I love reading and I want to share regular posts about books on this site. I thought I’d start by giving some recommendations for great reads. The following books are all quite different; genres, style, subject and date of publishing, but they all have in common that I’ve read them quite recently and really enjoyed.

The Flood Girls by Richard Fifield

Rachel Flood returns to her small, depressing home town after her father dies and leaves her his dilapidated mobile home. Rachel is an alcoholic in remission and has come back because she feels she needs to make amends for her past behaviour. Living next door to her is Jake, a flamboyant boy with a passion for fashion, Madonna and Jackie Collins novels and a born-again Christian step-father who hates him. Rachel gets roped into playing for her mother’s softball team, The Flood Girls, despite her mother wanting nothing to do with her and Rachel wanting nothing to do with sports. The book follows Rachel and Jake as they become unlikely friends, supporting each other.

The characters make this book; from Rachel and Jake and their unlikely friendship to Rachel’s mother, Laverna, and her crazy best friend Red Mabel and all the rest.

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not affect my decision to include it in this list.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal

Essentially this is a story of a remarkable girl told through food.

Eva Thorvald is the daughter of a Sommelier mother, who ran off when she was a few months old, and a chef father, who died when she was a few months old. Born with once-in-a-generation taste buds the novel is told through the people around her, beginning with her birth and progressing through middle school, high school and a successful culinary career. Each chapter has a different narrator and focuses on a different recipe.

Soulless by Gail Carriger

This is a tounge-in-cheek novel, the first in a series and the first in a series of series, about a young woman, Alexia Tarabotti, who is a supernatural “neutralizer”, that is, any werewolf or vampire she touches becomes mortal for the duration of that touch. So yes, there are vampires and werewolves in this but rest assured, this is no Twilight drivel. Set in an alternative 1880’s Britain, Alexia accidentally commits a major social faux-pas and kills a vampire. As a result must maneuver werewolf and vampire politics as well as altercations with the wolfish Lord Maccon, chief of the local werewolf tribe, who is sent to investigate her little vampire accident, and tea with her flamboyant friend, Lord Akeldama, a vampire dandy.

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

One of Heyer’s funnier books, Kitty Charing’s rich uncle promises to name her as his heiress only if she promises to marry one of his idiot great-nephews. She’s had a crush on her cousin Jack for the longest time but when he doesn’t attend the little gathering her uncle has arranged she convinces another cousin, Freddy, to act out a faux-engagement with her to make Jack jealous as well as to have a chance to go to London and see more of the world. In typical Heyer fashion complications ensue except in this novel they are more hilarious than melodramatic.

Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Set in France during the Second World War, Nightingale follows sisters Vianne and Isabelle. Vianne is married and living with her husband and child in provincial France while headstrong Isabelle has just been expelled from yet another finishing school. When war is declared and the Nazis occupy France (with a heavy presence in Vianne and Isabelle’s home town) the sisters must learn to survive but they do so in very different ways. Kristin Hannah has written a beautiful book about the harsh realities of staying behind when the men go off to fight during war and the strength some still find when a situation seems to be completely hopeless.