Difference between revisions of "Book Reviews From The Bookbag"

From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to search
 
(602 intermediate revisions by 4 users not shown)
Line 8: Line 8:
 
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
 
There are currently '''{{PAGESINCATEGORY: Reviews}}''' [[:Category:Reviews|reviews]] at TheBookbag.
  
Want to find out more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
+
Want to learn more [[About Us|about us]]? __NOTOC__
  
 
==The Best New Books==
 
==The Best New Books==
Line 15: Line 15:
  
 
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
 
'''Read [[:Category:Features|the latest features]].'''
 
'''Read [[Forthcoming Publications|reviews of books about to be published]].
 
<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1523092734
+
|isbn=1529077745
|title=A Women's Guide to Claiming Space
+
|title=The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope)
|author=Eliza Van Cort
+
|author=Ann Cleeves
|rating=5
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Crime
|summary=''She brings a hug-kick-thunderclap that every woman needs in her life. Again and again and again.'' (Alma Derricks, former CMO, Cirque du Soleil RSD)
+
|summary=A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned upD I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe SpencerSome people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh.
 
 
''To claim space is to live the life of choosing unapologetically and bravelyIt is to live the life you've always wanted.''
 
 
 
Sometimes the reviewing gods are generous: at a time when violence against women is much in the news, ''A Women's Guide to Claiming Space'' by Eliza Van Cort dropped onto my deskNow - to be clear - this book is not a 'how to disable your attacker with two simple jabs' manual: it's something far more effective, but discussion at the moment seems to be about how women can be ''protected''. I've always thought that women need to rise above this, to be people who don't need protection, people who claim their own space.  If all women did this, those few men who are violent to women would realise that we are not just an easy target to be used to prove that they are big men.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Darren Shan
+
|isbn=1399613073
|title=Archibald Lox and the Forgotten Crypt: Archibald Lox series, Volume 2, book 1 of 3
+
|title=Moral Injuries
 +
|author=Christie Watson
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The second trilogy in Shan's ''Merge'' saga opens with our hero, Archie, back in London in the world of the Born. It's not been easy, explaining to his foster parents where he's been, or slipping back into ordinary life and forgetting about Inez and his other friends in the Merge, but Archie has done his best.... well, except for visiting veteran locksmith Winston in Big Ben's clock tower and except for fiddling with that sneaky master lock in Seven Dials every time he can sneak away.
+
|summary=Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century.  Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon.  Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor.  Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy.  We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences.  Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involved.
|isbn=B093H8DPQZ
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0008444501
+
|isbn=0241636604
|title=The Answer to Everything
+
|title=The Trading Game: A Confession
|author=Luke Kennard
+
|author=Gary Stevenson
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=Life should have been good for EmilyShe had a lovely husband, Steven, who was a speech therapistWe'll pass over the fact that they rarely speak to each other and don't even sleep in the same bedIt isn't so much that Emily has left the marital bed as that she's sharing a bed with one of her children as it's the only way to get him to sleep during the nightArthur and Matty are gorgeous but they are a handful and Emily has a job to cope with too - she teaches drama two days a weekThey've not long moved into a new home in Criterion Gardens: it's a trendy area that has been gentrified and it's run on semi-communal lines.  The residents even share eco-friendly electric cars rather than owning their own.
+
|summary=If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary StevensonA hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injusticeThere was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of EconomicsStevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy.  He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupidIt was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with CitibankEventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985137
+
|author=Leanne Egan
|title=The Whole Truth (D I Fawley)
+
|title=Lover Birds
|author=Cara Hunter
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=5
+
|genre=Teens
|genre=Crime
+
|summary=When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around herA misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it?  Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them?  So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she?
|summary=DI Adam Fawley's team got to Edith Launceleve College first, called there by Jancis Appleby to see the Principal, Professor Hilary Reynolds.  There had been an accusation of sexual assault by a professor on a student.  When Fawley arrived he was almost cross: what was the alleged perpetrator doing in the room before they'd even got the details from the victim?  The problem was that Caleb Morgan ''was'' the 'victim' and the alleged perpetrator was Professor Marina FisherJust to complicate matters further, Caleb's mother is Petra Newson, the local MP, and Professor Fisher is a big name in Artificial Intelligence. She has an eight-year-old son, buys her wine by the case from Berry Brothers & Rudd, spends more than £1000 a month on clothes and has more than ten thousand Twitter followers.  When the excrement encounters the ventilation equipment, this is going to be ''very'' public.
+
|isbn=000862657X
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|author=Daniel Gibbs with Teresa H Barker
 
|title=A Tattoo on my Brain
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Autobiography
 
|summary=Alzheimer's is a disease that slowly wears away your identity and sense of self. I have been directly affected by this cruel disease, as have many. Your memories and personality worn away like a statue over time affected the elements. It seems as if nature wants that final victory over you and your dignity. This is what makes Daniel Gibbs' memoir so admirable. Daniel Gibbs is a neurologist who was diagnosed with Alzheimers and has documented his journey in ''A Tattoo on my Brain''.
 
