Sam's Fireside - Cosy Book Reviews & Recommendations

“You’ve got to be incredibly confident in your transport choices to drive a highlighter pen on wheels.” 🚗💛 I was worried about reading Jaimie’s new book because I loved her Ever After Street series so much, but I needn’t have worried—The Sunshine Teashop is every bit as good. It has a new vibe, new characters, and lots of huggy moments. 🤗 As the book starts, we’re in Kent. No offence to Kentish people, but I want my cute romance books to be set in the countryside or near the sea. 🌊🌿 So imagine my delight when Dolly ups and leaves for a gorgeous village in Yorkshire. 🏡 (Yes, I know the synopsis says this, but I don’t read them! 😆) I was with Dolly every step of the way and loved how easily she immersed herself in village life. She had the little old ladies wrapped around her little finger—in a lovely, happy, friendly way—and, just as importantly, they had her back every step of the way. 💛 I did cringe a bit when she and her new-found builder friend, Reece, got out the paint rol...

“Have dinner ready… be happy to see your husband and greet him with a warm smile.” The Woman in the Cabin was my April read for the @hook.me.a.book challenge – the  #NeglectedFaithfulsReadingChallenge – and a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for way too long 📚✨ It was dark, full of all sorts of wrongness… and I loved it so much 😈 I had to keep reading. I needed to know if Mary was going to be okay 😰, whether the control-freak husband was going to hurt her 😡, and just what other madness he had up his sleeve 👀 I think this book will send readers one of two ways: you’ll either be completely intrigued (like I was) and desperate to keep turning the pages 📖🔥, or you’ll be hugely frustrated by our female main character — like, kill the b*****d already! 😤 And if you’re big on women’s rights, this might make you properly angry at how any man could treat a woman like this 💔 However you feel, if you enjoy a captive thriller, you’re going to love this one 🖤 If you’re thinking of ...

"The feeling of being watched was just a symptom of her anxiety..." 👀 Full disclosure, I read this one over two years ago, but for some reason I didn't write a review, so when @megbatsbooks wanted someone to buddy read it with her, I thought it would be fun to read it again and see if I remembered much of it. 📚 I remembered bits correctly, particularly who one of the dodgy characters was, but I was wrong about other parts. I had killed someone off, but in fact he was alive and kicking at the end! 😅 Having worked for the NHS for many years, I understand and appreciate the lack of funding, lack of staff, lack of beds, etc. But this story goes way past the normal everyday frustrations and shows a deeper, darker (thankfully incredibly rare) and fictional insight into what happens when one or two unstable people take control. 🏥 Talk about gaslighting at work - poor Dr Wilson must have thought she was going round the twist when all the unexplainable things were happening t...

“New friends can often have a better time together than old friends.” Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald was April’s read for #classiclitbookclub, 📚 and one I’d read before for A Level. I wasn’t a fan when I first read it at sixteen—though, to be fair, I really didn’t enjoy dissecting books. For me, books were written to be read and enjoyed, not analysed and picked apart so students could try to get into the author’s head. 🤯 That’s probably why I failed my A Level English Lit!!! Anyway, I did enjoy it more this time around, thanks in part to the narration from Trevor White, who brought the characters to life far more than a classroom full of students and a slightly fuddy-duddy teacher ever did! I also noticed a lot more this time 👀. Before, all I really remembered was people lying on a beach in the South of France—after all, a teenage girl is going to pick up on the places she’d rather be. ☀️🏖️ What I didn’t remember was the reason Nicole Diver was in a mental institution i...

