The front cover says ‘fly or die’ – to get that far you need to walk or die, win fights or die, and generally take care or die. Dragons got nothing on this…

Violet is about to enter the Riders’ Quadrant of Basgaith College, of which her mother is a leader. She’s spent all her life so far preparing to be a Scribe but her mother isn’t having it – she’s got to follow the family’s effective tradition. And so Violet enters a literal cut-throat college with no experience and a target on her back for being her mother’s daughter – the older woman had a big role in subduing the parents of a whole bunch of now-candidates, young people who are there by force as penitence for their parents’ sins. But the horror starts at the entry point: in order to become a trainee rider, each candidate must walk over a parapet high above a valley. Each year, tens of people don’t make it and the weather today is wet and windy. If she makes it, Violet must make no friends, only allies, learn to fight, and, if she makes it all the way to meeting the dragons, hope to be chosen by one of them. These dragons breathe fire more often than any other you’ve encountered in fiction before, but without them there is no hope of Violet’s country winning the generations-long war.

Fourth Wing is an absolutely tremendous novel of high fantasy, high stakes, constant character peril (and, yes, they do die), politics, and death and destruction. It’s a book I’m happy to describe as living up to the hype, a famed book for good reason, a book that combines various basic ideas from various decades gone by to nevertheless create a new premise and story. It’s also an incredibly immersive story, the writing and description providing a filmic backdrop.

It would be impossible to point to one single reason this book works; it really is the sum of its parts. The first, and potentially most notable aspect, is the horror and violence – this book gives The Hunger Games a run for its money in just how nasty and violent it is. Death is, in many ways literally, around every corner from the moment Rider candidates join, and that only lets up after graduation insofar as unless the enemy the country is at war with is on your doorstep, you get a reprieve.

I want to get to what I would say are negative aspects about the book out of the way before continuing and one relates to the horror – sex and swearing are everywhere in Fourth Wing. Presented by the author as an activity undertaken due to living in survival mode, candidates are always having sex with each other and it’s almost always casual. Violet herself (the narrative is first person) thinks about sex a great deal to the point that the book is explicit throughout rather than just during the two fully-fledged sex scenes. The swearing is just as frequent and mainly concerns the F word. I personally wonder if both the casual sex and swearing are in there in large part to simply make it obvious that this is not a Young Adult novel, rather than for storytelling purposes.

Talking of the sex scenes and romantasy, let’s do this: this is a high fantasy romance book. You have a few chapters where there’s a possible love triangle before the way ahead becomes clear – in this, the first book of the Empyrean series, Yarros isn’t about to emulate previous decades’ tropes. She wants to get to the chemistry and build-up. I will say that the sex when it happens is rather fun, the explicitness muted by character development. It’s also comical on purpose. And, given that the romance leads of this book are discussed by fans so often, it’s worth noting that they are a diverse couple. (Yes, I’ve seen the AI fan art, too – it’s not accurate.)

The characters, then – Violet is a very average person, as she does remind you often, because she has no drive or confidence in her ability to be a Rider. She was brought up by her father to be a Scribe and, throughout the book, even through her successes she dreams longingly of the archives and the peace being in them would bring her. Xaden, who it’s pretty obvious will be the male lead from chapter one, is less developed due to us being in Violet’s head (you do get to know how hot he is) but a story element leads to us being able to hear more from him later on. The dragons are grumpy and dangerous and set people on fire and… are hilarious. Yes. And Violet’s eventual role as a chosen Rider by a dragon is extremely worth the wait. In fact the book consistently sports something major to look forward to and this is a big part of the story’s success.

There are various other important characters who become part of the core circle, and Yarros keeps the threat of death ever present.

We remain in the same location for the vast majority of Fourth Wing but it never gets boring. And the politics is well-planned with shocks that, no matter whether or not you work them out early, promise much for the continuation of the series.

I think I’ve written enough; frankly, I’d be surprised if anyone’s still reading these words. I’ll end on this – go read Fourth Wing. You won’t regret it and you can thank me later.

Publisher: Piatkus (Hachette)
Pages: 516
Type: Non-Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-0-349-44031-6
First Published: 2nd May 2023
Date Reviewed: 18th December 2024

Choosing what’s best for yourself.

