, it would help Abe enormously, but Lily wants something more. She wants Abe back. More than that, she wants Abe to return to himself with all the vitality, intelligence and allure he’s always had. She wants them to spend evenings talking about books and watch him hosting friends at their home. She wants Able to have his life back. In the meantime she’s going to enjoy her first vacation for a long time, staying in five star hotels and experimenting with Lucas while they try to find the elusive book.
This is an incredible, escapist, fantasy and travelogue, that could have been quite shallow and empty without the skill of the author. She has put so much genuine emotion and compassion into the story, along with the gritty realism of living with a loved one who is leaving you piece by piece. Lily’s memories of Abe and their relationship are heartbreaking when you realise he is now a motionless, mute, man unable to do anything but watch TV. Lily emphasises the loss of this man’s intelligence. He looms large in her memory and there’s a little bit of hero worship with the love she has for him. She describes the loss of his voice, their friends slowly disappearing, the loneliness of separating their sleeping arrangements and the torture of Abe being there, but not. It’s heartbreaking and I’ve been through exactly this experience as I slowly lost my husband fifteen years ago. Perhaps this is why I empathised with Lily so strongly and I understood why she was taken in by this adventure and by being desired for the first time in a long time. It’s like watching a flower bloom as she slowly awakens again, but even though I could understand her need I worried that somehow the book was exploiting her vulnerability. I didn’t get to know Lucas as well as Lily, so his motivations were slightly unclear. He mentioned being used to a five star lifestyle, but his money running low. This felt greedy or shallow when compared to Lily’s motivation. I worried that most people wanting to acquire the book were greedy and materialistic and there would be some sort of come-uppance, but I didn’t know if Lily deserved that. Each time they performed a step, the magic felt dark and it seemed to have an addictive quality. A new avenue would open up as if the book was drawing them closer and making their path easier. It wanted to be found, but why?
The pace towards the end really picks up and I was racing through the action with my jaw dropped open. However, it was the chapter after Paris that really hit me emotionally. It emphasised how much we look at the people we’ve lost with rose tinted spectacles. No matter how much we feel nostalgic for a certain place and time in our lives, it can’t be replicated. It reminded me of the saying ‘you can’t wade into the same river twice; because you have changed and so has the river’. I’ve read erotica where it’s all sexual acts with barely any story in between. This was an incredible story that I could have read happily without the sex, but to make the sexual acts an integral part of the story and the search was clever. The author has achieved an intelligent and fantastical book, that succeeds in being both erotic and a fascinating mystery.
Published 30th August 2022 by Faber and Faber
Meet The Author
Sara Gran is the author of The Book of The Most Precious Substance. Previous work includes Saturn’s Return to New York, Come Closer, Dope, Marigold, and the Claire DeWitt series. She is the founder of small press Dreamland Books and writes for television and film.
Oh my goodness 2023 is looking delicious when it comes to new releases and there were so many I’ve been lucky enough to either read in the last month, or that are still waiting on my TBR that I’ve had to do this in two parts. I wanted to tell you about all of them. This is a combination of proofs I’ve been lucky enough to receive, NetGalley ARC’s, and others I’ve got on pre-order for their release date. Some are for blog tours, others I’ve been given through working with the Squad Pod Collective. It’s going to be a busy year for me and I’m hoping to go to a few more events this year and meet some of the lovely people who support me or who send me books, hoping that I’m going to love them. So, without further rambling, these are the books on my radar for the first part of 2023.
I’m so grateful that Viper Books sent me a copy of this beautiful book when I was too unwell to go to their showcase event. Slated as perfect for readers of Jessie Burton, Stacey Halls and Laura Purcell and recommended by the amazing Essie Fox, this might as well have ‘written for Hayley Baxter written across the cover! We’re in Victorian gothic territory as Many would find much to fear in Fyneshade’s dark and crumbling corridors, its unseen master and silent servants. But not I. For they have far more to fear from me… On the day of her grandmother’s funeral, Marta discovers that she is to be sent to be governess at Fyneshade, her charge the young daughter of the owner, Sir William Pritchard. All is not well at Fyneshade. Sir William is mysteriously absent, and his son and heir Vaughan is forbidden to enter the house. Marta finds herself drawn to him, despite the warnings of the housekeeper that Vaughan is a danger to all around him. But Marta is no innocent to be preyed upon. Guided by the dark gift taught to her by her grandmother, she has made her own plans. It will take more than a family riven by murderous secrets to stop her.