|isbn=1108838936
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1635862353
+
|author=Sally Rooney
|title=The Sandalmaking Workshop
+
|title=Intermezzo
|author=Rachel Corry
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crafts
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A sandal-making workshop?  I couldn't really believe it, mainly because I'd always thought that you'd need more equipment than the average home was likely to be able to contain but I was intrigued.  Rachel Corry started sandal making accidentally - a small fire destroyed some of her shoes. One pair had come apart and she could see how the sandal was constructed.  Then she realised that she couldn't afford to replace all her shoes. Could she combine these two facts to create a new and worthwhile craft?  She showed quite a few people her first pair and they all either wanted to know how to do it - or if she'd make them a pair.  A new career was born.
+
|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
 +
|isbn=0571365469
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1787332098
+
|isbn=1009473085
|title=How to Love Animals in a Human-Shaped World
+
|title=The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024
|author=Henry Mance
+
|author=Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Politics and Society
 
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=''When we do think about animals, we break them down into species and groups: cows, dogs, foxes, elephants and so on. And we assign them places in society: cows go on plates, dogs on sofas, foxes in rubbish bins, elephants in zoos, and millions of wild animals stay out there, ''somewhere,'' hopefully on the next David Attenborough series.''
+
|summary=Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it ''isn't'' and that applies to ''The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?''.  If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what ''really'' happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you.  If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, {{amazonurl|isbn=B0BH7SKG2S|title=Johnson at 10}}, can be bettered for those tumultuous years.  It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics.  ''The Conservative Effect'' is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024.
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Mark Lingane
 +
|title=Chimera
 +
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Science Fiction
 +
|summary=''The survivor stumbles forward, her steps echoing in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.''
 +
 
 +
''Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and a raging thirst feels unquenchable.''
 +
 
 +
''There must be a way out. As she moves through the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.''
  
I was going to argue.  I mean, cows are for cheese (I couldn't consider eating red meat...) and I much prefer my elephants in the wild but then I realised that I was quibbling for the sake of it. Essentially that quote sums up my attitude to animals - and I consider myself an animal lover. If I had to choose between the company of humans and the company of animals, I would probably choose the animals.  I insisted that I read this book: no one was trying to stop me but I was initially reluctant.  I eat cheese, eggs, chicken and fish and I needed to either do so without guilt or change my choices.  I suspected that making the decision would not be comfortable.
+
As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being alive.
 +
|isbn=B0DNVWMYP2
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Ananda Devi
+
|author=Max Boucherat
|title=Eve Out of Her Ruins
+
|title=The Last Life of Lori Mills
|rating=4
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=At not even 200 pages, Eve Out of Her Ruins is one of the shortest books I've read in a long while, but it's one of the most dramatic. It's also told in a way that I can only describe as brutal: it spares nothing and pulls very few punches, the descriptions stark and unromantic.
+
|summary=We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome.  What could possibly go wrong?  Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world.  But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky.  For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn?
|isbn=0993009344
+
|isbn=0008666482
}}  
+
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0241985137
+
|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky
|title=The Whole Truth (D I Fawley)
+
|title=White Nights
|author=Cara Hunter
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=DI Adam Fawley's team got to Edith Launceleve College first, called there by Jancis Appleby to see the Principal, Professor Hilary Reynolds. There had been an accusation of sexual assault by a professor on a student.  When Fawley arrived he was almost cross: what was the alleged perpetrator doing in the room before they'd even got the details from the victim?  The problem was that Caleb Morgan ''was'' the 'victim' and the alleged perpetrator was Professor Marina Fisher.  Just to complicate matters further, Caleb's mother is Petra Newson, the local MP, and Professor Fisher is a big name is Artificial Intelligence.  She has an eight-year-old son, buys her wine by the case from Berry Brothers & Rudd, spends more than £1000 a month on clothes and has more than ten thousand Twitter followers.  When the excrement encounters the ventilation equipment, this is going to be ''very'' public.
+
|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.
 +
|isbn=0241619785
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0753558378
+
|isbn=0008385068
|title=Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters
+
|title=The Midnight Feast
|author=Greg McKeown
+
|author=Lucy Foley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Lifestyle
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=''The marginal return of working harder was, in fact, negative.''
+
|summary=It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised.  It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows.  The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famousHer husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the siteThe heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friendsOld scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found.
 
