We're up to our oxters here with Christmas orders (thank you so much, each of you who have ordered with us!) and it has left little time for reading. However, book people always find time to squeeze in time with a book, and so have we. Here's what we've been reading recently.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Firstly, congratulations to Samantha Harvey on winning The Booker Prize this year! I purchased Orbital a week or so before the winning announcement and let me tell you how glad I was that I had! Despite its small size, it really packs a punch and forces you to think about the Earth, Space and your place in it. Set over a day on Earth, you follow six people in space as they orbit the Earth sixteen times over. With the news of the death of one of their mothers and the growing typhoon they can see growing, they start to think and yearn for home and their loved ones.
I was completely blown away with the book. The existentialism and the fragility of human life is written with such gentleness and tenderness, that it’s a real treat to read. The writing is beautiful and I would highly recommend reading this with no distractions whatsoever to experience the book completely.
- Alisha
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
The Safekeep is an enthralling, sensual novel of secrets, love, ownership, and the fallibility of memory. Isabel, an introverted and somewhat serious woman, lives in her beautiful family home in the countryside outside of Amsterdam. It's 1961, her mother is dead and her brothers live away. Her eldest brother brings his mysterious new girlfriend Eva to dinner and when he has to go away for work, Isabel is forced to host the newcomer, despite her reservations about Eva, whose facade Isabel endeavours to pierce. When household objects begin to disappear, Isabel's paranoia and suspicions of Eva spill over into obsession. Evocative and mysterious, but also incredibly moving, this is one of the best things I've read in a long time!
- Liv
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune
This was one of my most highly anticipated reads of this year and it definitely lived up to expectations. The first of this two book series, The House in the Cerulean Sea, was one of my favourite reads of 2022 so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel when it was released.
It was just as heart-warming and funny as the first book and expanded on the world building I was craving. I loved that is satisfied my curiosity about Arthur and his life. It was just as cosy as I hoped it would be and I loved all the soft moments between the happy couple and the children. If you are craving a good found family story with only drips and drabs of angst- but mostly a lot of cute moments and humour- then I highly recommend you give this series a go!
- Aishah
What a Way to Go by Bella Mackie
I absolutely loved How to Kill Your Family so I was really excited to read this, but also, a little apprehensive whether it would be as good.
Reader, it was brilliant.
After millionaire, Anthony Wistern, comes to a grizzly end at his lavish birthday party, he watches down as his wife and four children bicker and fall out, accusing each other over who could have killed him and who will profit the most from his death. The truth is, a lot of people had reason to want him out of the way.
I always enjoy books with alternating chapters but I thought this storyline was really original with half of it from Anthony’s point of view in the afterlife waiting room. I think if I’d known this beforehand, it might have put me off a bit but it really worked and wasn’t as weird as you’d expect. Trying to work out the murder suspect kept me guessing all the way through- there were sooooo many people it could’ve been! The characters of the Wistern family were all unlikeable but that was the whole point.
A solid, entertaining read!
- Chloe
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas
Well, this book is seriously outside my usual reading comfort zone, but seeing as 'Romantasy' looks set to be one of the words of 2024 and so many readers rave about this series, I thought I'd better put my preconceived ideas aside and see what the hype was about.
This series has been an absolute publishing phenomenon, hyped to the skies on TikTok and selling multi-millions of copies worldwide. Sarah J Maas has given fantasy and romance publishing a huge shot in the arm, spawned many imitators, and best of all, has driven people back to reading.
Feyre, a human huntress, is whisked away to a world of faeries, magic, intrigue and romance when she kills a wolf who was actually a fairy in disguise. She's forced to confront everything she thought she knew about her world, and that of faeries.
On the positive side, I finished it- there's enough to have kept me turning the pages- but I was stuck on a delayed train with nothing else to read. I can't promise I'd have finished it otherwise! I read this to get an understanding of why it is so loved, and to be brutally honest I'm even more baffled.
Overall, it doesn't matter what I think, this is well loved, and I'm so delighted that it's got people talking about and buying books and getting excited about reading. It's a lovely thing to be entranced by a book, and this wasn't the one for me, but happy reading to all those fairy romantics out there!
- Marianne