Published 18th May 2023 by Profile Books
Expectant is the latest novel in Vanda Symon’s Detective Sam Shephard series and I finished this late last night so I can reveal it’s brilliant and full of tension as the countdown to catch a murderer coincides with the last weeks of Sam’s pregnancy. This great series, set in Dunedin New Zealand, never lets me down. Sam is a fantastic character, who I’d happily go for a drink with. She’s professional and has one of those faces that people trust immediately, meaning she can elicit new leads and confessions from the unlikeliest criminal. She’s stubborn and outspoken, very ballsy and, although she tries her best not to use it, has an incredible swearing vocabulary. She and partner Paul are expecting their first child and she’s working up to two weeks before her due date. They haven’t found time to organise their endless piles of baby kit into a nursery when a case comes in that Sam can’t help but be drawn into. A group of kids who are hoping to tag the wall down a quiet side street find a woman covered in blood, only one of them has the conscience to stay and ring an ambulance. He’s willing to face the music for the graffiti if he can save her. At first it’s thought to be a stabbing, but it soon becomes clear this is something more sinister. A pregnant woman has been subjected to a rudimentary Caesarian and left for dead, even worse there’s no sign of the baby. This must be someone with a certain amount of medical skill. For Sam, who’s at her most vulnerable, it’s scary to think this might have been someone the victim trusted and it makes her more determined to catch her killer.
Published 18th May 2023 by Orenda Books
I received a beautiful copy of this book because I’m taking part in the blog tour with Random Things Tours. This is a heartbreaking memoir about the power of stories with beautiful illustrations from Anna Walker.
Let me tell you a story…
When Chloe Hooper’s partner is diagnosed with a rare and aggressive illness, she has to find a way to tell their two young sons. By instinct, she turns to the bookshelf. Can the news be broken as a bedtime tale? Is there a perfect book to prepare children for loss? Hooper embarks on a quest to find what practical lessons children’s literature—with its innocent orphans and evil adults, magic, monsters and anthropomorphic animals—can teach about grief and resilience in real life. As she discovers, ‘the right words are an incantation, a spell of hope for the future.’ From the Brothers Grimm to Frances Hodgson Burnett and Tolkien and Dahl—all of whom suffered childhood bereavements—she follows the breadcrumbs of the world’s favourite authors, searching for the deep wisdom in their books and lives. Both memoir and manual, Bedtime Story is stunningly illustrated by the New York Times award-winning Anna Walker. In an age of worldwide uncertainty, here is a profound and moving exploration of the dark and light of storytelling.
Out now from Scribner U.K.
Grace has the incredible power to grab hold of you, immerse you in her world and have you firmly on her side all the way through. It’s possibly way too early to start picking candidates for favourite books of 2023, but I think this book is certainly going to be in contention. I found myself fantasising about having cocktails with her, already knowing we’d have the best time. Grace is stuck in traffic, it’s a boiling hot day and she’s melting. All she wants to do is get to the bakery and pick up the cake for her daughter’s birthday. This is one hell of a birthday cake: it’s a Love Island cake; it has to say that Grace cares; that she’s sorry; that she loves Lotte and hasn’t given up on their relationship. It’s shaping up to be the day from hell and as Grace sits in her tin can of a car on boiling hot tarmac, something snaps. She decides to get out of the car and walk, leaving her vehicle stranded and pissing off everyone now blocked by a car parked in the middle of a busy road. So, despite the fact her trainers aren’t broken in, she sets off walking towards the bakery and a reunion with Lotte. There are just a few obstacles in the way, but Grace can see the cake and Lotte’s face when she opens the box. As she walks she recounts everything that has happened to bring her to where she is now. The deep delves into the past slowly recount how Grace’s life imploded and created a permanent before and after. This book is a stunning debut and should be on your reading list.
