Author Archives: Beth Wren
Review: Everything She Forgot, Lisa Ballantyne
Lisa Ballantyne, international bestselling author of The Guilty One, delivers a compelling domestic thriller with impeccably observed characters and masterful edge-of-your-seat storytelling in a novel that leaps between past and present with page-turning finesse. “A sweet novel of love, redemption, and loss that chronicles one family’s struggle with a difficult past.”—Kirkus They’re calling it the worst pile-up […]
Falling for Autumn
Today I stepped outside and it smelt like autumn. And so begins my love affair with this beautiful season. There’s something magical about autumn that has captivated me for as long as I can remember. Maybe because it’s the season of my birthday (October 1st and don’t you forget it), maybe it’s the transition from […]
How to Apply for Literary Agents
A simple step-by-step guide on how to apply for literary agents. Want to take that step and put your heart and soul, sorry, book, out there in the publishing world? Easy! Copious amount of stress and pain required. Please follow this guide for enlightenment. Step 1. Realise that this is what you want. Really and truly. […]
Review: Because You’ll Never Meet Me, Leah Thomas
Ollie and Moritz are two teenagers who will never meet. Each of them lives with a life-affecting illness. Contact with electricity sends Ollie into debilitating seizures, while Moritz has a heart defect and is kept alive by an electronic pacemaker. If they did meet, Ollie would seize, but turning off the pacemaker would kill Moritz. […]
Review: The Versions of Us, Laura Barnett
What if you had said yes . . . ? Eva and Jim are nineteen, and students at Cambridge, when their paths first cross in 1958. Jim is walking along a lane when a woman approaching him on a bicycle swerves to avoid a dog. What happens next will determine the rest of their lives. […]
POETRY CORNER | POEM #7: Force of Nature
Because you cannot choose the way you are anymore than you can choose your own blood. And maybe I’m biased, but a monsoon beats a drought any day.
Review: Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
It’s 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She’s in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they’re trying for a baby – and she doesn’t want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to […]
Returning to Yorkshire
Coming back to Yorkshire was like a homecoming for me. I lived in York for three years whilst at university and after a year away, it’s fair to say that I was missing – as the people of Yorkshire proudly put it – God’s own country. I can’t quite explain how much beauty and culture […]
Review: The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
There’s really nothing like dipping into a book feeling returning to an old friend. Comfortable, comforting, like it’s an old story you know and love. Reading The Wise Man’s Fear was like continuing on a long journey with people and places I was already very intimate with. It took a very long time (nearly 1000 pages), we got a […]
Reflecting on Reflection
I’ve been pretty busy lately – working two jobs, saving money for travelling, trying to find a social life somewhere, becoming the ultimate cliché of a struggling writer; altogether forgetting how to switch off and shut down. During times like these you’re so busy being busy, putting yourself on automatic just to get through the days […]
Bethany Wren 