Need a romance novel recommendation? I’m here for you! Now I promise, these are anything but predictable, samey romance stories, but absolute gems that I’ve loved reading over the past few months, and am sure you will too.
Talking At Night – Claire Daverley
Will and Rosie are two totally different people – Will is wild, unpredictable and untethered to a traditional family unit; Rosie is a hard-worker, overthinker and grew up in a comfortable household with her parents and brother. However, they share a sense of understanding in each other as teenagers, until a tragedy strikes and tears them apart. Time and again, their magnetism brings them to one another, but throughout the novel we’re kept wondering if they can find their way to each other for good, and if love is ever enough?
Talking at Night is a gorgeous debut novel from Claire Daverley, very immersive and well-written. The two characters are both three-dimensional and likeable, which makes the novel flow with ease. It’s a great emotive and unpredictable story.
This Family – Kate Sawyer
If you love family dynamics – anything like The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo, or the TV series This Is Us – then you need to read This Family. It’s a British novel about a mother and her daughters, who are reunited at a family wedding in their childhood home. Visiting a place they’ve not been in years, and are about to lose forever brings up plenty of memories and, thankfully for the reader, lots of drama!
It’s told with flashbacks reaching as far back as the seventies, when their parents’ relationship began, to the daughters’ youths, to paint the family’s history and although there are still a few gaps that I’d like filling, it’s such an interesting novel that you’ll be a huge fan of if you love a book that explores family dynamics.
Good Material – Dolly Alderton
I was so excited by the premise of Dolly Alderton’s latest novel Good Material. It’s told from the perspective of a stand-up comedian called Andy who’s both failing at his career, and relationships – his long-term girlfriend just broke up with him and he has no idea why. It is incredibly witty – I can only imagine it must be tricky to create a comedian character with natural humour, but Dolly does this with ease. The situations Andy ends up in, from living on a boat to lodging with an eccentric old man had me laughing out loud.
It’s a fresh take on a break-up story and although I feel like Dolly’s own perspective of relationships feeds in a little too much at the end, breaking me out of the narrative and into the voice I’m so familiar with in her Sunday Times column, it’s a really uplifting read and will cure any reading slump.
Romantic Comedy – Curtis Sittenfeld
Saving the best until last! Sittenfeld’s alternative reality novel Rodham about Hilary Clinton is one of the best books I’ve ever read, so I was very hyped about Romantic Comedy. It’s about a comedy writer called Sally who writes for (without naming it) Saturday Night Live. She’s aghast at how amazing women fall in love with its average male writers, until she has a romantic encounter with a dazzling musical guest that puts her perspective on life and love out of kilter.
It was so refreshing how the characters Sally and Noah communicate – I find it so fustrating when the plot of romance novels only exists because the characters don’t communicate their feelings, but the writing in Romantic Comedy makes them so much more interesting. I was utterly shocked by some of the mixed reviews on GoodReads when I logged it as I was absolutely won over by it, so I need you to give it a read and let me know what you think!
What books are you reading this year?
