The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo had been sitting on my bedside table ever since I finished Daisy Jones and the Six. Daisy Jones had really enthused me about the writing of Taylor Jenkins Reid and I wanted more. The weird thing is, that once I bought this book, I let it languish. I had […]
Sometimes I can’t help but pause and wonder whether, as a reader, the books we read find us, rather than vice versa? This idea has been playing around in my brain over the last few days, as I finished two of the loveliest books, both of which provided much needed respite from the pandemic that […]
If you want to read something unusual then pick up My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. I bought this novel completely blind, as is so often the way, tempted by a clever cover. I’d seen it in the UK over the summer, but when I visited my local bookstore in the fall, […]
A few years ago, probably decades in the land of celebrities but a heartbeat ago to the rest of us, Charlize Theron dated Sean Penn. You probably don’t really care, after all, what are the lives of celebrities to us mere mortals, but for a brief period of time they were an intriguing ‘it couple’, […]
There’s a fighting chance that this week’s book review should actually be part of last week’s because they’re by the same writer and I read them in quick succession. Please don’t worry, I’ve now read everything Abbi Waxman has written, so there won’t be a follow up (although secretly, or not, I really wish that […]
There are some books that are like a warm, comforting blanket when you read them. They wrap themselves around you and immerse you in their world. It’s a happy place, somewhere that you like and want to be. These are the books that we want to take on holiday or recover with, the books that […]
There are certain books that you read which are impossible not to find profoundly disturbing. I’m not talking here of murders stories or supernatural tales, but the rather more mundane. The novels where you find yourself questioning whether something so simple is actually possible? The problem being that, if you believe it is, then could […]
Over the last few weeks of summer it felt like everything in my life suddenly went tits up. If you are American and reading this, then I should explain that this is our British equivalent of ‘when life gives you lemons…..’, but actually it’s far more coarse and far more aptly describes how things feel […]
Middle age teaches us many things, one of which is that you never know what goes on in someone else’s marriage. At the end of the day, once the doors are closed and the curtains drawn, our dearest friends could be hanging from the chandelier with a bottle of Grey Goose in one hand and […]
If you want a book that is genuinely going to make you smile this summer, then you could do a lot worse than purchasing or borrowing The Overdue Life of Amy Byler by Kelly Harms. It’s a total enjoyment fest! I had never heard of Kelly Harms, but by chance came across her whilst on […]
Nutshell Book Reviews 