Unexpectedly one of my top reads of 2021, I requested this book on Netgalley because I’ve also been writing a novel about a young woman obsessed with dying and I was keen to compare and learn. Of course, because Everyone in this Room will Someday be Dead (let’s ‘shorten’ this to EITRWSBD) starts in such a well written and attention grabbing way I instantly lost the will to write my own novel.

Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss is not a book that has arrived quietly. Although Mason herself says she wrote it pretty much in secret, it has been received with enthusiasm from reviewers and fellow authors to the extent that, despite a self-imposed book buying ban and a general dislike for heavier, more expensive hardbacks, I was desperate to read it.

Released during lockdown, Exciting Times was a book whose cover I kept seeing but it wasn’t really on my radar and I knew nothing whatsoever about it. I finally read it when a friend listed it as one of their top reads and I spent the first few chapters trying to work out if I loved it or was deeply irritated. In the end the love won out.

One thing I stockpiled long before we ever thought we’d end up in this situation were books. Still though I’m not immune to the lure of the shiny new title and spend an embarrassingly vast number of hours scrolling through bookstagram gazing at all the new releases.