Emma Types Stuff

What could be a more perfect Spring read than The Secret Garden ? Frances Hodgeson Burnett's cosy gothic story has been one of my favourites since childhood - helped by a stunning  film adaptation and my grandmother's own early life in India making me feel somehow connected to it all. To this day, the book has a sensory impact on me. I can feel the smooth surface of the letter writing block, hear the whoosh of the skipping rope, shudder at the cries in the night, and feel the turn of what must be the most satisfying key in all of literature.  Surely, then, I must be outraged at a remix of the story? How dare an author move the action to Canada, and add themes of race, sexuality and gender? ' The wokists have made Mary Lennox GAY, and Dickon a NON-BINARY INDIGINOUS PERSON' , you can imagine the Daily Mail screaming (thank god they haven't actually discovered this series).  Well, of course I'm not outraged. Firstly, I'm not a boomer. Secondly, I was raised on

One of the absolute joys in life is finding appreciation for something you didn't previously 'get'. For me, short story collections are that thing.  Whilst I have no issues reading short stories in general, collections and anthologies used to defeat me. I found them more exhausting than novels, much in the same way tapas can be more filling than a large meal. But after trialling a method of reading multiple collections and once, hopping between them as the mood struck, I have become an anthology devotee.  And so we come onto my Spring challenge. I actually intended to post this at the start of April, and keep it updated as I went, but life took a bit of a turn and so I chose to read the books and round them up later.  I had expected the books I chose to take the majority of the month, but a combination of three short page lengths and four very easy reads meant I was done in less than two weeks. See what I read below... The Collections The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by De

If it wasn't for my recent Read What You Own challenge , I probably wouldn't have read True Crime Story [Joseph Knox]. It's been languishing on my TBR every since I bought it and immediately forgot it existed.  It was only when I felt the need for something true-crime related that I looked at it again - I figured the title was certainly a step in the right direction. Realising that it is faux true-crime, one of my favourite subgenres, I dived in right away.  The overall conceit is that the real author of the book is editing this on behalf of a fictional writer friend, who died before completing her investigation into a missing student. She has interviewed all the main players and those interviews are interspersed with her own email conversations with Knox.    The case is that of Zoe, who went missing during a fire evacuation at her student towerblock in Manchester. She is blonde and pretty but far from the ideal 'virginal' missing girl, with an increasingly complex

Here I am reviewing a sports novel... who'd have thought it?  I have a soft spot for the extremely-hyped Taylor Jenkins Reid. I read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo because a colleague (clearly tuned in to my queerness) gave me the copy they'd just finished with a knowing ' this seems up your street '. And whilst I was dubious (novels about celebrity are not my thing) they were proven correct. I loved it.  Likewise I enjoyed Daisy Jones and the Six which, though not as good, was a fun evening's audiobook listen. I decided to put Taylor Jenkins Reid in the category of an author I wouldn't go out of my way for, but would probably read if a book came my way via the library, or a sale.  Which is how Carrie Soto is Back arrived in my lap. I snagged it for 99p and then ignored it for over a year, because... a tennis novel? Really?!  Believe it or not, I have form with tennis romances, with a friend of mine having written a particularly popular one. This was my j