Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Reviewed by Vicky

Erica is in Paris on her summer abroad before heading to university back in the UK. She wants to improve her French and be inspired by the city – what she doesn’t expect is to find the love of her life. She meets Laure by chance on the steps of the Sacré-Cœur and what follows is a love story that spans the decades.

At times, I wanted nothing more than to throw the book as far away from me as possible, to somehow enter this world and shake some sense into Erica and Laure. And that’s what is so special about this book. Kiran Millwood Hargrave has created a cast of characters I felt like I truly knew. I was waiting with Erica at Le Divan, ordering a red wine, and crying with Léa and Michel watching Laure say goodbye at the end of summer. But if you’ve thrown it across the room, the next moment you’ll want to hold it tight, too immersed in lives lived in deep regret.

Almost Life will make you want to drop everything and leave immediately to get your heart broken in Paris. What are you waiting for?

Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg

Reviewed by Vicky

Dell needs money. Her sister is in an induced coma and requires expensive life-support and her wages from Juice Body aren’t going to cut it. She has a side-line of selling plants, but they are slowly and surely taking over her New York apartment. She decides to start a 24-hour livestream of her life (obviously…) and soon descends into a money-making side of the internet that you’ll be relieved you haven’t had to resort to. Her viewers dare her to do increasingly outrageous things in order to earn a few dollars but it’s in the arena of chilli eating competitions that Dell firmly lands.

Though this is all extremely page-turning, the heart of the story becomes more about what Dell is hiding than what she’s willing to expose herself to.

Compulsive and repulsive in equal measure (Dell’s bathroom-less apartment gave me actual shivers) – you’ll race through this unpredictable and wild ride of a debut. 

A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia

Reviewed by Vicky

This one is simply beautiful. David is a catholic priest, Margaret has found her way to faith and attends a progressive school for laywomen in Rome. Their paths collide when they both teach at a catholic college in England where they slowly but irrevocably fall in love. The forbidden desire is undeniably sexy, but it’s in the meeting of minds that this love story is truly elevated. 

In a later timeline, we get glimpses of a life seen through a broken mind as Adrian cares for his dying grandmother (Margaret). Sy-Quia doesn’t necessarily give you what you want to hear, but that only makes it all the more authentic, and consequently, all the more heartbreaking. 

Impressive and precisely written, this debut was inspired by the author’s own grandfather who, too, was a catholic priest. A Private Man is about the unveiling of family secrets, the capacity for love and what it means to be descended from such a union. I urge everyone to pick up this quietly powerful book.

To The Edge of the World by Tilar J. Mazzeo

Reviewed by Vicky

Meet Mary Ann Patten – one of the bravest women you’ve never heard of. Just 19 years old, and 3 months pregnant, Mary Ann took command of merchant clipper Neptune’s Carr when her husband fell ill mid-voyage. Overcoming a dangerous storm and the threat of an ugly mutiny, this story is equally inspiring and jaw-dropping.

Coming into a favourite genre, this represents a detailed look into that rarest of perspectives from this time and place – the female voice. For fans of The Wager and anyone who enjoys tales of the high seas.

May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry

Reviewed by Vicky

A curator employed to commemorate a palace and the reluctant king they choose to immortalise. Exquisite in its language and transformative in its scope, I was mesmerised by this debut novel.  

Perry has breathed life into a medieval past that can only be glimpsed in the curator’s contemporary records. At points we are overwhelmed with detail and then thrown into a nothingness, a scarcity that is the historian’s bane. But it is within this world that we are the interlopers. We are forced to listen at doors and piece together any narrative that makes sense. 

A small book that speaks volumes. It’s about the distribution of power, about masculinity and loneliness. But it also asks – what can we ever hope to know about history when a life becomes a sentence?

Hermit by Chris McQueer

Reviewed by Vicky

Jamie is 19, jobless, friendless and living at home with his mum Fiona. There’s been a chasm between them since Fiona left Jamie’s abusive father, and every time she tries to help him, he slips further away.