 
That's what happened to Patrick McGinnis.  It's no exaggeration to say that he devoted his life to the company he worked for, struggling through, even when he was ill, only to find that he was working for a bankrupt companyHis stock had fallen by 97%, he had lost his health and his job had little valueHe made a bargain with God; if he survived, he would make some changesHe did survive and came through stronger - and richer.  There is, you see, a different way: ''great things are not reserved for those who bleed, for those who almost break.''
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1471181405
+
|author=James Baldwin
|title=Nighthawking
+
|title=Giovanni's Room
|author=Russ Thomas
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sheffield's [http://www.sbg.org.uk/ Botanical Gardens] (on Clarkehouse Road, if you'd like to visit) are an oasis of calm in what's otherwise thought of as an industrial city but this was disrupted when the body of a young woman was discovered. It had obviously been buried in one of the beds but who would have started to dig her up?  It had been in the earth for months and could have been undiscovered for years.  The police need to establish who stabbed her - and who left the two, very rare, gold aurei on her eyes. DCI Diane Jordan is the Investigating Officer and her foot soldiers are DS Adam Tyler and DC Mina Rabbani.  They're joined by DS Guy Daley who's just returned from extended sick leave.  Mina thinks he's as obnoxious as ever but suspects that he's not fully recovered from his injuries.
+
|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
 +
|isbn=0141186356
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Jennifer Saint
+
|author=Ashley Hickson-Lovence
|title= Ariadne
+
|title=Wild East
|rating= 4.5  
+
|rating=4.5
|genre= Women's Fiction
+
|genre=Teens
|summary= This re-telling of the myth of Ariadne and the Minotaur is interesting and unusual. Jennifer Saint presents the story in a way that is sympathetic to its origins but also appealing to a modern audience. Saint's narrative is told predominantly through the viewpoint of Ariadne, spanning from her childhood to her death, allowing the reader to really connect with Ariadne as a character in her own right rather than just a prop in the heroics of Theseus.  
+
|summary=Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble.  He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper.  But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words.
|isbn=1472273869
+
|isbn=0241645441
}}  
+
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Gianna Pollero and Sarah Horne
+
|isbn=1635866847
|title=Monster Doughnuts
+
|title=The Lavender Companion
 +
|author=Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Confident Readers
+
|genre=Lifestyle
|summary=After their parents mysteriously disappeared, Grace and Danni have been left to run the family bakeryBut Grace needs the doughnuts and sweet treats that Danni bakes for a rather unusual reason...even though she's only ten years old, she is a monster hunter!  Monsters have a very sweet tooth, and Grace uses a number of methods to defeat them such as throwing baking powder on them, or tricking them into eating a sweet treat that will, ultimately, be their demiseOne day, though, Grace finds herself facing a cyclops monster called Mr Harris, who has a weakness for doughnuts but doesn't seem to explode as the other monsters do, and so things start to get very strange…
+
|summary=It's strange, the things that make you ''immediately'' feel that this is the book for youBefore I started reading ''The Lavender Companion'', I visited the author's [https://www.pinelavenderfarm.com/ website] and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage.  I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally(There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it.  Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages.  You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem.  I ''loved'' this book already.
|isbn=1848129432
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0995647895
+
|author=Han Kang
|title=Sadie and the Sea Dogs
+
|title=The Vegetarian
|author=Maureen Duffy and Anita Joice
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
+
|genre=General Fiction
|genre=For Sharing
+
|summary=This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls.
|summary=Sadie's mother always said that she was a dreamer, her mind never on what she should be doing.  She lives by the River Thames at Greenwich and she loves to spend hours at The Maritime Museum or gazing at Cutty Sark.
+
|isbn=1803510056
 
 
''Her class had gone one rainy afternoon''<br>
 
''When all the houses cowered in the gloom,''<br>
 
''To the Maritime Museum''.  
 
 
Her imagination was fired.  She'd love to sail the oceans on an ancient sailing ship and went back regularly. One day she fell asleep under a glass case (it's the one where Nelson's Trafalgar breeches are on show) and missed the closing bell and the attendant's warning shout.  When she woke (hard floors don't make comfy beds) she was in the midst of an adventure that she could never have imagined in a world of dolphins, pirates, mermaids and treasure.
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Kristen O'Neal
+
|author=Jenny Valentine
|title=Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses
+
|title=Us in the Before and After
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Teens
 
