Our latest reviews
The Story Of Buildings by Patrick Dillon & Stephen Biesty
As a child I remember that ‘uplifting experience’ upon entering an example of great architecture, that positive effect on my sense of wellbeing that made me wonder how it was achieved. Reading The Story of Buildings brought back those fond…
Tiny: The Invisible World of Microbes by Nicola Davies & Emily Sutton
To fully convey the true wonder of the scientific world to younger children requires great skill. To make it informative yet entertaining demands art. This beautifully produced picture book has both, with delightful illustrations that capture the invisible world of…
The Claimant by Janette Turner Hospital
In her terrific new novel, with what feels to be great delight, Janet Turner Hospital plays with personal histories and notions of identity to create a work based around the trial of the Vanderbilt family, seeking to establish the heir…
The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson
Jonas Jonasson’s first book, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, was published to critical and commercial success in 2009, and his new book adopts a similarly quirky bent. The story centres on a young woman…
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Marie-Laure LeBlanc is a blind French girl who lives with her father, a locksmith working at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle in Paris. Werner Pfennig is an orphan living with his younger sister at a children’s home in the mining…
Only The Animals by Ceridwen Dovey
The animals who narrate the stories in Ceridwen Dovey’s collection have each been killed during a human conflict of the past century: Himmler’s dog is abandoned in the woods; a bear starves to death during the siege of Sarajevo. Each…
The Bloodhound Boys: The Great Blood Bank Robbery by Andrew Cranna
The little monsters of Skull River City have scary names and odd looks but they also behave like normal kids, and it’s this great balance of behaviour young readers can identify with and an exciting, death-defying plot that makes this…
Stay Well Soon by Penny Tangey
The cover of Stay Well Soon hints at only one side of this wonderful contemporary story about an Australian girl who has just begun Year 5, because although there is certainly sadness and loss for Stevie, she is such a…
The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
Here, Meg Wolitzer has given us a delicious, utterly absorbing novel of epic scope, concerning six characters who meet as teenagers in 1974 at an exclusive summer arts camp. They ironically refer to themselves as ‘the interestings’, and we follow…
The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah
Nicki Clements is driving her son’s sports uniform to school when a police blockade puts a dent in her travels. It’s at the barricade that she sees him: the police officer who knows a piece of her secret, one which…
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