Three new novels to read in February

A coming-of-age mystery, a blissful family saga and a novel in for many awards.

This week I’ve had the kind of cold where you can’t quite remember what it is like to feel normal. The plus side has been that in cancelling every one of my plans, I’ve spent a good few extra blanket-clad hours reading (almost as many as I’ve spent binge-catching-up on Happy Valley, but not quite). I hope you’re reading this germ-free, but whatever your situation, I’d say these three novels are all the plans you need this month.

What July Knew by Emily Koch

10-year-old July has a notebook in which she writes down things she’d like to know about her mother, who died in a car accident when she was a baby. Except, she’s not allowed to speak about her, so, in case her dad flicks through, she disguises her questions with celebrities’ names: Did Celine Dion prefer skirts or trousers? Did Eric Catona like mint choc chip ice cream?

So when a note is slipped into July’s schoolbag one day which reads, ‘she didn’t die in a car accident’, her search for the truth about her mother truly begins. What July Knew is a mystery wrapped up in a family drama, with a coming-of-age tale at the core; one which I tore through and loved to pieces.

The Garnett Girls by Georgina Moore

Women behaving badly, dysfunctional yet rock-solid sister relationships, family secrets, chaotic love and the sweeping Isle of Wight coastline… The Garnett Girls is a dream of a novel.

Margo is our headstrong matriarch, whose alcoholic husband walked out on her when their three daughters were still young. Now grown women, they are each navigating their own crossroads, when the youngest, Sasha, digs up a story about their past which perhaps would have been better remaining buried. I can best describe reading the saga that unfurls as pure bliss.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

When a debut comes with an endorsement from the late, great, Hilary Mantel, who tells you it is ‘a deeply impressive novel’, you take note. Hungry Ghosts is set in rural Trinidad in the 1940s, where a wealthy man has disappeared. Wanting protection, the young wife he has left behind employs a penniless man living in the ramshackle barrack nearby to work as her watchman.

As their lives become dangerously intertwined, the story becomes increasingly enrapturing. I also don’t think I have ever read a novel where the setting is so alive. Trust me when I tell you that Hosein is in for some very big literary awards.

And finally…

This letter Kurt Vonnegut wrote to a student brought me so much joy.