The 55 Best Debut Novels I’ve Read in the Last 5 Years | June 2021

a lot of people say that i love a debut novel but i don't think it's until now that i realized quite how true that was hi and welcome to my channel i'm simon and today i'm back to tell you about the 55 yes 55 debut novels that i have loved the most over the last five years and that's because this week i'm doing five videos this week celebrating five years on booktube it's my booktube birthday last week and this seemed like an ideal one i hadn't thought about until this morning and because today is the desmond elliott shortlist announcement day which is a prize for debut novels which i'm judging in our shortlist is this selection of three books here and i thought well i can't really talk to you about them they are i should say the manga tree which is by ak blackmore and rebecca watson's little scratch and um ellie williams the liar's dictionary so i get them all they're amazing the long list was fantastic and it was really really hard to judge them um but um i thought right i'm gonna talk about davies i love because people always tell me that i love david i'm like oh do i is that true apparently very much is the case um as you've seen from the pile at the beginning of this video and intro anyway i'm going to go through them in alphabetical order because it was the only way that seemed fair i'm also not going to include any of the books that were on the long list or shortlist for the dozens earlier that doesn't seem fair and i'm not including any books that are on the shortlist for the women's prize for fiction uh 2021 because me and my mom will be talking about those in a couple of weeks and again i kind of yeah it didn't seem bad although some would qualify so right let's get cracking and we start off with one of my absolute favorites when we finish with one of my absolute favorites actually so that's quite lovely and 53 in between i'm gonna do this as quickly as i can like an elevator pitch make notes because i am i'm not gonna be able to fit all of these in the description box down below it's just not gonna happen because there's a word limit so right let's go with first of all stay with me by aya bami adebayo which is a book that i wouldn't have read if it hadn't been on the women's prize long list and it was actually my favorite to win personally that year this looks a marriage in nigeria where they're struggling to where husband and wife are struggling to conceive a child and all these sort of scientific routes they go but also all the sort of mythical and folklorics ago that turns a marriage into a thriller that's the only way i can describe it it is phenomenal then we have saltwater by jessica andrews which won the postcard prize which i was the chair of judges for that year this i just think is so incredible it's about a young woman growing up in the north she moves to london and it looks at the culture clashes just between north and south but also what it's like to grow up as a young woman in the north and the language is beautiful it's a really heady book um yeah absolutely stunning can't recommend it enough flames by robiano now i have to say not necessarily this one it will be um but some of these books will make my 25 top books that i've read in the last five years now bear in mind it's about i don't know it's well over 500 books is this has been so hard um but some debuts would appear on here but not some others so this is also a really nice chance to sort of share more anyway lots of you will expect to see this on that list and you could be right um but flames is kind of almost a um novel told in short stories set in new zealand but where magic is still sort of happening and that's the only way i can really describe it but i will never forget reading this and just being so lost in it and sort of the the way it celebrates the magic nature of nature amazing there we go and russia by um shirley barrett a book about whaling set in i want to say the 1800s but no it's 1908 and i don't like books about boats didn't think i wanted to read whaling at all just wasn't my thing and this proves me completely wrong it's a rip roaring um historical adventure that is quite unlike any that i've read before and i read um shelley barrow's follow-up novel and thought that was a sensational two remembered by yvonne battlefelt in a book that i have mentioned on this channel a lot since i started it um well since i've read it actually because i started the channel before this came out a few years before this came out and this looks at the emancipation of slaves in a really different way from what i've read before there's hates and sort of the um almost uh ritual elements of slavery fiction within it but it does it in just a vote not ritual what's the word um the telling of the telling of history it tells history in its own way but it's very different there's ghosts in it haines as i mentioned um there's also the fact that you go back to what it was like to be on one of the plantations which is horrific but also this book really looks at the fear and the perils of freedom and i had not seen that in a novel before and that just yeah that was that for me i think it is incredible uh my sister the serial killer by incan braithwaite and also one of my mum's favorite books that she's read in the last five years full stop she loves this book i love it too it's about a young woman who has a sister who is a serial killer it's set in nigeria it's brilliantly done um and the tension it and the way it looks there's so many other things like what happened to these two sisters in their past um how do you like does familial love be all um how long can you let people get away with things and it also looks at beauty and well so many different things it's really really brilliant and a really really speedy read and i'm gutted i haven't talked about this more this was on the shortlist for the portugal prize uh when i was sharing it and i think i'm gonna say this it was between this and salt water for an hour and a half of discussion no word of a lie we loved this and it's set on a um estate um in the north of england where again this sort of like ghostly elements like could there be a ghost who is lurking amongst