Keaton has been told that her cheating ex (who was cheating with his ex-wife) and her boss (the ex-wife) are having a baby and the boss wants Keaton to take a promotion to help out on a higher-up level. Keaton decides she’s had enough. At the same time, her mother and uncle are looking to put their old family home on the market – finally, after many years of leaving it abandoned after their parents’ early deaths, they want to sell. So Keaton sets off to North Carolina to clear the heritage house she’s never been to and spend some time thinking about her next moves for her life. It won’t be simple, however – when she gets to Beaufort, NC, she falls in love with the house, the people, and her nextdoor neighbour is seriously hot. And she finds out something her mum does not know – many of the townspeople still talk about the sudden disappearance and presumed death of Rebecca and Townsend St James. The car crash that was rumoured may not be the real story.

A Happier Life is a dual timeline, dual narrative tale (with a brief third) of discovery in all its forms. It sees a bit of a change from Woodson Harvey’s recent work; one of the defining elements of 2022’s The Wedding Veil was a mystery and 2023’s The Summer Of Songbirds had a couple of things to iron out in this same vein, but A Happier Life is particularly high on it as to reach it as a genre categorisation. It also has a vastly different sort of ending that has proved controversial (more on that later). But in sum, this book does scratch any itch you might have to read more of the author’s work.

The basic features of a great Woodson Harvey novel are all here. (I do consider her to be an excellent writer.) You have the focus on characters and characterisation; the importance of family, never in any way overbearing, all very lovely and natural; and the wonderful North Carolina/Southern women’s fiction atmosphere that, in this Brit’s necessarily detached view, makes for a very homely and friendly setting.

Nevertheless that Keaton probably should have nipped her relationship with her co-worker-who-was-her-boss’s-husband in the bud, her journey of personal and familial discovery is lovely to read. Whilst she guards her heart very strongly for a while, the goodness she finds in the seaside town wins her over slowly as you know it will. She is the first narrator to be introduced, and arguably the main one.

Narrator two is Keaton’s unknown grandmother, Rebecca, who died long before Keaton was born. Her narrative is definitely more filler-in than completely fully-fledged, simply because we rely on her narrative to find out secrets, but she’s a good character also. (One of the defining aspects of Woodson Harvey’s novels and the reason starting one of her books feels so wonderful is that you know you’ll be greeted by a plethora of good people.)

To speak of the other main characters singularly would spoil the story; there’s only one further that is safe to discuss and that is Salt the dog who is modelled after Woodson Harvey’s own bundle of fur. Salt brings people together as all good boys do and is winsome – he is paramount to the plot.

(What I can say about people as a group is that Keaton’s friendships are lovely and Rebecca’s dinner parties are similarly good; Rebecca’s narrative is in part about menus and creating guest lists of compatible people, and food. Woodson Harvey includes a couple of recipes in the end pages of the book.)

Having chosen to set her novel in the town she lives in herself, Woodson Harvey’s use of location is, needless to say, on point.

There is a romance – it is sweet, well-written, extremely realistic as the author’s past novels have also been, and moves at a good pace. Woodson Harvey writes her romantic heroes very well.

The mystery itself unravels slowly – whilst it’s a focus it’s not the focus until the end; there is plenty of other story content here and you never feel it’s taking a while to get there (and truly the book spans a fairly short period of time in both narratives, anyway). And as the mystery concerns the ending I mentioned, let’s get to it. I’ll try my best to avoid spoiling it.

Given I’m writing this so late after publication and, indeed after my own reading of the novel, I might as well address the fact that some readers have been disappointed with the ending of A Happier Life due to the marketing and the cover (and, I expect, the author’s previous work being different). This book is indeed not really the beach read some expect. The conclusion of the mystery is a very bold choice, I feel, and whilst I understand the view of those who find it upsetting and not ‘right’, I personally see Woodson Harvey having used it in the star-crossed lovers sense, soul mates, and so on. Is it a surprise? Yes, it is, particularly given the choice Woodson Harvey makes as to where to end the book, but it does fit the point she was trying to make (succeeds in making, I would say) about the love between the two people.

So A Happier Life, then, is different. The title is shorter (it was initially titled The House On Sunset Lane, changed perhaps to give prospective readers pause). It doesn’t feature photos on its cover, instead a drawing. And the story, whilst still family and person and location and historically focused, is different in tone.

But it is, dare I say, objectively, a very decent read and a suitable progression of the author’s work.

Publisher: Gallery Books (Simon & Schuster)
Pages: 357
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-668-01219-2
First Published: 25th June 2024
Date Reviewed: 21st November 2024

Doing the time warp.

