It's fair to say that March has been quite a tough, uncertain time for a lot of people. Now, I try my hardest not to dwell on the negatives (hence the reason behind these gratitude lists), but there's no getting around the pandemic that is currently at the forefront of the UK, EU and USA. Lives have been lost, jobs have been lost and there is an undoubtedly large amount of financial stress on families and business across the globe, not to mention the pressure on health care professionals, grocery stores, delivery drivers and the like trying to keep up with the demand.

People's anxieties are sky high right now. I for one would not consider myself an anxious person and I'm lucky that I have never had to deal with bad anxiety, but these times are trying, exhausting and unpredictable and I feel for every single person out there effected by what's been going on. I'm trying my best to remain positive and look for the little things to keep smiling about and I think that's all we can encourage one another to do. With that being said, here is what I have been grateful for throughout March.

It was my birthday. My husband treat me to a lovely little weekend break to York for my birthday and we got to explore all the bookshops and cute little cake shops! I love York but don't visit very often despite only being an hour and half down the road. It's filled with cute little cobbled streets, quirky building and beautiful architecture. There's always something new to do in York, whether it be a new restaurant, a new building to explore or a new little shop to pop into!

Daily walks with my two dogs. This sounds a bit like an odd thing to be grateful for, but given the current circumstances, our whole office is now working from home. On my lunch break, I've been walking my two dogs daily near the river that I live right next too, and it's done me a world of good just to get out of the house for half an hour. We employ a dog walker for when both myself and my husband are at work, but she's currently temporarily stepped down her hours whilst everything is going on. It's been great to get some fresh air on my lunch and have a little break from staring at a screen!

Spending more time at home with my daughter. Whilst I'm still working (from home, now), my husband has been furloughed for a few months, which means we don't have to send her off to my parent's house for baby sitting duties during the day. Seeing her throughout the day has been a massive help in terms of my headspace - that small human really does do an amazing job at putting a smile on my face!

More time reading. Because I finish work and am right at home (which still feels bizarre), I don't have to account for the time it takes to get home from work, which can be anywhere from 30 minutes to over an hour. Instead, I can use this time to read more and just have that hour or so to myself to settle down with a book, which really helps me switch off from work mode!

What have you been grateful for this month?

I first picked up Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Carke. This is a beloved novel by many and I’ve debated picking it up for a long time now and I was SO close to giving in on a recent Waterstones trip, but then luck seemed to be on my side because I saw this in a charity shop for 49p and at that price it was pretty much impossible to resist! This is a hefty book though and is over 1,000 pages long, but I’ve heard it’s amazing!

I also picked up The Doll Factory by Elizabeth McNeal on my lunchbreak at work too. This was 100% a panic buy and the cover was what swayed me - I mean, just look at it! Although the cover is very pretty, I've since read some reviews on this book and apparently it's a bit creepy in places and if you know me, you know that I DO NOT GO ANYWHERE NEAR scary books. So, this one was a bit of a fail on my end but who knows, one day I might be brave enough to pick it up!

For my birthday, my Dad very kindly bought me two books I’d been after for a long time, and they are The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren and Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. I’ve already read The Unhoneymooners and I’m hoping to pick up Red, White & Royal Blue soon!

My best friend got me A Boy and his Dog at the End of the World by C.A. Fletcher for my birthday too!


For my birthday, my husband treated me to a night away in York and whilst there, I was very much in a TREATT YO SELF mood because I bought three books all by Fredrik Backman. I read A Man Called Ove by Backman a couple of months ago and it’s one of the best books I have read in a very long time and I just knew I had to pick more of his books up. I picked up Britt-Marie Was Here, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, and Us Against You which is the sequel to Beartown (which I already own). I think I now own all of his full-length novels which I’m pretty excited about and will no doubt pick up one of his books sooner rather than later!

The world is a bit of a scary, uncertain place at the moment isn't it? With more people being told to stay indoors, I figured I would put together a little list of all the books I've read lately that have made me feel good, in the hope that some of you will also find them uplifting and perhaps even take your mind off what's going on outside for a little while.

The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary
This is a book that is just so much fun. Tiffy and Leon share a flat in London but they have never met due to their conflicting work schedules, but instead they communicate through post-it notes and it's so, so adorable.

It's such a great read and one that had me laughing out loud on a few occasions. I really did love this slow-burn romance and typically I'm not one for slow-burn romances. O'Leary really does do an amazing job at bringing these characters to life and drawing you in to their situation; it's very hard not to root for these two characters because they are almost "too" perfect, but hey, there's nothing wrong with a bit of mushy-ness in a chicklit novel, right?

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren
This is my most recent read and again, it was just so much fun! Olive and Ethan, who do not like each other, end up going on Olive's twin sister's (and Ethan's brother's) honeymoon when the whole wedding party fall ill, including the bride and groom.

