I love reading; my daughter would tell you that I've often got my nose in a book! Here, I've cherry picked my absolute best reads from this year
Of the 200 hundred or so books I've read in 2024, here's a favourite for every week of the year. It spans everything from kids' non-fiction to memoirs, parenting books to adult fiction. I hope this list helps you decide what to read next, or what to pop on your Christmas wish list!
Here's a list of my 52 best reads of 2024:
CHILDREN’S NON FICTION
Foraging: The Complete Guide for Kids and Families by Stella and Dane De Luca Mulandiee (2024 Penguin Children’s)
I love Stella and Dane’s books (check out Knowledge to Forage) and this latest book, especially designed for families is a delight. After reading this book, you'll be able to 'find the best berries and plants for making tasty foods, tell incredible stories that are hidden in the flowers, plants and trees you see every day (and some you might never have spotted) and impress friends and family with your knowledge of the natural world'. Wonderful illustrations and packed with handy tips and fun missions to help kids connect with nature.
Patience by Rachel Williams and Leonie Lord (2024 Magic Cat Publishing)
I can’t recommend this book enough! It’s beautifully presented and so packed with information we always discover something new. The concept of time is hard to grasp, but here it’s explained in such a unique and clever way. This book takes 18 different periods of time - from a single minute; to an hour; to over a century - to show the process of life, looking at biology in all its forms, from plants, animals and human biology too.
In one minute, learn that your heart beats over 100 times. In one day, learn how a dragonfly unfurls a pair of wings. In a season, watch a bear hibernate for winter. In over 80 years, see a human live a lifetime. Packed with real science but rooted in the deeper things in life, this is a mesmerising read, which prompts lots of discussion. A perfect antidote to our modern world of instant gratification.
Hike It by Iron Tazz and Martin Stanev (2024 Magic Cat Publishing)
Discover camping, trekking and backpacking in this inspirational book about enjoying the great outdoors. Explore 30 diverse terrains, from snow-capped mountains to coastal trails to ancient forests, and discover the majesty of nature with glorious artwork throughout.
Young adventurers will learn about navigating - and what to do if you get lost, essential hiking equipment and fire safety and setting up camp. My daughter loved the section on elimination in the woods! Iron Tazz has years of experience hiking every kind of trail and shares his knowledge from adventures with his own little boy. Love this book.
Live Like a Hunter Gatherer by Naomi Walmsley (2022 Button Books)
I can't recommend this book enough - it's brilliant! Debunks the myth that all Stone Age people lived in caves and were not very clever or clean, once and for all! I love the fact that the end of the Stone Age was just 71 grandparents ago! This book is packed full of amazing facts, information, crafts, storytelling and projects to encourage you to live as a hunter gatherer. There’s step-by-step craft activities and recipes, plus projects to build skills, like making a Mesolithic shelter, fat lamps, creating cave art and making a bow and arrow.
Naomi runs Outback2Basics with her husband from their patch of woodland in Shropshire. She believes that every child should be able to safely light a fire and have at least ten uses for a stick by the age of ten!
When the Stars Come Out by Nicola Edwards and Lucy Cartwright (2023 Little Tiger Press)
My daughter and I love this book. We found it in the library, but promptly bought our own copy. Discover everything from moonbows to shooting stars. Experience how different habitats from the city to the ocean, come alive when the sun sets. Meet animals that make their own elaborate beds and others that sleep while swimming or flying.
Musical World by Jeffrey Boakye (2023 Faber & Faber)
This book is a new soundtrack to pivotal historical moments from around the world and has formed a loose music history curriculum for our home education journey.
From Billie Holliday to Aretha Franklin, Fela Kuti to Donna Summer, Elton John to Michael Jackson - it turns out that 38 classic tunes reflect and encapsulate the key historical moments of the 20th and 21st century. This book is both clever and enlightening. Jeffrey is a teacher, historian and broadcaster, and here he explores the roots and wider impact of each of these musical genres from jazz to hiphop, touching on why they were celebrated or seen as problematic, their political and cultural impact, and their ongoing legacy today.