Our narrator is a ‘bridge’ – a civil servant working in a top secret government ministry whose role it is to live and guide a person who has been extracted from the past and brought into the 21st century. These historical figures are people who are taken from their own time period just before the moment of their death – this gets around any pesky paradoxical issues created by time travel. Our narrator’s ‘expat’ is a man some readers may be familiar with – Graham Gore was a factual Navy Officer who died during the failed Franklin expedition to the Arctic – and in this book, he is revived in fiction twice over, once as a written character (little is known about the real man) and again through the time travel. Graham and our narrator get on quite well and Graham adjusts to the 21st century very well. But our narrator is well aware that she knows little of what’s really going on – she’s in on the secret of the government agency but not the secret’s secret. And as the year goes on and she makes friends with other ‘successful’ expats, she also finds herself feeling more for Graham than she probably should.

The Ministry Of Time is Kaliane Bradley’s phenomenal debut novel and one of the very best books of the year. (Don’t just take my word for it – it’s on many people’s lists.) Blending the sci-fi and fantasy of time travel, with the very real but little-known person of Graham Gore, adding some brilliant moments of comedy, and with some absolutely wonderful writing that manages to be literary and sparse and yet completely accessible, this is a very unique book that provides hours of absolute enjoyment and many moments of poignancy.

As the writing is the first thing this reviewer noted, it’s where we’ll start. When I say it’s literary but accessible I really mean it – Bradley doesn’t use all that much description. The Ministry Of Time is incredibly paired down in words enough that there’s a fair amount of white space within the stack of pages to the point that if it wasn’t for the slight distance you feel due to the way the first person/second person (at one point near the end) is written, you’d tear through this book at a rate of knots. Perhaps that’s the point – in creating a tale in sparse language, Bradley forces you to slow down and savour everything you’re reading, more so really think about what you’re reading. It’s the kind of book that you look forward to picking up every day but are sated enough each reading session to be happy to put it down. It is an incredible reading experience.

Yet none of this means the book lacks description – if I had to choose some words to describe this book I would pick ‘autumnal’ and that is because there are scenes set in autumn that are very immersive. Location, season, and, perhaps naturally, the progression of time, are all things Bradley, via the narrator, spends time on, with the role of ‘bridge’ being about a year long and time perhaps gaining new meaning with its manipulation having been achieved.

The characters are well created and developed – within the sparse framework there is still space to bring fully to life this unlikely band of people. The government agency, the other bridges (I think it’s safe to say that our narrator is fully realised!), the ‘expat’ time travellers. In fact, the sparse prose is very much in Graham Gore’s favour here, with his no-nonsense but caring personality and the way he responds to the many changes our narrator goes through. Their story is wonderfully written. And while the real Graham Gore may not have consented to being the hero of a love story – who knows? – it’s fair to say the representation by Bradley is considered, measured, and respectful. The narrator can be cagey, almost, sometimes, but more often she leaves things to subtext, such as her growing attraction to the man, which she shows in moments, for example, when she says that since living with Graham, her hemlines have lengthened.

The humour arrives with no warning – I think even if, unlike me, you know going in that it is an element of the book (well, you surely do now!), it will still be a surprise how and when it turns up. It’s a type of humour I can’t quite put a name to – not really laugh-out-loud or ‘typical’ British humour – but on occasion hilarious all the same whilst being mainly very… well, I’m going use the word ‘measured’ for a second time in this review. It’s obvious that a lot of work has gone into this book.

A change of tone in the second half brings poignancy, your guesses as to where the book will go perhaps mistaken. This is not to say the book becomes upsetting – it doesn’t – but the humour is dulled a little and a certain urgency and seriousness is slotted beside it.

There are a few keys threads in the novel that need mentioning. First is the look at race and multiculturalism and diversity and passing as white. The narrator, much like Bradley, is half-Cambodian, and she comments on the way people treat her and her family. In a great use of comparison, she speaks of Graham’s saying he can’t go ‘back’ – to the freezing Arctic that without the time travel intervention would’ve killed him – and how she’s always been asked by others if she’s been back to Cambodia, that place her mother had no choice but to leave. And there is a moment towards the end of Graham’s own chapters where different peoples are conflated.

