At the beginning of the year, one of my many resolutions was to try and read at least one book a month. Little did I know that resolution would be completely thrown out the window when I picked up Donna Tartt’s epic new novel The Goldfinch…but hand on heart, it was completely worth breaking my […]

I really didn’t need an extra book to add to the leaning tower of Pisa next to my bed…but when in the library the other day with Little I, I couldn’t resist picking up Sweeth Tooth, the new novel by Ian McEwan that was on display. Dangerously I read the inside front cover, and the […]

I read a lot of Stephen King as a teenager, but it’s been a good 15 years since I picked up anything by him. Yet something about 11.22.63 really intrigued me. Maybe it was the sheer weight of it – 740 pages no less! But I think it was the premise: if you had the […]

Today is World Book Day, and I know many children have gone into school dressed as their favourite book character. Speaking personally, I have always loved a strong, unconventional heroine…and last night I finished reading ‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett, which just happens to contain one of the most loveable, inspirational female characters that I […]

I love a good whodunit. In my child-free years I used to devour a crime novel in one sitting, but regrettably those reading days are over. Nevertheless, I love it when I come across a writer who keeps you guessing until almost the last page. Towards the end of last year I did a wee […]

You will have been hard pressed not to have noticed the buzz surrounding Christos Tsiolkas’ novel The Slap throughout the second half of 2011. It won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, as well as being made into a TV drama that was recently aired on BBC4. Set in […]

‘The hand that first held mine’ is Maggie O’Farrell’s fifth novel. It follows the lives of two women who are separated by 50 years. Lexie Sinclair, who has run away from her rural life in Devon to the bohemian milieu of 1950s Soho where her life becomes entwined with the eccentric but dashing magazine editor […]

The word ‘haunting’ is overused within book reviews, but in the case of Every Last One by Anna Quindlen, I really can’t think of a more apt word to describe the book. But as a mother, it’s the sort of ‘haunting’ that stays with you and gets under your skin – you don’t want to […]