The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
Reviewed by Vicky

An eclectic group of decidedly mid-list writers has been invited by one of the world’s most famous authors to one of his legendary parties on a private island. But when they get there, their host is dead and his new book still needs an ending.

They’ve got 72 hours to beat their fellow competitors. The chosen ending will take home a cash prize and a huge deal that will put them on the bestseller list. With a chance to get out of the dreaded mid-list within their reach, maybe a murder or two would be understandable…

As the body count keeps going up, who will be left at the finish? And what the heck is actually going on?

Pacy, satirical and clever, this is a book that demands to be devoured.

The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine

Reviewed by Bryony 

Misty is your typical teenager living on an estate in Belfast. She has a part time job in a hotel, went to college to become a make-up artist and makes a little extra on the side through the Benefactors site, where men pay to talk to women.

Living with her Mum’s ex partner, Boogie, and her sister she hasn’t always had the best childhood but things seem to be going okay until one night when hanging out with her so-called boy-friends from a wealthy part of town, things take a turn for the worse.

The Benefactors looks at the class system, family relationships and how different people react to the same situation.

I thought I knew where this story was going, I was wrong. It gives a deep insight into the lives of the four different families, all with their own issues and past traumas. How do these pasts affect how people deal with their present? Can you protect a loved one from the consequences of their actions without any repercussions? Are family members capable of thinking solely of your welfare and can money solve all your problems? The Benefactors is brutally honest with a soft centre.

London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

Reviewed by Vicky

Wow. I’ve been told Patrick Radden Keefe was good…but this good? Believe everything they say! I refused to put this down from page one. 

CCTV from the MI6 building recorded the last moments of Zac Brettler who fell from a fifth floor luxury apartment in November, 2019. His distraught parents want answers but none are forthcoming. Forced to investigate themselves, what they start to discover is a web of deceit, wealth and violence. 

London Falling reveals a darker side to London that feels inevitable yet nonetheless terrifying and near. What’s more terrifying perhaps is the level of police ineptitude that was, at best, laughable, but more likely high-level corruption. 

Patrick Radden Keefe has expertly wrapped up the heartbreak and injustice in this most gripping of books. It’s still all I want to talk about.

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki

Reviewed by Bryony

Hooked from the first page. A thrilling story of loneliness and female friendship with more than a whiff of Japanese food and landscapes. Beautifully translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is set in Tokyo and the surrounding countryside and tells the story of two Japanese women in their 30s – Eriko, a high flyer from a rich family but still living at home with her parents, and Shoko, a self-proclaimed lazy housewife blogger. These women live very different lives but they have one thing in common, they have no friends of their own. Eriko becomes obsessed with the blogger and tracks her down at a local restaurant to befriend her.

Yuzuki’s Hooked shows how far people are willing to go for the things they want the most. It unfolds gloriously in a way that is chilling, heartbreaking and heart-warming all at once. Yuzuki’s characters are so well written that it is hard not to see yourself in them (even when you don’t want to!).

John of John by Douglas Stuart

Reviewed by Bryony 

Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo showed us just how much of a craftsman Stuart is but John of John is something else. I found it to be slower-paced, but with this comes a gentle beauty. His description of island life and what it was to be a sheep farmer and weaver on Harris is so vivid that, even sitting in my warm bed reading at night, I would occasionally put the book down feeling damp and cold and hearing the clacking of the loom.

John of John follows Cal from mainland Scotland, where he’s just graduated from Art School, to the Island of Harris, after his dad has called saying his Granny is unwell. This book looks at the struggles of living as a gay man in a small rural and religious community and the relationship between a father and son. It is beautiful yet heart-wrenchingly painful, ferocious yet gentle.

The characters in John of John are loving, compassionate, complicated and slightly broken. Stuart has a way of getting to the heart of what it is like to be human better than anyone else. Putting this book down for the last time I knew I was going to miss every single one of them!

Frida Slattery As Herself by Ana Kinsella

Reviewed by Vicky 

Sweeping and intimate, Frida Slattery as Herself is an accomplished debut and makes for a page-turning read.

Frida, just out of university and an aspiring actress, meets John in a pub in Dublin. He’s a writer and theatre director who is instantly captured by Frida. What follows is over a decade of collaboration on and off the stage. Over the years, the power balance shifts between them and the reader can sit back and watch the real performance unfold. 

I was fascinated by Frida and John. They were developed with such nuance that it was impossible to know how to feel about either one. Their flaws were laid bare for us to see and truly captivated me.

Kinsella has structured the book perfectly for these characters. This isn’t a love story – it’s about art and performance, power and ambition. It makes us wonder what success looks like, and how life can take us away from where we want to be.

Honey by Imani Thompson
Reviewed by Vicky

‘…these things happen, sometimes you accidentally beat someone to death, it will be okay.’

Yrsa is trying out a new methodology for her sociology PhD thesis: enacting violence back on the perpetrator (white men). She didn’t mean to kill the first time, but then it becomes easier after that… What starts as a sense of justice quickly spirals into hilarious uncertainty. 

Darkly funny and outrageously relatable – alarmingly, I came to understand why these men had to die. Not sure what that says about me, but it sure makes this a cracking read. Honey is the philosophical serial killer book you didn’t know you needed.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Reviewed by Rosamund

Natalie Heller Mills is living the American rural dream – handsome cowboy husband, beautiful, well-behaved children, perfectly baked bread, it’s all insta-ready.  So what if her daughter asked if she was a trad-wife (the nannies must have allowed her screentime) or that the social media intern stopped filming just as her darling man bowled her over with a kiss?

She has the vibe of Bree from Desperate Housewives and the chill of Mrs Waterford in Handmaid’s Tale.

One day, however, she wakes up in a house that looks a little like hers, but with none of the backoffice help – where is she and are these her husband and children really?  She must escape, but how?

Funny, dark, a treat.