Book after Book

I am in a pickle! I enjoyed so much writing ' My top 5 books in 2017 ' post last year that I thought I'd do that again. I didn't read a lot in 2017, though, and picking my top 5 books was a breeze. If you've come across 'My 2018 in books' post last week, however, you know that I had a stellar 2018 when it comes to reading. There is no way I can do a Top 5 list. I tried. I failed. I refuse to try again. As I don't think anybody would survive a 'My top 70 books in 2018' post, I have therefore settled for a Top 10 instead. Just as hard but more doable. What I am NOT attempting is ranking these books in order of merit, enjoyment or any other classification. The numbers purely help me tidy up the page. In my heart, they are all in first place! So here it goes… And please do let me know in the comments below or on Twitter whether you also have loved some or all of these! 1) The Lion Tamer Who Lost by Louise Beech If you haven't experienc...

Hi Juliet! First of all, I would like to congratulate you on the publication of The Faithful , which I loved! Can you please briefly tell us what it is about? A: The novel is set in the run-up to the Second World War and it’s a love story that follows the lives of Hazel and Tom, who are teenagers when they first meet in 1935. They come from two very different families, but there is an instant connection between them. This was a turbulent time for British politics, and Hazel is drawn into the dark world of the British blackshirt movement, just as Tom is breaking his ties with the party. Let’s just say their romance turns out to be far from straightforward as the years pass and their lives take different paths... Did you have the plot entirely figured out when you started writing or did it develop before your eyes as the characters grew on the page and did something that you were not expecting? A: I had very little plot in mind. Just the setting – the Sussex coast and London – an...

By Juliet West Published by Mantle Synopsis: July 1935. In the village of Aldwick on the Sussex coast, sixteen-year-old Hazel faces a long, dull summer with just her self-centred mother Francine for company. But then Francine decamps to London with her lover Charles, Oswald Mosley's blackshirts arrive in Aldwick, and Hazel's summer suddenly becomes more interesting. She finds herself befriended by two very different people: Lucia, an upper-class blackshirt, passionate about the cause; and Tom, a young working-class boy, increasingly scornful of Mosley's rhetoric. In the end, though, it is Tom who wins Hazel's heart - and Hazel who breaks his. Autumn 1936. Now living in London, Hazel has grown up fast over the past year. But an encounter with Tom sends her into freefall. He must never know why she cut off all contact last summer, betraying the promises they’d made. Yet Hazel isn't the only one with secrets. Nor is she the only one with reason to keep the two ...