Review: Big Little Lies

Sometimes it’s the little lies that turn out to be the most lethal.

Madeline is a force to be reckoned with. She’s funny and biting, passionate, she remembers everything and forgives no one.

Celeste is the kind of beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare. Celeste and her husband look set to become the king and queen of the school parent body. But royalty often comes at a price.

New to town, single mom Jane is so young that another mother mistakes her for the nanny. Jane is sad beyond her years and harbours secret doubts about her son. But why?

3.5* Read!

Review: Brooklyn

It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time.

Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed. She is far from home – and homesick. And just as she takes tentative steps towards friendship, and perhaps something more, Eilis receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There she will be confronted by a terrible dilemma – a devastating choice between two worlds.

3.5* Read!

Review: December Girl

Molly Thomas is a feisty, independent soul, born on the Winter Solstice. At every stage of her life, she has faced troubles. As a young woman, her family are evicted from their home at Christmas. Molly swears vengeance on the jealous neighbour and land agent responsible, Flann Montgomery. Then in 1896, her baby son is taken from his pram. While Molly searches the streets for little Oliver, the police are called but her baby is gone.

Why does trouble seem to follow Molly? And will she ever find out what happened to her child? December Girl is a tale of family bonds, love, revenge and murder.

4* Read!

Review: How To Be Single

It’s the most annoying question, and they just can’t help asking you.
You’ll be asked it at family gatherings, particularly weddings.
Men will ask you on first dates.
Therapists will ask you over and over again.
It’s the question that has no good answer.
It’s the question that when people stop asking it, makes you feel even worse – why are you single?

3.5* Read!

Review: Truth or Dare

How far is too far when it comes to the people you love? Claire Casey hates being the centre of attention. But if it means getting Sef Malik to notice her, it’s a risk she’s happy to take. Sef is prepared to do anything to help his recently disabled brother. But this means putting Claire’s love – and life – on the line. Because when you’re willing to risk everything, what is there left to lose?

3.5* Read!

Review: Eleanor & Park

Eleanor first meets Park, she thinks he’s obnoxious. When Park first meets Eleanor, he thinks she’s weird. It is hate at first sight. But as they suffer each other’s company in silence on the bus rides from and to home every day, Eleanor and Park realise that first impressions can be deceiving.

3* Read!

Hello, Goodbye and Everything In Between Book Cover

Review: Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between

One night. A life-changing decision. And a list…
Of course Clare made a list. She creates lists for everything. That’s just how she is.
But tonight is Clare and Aidan’s last night before college and this list will decide their future, together or apart.

It takes them on a roller-coaster ride through their past – from the first hello in science class to the first conversation at a pizza joint, their first kiss at the beach and their first dance in a darkened gymnasium – all the way up to tonight. A night of laughs, fresh hurts, last-minute kisses and an inevitable goodbye. But will it be goodbye forever or goodbye for now?

3* Read!

Review: The Secret History

Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and for ever.

3* Read!

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Book Cover

Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.

While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

*SPOILER FREE*

3.5* Read!

Review: Jam and Roses

Three sisters are growing up in 1920s Bermondsey – the larder of London – with its bustling docks, its spice mill, tannery and factories. Southwells jam factory is where many of the girls work. And Milly Colman knows she’s lucky. At Southwells she can have a laugh with her mates. She’s quick and strong and never misses a day’s work. She needs to be. Because at homes things are very different.

The Colman household is ruled by the tyrannical rages of the old man – her father. Often Milly feels she is the only thing protecting her mother and younger sisters from his murderous violence. At least autumn hop-picking in Kent gives all the Colman women a heavenly respite. But it is here, on one golden September night, that Milly makes the mistake of her life and finds her courage and strength tested as never before.

2.5* Read!

Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops Book Cover

Review: Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, Books 1 & 2

A John Cleese Twitter question [‘What is your pet peeve?’], first sparked the ‘Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops’ blog, which grew over three years into one bookseller’s collection of ridiculous conversations on the shop floor. From ‘Did Beatrix Potter ever write a book about dinosaurs?’ to the hunt for a paperback which could forecast the next year’s weather; and from ‘I’ve forgotten my glasses, please read me the first chapter’ to’Excuse me… is this book edible?’

3.5* Read!

Life on the Refrigerator Door Book Cover

Review: Life on the Refrigerator Door

Life on the Refrigerator Door is told exclusively through notes exchanged by Claire and her mother, Elizabeth, during the course of a life-altering year. Their story builds to an emotional crescendo when Elizabeth is diagnosed with breast cancer. Stunningly sad but ultimately uplifting, this is a clever, moving, and original portrait of the relationship between a daughter and mother. It is about how we live our lives constantly rushing, and never making time for those we love. It is also an elegy to how much can be said in so few words, if only we made the time to say them.

3* Read!

Review: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a consummate summary of the ‘roaring twenties’ and a devastating exposé of the shallowness of the ‘Jazz Age’. Through the narration of Nick Carraway, the reader is taken into the superficially glittering world of the mansions that lined the Long Island shore in the 1920’s, to encounter Nick’s cousin Daisy, her brash but wealthy husband Tom Buchanan, Jay Gatsby and the dark mystery that surrounds him.

2.5* Read!

Review: Twenty Questions For Gloria

Gloria is tired of her ordinary life. She barely recognizes the free-spirited girl she used to be in the unadventurous teenager she has become. So when a mysterious boy bent on breaking the rules strolls into her classroom, Gloria is ready to fall under his spell.

Uman is funny, confident and smart. He does whatever he likes and doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him. The only people for him are the mad ones, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn. He is everything Gloria wishes to be. He can whisk her away from the life she loathes and show her a more daring, more exciting one, in which the only limits are the boundaries of her own boldness. But Uman in not all he seems and by the time she learns the truth about him, she is a long way from home and everyone wants to know, Where’s Gloria?

3.5* Read!

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender Book Cover

Review: The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender

Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava – in all other ways a normal girl – is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition, and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, 16 year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.

3.5* Read!

Review: Kiss Me First

On the internet, we can be anyone we choose. No one knows who we really are. Sheltered and obsessive, Leila spends more time online than out in the real world. So she seems the ideal person to take over the virtual identity of the vivacious and fragile Tess, who wants to disappear. But even with all the facts at her fingertips, there are things that Leila can’t possibly know about Tess – or herself – until it is too late…

3.5* Read!