Published on 19th January 2023 by Michael Joseph.
Touted as perfect for fans of Eve Chase, Kate Morton and Kate Mosse – all of whom take up space on my forever shelves – this is the third novel from Polly Crosby and on the strength of her first two I would pre-order this without question. In a time slip structure we meet two women, Lady Vita Goldsborough and Eve Blakeney. In 1938 Vita lives in the shadow of her controlling older brother, Aubrey. Trapped and isolated on the East Anglian coast, Vita takes solace in watching the birds that fly over the marshes. But then she meets local artist Dodie Blakeney. The two women form a close bond, and Vita finally glimpses a chance to escape Aubrey’s grasp and be as free as the birds she loves. Decades later in the 1990’s and in the wake of her mother’s death, Eve Blakeney returns to the coast where she spent childhood summers with her beloved grandmother, Dodie. Eve hopes the visit will help make sense of her grief. The last thing she expects to find is a bundle of letters that hint at the heart-breaking story of Dodie’s relationship with a woman named Vita. Eve and Vita’s stories are linked by a shattering secret that echoes through the decades, and when Eve discovers the truth, it will overturn everything she thought she knew about her family – and change her life forever. It shows how much I rate Polly Crosby that this isn’t out until the end of May 2023 and I’m already anticipating publication day.
Published 25th May 2023 by HQ
I’ve been lucky enough to receive a special proof copy of this romantic book with special spredges, which I’m always a sucker for. This isn’t one love story. It’s two.
Becca Calloway is calling it: she’s ready for Mr Right, and she’s ready now. She even goes as far as to hold a manifestation ceremony for him – and when she receives a text from her ex five minutes later, she knows it’s a sign. The problem is, she doesn’t know which way it’s pointing…
Should Becca reply and reignite things with her old flame Mike? Or delete and block, moving forward with the new man in her life? Becca has one choice, with two ways this could go. And in Lovestruck, you’re about to see them both.
Published by Penguin 8th June 2023.
THEY TRIED TO CAGE US.
BUT A WEYWARD WOMAN BELONGS TO THE WILD.
WE CANNOT BE TAMED.
Kate, 2019 Kate flees London – abandoning everything – for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.
Violet, 1942 Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever.
Altha, 1619 Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated.
But Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…
I couldn’t be more excited about this debut. Weaving together the stories of three women across five centuries, Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.
Published 2nd February 2023 by Borough Press.
1852. Margaret Lennox, a young widow, is offered a position as governess at Hartwood Hall. She quickly accepts, hoping this isolated country house will allow her to leave the past behind.
Margaret soon feels there’s something odd about Hartwood: strange figures in the dark, tensions between servants and an abandoned east wing.
Margaret is certain that everyone here has something to hide, and as her own past threatens to catch up with her, she must learn to trust her instincts before it’s too late… this is another Gothic treasure that I can’t wait to open.
Published by 30th March 2023
I loved the psychological detail in Liz Nugent’s last novel about family dynamics and the fact that no two children have the same parent. I’m hoping for similar in this new novel. Sally Diamond cannot understand why what she did was so strange. She was only doing what her father told her to do, to put him out with the rubbish when he died.
Now Sally is the centre of attention, not only from the hungry media and police detectives, but also a sinister voice from a past she cannot remember. As she begins to discover the horrors of her childhood, Sally steps into the world for the first time, making new friends and big decisions, and learning that people don’t always mean what they say.
But who is the man observing Sally from the other side of the world? And why does her neighbour seem to be obsessed with her? Sally’s trust issues are about to be severely challenged . . .
Published 2nd March 2023 by Sandycove Publishing
‘All of you are cursed, you hear me? An ugly death for the ones with whom you fall in love’
For generations, the Montrose women have lived alone with their secrets, their delicate peace depending on the unspoken bond that underpins their family life – Voodoo and hoodoo magic, and a decades-old curse that will kill anyone they fall for. When seventeen-year-old Nickie Montrose brings home a boy for the first time, this careful balance is thrown into disarray. For the other women have been keeping the curse from Nickie, and revealing it means that they must reckon with their own choices and mistakes.