|genre=Teens
|summary= Having recently been diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease, Priya has to come to terms with the fact that she may be in constant pain for the rest of her life. She joins ''Oof Ouch My Bones'', an online support group where she talks to a bunch of other teens living with chronic illnesses. They talk about their troubles and help each other out, while also providing an escape to just joke and mess around. When Brigid—one of her closest friends—doesn't respond to the chat for a while, Priya becomes concerned. She decides to steal her parents' car and drive to Brigid's house to check up on her. But what she doesn't expect to find there is a werewolf in the basement – and for that werewolf to be the girl she has been talking to online for the past few months.
+
|summary=Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time.  But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable.   Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together.
|isbn=1683692349
+
|isbn=1471196585
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=1787333175
 +
|title=You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here
 +
|author=Benji Waterhouse
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Popular Science
 +
|summary=I was tempted to read ''You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here'' after enjoying Adam Kay's first book {{amazonurl|isbn=1509858636|title=This is Going to Hurt}}, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. ''You Don't Have to be Mad...'' promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist.  I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding.
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Mariana Enriquez
 +
|title=A Sunny Place for Shady People
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre=Short Stories
 +
|summary=Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture.  
 +
|isbn=1803511230
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Mercedes Helnwein
+
|author=Onyi Nwabineli
|title=Slingshot
+
|title=Allow Me to Introduce Myself
|rating=3
+
|rating=4.5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gracie Welles has resigned herself to being lonely. As a secret illegitimate daughter of a man with a "real" family, she is used to not being a priority in people's lives. But when she defends a random boy in her class with her slingshot, her simple existence is changed for good. No longer can she spend her time writing novels in solitude, for her life now has a boy in it that she never asked for: Wade Scholfield.
+
|summary=Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her.  Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire.  Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time?
|isbn=152905818X
+
|isbn=0861546873
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B005FM76AA
+
|author=David Chadwick
|title=The Duke's Children
+
|title=Headload of Napalm
|author=Anthony Trollope
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=The story opens to probably the worst news of all: Lady Glencora Palliser is dead.  Her husband, Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, is nearly paralysed by grief and struggling - at the same time - to adjust to no longer being prime minister, or even in office. He seeks to protect and guide his three adult children, which is easier said than done when none of them wishes to ''be'' guided. Silverbridge (his elder son, actually called Plantagenet, but always known by his title) and Gerald are destined to be sent down from Oxford and Cambridge respectively and to run up gambling debts, occasionally in eye-watering sums. Lady Helen has fallen in love with - and wishes to marry - Frank Tregear, the penniless son of a poor squire, which the Duke cannot countenance, not least because he sees echos of what might have happened when he married Lady Glencora. He's about to learn that parents do not always get their way.
+
|summary= It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until....
 +
|isbn= B0D321VJ76
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Goldy Moldavsky
+
|author=Tom Percival
|title=The Last Girl
+
|title=The Wrong Shoes
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
+
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary= Rachel Chavez is the new girl at Manchester Prep. A school filled to the brim with the richest children in the city – and Rachel doesn't belong. She's not rich, she has no ties to some royal family in Serbia, and most of all, she spends the majority of her spare time watching horror movies as a source of comfort. She struggles to find anyone to connect with, until one day she stumbles upon the Mary Shelley Club. A secret society with one aim: pull off the best prank in true horror movie style, and unless someone screams, you have failed. Rachel becomes immediately engrossed in the competition. But as the pranks escalate, and Rachel finally feels like she has found her place in this school, things start to go wrong; a masked figure keeps showing up to the pranks, and people begin to get hurt. When the competition then takes a deadly turn, Rachel must figure out who this masked figure is before it's too late.
+
|summary=Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope.  He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
|isbn=0755501527
+
|isbn=1398527122
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Polly Barton
+
|author=Sylvie Cathrall
|title=Fifty Sounds
+
|title=A Letter to the Luminous Deep
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=5
|genre=Politics and Society
+
|genre=Science Fiction
|summary= Where do I start? I could start with where Barton herself starts, with the question ''Why Japan?'' Japan has been on my radar for a while and if the world hadn't gone into melt-down I would have visited by now. I may get there later this year, but I am not hopeful. And like Barton, I don't know the answer to the question ''why Japan?'' She explains her feelings in respect of the question in the first essay, which is on the sound ''giro' '' – which she describes as being, among other things, the sound of ''every party where you have to introduce yourself''.
+
|summary= There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them.
|isbn=1913097501
+
|isbn= 0356522776
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Lucy Holland
+
|isbn=1786482126
|title=Sistersong
+
|title=The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway)
|rating=5
+
|author=Elly Griffiths
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=Sistersong is part of a genre I particularly enjoy, the modern retelling of folk and fairy tales. These stories, for most of us, are a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role of women. Sistersong is a perfect example of a modern retelling done well, the plot is handled with care, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters to come to life, to feel real and human, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age they live in. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end.
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=1529039037
+
|summary=Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder?  Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson.  It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1529124255
+
|author=Joan Didion
|title=The Whispers
+
|title=The Year of Magical Thinking
|author=Heidi Perks
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Thrillers
+
|genre=Autobiography
|summary=We know straight away that there's going to be a body.  It's on the beach under Crayne's Cliff near the town of Clearwater and it's new year's day. To understand what happened we're going to have to go back to the previous September.  Grace Goodwin has a soft Australian accent - she's lived there since her teens and now, in her mid-thirties, she's returned to her home town to live. Her husband, Graham, works in Singapore and she and her eight-year-old daughter, Matilda, might as well be in the lovely apartment she's found. Grace's best friend, Anna Robinson, is still in Clearwater and she has an eight-year-old child too.  Ethan's in the class Matilda will be joining.  It's perfect!
+
|summary=This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear.
 +
|isbn=0007216858
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Sarah Sultoon
+
|isbn=0008551324
|title=The Source
+
|title=The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie)
|rating=2.5
+
|author=Neil Lancaster
|genre=Thrillers
+
|rating=4.5
|summary=1996. Essex. Thirteen-year-old schoolgirl Carly lives in a disenfranchised town dominated by a military base, struggling to care for her baby sister while her mum sleeps off another binge. When her squaddie brother brings food and treats, and offers an exclusive invitation to army parties, things start to look a little less bleak...
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=1913193594
+
|summary=It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants.  And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date.  Not much to ask, is it?  The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B004O37B6A
+
|isbn=0241678412
|title=The Prime Minister
+
|title=The Proof of My Innocence
|author=Anthony Trollope
+
|author=Jonathan Coe
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=Thrillers
|summary=Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, is the prime minister of a coalition government but he's privately enraged at the seemingly unstoppable rise of Ferdinand LopezLopex is exotic - some describe him as Jewish, others as Portuguese but the truth is that no one knows and Lopez is not going to explain.  The ladies of society, even Palliser's own wife, Lady Glencora, are supporters but after Lopez makes an advantageous marriage Palliser is placed in the position of having to support his wife's actions when Lopez loses a by-electionThe Duke's payment of Lopez' election expenses in an attempt to stem gossip about his wife will come back to haunt him.
+
|summary=Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated.  She's back home, living with her parents and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow AirportAll those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing.  The situation improves when 'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida.  Christopher Swann (described by some as a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University in the 1980sIt plans to push the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to act.
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Jessie Greengrass
+
|title=Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People?
|title=The High House
+
|author=Claire Dederer
|rating=4.5
+
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Charles Darwin taught that all living matter evolved to pass on its genetic material with the implied belief that your progeny will then pass on theirs. However, that train of thought is slowly seems to have fallen out of favour. Today's young generation are discovering that their parents and their parents' parents did not seem to think that far ahead. Or they did think that far ahead and thought "it's not my problem" or "there's nothing I can do". Raising a child and living in a world on the precipice of catastrophe is what drives ''The High House'' by Jessie Greengrass. This is not a science-fiction novel. This is our reality. This is the life our children and their children will have to live.
+
|summary=Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a ''biography of the audience'' in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary ''cancel culture''. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of ''monstrous men'' as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice.
|isbn=1800750072
+
|isbn=1399715070
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author=Ruth Hogan
+
|isbn=1739526910
|title=Madame Burova
+
|title=Where I've Not Been Lost
 +
|author=Glen Sibley
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages of life in the early 1970s, all vaguely connected.  So we have a bullied half-cast boy (as he would have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting to become a singer, and chiefly, Imelda, the third generation of Madame Burova, ''Tarot-Reader, Palmist and Clairvoyant'', to use her family's sea-front booth. The singer, the scryer and the sufferer's mother will all become staff at a revamped holiday camp, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo for the first time in the family stall. We also see her on her last day, fifty years later, in possession of a pair of letters that will change everything for a woman called Billie.  Just who is she, and who delivered the secrets about her to Imelda, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?
+
|summary=''One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities.''
|isbn=152937331X
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|author= Jonathan Stroud
+
|isbn=0008405026
|title= The Outlaws Scarlett and Browne
+
|title=A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11)
|rating= 4
+
|author=Jane Casey
|genre= Teens
+
|rating=5
|summary= Scarlett McCain is an outlaw, rejecting the draconian conformity of the Surviving Towns and Faith Houses to wander the wildlands between the Seven Kingdoms of Britain, robbing banks and shooting other outlaws to keep herself alive. But then she meets Albert Browne, a dark boy with dark powers and a darker past. With mysterious militiamen hunting them down, they plan to flee to the mythical Free Isles of the London Lagoon. Together, they must brave man-eating wildlife, the cannibalistic Tainted and all the horrors of post-apocalyptic society to reach the Free Isles, but will they be any more accepted there than they are in the rest of Britain?
+
|genre=Crime
|isbn=1406394815
+
|summary=It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night.  She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder.  Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced.
 