all of the waterworks there and we go over several generations of people who live on this estate and how their lives intertwine and are it is just brilliant i don't love the cover and i think that might have hindered it possibly actually but if you haven't read it yet please please please get your mix on it iron off of this by glenn james brown incredible more historical fiction now the wicked cometh by laura carlin and this is set um in victorian england it's incredibly gothic and i lapped this up this is sort of savage catnip in its rarest form we'll be talking a little bit more about what is savage cabinet tomorrow um but uh yeah i just got completely and absolutely lost in it it had some things that i'd seen in historical fiction before but i didn't care because it felt fresh still and it's so gothic i sadly read laura carlin's second book and didn't love it as much but i'm going to head back to it at some point and try it again because this one i just thought was so phenomenal yes loved it a lot don't think i managed to do less than 30 seconds on each one and queenie by candice carty williams this is all about queenie who um is contemporary novel set in london and looks at her and she's kind of in a difficult situation life she's sort of broken up with a boyfriend although she wants to get back with him she's really struggling at work she's having quite um quite a tricky sex life uh and then sort of it looks at reasons for that and goes into that a lot more but it's really very much i felt like this book really shone a light on um a voice that isn't heard enough and should be heard more and i think candy's kylie williams is genius i can't wait to see what she writes next and also this was one of me and melanie's early book clubs so i love it for that because it's got that sort of memory uh linked into it for me so i thought that was brilliant then we have another book that looks at freedom in a very different way and i actually had the pleasure of doing an event with this author andy von battle fulton for durham book festival and it's the confessions of franny langton by sarah collins and this tells of franny langton who as we meet her and i love this infection is telling us her tale in letters from prison and where she has been arrested for the murder of her master and mistress but what has really happened i shall say no more other than that it's a glorious gorgeous sometimes really naughty but incredibly moving and powerful and thought-provoking uh romp i just think yeah phenomenal then we have sarah um crossland who this isn't technically her debut because she's written novels for um younger people but it's our adult debut and i counted that with a few that are in this mix um and then yet this tells of a woman who's been having an affair um for quite a while and he dies so what does she do with the grief that she can't share with anyone because it wasn't because it was a secret and i just think it's so beautifully written it's written in verse and it just i don't know there's something about um poetry and novels and and poets and novels i just i don't know it does something it gives me all the book tingles and this did just that i thought it was um incredibly incredibly done very definitely done love the word definitely um then we have a book that i read for sky arts book club and so it's special to me for that reason but also it's just a really really brilliant book and this is all about um sorry it's the girl with the louding voice by abidari and this is about a dooney who um when we meet her she is given to be um a wife the third wife of 14 of kind of this quite powerful man and it's how she leaves that scenario and what happens afterwards and i don't want to say any more than that because this is a book that you just kind of have to go in and follow her journey and it is so powerful and so brilliant and it doesn't feel like a debut voice it's just incredible then we have west by carys davis who's one of my favorite authors because of her short story collections this was her first novel slash novella and it set uh back in the west back in history when um a man psy is going to go and try and find uh sort of either the bones of or some and physical uh proof that there are these kind of prehistoric massive monstrous mammoths out there and he leaves his daughter behind but what i love about this book is it's about the dangers of psy goes out into the west but also really the dangers back at home for his daughter so brilliant and the tension in it is just incredible then we have the butcher's hook by jenna ellis um and yeah this book instantly makes me smile it's a very unusual historical sort of thriller with the sort of i don't want to give too much away but um you will never ever forget uh anna the main character in this book she's just so brilliant and so quirky and so different and i absolutely just locked this up i just thought it was yeah absolutely amazing and not i'm sorry um yeah phenomenal phenomenal phenomenon phenomenal historical fiction with kind of a different twist then we have fresh water by a kwaki meze and i think this novel like their novels that i've read since have just got better and better and better um and i'm really really excited about their uh first non-fiction and this there were paragraphs in here that made me really understand what it must feel like to have no gender and being on binary and that really really resonated with me in a really powerful way it's about a young person who feels they have spirits inside them that um are kind of making them feel different at different points and yeah it's just phenomenal i'm going to say that a lot you should have a sweet every time i say phenomenal amazing fantastic wow and gold is uh nightingale point um i came to this later than i should have because it should like it's a very very me book and i don't know why i didn't read it sooner it's set on a councillors day in london where something really really horrific happens and we follow several characters in the lead up to that moment and then afterwards and it kind of looks at this the situation around graham fell in a fictional account but with a very different um disaster um but the narratives and the way you step into each of