Tag: contemporary fiction

Looking out at the crystal clear waters of Sorrento, my heart aches at the loss of the future I’d allowed myself to dream. But Tom’s lie is bigger than I could have imagined. How can we survive it? My decision will shatter more than just my own heart. Am I really ready to say the words that will change everything?

It was supposed to be a week of bliss leading to our dream wedding on the Italian coast. But it’s obvious our families are against it. My mother questions why Tom has controlled so much of the planning, twisting his generous surprise into something sinister. Tom’s daughter, Lily, makes it known she’ll never see me as her mother.

Trying to focus on our dream day, I can’t help but notice a woman who spends every day at the pool, alone. She seems fascinated by Lily in a way that worries me. When Tom finally locks eyes with her, he immediately pales.

This week should have been the best time of our lives but before our future can begin, Tom will confess a secret that could destroy everything. But he’s not the only one who kept a past lie hidden for the sake of happily-ever-after. By the end of the week with both our secrets laid bare, will we really say, ‘I do’?

A totally addictive novel about family secrets which will have you turning the pages long into the night. Perfect for fans of Jodi Picoult, Liane Moriarty and Diane Chamberlain.

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Emma Robinson is a USA Today Bestseller with a passion for stories which explore the power of family and friendship in the most challenging circumstances. Focusing on emotional themes, her novels are both heart-breaking and life affirming.

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My thoughts: Carrie has been whisked off to Sorrento by her fiancé Tom along with her mother and his daughter, to get married. They’ve only known each other eighteen months, and been a couple for eleven, but surely that’s long enough to know what you want?

However, it appears Tom hasn’t been a hundred percent honest, with either Carrie or Lily, and now, in the brilliant sunshine and with days before they tie the knot, the truth is about to come out.

Carrie has to make a lot of decisions in a short space of time  – and not just about her future spouse, as it turns out her overprotective mum might also have a few things to come clean about.

I felt for Carrie, she’s struggling a bit with everything, part of her things have gone a bit fast, and she wants to be a good step-mum to Lily, who at twelve, is pushing back. When she finds out the secrets the people she trusted so much were keeping – she’s furious and has to stand up for herself.

The secrets aren’t life threatening, but they do change things for Carrie, and make her decide to take charge for a change. A really interesting and enjoyable read.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

They’ve changed. He hasn’t. And that’s the problem.

Alan Hope has spent his entire working life as a reporter for the local newspaper. Now in his early sixties, he’s the newsroom dinosaur, firmly out of touch with the TikTok generation. So when his editor insists he starts an online blog, Alan treats it like free therapy. It’s not like anyone is actually going to read it… right?

Wrong! Because the more Alan’s life unravels – both personally and professionally – the more his brutally honest posts explode in popularity. Suddenly, the tight-knit town of Bashford is reading Alan’s innermost thoughts…

His wife announces she no longer wants to grow old with him. His two grown children
are more like strangers. His colleagues are mortified at the oversharing. Then he’s forced to work with fellow reporter Lisa – young, ambitious and the epitomise of modern life.

Everything Alan is not.

But can someone from a completely different generation help Alan reconnect with his own family? And can Alan – a newspaper relic who now actually hates newspapers – help Lisa uncover the truth about her father?

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Rob Harris grew up in the Forest of Dean but now lives in Oxfordshire with his wife
and daughter. For more than 15 years he worked on regional newspapers as a
journalist, sports editor and sub-editor and he is a former editor of The Forester
newspaper. He’s also been named Gloucestershire Media Sports Writer of the Year.

Rob’s first novel, The Absurd Life of Barry White, was published July 2024 by
Bloodhound Books. The sequel, Barry White is Still Absurd, came out in June 2025.

Rob previously wrote a memoir about the rare highs and frequent lows of being a
committed but ultimately frustrated village cricketer – called Won’t You Dance for Virat Kohli?, which was published in 2021 by Pitch.

He still knocks around on village cricket grounds, allegedly ‘for fun’.

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My thoughts: This had quite a few funny moments as Alan, a formerly good reporter slowly loses the will to write for the local paper and starts writing a blog, that ends up derailing everything. He doesn’t think anyone is reading his thoughts, but really he has thousands of dedicated fans, especially in India, where the papers owners are based. 

His editor is horrified at the airing of the papers secrets, the way Alan is so rude about their ultimate bosses, and tries to rein him in, but Alan won’t do as he’s told and as his personal life collapses and he moves into his shed, things go from bad to worse.

A bit silly, but very entertaining, this is one man’s breakdown that will take everyone with it. Even being assigned to teach new reporter Lisa how newspapers work won’t stop Alan unleashing his real opinions on his blog and bringing chaos to the quiet town of Bashford. 

