Reading Lately - April 2018 · Gail Anthea Brown

April has been a good month for me on the reading front, and the combination of school holidays, trips away in the campervan and longer evenings have seen me making good progress on my reading pile. I can’t seem to stop myself adding to it every time I visit a second hand bookstore or my local library though, but hey, there are worse habits! I’ve got some fab reads lined up already for May but for now let me fill you in on what’s been keeping me up at night this month. Heartbreaking fiction, a thrilling page-turner, some life lessons from Sweden and a celebrity biography – an eclectic mix as always, that’s just the way I like to read and roll 😉 .

Bad musical parodies aside, my first book for April was We Own The Sky by Luke Allnutt. I usually pick up books based on recommendations or blog reviews but this one just sort of spoke to me from the library shelf. I’m so glad it did and it reminded me I need to let that happen more often. It’s an absolutely beautiful book about love, grief, hope and dealing with the very darkest parts of human life. It tells the story of a couple and their young son and what happens when they discover something is very wrong with him. If you can handle the difficult subject matter this is a story that you will find in turn uplifting, heartbreaking and ultimately impossible to forget.

My second book for April was Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell, another one for the must-read list if you like page-turning thrillers that keep you guessing till the very end. It centres around Laurel, whose daughter Ellie went missing ten years ago – and whose life is just starting to piece together when she falls into a relationship with a man whose daughter bears a striking resemblance to Laurel’s missing child. If you enjoyed books like The Couple Next Door I’d say you’ll love this. I found it pretty un-putdownable – although unfortunately real life meant that I did have to put it down from time to time!

My third book for April was a sweet little read about Lagom, the Swedish philosophy of ‘not too little, not too much, just right’. The book gives a lot of insight into how the Swedes approach life/work balance, consumption, the environment and overall contentment – all with a healthy dose of lagom thrown in. I enjoy reading books like this and actually think the Nordic way of life bears many resemblances to life in the far north of Scotland. We do have Viking roots up here after all, so perhaps there is an underlying link!

My final book for April was Reveal by Robbie Williams and Chris Heath, whom he also partnered with on Feel a few years ago. I’m a big Take That/Robbie Williams fan so I was keen to read this follow up – in general I enjoy biographies and autobiographies as they give a fascinating insight into other peoples’ lives. This has the usual mix of RW vulnerability and eye-popping frankness. If you’re a fan you’ll love it – and if not it’s still an interesting read on celebrity, showmanship and the realities of life under a lens.

That’s it for this month’s round up but I hope you’ve enjoyed it. I’ll be back next month with more in the usual format of different-but-the-same. In the meantime, happy reading and do let me know which books you’ve been loving lately. As for me, I’m off to tackle that to-read pile….here’s wishing you all a lovely May in books 🙂 .

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