these characters so confidently and they're so real and vivid flaws and all and the secrets they keep and how they all intertwine with each other it's just really really really brilliantly done and i'm annoyed with myself that i haven't read her new novel homegoing yet homecoming yet so i'm going to head to that very very soon because i'm an older sausage for not reading that scene and i only read this earlier this year absolutely incredible mrs death mrs death by selena godin i mentioned earlier like sometimes when a poet um writes their first novel what there's something that gives me the book tingles and this totally does that this is about death who is a black middle aged woman who you wouldn't notice necessarily until she comes to find you and um it's a look at kind of the history of london in some ways it's how she becomes friend with wolf and decides to write her memoirs it's so different and so brilliant and just so everything that if you've not read this this year i was a naughty sausage for not having read luanne gold is you're very naughty for not reading this because it is brilliant historical fiction again a big old rump the mermaid and mrs hancock by imagine hermes gower i cannot wait for her second novel um yeah i don't know what to say what more to say about this other than it is just a massive juicy riotous um character driven yet very private at the same time like it's just a good like yeah it's just gorgeous it's a big gorgeous epic romp in georgian england that's all i can say and it's also one of tom of tom riesling's favorite books so there we go then we have uh what belongs to you by garth greenwald which is set in bulgaria and tells of a professor who kind of or an english teacher who falls in love with mikko who is a um sex worker and it's how their relationship builds from there interestingly i have not read the follow-up to this and i really really should because i loved gargamel's writing and i even have actually an uh sort of novella of his called mcco which i think ends up sort of turning into this morphing into this eventually so i must get to that because i thought this was really really brilliantly done and looked at what it's like to be queer in a different um a very different situation from me when i was growing up for example um yeah i thought it was done really really really brilliantly and interestingly ionopolis i wasn't sure about the cover being like this but this i really really like so what's that about i'm fickle who knows then i have the pleasure of judging the costas um twice actually but i had the pleasure of judging early on on booktube although i've been blogging for quite a while before i started booktube i think 12 years before i started booktube um and doing podcasts and stuff um i was invited to be on the judging panel for the debut um novel for the costas and our winner was elena elephant is completely fine by gail honeyman i don't feel like i need to say much about this book because it's been so so talked about before it went and since it won and it has sold hundreds and hundreds of thousands of millions of copies and rightly so because it's a really interesting look at someone who is a bit of an outsider a bit of a loner and how they want to be like everyone else but how they go about it um and yeah i thought it's wrong now i think i can say this um as it was several years ago i think it was since i've been on this youtube channel if not i've cheated with two books but one of the shortlisted books which is one of my absolute favorites and i really really really really really wanted to win was the haunting of henry twist by rebecca f john um and obviously like each meeting it depends on what goes on in the room and how the other judges feel about it and this very very nearly made it but just not quite but for me i just could not stop thinking about it it's about a man whose wife is killed and and then a few days um after that sorry she's pregnant that that child survives and sort of a few days later this mysterious um henry twist turns up and um it's how this sort of weird feeling of sort of recognition between the two of them but also this kind of underlying frisson is going on and yeah i just thought it was brilliant really spooky very sexy um and yeah just a great great book as is daisy johnson's everything under which um followed on from her short story collection female was her debut novel it was shortly shortlisted for the man booker this is a book that looks at memory it looks at trauma it looks at language because there's a lexicographer in it um and it looks at familial relationships which i really really love and i just think daisy johnson writes superbly i have loved all of her books this book i read um late last year and earlier this year again and i just i've talked about it i've given it its own video because i love it that much it's the prophets by robert jones jr i know people say quite often i couldn't believe that was a debut and i think i would apply that to quite a lot of the ones that i've read that i've mentioned already and and if that sometimes say oh it feels like a baby that's not a bad thing because what i love about debut novels which i should have said earlier on is that i love the fact that the author kind of puts everything into it because it's like this is my chance to have a book published and i want to put everything that i think can know and love and all other sorts of things into it i love that um but this um felt so so assured and so beautifully written and so haunting i should say it's about it's set on a plantation called empty uh it's about two male slaves who fall in love before homosexuality was a label and it looks also his like um the history of those who arrived there um and there's so much going on but hence why i made a whole video about it um but it's this book almost leaves me speechless partly because i get very emotional thinking about it but also because i just think it's so so phenomenal it's not an easy read and you have to be the right frame of mind for it but should you be and you read it i defy you not to have it as like a favorite novel after having read it so there's that then we have english animals by laura k which is a quirky book um which