Feeling lonely and isolated, Jamie is easy prey for certain online forums. He soon discovers a group who feels the same way he does, they make him feel seen and understood…

I had a dread in picking this up to read more, but also an absolute need. I HAD to know what happened to these characters that I actively worried about when away from them. 

Chris McQueer somehow suffuses a truly frightening story with humour and hope. I honestly do not know how he’s pulled this off. Read this and be blown away by a rare insight into the pitfalls of modern masculinity.

The Barbecue at No.9 by Jennie Godfrey

Reviewed by Vicky

Jennie Godfrey has done it again. With her fresh style of weaving multiple perspectives together to create the voice of a community, she manages to capture a wonderful sense of time and place. The Barbecue at No. 9 takes us back to the summer of 1985…to Live Aid. The Gordons are preparing to host their neighbours for the music concert, (their state-of-the-art barbecue and TV will show them all how perfect their lives are), but all is not as it seems in this atmosphere of keeping up appearances… 

Although secrets and deceptions keep you intrigued, it is without doubt the warmth and heart in Delmont Close that propel the narrative. You’ll want every single character to overcome their own private battles. Godfrey is so good at people. Her power of observation helps create a world that feels real and raw with each character sensitively rendered within it. 

A beautiful story of community and forgiveness. Pick this up for feel-good nostalgia.

A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford

Reviewed by Vicky 

I’m not recommending this book…I’m saying you HAVE to read this book. 

It’s 1979 in Possilpark, Glasgow. This deprived area of the city is home to a warm community with Janey and her Nana at its core. When Janey and her dog, Sid Vicious, find the body of a murdered woman, it affects the 12 year old in ways neither she or her Nana could imagine. Repressed traumas come to the surface and soon they are fighting for more than just their peace of mind.

A true page-turner with everything from hilarity, friendship and family to heartbreak, poverty and justice. The depth of love shared between Janey and Nana will stay with me for a long time. (N.B. If I need help getting out of a tough situation, I want Nana on my team.)

And how many times can you say you’ve read a book with the most perfect ending? This rarest of accolades goes to A Bad, Bad Place. 

A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford

Reviewed by Rosamund

It’s rare that more than one of our booksellers review a book (so many books, so little time…), but every now and then one comes along that just flies to the top of the pile..

I almost wish I’d listened to this for the voice of these wonderful characters, but no need, they sing off the page in perfect Glaswegian – think Shuggie Bain as a murder mystery, yes with some sadness and definitely plenty of jeopardy, but shot through with effortless, pure dead perfect, wit and wisdom.  

If you treat yourself to one new author this year, let it be this one.

Departures by Julian Barnes

Reviewed by Jen

There are a great deal of blurred lines in this ‘novel’. Is it, in fact, a ‘true story’, a memoir? The narrator is called Julian: is he Barnes? Does it really matter?

Departure(s) can be read two ways. Although not a departure from life, this is Barnes’ departure from life as a novelist. But it also resonates with themes in the book as the lovers Jean and  Stephen part and then reconcile then part again. Even Jimmy the aged Jack Russell dies and departs… There can be no doubt this is a personal book. Barnes clearly enjoys messing with the reader’s head as he blends fact and fabrication. I enjoyed the knowing asides of the narrator and am wistful to think of this as Barnes’ final novel. (He still intends to write as a journalist.) 

Family Drama by Rebecca Fallon

Reviewed by Jen

Family Drama is a captivating debut from Rebecca Fallon that, in interwoven narratives from the nineties and the naughties, explores the pressures and difficulties of trying to balance ambition and dreams with settling down and having a family. 

Fallon creates a drama based on Susan Bliss’ dichotomous life: on one hand she is a loving and loved wife and mother and on the other she is a soap opera star. She has two different lives on each coast of the US and, when the unthinkable happens, her devastated husband tries to blank the life she didn’t share with him and her young twins. But her twins begin to unravel the truth of her life…

My heart ached realising that Susan doesn’t have time to live both the lives she craved and for the difficulties the unravelling causes her children and husband. This is a story of grief, legacy and assumptions.

