Book Reviews July 2025
Blog · Posted July 30, 2025
Summer Reading Recommends…
There’s something wrong with these floor plans. Why were these houses designed like this and can the grisly idea proposed be anywhere close to the truth? Uketsu invites us to theorise alongside our narrator.
Experimental in structure, this makes for a speedy read, with a final chapter turning everything on its head – blending the fictional world of the novel with reality. I look forward to the author’s next creepy installment…
Piglettes by Clementine Beauvais
A welcome reissue of this simply lovely story – introducing the hilarious Mirielle, Astrid and Hakima to all those who haven’t met them yet (including me)!
After being voted the ugliest girls in their school, these three decide to wipe away their tears and cycle to Paris instead and sell sausages along the way. Sounds bonkers, but they have a plan…
Piglettes is the kind of book I wish I had when I was an uncertain teenager. It’s about taking control of your own story, about appreciating who you are and, most importantly, it’s about friendship.
Dry Cleaned by Joris Mertens
An honest, hard-working guy, François has bought a lottery ticket every week for 17 years. He’s overlooked at his job at the dry cleaners and the only highlight of his day is talking to Mary Yvonne and her daughter. On discovering a grisly scene when delivering to one property, his life could soon spiral out of control.
A moral tale of temptation with noir undertones. Sumptuous artwork lends a beauty to François’ somewhat dull routine, with a palette so vivid, you can almost smell the rain on the pavements.
Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
I usually turn to a thriller when I need a quick fix. The speed with which a good crime writer propels you through hundreds of pages never fails to impress me. But this one is different…
Ash’s dad Paddy has just died – pushed into an oncoming train. His widow Nina eventually forms a relationship with Nick, but Ash wonders if he is who he says he is. But what evidence does she really have, and will anyone listen to her anyway?
Lisa Jewell introduces us to Nick in all his guises and you’ll need to concentrate for this one! I ended up making a timeline so I could keep track of this nasty piece of work and all his victims. You emerge from this thankful to be living your life, not in the clutches of Jewell’s smooth-talking, truly frightening villain.
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
Thirtysomething academic, Nadia has been promoted to a coveted lectureship, secured by her paper on deradicalising ISIS brides. But a fragile relationship with her mother and the end of a love affair sends her fleeing to Baghdad, where she’s been recruited to set up a UN programme based on her ISIS work.
There she encounters Sara (an ISIS bride at 15yrs), and finds an unexpected emotional connection, seeing parallels between their lives and a powerful sense of what might have been.
The subject matter grabbed me immediately, but I wasn’t expecting it to be laugh out loud funny – Nadia has the sweary thing down and the UN office politics are very enjoyable. This is a rollercoaster of a book – bold, brave, hilarious, much like our (sometimes misguided) heroine.
Waist Deep by Linea Maja Ernst
Languid yet intense this extraordinary debut novel will transfix and transport you…
The heat of a Danish summer heightens the tensions between five university friends, now in their thirties, and their partners.
Together at a lakeside summer house in the woods, life has moved on in different directions since university and the friends now find themselves dealing with tensions and attractions through the lens of real adulthood. Love in its many forms is the background constant but the choices and “what if-ery” of desire, ambition, identity and fragile boundaries loosen the ties. Who will be undone by the end?
With language that is lush and fluid, characters perfectly drawn as vulnerable and real, and an idyllic setting, this is a novel to dive into and let wash over you.
The Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa
Welcome to the Hankyu Line, a commuter train running through Osaka and Kyoto. With chapters covering each station, we become observers of everyday life for these ordinary people. We learn of their troubles, their hopes and we see them forming connections with other passengers. I found myself wondering when we would see certain passengers again and hoping they were doing well.
Pick this up for an intake of pure solace. This book wants nothing more than to make you feel better.
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie
Vicky
Alex Lyons is a theatre critic with a fierce reputation. When he and Sophie head to the Edinburgh Fringe for the paper he thinks nothing of giving Hayley Sinclair a scathing one star review. But then he decides to sleep with her without telling her who he is…
When she finds out, Hayley transforms her entire show into The Alex Lyons Experience to call him out on everything he’s ever done. This soon escalates into pure hysteria. What Alex does and says are face-clawingly awful and completely unapologetic, but as it all unfolds you can’t help but read on at a (later) regretful pace.
