The Bloom & Burn Book club February 2026

February is the shortest month of the year, so it seemed like a good excuse to read shorter books. I went quite hard in January, so this month I leaned towards books you can get through in a couple of sittings.

I’ve always loved short books. When I started reading again properly, they felt like a really accessible way to fall in love with books again. You still get that sense of finishing something without it feeling like a marathon or a huge mountain to climb.

So alongside the books I read this month, it also felt like a good time to share a few of my favourite short ones in case you’re in a bit of a slump or trying to get back into reading.

Anything by Claire Keegan is a great place to start. I love her short story collections, but also her shorter books like So Late in the Day and Foster. Small Things Like These is another favourite.

Another short book I’ve really enjoyed is Convenience Store Woman. It’s a great one if you’re at a point in your life where you’re feeling a bit confused and wondering, am I doing enough? I found it oddly life-affirming and it’s one I go back to a lot.

One of my favourite books from last year was Dogs by C. Mallon, which I haven’t really seen many people talking about. It’s a short book and absolutely emotionally devastating, but I loved it. If you’re looking for something gritty that feels like an entire world in just 200 pages, give it a try.

So here are the books I read this month. I’ve put them in a loose ranking, from my favourites to the ones I didn’t connect with quite as much. Hopefully you find something to add to your reading list.

‘The job listing hadn’t mentioned killing. What it had mentioned, rather, was saving the world.’

This is a weird little book. I had no idea where it was going and, to be honest, I was totally seduced by that gorgeous cover. I also love goats, so a story about goats and a man trapped on an island had me immediately interested.

I don’t think it’s for everyone, but I was utterly charmed by it and it definitely didn’t go where I thought it was going to, which kept me gripped.

What I think I connected with most was the idea of this man agreeing to something where he had most of the information beforehand, but when he actually gets there, some key details have been glossed over. Suddenly he’s in a situation he can’t easily get out of.

I definitely found myself thinking about times I experienced something similar when I was working as a wedding florist. Agreeing to things and then suddenly thinking, oh no… I haven’t quite charged enough for this or I’m not sure I actually want to do this. Obviously the stakes here are much bigger than a wedding day, but the feeling was familiar.

I really loved it. It’s a super fun, strange story and an interesting take on what’s happening in the world. And only 150 pages so you can rattle through it in an afternoon.

‘I’m just a nobody trying to tell everybody about somebody who can save anybody.’

This is one of those books that feels like it’s hurtling towards disaster from the very first page.

Told from two different perspectives, the story is centred around the character of Wonderboy, the son of a reverend. The two voices we hear from are his mother and his girlfriend, who alternate each chapter. At the beginning b

oth of them are are slightly in awe of Wonderboy in their own ways.

What the author does very cleverly is build a kind of third narrative underneath those two perspectives, which is who this person really is.

It’s a book about family pressure, legacy, and the darker side of religion.

The religious aspect of it really connected with me because of growing up in Northern Ireland. Obviously there was such a strong religious divide there and, although what’s happening in this book is quite different, it did remind me of that feeling of religion shaping everything in the world around you.

I’d been waiting for this book to come out for ages after hearing about it on a podcast last year, and it didn’t disappoint.

I’ve read a couple of Édouard Louis’s books and, from what I understand, they’re all semi-autobiographical, often centred around versions of his own life and family.

This one focuses on his mother and her escape from a toxic relationship.

I’ve really enjoyed his writing in the past, there’s something quite compelling about the way he revisits the same world and people from slightly different angles.

While I did enjoy this one, I didn’t connect with it quite as much as some of the others. I think maybe it just felt like I was dipping back into a world I’d already visited quite a few times before.

That said, if you haven’t read any of his work before, this works perfectly well as a standalone, although ‘Change’ is my favourite of his so far so that could be a good place to start.

I was waking up early and staying up late just to read this. It’s set on a remote island where a family are tasked with saving the worlds plant species while an unknown danger looms around the edges. A woman washes ashore and the story slowly begins to unravel. I was completely absorbed by it and desperate to find out what happened next.

But then the last 30 pages completely lost me. What had felt like a gripping literary thriller suddenly took a wild turn that I just didn’t see coming and, honestly, didn’t really want.

It reminded me a bit of a book I read last year, God of the Woods, which I was obsessed with until the final few pages when for me, it all fell apart.

I sometimes find it hard not to let an ending affect my enjoyment of the whole book. If the ending doesn’t quite land, I can end up feeling a bit cheated, even if I loved most of what came before. I’d be curious to know how other people feel about that.

“Food, water, and shelter will increase our chances of survival,” said Bud. “Not fucking the neighbour.”

I absolutely loved the first hundred pages of this. It was genuinely very funny, with lots of moments where I was properly laughing out loud. My partner kept saying he couldn’t wait to read it because I seemed to be laughing the whole way through.

But somewhere along the way the humour just seemed to disappear, and I stopped quite believing the characters. At the beginning they felt incredibly real and the family dynamics were fantastic, but as the story grew bigger it drifted into stranger territory with the introduction of a storyline about a billionaire businessman, that I just wasn’t interested in.

It reminded me a bit of Burnham Wood, which I also really enjoyed until a similar kind of character appeared and the whole thing took a slightly odd turn.

For me, this might have worked better as a much smaller story. The family dynamics and humour were more than enough and I would have loved a deeper exploration of those relationships.

Curtis Garner’s first book, Isaac, was a five-star read for me and one I’d highly recommend. This one didn’t quite land in the same way.

It follows the relationship between two young men who meet in Cornwall before one of them moves to London, and how that shift changes their dynamic over several years, sitting somewhere between friendship and something more.

Unfortunately this one never quite held my attention in the way I’d hoped, which was disappointing given how much I loved Isaac.

It might also just be that I’ve read quite a few books recently that explore similar territory. Evenings and Weekends and Sunstruck both came to mind, two books I really enjoyed and perhaps I’ve just spent a bit too long in that particular world.

It’s also made me realise that when I’m reading lots of new releases, I can end up circling around the same kinds of stories. There definitely seem to be trends that appear in fiction. Recently I’ve noticed quite a few remote island settings, Eradication and Wild Dark Shore mentioned above, and Whale Fall from last month’s reads, as well as the recurring tech billionaire trope.

So maybe my challenge for next month is to mix things up a bit more: read a few older books alongside the new releases and move between genres a little more.

I’d be curious to know if anyone else has noticed recurring themes or settings popping up in the books they’ve been reading lately.