On Bee's Bookshelf

Genre: Short story Release Date: 30th October 2018 I'm going to be honest - I still don't completely understand anything that happened during the course of this story but I know I had fun reading it. Now, this actually won the Goodreads horror award in 2018 but this is a strange blend between realism, horror and fantasy so it's honestly hard to put in a box.  Scott Carey is losing weight. Now that might not sound like a problem, but he's losing so much weight and not changing at all. His body looks the same. His clothes fit the same. He's just getting lighter and lighter every day and even a trusted friend and Doctor can't seem to find the problem. In his small town, he's also dealing with disputes with his neighbours and business owners who are themselves trying to navigate dealing with homophobia and judgement in a small town. But all these problems bring unlikely alliances into Scotts life ... making their life just that little bit lighter, you could say....

  Genre: Psychological Thriller Release Date: 16th October 2020 Hannah wants the traditional romance story and she isn't ashamed of that. She wants three kids, a yellow labrador and family trips to Devon. But since her last dissappointing relationship, she isn't keeping optimistic about that happening. Jas, her best friend and boss, has different ideas though. Since the death of her husband she hasn't committed to anything, but she definitely doesn't want Hannah doing the same. So, the pair drunkenly sign up for a new online dating service and she meets Alex. Alex is perfect. They want all the same things, they have the same values, they drink the same wine ... and he is gorgeous which helps. This is a first date to remember. For a while, Hannahs life becomes all about wine, and dinner, and deep conversations ... and then a mysterious and very sinister bouquet of flowers changes everything.  And from the title of this book, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that...

Genre: Romance Release Date:  10th March 2020 Where will you be in five years? Dannie knows. Dannie has it all figured out - she's going to get engaged to her amazing boyfriend David, she's going to help her best friend Bella, and she's going to keep climbing the career ladder as a sucessful lawyer. It's all going to plan. Until one day, Dannie wakes up from a dream that was so vividly real that she couldn't shake it. It was exactly five years from today, and she was in a new apartment, kissing a beautiful man that she'd never met before.  That is, until he shows up with Bella, a very real person.  But this isn't the story you're expecting it to be.  With such vibrant characters and an in-depth world, this book completely sucked me in. Dealing with the pitfalls of falling in and out of love, illness, friendships and expectations, this story was so much more than the pretty cover made me think it could be. It frames love in so many different forms and mak...

Genre: Romance Release Date: 16th April 2020 The Switch was definitley highly anticipated this year, following up from the sucess of her first book 'The Flat Share' which was a perfect example of what romantic comedy should be.  The Switch follows Eileen, who is very bored of being old and her granddaughter Leena, who is very bored of being young. These two women have nothing in common aside from how much they love each other ... on the surface anyway. Leena is forced to take a sabbatical from over-achieving and over-stressing at work and after a strange conversation, she switches her high-flying city life for the quiet yorkshire town life of Eileen. While Leena is trying to deal with her now long-distance boyfriend and trying keep up with her Grandmothers surprisingly hectic life, it seems Eileen is much cooler and younger than she remembered she was.  I fell in love with Leena and Eileen instantly. I was expected this to read just like every other life-swap concept but this ...

Genre: Poetry Release Date: October 2019 Now I'd like to preface this by saying I do not read a lot of poetry. There's a few modern poets I'm fond of and I've read all the classics - but this book was something else.  First impressions just from the cover art had me intruiged right away - and if definitely made me think I was in for something a little different.  Featuring beautifully written poetry in four different hard-hitting sections; mental illness, recovery, LGBT topics and positivity - throughout  all sixty poems  I found something relatable in every single one.  Kyle managed to perfectly capture the journey of decline and recovery, of despair and hope, and it is both realistic but uplifting in such a unique way.  Some of these poems were particularly hard to read, not because they weren't perfectly written but because the words were so raw and real that it invoked all kinds of emotions - from delving into the most difficult parts of our subconcious...

  Genre: Fiction Release Date: 31st October 2019 So Lucky has been sitting in my TBR pile for almost a year, and when I finally picked it up I read the whole thing in one sitting.  This story follows the lives of three women, all quite honestly, sick and tired of being told how lucky they are for the most basic things. Ruby, a newly single mum to a kid who is, in her own words, a bit of an asshole. Ruby is struggling to learn not only to parent, but to co-parent with her ex who embarassed her in front of her entire wedding party by making jokes about the health conditions that have made her hide her body, and her entire self away from the whole world. She hates everything. Hates it.  But she's lucky, she got pregnant where so many women couldn't.  Then there's Beth,  who to the world 'has it all' - the husband, the newborn baby, the sucessful business - but she doesn't have anything, really. Nothing she wants. While she should be feeling thankful that her husba...

Genre: New Adult Date of publication: 2nd April 2020 Holly Bourne has already cemented herself firmly as YA royalty, and her recent entry to the adult fiction world has been just as impressive. Pretending tells the story of April, who is a very reluctant heterosexual. And she hates men.  No, not all men obviously, but enough of them for it to be a problem. She is sick of living in a world where the men she meets expect feminine perfection with nothing in return. They want someone with no damage, no flaws, no 'crazy' at all. They want a fantasy woman who doesn't exist - so she decides to create one, maybe for payback but maybe for herself. Gretel is everything April isn't. She is the perfect woman, by the standards she's been held to since she grew boobs, so that's exactly who she's going to be. Bourne captures the voice of an angry woman who is fed up pretending everything is okay. Pretending to be happy. Pretending to satisfied. The characters are so deeply...

  Genre: Psychological Thriller Release Date: 28th July 2020 The fourth novel from JP Delaney, who very quickly catapulted into being one of my favourite authors. Released this July, this was definitley pegged to be in the running for my favourite book of the year.  JP Delaney always has a magically dark way of making me uncomfortably interested in everything he's written, and usually I'm simply not able to put a book down until I've read everything in one sitting. And this time wasn't any different. It starts off with just a normal day for Pete. His wife and son aren't home, but suddenly a strange man and his lawyer are at the door with an unbelievable claim - his beloved son isn't his at all. He was switched with another mans child at the intensive unit he was born in. If that wasn't enough, this man suddenly wanted to meet his biological son. Starting out, it seems like this might work out okay. Weird, but okay. Visitations, photographs, sharing the big m...