When reading books like It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, it’s easy to be swept away in a fantasy world that doesn’t include putting the bins out and scraping baked beans off your dinner plate. This New York Times best seller knows how to lift its readers into a love high then put our emotions through the spin drier and still finish that last page with a sigh of … Read More
Searching for more books like Six of Crows? Anyone who’s at all interested in YA and fantasy might have come across Bardugo’s immensely popular Six of Crows series. The tale of Kaz Brekker, leader of the Dregs, a prominent gang in the city of Ketterdam, has had many fans of Bardugo’s work talking since 2015. On the surface, it’s a story about a daring heist (always fun!), but scratch beneath … Read More
Searching for more books like When Breath Becomes Air? Paul Kalanithi was a dedicated surgeon; he devoted his life to medicine and in his final year of residency, when he began to experience frightening symptoms, he pushed them to the wayside, determined to continue on with his studies. Only a few weeks later, it became clear he couldn’t keep practising medicine, and he was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. … Read More
Books can be like Marmite; you love some, you hate others. A Court of Thorns and Roses seems to very much be a ‘marmite’ read. A loose retelling of Beauty & the Beast, this fantasy romance is targeted very much at the YA market, yet the lead protagonist, Feyre, has more character agency than Beauty ever did. Beauty is almost too perfect, whereas Feyre has many flaws and defects that … Read More
At times, books like A Clockwork Orange get lost in a cloud of their own notoriety because the world’s envisioned and the actions of characters are too painful, too shocking, too plausible to comprehend. But if you dare read on, you will discover authors of sublime skill and incomparable vision for though it may be portrayed via unsettling means, the subversive undertones of these novels are incredibly perceptive (topical even) … Read More
This wonderful story by Nicholas Sparks is about the one that got away and how they remain in our hearts no matter where life takes us. Luckily, for the main characters in books like The Notebook, fate often has a way of giving them a second chance. The Notebook begins with an elderly man ‘Duke’ reading pages of a story from a notebook to an elderly woman. He reads to … Read More
Looking for more wholesome and poignant books like Tuesdays with Morrie? Tuesdays with Morrie is, in some ways, Mitch Albom’s memoir, documenting the fourteen visits he made to his former sociology professor before he died in 1995. The book became something of a cult favourite, for the important lessons Morrie teaches Albom, and in turn, any of the book’s readers. Although it is an incredibly sad story, as you follow … Read More
On the hunt for more books like Shatter Me? There’s something about romance that really appeals to young adult readers. Perhaps because more then any of us, young adults are navigating their tentative first steps through romantic relationships. Shatter Me filled a burning need no one in the publishing industry knew was there; romantic dystopian fantasy. Mafi’s writing is… bonkers. The style is almost journalistic with whole sentences crossed out. … Read More