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[[Category:New Reviews|General Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage |isbnauthor=1529123941 Andrew Sharp|title=The Silent Treatment |author=Abbie Greaves Chef, the Bird and the Blessing|rating=4.5 |genre=General Fiction |summary= When we meet Professor Frank Hobbs and Chef Mlantushi - Mozzy to his wifeemployer - is, Maggie, Frank is playing chess against in his computermind, although not very successfully. Maggie, on the other hand, has just taken some pills - eight head chef of them, a safari business catering to VIP guests in fact an unnamed African country. Mozzy is earnest and dedicated to his task and he puts all of himself into creating fine cuisine dishes for the guests at BOD- and before long she will collapse. When Frank rings W safaris but his dream is to become the emergency services head chef of a restaurant in Oxford he has London or a bit of big American city. Even to win a problemMichelin star. He has is thwarted in this ambition by his boss, Mr Bin (Ben to admit that he you and Maggie havenme) who incurs Mozzy't actually spoken s disapproval for a while. How long? Wellhis scruffy ways, it's about six months since he spoke to Maggie his uninterest in his guests and he can't really say if it's likely that Maggie has tried to take her own life- shock, horror - his allowing of bush animals into the house.|isbn=B09926MK8H

|isbn=1901514978|title=There's a Problem With Dad|author=Carlos Alba|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Life is different for George Lovelace and he can't really understand why. He's always done everything he ought to: steady worker, husband and father - and a father who was always there for school plays and sports days. So why is he never quite in tune with those around him? Why does he upset people? Why is someone with such a ''good'' mind unable to progress at work or to relate to his colleagues? Why does he make so many breath-taking gaffes? It's almost become a cliche these days to suggest that someone who is a little different is 'on the spectrum', but George Lovelace has all the symptoms of Asperger's Syndrome: high-functioning autism.}}{{Frontpage|author=Camilla BruceFreya Sampson|title=You Let Me InThe Last Library

|summary= EccentricI am always a little nervous to start a story about a library, isolated romance novelist Cassandra Tipp has been missing for since I am a librarian. I always grit my teeth slightly at the thought of the incoming cardigan-wearing, hair in a bun, cat-owning, glasses on a chain stereotypes! In this story, the main character, June, does put her hair in a bun, and she does own a year cat (called Alan Bennett), and she has been pronounced legally dead by barely any friends and spends her lawyersevenings eating the same Chinese takeaway meal once a week whilst reading books alone! But I didn't immediately throw the book out of the window, because I found I was interested in June, and why she lived as she did. Her will instructs her niece mum used to be a librarian at the village library, but when she got sick, June gave up on going to University and nephew stayed at home to enter take care of her home mum, as well as taking on a job as library assistant at the local library. And even though her mum sadly died some years ago, she is still working there, still eating her mum's favourite takeaway meal, and find the key to their inheritance in an still reading her mum's old manuscript left books. June is stuck, but little does she know, everything in her office: life is about the last story she'll ever tellchange.|isbn=1787633179183877369X

|author= Becky Albertalli and Aisha SaeedEmily Critchley|title= Yes No Maybe So The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers|rating= 43|genre= TeensGeneral Fiction|summary= The Tiny Gestures of Small Flowers had all the hallmarks of something good. I was intrigued by the plot, liked the design of the book, and thought the author''We might give s work sounded interesting. From the outset it our all and crash and burnlooked incredibly promising. But we might winSo what on earth went wrong here?|isbn= 1911427091}} {{Frontpage|isbn=B093VPBL5L|title=Cape Henry House|author=Jolly Walker Bittick|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Bosner, or, to give him his full title, Petty Officer Third Class Bosner. We might actually change things. And never really find out if he has a first name: there's merely a hint that maybe makes it still worth going for, donhe had the nickname 't you think?Secretary'at one point. He'Jaime has been spending his summer helping his cousin with campaigning in time for a special elections simply Bosner to one and all. When his mother encourages we first encounter him to go canvassing, he can't think of anything worse. However, Jaime has always wanted to be a politician and decides there is no time like the present to conquer s exploring his fear memories of speaking to the public. Maya is 2008 when he was a Pakistani-American Muslim girl who is having the worst summer of her life. Her parents are going through a separationgreaser on helicopters (or helos, she has zero plans for the summer to help take her mind off things and her only close friend is permanently busy. To help occupy her, her parents offer to buy her as they were called) at a car if she agrees to go canvassingnaval establishment. The pair hours could possibly be long and he was often working nights but at the worst canvassing duo in historyage of twenty-one, as neither of them really want to be there, but as the campaign goes on they discover that they care, was always a lot, about the election - way to work some fun (think drinking and maybe even about each other?|isbn=1471184668eating) into his day.