“Leonardo hid so many of his secrets in his artwork. My very last hope is that he hid the secret to setting me free…” ✨ I really liked the first quarter of this book—but the rest of it? I absolutely loved it. 💛 It completely blew me away. Magical realism, living forever—quite literally—not what I was expecting at all. 🤯 I don’t want to say too much because that would spoil it… just trust me and read it. 📖 Don’t be fooled—there are some truly heartbreaking moments here. 💔 It isn’t all sunshine and roses. But there are also some beautiful family connections, especially towards the end, and it all balances out so well 🫶 Helen McAlpine and Nathaniel Priestly were brilliant as narrators, 🎧, bringing warmth, love, and sadness to their characters. I was completely invested in their voices from the start. Honestly—read it, listen to it, I don’t mind—just get your hands on this book NOW! 🔥 A very belated thank you to Hodder & Stoughton Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to liste...

“Inside was a message in her dad's handwriting.” 💌 The Lily Garden was April's read for #kindlecrushchallenge 📚 and a book that had been sitting on my Kindle for almost five years! This was the first Barbara Josselsohn novel I’ve read, and I loved it from beginning to end. ❤️ We spend the majority of the book in the small town of Lake Summers—a place where, almost thirty years ago, Caroline lost her parents. 💔 She left a few years later and never returned… until now. ✨ The story had everything I adore in a book: a close-knit community, 🏡 cosy spots to grab a coffee, ☕ a great food place serving delicious, mouthwatering dishes, 🍽️ and of course, a cute love interest. 💕 Throw a garden into the mix 🌸 and I’m all in! I really liked how Caroline’s daughter, Lee, consistently knew what she wanted throughout the book and stuck to her guns. 💪 Yes, other people tried to force their opinions on her, but in the end, her dreams shone through. ✨ Maxine and Gull are great characters...

"Having a desk job doesn't mean you have your shit together," I say. "It just means you have a flat ass from sitting all day." 😅💺 Let me begin by saying I was born in the seventies, when a stream was something at the bottom of my road that I paddled in 🌿💦, and the internet hadn’t even been thought of. This book is completely outside my comfort zone, so I was surprised I enjoyed it even as much as I did 🤔📖 The idea of someone watching and listening to my every move 24/7 is unsettling 😬👀 Dell’s world felt strange and uncomfortable at times—her life is about as far from what I’d consider normal as you can get. Some of the things she does for money really made me wonder… are there actually people out there like this? I suppose there must be 😳💸 That said, I didn’t like Dell. I found her underhanded and manipulative, with little respect for herself or anyone else. She’s not someone I’d ever want to meet 🙅‍♀️🚫 Thank you to Scribner UK for the gifted copy o...

“...this place has a way of encircling your heart, cocooning you in its warm embrace so that you never want to let go. Of it, or the way it makes you feel.” Falling for Polkerran Point was published in October 2025, and I’ve been putting off reading it. Why? Because it’s the final book in the series. I wasn’t (and I’m still not) ready to say goodbye to Cleggie and old Mrs Lovelace. I adore Mrs Lovelace’s mispronunciations—they’re hilarious, and I always enjoy the chuckles she brings as the story goes on. This book follows Ellie and Will in a second-chance romance, full of friendship, community spirit, and oodles of love. The lovely Anna is still there too, making everyone feel welcome around her kitchen table every single morning with coffee and homemade cakes—far too sociable for me, though maybe I could manage it occasionally! I’ve loved all the books in this series, and it’s definitely one I’d read again—high praise indeed. Please, Cass, I hope you have another equally unforgettable...

"Out on the pond the water is absolutely still. A fish jumps and, in its wake, leaves a trail of concentric circles. I watch them bleed out and around the edges until they are reabsorbed, as if nothing ever happened." 🌊🐟 March's read for #kindlecrushchallenge was The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller, another book that's been missing in the depths of my Kindle for a few years! 📚 I enjoyed this book the more I read it. It's definitely a slow-burner, flicking between twenty-four hours in the present day and back in Elle's childhood. ⏳ It's a great work of literary fiction where Miranda leaves the reader wondering what on earth it is that they've just digested. 🤔 It wasn't until I was probably a quarter of the way in that I settled into the rhythm of the story and began to enjoy it, if indeed you can enjoy a book with so many disturbing triggers! 😬 The ending has been left to the reader's imagination - I think - at least that's the w...