Favourite Books of 2018

this is such an incredible historical novel so exciting and interesting I knew very little about the history of Canada in the very early 20th century and I found that kind of settler life with a slight difference from a lot of the 19th century Americans set a novel really interesting

this is a short story collection that I read quite a while ago now which I really enjoy it's very hard-hitting very moving very powerful and just brilliantly done

it is so dramatic the atmosphere is just incredible but it's also like all crispy really just enjoyable to read like you can get through it so quickly I think it's our Agatha Christie is just the master of like characterization and just really getting to grips with the character and just like one or two lines I think she's just fantastic and I loved and then there were none a lot

it's very good fun a bit silly but really engaging so enjoyable and also with some surprisingly complex and important themes and some surprisingly enlightened views for the end of the 19th century whatever neighbor I would recommend

it's very dramatic very exciting really enjoyable and interesting I just I love a tree trunks writing style I feel like there are a few authors whose work I just like enjoy every single word of as Anthony Trollope like not just the whole book is great but just like every chapter I'm just having such a great time

this book is just so beautiful and write so beautifully about family and relationships in such a wonderful way I also just love like the narrative voice of this is so rich and feels so authentic I thought it was such a brilliant read and I loved it I read it in just one day I think and it was just an absolutely incredible book

it is a Victorian sensation novel but it also deals a lot of really complicated themes and it has a lot of really well drawn characters and looks really interesting Lee at the position of women within Victorian society it's a really great read so gripping was so enjoyable

this was a real surprise to me I picked it up for a book club having heard lots about it but not really feeling very sure whether or not I would like it and I just fell in love with Celeste Eames writing style it really reminded me of heavenly Sinjin Mandel who is my favorite contemporary novelist probably almost definitely

I liked it more than fingersmith which was my first though I did love finger Smith a lot as well

it's definitely a book I would recommend and actually did my creative writing masters a few years ago with Ali and I read some extracts of this at the time and loved it then and I loved it now it's a really brilliant book and I would highly recommend if you enjoyed historical fiction looking up the Victorian period

her biography of Jane Austen is really wonderfully and beautifully written I know a lot about Jane Austen I used to work on also scented bath like I knew a fair amount of the information in this but actually there was still so much new information to learn

it's incredibly powerful and incredibly moving and it is just fantastic and someone who's very interested in cultural and social history this is just fascinating and such a important and interesting book

this is a wonderful book which Picador very kindly sent me for review and I just fell in love with it completely it is a dual narrative which switches between the present and the past in the Victorian period

I've since also read my cousin Rachel which I also really enjoyed but Rebecca it's definitely my favorite so far

it was incredible definitely one of my best like underrated obscure random Victorian mature discoveries I just thought it was amazing and fantastic oh and highly recommend it especially if you like Jane Eyre I think it has quite a lot in common with Jane Eyre

it is fantastic and I really I really don't know how she did it because his book shouldn't work like there is so much in this book and it's so complicated but somehow Katherine and Valente pulls it off magnificently and it is incredible

it is so exciting so well done so clever so atmospheric the writings so incredible and also found it really interesting to compare to Jane Eyre

this I read way back in January 2018 and just absolutely loved it's really very much my kind of historical fiction it is set in the Netherlands in the 17th century

I never thought I was someone who would enjoy a true-crime but I found this book so compelling and so interesting and so filled with historical detail and historical interest like it was so fascinating to read about not only the murder itself and the kind of solving of the case but also how Victorian society reacted to it's so telling about the way that the Victorian world worked in terms of what was kind of kept behind closed doors and yeah just a brilliant read that I would highly recommend

it's just incredible it's got like all of the things that I love in a novel it's got a dual narrative it's got music as an important theme and the Victorian period but because half the characters are Japanese it looks at quite different groups of Victorian society than you often encounter in historical fiction

this is another fantastic historical fiction one I really enjoyed this is my second Sarah waters and I liked it more than fingersmith which was my first though I did love finger Smith a lot as well

this book is just absolutely my kind of literary criticism the subtitle is 20 crucial puzzles solved and basically John Mullin takes 20 questions or 20 like patterns in a way throughout Jane Austen's work and uses these small details to analyze the whole of her work