|authorisbn=Elliot ReedB095CY7NBN|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingAutumn Camp|author=Barry Fowler|rating=4.5

|summary=This is It was to be Brian's last camp. He'd founded the organisation some four years ago and had done all the organisation since but he was leaving school and the time had come to hand the story of a young boy, William Tycereins to someone else. The obvious person was Gary, who is being raised by his uncle after 'd always been the death fun element of his mother the camps and Brian had said that on this camp, Gary should act as the leader and his fatherhe's abandonmentd just be there to observe. However, it isnThe problem with this was that Gary wasn't told in the usual narrative wayreally an organiser, an administrator if you like. InsteadHe was the entertainer, the book is person who basked in the spotlight and made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a way of describing certain events, situations things fun - so Brian stepped in and emotionsdid the organising. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, He handed the camp over - and then moving took it back. And Gary determined to ALPHABETICAL ORDERhave his revenge. As I began to read I did find myself thinking This should have been ''what on earth?!his' but I soon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William's storycamp.|isbn=1911545418

|author= T R HendrickJohn Boyne|title= What if They KnewThe Echo Chamber|rating= 45|genre= General Fiction|summary= ItMeet George Cleverley. He is self-defined as "one of the few television personalities over the age of fifty without a criminal record". He starts this book a bit worried when his mistress tells him she's 2025carrying his child, but then his author wife is getting her kicks with the Ukrainian partner "Strictly Come Dancing" paired her with. Underneath They have three children, who are a lodge in the Blue Mountain resort in Pennsylvaniasad-sack with absolutely no social skills whatsoever, is a secret facility. Heregirl who hangs around with a virtue-signalling, keyboard warrior "wokester" who wants to save the world's homeless with out-of-date food, Dr Benton and his team are making some critical scientific advances on behalf of a fit young lad doing the Benefactorgay hustle thing. Add in a few other characters – therapists, their anonymous funder. Alreadylawyers, the team random transgender types – that all have succeeded in teleporting small primates from one place two very different connections to another. Buthis life, unbeknownst and you have something that suggests an almost farcical approach to the Benefactormodern world. What suggests the farcical approach even more, Dr Benton has also coded for another type of teleportation altogether - travel through timehowever, is the fact this is bloody funny. And he's ready to test. If successful, Benton has a very specific use for his technology in mind|isbn=17342772110857526219

|authorisbn=H G Parry 0008444501|title=The Unlikely Escape of Uriah HeepAnswer to Everything|author=Luke Kennard

|summary=Brothers Rob and Charley Life should have struggled to see eye to eye been good for years - Rob Emily. She had a sensible lawyer lovely husband, Steven, who exists was a speech therapist. We'll pass over the fact that they rarely speak to each other and don't even sleep in the "normal" world - and Charley same bed. It isn't so much that Emily has left the marital bed as that she's sharing a man who is blessed bed with an ability he canone of her children as it't fully control - one which allows s the only way to get him to bring literary characters into sleep during the real worldnight. After years of protecting Charley, Rob wants to discharge his duties Arthur and Matty are gorgeous but they are a handful and leave Charley Emily has a job to his own devices cope with too - but circumstances soon take choices out of both their handsshe teaches drama two days a week. As literary characters begin to appear everywhere, They've not long moved into a new home in Criterion Gardens: it soon becomes clear 's a trendy area that someone out there shares Charleyhas been gentrified and it's powers and intends to use them for nefarious gainsrun on semi-communal lines. Rob and Charley must team up to stop the madness The residents even share eco- in a battle to win before they, the characters and the world reach The End…|isbn=0356513777friendly electric cars rather than owning their own.