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

It is a truism, frequently invoked by the members of the Meryton Women’s Guild, that one is only ever as happy as one’s unhappiest child. So, with five daughters and four grandchildren, it was a miracle Mrs Hester Bennet ever raised a smile. At best, she was only ever tentatively pleased, and even then understood that her contentment rested on the edge of a gaping precipice into which she would inevitably tumble the second Kitty or Lydia (it was almost always those two) messaged in the clutches of yet another existential crisis…

Lydia, home from Paris on New Year’s Day in a welter of hangover and humiliation, finds herself swearing off drink, drugs and sex for the next 12 months. Through her unfamiliar sobriety, she’ll see a landmark year for all the Bennet sisters, including a disruptive 40th birthday, an engagement and a funeral: and, maybe, coming to terms with the results of a run-of-the-mill run-in with a jackknifed lorry on a wet stretch of the M1…

A sharply funny and unexpectedly tender modern sequel to Pride & Prejudice, this is a story of sisterhood, survival, and second chances. For fans of Marian Keyes, Dolly Alderton, and anyone who’s ever wondered what the Bennet sisters would be like in the age of therapy, WhatsApp, and wellness trends gone rogue.

Joanna Nadin is a former broadcast journalist, political speechwriter and special adviser to the Prime Minister. Since leaving politics she has written numerous books for children and adults, including an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for younger readers, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Joe All Alone, which is now a BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated BBC drama, andthe Flying Fergus series with Sir Chris Hoy. Originally from Essex, she now lives in Bath, and is Associate Professor in Creative Writing at University of Bristol.

My thoughts: this modern day update to the sisters of Pride & Prejudice is fantastic, funny, sad, thoughtful, entertaining and hugely enjoyable. The Bennet sisters are up to date with dating apps, WhatsApp chats and a very different take on the 18th Century.

Lizzy is a doctor with twins who never stop asking questions, juggling a demanding job with parenthood, Jane is contemplating her future and that of Netherfield, Mary is still figuring things out, Kitty might be about to wreck her love life and Lydia is, well, a total mess.

While Mr Bennet takes refuge in his newspaper, Mrs Bennet is still meddling in her daughters’ lives, some things never change.

As the sisters’ year begins, there’s heart break, misunderstandings, arguments, gossip and a trip to Paris which might derail the close knit bond between the five for good.

So much fun, very cleverly done and with real heart, this is a terrific book.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Steph Harper is on the run. 

When she was five, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing interfere with her dream to become an astronaut, and ultimately, to go to the moon.

In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with the three women who know and love her most dearly: her younger sister Kayla, an artist whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; her college girlfriend Della, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her family as a young girl through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and her mother Hannah, who has held up her family’s history as a beacon of inspiration to her kids, all the while keeping the truth about her own past a secret.

Told through these women’s interwoven lives, and spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find a little space for herself.

Eliana Ramage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Vermont Studio Center. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family. To the Moon and Back is her first novel.

My thoughts: This is very good, a beautifully written, engaging, intelligent story about family, as complicated as that can be, told through the eyes of two sisters – Steph and Kayla, and their mother Hannah. As well as Steph’s friend Della.

Their lives haven’t been easy, as members of the Cherokee, they live with the memories of the trauma their people suffered over generations. And they have their own too.

Hannah fled her abusive husband with her daughters, from Texas to Oklahoma, hoping to give them more than she had. Her parents threw her out when she was pregnant, and she does her best to love and support them, struggling to express that all the while. 

Steph wants to be an astronaut, it’s her lifelong, obsessive, dream. It takes over at times and damages her relationships with her family, her friends and her girlfriend Della. She works diligently at achieving her goal, studying hard, applying for fellowships and eventually going to Hawaii to live in a simulated environment in an experiment.

But her interpersonal relationships are a mess, she’s bad at expressing her emotions, bad at communicating. Her obsessive plan to go to space overwhelms everything.

I found the relationship dynamics between the characters fascinating, they felt like real people – messy and complicated. The writing is confident and engaging. I don’t know a lot about Native Americans, living in the UK, they’re not something that we’re taught about, so a lot of those parts were interesting too.

It’s a really enjoyable book, and for a debut, is so confident and well written, I can’t wait to see what Ramage writes next.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Can you imagine it? Can you imagine me there in the front row in Saint Peter’s Square? The lesbian sister of a literal saint.

Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself . . .

Inspired by the author’s own devout upbringing, Ordinary Saints is a brilliant debut novel from a fresh, exciting new voice which asks – who gets to decide how we are remembered – and who we will become?

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin was the winner of the inaugural PFD Queer Fiction Prize and was also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize Trust Discoveries Prize in 2022. Her début literary novel Ordinary Saints was shortlisted for the 2025 Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize.

‘Inspired by my own upbringing in a devout family, Ordinary Saints asks how we, particularly as queer people, can reconcile ourselves with the beliefs, communities and selves we’ve had to leave behind. The premise is also based on real events. In October 2020, I read about the beatification of Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager who is expected to become the first millennial saint. I couldn’t stop thinking about his family and how the cause for canonisation, on top of the grief of losing a son or brother, would affect them. This became the instigating question of my novel and my protagonist ‘the emigrant lesbian sister of a literal saint’ appeared soon afterwards.’ Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, 2024

My thoughts: This book has an excellent opening line, and is really interesting and a bit funny. Or maybe that’s just me. Jay’s older brother died young in a terrible accident, he was training to be a priest. Jay was a teenager.

