Review: Not Going To Plan by Tia Fisher

 

Publisher:  Hot Key Books

Publication Date: August 2025

Source: Borrowed from library

Blurb: 

Marnie's really messed up this time - expelled and forced to change schools, the only empty seat in Marnie's new school is next to Zed, a nerd with zero tolerance for mistakes. Marnie (skilled at art and Spanish, struggles with numbers) can't wait to lose her virginity. Zed (brilliant at maths and physics, loathes languages) is a loner who can't stand being touched. They couldn't be less alike, but they both need good grades in the subjects they hate.

What starts as a trade in tuition turns into an unlikely friendship - and after Marnie has sex with a boy who lies about using a condom, she needs Zed's help to make the hardest decision of her life.

After reading Fisher's debut, Crossing The Line, last year, I knew she would become an author I would read everything she put out. 

Our main characters are going through a transition and a coming-of-age time in their lives. Marnie has just been expelled from her private school and has now been enrolled into public school. Zed has always been a loner, more intent on solving maths equations than making friends. When Marnie and Zed are thrust together, a beautiful, unlikely friendship forms. I really enjoyed reading about their friendship. They are total opposites but perfectly complete each other and build such a supportive friendship. I loved reading about Zed discovering his sexuality and from his point of view, we learn the way he interprets the world around him is very different to Marnie. 

Review: Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson

 

Publication Date: April 2015

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Source: borrowed from library

Blurb: How do you survive the unsurvivable?

Rachel lives with her husband Tom and their two children: it's the ordinary family life she always thought she'd have. All of that changes in an instant - when Tom runs the family car off the road, seeking to end his own life, and take his wife and children with him. Rachel is left to pore over the wreckage to try and understand what happened - to find a way to go on living afterwards.

What emerges is a snapshot of what it's like to live alongside someone who is suffering, how you keep yourself afloat when the person you love is drowning, and how you survive irreparable loss.

Impossible to turn away from, Show Me Where It Hurts is a compelling, heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming story of recovery and unexpected hope.

This was another case of the book being so hyped up and talked about that it just didn't do it for me. 

This debut novel deals with an incredibly dark topic - our main character Rachel is dealing with the aftermath of her husband driving their family to their deaths but both her and her husband , Tom, survive, leaving the children dead. 

Review: Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

 

Publication Date: March 2022

Publisher: Penguin Books

Source: Borrowed from library   [ Goodreads ]

Blurb: 

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.

But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fueled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation. And soon a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time.

This is potentially a controversial post but I just don't think this book lived up to the hype at all for me. 

Review: Liccle Bit by Alex Wheatle

 

Publication Date: March 2015

Publisher: Atom Books

Source: Borrowed from library    [Goodreads]

Blurb: 

What's worse than hiding a secret? Liccle Bit's about to find out...

Venetia King is the hottest girl at school. Too bad Lemar is the second shortest guy in his year. Everyone calls him Liccle Bit, and his two best friends, McKay and Jonah, never tire of telling him he has no chance with girls. Things aren't much better at home. His mum is permanently hassled, his sister a frustrated single mum and his dad moved out years ago. Liccle Bit wishes he could do something - anything! - to make life better. A new phone would be a start...

As a new gang war breaks out on his estate, Lemar discovers that South Crongton's notorious gang leader has taken an interest in him. Before he knows what's happening, he's running errands. When he puts his own family in danger, Liccle Bit will be forced to question his choices. How can he possibly put things right?

I picked this book up on a whim, having heard nothing about it apart from that the CBBC was adapting it into a tv show. After my order arrived from my local library I dove in and was so pleasantly surprised to find that this was a phenomenally entertaining read. 

Set in "Crongton", an alias for Croydon I assume, the story follows Lemar (Liccle Bit to everyone else) as he navigates friendship, family problems, school, a crush and some seriously dangerous people. 

What I absolutely loved about this book was how genuinely "teenage" the teenage characters felt. A lot of the time you read a book written by an adult with teen characters and think "no teenager would say that / act like that / do that". Alex Wheatle has captured exactly the mannerisms and thought processes of teenagers, and teenage boys to be more exact, in this novel. From the friendship interactions, the talking about and to girls and the slight feeling of awkwardness everyone feels as a teenager - it was perfectly done.

Review: Toffee by Sarah Crossan

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Publication Date: February 2020

Source: Purchased

[Goodreads]       

Blurb: I am not who I say I am,
And Marla isn't who she thinks she is.

I am a girl trying to forget.
She is a woman trying to remember.

Allison has run away from home, and with nowhere to live, finds herself hiding out in the shed of what she thinks is an abandoned house. But the house isn't empty. An elderly woman named Marla, with dementia, lives there – and she mistakes Allison for an old friend from her past called Toffee.

Allison is used to hiding who she really is and trying to be what other people want her to be. And so, Toffee is who she becomes. After all, it means she has a place to stay. There are worse places she could be.

But as their bond grows, and Allison discovers how much Marla needs a real friend, she begins to ask herself - where is home? What is a family? And most importantly, who am I, really?

 If you know me, you know that Sarah Crossan's One is a book that I absolutely adored with my whole heart. So when I happened across her new novel in the bookshop, I immediately snatched it up. 

Review: The Intruder by Freida McFadden

Publication Date: 7 October 2025

Source: Library

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press 

[ Goodreads ]

Blurb: Who knows what the storm will blow in…

Casey's cabin in the wilderness is not built for a hurricane. Her roof shakes, the lights flicker, and the tree outside her front door sways ominously in the wind. But she's a lot more worried about the girl she discovers lurking outside her kitchen window.

She’s young. She’s alone. And she’s covered in blood.

The girl won't explain where she came from or loosen her grip on the knife in her right hand. And when Casey makes a disturbing discovery in the middle of the night, things take a turn for the worse.

The girl has a dark secret. One she’ll kill to keep. And if Casey gets too close to the truth, she may not live to see the morning.

  

So, in the last year or two, I have become a big Freida McFadden fan. I have read quite a lot of her work - enjoyed some, loved some and did not like some! She is an author whom I will always pick up as I know I will be getting a quick, fast-paced, twisty, insane in the best way book that will be glued to my hands until I finish. The Intruder was no exception. 

I have to start my review by saying that this concept, of someone being in your house (or in this case, your shed) while you are home alone, is one of my biggest fears. Anything about home invasion, break in's etc really freaks me out. I suppose because I view your home as your safe space, and having an Intruder there really pops your little safety bubble. 

Bridgerton Series 4 Book Recommendations

 

An Offer From A Gentleman by Julia Quinn, was my favourite Bridgerton book of the series so I was hugely excited in the run up to series 4 being released. 

I loved the season, although slightly different than the book, the relationship between Sophie and Benedict was still beautiful to watch grow. 

I thought I would share some recommendations for books to read to help your Bridgerton induced hangover and include some, in my opinion, underhyped novels too. 

A Little In Love by Susan Fletcher

Blurb: As a young child Eponine never knew kindness, except once from her family's kitchen slave, Cosette. When at sixteen the girls' paths cross again and their circumstances are reversed, Eponine must decide what that friendship is worth, even though they've both fallen for the same boy. In the end, Eponine will sacrifice everything to keep true love alive.

Inspiration taken from the Victor Hugo classic, this novel grips the reader and takes them on a journey from the first page - much like the sweeping Bridgerton story.