Books out in May and June, which made me fall in love with reading again

A recent weekend was made approximately a thousand times better by reading Annie Knows Everything, which is stuffed full of all the things I adore. A New York-set workplace romcom. A heroine with proper gumption. A hero able to match Annie’s elite level of banter. Yearning. A superb cast of supporting characters who all felt fully realised without being ridiculous. I’m finding it increasingly hard to source romcoms that really satisfy me but Annie Knows Everything pushed all my buttons and buttons I didn’t even know I had. Paradoxically, it felt refreshingly different while still hitting all the right beats. After finishing, I had to immediately email Melissa at Bonnier, who published it, to check that Rachel Wood was writing another novel. I could only unclench when I was informed that she’d just delivered her second novel and I am already impatient for it.

Buy Annie Knows Everything here (paid link)

I’m a huge Emma Straub fan and it’s always puzzled me that she’s not huge here in the UK (Modern Lovers (paid link) should be added to your tbr pile immediately.) American Fantasy very much follows the unofficial theme of these particular reviews as a book about proper grown ups but in this instance they’re not doing proper grown up things. Set on a cruise ship where a famous 1990’s boyband are entertaining their diehard fanbase, American Fantasy focuses on Annie, newly divorced, increasingly sidelined and not entirely sure what she’s doing there. As she begins to connect with a part of herself that she thought was lost forever, she also connects with Keith, one of the members of Boy Talk, who feels just as isolated as Annie. But on a cruise with three thousand mostly feral, mostly drunk middle aged women no one can hear you scream. This was such a funny, keenly observed book about how we often grow invisible as we grow old and what it means when someone actually sees you.

Buy American Fantasy here (paid link)

I was and always will be a huge Aisling fan but I was really happy that Emer McLysaght and Sarah Breen did something completely different here in a standalone novel which covers very different ground but with stunning results. Full of early Noughties nostalgia, Our Deadly Summer showcases Emer and Sarah’s trademark humour then throws in a little murder as university students Laura and Dee think they’re leaving Ireland for a New York summer full of hot boys and wind up waitressing in a stuffy golf club in New Jersey and, um, killing someone. This is a thriller stuffed with all the twists and turns you could ever want and also a deep dive into the glorious and messy complexity of a real ride or die female friendship; when you would literally help your BFF bury a body. The perfect sun lounger read.

Buy Our Deadly Summer here (paid link)

When I reviewed for Red Magazine, I would get a new Annabel Monaghan book in every summer. But every summer there was always so many romances to review and now I’m so mad about sleeping on her wonderful novels for so long. As I mentioned before, I am very fussy about my romcoms and on the surface Dolly All The Time is simply a fake dating billionaire romance. Oh my goodness, do you know how many fake dating billionaire romances I’ve read or DNF-ed? So many! But Dolly All The Time is not your little sister’s KU billionaire romance. It was also a relief to read about an older heroine that wasn’t a “hilarious” novel about a woman going through the menopause. Dolly is a very capable, very eldest daughter of thirty nine when she drifts into the orbit of Stewart Whitfield, whose richer than God family dominates the small Rhode Island town named after them. I really enjoyed that the seemingly improbable romance between Dolly and Stewart felt very realistic while brimful of yearning. So much yearning! (Also I’ve been to Rhode Island, even to the tiny outcrop of Point Judith mentioned in the novel so that added to my good cheer.) When I finished reading Dolly All The Time, before the afterglow could wear off, I then ordered every book that AM has written and I don’t regret this decision.

Buy Dolly All The Time here (paid link)

I absolutely loved Claire’s debut novel, At The Table (paid link), the story of a year in the life of one family told through a series of dinners, lunches and drinks. All In has a similar vibe. It’s told from the point of view of a couple, Jo and Dave, whose marriage has flatlined when they go to spend a few days at an all inclusive Mediterranean resort paid for by Dave’s flashy Dubai-dwelling brother. What Claire Powell does so beautifully is to write about the messy humanity of being a person just trying to exist in the world. You come to know and love Jo and Dave in their warts and all glory, their foibles, their failures, their desperate need for connection. In many ways, All In reminded me of that other book where famously nothing happens, but everything happens, RC Sherriff’s The Fortnight In September (paid link). I can’t think of higher praise, quite frankly.

Buy All In here (paid link)

Full disclosure: Anna and I have been friends since the early days of Twitter when we discovered that we both loved the incomparable and much missed Sassy magazine and traded our duplicate copies. We like all the same things in a way that is almost creepy so it’s no surprise that I’ve loved all her YA books and was delighted when she started writing romcoms for grown up ladies. I adored Our Song (paid link), her debut, and gobbled up Love Scene, a proper, no holds barred enemies to lovers romp set behind the scenes on a fictional much loved Irish soap opera, Northside, which has lost its way. Quite simply, Love Scene is just a really great, engaging romcom. Though there’s no ‘just’ about and it takes a lot of writing and rewriting and editing and sweating to achieve a story that reads so effortlessly, assuredly (is that the right word?) and easily. Like Laura in Our Song, Annie is another layered, sometimes prickly but relatable heroine and her struggles with anxiety are portrayed sensitively and perceptively. Art started off as a bit of a knobhead, albeit a devastatingly fanciable knobhead, but Anna is so good at unpeeling her characters’ layers; and everyone, even fictional everyones, are going through stuff that we might not know about on first acquaintance. Our Song was funny, sexy and tender and the Northside 50th anniversary jeopardy had me on tenterhooks.

Buy Love Scene here (paid link)

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My new novel, The Love Library, about proper grown ups behaving very unseriously, is out on June 25th and is available for preorder now. (paid link)