Three Wishes – Liane Moriarty
Rating: 5 stars Most people by now will have heard of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, famously adapted into a television series starring Nicole Kidman. Alas, I’ve not managed to see the adaptation, but I [...]
Our Endless Numbered Days – Claire Fuller
Rating: 5 stars Peggy is the narrator of Claire Fuller’s remarkable first novel, which won the 2015 Desmond Elliot Prize for debut novels. Her story opens in November 1985 when she finds [...]
Swimming Lessons – Claire Fuller
Rating: 5 stars I was hooked from the start by the tremendous opening of Fuller’s novel: “Gil Coleman looked down from the first-floor window of the bookshop and saw his dead [...]
Lullaby – Leïla Slimani: Lavinia’s Book Pick, September 2018
Lullaby is the story of the murder of two young children by their nanny. That’s not a spoiler – that’s how it opens. It’s tense, tight, and enigmatic throughout. There’s a [...]
The Music Shop – Rachel Joyce
Rating: 4.5 stars Rachel Joyce is one of my favourite contemporary authors – I absolutely loved her recent collection of short stories, A Snow Garden, reviewed here earlier this year, as well as her three previous novels. [...]
The Last Mrs Parrish – Liv Constantine
Rating: 4 stars The Last Mrs Parrish, by a sister writing duo who work under the name ‘Liv Constantine’, is a sort of Rebecca-in-reverse; we begin by following the shallow and ambitious [...]
Big Little Lies – Liane Moriarty
Rating: 5 stars Big Little Lies was a birthday gift for which I am extremely grateful. I was totally hooked from start to end, and it’s a book that starts (very [...]
The Girls – Emma Cline
Rating: 5 stars The Girls is one of those now ubiquitous ‘not-quite-based-on-a-real-crime’ crime stories. I was put off by the name and the fact that it was related to a real crime, and [...]
Jonathan Unleashed – Meg Rosoff
Rating: 5 stars I love it when my hints work and I get given a book I’ve been longing to read. I heard parts of the Radio 4 Book at Bedtime serialisation [...]
TRUE CRIME, ALL THE TIME
Louise, from Chapter and Verse, tells us about her experience with true crime... Read All About It I’ve just read (and loved) The Girls by Emma Cline*, and like so many [...]