Now, thirteen years later, her dad calls and says he might be beatified as a saint. Unbeknownst to her, her parents have been helping to compile proof that he has been responsible for miracles after his death.

Jay is at a loss as to how to deal with this utterly bizarre thing. She’s not much of a Catholic these days, and she cannot get behind the campaign to turn her brother into a saint. She is forced to revisit and examine her relationship with him, and with her parents.

It’s a really interesting premise and while I was raised going to church, the Church of England doesn’t make saints, so this whole concept is mind boggling. The idea that in the 21st century anyone can imagine that there are new saints to be made is just, well, bewildering.

I really enjoyed this book, I empathised with Jay, struggling to reconcile the brother she remembers with the version being presented by the church, worthy of sainthood. The complicated nature of grief, memory and family relationships are all laid bare and Jay has to try to work out whether she can really believe that her brother, someone she isn’t sure she really knew, could really be perfect.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Booksellers Florrie Appleton and her fiancé Ed are just three weeks away from their dream wedding.

Between hand-selling beloved classics, unveiling Ed’s enchanting window displays and hosting lively book readings with local authors, they’ve managed to plan an intimate ceremony that promises to be everything they’ve ever hoped for – filled with literary delights, lots of laughter and the love of those closest to them.

But when Ed’s mother Dawn arrives unannounced on their doorstep, Florrie’s world is thrown into chaos like confetti. Dawn claims she’s come to help with the wedding preparations, yet she’s never
shown the slightest interest in her son before. As she starts dismissing their carefully curated shelves and snooping around their cosy cottage, Florrie can’t shake the feeling that Dawn’s plans stretch far beyond simply choosing flowers and cake.

With her close-knit group of friends rallying around her and the bookshop’s loyal customers offering support, can Florrie protect her relationship and the bookshop that means everything to them both?

Or will their happily ever after slip through their fingers like pages torn from one of her treasured books?

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Eliza J Scott lives in North Yorkshire with her family and has wanted to be a writer as far back as she can remember. She is inspired by her beautiful surroundings and loves to write heartwarming stories
based on romance and friendship with a generous dollop of community spirit and a hint of humour.

When she’s not writing, Eliza can usually be found with her nose in a book or working in her garden doing a spot of plot wrangling (of the writing variety), and battling against the weeds. The weeds,
unfortunately, are currently winning but Eliza is undeterred. Roses are amongst her favourite flowers and she doesn’t need much of an excuse to visit a plant centre, where a new rose always seems to
mysteriously find its way onto her trolley much to her husband’s astonishment.

Eliza also enjoys having a catch-up with friends over tea and cake, as well as bracing walks in the countryside, rounded off by a visit to a teashop – for yet more tea and cake!

Amazon author page: Eliza J Scott – UK or Eliza J Scott – US
Website: Eliza J Scott
Twitter/X: @ElizaJScott1
Facebook: @elizajscottauthor
Instagram: @elizajscott

Bookbub: @elizajscott
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My thoughts: Florrie and Ed are counting down the days to their wedding, when Ed’s ghastly mother shows up, looking to cause havoc and derail their plans.

She’s still mad that Ed’s grandparents left their bookshop to him and Florrie, and wants to drive a wedge between the couple. Unfortunately for her, they’re strong and can see what she’s up to.

Florrie’s friends have planned a week’s worth of pre-wedding fun, a long and entertaining hen week, with no pig wrangling involved (promise!) It should keep her distracted and hopefully stop any panic about what Ed’s mad mother is up to. 

And then, before they realise, it’s time to say “I do”. 

This is a lovely, funny, fun read, light and entertaining, perfect for unwinding and letting your own worries go for a while.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.

Can a great love survive a great deception?

In the wilds of Donegal, Ireland, 1999, Saoirse is an artist living an outwardly idyllic life. Her tender husband Daithí and two beloved daughters are regular subjects for her work, and in them she has found the safe home that she has always longed for. She tends not to talk about her past, and those that love her have learned to accept that the full story is too painful for her to disclose.

When her Dublin exhibition unexpectedly wins a prestigious award that invites a swarm of publicity, Saoirse is left panic stricken. The unanticipated recognition threatens to expose a decade’s worth of buried memories and past crimes. Because what her family and friends don’t know is that Saoirse has been on the run since she was seventeen, she has stolen an identity to survive, and whilst Ireland might now be her home, it wasn’t her first – and now her past life is poised to reclaim her.

Charleen Hurtubise has lived in Dublin, Ireland for over 25 years, having moved from Michigan, USA. She is a teacher and artist as well as a writer, and her short fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in various publications. She holds an MFA Creative Writing from University College Dublin (UCD) where she has also facilitated creative writing modules.

My thoughts: Saoirse has been running from something her whole life, but now she’s found a home, she’s finally safe, but it all might be lost in an instant.

I was utterly hooked by Saoirse’s story, her awful childhood, her attempts to start over, her love for Daithí and her children, her passion for her art. She’s a fascinating character, she’s had to fight for so long, struggle for survival.

It might not be the happiest of stories, but Saoirse is a survivor, a chameleon, changing herself to fit in, to keep going, always living on her nerves. It’s intense but gripping, moving and full of beauty.

*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.