}}
 
}}
 +
 
{{Frontpage
 
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B08R7LXQ9S
+
|isbn=B0DGDJRHYD
|title=Remy: A book about believing in yourself
+
|title=Nowhere Man
|author=Mayuri Naidoo and Caroline Siegal
+
|author=Deborah Stone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=For Sharing
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Remy is feeling miserable. He's let himself down ''again''. The school bully Jayden, together with his sidekicks Ryan and Brandon, have been laughing at Remy, calling him names because he is short and has small eyes. They are mean but they are not stupid. They are careful to wind up Remy when nobody can see and then push him just that little bit further when the other kids are around. So, when Remy reacts, it looks as though he was the instigator. And then he gets into trouble at school and the teachers don't believe him when he tries to explain what happened.
+
|summary=In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done.
}}
 
{{Frontpage
 
|isbn=B00474HVX4
 
|title=Phineas Redux
 
|author=Anthony Trollope
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=It's some time since we heard from [[Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope|Phineas Finn]]. Having succeeded in parliament and achieved a paying position he fell out with those who provided his income and returned to Ireland where he married Mary, his childhood sweetheart.  He was fortunate to get a job in Cork (or Dublin - recollections may vary) and seemed settled into a life of domesticity.  To bring Finn back, Trollope had to kill off poor Mary and Phineas emerges in London as a childless widower with a legacy from an aunt who died at just the right time to allow the move to be possible.
 
 
}}
 
}}

Latest revision as of 09:34, 22 December 2024

Reviews by readers from all the many walks of literary life. With author interviews, features and top tens. You'll be sure to find something you'll want to read here. Dig in!

Find us on Facebook Facebook, Follow us on Twitter Twitter, Follow us on Instagram Instagram and LinkedIn

There are currently 16,126 reviews at TheBookbag.

Want to learn more about us?

The Best New Books

Read new reviews by category.

Read the latest features.