i sometimes forget that i've read which is really bad because i would like to shout about it more um i read this with lauren and mercedes which is a real treat as well so that's another reason that i love this book for the memories of that um but this is about a woman who um takes a role um helping a taxidermist on his estate with his wife and their relationship is very very odd and it's how she kind of gets embroiled with it when she falls in love with his wife or falls in lust with his wife and we follow on from there it also looks at um the relationships between britain and europe which since this book came out i have obviously things have happened to understatement of the year but um yeah this looks sort of the bubblings of that which is yeah that speaking of books that are sort of based around the bubblings of or anything but also look at um political elections and all those kind of things we have crudo by olivia lang which is set in the summer of 2017 and follows in real time all the events that take place um as this woman kind of is is deciding whether she wants to get married or not and is thinking about her life in general um and it's done so well because you you wouldn't believe 2017 was real reading this and that's what kind of it's just a really really good play and everything now olivia has written non-fiction before and since i really like her non-fiction too and i think she's gonna end up being one of my favorite authors i think i'm talking really really fast i'm really really sorry although looking back at some of my videos from the last five years this isn't slow i didn't realize quite how fast i talked and i read this earlier this year luster by raven leilani this is almost like an american cousin to queenie which sounds really lazy but it isn't the fact that it's about a young woman who's not quite sure where her life is going and what she wants to do and she's sort of in between things and when she meets um a much older man and sort of becomes embroidered in his life he's in an open relationship and yeah we follow on from there i thought it was done really really well sometimes almost too well and too frank and too real yet in a kind of extreme way if that makes sense um historical uh fiction that's based on truth i really love it something that i've learned from going through all of these books and and i think this book is a prime prime prime example of that and i don't think it's been read by enough people and i want to be read by more people it's the rapture by claire mcglasson and this is based on a true cult that that was set up uh post-war in um bedfordshire in britain and we follow the characters there there's also an awareness to it without spoilers and it's just brilliant my dart vanessa which is a recent uh book club choice of mine and melanie's um i wasn't sure how i was going to feel about this it's a it's a story of um a young woman who when she's at um college starts a relationship with one of her teachers and it looks at grooming and it looks at how susceptible she is but then heads to the future and what how that has left her mentally when she hears she believes it was love and she believes it was a relationship but she hears that she was not the only woman and someone else is speaking out about it and we follow from there this book is incredibly disturbing and quite hard to read yet at the same time has the propulsion of a thriller i don't quite know how kate elizabeth russell did it but she did it and i also think it's just a really important read that lots of people should read if they feel brave enough to do it there we go see what i've done by sarah schmidt i just realized i've gone in the wrong order hang on put those back sorry i meant to go here to m not to um not to oh yeah not from m to r sorry whoops i'm gonna leave that in because you've told me not to do um so the glorious harris is by lisa mcinerney i love this book it's gritty it's dark it's uh very funny uh it can be quite shocking in parts um it's based around gangs in ireland and um i'm judging the desmond elliott prize with lisa at the moment and she is an absolute joy and i cannot believe i have not read not just the follow-up to this but the follow-up to that because it's a trilogy and i must get to the next two i'm going to do that very very soon and but this is the women's prize and indeed one sorry the women's prize as well as the desmond elliott so there we go we've come round in a circle even though i went by r when i should have gone to m and then we have the doll factory by elizabeth mcneill who one of my favorite moments in the last five years is um one getting to know elizabeth but also getting her to teach me how to pot and she is also possibly going to be a guest on the podcast that i'm doing but i'll say no more than that and and this i just thought was brilliant um it's set in victorian england it's really really really really really um how can i put it all those really and then how do i put it it really immerses you in that period and what i loved about this is that it reminded me of um uh john fowls what's the butterfly book um but where it's about a young woman sorry who comes to the attention both of these sort of pre-raphaelite and painters um and sort of it's how she gets into that world but also about how a man called silas kind of she catches his eye and it becomes a bit cat and mouse and it's just brilliantly brilliantly done the parentations by kate mayfield i think this needs to be read by everyone and i think what might put some people off is the premise if you read it as a blur because it is about a pool in iceland where there is the elixir of eternal life and we start off when the sort of first person discovers it years and years and years ago and then we go through history following people and then it sort of really hovers around um the victorian area for a while which i loved and we meet clovis who is a villainous woman i will never forget and i loved every moment she was in no matter how despicable as she could be it's also got um these gothic twin sisters in it it's got a really interesting look at the um what it was like to be queer throughout history it's just got everything in it that i absolutely love and i would