As new truths emerge, the Montrose women are set on a collision course that echoes back to New Orleans’ French Quarter, where a crumbling book of spells may hold the answers that all of them have been looking for… Rich in its sense of character and place, Black Candle Womenis a haunting and magical debut from a talented new storyteller.
Published 28th February 2023 by Headline
Power. History. Love. Hate. Vengeance.
She will be Queen. Whatever it takes…
Daughter of an ousted king, descendant of ancient druids, as a child it is prophesied that one day Gruoch will be queen of Alba.
When she is betrothed to Duncan, heir elect, this appears to confirm the prophecy. She leaves behind her home, her family and her close friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to embrace her new position.
But nothing is as Gruoch anticipates. Duncan’s court is filled with sly words and unfriendly faces, women desperate to usurp her position, and others whose motives are shrouded in mystery. As her coronation approaches, a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital, finding herself alone, vulnerable and at the mercy of an old enemy. Her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch does what she must to survive, vowing that one day she will fulfill her destiny and take up the future owed to her. Whatever it may take.
Published 2nd March 2023 by Raven Books
In New York City, two rival witch families fight for the upper hand.
The Antonova sisters are beautiful, cunning and ruthless, and their mother – known only as Baba Yaga – is the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants. Their adversaries, the influential Fedorov brothers, serve their crime boss father. Named Koschei the Deathless, his enterprise dominates the shadows of magical Manhattan.
For twelve years, the families have maintained a fraught stalemate. Then everything is thrown into disarray. Bad blood carries them to the brink of disaster, even as fate draws together a brother and sister from either side. Yet the siblings still struggle for power, and internal conflicts could destroy each family from within. That is, if the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy both sides first. I’m totally new to this author, but have seen such great reviews for her last novel The Atlas Six and five star previews for this one too. I’m excited to discover an author that’s new to me but has a back catalogue to read my way through.
Published by Tor, 6th April 2023.
For someone who spent time studying the Gothic, Grotesque and Monstrous at university, this cover would have screamed out to me in any bookshop even if I wasn’t a book blogger. gothic adventure story, a classic tale with a feminist twist, a story of ambition and obsession, forbidden love and sabotage…
‘It is not the monster you must fear, but the monster it makes of men…’
Mary is the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein. She knows her great uncle disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Arctic but she doesn’t know why or how…
The 1850s is a time of discovery and London is ablaze with the latest scientific theories and debates, especially when a spectacular new exhibition of dinosaur sculptures opens at the Crystal Palace. Mary, with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue, is keen to make her name in this world of science, alongside her geologist husband Henry, but without wealth and connections, their options are limited.
But when Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle’s past, she thinks she may have found the key to securing their future… Their quest takes them to the wilds of Scotland, to Henry’s intriguing but reclusive sister Maisie, and to a deadly chase with a rival who is out to steal their secret. Our Hideous Progeny is a sumptuous tale of ambition and obsession, of forbidden love and sabotage; an adventure story that blends classic, immersive storytelling with contemporary themes.
Published by Doubleday 4th May 2023
This is a book I’ll be reading along with the rest of my Squad Pod Collective and I’m looking forward to the discussions coming up. I’ve seen preview comments from other authors and it’s recommended by Erin Kelly, Catriona Ward and one of my favourite authors Will Dean, so it must be good. Plus it’s a book about books and what do we book bloggers like more than that? It’s billed as the debut thriller of 2023 and much as I usually avoid hype, this one has tempted me.
Roach – bookseller, loner and true crime obsessive – is not interested in making friends. She has all the company she needs in her serial killer books, murder podcasts and her pet snail, Bleep. That is, until Laura joins the bookshop. Smelling of roses, with her cute literary tote bags (oh I do love a tote bag) and beautiful poetry, she’s everyone’s new favourite bookseller. But beneath the shiny veneer, Roach senses a darkness within Laura, the same darkness Roach possesses. As Roach’s curiosity blooms into morbid obsession, it becomes clear that she is prepared to infiltrate Laura’s life at any cost.
