Mid-year freakout book tag

Like it’s the ‘old days’ of the blogosphere

One of the fun things about the ‘old days’ of YouTube and blogging were the ‘tag’ videos and posts that used to flow around. It was really fun to see other people’s answers to questions and then add your own. 

This week’s episode of the What Should I Read Next podcast saw Anne and her team member Shannan complete the ‘mid year freakout’ book tag - and I thought it sounded so fun that I wanted to get in on it too!

Side note: in my work’s office in London there are a few sofas at one end of the floor with little signs designating them as ‘breakout spaces’ - except, something about the typeface makes it very easy to misread the signs. A former boss of mine told me that she’d read it as ‘freakout space’, which I thought was hilarious.

This is a long, full-of-links, email which might get cut-off by some email providers - I can recommend downloading the Substack App, or reading it on my Substack webpage; Substack is the service I use to send out these emails; think of it as a blogging platform hosting my one-woman magazine. (I also had to send it without all the pictures I wanted to include thanks to wobbly train WiFi - I’ll be adding those to the web version of the post once I get somewhere with better internet)

Best Book You’ve Read So Far in 2024

I’m on record as a massive fan of Laura Wood, and the first of her two 2024 releases, A Season for Scandal* (*Amazon affiliate link - ad), is I think the best book I’ve read in the first half of this year. It’s pitched as ‘deliciously romantic’ and totally lives up to that. Great fun, and a nice generous dose of ‘fuck the patriarchy’ in there too.

Best Sequel You’ve Read So Far in 2024

I mainlined the first three books in Mimi Matthews’s Belles of London series earlier this year, and loved them all. The series starts with The Siren of Sussex*, which I absolutely adored and in which you can definitely see evidence of the author’s love of North & South. It’s followed by The Belle of Belgrave Square* and The Lily of Ludgate Hill* - and in all three books the women step outside of what’s expected of them, in full knowledge of the consequences that might come as a result. These are ‘clean’ romances, but they’re no less sexy for that. As Lex Croucher said at a book event of theirs I went to last year, sometimes there’s nothing sexier than someone rolling up their sleeves.

New Releases That You Haven’t Read Yet But Want To

I have a stack of three new-released books sitting on my nightstand that I just haven’t got to yet - perhaps because, in reality, although I love to buy a physical book, I mostly actually read digitally…

Laura Wood’s Under Your Spell*, Kate Young’s Experienced*, and Laura Dockrill’s I Love You I Love You I Love You* are all sitting looking disappointed at me every time I ignore them to dive into an ebook, and I can’t blame them - I’m dying to dig in! I now have two of the three on my Kindle and I’m in a months-long library waiting list for the third.

Most Anticipated Release for the Second Half of the Year

I can’t wait for everyone to be able to read Casey McQuiston’s The Pairing next week! I was lucky enough to get a NetGalley advance reader copy, and I’ve already read it twice. A tour de force from McQuiston - absolutely wonderful.

Biggest Disappointment

As I do every summer, I’ve been reading sports books lately, and I eagerly dug into a tennis romance set in Wimbledon during the championships. The premise of a failed The Holiday style houseswap leading to an elite tennis player and a heartbroken Londoner was fantastic, and I enjoyed the book right the way up until the end… when the epilogue, instead of the proposal I was expecting, turned into a surprise baby announcement. No thank you. (Still a good book, just an ending that was very much not for me).

Biggest Surprise

I dipped a bit of a toe into fantasy this year - that is, further than the lightly magical realism I have read before - and have been really pleasantly surprised. Freya Marske’s The Last Binding* series (which starts with A Marvellous Light*) is set in a version of Edwardian England with an undercurrent of magic running through it, about which most non-magic people are blissfully unaware. It’s got hedge mazes, conspiracy theories, wonderful settings, and gorgeous romance.

Buoyed up by that, I read Megan Bannen’s The Undertaking Of Hart and Mercy*, a rom com set in a fantasy world whose worldbuilding was done so well that I almost forgot to be confused. It uses the You’ve Got Mail premise of two strangers exchanging letters and forming a bond, in a delightfully knowing way. I laughed out loud at the recreation of the scene where Joe Fox finds Kathleen Kelly in the cafe waiting for him - it was spot on. All about family, ambition, and what we do for the people we love - I’ve got the sequel sitting on my Kindle.

Favourite New Author (debut or new to you)

This is more of the ‘biggest surprise’ theme, really, but I absolutely adored Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals. Once again, we have strangers exchanging letters - only they’re also journalists in a war-torn civilisation that resembles a magically dystopian version of Central Europe. It’s for a young adult audience, so the romance storyline is much cleaner than in Hart & Mercy, but, like the Belles of London series, it’s still all-consuming.

Newest Fictional Crush

Kit Fairfield from The Pairing. He’s a bilingual, French-American pastry chef with a wicked sense of humour. On their Instagram, Casey McQuiston has shared some behind-the-scenes character notes about Kit and & Theo, the protagonists of the book. I’ll share a few of Kit’s here… (from these posts: 1, 2, 3)

Newest Favourite Character

In the interests of fairness… Theo Flowerday, from The Pairing. Here’s Theo’s equivalent behind-the-scenes info (from the same posts).

A Book That Made You Cry

I read Glynnis Macnicol’s I’m Mostly Here To Enjoy Myself* on a train through mid-Wales and along the Cambrian coast. It made me cry out of relief that someone else is finally talking about how peculiar the experience of being locked down alone was, and, maybe even more, the overwhelm of re-entry into the world - and oh boy, did Glynnis re-enter the world! (As I mentioned when I included it in July’s roundup post, weirdly, this was available in ebook and on Audio when I bought it, but is no longer available in either of those formats in the UK. Would appreciate any little birds at Penguin explaining why this has happened…)

A Book That Made You Happy

The Paris Novel* by Ruth Reichl is this year’s Mrs Harris Goes To Paris*. Just wonderful. And, because it’s by Ruth Reichl, the FOOD in it is incredible. One to read in a sunny spot at some point in August, if you haven’t yet, preferably with a glass of something cold to drink and a bowl of olives to nibble on. 

The Most Beautiful Book You’ve Bought This Year

Not a book, but I bought a copy of an issue of The New Yorker magazine this summer entirely for its cover art: “Chilling” by Klass Verplancke. I’ve framed it and am now choosing where to hang it in my flat. The art made me think of how much sustenance I get from books and how much solace they provide when the world outside… doesn’t.

Books You Have to Read by the End of the Year

See everything I mentioned in ‘new releases I haven’t read yet’. In the process of writing this I discovered that The Muse of Maiden Lane*, the 4th and final Belles of London series, comes out in November, and I’ve pre ordered it! I’ve also got on pre-order Lucy Jane Wood’s Rewitched*, Martha Waters’s Christmas Is All Around*, and Kendra Adachie’s The Plan*.

*as this post has so many affiliate links, I thought it was worth a quick explanation of why I use them. At no extra cost to you, I get a small kickback (usually about 5% of the cover price) from Amazon. The pennies (and I do mean pennies - it’s usually about £1 per month) I accrue from these links all add up and help me to keep writing these newsletters. So especially if you can’t justify the cost of a paid subscription (which I get, cash is tight for a lot of us!), it’s a nice way to support me and the newsletter. Thank you ❤️ 

I’d love to hear what some of your responses to these questions would be!

Speak soon,

Lily

Missed Friday’s recommendations post?