Sigh. Whilst poolside reading might be off the cards, it’s no reason to ditch the feel-good reads you normally pick up en route to somewhere divinely sunny- hang on in there, next year will be our year people!
2020 = the horror story none of us signed up to read, making a feel-good, ‘warm and fuzzy inside’ story all the more needed. We’ve picked out the creme de la creme of this genre to see you through summer and beyond- the perfect companions for a staycation, golden hour in the park or alongside a blissful bubble bath. So sit back, relax and let yourself be transported to a word of pure escapism.
What’s your ultimate feel good-read?
Darcey
*Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert, £8.19
One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 memoir by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The memoir chronicles the author’s trip around the world after her divorce and what she discovered during her travels.
*Good Vibes Good Life – Vex King, £8
How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness
*Paper Towns – John Green, £5.99
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. … After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues–and they’re for him.
*To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before – Jenny Han, £6.55
Lara Jean Covey is a teenage girl who writes love letters when she gets a crush too big to handle but she never actually sends them. One day her deepest secrets are revealed and she creates and elaborate plan to save herself from being too embarrassed but it all goes pear-shaped when it turns into more than fake.
Lareese
*Cold Sunflowers – Mark Sippings, £7.48
Three women bound together by a heartbreaking secret. A love story that needs to be told.
A tender, joyous debut novel about a cub reporter and her eighty-six-year-old subject—and the unlikely and life-changing friendship that develops between them.
*Holding Up The Universe, Jennifer Niven, £6.55
Everyone thinks they know Libby Strout, the girl once dubbed “America’s Fattest Teen.” But no one’s taken the time to look past her weight to get to know who she really is. Following her mom’s death, she’s been picking up the pieces in the privacy of her home, dealing with her heartbroken father and her own grief.
*The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon, £6.99
Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the colour yellow.
*Saving Missy – Beth Morrey, £10.59
Missy Carmichael’s life has become small.
Grieving for a family she has lost or lost touch with, she’s haunted by the echoes of her footsteps in her empty home; the sound of the radio in the dark; the tick-tick-tick of the watching clock.
Spiky and defensive, Missy knows that her loneliness is all her own fault. She deserves no more than this; not after what she’s done. But a chance encounter in the park with two very different women opens the door to something new.
Another life beckons for Missy if only she can be brave enough to grasp the opportunity. But seventy-nine is too late for a second chance. Isn’t it?
Zoe
*Our Stop – Laura Jane Williams, £6.50
Nadia gets the 7.30 train every morning without fail. Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma’s after too much wine. Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn’t been able to sleep properly since his dad died. One morning, Nadia’s eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper:
To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I’m the guy who’s always standing near the doors… Drink sometime?
So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.
*Angus, Thongs & Full Frontal Snogging – Louise Rennison, £5.85
In this wildly funny journal of a year in the life of Georgia Nicolson, British author Louise Rennison has perfectly captured the soaring joys and bottomless angst of being a teenager. In the spirit of Bridget Jones’s Diary, this fresh, irreverent, and simply hilarious book will leave you laughing out loud. As Georgia would say, it’s “Fabbity fab fab!”
*The Switch – Beth O’ Leary, £10.65
When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen.
*I Heart Series collection – Lindsay Kelk, £24.99
The ‘I Heart’ series features 8 books and follows the story of Angela Clark, from cheating boyfriends to travelling the world these books are jam-packed with fun.
Danielle
*Harry Potter: The Complete Selection, J. K. Rowling, £41.75
Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.
*One Day, David Nicholls, £7.99
15th July 1988: Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that?
And every year that follows?
*Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, £6.29
Generations of readers young and old, male and female, have fallen in love with the March sisters of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular and enduring novel, Little Women. Here are talented tomboy and author-to-be Jo, tragically frail Beth, beautiful Meg, and romantic, spoiled Amy, united in their devotion to each other and their struggles to survive in New England during the Civil War.
*Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple, £6.99
When her daughter Bee claims a family trip to Antarctica as a reward for perfect grades, Bernadette, a fiercely intelligent shut-in, throws herself into preparations for the trip. But worn down by years of trying to live the Seattle life she never wanted, Ms. Fox is on the brink of a meltdown. And after a school fundraiser goes disastrously awry at her hands, she disappears, leaving her family to pick up the pieces–which is exactly what Bee does, weaving together an elaborate web of emails, invoices, and school memos that reveals a secret past Bernadette has been hiding for decades. Where’d You Go Bernadette is an ingenious and unabashedly entertaining novel about a family coming to terms with who they are and the power of a daughter’s love for her mother.
Maddie
*Wilde Like Me – Louise Pentland, £6.55
Single mum Robin Wilde adores her six-year-old daughter and loves her job as a makeup artist’s assistant. She has a wonderful best friend and an auntie who is bonkers, yes, but loves her to the moon and back. But Robin has a secret. Behind the mask she carefully applies every day, things just feel … grey. And lonely. She struggles to fit in with the school mum crew. Online dating is totally despair-inducing, and she worries every day about raising her little girl with self-confidence, courage and joy.
*Inkheart – Cornelia Funke, £7.54
One cruel night, Meggie’s father reads aloud from a book called INKHEART– and an evil ruler escapes the boundaries of fiction and lands in their living room. Suddenly, Meggie is smack in the middle of the kind of adventure she has only read about in books. Meggie must learn to harness the magic that has conjured this nightmare. For only she can change the course of the story that has changed her life forever.
*Eat Pray Love – Elizabeth Gilbert, £8.19
One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia is a 2006 memoir by American author Elizabeth Gilbert. The memoir chronicles the author’s trip around the world after her divorce and what she discovered during her travels.
*The Potion diaries – Amy McCulloch, £2.96
When the Princess of Nova accidentally poisons herself with a love potion meant for her crush, she falls crown-over-heels in love with her own reflection. Oops. A nationwide hunt is called to find the cure, with competitors travelling the world for the rarest ingredients, deep in magical forests and frozen tundras, facing death at every turn.
Charlotte
*Surprise Me, Sophie Kinsella,£7.89
After being together for ten years, Sylvie and Dan have all the trimmings of a happy life and marriage; they have a comfortable home, fulfilling jobs, beautiful twin girls, and communicate so seamlessly, they finish each other’s sentences. However, a trip to the doctor reveals they could live another 68 years together… and panic sets in. They never expected ‘until death do us part’ to mean seven decades.
*The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion, £6.99
An international sensation, this hilarious, feel-good novel is narrated by an oddly charming and socially challenged genetics professor on an unusual quest: to find out if he is capable of true love.
*The Little Bakery on Rosemary Lane, Ellen Berry, £7.45
Growing up in a quiet Yorkshire village, Roxanne couldn’t wait to escape and find her place in the world in London. As a high-powered fashion editor she lives a glamorous life of perennial singlehood – or so it seems to her sister Della. But when Roxanne gets her heart broken by a fashion photographer, she runs away, back to Della’s welcoming home above her bookshop in Burley Bridge.
*The Flat Share, Beth O’Leary, £4.50
Tiffy Moore and Leon Twomey each have a problem and need a quick fix.
Tiffy’s been dumped by her cheating boyfriend and urgently needs a new flat. But earning minimum wage at a quirky publishing house means that her choices are limited in London.
Leon, a palliative care nurse, is more concerned with other people’s welfare than his own. Along with working night shifts looking after the terminally ill, his sole focus is on raising money to fight his brother’s unfair imprisonment.
Leon has a flat that he only uses 9 to 5. Tiffy works 9 to 5 and needs a place to sleep. The solution to their problems? To share a bed of course…
As Leon and Tiffy’s unusual arrangement becomes a reality, they start to connect through Post-It notes left for each other around the flat.
Can true love blossom even in the unlikeliest of situations?
Can true love blossom even if you never see one another?
Or does true love blossom when you are least expecting it?
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