Sam's Fireside - Cosy Book Reviews & Recommendations

“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...

“It’s strange to think that this little black bean will grow up to be a big plant and that plant will have its own seeds to make another plant and another seed and this will go on, over and over again, for years...” My Name is Leon was recommended to me by my cousin, and it’s set in and around Birmingham — my hometown — which immediately drew me in 🏙️. I listened to the audiobook via Libby, narrated by a true Black Country lad, Lenny Henry, while pottering about 🎧. For those who don’t know, Lenny Henry is a comedian, so I went in expecting something light-hearted… but it’s far from that! While there are moments of humour, the story is often upsetting and deeply moving 💔 — powerful and eye-opening, set against the backdrop of the Birmingham riots in the early 1980s. I loved Leon’s story ❤️. I adored Tufty, his allotment friend 🌱 (who I’m guessing Lenny Henry plays in the TV adaptation), and I really admired Maureen as his foster carer through much of the book. It’s the kind of story...

"Books clomped off her desk and arranged themselves on a nearby shelf." ✨📚 This was my March listen for another one of @hook.me.a.book challenges. This time it's the #LetsEarItAudiobookChallenge 🎧. I wanted to enjoy this one, I really did. It sounded so good when I chose it on Libro FM, and maybe I made the mistake of listening rather than reading, but I think I missed a lot of it because I was doing other things! Whatever it was, it didn't grab my attention. Although I did finish it, I won't be reading (or listening to) the next one. Read the book description — sounds good, right? Especially if, like me, you love a witchy read 🧙‍♀️. Plus so many people loved it and it has such great reviews, although to be fair there are some not-so-great ones too. Maybe it's like Marmite — you either love it or hate it! Maybe I'll come back to it one day. If enough people tell me they enjoyed this one, then I might just give it another go. Although this one didn’t qui...

"Don't wish your days away." How Charlie Sheen is still alive is a mystery to many 🤯. The torture that he's put his body through is mind-blowing. Yet here he is, still here and ready to tell his story. When I saw his memoir was out as an audiobook 🎧, I reserved it from Libby (there was a long wait ⏳), and settled down to listen to the man himself tell me about how in fact, he was still alive! Charlie Sheen has been in the background of my life forever I think, but I really started to notice him when he was in Two and a Half Men, a sitcom that I loved 📺. But he starts his book way before that point. The book was really sobering (pardon the pun), 🍸🚫 and I found it incredibly interesting. Charlie doesn't pull any punches, he knows he was a total a**h**e, he knows he has no right to still be with us and he doesn't blame anyone but himself. As he finally approaches sobriety, he tells us about it with positivity and hope, and as he writes, he's eight years ...

“I am not trying to take you from the life that you know. All I'm trying to do is show you a world that you deserve to see".  #thatbonkersbookclub chose Wisteria for February’s “Sequel Shelf” 📚 It’s the third and final full-length novel in the Belladonna series, which is a series I’ve really loved! ✨ Wisteria focuses on Blythe and Fate and their forced relationship — one that slowly evolves with understanding and time spent together. Blythe has never been my favourite character in the series by any stretch, but she did grow on me in Wisteria. I know lots of people loved her, but for me she was always a bit… meh! 🤷‍♀️ Fate (aka Aris) was well grumpy 😤 Quite frankly, he needed a good kick up the a**e to stop him treating Blythe the way he did. I mean, come on — did he really need to be that harsh?! This is a difficult review to write without including spoilers, but my favourite thing had to be the front door that leads anywhere you want it to 🚪✨ Just imagine how useful that ...

“Some of the nicest people I know are decomposing as we speak. I’ve always liked graveyards. I like reading the headstones.” Billy Connolly is a legend and one of my favourite comedians of all time, so when I saw this audiobook, I grabbed it and devoured it with both ears. Billy’s stories never age. However many times you’ve heard them, his observational wit remains second to none. As he narrates — as eloquently as anyone can in a Glasgow accent — his ramblings in that unmistakable, inimitable style, I felt as though I was travelling alongside him. Every road, every adventure, every wonderfully odd character he encounters — you’re right there with him. He had me in stitches in every chapter. This is the sort of book that makes you laugh regardless of the mood you’re in. On days when life felt heavy, Billy could always lighten it. He is a gentleman and a scholar, and he will remain a Scottish icon long after he’s gone. Realistically, that time may not be too far away — and that makes th...

“All it takes to get along in this here man's town is a little shit, grit, and mother-wit.” Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison_ was February's read for #classiclitbookclub 📚, and I decided to listen to this one — which turned out to be a very good decision 🎧. I really enjoyed Joe Morton’s narration; he did a fantastic job capturing the many different accents as our unnamed protagonist moves from the Deep South 🌾 to the hustle and bustle of New York City 🗽. We never learn the protagonist’s name, even when he is given a new identity. I believe this reflects the invisibility he feels — as a Black man coming of age in a world with deeply blinkered views about how he should behave in the presence of “white folk.” Few books stay rent-free in my head 💭, but this may just be one of them. If this sounds like something you’d enjoy but you’re worried about struggling with the colloquial language, I highly recommend the audiobook 🎙️. This is definitely a book I’ll return to, and one I su...

"LIFE is many things - good, bad, steady, unexpected - but we can all agree that each one is UNIQUE. " I didn’t really know what I was getting into with All This & More 🤔. It’s a concept I’ve only ever experienced as a child, through the Choose Your Own Adventure stories 📚. Peng takes that idea to a whole different level, delivering it in a far more complex and lengthy way. I’m not sure how much my experience was affected by listening rather than reading 🎧, but whenever a choice came up, I almost always selected the option that said continue listening. It was simply easier, especially as I was usually doing other things at the same time 🏃‍♀️🧹. The only exception was right at the end, when I chose to listen to all three endings 👀. The book blends fantasy, sci-fi, and time travel 🚀✨, which—for the purposes of this story—is explained through quantum physics 🔬. That’s something I don’t understand and probably never will 😂! I’m also not sure whether we’re meant to lik...

"Hurricanes aren’t just weather; they are monsters that never truly die.” The Storm was my second January listen for another of @hook.me.a.book’s challenges, the #LetsEarItAudiobookChallenge 🎧📚. I’d been seeing this one everywhere on Instagram over the past few weeks, so I finally got around to listening. It took me a while to get into it. The build-up was slow, and I found it took a minute to get to grips with all the different characters — particularly in audio format, where each character had a different narrator 🎙️. However, once I’d heard from them all, I was hooked and the pace picked up more and more. Alongside the multiple points of view, the story also uses a dual timeline — just to confuse me and intrigue me a little further ⏳🤔. After all the twists and turns, I still couldn’t fully work out what had happened in the past or how it was going to play out in the present, especially as the latest hurricane headed towards St Medard’s Bay 🌪️. As the story peaked, I found ...

"How could he have betrayed his beautiful wife like that?" This was one of my January listens for another one of @hook.me.a.book challenges. This time it's the #LetsEarItAudiobookChallenge. I'm pretty sure this is my first Susan Lewis book, and I really enjoyed it. 😊 Of course, I spent most of the story trying to second-guess what was actually happening, but apart from a few inklings, I didn’t see the twist coming at all until it was fully explained. 😲 No One Saw It Coming is told from multiple points of view, but I never felt confused. It was easy to move between perspectives, and I very quickly became invested in each character and desperate to know what would happen next. 📖💭 A great deal of research has clearly gone into the mental health aspects of this novel, and they’re portrayed both sensitively and realistically. It’s quite frightening, really, how sometimes we just can’t understand how someone else’s brain is wired. 🧠 Now that I’ve read one, I’ll definit...