The Bloom & Burn Book club

January 2026

I started reading properly a few years ago and my love of books has just kept growing. I’ve always wanted to be part of a book club but I’ve never really found one, so I thought I’d start my own.

This is somewhere you can come for book recommendations and to see what I’ve been reading each month. I’d really like it to feel open and conversational, so if you want to comment and join in, please do. Each month I’ll share the books I’ve read and put them in order from the ones I enjoyed the most to the ones I enjoyed the least. It’s not about being harsh or negative, it’s just a way of sorting them.

Reading feels really tied to where you are and what your days look like at the time. The same book can shift depending on how and when you read it. A book read slowly on holiday, with nothing else asking for your attention, can feel very different to reading in snatched moments at home. Because of that, I don’t always think a book is a write off just because it didn’t quite work. Sometimes it’s just about timing.

Alongside the list, I’ll share a bit about what I liked, maybe a quote or two, and why each book sat where it did that month. Even when I don’t love a book, there’s usually something I take away from it.

I hope this becomes a small place you can come back to when you don’t know what to read next and need a bit of inspiration.

I love flowers, I love my work and I love my business, but I have other interests too. Instagram can make things feel quite narrow, so this journal is a way for me to share some of those other things, starting with books.

‘I want to come back home, I want to go to sleep at ten every night and take walks and not have to make an effort to be someone’

This felt like the perfect January book. It took me straight to a sticky summer in Madrid and I loved being inside the main character’s head. She’s difficult, a bit depressive, but also sharp, funny, and self-aware.

She hates her job and feels stuck, and I could really relate. I personally love my job, but in January it can feel like I’m just playing a waiting game, I can’t get going because I work with locally grown flowers and there’s very little available yet. So I really felt her frustration the whole way through.

I could really feel her pain, watching her colleagues enjoy their jobs when all she wants to do is go home and watch YouTube videos. I felt that so clearly towards the end of my TV career, and there’s nothing worse than being the only person in the room not having a good time.

Could be a good one to read if you are looking for a career change!

I loved his last book, Yes, Daddy, totally chaotic, silly, and completely addictive and this is more of the same.

A gay baby shower set in the near future while the world is about to implode, so basically any day at the moment.

It rattled along really quickly, it was funny and ridiculous, and even though I’m not usually into dystopian novels, there was something super charming about it.

The twist at the end completely surprised me.

If you’re looking for something fun, a little unhinged, but also with a message and a reminder of the world’s current terror, this is it. It’s a weird mix, but I loved every second.

This is a big chunky book, but don’t let that put you off.

I read Victor’s other novel, Honey, a few years ago and I adored it, it’s become one of those books I go back to again and again and this is just as brilliant.

It’s epic and sweeping, a family saga to get completely lost in. The themes are dark, but there’s so much tenderness in it.

Edgar is just the sweetest character, and you’re rooting for him the whole time. Even in the worst moments, there’s a gentleness and innocence that I loved. And when the main story starts to unfold, it went in a direction I didn’t expect. Each chapter jumps around between different characters which really helps keep the pace up and there’s lots of cliffhangers along the way.

“I know that a blush isn’t gonna transform my life, but it’s still nice to believe during the three-day shipping time that it could”

A story we’ve all read before: an older–younger relationship dynamic, handled recently in a couple of books that I loved, Margo’s Got Money Troubles and Green Dot. But this still felt fresh to me, mostly because the relationship wasn’t what I was most interested in.

What really worked was the main character and her need to escape from her life for a while. The scrolling, the YouTube holes, the endless ordering of things online, all in the hope that one small, easy action might lead to a bigger change.

It moves quickly, and yes, I could see the ending coming, but I didn’t mind. What other way was it going to go? I liked being around her and I wanted things to work out for her.

It really captured that teenage feeling of wanting to grow up faster than you can, of feeling like you’ve outgrown everyone around you.

If this doesn’t grab you, try her first book, I’m Glad My Mom Died, a fascinating insight into the authors life growing up in show business and the pressures of being a child star.

This one is super short so if you’re in a reading slump its could be a great book to reach for.

A whale mysteriously washes up on the shore of a small island and we follow the impact it has on the local community.

News of the whale brings two outsiders from the mainland, and it’s about how they start to integrate, particularly into the life of our main character, who becomes their translator, as they start to document island life, as they see it.

It’s taut, uncomfortable, and claustrophobic, but I was totally transported to the island. Another great escape of a book for the winter months.

There’s loads to love here, and it really hooked me in from the first page. It’s set in a boxing gym, and I’m not into boxing, but that didn’t matter at all.

The characters are intriguing, and there are lots of narratives running at the same time that feel a bit disjointed at first, but gradually start to fit together.

Towards the last quarter of the book, it all became a bit too neat for me. The scrappiness and authenticity that drew me in felt like it got lost, and the ending didn’t quite convince me, but that’s just my take.

There’s still so much in this book to enjoy, and on another month it might have ranked higher on my list.

Next up is Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst. This has been on my list for a while, my partner read it last Christmas and absolutely adored it, so I went in with really high expectations.

For me, it just didn’t click. I couldn’t connect with the characters, and a lot of the scenes felt overly long, without building the story or moving the narrative forward.

I ended up finishing it on audiobook, after about 300 pages and actually I got more into it then. Sometimes having a book read to you helps with the pacing, and it was nice to be able to do other things while listening. It’s not a book I felt i needed to get cosy and gave my full attention to, but I know I’m in the minority, loads of people love this one.

I’ve got a couple more of Hollinghurst’s books on my list, and this definitely hasn’t put me off giving them a go.

Next up is The Imaged Life by Andrew Porter. This had everything I usually love in a book. Difficult family relationships, a complicated gay love story, and a Californian setting that I really enjoyed.

There is a brilliant book here, but I felt it lost its way about two-thirds of the way through. By then it could have wrapped up neatly and I would have loved it, but it started to feel a little repetitive.

There is so much that can be packed into a shorter book, under 200 pages, and some of my recent favourites like Discontent on this list show just how punchy that can be.

I think this one might have hit harder if it had been a bit tighter.

This is the story of a young woman who moves back from London to a small Irish hometown. She ends up living with her mother, who’s moved on and built a new family with a partner and three younger children. A lot of the book sits in that uncomfortable space of watching this close-knit unit you’re not really part of, and trying to find your place in a family that feels like it’s carried on without you. Her relationship with her mother is strained, and that tension drives much of the novel.

There are heavy themes of drug and alcohol misuse running through it, so it can feel bleak at times. That wouldn’t usually put me off, but for whatever reason this one just didn’t connect for me. I never quite felt pulled in to the story.