Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Queenie felt familiar to me, as I have a friend just like her, and reading this book was a little like hearing about my mate’s exploits on one of her typical Saturday nights. But Queenie doesn’t confine her casual trysts to the weekend. She has frequent random encounters at unsuitable times with deeply predatory men […]

Book Review: The Colletta Cassettes by Bruno Noble

I love this book, even though it is the third, possibly fourth time of reading it in its entirety (Full disclaimer: Bruno is a friend of mine, and the two of us have been writing buddies for about 5 years. He knows that being my friend is not enough to get five stars. You have […]

Book Review: Trevor Noah’s Born A Crime

Originally posted to Amazon on 14th March 2021: There’s almost no point reviewing Trevor Noah’s book, as anyone who knows of him or has heard him on the radio will think, ‘Ah. A book by Trevor Noah. Must be good,’ and it doesn’t disappoint. The few hours spent reading it are as therapeutic as having […]

Lela: Ashes of Childhood by Lela Burbridge and Sarah Jarman

Lela’s story is a harrowing one, and it is told with unflinching honesty. Growing up in Uganda, the youngest of four girls, she can never understand why her Maama treats her like a servant, why she isn’t allowed to go to school like the other girls, why she has to tramp mile after backbreaking mile […]

Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus

‘The Circus arrives without warning… it is simply there, when yesterday it was not.’ An empty field is suddenly full of black and white striped tents, each containing something more magical and astounding than the last. The circus stays for a while, open only from sundown to dawn, then moves on as suddenly as it […]

Jodie Picoult – Small Great Things

The worst you can say about Jodi Picoult is that she lays it on with a trowel, and she likes to tie her loose ends so tightly that they squeak, echoing beyond the realms of believability. Once you accept this, you can allow yourself to get utterly absorbed in her novels, which shamelessly pull on […]