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Latest Reviews By LoveReading

A heart-breaking, unforgettable and incredible story that will stay with you long after you've finished it. It is difficult to believe it's a debut as you read the travails of young Shuggie, his alcoholic mother Agnes and see inside their dysfunctional family life in 1980s working-class Glasgow. It's a powerful story with unflinching honesty that will no doubt make you cry. It shows the power of love and despite the bleak subject matter, it's incredibly tender, hopeful and oh so readable. It's a triumph. View Full Review

A gorgeous, slow-burning love story set in Saudi Arabia, The Consequences of Love is touching, infinitely plausible, and infused with a brooding sensuality. It is summer in Jeddah, but Naser's life seems bleak. An immigrant in an unfriendly land, his friends have fled town for cooler climes and left him to his dead-end job and the scrutiny of the religious police, who keep watch through the shaded windows of their government jeeps. He spends his time writing to his mother in Africa and yearning to meet a woman - but in a country that separates men and women with walls ... View Full Review

I’m always slightly disappointed at how many people never read graphic novels. This one is exceptional; a tough, hard-hitting memoir of abuse set in Yorkshire against the background of the 1977 Yorkshire Ripper manhunt. As this national news story unfolds around her, Una finds herself on the receiving end of a series of violent acts for which she feels she is to blame. This spectacular novel explores gender violence, blame, shame, and social responsibility. Through image and text Una asks what it means to grow up in a culture where male violence goes unpunished and unquestioned. With the ... View Full Review

This book is an exquisite rarity: a faerie book that is at the same time marvellously visual and imaginative, but works equally well as a study of human trauma; a love story (of sorts); a family drama; a wholly engaging mystery. I found it in my to-read pile (which this year has been sadly neglected) and started it with no great expectation, although by the end of the third page I was not only hooked, but beginning to think that this might be the best book I'd read all year. Anyone who knows me knows how often I find myself ... View Full Review

This is the first of a series of books, and together they represent by far the best sci-fi I've read in a long time. There are no space battles here, none of the tired tropes of sci-fi. This is something genuinely different, inclusive and compassionate, which treats the concept of alien-ness - in terms of race, gender, sexuality and culture - as something genuinely diverse, rather than just humans in clever makeup. The dialogue is terrific, the world-building spectacular, and the style is spare and elegant and wholly, gloriously immersive. This is what sci-fi has been trying (and largely failing) ... View Full Review

One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, five lives collide – a flower seller, a schoolboy, an army wife, a security guard, a widower – all facing their own personal disasters. This is a spectacular book; unusual, sad, poetic, and gorgeously-written. Five intersecting stories in five very different voices, all set in the shadow of Salisbury Cathedral and the context of a single incident reveal how closely we co-exist; how fragile our lives can often be and how beautiful the small human connections that we make on a daily basis ... View Full Review

From the author of the New York Times bestselling Wilder Girls comes a twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery - until she decides to return to her mother's hometown, where history has a tendency to repeat itself . . . View Full Review

Return to Emberfall in this feminist fantasy, the thrilling Cursebreaker series, which began with the bestselling A Curse So Dark and Lonely. Romantic, commercial and action-packed, this third instalment of Brigid's bestselling YA fantasy series is packed with danger, mystery and romance – perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Marissa Meyer. View Full Review

Born worlds apart - a wolf from the North and a boy from Africa. The wolf has lost nearly everything on his way to the zoo, including his eye and his pack. The boy too has lost much and seen terrible things. They stand either side of the wolf's enclosure and make their stories known to each other. View Full Review

It is Harry Potter's sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As Voldemort's evil forces gather it becomes more and more clear to Harry that he will soon have to confront his destiny. But is he up to the challenges ahead of him? In this dark and breathtaking adventure, J.K. Rowling skilfully begins to unravel the complex web she has woven, as we discover more of the truth about Harry, Dumbledore, Snape and, of course, He who must not be named... View Full Review

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