Tag: Fiction
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Our Beautiful Mess by Adele Parks: Messy Families and Buried Secrets
This was my first Adele Parks book (a Goldsboro Books Crime Collective pick for me), and it definitely won’t be my last. Our Beautiful Mess centres on Connie and her family over Christmas – a time that should feel warm and familiar, but very quickly spirals into something far more complicated. Her daughter Fran returns…
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Babylonia by Costanza Casati: Power, Passion and a Woman Who Refuses to Stay Small
It took me a while to get round to reading Babylonia but having seen the reviews I was expecting a rich historical retelling. I kid you not, I came out of it completely obsessed. This book was bold, brutal, and utterly addictive storytelling at its finest – I genuinely could not put it down. Set…
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July Reading Wrap-Up
I’m not entirely sure how we’ve reached the end of July already, but somehow here we are – and I managed to read 7 books, and a grand total of 2,326 pages along the way. There was true crime, feminist non-fiction, memoir, forensic science, historical fiction and bit of literary fiction for good measure. A…
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All Fours by Miranda July: Wild, Weird and Unapologetically Honest
You know when you finish a book and just sit there like…huh. That was a lot. That was me with All Fours. It’s sharp, messy, clever, and undeniably Miranda July – which is to say, it will either completely click with you or leave you frustrated. For me, it was both. I gave it four…
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This Is Not A Game by Kelly Mullen: Chaos in a Locked-Room Whodunnit
You know when a book just delivers exactly what you hoped for – clever, cosy, a little bit camp, and absolutely cramped with red herrings? This was This Is Not a Game for me. A classic murder mystery in a snowed-in mansion, but with a quirky modern twist (and a lot of martinis). What’s it…
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Death at the White Hart by Chris Chibnall: A Cosy Whodunnit Worth the Wait
Let me start by saying Death at the White Hart was a slow-burn mystery – and I absolutely savoured it. You know those books that feel like curling up by the fire on a rainy evening? This one had that vibe in spades. It’s not a thriller that grabs you by the throat; instead it…
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The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden: Sensual, Suspenseful and Simmering with Secrets
I finally picked up The Safekeep after seeing it buzz around the Women’s Prize shortlist – and I’m so glad I did. This one’s not just a historical novel, or a slow-burn romance, or a psychological character study. It’s all three – and then some. We follow Isabel, who lives alone in her dead mother’s…
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Good Girl by Aria Aber: What it Means to Be Seen
Let me start by saying Good Girl absolutely wrecked me. Not in a sobbing-on-the-floor kind of way, but in that deep, disorienting, quietly-knocks-the-air-out-of-you way. I picked this up because it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and I was intrigued, given how much I loved the other longlisted and shortlisted books that I’d read. Aber…
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All The Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman: But I Kind of Loved Her
This books was exactly what I needed after a period of heavier reads. This one felt like a true palette cleanser – fun, fast-paced, and just the right amount of messed up. We meet Florence Grimes, a gloriously chaotic single mum with a past in a barely-famous girl band and a present that involves balloon…
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Perspectives by Laurent Binet: Whodunnit in Florence
Have you ever picked up a book and thought, “Wait…have I ever read anything quite like this before?”. That was me, immediately after reading the prologue of Persepctives by Laurent Binet. Told entirely through 176 letters exchanged between a host of very real, very dramatic figures from Renaissance Florence, Perspectives is part murder mystery, part…
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