Holly Bourne's Favourite Reads of 2017

Ahh, there were so many books I loved this year! I’ve just about narrowed it down to my top 5. JUST. 

A Quiet Kind of Thunder

Sara Barnard

£7.99

Paperback

Out of stock

The stunning new novel from the bestselling author of Beautiful Broken Things is a love story about the times when a whisper is as good as a shout. Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life but Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she's falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

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This love story between a girl with selective mutism, and a boy who is deaf melts your heart in all the right places. It's also one of the best depictions of social anxiety I've ever read. 

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death

Maggie O'Farrell

£18.99

Hardback

Out of stock

An extraordinarily intimate memoir of the the brushes with death that have made Maggie O'Farrell the woman and the writer she is today, for readers of The Last Act of Love and When Breath Becomes Air.

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This book is just brilliant, just brilliant, just brilliant. As Maggie recounts her seventeen brushes with death, you start to cherish not just her incredible mastery of words, but also your own life and how precariously precious it is.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

Gail Honeyman

£12.99

Hardback

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Eleanor Oliphant has learned how to survive - but not how to live. She leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. 'Heartwrenching and wonderful' - Nina Stibbe

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An incredible, literary, yet hilarious and totally-accessible study of loneliness and how a little bit of kindness can have a massive impact. 

Freshers

Tom Ellen, Lucy Ivison

£7.99

Paperback

In stock

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Uni beckons. Phoebe can't wait, especially since her crush from school will be there. But Luke's oblivious, still reeling from the fallout of the break-up with his ex. Thrown head first into a world of new friends, parties and social media disasters - can Phoebe and Luke survive the year, let alone find each other?

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Hands down the funniest book I read this year. This anti-love story set in Freshers term at university will have you peeing yourself laughing, while it also examines darker themes such as toxic masculinity, rape culture, and loneliness. 

The Hate U Give

Angie Thomas

£7.99

Paperback

10+ in stock

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The 2018 Waterstones Children's Book Prize winner is an incendiary piece of work, which tackles race, violence and poverty with such raw honesty and fearlessness as to mark a new page in the evolution of the YA novel. Unflinching and immensely powerful, The Hate U Give speaks to twenty-first century society as few other books can hope to.

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Sometimes the right book is written at precisely the right time, perfectly capturing a moment or movement, and THUG is this book. A masterclass in voice, this book will make you simmer with the sort of anger that can really change things for the better. Not to be missed.