(Graham’s chapters, about his last days in the Arctic, are quite a change from the rest of the narrative, and it takes a while to work out what they are for, exactly, but it’s nice to read Bradley’s nod to the real history. The hardback end papers are of his artwork. His daguerrotype picture, the only one we have, is included at the end.)

Maybe I was tired of stories, telling them and hearing them. I thought the dream was to be post-: post-modern, post-captain, post-racial. Everyone wanted me to talk about Cambodia and I had nothing to teach them about Cambodia. If you learn something about Cambodia from this account, that’s on you. […]

When I first joined the Ministry and they’d pressed me through HR, a woman ran her finger down the column with my family history. ‘What was it like growing up with that?’ she asked. She meant it all: Pol Pot Noodle jokes on first dates, my aunt’s crying jags, a stupa with no ashes, Gary Glitter, Agent Orange, we loved Angkor Wat, regime change, not knowing where the bodies were, Princess Diana, landmines, the passport in my mother’s drawer, my mother’s nightmares, fucking chink, you don’t look it, dragon ladies, fucking paki, Tuol Sleng was a school, Saloth Sar was a teacher, my grandfather’s medals, the firing squad, my uncle’s trembling hands, it’s on my bucket list, Brother Number One, I’ve got a thing for Latinas, the killing fields, The Killing Fields (1984), Angelina Jolie, do you mean Cameroonian? Do you mean Vietnamese? Will you say your name again for me?

I considered.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What was it like growing up without it?’

— Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry Of Time, page 182.

Next, history and progress – two subjects stuck together here as a theme.

I didn’t understand that my value system – my great inheritance – was a system, rather than a far point on a neutral, empirical line that represented progress. Things were easier for me than for my mother […] Was this not progress?

— Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry Of Time, page 117.

That history and progress are here and are together is not surprising – many paragraphs deal with a historical figure learning how to do such things as use a kettle or a washing machine, and the narrator is forced to think this way when living with him and also when considering the ministry. This feeds into the threads on climate change – 30 degrees centigrade is a cool day all things considered.

Lastly, there is some interesting intertextuality here with the 1939 novel by Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male. Graham rather likes it. A thriller set in London and dealing with London and dictators and secret police and gunshots, while I haven’t read it myself to comment on it fully, there seems enough commonality between Rogue Male and The Ministry Of Time that readers of the older work will enjoy the mentions in the newer. (I think there may be plot elements that are more similar than the Wikipedia article on Household’s novel makes out.)

The Ministry Of Time is a feat. It’s utterly unique in its writing and very different to other time travel stories, including time travel romances. This review hasn’t done it justice, and trust me, I’ve tried – if you haven’t read it yet then look out because your ‘best of 2024’ list is about to have a new entry at the 11th hour.

Publisher: Sceptre (Hachette)
Pages: 343
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-399-72634-4
First Published: 7th May 2024
Date Reviewed: 2nd October 2024

Extreme choices.

Izabela meets Bill when he’s brought to her farm by the Nazis as part of a work team; the Nazis occupy Czechoslovakia but want to keep the industry going and when Izzy’s mother says that yes, they could do with some help on the farm (Izzy’s father and older brother have gone to fight in the resistance) the Nazis bring a couple of British prisoners of war. Izzy falls for Bill fairly quickly as he does her; her English isn’t good (and, to be fair, his Czech is non-existent) but it happens. And then the looks and touches and secret conversations turn into a longing to be together. Izzy makes a tremendous decision; she’ll join Bill and do a runner. The pair do so with Izzy dressed as a boy, hair shorn. It’s against everything in the wartime ‘rules’. Discovery would mean death.

The Prisoner’s Wife is an exhilarating tale of mental strength and deception. Based on a true story and told via a couple of different narratives – Izzy’s and Bill’s, which I’ll expand on in a moment – it provides an at times awful but nevertheless compelling and immersive story that leaves you with a couple of threads untied for a dramatic and meaningful finish.

Starting with the writing, Brookes’ prose is wondrous, fully of imagery and detailing that makes everything easy to picture. Too easy to picture, you might lament, when the horrors arrive, as you know they will. There are many chapters confined to very small places, yet these come alive as much as those of wider scope, owing to Brookes’ skill when it comes to description and, arguably, storytelling in general.

