Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks.
Lily Lindon - Editorial Expert
Lily Lindon is a writer and editor living in London. She studied English Literature at Cambridge University, where she was also part of the Footlights comedy group. She was an Editor at Vintage, Penguin Random House, before becoming an editor and mentor at The Novelry. Her debut novel DOUBLE BOOKED ('the bisexual romcom of your wildest dreams', DIVA Magazine) was published in June 2022. She is on Twitter @lily_lindon and Instagram @bookymcbookface.
Cookbook writer Ellie is trying to be efficient and independent, yet still living in the shadow of her deceased husband. Chef Kieran — aka ‘the Happy Leprechaun Pirate’ (quite a mouthful) — has just won a cooking tv competition, but hates his public branding, and worries his dyslexia and ADHD will make writing a book impossible. Together, they get off the wrong foot, but of course will end up being exactly the contrast the dish needed.
It cleverly combines many romcom tropes, including enemies to lovers, fake dating, and forced proximity, and romance genre superfans can enjoy the ... View Full Review
Something I really enjoyed about reading this novel was how it took place in a time and setting I haven’t read about before – in 1971, Suyin goes between her family home in Penang, Malaysia, where she is a seamstress, to being a trainee nurse in London’s Bethnal Green hospital – and both these settings are brought to life with not too much and not too little detail.
It’s a novel of a woman trying to find her place in the world, trying to find love, and drive, and people to trust, when the ... View Full Review
God I love reading quirky queer high-concept books! Shelly Jay Shore’s novel is a lovely mix of supernatural and slice of life, bringing together the melodramatic and the relatable: from ghosts to gossipy group chats, the novel keeps surprising you with revelations of family secrets, births, deaths, accidents and tragedies – even Ezra says his life is ‘like a soap opera’. But at its heart, the book is interested in chronicling the movements of relationships – particularly family dynamics, and a very sweet romantic story-line which included beautifully tender scenes between the two of them which ... View Full Review
This book has a brilliant premise and title which I have no doubt will pull the gorgeous BookTok girlies in, and a full inventory of some of the most popular romcom tropes to keep them there, including forced proximity, work romance, second chances, and (always my personal favourite) enemies to lovers. It also ticks all the boxes of setting, travelling between glamorous US publishing, quaint European bookshops, and beautiful Edinburgh. On the romance/comedy scale, this book prioritises the former, prioritising charting the characters’ emotions. You don’t have to be knowledgeable about publishing to follow the book ... View Full Review
Well, Croucher’s written another absolute banger. It’s really deliciously good. Croucher makes writing exquisite romcoms look easy – this should be infuriating, but they’re too damn enjoyable to be cross about.
We’ve got the swoon-worthy rom – a charming opposites attract between the sunshiney healer Clem, and her uptight ‘kidnapper’ Mariel, who is buff from all the chips on her shoulder that come with being the daughter of the Merry Men’s Commander, and a descendent of Robin Hood. And we’ve got the constant com – repartee ... View Full Review
I confess I didn’t know the author from her other worlds before reading this, but perhaps more of the readers of this book will be drawn to it from enjoying Soph Galustian’s acting or poems. However, even if you were just drawn in by the subtitle, there will be things to enjoy here. I intended to just read a little bit of it but was drawn in to reading basically the whole thing in one go. Even the shortest of attention spans (like mine!) will I think find this book very easy to digest, as it ... View Full Review
‘He’s convinced someone at Saints is helping closeted trans women start new lives. [...] He needs to get into Saints. [...] If there’s one thing Stefan’s sure of, it’s that he’s not a boy.’
Ooh, this book really keeps you on your toes! I’d say it could be described as a trans YA thriller, part of the surge of trans body horror and revenge stories at the moment, but also has some playfulness in its tone which results in lines like: ‘Getting to see how the ... View Full Review
You know when sometimes a book feels like it was written specifically for you? This is one of those for me.
I sometimes felt like the authors must have installed a Family Friend in my house from how specifically it skewered what me and my friends have been talking about recently.
Blackett and Gleichman are experts of irony, and poking at hypocrisy, making their reader feel both smug and called out. Sharp as an artisanal vegetable peeler, outrageously horny and thrillingly ominous, Trust & Safety is the morality tale the queers need right now. It straddles wish-fulfilment and dystopia, ... View Full Review
This history of lesbian fashion is written in a way which is both detailed and accessible, as satisfying to the casual reader as to the academic. With case studies of lesbians and ‘lesbian-adjacent’ figures that readers will likely be varyingly familiar with, including Sappho’s tunics and violets, to Anne Lister’s hats (comparing how the character is presented in the Gentleman Jack television show in a top hat, to how the historical figure likely dressed from her diaries, in bonnet and lace) to the drag kings and ‘impersonators’ of European performers in the 1920... View Full Review
Romance publishing is enjoying a supernatural moment right now, which suits me just fine, as I love a big shiny high concept. In Kirsty Greenwood’s The Love of my Afterlife a romance-obsessed angel gives newly-dead Delphie a loophole – if she can find her soulmate on earth and have him kiss her within ten days, she’ll be allowed to live. But back alive, Delphie sees life in a whole new way, including the bad-boy-next-door-neighbour she thought hated her…
Considering this novel starts with a death and takes place in purgatory, it never makes the ... View Full Review
Issy used to spend her life at home, crafting pieces inspired by her pet chinchilla Abigail, trying to manage her depression, until a famous artist discovers her and invites her to work in London on a TV show which brings otherwise isolated crafters together.
The reader comes with Issy on her coming-of-age adventure as she discovers her sexuality (and how sex ‘can be silly’), living with a squad of equally fish-out-of-water flatmates in bizarre London rental accommodation, and meeting her surprisingly terrifying (and gorgeous) neighbour Aubrey…
A less brilliant writer would struggle to make the ... View Full Review
Our unnamed narrator is a lyrical and sensitive storyteller, conjuring her world with jolting metaphors, sharp wit, and tender poetry. She doesn’t hold back any punches on brutality, but she also savours moments where she can elevate humans’ ability to be soft and lovely.
Our unnamed narrator is a young trans woman, growing up in a hand-to-mouth suburb in Madrid, ever-watchful and sensitive to the ways in which her neighbours model and police gender, sexuality, class. As a child she is drawn to figures like the witch known as The Wig, and the gentle trans woman Margarita, ... View Full Review
-c-cecile-pin-cropped.jpeg)