Published by Hodder and Stoughton 28th April 2023
I heard the words ‘Edwardian heist novel’ and ‘Ocean’s 8 meets Fingersmith’ and I was hooked by this novel.
Mayfair, 1905. The grandest house on Park Lane has just dismissed its housekeeper. All manner of treasures lie behind the pillared doors – and scandalous secrets too. With the event of the season looming, nothing must go wrong. But what no one knows is that Mrs King will be back at Park Lane on the night of the ball. She has an audacious plan in mind… and knows just who to recruit to help her clean up.
Housekeeper. Sewing maid. Kitchen girl. Thief.
Never underestimate the women downstairs.
IT’S YOUR HOUSE. BUT IT’S THEIR RULES.
Dazzling, stylish and wildly entertaining, The Housekeepers lets loose an outlandish alliance of women you’ll never forget.
Published by Headline Review 6th July 2023.
Kate Sawyer’s debut novel The Stranding was my favourite novel of 2021 so I have high hopes for this second novel and have been the luckiest blogger in the world to receive this early copy.
It is my dearest wish, that after so long apart, I am able to bring this family together for my wedding day.
This house. This family.
Mary has raised a family in this house. Watched her children play and laugh and bicker in this house. Today she is getting married in this house, with all her family in attendance. The wedding celebrations have brought fractured family together for the first time in years: there’s Phoebe and her husband Michael, children in tow. The young and sensitive Rosie, with her new partner. Irene, Mary’s ex-mother-in-law. Even Emma, Mary’s eldest, is back for the wedding – despite being at odds with everyone else. Set over the course of an English summer’s day but punctuated with memories from the past forty years of love and loss, hope and joy, heartbreak and grief, this is the story of a family. Told by a chorus of characters, it is an exploration of the small moments that bring us to where we are, the changes that are brought about by time, and what, despite everything, stays the same. This sounds like my perfect mix of reminiscences and recriminations, with a fractured family dynamic there can be a dozen interpretations of the past and I’m looking forward to making sense of them.
Published 11th May 2023 by Coronet.
In the name of the Father, not a word of this. Her letters are forbidden.
Beatrice is the convent’s librarian. For years, she has shunned the company of her sisters, finding solace only with her manuscripts.
Then, one carnival night, two women, bleeding and stricken, are abandoned outside the convent’s walls. Moments from death, one of them presses something into Beatrice’s hands: a bewitching book whose pages have a dangerous life of their own.
But men of the faith want the book destroyed, and a zealous preacher has tracked it to her door. Her sisters’ lives – or her obsession. Beatrice must decide.
The book’s voice is growing stronger. An ancient power uncoils. Will she dare to listen?
Published 2nd March 2023 by Wildfire.
My final pick for this post is The Walled Garden, which again has a stunning cover and is a debut novel. The aftermath of war is something I’ve been deeply interested in, although my reading covered the post- WW1 period. This past year I’ve read a couple of books set post WW2 and I learned so much about prisoners of war and how long it took communities, both those occupied and those of the occupier, to recover. No one survives war unscathed. But even in the darkest days, seeds of hope can grow.
It is 1946 and in the village of Oakbourne the men are home from the war. Their bodies are healing but their psychological wounds run deep. Everyone is scarred – those who fought and those left behind.
Alice Rayne is married to Stephen, heir to crumbling Oakbourne Hall. Once a sweet, gentle man, he has returned a bitter and angry stranger, destroyed by what he has seen and done, tormented by secrets Alice can only guess at. Lonely and increasingly afraid of the man her husband has become, Alice must try to pick up the pieces of her marriage and save Oakbourne Hall from total collapse. She begins with the walled garden and, as it starts to bear fruit, she finds herself drawn into a new, forbidden love. Set in the Suffolk countryside as it moves from winter to spring, The Walled Garden is a captivating love story and a timeless, moving exploration of trauma and the miracle of human resilience.
Published 16th March by Manila Press.
