The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott

The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott

The House on Rye Lane by Susan Allott

  The house is too good to be true, isn’t it always? Maxine falls for the house hard, with its beautiful Georgian features, and desirable location in Peckham Rye. She doesn’t mind that there’s a lot of work to do to make it habitable, or the fact that most people were put off from buying it. It is Seb, her partner who is more cautious about the house, who notices a window had been nailed shut. I don’t know about you, but I would have alarm bells going off.  But Maxine sees her future with Seb in this house and

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Second Self by Chloё Ashby

Second Self by Chloё Ashby

  Cathy and Noah are happily married. They had an understanding at the beginning of the relationship that it would be a childless one, but eight years later, Cathy is unsure about this decision. Second Self is Ashby’s second novel and within it is a plethora of life. We are faced with death, love, loss, ageing, personal and societal pressures on women as well as mothering and the need to be mothered. There are several triggers that propel Cathy into a spiral of indecision over whether her choice to not have children was the right one. When she misses her

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The Hike by Lucy Clarke

The Hike by Lucy Clarke

  Lucy Clarke has become a novelist that I turn to if I want to be transported to an exotic or wild setting near a large body of water and even though The Hike is set in the mountains of Norway, she still provides a sea to swim in. We all have writers we turn to when we desire a specific mood, for me, I rely heavily on Clarke for atmosphere. The reason why she gets it right every time is because she submerges herself into her settings for research and is able to bring it alive on the page,

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Living Rooms by Sam Johnson-Schlee

Living Rooms by Sam Johnson-Schlee

  When I first moved out of my parent’s home, into a flat with my fiancé many years ago, my sister’s lovely Dutch friend came over and told me it was like a smaller version of my parent’s house. At the time, it felt like a compliment but also, it felt like I hadn’t quite made my own mark even though my sister and I began wielding an influence on the décor at home before we moved out. I looked around me and noted I had the typical red carpet, mine was from Ikea, my parent’s much larger, more beautiful

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The Last Days : A memoir of faith, desire and freedom by Ali Millar

The Last Days : A memoir of faith, desire and freedom by Ali Millar

  The Last Days opens up in the Kingdom Hall and Satan wishes to devour those that stray but those who stay true to word of Jehovah are issued immortality on earth. The Last Days is not just an insight into life as a Jehovah’s Witness, it is about heroism, it is about Millar’s bravery which illuminates the true strength of will and encompasses that defining moment of desperation where Millar must make a life changing choice ‘shall I stay? Or shall I go?’  Millar was raised by her mother who became a Jehovah’s Witness when Millar was two years

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Wet Paint By Chloё Ashby

Wet Paint By Chloё Ashby

    ‘I edge closer until I’m standing directly in front of the painting, the largest in the room…Eyes gliding across the canvas, I fiddle with the beads again, slipping one into my mouth. Hail Mary.’  Even if you do not know the artist’s name or title of the painting, Manet’s A Bar at Folies – Bergѐs is likely to have crossed your path at some point. It may have been whilst flicking through a book or maybe your art teacher at school flashed it once before your eyes when you were studying impressionism or maybe you simply glanced at

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THE INSTANT BY AMY LIPTROT

THE INSTANT BY AMY LIPTROT

  Amy Liptrot once said in an interview that she had always harboured an ambition to write her diaries for a living.  This may be the driving force for her successful ability to take a subject and delve deep into its bone. In Liptrot’s The Instant, it is the moon that lurks above and throughout. Its presence can be felt no matter where you are and for Liptrot, it is Berlin where she follows its waxing and waning movements, she writes ‘I’ve run away  but I find the moon everywhere I go.’  But the moon app is not the only

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The Cure For Sleep Memoir of a Late-Waking Life by Tanya Shadrick

The Cure For Sleep Memoir of a Late-Waking Life by Tanya Shadrick

  Birth and death sit firmly together in the palm of life, something Shadrick knows all too well as she nearly bleeds to death not long after giving birth to her first child. She had been afraid of shedding the skin of a woman just forming and taking on the shape of becoming a mother. Maybe she wouldn’t have ever been ready to set aside the pain she had been cloaked in childhood where she had been abandoned by her own father who still lived in the same town, driving by her without acknowledgement. Maybe it was the childhood in

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Earthed by Rebecca Schiller

Earthed by Rebecca Schiller

For a long time, I was obsessed and convinced that the answer to all of my problems would be a change of scenery; the exchange of city for country. My blog, as it was called back then was rife with city claustrophobia. Too many people pounding the pavement, too much traffic, excessive noise in every aspect as we lived on top of each other in terraced houses, I no longer wanted to be able to hear my neighbour sliding her wardrobe open or sexual endeavours. I longed for nature. For roads to be exchanged for fields, for simplicity. To be

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In The Garden Essays on Nature and Growing

In The Garden Essays on Nature and Growing

  It is a dark grey day here; the wind freezes my extremities as I plant on my carefully loved and tended to “Love- In – A Mist” also known as Nigella Damascena but my five year old loves calling it by its more amusing name. I even have a video of him singing a song he had made up in homage to it. Returning to this morning where the sun was brief and passed rapidly, I walked up and down the swerving stone garden path to the compost, filling my pots and placing a dibber gently in to retrieve

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