Category: Fiction

The story in this book seems to be an easy one to judge. There are some things that seem to be moral absolutes. And yet, somehow this book takes some of the most basic moral absolutes and makes them ambiguous. It takes the easy good guys and has them become at best misguided, at worst READ MORE

It’s been rather warm here over the past couple of months (except, of course, the last week), so this felt like a very thematic book to tackle this summer. I haven’t read many of Maggie O’Farrell’s books – in fact, before this, I’d only read one. But that one made such an impression on me READ MORE

Sometimes even for very different people at very different points in their lives, there is a shared experience. In this book, that shared experience is loneliness. The book begins in a cemetery. Maddy, a lonely teenaged girl, is there on her lunch hour to visit her mother’s grave. Arthur Moses is there – as he READ MORE

I love discovering quiet books that have completely escaped my notice for years, but that suddenly become reading experiences that irrevocably change my internal literary landscape. This is one such book. It was published in 1931, and written by a WWI survivor who had come to fame when he wrote a play, Journey’s End, based READ MORE

  Why had I not heard of this book before? I wouldn’t have ever discovered it if it hadn’t been on sale through one of my audiobook sites, and I’m so grateful it was. This is the story of Joel, an elderly man who lives in a nursing home. He has lost his wife, his READ MORE

  TW: depression, suicide, death, self-harm  Man, this book is a trip. Literally. It’s the story of Nora, whose life is not going well. In 24 hours her cat has died, she has lost her job, her piano student’s mother has fired her, her neighbour has told her he doesn’t need her to help him READ MORE

  If I’m honest, I decided to read this book based on the fact that it has a bookcase on the cover and is about a woman who moves into an old cottage and finds letters. That’s all it took. I didn’t even know until I was about a third of the way into it READ MORE

    Meredith hasn’t left her house in 1,214 days when we first meet her. It’s easy to judge this, to think it’s sad and unhealthy and even to those lacking in sympathy, pathetic. It’s easy to think that she must be miserable. And yet, she isn’t. She’s not exactly happy with her situation, but READ MORE

  Who would have thought that a book partially narrated by an octopus could be one of the most evocative, touching reads I’ve encountered in the past year? And further to that, who would have guessed that the octopus himself would not only be my favourite character in the book – but one of my READ MORE

  This book was a fascinating reversal of our usual superhero tale. This one is not only told from the perspective of the villains of the piece, but, even more interestingly, from the perspective of one of their henchwomen. In this story, henches are often contract employees. The story starts with Anna, a novice hench, READ MORE

  I love knitting, and I also love the idea of a craft – particularly one that is traditionally women’s domain – offering both solace in and of itself during difficult times, and also an opportunity to connect with other women while learning and practicing the craft. Ann Hood is the editor of a couple READ MORE

When this book starts, Gertie Bingham has just lost her beloved husband. She still has the bookstore that they ran together and her lovely dog, Hemingway, but she’s foundering. She’s lonely at home, adrift in her life, and can’t engage with the bookstore as she did when Harry was alive. When she’s there she’s haunted READ MORE

  I’ve read many books that deal with the second world war – it’s usually the only historical time period that I’ll actively seek to read about – but this book is set earlier, before and during the first world war. And yet, it felt familiar in the way that WWII narratives feel familiar, because READ MORE

  I don’t normally jive with romances, as you all know by now, but once in a while I do enjoy picking one up if it has other things that appeal to me about the story. Being an admitted bibliophile, any book that is about readers will automatically pique my interest, and if the story READ MORE

  Another BookTube Prize selection for 2023, this was not a book I even had on my radar, let alone my TBR. And it was not at all what I expected, based on the very little I read before picking it up. Rather than a true novel, this book takes the form of a series READ MORE

  I read this for The BookTube Prize in the summer of 2023, though it wasn’t one I had planned to read otherwise. I read Shuggie Bain in 2021 for the same reason, and while I found it difficult going  – of course – I was also glad I read it. It was dark, being READ MORE

  Is there anyone out there in bookland who hasn’t heard of this book? It feels like it has been taking the reading world by storm over the past year, and being discussed by… well, pretty much everyone. It co-won the Pulitzer Prize and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction – which saw Barbara Kingsolver READ MORE