In the end, this is not a family drama in the style of a melodramatic soap opera but the very real story of everyday difficulties of ordinary people trying to do the best they can. I found this a compelling and touching novel with heart that will make you appreciate the decisions, big and small, that are made trying to balance love, career and reality against the uncertainty of life and time. Prepare to be swept along…

The Good Liar by Denise Mina

Reviewed by Jen

I love when you know right from the start that a bombshell is going to be dropped. (Or not?!)  Denise Mina doesn’t disappoint and keeps you guessing with this edge-of-the-seat thriller. 

Claudia O’Shiel is a forensic scientist whose Blood Spatter Probability Scale ensured the conviction of a young man for his parents’ murders. But as the novel opens she’s about to shed light on the truth of the matter: she’s going to ruin her own life! 

As we follow O’Shiel in the nail-biting run-up to the speech, Mina splices in the narrative of the evening and after-effects of the murder in question. O’Shiel is a flawed but sympathetic character and it’s clear she is torn between doing the morally right thing and progressing in her career which she has toiled to achieve from a difficult background. There is so much to this case; power and privilege; conspiracy and financial impropriety; class and the establishment that I found it difficult to put the book down. I urge you to pick it up – this is not just a crime thriller but an exploration of morals and justice.

Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer

Reviewed by Jen

Eliot doesn’t see it coming when his beloved terminally-ill wife, Claire, tells him that she wants her two best friends to care for her instead of him as her life ends. 

Eliot just doesn’t get it and Claire can’t explain it. The premise for this novel is fascinating and terrible at once and it makes for an emotional and difficult read. It’s hard to relate to what Claire is asking of her husband of nearly forty years but it makes you realise that dying is ultimately such a personal process. Is it right for Claire to put her needs before Eliot’s? Should Eliot expect to put his needs before Claire’s?  

Told from Eliot’s point of view as he negotiates his grief and the idea that he doesn’t fully know the woman he has been with all these years, I found this myself meditating on the nature of love and grief and the unknowability of us messy human beings. Not an easy read but worthwhile and thought-provoking

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye by Claire-Louise Bennett

Reviewed by Jen

This novel reads as an unravelling: of previous relationships, exploring how people come into our lives, the effect they have, their legacy once they’ve moved on or passion has dwindled or emotions rearrange. As I read, I felt I was wrapped in a fever dream as moments and memories were highlighted and then snuffed out. Themes were repeated, relationships were related, letters and emails were received and read. Not overburdened with plot, this novel feels like being in the narrator’s consciousness where experience and thoughts and threads of emotion circle and interrupt each other. Entranced by the writing and slightly discombobulated by the experience of reading it, this book has stayed with me and will be one I pick up and reread. 

It is a brilliant, if unsettling, read!

Tarantula by Eduardo Halfon

Reviewed by Bryony

I was given this book to read by my colleague after having had a bit of a reading slump. This book is a little gem. Eduardo’s heart-breaking story is beautifully translated by Daniel Hahn, it is both powerful and gentle, something I find rare in a book.

Tarantula tells the story of a young Eduardo, having fled Guatemala with his Jewish family in the early 80s during the civil war. Relocating to Florida, Eduardo tries to shrug off his Jewish ancestry to fit into his new life. Unhappy with their son’s abandonment of their family heritage his parents send him and his brother to a Jewish summer camp back in Guatemala.

This experience ends up being life-changing. Tarantula looks at the many and varying repercussions of the Holocaust and delves into how affecting childhood memories can be if they are based on realities or imagination. Both as important as the other.

I’m not sure I would have picked up this book, but I am so very glad that it was handed to me. This thoughtfully written (and translated) book has made me look at a subject I had read about many times before from a different perspective and it will stay with me for a very long time.