The writing style is so refreshing and it is so incredibly light and easy to read, which is perfect if you're feeling a bit down in the dumps.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This book is based on an ageing Hollywood icon who has decided that now is the time to tell her life story, and she does so by choosing an unknown magazine reporter and we follow both women as Evelyn's life story unfolds.

I really, truely, whole-heartedly LOVED this book to its core. Evelyn is complicated, lovable, loud and at times even awful. She is undoubtedly flawed, but also brave and compelling and ambitious. She clawed her way through grit to get to get where she wanted to be, and she never gave up. She dominated the big screen for more than 4 decades; every woman wanted to be her and every man wanted to be with her.

This is the perfect book to get completely immersed into and just forget about everything else going on. The book is so full of drama that it's hard not to be drawn in and it's one that I would read over and over again.

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
This book is centred around Ove, who knows what he likes and knows what he doesn't and is a bit of a grumpy sod. On the surface he is miserable and rude and likes to point fingers at people. But behind the cranky exterior there is a true sadness about Ove, and we see this unfold when his two next door neighbours move in with their two young children and accidentally reverse their car into his letterbox. It's a tale about unexpected friendships and a bitter old man who's life is about to be changed forever - whether he likes it or not.

I feel like everyone knows an Ove. A grumpy, witty, to-the-point person who comes across a bit blunt and a bit rude. But you might not *really* them, and that's what this book explores, but it does so in such a beautiful and entertaining way that you never get bored of reading about the grumpy old man. I found that after I had finished a chapter I needed to read another one straight away because I couldn't get enough of Ove's story and everything that led him to where he is and how he is today.

This is such an utterly heartwarming story and one that will certainly have your smiling from ear to ear the whole way through.

What books have you been reading to take your mind off things?

Author: Christina Lauren (which is the combined pen name for the writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings)
Pages: 400
Publication date: 14th May 2019
Publisher: Gallery Books

About the book
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.

Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.

Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs. But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of... lucky.

Review
This is my first Christina Lauren book and I'd been after it for a long time. I feel like this was a really popular book last year and I remember seeing it everywhere but I'm always *that* person who is late to the party and so this is one of those books that passed me buy until recently when I finally bit the bullet and asked my Dad to pick it up for me for my birthday (thanks, pops).

I really enjoyed this book and got through it pretty quickly for someone who doesn't get through books at roaring speed. I liked the plot, even if parts of it were particularly unrealistic and would-never-happen-in-real-life kinda thing. It's one of those books where everyone sorta already knows what will happen at the end, but it's still enjoyable non-the-less.

Olive and Ethan are likeable characters and I found Olive especially funny at times; this is one of those books that had me laughing out loud a couple of times. But here's the thing; there's nothing extra about the characters. They're your typical chick-lit couple who should never be together but somehow the world works around this and the rest is history, which is fine because it fits the genre perfectly and you go into this book knowing what to expect, but it doesn't exceed expectations.

The hate-to-love trope was just a little too much for me to warrant giving this a five star review. There was too much coincidence and the sometimes the story was a bit too forced.

Having said that, the writing style is refreshing and it's my first read by this writing duo but certainly won't be my last. It's the perfect summer book; incredibly light and so easy to read, I mean, just look at the cover!

Verdict: ★★★★

1. A book on your TBR that you haven't finished?
It would definitely have to be The Toll by Neal Shusterman. I started reading this when it was released late last year but never managed to finish it. The Arc of a Scythe series is one of my favourite series and I'm so sad that I only got around 60 pages into the book before life got too busy and I stopped reading it.

2. A book you just haven't had time to read?
I've been meaning to pick up The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young for months now but I've just not got round to reading it!

3. A book you haven't read because it's a sequel scarlet?
Cilka's Journey by Heather Morris is a book I eagerly anticipated and bought on release day, but I loved The Tattooist of Auschwitz so, so much that I'm worried this one won't live up to its expectations!

4. A book you haven't read because it's brand new?
I genuinely can not think of a book that's new that I haven't gotten around to reading... there's a few that I'm eagerly anticipating though!

5. A book by an author you read previously and didn't like?
I really hate bashing authors and their books, but I probably wouldn't read anything by authors who I have marked 2 stars or less. I very much judge authors by the first book of theirs that I read, so if there's one that I don't particularly like, I won't rush to read anything by that author any time soon.

6. A book on your TBR that you're just not in the mood to read?
The book community will disown me for this answer, but I'm really put off reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern just because I've heard the writing is quite whimsical and flowery and I'm just not feeling that style of writing right now. At the moment I'm gravitating more towards contemporary mixed with a bit of humour that's quick and easy to read.

7. A book on your TBR that you've put off because it's enormous?
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is a book that sounds EXACTLY up my street, but I just keep putting it off because it's almost 900 pages long!

8. A book on your TBR that you bought because of the cover?
Gods of Jade & Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is easily one of the prettiest books I own and DEFINITELY influenced me buying it!

9. The book on your TBR that you find the most intimidating?
Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin is so unbelievably beloved by the book community and its fair to say that I'm intimidated by it due to how much people rave about it!