Tomorrow I’ll be musing on more new books from the coming year. ❤️📚
It’s very hard to buy for a book blogger, because I’m told people assume I have all the books I want. This is so far from the truth! I don’t always managed to secure a proof of a book I want so I still buy a huge amount of books. There’s also those e-books I’ve read, from the publisher and from Netgalley, where I would love a finished copy. This especially matters where the format of a book has been a struggle in e-book form – Robert Galbraith’s The Ink Black Heart and Janice Hallett’s The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels come to mind. Finally there’s those special editions, whether it’s a first edition, signed edition or has special sprayed edges I’m there for it. I’m an absolute sucker for spredges so I’m happy to receive pre-orders at Christmas if it secures me that special book. I’ve also included here, some sellers who create bookish jewellery, clothing etc because there’s nothing I like more than a sweatshirt or piece of art inspired by a favourite book. So here’s my Christmas List. I hope you get whatever your bookish heart desires.
Have an E-Copy want a Real Copy.
The left-over women from Jane Eyre and Dracula, Lucy Westernra and Bertha Mason – are living in Los Angeles when they find out that Dracula and Mr Rochester are on their way. Lucy has been resisting Dracula for many years and Bertha does not want to join Rochester’s harem of female fans. They must fight against these men who have tried to erase them.
A fantastic post WW1 look at the seedier side of London through the eyes of two women; Ruby Miller the charismatic and ambitious member of girl gang the Forty Thieves and Harriet Littlewood an aspiring writer who wants her own position at the local newspaper. These women’s lives overlap, changing the course of their lives and ambitions for the future.
Lucy Caldwell takes us back to four days in August 1941 when two sisters, Audrey and Emma, are caught up in the Belfast Blitz. One sister is engaged to be married and the other is in a secret relationship with another woman. Here we find out how they live under duress and try to maintain those elements of our personality that make us who we are.
Maggie Mackay has been haunted her entire life. No matter what she does, she can’t shake the sense that something is wrong with her. And maybe something is…When she was five years old, without proof, Maggie announced that someone in the remote village of Blairmore in the Outer Hebrides had murdered a local man, sparking a media storm. Now, Maggie is determined to discover what really happened and what the villagers are hiding. But everyone has secrets, and some are deadly. As she gets closer to the horrifying truth, Maggie’s own life is in danger…
The much-loved poet behind Milk and Honey and Home Body presents a guide to mindfulness and self-love through the act of writing, blending her own luminous verse with profound and empathetic advice for exploration through art. Healing Through Words is a guided tour on the journey back to the self, a cathartic and mindful exploration through writing. This carefully curated collection of exercises asks only that you be vulnerable and honest, both with yourself and the page. You don’t need to be a writer to take this walk; you just need to write – that’s all.
Throwback Books and Classics
In 1976, Dana dreams of being a writer. In 1815, she is assumed a slave.
When Dana first meets Rufus on a Maryland plantation, he’s drowning. She saves his life – and it will happen again and again.
Neither of them understands his power to summon her whenever his life is threatened, nor the significance of the ties that bind them.
And each time Dana saves him, the more aware she is that her own life might be over before it’s even begun.
This is the extraordinary story of two people bound by blood, separated by so much more than time.
It is 1865, the American Civil War has just ended, and 18-year old Vita Tenney is determined to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a country doctor like her father. But when her father tells her she must get married instead, Vita explores every means of escape – and finds one in the person of war veteran Jacob Culhane. Damaged by what he’s seen in battle and with all his family gone, Jacob is seeking investors for a fledgling business. Then he meets Vita – and together they hatch a plan that should satisfy both their desires.
Months later, Vita seemingly has everything she ever wanted. But alone in a big city and haunted by the mistakes of her past, she wonders if the life she always thought she wanted was too good to be true. When love starts to compete with ambition, what will come out on top?
Paris, 1750.
In the midst of an icy winter, as birds fall frozen from the sky, chambermaid Madeleine Chastel arrives at the home of the city’s celebrated clockmaker and his clever, unworldly daughter.
Madeleine is hiding a dark past, and a dangerous purpose: to discover the truth of the clockmaker’s experiments and record his every move, in exchange for her own chance of freedom.
