Would you go to a hen night/bachelorette party of a woman that you hadn’t seen since school? Nora does. Would you go even if you knew that you weren’t being invited to the wedding? Nora does. Yes it sounds implausible, but in the masterful hands of Ruth Ware, this horrendous social scenario becomes utterly plausible […]
When I was young I lived in London. All over London. Moving, as young renters do, approximately every twelve or eighteen months. What initially seemed like a fun way to live soon became a drag as flatmates moved in with boyfriends or went travelling. As I read JP Delaney’s novel, The Girl Before, I was […]
As with a silent companion, this book snuck up on me. I finished it two nights ago and have been thinking about it ever since as, just like a Henry James novel, I’m not entirely sure what I just read. Was it a descent into madness, was it a ghost story, a betrayal? What? What […]
I love the way The Drowned Detective, by Neil Jordan, is written. It just feels so incredibly oblique and dreamlike, which works well in the confusion of the story itself and our inability as reader to tell the difference between what is real and imagined. Does the title of the book refer to the fact […]
Imagine yourself in Bob Hope Airport, Burbank, Los Angeles, at about 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. There is only one shop open because your flight is the last one leaving. That shop only seems to sell candy, pop and the new Amy Schumer book, which although doubtless hilarious, you don’t really feel like reading in […]
Two words spring to mind when I consider the novels of Simone St. James: literary crack. Truly, I have no idea exactly why I enjoy her writing so much, but I have now read all four of her novels and bought them for my mother too. I can hardly wait for her fifth novel to […]
Spoiler Alert!!!! Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes is the follow-up to You. If, like me, you loved You, then this is an utterly unmissable sequel. I bought it whilst reading Little Women and naturally enough found myself skipping a week’s worth of Daughter imposed reading deadlines in order to binge read this beauty. The problem […]
You by Caroline Kepnes is the very definition of creepy. It’s the kind of book that leaves you wanting to give yourself a good scrubbing after you read it. It’s the kind of book that makes you pretty sure you are never giving your children a phone, a computer, access to anything online ever again. […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 