Handbook of Forgotten Skills by Natalie Crowley, Elaine Batiste and Chris Duriez (2023 Magic Cat Publishing)
Gorgeous book! Open it up and turn back the clock to a simpler time... cold lemonade in summer, evenings by a campfire, a warm blanket in winter. Fully-illustrated chapters feature the history and story behind more than thirty skills for you to discover and learn with your kids.
Skills include how to grow your own tomatoes, how to sew on a button, how to use a compass and how to mend a sock. I love the simple to follow step-by-step instructions and how it promotes sustainability while encouraging creativity and fun.
CHILDREN’S FICTION
Leila, The Perfect Witch by Flavia Z. Drago (2023 Walker Books)
A firm favourite! Mainly for the illustrations – my daughter and I could spend ages pouring over each page. It's one of those books that makes me want do an about turn, and retrain as a book illustrator. Author and illustrator, Flavia was born in Mexico City and wanted to be a mermaid when she grew up. When that didn’t happen, she began a career as a graphic designer and a children’s book illustrator, luckily for us! Check out her other books Gustavo the Shy Ghost and Vlad the Fabulous Vampire too.
Pippi by Astrid Lindgren and Lauren Child (2023 Oxford University Press)
This book is so uplifting and funny. My daughter and I love reading about Pippi's unconventional life and superhuman strength. She's unpredictable and my daughter loves that she has NO rules! We've laughed a lot at the antics of Pippi and her pet monkey, Mr. Nilsson. And had lots of discussion about life with no-one telling you what to do. This version of Astrid’s famous book is charmingly illustrated with Laren’s inemitable style.
When I’m Gone by Marguerite Mclaren (2023 Penguin Children’s)
When someone you love has died there will be sad days and angry days, but also happy days and fun days. This sensitively-written picture book will help children grieve, celebrate and learn how to live and love life when a parent is gone. Marguerite writes so directly about the subject of loss – this is a love letter to her daughters, since discovering that her breast cancer has returned and is incurable. There’s so much love packed into this book. At the back there’s expert advice from the charity, Child Bereavement UK.
Beti and the Little Round House by Atinuke and Emily Hughes (2024 Walker Books)
Forgive me for the amount I’ve mentioned this book this year – my daughter and I are so in love with it! It’s a book of four seasons, each telling a simple tale of Beti and her family, in their handbuilt roundhouse, with no TV or phones, just goats, chickens and lots of vegetables. My daughter wants to live in the story. Author, Atinuke lived in a roundhouse with her toddler son in Wales, after she moved to the UK, from Lagos. The illustrations by Emily Hughes are bewitching. It’s just such a heartwarming book – the type that I want to buy for everyone as gifts.
PARENTING
How the World is Making our Kids Mad by Louis Weinstock (2024 Ebury Publishing)
This is the best parenting book I’ve read in ages! It’s a guide to raising kids in a turbulent world, and it’s so thoughtful and inspiring - my copy now has markers on every other page. Louis speaks with compassion about the climate disaster, and offers hope in the face of the children’s mental health crisis we’re facing. It's an antidote to the chaos in today's society. Some of it makes for bleak reading, but each section is threaded through with awareness exercises, and case studies. It offers a way of embodying and moving through the information, rather than it all being heady and knowledge based.
I didn’t want it to end and yet, after I’d finished, I felt lighter and more hopeful than I have in a long time. More empowered too, and definitely kinder and more patient with my youngest. I thoroughly recommend it.
The Montessori Child by Simone Davies and Junifa Uzodike (2024 Workman Publishing)
I used Simone’s The Montessori Baby and The Montessori Toddler to help me organise our living space, and inform some of my parenting decisions, when my youngest was small. Here, authors, Simone and Junnifa Uzodike pick up where the last book left off. This is all about raising capable, creative children, from aged 3 to 12 years old. I love how this approach goes the extra mile, beyond gentle parenting. With respectful parenting at its heart, Montessori teaching also places importance on the beauty and layout of the environment, and parental observation skills.
Wildlings by Steve Backshall and Helen Glover (2023 John Murray Press)
Adventurer and explorer, Steve and his wife, professional rower, Helen Glover have created this handbook for raising wilder, happier, muddier, more resilient kids. Includes a section from Caroline Lucas on protecting the planet, Chris Hoy on riding bikes and Judy Murray on rainy day kitchen games. There so many ideas for getting out and about with your family. It feels welcoming and also inspirational.