|isbnauthor=1643785036Louise Beech|title=The Wondrous ApothecaryThis Is How We Are Human|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Veronica is a devoted single mother to her son, Sebastian - but she can't give him everything he wants. Sebastian has decided that it's time for him to have sex. But as an autistic 20 year-old, that's easier said than done. And it's starting to cause them both problems. |isbn=1913193713}} {{Frontpage|author=Mary E MartinAnanda Devi|title=Eve Out of Her Ruins

|summary=Those who have known Alexander WainwrightAt not even 200 pages, Eve Out of Her Ruins is one of the landscape artist famous for his Turner prize winning shortest books I've read in a long while, but it'The Hay Wagons one of the most dramatic. It's also told in a way that I can only describe as brutal: it spares nothing and pulls very few punches, the descriptions stark and unromantic.|isbn=0993009344}} {{Frontpage|author=C J Carey|title=Widowland|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's April 1953, and RinaldoAdolf Hitler's schedule includes going to Moscow to attend the state funeral of Joseph Stalin then within weeks coming to London, parading around a bit, renowned conceptual artist would say that they're chalk and cheesewatching over the sanctioned return to the throne of Edward VIII with his wife, if not sworn enemiesQueen Wallis. If youFor yes, Britain caved in the lead-up to the World War Two that certainly didn've watched the relationship, t happen as has our narratorwe know it, art dealer Jamie Helmsworthand we are now a protectorate – well, youwe share enough of the same blood as the Germanic peoples on 'd have said that they were magnets'the mainland''. But this is most certainly a different Britain, for Nazi-styled phrenology, drawing and repulsing each other in equal measure. Wainwright was at the socially acceptable end ideas of the artistic continuumfemale purpose, but with Rinaldo it was has put all too obvious of that there was but gender into a fine dividing line between conceptual art caste system, ranging from high-brow office bigwigs to the drudges, and public nuisance. As time has worn beyond those, right ondown to the childless, he's frequently been brought to the attention of husbandless and the policewidows. On Female literacy is actively discouraged. And in this latest occasion we see him charged puritanical existence, our heroine, Rose Ransom, is employed with arson the task of bowdlerising classical literature to take all encouragement for female emancipation out of it – after all, not every book can be banned, and theft not every story excised immediately from British civilisation, and so they just get a hefty tweak towards the party line before they're stamped ready for reprint. That is her job, at least, until the first emerging signs of female protest come to light, with their potential to spoil Hitler''The Hay Wagon''s visit.|isbn=152941198X

|isbn=0857527231|title=Dog Days|author=Ericka Waller|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=George Dempsey is exceedingly angry. It's eight days since his wife, Ellen, died and it's the first time that she's let him down. He's lost, bereft without her ( he ''needs his wife, like a snail needs its shell''). He misses their ordered life and rather than bringing him meals to leave on the doorstep, he'd much rather have a good row with someone. He's particularly angry about the dachshund puppy which Helen brought home just three weeks before she died. She even dared to contradict him when he told her that the dog wasn't staying. Now he's lumbered with a dog he doesn't want and a load of busybodies who are trying to interfere in his life. Worst of all is Betty, who won't take no for an answer. Betty knits jumpers for Lucky, her greyhound. Lucky spends a lot of time trying to escape from and destroy them.}}{{Frontpage|author=Martin Venning|title=The Primary Objective|rating=2|genre=General Fiction|summary= Sometimes a book starts off slowly, but eventually draws you in to caring about the characters or simply wanting to know what happens next. Sometimes it doesn't. The basic premise is a good one – a clandestine organisation, operating as a charity, but funded by various governments around the world and partially (maybe, I'm not sure) under the auspices of the UN, with the primary objective of keeping the peace, by any means possible. Diplomacy is always the first option and sometimes one that needs to be carried out by third parties, but for situations when that looks unlikely to yield results Peace International maintains a call-on list of field operatives, ex-military, medics, scientists or anyone else with a taste for adventure and willing to risk their life for the sake of it.|isbn=1800461100}}{{Frontpage|author=Karen M McManus|title=The Cousins|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary= The rich and famous Story family led a life of luxury on Gull Cove Island, until 25 years ago when each of the Story children - Anders, Archer, Adam and Allison - received a mysterious letter from their mother and were cut off completely. But now, a quarter of a century later, their children have been called to return to the island for the summer by their grandmother. What does she want with the cousins? Why did she cut off her children all those years ago? Are the deaths on Gull Cove Island really what they seem? The dark web of twisted lies, secrets and tragedy that has held the Story family up - and held them apart - for a quarter of a century is about to come crashing down.|isbn=0241376947}}{{Frontpage|author=Mary HRuth Hogan|title=Madame Burova|rating=4.K5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This book lets us discover several people in different stages of life in the early 1970s, all vaguely connected. So we have a bullied half-cast boy (as he would have been called then), a girl in a humdrum job wanting to become a singer, and chiefly, Imelda, the third generation of Madame Burova, ''Tarot-Reader, Palmist and Clairvoyant'', to use her family's sea-front booth. The singer, the scryer and the sufferer's mother will all become staff at a revamped holiday camp, but just before then we see Imelda fly solo for the first time in the family stall. Choi We also see her on her last day, fifty years later, in possession of a pair of letters that will change everything for a woman called Billie. Just who is she, and who delivered the secrets about her to Imelda, and why did it have to remain a secret all this time?|isbn=152937331X}}{{Frontpage|author=Stephen Clarke|title=Permanent RecordThe Spy Who Inspired Me

