One-hit Wonder – Lisa Jewell

Selected as the light-weight option in today’s 5 book haul from the newly reopened Battersea Library, this chick-lit (not quite that, but it’s the closest pigeon hole) novel didn’t even last 24 hours – it was that gripping.

It took a while to get going, but once the lead character, Ana, is in London things step up a gear and it’s a page-turner, roller-coaster of discovery from there on in. And a great, neat, tear jerker of an ending.

Buy it: Amazon link

I don’t know how she does it – Allison Pearson

Loaned to me by Jo, who’d found time to finish reading it whilst I was weekending en famille in Suffolk with TJBR, this is a Good Read for the ladies, particularly those who enjoy the Bridget Jones style storyline – i.e. reads a bit like a diary, lots of self-awareness/self-analysis, fictionalised reality – and who work in the City, or indeed any high pressure environment where male bosses and perspectives predominate, irrespective of any postulated equalitiy, or “diversity” as IDKHSDI describes it.

I read it at every available opportunity, and am thankful that the occasions when I had to laugh (snort) outloud came to pass when I was in the privacy of my own home – unlike the sections which made me cry, which I reached sitting on the 242 to Hackney.

Buy it: Amazon link