like to head back to it at some point and get kind of everybody reading it because yeah i just thought this was incredible i also really loved um kate's memoir um another author who has written books before but this is their first book for adults is kieran milward hargrave and this is the minises which is based on the real witch trials in i want to say 19 i want to say 1666 it's not a 1617 on the island of vardar and um how after a really really awful incident basically kills all the men the women are left to create a community and survive and then it's the judgment that befalls them for doing that um absolutely incredible helen moore's black car burning another poet who has gone on to write a novel and again i loved it that i also have this because it's got my hometown in it it's got my home county in it it's very much a celebration of the north and it's all about lots of different characters who all intertwine around rock climbing either because they have done it or because they are doing it all because they're in relationships with people who are climbers and one particular relationship that gets looked at is this um kind of polly relationship which i found really really really interesting to read about and yeah i just thought it was great helmet oh helmet by fiona mosley and a book that very much looks at nature and but also is about a family who are on the outside of everything and who become outsiders and you initially think it's the choice of all of them but it's not really it's very much about this father who is also a really feared figure and it looks at the brutal masculinity but also the brutal nature of nature and i loved it for all of those things i think it's a phenomenal debut and the wall-to-wall experiment another book that is based on um true fact by alex nathan um as in not as in another book by alex nathan it's based on true fact but a book based on truth facts bye alex nathan i love this this um is about a man who advertises for somebody to go and live in the well below the cellars of his house for seven years and i'll cut their hair they're not allowed to clean cut their nails they just have to be down there and they will be paid for doing it and we follow the uh man who advertises it and the man who ends up going there and then also there's a sort of this other element that comes in a bit of a trusty thing and i thought it was incredible and the private joys of nana maloney by achieving zello and i just thought this was phenomenal it really looks at what it's like to be um a young person who is looking at their cultural background and is just also trying to find themselves it's a real coming-of-age story um and i thought that it was just done so well um again this is so but it doesn't feel like it's a first novel it feels like somebody who's at the height of their powers and i cannot wait for um what we do is next so yeah we have that one and we have the son of the house which i only read earlier this year by uh chaluchi onyamalukwi anubia and this is about well it opens up with two women who are tied together in this sort of dank room i assumed it was underground i don't know why um and as they start to tell each other their stories both coming from very different walks of life in nigeria we start to see why they are where they are and the commonality is sadly men but um it looks at how for women no matter what um your circumstances you are limited at all it's just done really really i thought really really really well love after love i've talked about this a lot on this channel by anger episode um this is just about almost like a found family uh we have um betty and her son um her husband betty's husband has died we meet him at the beginning he's a very aggressive man he's died they're taking a lodger and it's how uh they all form this yeah this found family until one night when lots of secrets are revealed and everything changes she'll say no more i'm aware i'm on 29 minutes i've still got so many ghosts i'm going to be even speedier than i have been um also even more succinct than i have been um d transition baby by tory peters only read this earlier this year i think it's a really really important novel in terms of looking at what it's like to be a trans person looking at transitions of all kinds looking at queer family looking at different relationships it's a very frank honest open direct book i will say that um sometimes the writing was a bit clunky but this book it's almost it goes because of what the book is doing and what then the story is telling for me it went beyond the writing it was just about this existing and this story being told and a lot of writing is brilliant so i also uploaded that but yeah that's that's my thoughts on that one the house at the edge of the world by julia rochester why have we not had more books by julia rochester because we really really should have this is all about a family who the father of the family and either drunkenly falls off the cliff or may have been pushed off a cliff and leaves them with this kind of embarrassing ghost both in terms of space but also possibly a literal embarrassing ghost and we follow how two siblings then deviate from each other and move away and what follows the family afterwards i would like another novel by julia rochester please i love books that look at where different cultures combine clash all those things stubborn archivist by yara rodriguez fowler looks at that with a young woman who is half brazilian and half english and how she tries to find herself within that and with all the cultural heritage heritage of both and i just thought this was phenomenal can't recommend it enough um black sunday which i read earlier this year by toronto rotimi abraham effect was my first book of this year and i thought it was um kraken it's actually it's sold as being about two sisters who after becoming orphans um in nigeria we follow them and how different their lives are but actually it's really about siblings at his heart but i thought it was phenomenally done the lost flowers of alice heart by holly ringling are cracking australian debut which looks at trauma but also looks at the power of nature and it's a book about as much as it's about trauma it's also about