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We’re here to help you find that book that you can’t put down, the book you’ll push on all your friends, the book that’ll change your life.
We read literary fiction, non-fiction, classics and children’s books, all genres and styles embraced in our aim to share the love. You’ll also find fabulous Bookstagrams and literary news.
A world of bookish delights!
Kirstin and Julie
Sixteen people at a family birthday party are mowed down by gunmen in the shocking opening scene of American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. The sole survivors, Lydia and her 8-year-old son Luca, flee towards ‘el norte’ with Acapulco’s most feared narco baron, Javier Crespo Fuentes, and his henchmen at their heels. Sounds like an action film? Yep. And that’s both the appeal and the trouble with this gripping Mexican refugee novel.
‘Fair is foul and foul is fair,’ a famous line from the opening scene of Macbeth, itself the inspiration for this steamroller of a revenge novel. This is Jade’s story. Beautiful, fierce Jade, who gatecrashes a glittering LA party with her ‘coven’ of best friends. When her drink is spiked and she is seriously sexually assaulted, Jade swears bloody vengeance on the ‘golden boy’ perpetrator Duncan, and his band of sidekicks. Steel yourself for Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin.
As a thinker and a dreamer, 11-year-old Stevie has a gloriously rich interior life and is on a mission to answer life’s big questions. How do phones work? What are sea angels? Why does she get a warm fuzzy feeling that only happens when she looks at her friend Chloe? Deservedly shortlisted for this year’s Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, The Deepest Breath by Meg Grehan is a wonderfully eloquent and perceptive introduction to LGBTQ identity for pre-teens.
Wanted to share this thoughtful little piece by Caitlin Moran (the author of the side-splittingly funny How to Be a Woman and many other books) from The Times. I’m guessing this is how many of us feel right now. Read full Review
Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo shook South-Korea to the core when it was published there a few years ago, unleashing a fierce #MeToo debate. It chronicles the life of Kim Jiyoung from birth to motherhood to mental breakdown and is written in the form of a psychiatrist report. The cold clinical way her case is described is, of course, a reflection of the way she, as a girl and a woman, is treated. That South Korea lags behind in women’s lib possibly doesn’t come as news but this little book still had the power to surprise and move.
The Five – The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold won the Baille-Gifford prize for non-fiction in November. And what an incredible book this is, despite its miserable subject matter. Thankfully, there’s no revelling in the gruesome murders at all, in fact, this book is all about humanising the victims who’ve been so despicably treated by history. I was glued to the page from the start, impressed by the incredible research Rubenhold has undertaken and moved by the terrible plight of poor women in Victorian times. Highly recommended.
Here’s one to set off a fiery debate around the dinner table. Now that the first storm around #MeToo has settled, This is Pleasure by Mary Gaitskill takes a step back and looks at the fallout. Quin, a successful, charming publisher, has been a huge flirt his entire adult life. While never explicitly abusing his power, Quin has always operated at the very edge of acceptable behaviour (sometimes overstepping it). It has now come back to haunt him. Many of us have had a Quin in our lives. What do we think of this one?
‘Reese made me feel like I was wearing chainmail and he was a giant sexy magnet.’ Oh, the fizzing chemical wonder of romantic attraction. For aspiring singer/songwriter, Amelie, being with Reese is intoxicating. He’s cool, charismatic, and the lead singer of a band, their connection one of musical as well as sexual passion. It looks a lot like love. Except surely real love shouldn’t hurt like this. The Places I’ve Cried in Public by Holly Bourne explores the devastating emotional fallout from a mentally abusive relationship.
Everyone says Big Pete Kowalski is a good guy, widowed with four kids yet never once asking for help. His 11-year-old son, Max, wants to be just like him when he grows up. Max, however, is already carrying a man-size burden, caring for his three little sisters while his dad works long shifts. Max Kowalski Didn’t Mean It by Susie Day charts events when Big Pete suddenly disappears. In this distinctive and engaging novel, Max and his siblings are plunged into an adventure that will take them from Southend Pier to the mystical Welsh mountains.
Happy new year to all you Bookstokers out there! How about this one for a New Year’s resolution? Find out what happened when our reviewer Nicole met Joyce at The London Literary Salon.