For as children quietly vanish from the Parisian streets, rumours are swirling that the clockmaker’s intricate mechanical creations, bejewelled birds and silver spiders, are more than they seem.
And soon Madeleine fears that she has stumbled upon an even greater conspiracy. One which might reach to the very heart of Versailles…
A intoxicating story of obsession, illusion and the price of freedom.
Those Very Special Editions
How beautiful is this special addition of Kiran Millwood Palgrave’s The Girl of Ink and Stars? Not only is this book an award winning tale in it’s own right, this is a beautiful hardback gift edition with stunning illustrations from Olia Muza. Forbidden to leave her island, Isabella dreams of the faraway lands her cartographer father once mapped. When her friend disappears, she volunteers to guide the search. The world beyond the walls is a monster-filled wasteland – and beneath the dry rivers and smoking mountains, a fire demon is stirring from its sleep. Soon, following her map, her heart and an ancient myth, Isabella discovers the true end of her journey: to save the island itself. I think this is a beautiful gift for any age group and it’s high on my list this Christmas.
This is a beautiful new special edition of a much loved book within the blogger community. This new edition is from Waterstones and has incredible Art Deco inspired end papers as well as this gold foil cover. Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.
Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
Pre-Order Promises
When I was young I had absolutely no patience when waiting for presents I had to feel them all and was allowed to open one present when we got home from midnight Mason Christmas Eve, just to stop me from getting up at 4am to open them all! Now I don’t mind waiting, espe
In New York City, two rival witch families fight for the upper hand.
The Antonova sisters are beautiful, cunning and ruthless, and their mother – known only as Baba Yaga – is the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants. Their adversaries, the influential Fedorov brothers, serve their crime boss father. Named Koschei the Deathless, his enterprise dominates the shadows of magical Manhattan.
For twelve years, the families have maintained a fraught stalemate. Then everything is thrown into disarray. Bad blood carries them to the brink of disaster, even as fate draws together a brother and sister from either side. Yet the siblings still struggle for power, and internal conflicts could destroy each family from within. That is, if the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy both sides first. There are some gorgeous editions out there too, with spredges and end papers to die for.
Be careful what you wish for… it may just come true.
At The Mercury Theatre in London’s West End, rumours are circulating of a curse.
It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.
What Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in nature. On stage, it’s as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the Muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress. But when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders if the rumours are true, and fears that when the Muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.
No one survives war unscathed. But even in the darkest days, seeds of hope can grow.
It is 1946 and in the village of Oakbourne the men are home from the war. Their bodies are healing but their psychological wounds run deep. Everyone is scarred – those who fought and those left behind.
Alice Rayne is married to Stephen, heir to crumbling Oakbourne Hall. Once a sweet, gentle man, he has returned a bitter and angry stranger, destroyed by what he has seen and done, tormented by secrets Alice can only guess at.
Lonely and increasingly afraid of the man her husband has become, Alice must try to pick up the pieces of her marriage and save Oakbourne Hall from total collapse. She begins with the walled garden and, as it starts to bear fruit, she finds herself drawn into a new, forbidden love.
Bookish Extras
As I’m sure most bookish people know, there are a wealth of gifts out there for your favourite bookworm. Above are just a few items from my wishlist on Etsy, as it’s my ‘go to’ place for bookish extras. I’m going to feature just a couple of them to give you a place to start and for all those bookish ladies, something to leave for your other half to ‘find’ when it’s your Ruth day.
The Vintage Bookworm is a great shop full of old books that need a new home. Some are recovered and restored vintage books, but the owner also makes new stationery such as covered sketch books and journals. You can even adopt an old book!
If you or your loved one has a favourite book, just do a search and you’ll find. Wealth of different gift ideas from bookmarks, to earrings to book cover art. I love The Great Gatsby and luckily it’s one of those books that seems to inspire artists. I also collect items inspired by The Night Circus and again, it’s a book that seems to spark creativity.
