From themes of love and loss to uplifting true tales of self-discovery, let these recommendations inspire your reading list this month …
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Jojo Moyes became an international phenomenon with her 2012 book, Me Before You, which sold 21 million copies and was later made into a major film. Her latest book, WE ALL LIVE HERE (Michael Joseph, €13.99), is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences I’ve had in a long time. It tells the story of Lila, an author who has written a book about how to have a perfect marriage like hers. Unfortunately, Lila’s husband has been having an affair with one of the mums from her children’s school and now she has to see her every day on the school run. Newly separated and trying desperately to sell another book so she can keep up with her bills, she is also in mourning after the death of her mother, and her stepdad has also moved in! When Gene, her absentee, famous TV actor father, shows up unexpectedly looking for a place to stay, the house suddenly feels very cramped. In the midst of all of this, Lila is searching for some remnant of the woman she used to be and attempting to re-enter the dating world. The book is genuinely heartwarming and uplifting. At times I wept very satisfying tears, at others I laughed out loud. It’s a joy to read such an expertly calibrated book by a writer at the top of her game. The perfect antidote to February.
Sligo writer Elaine Garvey has been tipped as an Irish talent to watch in 2025 and having read her debut novel THE WARDROBE DEPARTMENT (Canongate, €21.75), set in London in 2002, it’s easy to see why. Mairead is a 20-something from the west of Ireland working in a wardrobe department in a theatre in London. The story is jam-packed with vibrant characters, from the bullying, exploitative producer to the narcissistic leading man, an avuncular doorman and supportive co-workers to the hardened, alcoholic boss. Garvey worked in theatre in the UK and the book is full of theatre details. Mairead is conflicted between her timid personality and relaxed English mores, her loneliness as an immigrant and a desire to live life to the full. When Mairead returns home for her grandmother’s funeral, she has to make a decision about her life. This is an impressively insightful and beautifully written debut.
Another highly anticipated Irish release, THE BOY FROM THE SEA (Picador, €15.99) is the debut novel from Garrett Carr, better known as a non-fiction writer and Creative Writing teacher at Queen’s University Belfast. This book has been generating a lot of pre-publication buzz, with justification. It begins in 1973 when Ambrose Bonnar, a fisherman in a small fishing community on Ireland’s west coast, finds an abandoned baby on the beach. He adopts the baby, calling him Brendan, and the story follows Ambrose’s family over the course of two decades, exploring how Brendan’s arrival affects not only the lives of Ambrose, his wife Christine and their son but the changing local community too.
Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Anne Tyler is back with her 24th novel, THREE DAYS IN JUNE (Chatto & Windus, €15.99). The story has a deceptively simple set-up – Debbie is getting married, which brings her divorced parents Gail and Max together for three days in June. In anyone else’s hands this would be a simple, nostalgic story, but in Tyler’s fiendishly clever hands the story becomes arch and questioning, pushing the reader to face their own prejudices and beliefs about monogamy, fidelity, family, friendship and ageing, while also being a meditation on love and tolerance. A truly lovely novel that manages to avoid sentimentality thanks to Tyler’s wicked wit and sense of humour.
MAY ALL YOUR SKIES BE BLUE (Faber, €15.99) is the second novel from Fiona Scarlett, the author of the widely acclaimed Boy’s Don’t Cry. Exploring themes of first love, loss, regret and the emotional rollercoaster that is growing up, the book opens in the summer of 1991 in Ireland as Dean and Shauna’s teenage romance blossoms. Moving from past to present, the story explores the challenges the two face, together and separately, in a deeply moving narrative that brings the reader along every step of the way. When all seems lost, will they find each other under the same blue sky?
Part one of a two-part series, LOST SOULS MEET UNDER A FULL MOON by Mizuki Tsujimura (Doubleday, €17.99) is a Japanese novel that has sold over a million copies and has now been translated into English for the first time. Set in the suburbs of Tokyo, the novel sees five troubled characters looking for a reunion with the person who changed their lives. The catch? They are all dead. Meaning Ayumi, the Go-Between, a teenage boy with a gift for connecting the living with the dead, is their link. With each heartbreaking reunion, clues are scattered for readers to piece together the truth behind the Go-Between. Tsujimura explores the complexities of human relationships and the power of second chances in this captivating novel.
Eimear McBride’s latest novel, THE CITY CHANGES ITS FACE (Faber, €15.99) has a unique experimental style we have come to expect from the best-selling author of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians. It’s 1995 in London, and Eily and Stephen are in the grips of obsessive new love. Eighteen months later, the couple reexamine the course of their romance as the real world, and their pasts, come crashing in. Intimate and intense, The City Changes Its Face explores a passionate love affair tested to its limits.
Charmaine Wilkerson is a Caribbean-American journalist and author whose debut novel, Black Cake, was a New York Times bestseller in 2022 and has since been adapted into a Hulu series produced by Oprah. Her latest novel, GOOD DIRT (Michael Joseph, €21.99) is another multigenerational family story which follows the Freemans, one of the few Black families living in a wealthy suburb of Connecticut, New England. At age ten, Ebby Freeman discovers her brother has been fatally shot following a break-in at their home, a stoneware jar that had been in their family for generations shattered around him. Twenty years later, Ebby escapes to France after a break-up, only to be met with the surprise appearance of her ex-fiancé and his new girlfriend, as secrets of the past begin to be revealed.
In non-fiction, Diana Evans, bestselling author of Ordinary People and A House For Alice, releases I WANT TO TALK TO YOU: AND OTHER CONVERSATIONS (Chatto & Windus, €21) a collection of literary essays and interviews, some old, some new and previously unpublished. Charting her career as a young journalist to published author over the course of 25 years, it’s a memoir of this writer’s journey, weaving together a conversation on literature, art and music, fashion, identity, grief and everything in between.
SEE MORE: 10 More Books To Read This Month