1529077745.jpg

Review of

The Dark Wives (D I Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves

4.5star.jpg Crime

A man walking his dog in the early morning discovered the body of a man in the park near Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The dead man was Josh - one of the care workers who was due to work a shift the night before but who had never turned up. D I Vera Stanhope is called in to investigate the murder - but her only clue is the disappearance of one of the residents, fourteen-year-old Chloe Spencer. Some people believe that Chloe was responsible for the death but Vera thinks this is unlikely as the girl's diary makes it clear that she adored Josh. She knows that she has to find Chloe to discover what happened to Josh. Full Review

1399613073.jpg

Review of

Moral Injuries by Christie Watson

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

Olivia, Laura and Anjali met on the first day of medical school and their friendship would keep them inseparable for a quarter of a century. Olivia is ruthlessly ambitious, which is a bonus when you aim to be a cardiothoracic surgeon. Laura is a perfectionist and a trauma doctor. Anjali is the free spirit of the group and she becomes a GP. When we first meet them they're at a drug and alcohol-fuelled party and it's going to end in tragedy. We don't know who suffered the tragedy or the consequences. Twenty-five years later there will be an eerily similar event that will impact the three friends. This time, it's their teenage children who are involved. Full Review

0241636604.jpg

Review of

The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

If you were to bring up an image of a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader. Full Review

000862657X.jpg

Review of

Lover Birds by Leanne Egan

4.5star.jpg Teens

When new girl, Isabel, moves to Lou's hometown of Liverpool from London Lou immediately feels Isabel's disdain for everything around her. A misunderstanding between them leaves them hating each other, but Lou feels her pulse racing every time she looks at Isabel or speaks with her, and that's definitely because Isabel makes her feel so cross, isn't it? Because Lou is straight, isn't she? Even though none of her relationships with boys have gone very well so far, and she's never had a good kiss with any of them? So she just finds herself watching Isabel, and wanting to hang out with her because fighting with her is fun, and she definitely just hates Isabel, doesn't she? Full Review

0571365469.jpg

Review of

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Full Review

1009473085.jpg

Review of

The Conservative Effect 2010 - 2024 by Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton (Editors)

5star.jpg Politics and Society

Sometimes it's simpler to explain a book by describing what it isn't and that applies to The Conservative Effect: 2010-2024 - 14 Wasted Years?. If you're looking for an easy read which will deliver the inside story about what really happened on certain occasions, then this isn't the book for you. If that's what you're looking for, I don't think Anthony Seldon's book, Johnson at 10, can be bettered for those tumultuous years. It's a compelling read and should be compulsory for anyone who thinks Johnson should return to politics. The Conservative Effect is an entirely different beast. It's the seventh book in a series which looks at the impact a government has made and co-editor Sir Anthony Seldon regards this as the most important. This book follows the well-established format: a series of experts from various fields review the state of the nation when the coalition took over in 2010, the changes that occurred and the situation in 2024. Full Review

B0DNVWMYP2.jpg

Review of

Chimera by Mark Lingane

4.5star.jpg Science Fiction

The survivor stumbles forward, her steps echoing in the oppressive silence. Her heart pounds like a jackhammer. She doesn’t know where she’s heading. All she remembers is running. Terror chasing. Everything lost.

Broken and fragmented recollections tumble around her head. Fear courses through her body. Her breaths come in shallow, ragged gasps as desperation claws at her throat. Dehydration consumes her, and a raging thirst feels unquenchable.

There must be a way out. As she moves through the foreign area, memories begin to gel. Disaster had ploughed through her life—not just hers, everyone’s.

As our survivor struggles to orient herself, she's guided by a robot, which looks human-made, but she can't be sure. It says it is. It says she must try not to injure herself. Guided to an interview with an eerie, terrifying group of aliens, she desperately tries to make sense of flashes of memory - environmental degradation, deals done and then betrayed, horrifying rituals covering desperate attempts to survive - and to attempt to explain how she came to be here, apparently the last human being alive. Full Review

0008666482.jpg

Review of

The Last Life of Lori Mills by Max Boucherat

4.5star.jpg Confident Readers

We meet Lori on the first evening she's got the house to herself – no neighbour to pop in, babysitter poorly, mother at work, just an avidly rule-breaking eleven year old, on her lonesome. What could possibly go wrong? Snuggled in a blanket fort, she has one main intention, and that is to log on to Voxminer, the world-building, critter-collecting game that is a hit in Lori's world. But first Lori has a tiny inkling that this stormy night doesn't find herself entirely on her own, and then she finds something even more spooky. For the server she and her bestie and nobody else should be able to enter shows signs of tampering. When malevolent eyes spark up on her phone screen, and her safe place in the game has been doctored – well, where is a girl to turn? Full Review

0241619785.jpg

Review of

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

5star.jpg Short Stories

As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. Full Review

0008385068.jpg

Review of

The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

It's midsummer on the Dorset coast and guests gather at The Manor. It's their opening weekend and splendid celebrations are promised. It's all headed up by Francesca Meadows. The Manor was her ancestral home and she's converted it into an impressive retreat for the wealthy and famous. Her husband, Owen, was the architect and work is still ongoing on parts of the site. The heat is oppressive and amongst the guests are enemies as well as friends. Old scores are going to be settled and it won't be long before a body is found. Full Review