healing and there's going to be a tv show with sigourney weaver very soon so get to it before the show comes out then we have mike dart vanessa which i've talked about then we go to another australian book see what i've done by sarah schmidt this is a fictional retelling of um the lizzie borden murders um and i don't feel like i need to say anyone that this book though is so like you feel the dirt under your nails you feel the grime everywhere and oh it's phenomenal i should say as well this book led me and sarah to meeting and we've become firm of friends ever since but i think this book is amazing i read it before as a friend so therefore that doesn't count and this year i read and i haven't talked about this enough and i really really should color hill by neima shah and this is set in uganda in the 1970s when um basically overnight um all ugandan asians must leave the country within 90 days its decreed and we follow one particular family amazing sugi bane when the booker about to read this again for me a melanie's book club because she's chosen this is our next read um it's about sugi who is a young boy living with an alcoholic mother in glasgow during a really well a really hard time for glaswegians and we follow them on from there i don't feel like i need to say more than that real life by brandon taylor also um was up for the booker at the same time as um and this is all about a young black scientist who um it's about kind of his odd relate not odd because we've all possible not all of us have been there but some of us have been there uh the relationships that he has with his friends we follow him over like one weekend uh including kind of a relationship that he has with one of his friends that's more than just friendship but yet at the same time isn't what it's like to be a young black man surrounded by white people and just what's going on with him after his father's death um really really really well done um ocean vong on earth were briefly gorgeous absolutely stunning novel um about um a son writing letters to his mother about his sexuality about his childhood um about what it was like to grow up from with a vietnamese family in america amazing now i'm not sure if i started my channel when i've read this or not but i couldn't not include it and it's my name is leon by and kit dual which is a tale of two brothers who are put up for adoption and um what happens when the younger who is white is adopted very quickly and the order who is not uh isn't and i thought this was absolutely for not me no so i had to include it even though i think i read it slightly before i started and youtube and love and other thought experiments by sophie ward a very different book and in some ways can be quite hard to read because it deals with um a lot of philosophy and these thought experiments get entwined but at the heart it's really about uh queer families and the love between mothers and sons um and also the what-if scenarios of the world brian washington's memorial we're almost there um which is um based around a couple who are going through a really difficult time that you know they love each other they think they sort of have sex occasionally um but uh when they are forced to kind of uh not separate as in literally but when one of them has to go to uh japan to see his dying father his mother then flying at the same time which is the only slight quibble i had with this book so i was like would that really happen um it looks at how their relationship is formed how they got into really really difficult situations but also what the future may or may not be from both of their perspectives and i thought this looked at a relationship in probably one of the most real raw ways that i've seen in like that sort of falling in and out of love and all those kind of things then we have a book that again i haven't heard much about and i would like to hear more it's got a quote from me inside it just there and it's foxlow by eleanor wasserberg and this is um set um it's well it's about cults and i love books about girls really fascinating and i thought this was done really really well because you've got like and green and blue her sisters and foxes where they live and the outside is just bad and it's how they test the boundaries of that and what follows on from there weathering by lucy wood who um i love her short story collections particularly diving bells is one of my favorite short story collections of all time this was described as like a fairy tale uh mythical version of the arches and i can totally see what people mean but it's about um a mother and daughter who have taken over well they've moved into their mother grandmother's house they've got rid of her ashes but she hasn't really gone anywhere she's still around and we follow on from that with sort of these magical moments rippling through and then penultimately we have shelter by jung yun which um this is like a family thriller unlike any other and the opening scene of this is so incredible because um it's about a family who've got their house up for sale and an estate agent is kind of going around and then um showing another couple around and as they get to the window they see a naked woman coming towards the house and it's the mother of the couple who are selling the house all i will say and last but certainly not least how much of these hills is gold by c pam zhang one of my absolute favorite books that i've read um in the last five years this tells of siblings who after the death of their father and actually after their mother before that have been trying to survive they're trying to find a place that's home in the gold rush in america but with a slightly different twist on that gold rush story and i just thought it was amazing so there we are i managed it in under 38 minutes i thought it was going to be about an hour but it hasn't been let me know if you've read any of these in the comments down below and let's have a chat about them and uh yeah i will speak to you all very very soon well tomorrow in fact bye

Channel: SavidgeReads

Views: 4,861

Rating: 4.9506173 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: hAztQ5YEw8s

Length: 37min 36sec (2256 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021