Another great shop on Etsy is Storiarts, who stock unique products from scarves and long fingerless gloves (which I’ve taken to writing in) to weekend bags, duvet covers, badges and candles. Usually based on classic literature from Shakespeare to 19th Century classics like Jane Eye and Dracula, there is something for every reader.
Finally there’s this lovely shop that does book subscription boxes of all kinds from self-care boxes to Blind Date With A Book. Each box has a chosen book plus other items like journals, teas, chocolate, bookmarks and bath bombs. They look lovely and are great for those bookish friends who live far away.
So that’s my Christmas list. My lovely other half is brilliant at choosing something I’d love from my lengthy list. I don’t make a long list so I get so much stuff, I do it because I like to be surprised and also I like him to choose what he wants to give me from my suggestions. It’s often quite a surprise what he chooses. Us bookish types are not so hard to please, ask your bookworm to list books they’d like or share their Amazon wishlist with you. Or use their favourites list on Etsy or Folksy to steer you into the right direction. If you find out what your bookworm’s favourite book is you can find tote bags, sweatshirts and art for that title, or maybe look on abe.books or trawl old bookshops to find a vintage copy or even a first edition if it’s not too expensive. Finding an old copy of their favourite childhood book always looks thoughtful. I hope something here has given you a great idea for the bookworm in your life. I’ll be sure to post a first look at my pressies on Christmas Day. Happy Christmas shopping everyone.
As I go through other blogger’s fantastic end of year book lists, it strikes me how many brilliant books I haven’t had time to read. That’s not because I’m one of life’s busy people – I don’t work, the girls are only with us part-time, I’m still semi-shielding, and I have a carer/cleaner – I’m hardly plagued with Virginia Woolf’s worries and yes, I do have a room of my own. I could be reading more, but mainly I could be making better choices. The problem is I become distracted. I’m distracted by the same things a lot of other book bloggers are: should I be on Tik-Tok? Should I be chasing this year’s hottest release? Do I have enough Twitter followers? Is a photograph better than a review? How do I stay relevant? Is anyone even reading this? It’s so easy to spend half your day on Twitter or Instagram looking at other people’s beautiful and creative content and thinking ‘should I be doing that too?’
The only answer is to do what you love. I’m never going to be a major book influencer with followers in the millions, merchandise and a whole new income stream. So I have to think, what is it I enjoy about book blogging? Well, I love the Book Twitter community, the bloggers, blog tour organisers, the publishing assistants and other writers. By talking to writers over the last few years I’ve had so much encouragement and advice about my own writing, that I could see myself actually finishing my own book. People have been generous and kind with their time and their tips on how to be a book blogger. I love reading, discovering new authors and broadening my reading choices. I love writing about characters, their stories, their psychology and really championing those books that make my heart sing. I can do all of these things without putting myself under pressure, without chasing every new book, without joining every blog tour or buying every special edition. I can do this without pressuring or challenging myself even more than last year.
My village book exchange
That’s not to say I don’t appreciate those who take stunning Insta photos, or know a flat lay from a stack, because I do. Some people are absolute artists! I also admire those who worked hard to remain up to date and relevant, but it’s not always me. It takes me a long time to understand and adopt new apps and methods of getting the book love across. So in short, I’m going to worry less and read more of the books I already have. Stress less and enjoy this more. I’m going to spend more time writing my own work, putting new books into our village book exchange, and reaching to the back of the shelf for those books I didn’t get to this year. I’m going to write about those back of the shelf books and celebrate what I have as much as the new. I can’t believe I haven’t yet read The Appeal by Janice Hallet or Still Life by Sarah Winman, but they are both tucked away on the shelf. I’m going to look forward to those books I’ve highlighted for 2022, but not worry if I don’t get to them all. I’m also including my NetGalley shelf in this, which I’m afraid to say, is cluttered with forgotten gems and new books due to be published as far away as next summer!
It’s easy to forget why we do this. I need to remember those reasons, to simply enjoy being part of this great book community. To relax and celebrate the journey, rather than stress and strain towards an unknown goal. Here’s wishing you all a deliciously bookish 2022 and I look forward to chatting and sharing with you all this coming year. ❤️📚