|genre=TeensGeneral Fiction|summary=Pablo, This is a college drop-outspoof spy story, is working at a New York bodegathat isn't about James Bond. Or Ian Fleming. He's massively in debt, he's avoiding his motherBut it features a man called Ian Lemming, who dresses well and he finds his joy in creating unusual snacks with random ingredients! Whilst working one evening, he's surprised to discover that likes the girl he is chatting with as he serves is a super-famous pop star ladies' and, as unlikely as it may seem, they start a relationship. With one character who is trying very hard not to be seen or noticed by anyoneworks for the secret service, and but in the other who is seen and followed and hounded by everyone all over planning side of things more than the world, it's an interesting clash as they come togetheractive service. This isn't just Lemming finds himself put on a mission with a love story thoughfemale spy called Margaux, and actually it's really just Pab's storythe pair end up stranded in Normandy, about with Margaux on a desperate mission to unearth traitors in the journey he takes in his life via his meet-resistance network, and Lemming desperately trying to keep up with Leanna Smart.her!|isbn=03490034592952163855

|author=Daniel KrausAndrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)|title=Blood SugarIf You Kept a Record of Sins|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This was an incredibly readable novella, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, and before we even know his gender or the nature of the person he's addressing in his second person monologue of a narration, we see him picked up by his mother's chauffeur, and carted off to do all the necessary introductions before said mother is buried the following day. The mother was a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (night-time and business) partner, and feelings of abandonment are still strong. And so we flit from current (well, this came out in the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharest, to the lad's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell address.|isbn=1939810965}}{{Frontpage|author=David F Ross|title= There's Only One Danny Garvey|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary= Years ago, Danny Garvey was a footballing prodigy playing for his local club. Everyone predicted a bright future – but his career in professional football never quite worked out. Thirteen years on, convinced to return home by his "uncle" Higgy to visit his dying mother, Danny takes over the shambolic and once-great team he used to play for and tries to reform them.|isbn= 1913193500}} {{Frontpage|author=Gail Honeyman|title=Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine|rating=4.5

|summary=This Eleanor Oliphant is almost 30. She lives in Glasgow, alone. And she likes it that way. She works 9-5, 5 days a difficult readweek, and spends the weekend not drunk, but not sober. alone. And not because of the dark subject matter – she likes it that'll come later – but because of the way in which it's told. This might put She lives by a lot of readers offroutine, and to be honest itthat'd be hard to blame thems fine, thankyouverymuch. Nothing is missing from her life. Except everything is. Kraus tells the story Until one day, at a concert she won tickets for in a distinctive voice unlike any other I've read; an erratic dialect with heavy and frequent slangoffice raffle, she sees the man she is sure will be her husband. The immediate effect is disorientating and distractingEleanor begins a journey to make herself the best version of herself that she can, and it takes some time in order to feel naturalsecure this beautiful musician. ItThen, as she's on her way home one Friday, she and the new IT guy at her office see a struggle man collapse in the street and stay close to acclimatise to Jodyhim in hospital. Then, before she knows it, her once quiet life becomes a hubbub of social engagements with the man's voicefamily and friends, with Raymond from IT and of course her side project of falling in love with Johnnie Lomond. But just as her life seems to get acquainted with his mannerismsbe looking up, but things take a turn for the story wouldnworse. Is Johnnie all he't s cracked up to be ? What secrets does Eleanor have from her childhood? Eleanor's walls have been broken down and she has to fight her way out of the same without it, and somehow it works. It shouldnshadows - but maybe she doesn't, but have to do it doesalone.|isbn=17890919340008172145