0141186356.jpg

Review of

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Giovanni's Room follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. Full Review

0241645441.jpg

Review of

Wild East by Ashley Hickson-Lovence

4.5star.jpg Teens

Written in verse, this is Ronny's story, a young black fourteen year old boy from Hackney who suddenly has to move to Norwich and start at a mostly white school. The move is initiated by Ronny's mum who is worried for Ronny's safety after a tragic event, and so Ronny finds himself trying to settle in a new town, a new school, and keep himself out of trouble. He listens to music constantly, and has always dreamed of being a rapper. But now, in this new school, his teacher encourages him to be part of a poetry writing workshop group and, slowly, Ronny begins to see the connections between rap and poetry, and the power of creativity and crafting your words. Full Review

1635866847.jpg

Review of

The Lavender Companion by Jessica Dunham and Terry Barlin Vesci

4.5star.jpg Lifestyle

It's strange, the things that make you immediately feel that this is the book for you. Before I started reading The Lavender Companion, I visited the author's website and there's a picture of a slice of chocolate cake on the homepage. I don't eat cakes and desserts - but I wanted that cake viscerally. (There's a recipe in the book, which I'm avoiding with some difficulty!!) Then I started reading the book and I was told to make a mess of it. Notes in the margins are sanctioned. You get to fold down the corners of pages. You suspect that smears of butter would not be a problem. I loved this book already. Full Review

1803510056.jpg

Review of

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

This novel, winner of the International Booker Prize in 2016 and penned by an author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature this year, is as close to unputdownable as it gets. It more than lives up to the acclaim. The story introduces uncanny characters with fragile, vividly tangible bodies yet unknowable, elusive souls. Full Review

1471196585.jpg

Review of

Us in the Before and After by Jenny Valentine

5star.jpg Teens

Elk and Mab are best friends, or more than that even, their friendship is a once in a lifetime connection. They meet as children one day on a trip out but unfortunately they don't get each other's contact details at the time. But then chance brings them back together, and they are inseparable. Something has happened though, something terrible and tragic, and now they must work through their grief, and their friendship, together. Full Review

1787333175.jpg

Review of

You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here by Benji Waterhouse

5star.jpg Popular Science

I was tempted to read You Don't Have to be Mad to Work Here after enjoying Adam Kay's first book This is Going to Hurt, a glorious mixture of insight into the workings of the NHS, humour and autobiography. You Don't Have to be Mad... promised the same elements but moved from physical problems to mental illness and the work of a psychiatrist. I did wonder whether it was acceptable to be looking for humour in this setting but the laughter is directed at a situation rather than a person and it is always delivered with empathy and understanding. Full Review

1803511230.jpg

Review of

A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez

5star.jpg Short Stories

Mariana Enriquez writes horror that is disturbingly real, achieving this uncanny familiarity by basing her paranormal plots on gritty realities: her settings include an abandoned field full of disused refrigerators due to an urban planning mishap, an overcrowded homeless shelter and a crime-ridden neighbourhood where safety meetings are routine - all within Argentina. The circumstances of her characters are so plausible that the supernatural or otherworldly horror which seeps into these spaces adopts a similarly tangible texture. Full Review

0861546873.jpg

Review of

Allow Me to Introduce Myself by Onyi Nwabineli

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Anuri spent her childhood on display to the world, thanks to her step-mother Ophelia's increasingly popular presence on social media, where she posted every step of Anuri's childhood for sponsorships and influencer deals and, basically, monetary gain. Now Anuri is in her twenties and she is slowly trying to regain her confidence and to get her life back, suing her step-mother to take down the content about her. Anuri is battling alcoholism, failing to start her PhD, undergoing therapy and secretly abusing people online and receiving money from them for doing so. Most importantly, she is desperately worried about her little sister, who is the new focus of Ophelia's online empire. Can she save her sister, and perhaps herself and her relationship with her father at the same time? Full Review

B0D321VJ76.jpg

Review of

Headload of Napalm by David Chadwick

4.5star.jpg Thrillers

It's September 1973 in Hicks, California. Hicks is a Mojave desert town of a few thousand people with its nearest neighbours of LA and Las Vegas both a significant drive away. Not much happens in Hicks. A silver mine and a defence contractor are the main local employers but otherwise, there's not much of note other than dive bars and Joshua trees. Life is quiet, until.... Full Review

1398527122.jpg

Review of

The Wrong Shoes by Tom Percival

5star.jpg Confident Readers

Will's life is difficult, in a multitude of ways. He is bullied because he has 'the wrong shoes', he has the wrong shoes because his dad can't work and doesn't have enough money for even the most basic of things like food, and his dad can't work because he lost his job at the college, was working a cash-in-hand job on a building site and had an accident. Throw into that mix the fact that his mum and dad are separated, and Will's life seems bleak in every direction. And yet, he still has a tiny amount of hope. He is good at art, and clings to the moments of joy when he is drawing, that feel like a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Full Review