That then supports the earlier notion of immersion; an expansion must be made on narrative. Brookes does something very literary with her narratives. You have the regular choice – as there have been many books that do such by this time – of two narratives split by point of view as to cover both main characters, and a further choice to write one in first person and one in third. So far, so normal. But with Brookes’ story and her inclusion of language as a continual plot thread, the narrative takes on an additional purpose. Izzy’s command of English is slight, and in disguise she must remain mute so that her voice does not betray her. So then Brookes’ first person narrative shows the progression of Izzy’s English comprehension as well as provides the reader a way to know about her when she cannot speak. The latter is perhaps pretty obvious, but the former is particularly interesting for the way and times Brookes chooses to focus on it – at the start Izzy thinks a lot about English but by the end her progression is far more in the subtext. And then you have Bill’s third person narrative – it’s not so focused (he gets dialogue after all) and creates an interesting distance between him and yourself, the reader, where you end up caring far more for Izzy, the person who stands to lose so much more. You may even get irritated with Bill on occasion – he is far from the perfect person in Brookes’ narrative, away from any commentary on his situation as a prisoner of war, and is in fact often eclipsed by the other main (somewhere between main and secondary) characters.

These other characters, then, they must be noted. Staying away from where they are located and who they are exactly as to avoid spoilers, you have Ralph, who becomes very important to Izzy, Max, who is a more quiet, bookish, sort (it’s not major but there’s a book-about-books thread going on here), and Scotty, whose character development you are sure to enjoy. Indeed Brookes develops all three characters, and some others, very well so that the various themes and, certainly, the history we’re looking at here, is relaid all the better. Brookes’ employs every aspect of storytelling in her explanation of the various scenes, showing how everything contributes towards the greater whole in a particularly notable and poignant way.

Necessarily, given the circumstances, the romance is mostly confined to thoughts and certainly the thrill is in the deception. Where romantic thoughts come in they are Izzy’s, understandably. This all said, it’s in Izzy’s thoughts of romance that a fair amount of her character development can be found – she beings very much a young woman, taken up completely by thoughts of Bill and forgetting the world (which is of course really dangerous) and ends up mature beyond her years. Part of this development, which in some ways coexists with the use of language, is in Izzy’s adoption of the persona of the fictional boy she becomes. She starts to think in terms of Algernon Cousins, her secondary identity, which becomes interesting in itself.

Better get to history – I’ve spoken about near everything else at this point! Brookes ups the anti and fools you sometimes into thinking it’s alright (well, alright as alright can be in the situation). You do become somewhat immune to everything after a few chapters – oh, they’re on the run but they’re finding places to sleep… oh a POW camp is scary but there’s an established routine – but the answer to ‘how much worse can it get?’ is, probably (I won’t assume how much you know about the war) ‘worse’, every time. There are some unapologetically realistic authors of wartime fiction – people such as Kristin Harmel with her baby murders, Jennifer Robson with the gas chambers, and Vincent Lamb with things I’m still trying to forget to this day; Brookes is on the same level. This is the war, and you can have a romance and some happier times, but it is still a war.

Two last things of note. Firstly the question of class that is looked at in the novel – it takes a backseat because it’s not as important as… well, the subjects included in the previous paragraph, but Brookes does include a small study of classism in the army through one of her characters and the effects it has on a general level. This happens in a POW camp and in the POW camp we also see – second thing of note – some of the lesser-known tasks given to dissenting prisoners. Brookes spends a good few pages on the subject – it’s yucky. It’s also something this reviewer’s never read about before and she’s read a fair number of wartime novels.

In sum, then, The Prisoner’s Wife is an expertly written, page-turning, novel that will do well on the shelves of any reader of WW2 fiction and historical fiction in general. It has the characters, it has the facts, and it has its romance when the time is right.

Publisher: Century (Penguin)
Pages: 396
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-529-12428-6
First Published: 16th April 2020
Date Reviewed: 29th August 2024

The rom-com of the summer.

Maya rushes to the Tube train; she’s late for work again. As she puts her makeup on she notices the incredibly hot guy sat across from her is looking at her; they begin conversing. Noah only recognises they’ve reached his station when they arrive and he rushes off the train, gesturing to Maya to call him. But he didn’t give her his number – they didn’t exchange any details. Then Maya finds the notebook he’s left behind; when, later, her co-workers push her to open it, she finds it’s full of a ‘thirty things to do before turning 30′ list. With her friends’ influence, she decides to go through the list herself one thing at a time, adapting the goals as needed (Maya’s never going to be a physiotherapist and she’s not sure about jumping out of a plane), in the hope that she’ll run into Noah at some point, give him back his notebook, and maybe forge a lasting connection. But in starting the list she meets an irritating guy at an art class, and then when her parents find out she wants to pursue her Masters, they request she starts looking for a husband at the same time. Maya’s life has been monotonous for years; she’s going to change that right now.