Runcie covers a multitude: motherhood, grief, revenge, feminism, cancel-culture, privilege and toxic masculinity, all wrapped up in an impossibly funny narrative. It leaves you rethinking how you want to react to the world around you. As our narrator Sophie discovers in her personal life too, it is so easy to forget that there are always two sides to a story.
Jen
Having discovered Vicky started this novel the same evening I did, I should’ve put it aside and picked up something else in the interest of us booksellers being widely read…BUT I was hooked and simply couldn’t walk away from Alex, Sophie and Hayley.
Set in frantic Edinburgh during the International Festival and Fringe, this is a thought provoking and intense look at toxic masculinity and cancel culture written in a compulsive and yet witty manner. You will want to cover your eyes yet still keep turning the pages!
The fallout from Alex’s one night stand and one star * review makes for a five star ***** read!
Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth
For her sister’s 40th birthday, Sarah decides to take Juliette on a road trip around Scotland in a rented campervan. As well as the inevitable secrets that are unearthed between them, there is also something deeper happening. Through the repressed trauma and hilarious interactions, through the midlife reckoning and razor sharp wit, there is the unanswered question for Sarah: what does she actually want? In this refreshingly open discussion of female desire and comic coping mechanisms, perhaps she’ll never really know.
Revisiting teenage angst and parental neglect, the narrative propels you to a fiery and vengeful confrontation. And through it all? The kind of spiteful yet unending love that can only happen between sisters.
On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvey Balle
Prepare to be consumed by this thought-provoking meditation on time!
The eighteenth of November is replayed over and over… Tara has slipped through the cracks of time and wakes up to the same day but not in the same place depending on what she does on each eighteenth of November. In very deliberate, measured and repetitive language, Balle explores the nature of this inexplicable shift in time that only affects Tara.
Meditative and gentle, this short novel is a profound insight into how we leave traces in our lives, how we live our lives in time. A mindf**k to think on after you turn the last page…
But then you can jump straight into Volume II. There are seven books in the series which Balle has yet to complete.
Among Friends by Hal Ebbott
How well do we really know ourselves – and our closest friends and loved ones?
Ebbott’s debut novel is a vivid evocation of others’ inner lives and the telling of truths and honesty in relationships.
Longstanding friends Emmerson and Amos have a deep connection and the lives of their wives and daughters are just as intertwined. But when the unexpected occurs what happens to these perfect friends, those involved? Where do their loyalties lie?
Unsettling, tense and at times uncomfortable to read, this novel is compulsive!
Saltwater Mansions by David Whitehouse
A real-life missing person mystery that is a deep dive into the impact we have in the lives of others. Or rather the impact of absence!
Whitecross’ investigation into the complete disappearance of the mysterious Caroline Lane is sparked by an innocuous visit to the local hairdresser. As he tries to trace Lane, the people he meets have their own stories which nest in the wider picture. These extraordinary ordinary lives are given light with empathy and compassion.
As much an insight into the seaside town of Margate over recent years, I defy you not to be moved by this humane and sensitive portrait of loss, grief and the human condition.
So Far Gone by Jess Walter
A wry and witty caper of a novel… then you realise it’s given you more to think on than it initially seemed!
Rhys Kinnick, retired environmental journalist, is So Far Gone into his chosen reclusive life off grid in the North West of the US that he barely recognises his grandchildren when they appear on the doorstep of his tumbledown home in the forest. Their mother, his estranged daughter Bethany, has disappeared. Can Rhys, without mobile phone, car or people skills! rise to the occasion and help? Thus begins an emotional, quirky and often laugh out loud journey as Rhys and a collection of friends and acquaintances do their best to reunite mother and children and father and daughter.
Despite centring around topics such as the reach of technology, the rift in America due to politics and religious fanaticism, and family dysfunction, Walter’s empathetic and deftly light touch, rounded characters and a plot driven forward from the perspective of the different characters gives this novel a truly warm heart.
No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done by Sophie Hannah
Sally Lambert has four children. Two are human, the other two are welsh terriers (one alive, one dead). When the family’s village nemesis the Gaveys accuse Champ of biting their teenage daughter, Sally instantly knows which knife she will use to kill whoever comes to take her furry beloved away. Thankfully this isn’t required and instead the whole family goes on the run(!) Champ is obviously innocent but how will they clear his name?
Here there is laugh-out-loud humour and unconditional love wrapped up in a metafictional rollercoaster of a book. It’s a perfect combination of clever and absolutely bonkers. I can guarantee one thing – you won’t have read anything quite like it.