HEALTH
A Working Herbal Dispensary: Respecting Herbs as Individuals by Lucy Jones (2023 Aeon Books)
This book was a recommendation from a friend, and it’s brilliant. It’s packed with knowledge. I like to open it at random and learn more about a plant; layering new information on top of what I already know. I feel like Lucy sees plants in a whole new way. I love how there’s an energetics section for each entry.
Roses, for example, help us gently open our hearts and process trauma. A full time medical herbalist, Lucy shares the characters and medicinal virtues of 108 herbs that she works with in her practice. She writes about each herb as an individual that she knows and respects, rather than simply a list of conditions it treats or the constituents it contains. There’s history and plenty of recipes too, in this, Lucy’s second book.
The Inner Clock: Living in Sync with Our Circadian Rhythms by Lynne Peeples (2024 Bloomsbury)
I’ve been inspired by this book to seek out as much daylight as possible - to benefit my mood, productivity and ability to sleep well at night. Apparently the optimal dose is 30 minutes of light that is 10,000 lux in intensity. Because the skies are often cloudy at this time of year (giving off light of around 5,000 lux), we’re encouraged to lengthen our time spent outdoors. I've switched up my morning responsibilities as inspired by this book so that I can get outside and spend mornings soaking up light and it's had a powerful effect on my mood, and sleep.
Lynne also writes about how looking at our phones, laptops etc. in the hours before bed can really mess up our inner clocks. A fascinating read, especially for science fiends!
Wild Creature Mind by Steve Biddulph (2024 Bluebird)
Bestselling psychologist Steve Biddulph reveals a groundbreaking insight: we possess not just one, but two minds. While our familiar, analytical mind dominates in today's busy, modern world, our primal, instinctual 'wild creature' mind lies dormant, waiting to guide us with its innate intuition and compassion.
This book really got me thinking and has had a profound impact on the way that I approach challenges in my daily life. It's aimed at young people (though adults can benefit too), and Steve hopes to alleviate some of the anxiety and stress endemic in our society.
In our new edition of The Green Parent, Steve shares his motivation for writing the book and a couple of his favourite exercises for getting in touch with your wild creature mind - get your copy here.
OUTDOORS
The Wilderness Cure by Mo Wilde (2023 Simon & Schuster)
I love a diary style memoir about wild challenges. This book by Mo Wilde exceeds expectations. And in fact she won the John Avery Award at the Andre Simon Awards 2022.
Here Mo writes about her pledge to live only off free, foraged food for an entire year. In a world disconnected from its roots, eating wild food is both culinary and healing, social and political. Using her expert knowledge of botany and mycology, Mo follows the seasons to find nutritious food from hundreds of species of plants, fungi and seaweeds, and in the process learns not just how to survive, but how to thrive. Nourishing her body and mind deepens her connection with the earth and her ancestors. Thoroughly recommend!
Wild Service: Why Nature Needs You, edited by Nick Hayes (2024 Bloomsbury)
This is such a great book – everyone’s getting a copy for their Christmas pressie! Inspired by the rare wild service tree (Sorbus torminalis), it’s all about re-wilding and an invitation to discover the power in participation. It features many different people writing about our connection with nature, and offers a realistic and yet, positive take on the situation we find ourselves in now.
It’s given me so much hope; I feel uplifted and excited. A heady blend of science, nature writing and indigenous philosophy, this book calls for mass reconnection to the land and asks that we all commit to its restoration. It’s rocked my world!
On This Holy Island: A Modern Pilgrimage Across Britain by Oliver Smith (2024 Bloomsbury)
What a great read! This shimmery gold covered book is filled with wonderful tales of spiritual travel. I wanted to savour every word. Oliver embarks on an epic adventure across sacred British landscapes – climbing into remote sea caves, sleeping inside Neolithic tombs, scaling forgotten holy mountains and once marooning himself at sea.