|isbn=B07W4MNBSGB08GFSK2WZ|title=Be Careful Who You MarryThe Karma Trap|author=Lizzy MumfreyLisette Boyd

|summary=It was coming up to Halloween in 1987 Between life and death there is a group of sixth-form schoolgirls wondered what they would be doing when they were fiftylibrary. When you're only seventeen that seems positively ancientAnd so, 38 minutes after Nora decided to die, but Liz was convinced she finds herself in the Midnight Library. Everything that could've gone wrong in Nora'your entire s life depends on who you marry'has. Her cat died, she lost her job, her brother won't speak to her, her parents are dead, the boy she teaches piano to no longer cares about piano, she called off her wedding, and old Mr Banerjee next door no longer needs her help. The only eligible boys were She gave up on all the Young Farmers and things that would've let her escape the idea wet, cold town of living in a farmhouse Bedford and having a couple of children called Will given her life some purposeful direction. So at 23:22, she realises that she isn't made for life and Olly appealed decides to Charlottedie. But instead of death, or perhaps William and Oliver if you were Elizabeth who was determined to marry she finds the rather superior Patrick Shepley-Bothamlibrary. The place Each infinite shelf is filled with books, each book providing a chance to start their search was obviously the Young Farmers' Halloween disco that weekendtry another life she could have lived, in a parallel time. There was And so, just one problem - there were too many Elizabeths in after midnight on Tuesday the class18th of April, Nora Seed begins to live every life she could've.|isbn=1786892731