The Thirty Before Thirty List is Tasneem Abdur-Rashid’s second rom-com following 2022’s Finding Mr Perfectly Fine. If you had been hoping that book 2 (well, book 3 if you count her pseudonym) would be just as good as the first you’re in luck – it’s not just as good, it’s even better.

Leaving that there before I end up in full Marks And Spencers puns territory, The Thirty Before Thirty List has everything: solid plot, solid character development, a highly satisfying case of author answering the reader’s questions when they have them, and good pacing.

Told in the first person, you get a great sense for who Maya is but Abdur-Rashid never shies away from letting the reader figure things out before Maya does when it makes sense. There is in fact only one place where it takes Maya too long and that is arguably to show how in her own head Maya is; flawed characters, highly realistic and relatable characters, are Abdur-Rashid’s bread and butter.

There are many characters in this book that in other books might be too large a number, but here each character is developed enough within the scope of their literary placement (main, secondary, and so on) that it never becomes difficult to keep up and you never forget any of them either. Shout outs should be given to Maya’s mother, Maya’s brother Malik, cousins Pinky and Pretty, and co-worker Lucy, whose role as ever-closer-friend as the journey continues is rather lovely. There’s another interesting thread of friendship throughout as Maya gets to grips with best friend Dina’s continued (but not large) distance as the latter takes more time for her growing family and Maya works with these changes, learning to turn to others when Dina isn’t available and taking the moments Dina is available as special. (Anyone who’s at or been through that age when your friends or yourself are going through the changes brought about by having children will appreciate the author’s approach.)

All these words and not one about the romantic aspect… like Finding Mr Perfectly Fine, there are a few contenders here. There’s obviously Noah, the guy from the train; there’s Zakariya from art class (because you know he’ll be there somewhere); and then there’s the man Maya’s parents set her up to meet in a dekha dekhi arrangement. There are also a couple of other men involved in romances. Please note, artistic license may have been used here to prevent spoilers.

You find yourself working out what you think will happen, Abdur-Rashid says, ‘not so fast’, and this repeats throughout. It’s exhilarating – when you put the romance thread together with the use of communication in the book, Abdur-Rashid’s priorising of reader questions, laugh-out-loud humour, and nods to popular culture (Bridgerton gets two nods, thank me for that info later) you get a book that you want to finish as quick as you can because you want to find out what happens. You also find yourself in a situation where you mourn the loss of your ability to read in a more measured fashion because you know books aren’t written over night and you’ve a long wait ahead of you for the next book because it hasn’t been written yet. (Unless you haven’t read the author’s first book in which case I’m very envious. You’re in for another treat.)

All that to say – okay, really I might just have got carried away with how well this book is written – the romance is top-notch, brilliantly done. You’re unlikely to disagree with who (if she does pick one) Maya chooses because the author again never shies away from details. There are no really bad guys here but there are definitely ones more suited than others.

So to the promised inclusion of what happens to Zara (the main character from the author’s previous book)¹ – you get a good number of pages to not just find out where Zara ‘went’ after her book was over but to enjoy a bit of the ride along with her. And perhaps the best bit – you’re not left hankering for more after she makes her exit. It’s a very decent closure.

Last thing – you’re going to get hungry reading this. Food is a big part of the novel. It’s there for the regular mealtimes, it’s there for gatherings, and it’s there when people need another person to lean on and talk to. It’s there for meetings and karaoke and post-shopping refuelling and potential in-laws all meeting for the first time.

The Thirty Before Thirty List is excellent. It’s fun, it’s well-written, and, as a bonus, it leaves just enough questions at your feet for you to spend a good time afterwards thinking about whether you agree with one or two characters’ actions. This is always a great thing to close a book on, and also a review – I’m still questioning one character’s resolution and I like the fact that I am very much.

I was invited to and attended the launch of this book.

Publisher: Zaffre Books (Bonnier)
Pages: 380
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-838-77818-7
First Published: 18th July 2024
Date Reviewed: 15th August 2024

Footnotes

¹ See my interview with Tasneem, episode 85 of the podcast.