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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
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News by Julie
Top Ten Summer Classics
Is there anything better than a summery read to get you into a sunny mood? Or a summery novel to read on your holiday? To get you into the spirit, we have chosen our top ten summer classics.
Review by Kirstin
Dead Lucky
Inspired debut novel of addiction and confession
The most original debut we’ve read this year, Dead Lucky by Connor Hutchinson tells the story of twenty-something Jamie, a funeral embalmer leading a chaotic double life in a Manchester suburb. Although dedicated to his job and in love with his fabulous girlfriend, Rebecca, Jamie is harbouring a secret which threatens to capsize his life. Addicted to gambling, on the edge of financial ruin and under pressure from Rebecca to purchase their first home together, Jamie needs to pull off a major win. By turns darkly funny and affecting, Dead Lucky invites us into the mind of a young man, who unable to share his troubles with those who love him, tells them to the corpses on his embalming table instead.
Review by Julie
Strangers by Belle Burden
The shock of abandonment
On the face it, the premise of Strangers by Belle Burden might repel some readers. A Waspy, privileged, New York woman is suddenly left by her successful, hedge fund husband. What’s new? you might think. That was my reaction too, however, as I started reading I was won over by Burden and her portrayal of grief, confusion and loneliness. Sure, millions of women around the world have been in a lot more dire straits than Burden, but the trauma of being abandoned is universal.
Review by Julie
Territory of Light
A quietly powerful story of separation
Our nameless narrator’s husband has just announced he is leaving her. Adrift with a three-year old daughter she attempts to rebuild a life, but 1970s Japan is an unforgiving place for divorced women and shame, sadness and responsibility weigh heavily on her. Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima is a strange little book; its quietly powerful, sparse language perfectly captures despair and isolation in the wake of separation.
Review by Julie
Backlight
The comedy of puberty
Prickly Pirkko is in opposition to everyone and everything, above all her cantankerous father and most of her teachers, with the notable exception of her Finnish teacher who seems to spot a glimmer of talent in her student’s writing. Besides, she hates puberty. She seeks out trouble, befriends the wrong kids and is all round a pain in the butt. Backlight by Pirkko Saisio is an autofictional deep dive into the author’s teenage mind which will leave you relieved those years are behind you.
Review by Julie
Brawler
Hard hitting on good and evil
Anyone who loved the novel Matrix—a book I still think about—will leap at newly published short-story collection Brawler by Lauren Groff. Groff’s incredible range is on full display in this engrossing collection. We travel from the East Coast to Southern California, from Boston aristocracy to Los Angeles trailer parks. The settings vary, but the family troubles remain the same, as does the capacity for both good and evil.
Review by Julie
Nervous Conditions
Instant African classic
Rare is the book that becomes an instant classic but that was the case for Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga when it was published in 1988. Set in 1960s and 70s in what was then Rhodesia, it’s the coming-of-age story of Tambu, a gifted girl from a dirt-poor farming family who defies her gender and class to be allowed an education. Nervous Conditions was the first book published in English written by a black Zimbabwean woman and its feminist outlook, inspired by Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, revolutionary in itself. A fenomenal portrayal of misogyny, colliding cultures, colonialisation and class.
Review by Kirstin
Reservoir Bitches
A graveyard full of pink crosses
Fierce, street smart, and laced with dark humour, Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda is a literary adrenaline shot; thirteen blistering and brilliant tales of contemporary Mexican womanhood, from an activist and debut writer whose theme here is women who live with violence. With a cast of characters spanning the social scale (aging seamstress ‘spinsters’ traumatised by the degradation of their once nice neighbourhood, an impoverished young woman contemplating a lonely abortion, a wealthy narco heiress running her father’s empire), De la Cerda shows us the lengths these women will go to to survive.
Review by Julie
Vaim
A Three Sentence Miracle
One sentence books scares me. Vaim by Jon Fosse, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2024, is one of those, although to be fair, it is more like a three-sentence book, one sentence for each of its three parts. How wrong I was. In stream-of-consciousness prose Fosse hypnotises his reader with the story of invisible, middle-aged Jatgeir, his beloved wooden boat and the enigmatic Eline amongst the deep fjords of Norway’s west coast. It has an almost otherworldly feel to it this novel and a timeless, disorientating quality which is part of its magic. Ideally, this short novel should be read in one sitting. I was reading it while juggling Christmas dinners and dishwasher emptying, not the ideal context. Find yourself a quiet corner on a rainy Sunday, immerse yourself and be enthralled.