{|class-"wikitable" cellpadding="15" <!-- Will Carver -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1912374838.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1912374838/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Nothing Important Happened Today is a dark, twisted, difficult read. Stories about cults often are, but this is different; it's written with a sense of style that is quite unlike anything I've read before. I can't remember ever having read a novel with such an odd, distinctive narrative voice. While a slim and relatively small book, the slow-moving nature of the plot makes it feel far larger than its 276 pages. [[Nothing Important Happened Today by Will Carver|Full Review]] <!-- Claire North -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:williamabbey.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0316316849/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]], [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]]  When William Abbey fails to prevent the lynching of a young boy in 1880's South Africa, he finds himself cursed by the grieving mother. A naïve English Doctor, he slowly learns the weight of the curse upon him, as the shadow of the dead boy begins to follow him across the world. Never stopping, always growing – it crosses oceans and mountains in pursuit of William. As he finds himself unable to resist speaking the truths that he hears in others, he also learns that the dark shadow is deadly – and seeks to kill the one he loves the most… [[The Pursuit of William Abbey by Claire North|Full Review]] <!-- Oates -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1785656775.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785656775/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"| ===[[The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Thrillers|Thrillers]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Bobby is an angry, damaged man - damage that came from being abandoned as a baby in a bus station locker, and then being thrown from one foster home or detention centre to another, never far from violence or abuse. Eager to succeed as a musician, he arrives in Hollywood to find his dream - but it soon becomes clear that his paranoid delusions and seething rage will enable a capacity for acts of extreme violence. Unpublished for 40 years, this edition of ''The Triumph of the Spider Monkey'' comes combined with a connected novella – ''Love, Careless Love''. [[The Triumph of the Spider Monkey by Joyce Carol Oates|Full Review]] <!-- Ellory -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1542007232.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1542007232/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[The Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Berlin, 1989. Miriam is in the middle of a city freshly united, with the Wall newly broken down and people able to cross at liberty for the first time in decades. She is in the middle of such euphoria, but cannot feel it, for she has not left her father's apartment in weeks, nursing him as he lies dying. One standard bed-bath, however, is very different, when he gasps the name ''Frieda'' that she does not recognise – and she sees for the first time ever a tattoo for his camp inmate identity under his watch. One bombshell outside, then, and two inside. And inside her father, Henryk, what is going on, as he has a first person narrative alternating with her story? What will we find happened, as he remembers back to the real Frieda, a young woman that shook him to the core when he was her literature professor? That's right, more bombshells… [[The Rabbit Girls by Anna Ellory|Full Review]] <!-- McGee -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0241365953.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0241365953/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[American Royals by Katharine McGee]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Two and a half centuries ago, America won the Revolutionary War and General George Washington was offered the crown. Today, the House of Washington still sit on the thrown with Princess Beatrice next in line. Beatrice's whole life has been building up to her ruling the United States and the time for her reign is imminent. [[American Royals by Katharine McGee|Full Review]] <!-- Mulligan -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1784742716.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1784742716/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in the most pleasant way. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]], and [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness. More fool me. [[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]] <!-- Coleman -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1785032461.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785032461/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Girl at the Window by Rowan Coleman]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Paranormal|Paranormal]] Trudy Heaton is going home, to a house where her roots burrow back through the centuries and to a mother she hasn't spoken to for sixteen years. Home, her refuge, Ponden Hall, where she can heal herself and try to come to terms with the traumatic loss of her husband. She needs to build bridges with her mother and convince her grieving son that his father is dead. Where better than the house full of light and shadow, that nurtured her throughout her childhood? [[The Girl at the Window by Rowan Coleman|Full Review]] |-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0008291845.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0008291845/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[We Are Not Okay by Natalia Gomes]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Teens|Teens]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Set in a typical American town, ''We Are Not Okay'' tells the story of four teenage girls facing the difficulties brought on by high school and growing up as a girl in today's society. The novel is told from four different perspectives, those of Lucy, Ulana, Trina and Sophia, whose friendship statuses vary from BFFs to sworn enemies. The reader is presented with a glimpse into each of their lives, but more importantly their minds, and at times the thoughts of those characters could have been taken directly from my own. Gomes has created a heartbreakingly real and relevant novel that focuses on prominent topic areas which are becoming ingrained in our society, particularly in relation to the ''Me Too Movement''. ''We Are Not Okay'' reminds the reader of the importance of phrases like ''I'm With Her''. [[We Are Not Okay by Natalia Gomes|Full Review]]  <!-- Kate Tough -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:034914365X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/034914365X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Kate Tough]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Women's Fiction|Women's Fiction]] Life has just hidden behind a corner and stuck a foot out as Rhona Beech came past. She and Mark had been together for nine years and it was beginning to feel ''settled''. Then Mark announced that he'd got a job in Canada and he was going whether Rhona wanted to come with him or not. The ''not'' bit of the sentence was the way it worked out and Rhona was left on her own. Well, she wasn't completely on her own: she had friends and family, but it's not the same as having that special someone in your life, that someone who makes you part of a couple. So Rhona had to start again, rejoining a world that bore little resemblance to the one she'd left nine years ago - and there's a lot of difference between being in the middle of your twenties and the middle of your thirties. [[Keep Walking Rhona Beech by Kate Tough|Full Review]] <!-- Varenne -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0857058738.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857058738/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Equator by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and who hates the way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Equator by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Jane O'Connor -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:B07GLCDXZL.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07GLCDXZL/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Needlemouse by Jane O'Connor]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Women's Fiction|Women's Fiction]] We first meet Sylvia Penton Move on her birthday and her boss, the Prof, is taking her out to lunch. This is her favourite day of the year, not because it's her birthday but because of the special time she gets to spend with the man she loves. He's told her that he and his wife are going to divorce - Martha is apparently having an affair - and Sylvia is convinced that the Prof will then declare his love and they can be together. She hasn't fully constructed 'together' in her own mind - she envisages it as romantic, but her imagination hasn't yet progressed to the sexual part of the relationship. There's time though - she's only been the prof's PA for fifteen years. [[Needlemouse by Jane O'Connor|Full Review]] <!-- Laurain -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1910477672.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1910477672/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Newest Graphic Novels Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] Vintage 1954 starts by thrusting several completely different characters upon us, before deciding to run with them and formulate a plot. So we have an American biker, just landing in Paris but unfortunately not with the wife who shared his dream of visiting the city together. We have a goth girl who everyone recognises from an American crime show, but actually is a humble restorer of antiques. We have a cocktail barman, infatuated with the goth girl. We also have a man ruling the roost over a whole suite of individual apartments fabricated from the Haussmann-era mansion his family once owned. Finally something conspires to get them together, and drinking from the same bottle of a rare 1954 red wine. Only, one of them has a bizarre incidence in his family history that also features the same plonk – where a grandfather imbibed, and walked out the door one rainy morning, never to be seen again. But of course nobody will be doing any disappearing now, though – will they? [[Vintage 1954 by Antoine Laurain, Jane Aitken (translator) and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->|}