Bookish Thoughts: December

Welcome to the monthly-round-up, where I yap about books I’ve read recently and what the shiny bits were, whether they came out years ago or last week.

From the archives:

A.S. King’s Still Life With Tornado is a YA book of wonder.

This month’s shiny new reads:

YA fiction this month in the Irish Times is a round-up of the best of 2018.
Early Work by Andrew Martin (debut American author, not the British mystery dude) is a wry look at young-writers-trying-to-be-writerly, among other things. Hugely enjoyable.
Jessica Vallance’s Trust Her is a thriller that offers two messed-up antiheroines for the price of one – a delicious read.
Ruth Ware’s The Death of Mrs Westaway is an old-school-style mystery set in a Big House and featuring family secrets of various kinds.
My Meg Wolitzer crushing continues and I finally read The Female Persuasion, which is a neat little look at what it means to try to be a feminist in your life and in your career. Adored it.
The latest Diary of a Wimpy Kid title, The Meltdown, continues its sharp observations about what it means to be a kid. Greg also offers up some excellent suggestions about how humans should hibernate all winter. Book 13 and still going strong…
I reviewed the latest Jodi Picoult novel, A Spark of Light , for HeadStuff.

To watch out for:

Sinead Gleeson’s Constellations. A stunning, smart, empathetic collection of personal essays offering insight into illness, the body, grief, identity and so much more. Publishing April 2019 and already on several ‘to watch out for’ lists.
Claire Allan’s second psychological thriller (following a successful career writing women’s fiction), Apple of my Eye, is out in January and is deliciously gripping.
Out in February: Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient, a thriller about a painter who allegedly stabbed her husband to death and the psychotherapist determined to make her speak.