I got a Kindle Paperwhite for my birthday (and a purple cover – gorgeous), and between that and some excellent paper books with really beautiful covers, I’ve been enjoying a lot of books recently. Here are my top 5 …
Where’d You Go, Bernadette, by Maria Semple. A brilliant, complicated story about a brilliant, complicated architect, Bernadette, who HATES living in Seattle, and her family, and why it’s important to visit the Antarctic. There should be more mothers like this in books!
Cruel Summer, by James Dawson. Fabulous, sun-and-sangria-soaked YA horror. A whip-crack plot and characters you’ll wish you’d been at school with. (All except one …)
The Cuckoo’s Calling, by Robert Galbraith. Recommended to me by my go-to detective story guru (my mother), who had forgotten that Robert Galbraith is actually JK Rowling. Great story, wonderful characters and vivid descriptions of high-end London. I love to picture her there, doing her research, and nobody noticing …
Looking for Alaska, by John Green. More YA. And more wonderful, vivid characters.
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce. An astonishing, assured adult debut. You follow Harold through ever step of his journey up England, from the very bottom, in Devon, to the very top, in Berwick-on-Tweed. And you do indeed feel as if you’re going on a pilgrimage. I wasn’t so sure about the last section, but up until then I found it very moving and the descriptions of the English countryside are elegaic. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
