The Overflowing Library

I've not read a huge amount for me this month. I've started a reasonably regimented exercise programme as part of a cardiovascular study for a University which means I'm spending a huge amount of time down the gym which is, as a direct consequence, eating into a lot of my free time in the evenings in itself. It's also means by the time I get to bed I'm tired and needing to sleep a lot earlier rather than staying up reading. Anyway back to the books. This month I've read some excellent ones from the library as follows. Crazy in Love at the Lonely Heart's Bookshop by Annie Darling You can go crazy searching for the one… Tattooed, pink-haired, Bettie Page lookalike Nina is addicted to bad boys. Like Heathcliff and Cathy, Nina firmly believes that true love only takes one form: wild, mad love, full of passion and fire and tempestuous arguments, and she won’t settle for anything less. But years of swiping right has uncovered nothing but losers and f...

Bad Girls by Caitlin Davies Society has never known what to do with its rebellious women. Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from public view, locked up and often forgotten about. Many of these women ended up at HM Prison Holloway, the self-proclaimed 'terror to evil-doers' which, until its closure in 2016, was western Europe's largest women's prison. First built in 1852 as a House of Correction, Holloway's women have come from all corners of the UK - whether a patriot from Scotland, a suffragette from Huddersfield, or a spy from the Isle of Wight - and from all walks of life - socialites and prostitutes, sporting stars and nightclub queens, refugees and freedom fighters. They were imprisoned for treason and murder, for begging, performing abortions and stealing clothing coupons, for masquerading as men, running brot...

The first rule of Sunday Lunch Club is … don't make any afternoon plans. Every few Sundays, Anna and her extended family and friends get together for lunch. They talk, they laugh, they bicker, they eat too much. Sometimes the important stuff is left unsaid, other times it's said in the wrong way. Sitting between her ex-husband and her new lover, Anna is coming to terms with an unexpected pregnancy at the age of forty. Also at the table are her ageing grandmother, her promiscuous sister, her flamboyantly gay brother and a memory too terrible to contemplate. Until, that is, a letter arrives from the person Anna scarred all those years ago. Can Anna reconcile her painful past with her uncertain future? Juliet Ashton weaves a story of love, friendship and community that will move you to laughter and to tears.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Sunday Lunch Club. The Sunday Lunch Club is the story of the Piper family who meet on a semi regular basis to have Sunday Lunches. F...

Daphne is off to St Rita’s, an exclusive girls’ boarding school. It sounds awfully respectable and Daphne herself is awfully respectable too. She loves to read, and is delighted to be offered the chance to interview for Librarian’s assistant’s assistant immediately upon arrival. But it turns out nothing is quite what you’d expect at St Rita’s—you can’t trust a padlock if the fourth graders are around, the floor has holes from cannonballs, the smell in the dining room is disgustingly foul, and Daphne discovers the librarian doesn’t really exist. But there is a librarian’s assistant, Emily Lime. And she’s really a crime-solving genius, who’s looking for a new assistant of her own. And booksmart Daphne is just the girl for the job, because mystery and intrigue are about to strike St Rita’s and Emily Lime is going to need all the help she can get…. If you loved Robin Steven's boarding school series and a series of unfortunate events you will love this book. The Book...

Astor, Ontario. 1904. A boy staggers out of the forest covered in blood and collapses at the feet of 16-year-old Emmy. While others are suspicious and afraid, Emmy is drawn to him. Is he really the monster the townsfolk say he is? Astor, Ontario. 1994. Megan arrives from London for her great grandmother Emmy’s 105th birthday. It should be a happy family occasion, but Megan is nursing a broken heart and carrying a secret she fears might consume her. I thoroughly enjoyed Stranger. I really enjoy novels where the narrative is split between a linked contemporary and historical story where at first the link isn't fully clear and over the course of the novel the linked are unveiled so I was incredibly excited to read this book. The contemporary story is really lovely. It follows Megan who has arrived in Canada to celebrate a special family occasion and spend time with her father who she lives hundreds of miles away from. While it is supposed to be a happy time for her she h...

Annie is starting college. She can’t wait. No more school, no more uniform, and no one telling her what to do. It’s the start of a new adventure and Annie’s not going to let anyone or anything get in the way of that. Freedom matters to Annie. She has cerebral palsy and she’s had to fight hard to get the world to see her for who she truly is. Then she meets Fab. He’s six foot two, Polish and a passionate believer in…well, just about everything, but most of all Annie and good old fashioned romance. The moment Fab sees Annie, he’s wildly drawn to her and declares she must be his girl. Annie’s horrified. She doesn’t want to be anyone’s anything, especially if it means losing her independence. But then Annie finds herself falling for Fab. As things go deeply wrong, Annie realises that love can make you do wild, crazy things, and so she sets out to win his heart with a romantic gesture of truly epic proportions! Fans fell in love with the warmth, wit, romance and fierce fri...

A razor-sharp, adrenaline rush of a novel from award-winning author Juno Dawson, Clean is Gossip Girl meets Girl, Interrupted. 'I can feel it swimming through my veins like glitter ... it's liquid gold.' When socialite Lexi Volkov almost overdoses, she thinks she's hit rock bottom. She's wrong. Rock bottom is when she's forced into an exclusive rehab facility. From there, the only way is up for Lexi and her fellow inmates, including the mysterious Brady. As she faces her demons, Lexi realises love is the most powerful drug of all ... It's a dirty business getting clean ... Addiction and redemption, love and despair. Clean will have you hooked from the first page. Clean is a brilliant YA read and a perfect example of how YA fiction can be used to tackle more mature ideas in a thoughtful way to make a real impact on its reader. Clean does not hold back. It tackles a broad range of issues including drug addiction, gender identity, eating disorders, me...

How do you know you really exist? It's Maisie's birthday and she can't wait to open her presents. She's hoping for the things she needs to build her own nuclear reactor. But she wakes to an empty house and outside the front door is nothing but a terrifying, all-consuming blackness. Trapped in an ever-shifting reality, Maisie knows that she will have to use the laws of the universe and the love of her family to survive. And even that might not be enough... A mind-bending mystery for anyone who's ever asked questions. From the author of The Many Worlds of Albie Bright and The Jamie Drake Equation. The infinite lives of Maisie Day was a really lovely read which I enjoyed. What I liked about it was that it had a young female lead and was completely focused around science and coding. There's not enough fiction focused on science that is female led and I loved it for that. The story is exciting from the outset with lots of twists and turns including ...

A another month, another pile of books I can't wait to get my hands on .... The Breakfast Club meets One Day in Floored, a unique collaborative novel by seven bestselling and award-winning YA authors: Sara Barnard, Holly Bourne, Tanya Byrne, Non Pratt, Melinda Salisbury, Lisa Williamson and Eleanor Wood. When they got in the lift, they were strangers (though didn't that guy used to be on TV?): Sasha, who is desperately trying to deliver a parcel; Hugo, who knows he's the best-looking guy in the lift and is eyeing up Velvet, who knows what that look means when you hear her name and it doesn't match the way she looks, or the way she talks; Dawson, who was on TV, but isn't as good-looking as he was a few years ago and is desperately hoping no one recognizes him; Kaitlyn, who's losing her sight but won't admit it, and who used to have a poster of Dawson on her bedroom wall, and Joe, who shouldn't be here at all, but who wants to be h...