0356522776.jpg

Review of

A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

5star.jpg Science Fiction

There are few greater joys than a book which lives up to a compelling premise. And this is one of them. Full Review

1786482126.jpg

Review of

The Janus Stone (Dr Ruth Galloway) by Elly Griffiths

4.5star.jpg Crime

Builders were demolishing an old house in Norwich - the site was going to hold seventy-five 'luxury' apartments - when they discovered the bones of a child beneath a doorway. There was no skull. Was this a ritual killing or murder? Inevitably, Dr Ruth Galloway finds herself working with DCI Harry Nelson. It's difficult as Ruth knows, but Nelson doesn't, that she is pregnant with his child as a result of the one night they spent together some three months ago. Her condition will be obvious before long, not least because Ruth is prone to sudden bouts of sickness. Full Review

0007216858.jpg

Review of

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

4.5star.jpg Autobiography

This book is Joan Didion's heartbreaking autobiographical account of the grief she endured following her husband's sudden death. Books that shed light on taboo topics like death are such a beautiful and necessary resource to help people feel less alone. Didion unpicks unpleasant feelings surrounding death like self-pity, denial and delusion and makes them utterly normal, lends them a human face to wear. Full Review

0008551324.jpg

Review of

The Devil You Know (D S Max Craigie) by Neil Lancaster

4.5star.jpg Crime

It's unusual for anyone from the Hardie family to approach the police. Neither side likes or has any respect for the other. But Davie Hardie is struggling in prison and he's prepared to tell the police where the body of a missing person is buried and who was responsible for her death. This person, he promises, is someone big and it will be worth the police doing what he wants. And what he wants is to be transferred to an open prison to serve the remainder of his sentence and to get an early parole date. Not much to ask, is it? The new Deputy Police Constable doesn't think so and she's even prepared to do the other thing that Hardie demanded - make certain that DS Max Craigie and anyone who works with him is kept well away from what's happening. Full Review

0241678412.jpg

Review of

The Proof of My Innocence by Jonathan Coe

4star.jpg Thrillers

Life after university hasn't worked out quite the way that Phyl anticipated. She's back home, living with her parents and on a zero-hours contract serving sushi to tourists at terminal 5 of Heathrow Airport. All those ideas of becoming a writer seem to have come to nothing. The situation improves when 'Uncle' Chris comes to stay and introduces Phyl to his adopted daughter, Rashida. Christopher Swann (described by some as a lefty blogger) is investigating a think tank which originated at Cambridge University in the 1980s. It plans to push the government in a more extreme direction and is ready to act. Full Review

1399715070.jpg

Review of

Monsters: What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? by Claire Dederer

3star.jpg Politics and Society

Dederer sets out to unveil what she calls a biography of the audience in a deconstructed, thoroughly nitpicked, exploration of the old aphorism of separating the art from the artist in the context of contemporary cancel culture. Dederer's work is original and expressive. The reader gets the impression that the thoughts simply sprang and leapt from her brilliant mind and onto the page. In particular, the prologue packs a punch: she simultaneously condemns and exalts the director Roman Polanski, an artist she personally admires for his art, and yet despises for his actions. This model of monstrous men as she calls them, is consistent for the first few chapters, interrogating the likes of Woody Allen, Michael Jackson and Pablo Picasso. Her critical voice is acutely present throughout, never slipping into anonymity and maintaining her own subjectivity, as she holds it so dearly, and a personal, rather than collective voice. Full Review

1739526910.jpg

Review of

Where I've Not Been Lost by Glen Sibley

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

One year after a suicide attempt blows apart musician Brian O’Malley's life, he arrives in an unfamiliar Devon town to recover. Living with an unexpected housemate at his former manager’s holiday home, he dreams of reconnecting with everything he has lost. But as those tentative plans falter, he becomes swept up in a local world of unlikely friendships, mobile discos and surprising romantic possibilities. Full Review

0008405026.jpg

Review of

A Stranger in the Family (Maeve Kerrigan 11) by Jane Casey

5star.jpg Crime

It's sixteen years since nine-year-old Rosalie Marshall disappeared from her bed one summer night. She was never found and the investigation ground to a halt. Now, her mother, Helena, and her father are dead in their bed. Initially, it looks like a straightforward murder/suicide but there's something about the positioning of the bodies that makes DS Maeve Kerrigan and her boss DI Josh Derwent suspicious. What looked as though it was going to be an open-and-shut case is now a complex double murder. Kerrigan is convinced that the explanation lies in Rosalie's disappearance: others (such as Derwent's boss, Una Burt) are less convinced. Full Review

B0DGDJRHYD.jpg

Review of

Nowhere Man by Deborah Stone

4star.jpg General Fiction

In a quiet suburban house, Patrick is making his final plans. A meticulous man, he makes sure of every preparation, down to the last detail. Some last reflections, and then he says goodbye to his wife, the world, and his life. It's horribly sad. At work in her shop, his wife Diana is fending off yet another phone call about her ageing and ailing mother, who needs extricating from yet another accident. It will be a while before Diana realises what Patrick has done. Full Review