Following holy roads to churches, cathedrals and standing stones, this travelogue explores places prehistoric, pagan and Christian and the routes he walks are ancient. The book centres around a timeless truth that making journeys has always been a way of making meaning. So often, Oliver finds, “the unravelling of a path goes in tandem with the unravelling of the soul.”
52 Ways to Walk by Annabel Streets (2023 Bloomsbury)
Delightful book packed with ideas, and cool statistics. For example, research shows that 12 minutes of walking can have a positive impact on our longevity, and that our spirits remain lifted 4 hours after hearing bird song. I found lots of inspiration inside these pages and loved the easy to dip into nature. Each section is only a couple of hundred words long, so perfect to stash in a bag and read in those short snatches of time we often get as parents!
Where The Wild Things Grow by David Hamilton (2023 Hodder & Stoughton)
Nestled by the roadside, peeking through the hedgerows, hidden in the woods and even in city streets and parks, wild food is all around us - if you know where to look. From woodland mushrooms and riverbank redcurrants to garden weeds and urban cherry blossoms, Where the Wild Things Grow takes us on a journey through the forager's landscape.
Drawing on 25 years of foraging experience, David shows us how food is hidden all around us. You'll discover where to find mallows, mustards and pennywort, as well as sumac, figs and mulberries. You'll learn how to pick the sweetest berries, preserve mushrooms using only a radiator and prepare salads, risottos and puddings all with wild food. This book is beautifully illustrated and with plenty of rich extra detail about each plant. A valuable resource.
MEMOIRS
Did I Ever Tell You? by Genevieve Kingston (2024 Quercus Publishing)
This is such a wonderful read. I loved the idea of the gifts and letters left by Genevieve’s mother. Before she died she thought of every occasion she’d miss, from graduation to every birthday up to the age of thirty, and wrote a letter and wrapped a gift to be opened at the right time. She wrote a letter for her daughter’s menarche that had me curled up messy crying – it’s so beautiful.
Letters From Brenda by Emma Kennedy (2023 Hodder & Stoughton)
After her mother, Brenda, died, broadcaster and writer Emma Kennedy found herself unable to make peace with the complex, charismatic woman who had been her mum. And then she found some letters written by Brenda hidden in the family attic. This is a heartbreakingly funny book about the impact of discovering lost letters; I dream of finding something similar from my mum! I’m always hunting out evidence of her life now that she’s gone; reading her appointment diaries and notebooks seeking more information about what she was thinking and feeling when my siblings and I were growing up. I love the mother/daughter theme explored in this book, though it does make for uncomfortable reading, uncovering the lies and mental illness that shaped Brenda’s life.
All My Wild Mothers by Victoria Bennett (2024 John Murray Press)
A wonderful book about one woman’s struggle to come to terms with the death of her sister. She writes about the garden that she plants with her son, an apothecary garden emerging from the rubble in the backyard to help her navigate her grief. She plants borage to bring hope in dark times, dandelion for strength and daisy for resilience. A magical read.
The View From Down Here: Life as a Young Disabled Woman by Lucy Webster (2023 Dorling Kindersley)
This book is a powerful, honest memoir about the struggles of a being a disabled woman, living at the intersection of sexism and ableism. I've learnt so much, and there's so much to think about. Some of it makes for hard reading, but it’s so important.
A Matter of Death and Life by Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom (2022 Little, Brown)
I loved this heartwarming account, written by a wife and husband team about Marilyn’s impending death. It investigates how to have a good death, what happens to the spouse left behind and how to live meaningfully in the last days of life. It’s so poignant and deeply thought-provoking, written as it is by two professors, and much more hopeful than you might think a book in this genre might be.
A Girlhood by Carolyn Hays (2023 Pan Macmillan)
I bought this book as the mother of a non-binary person and spent much of it in tears. This is a parent's deeply moving love letter to a daughter who has always known exactly who she is. Carolyn Hays’s child made clear to their family that he was not a boy, but, in fact, a girl; the Hays shifted pronouns, adopted a nickname and encouraged her to dress as she felt comfortable.
And then one ordinary day, a caseworker from the Department of Children and Families knocked on their door to investigate an anonymous complaint about the upbringing of their transgender child. It was this threat that instilled in them a deep-seated fear for their child’s safety in the Republican state they called home. And so they uprooted their lives to the more trans-accepting Northeast United States.
Hays asks us all to love better, for children everywhere enduring injustice and prejudice just as they begin to understand themselves. This book is about a child who has always known herself and is waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
FICTION
Absolution by Alice Mcdermott (2023 Bloomsbury)
A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War. In Saigon in 1963, two young American wives form a wary alliance. Tricia is a starry-eyed newlywed, married to a rising oil engineer “on loan” to US Navy Intelligence. Charlene is a practiced corporate spouse and mother of three, a talented hostess and determined altruist, on a mission to relieve the “wretchedness” she sees all around her. With a deft hand Alice confronts the unresolved mysteries and ironies of America’s tragic interference in Southeast Asia. Clever and mesmerising.
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (2024 Penguin Books)
How good is this rangy novel? It won Irish Book of the Year and was short-listed for the Booker Prize last year. I loved it; it tracks the lives of the Barnes family, each member carefully crafted and filled out as the novel unfolds.
Bewilderment by Richard Powers (2024 Vintage Publishing)
A beautiful, painful read. It’s a story about fatherhood and nature connection, and is often almost poetic, especially in its descriptions of celestial bodies. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021, there are some gorgeous passages here: “Life is something we need to stop correcting. My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom.” And “I wanted to tell the man that life itself is a spectrum disorder, where each of us vibrated at some unique frequency in the continuous rainbow.” I wholeheartedly recommend it, although buckle in – it’s emotional.
The Familiars by Stacey Halls (2024 Bonnier Books)
A wonderful page-turner of a novel about two young women in 17th century Lancashire. This historical fiction centres on the witch hunts in the area, and many of the characters can actually be found in historical records.
Free Love by Tessa Hadley (2023 Vintage Publishing)
This is a delicious novel, which promises everything you’d expect from Tessa Hadley. There’s depth and subtlety and yet, it’s very captivating and east to read. It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable. But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire.
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead (2022 Transworld Publishers)
I was so convinced that this was a real story that it took me a while to register that this is a made-up memoir, but no less compelling for it. It spans the 20th century and offers almost cinematic visuals in the images Maggie creates with her words. It’s very well crafted and a pleasure to read. I loved every one of the 600 pages! Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023.
Haven by Emma Donoghue (2023 Pan Macmillan)
This novel is dark and unsettling, and super captivating. A story of survival set in 600 AD Ireland; it covers patriarchy, destruction and religion at sea. Written by Emma Donoghue, the bestselling author of Room. The story follows three men who find an impossibly steep, barren island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds, and claim it for God. But in such a place, far from all other humanity, what will survival mean? This is eerie storytelling at its best!
The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry (2024 Canongate Books)
I just couldn't put this book down. It's such a rich tale and the writing is mesmerising. It’s an edible book - I needed to inhale it! Named as a Guardian Book to Look Out for in 2024, this wild west love story follows Tom and Polly as they strike out West on a stolen horse during the winter of 1891, traveling through Montana and Idaho. Delicious!
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Sharak (2023 Bloomsbury)
Mesmerising story about a family and a fig tree that watches over them. Elif Sharak is a British-Turkish novelist, who’s published 19 books. I love her writing and how with great deftness she packs so much history and research into her books. I come away feeling that I've gained a deeper understanding of a culture or place. This story in particular is a powerful love story.
Julia by Sandra Newman (2024 Granta Books)
A dystopian feminist companion novel to George Orwell’s 1984. It’s a while since I read Orwell’s book and I don’t think you need to have read it to thoroughly enjoy this. If dark, provocative, sometimes troubling writing is your thing. It’s so brilliant that I took it to the park a couple of times this week, in the hopes that I might sneak in a couple of minutes extra reading time! Thoroughly recommend.
Liars by Sarah Manguso (2024 Pan Macmillan)
I read Liars in 24 hours - it's sooo good; a novel about being a wife, mother and artist within a toxic relationship. I actually woke up in the middle of the night to read Sarah's book - the story was so compelling! Throughout the upheavals of family life, the wife in this story - Jane - tries to hold it all together. That is, until her husband John leaves her. Packed with wit and rage, telling the blistering story of a marriage as it burns to the ground, and of a woman rising inexorably from its ashes.
Little Prisons by Llona Bannister (2023 John Murray Press)
This is not my usual sort of reading choice, but I picked it up randomly and it’s really good (thanks to my local library for their fun colour-themed book displays!). A pacy page turner about the lives of four women who live in a block of flats and how their lives come to be interlinked. I liked how it demonstrated that small acts of compassion can transform an existence. It’s a redemptive novel with a big heart.
Music in the Dark by Sally Magnussen (2024 John Murray Press)
This book is about the Highland Clearances and what happened to women who stood up for their communities. Sally’s own great grandmother was evicted from her home on the Isle of Mull and she draws on some of her own family history to write this book, which was released last Spring.
My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal (2024 Oxford University Press)
A reprint of this brilliant novel by Kit de Waal, which is an incredible story of a boy surviving a childhood in care. I wasn't able to put it down - Leon's voice is so powerful and I shed a load of tears whilst reading. Go and find a copy now!
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (2022 Vintage Publishing)
This was a gift from my eldest and it’s brilliant, power packed novel about a mother turning into a wild beast! At home full-time with her two-year-old son, an artist finds she is struggling. She is lonely and exhausted. Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind. Instead, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice... A funny, uplifting, surprising read.
North Woods by Daniel Mason (2024 John Murray Press)
I loved this book so much. It’s really clever! It traverses cycles of history, nature, and even literature as it tells the story of an apple tree throughout history from the 1760s to present day in western Massachusetts. The characters (and there’s a wealth of them!) are rich and spellbinding and the stories are cleverly interwoven through the centuries. Wonderfully written.
The Power by Naomi Alderman (2023 Penguin)
This is a brilliantly dark science fiction tale where women discover that they have ALL the power and can kill men with a single touch - it's thought-provoking and spellbinding. Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017. Now also a TV series starring Toni Collette.
A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan (2022 Scribe Publications)
I enjoyed this debut novel. It's written by a neurodiverse author and explores the challenges of social interaction and relating to others, in real depth. It's slow and considered, not a pacy page-turner. It takes place over 24 hours and explores the protagonists inner world in depth.
The Startup Wife by Tahmina Anam (2022 Canongate Books)
When Asha starts work on a revolutionary app together with her new husband Cyrus, she's thrilled. But while she creates an ingenious algorithm, Cyrus' charismatic appeal throws him into the spotlight. What happens when the app explodes into the next big thing? This novel is about big ambitions, speaking out and standing up for what you believe in. It’s poignant, funny and smart, exploring the intricacies of sexism and racism.
This Other Eden by Paul Harding (2024 Cornerstone)
A beautifully written tale of an island off the East coast of the US in the late eighteenth century. When a missionary lands on the shores the islanders' lives are uprooted and the community broken up. It was shocking to read that this book was based on a true story. Brutal and powerful.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (2022 Penguin Books)
Shortlisted for The Women's Prize For Fiction 2021, this gorgeous novel follows a family’s history across continents and generations. It’s powerful storytelling with race and religion at its heart.
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller (2022 Penguin Books)
Twins Jeanie and Julius are 51 years old and still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance. But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world, even as their mother's secrets begin to unravel, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake. This is a powerful novel about love and survival. A portrait of life on the fringes of society that is also about spinning light from darkness.
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright (2024 Vintage Publishing)
A beautiful tale of family, motherhood birds and poetry. Enright’s eighth novel, it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction this year. Poems are scattered throughout this multigenerational story – I particularly loved the poignant scenes between mother and grown daughter. Reminded me of my aching to spend more time with my older kids.
Yellowface by Rebecca K. Kuang (2024 Harper Collins)
Brilliant dark humoured book, which explores racism and cultural appropriation in a clever, un-put-down-able style. It came out last Spring and Time included it in their list of 100 Must Reads of 2023. I inhaled it in 24 hours and would thoroughly recommend.
PLEASE NOTE: The links in this post are to Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookshops.
What are your favourite reads from 2024? Hit reply and let me know!
