What I read, and was it any good? Twenty-three books, three years, one degree, and a lot of opinions I am now going to inflict on you. Here is the thing nobody tells you about studying English: the reading list is not a list of books you will love. It is a list of books someone decided you should have opinions about. Some of them changed my life. Some of them I resented every single page of.

Very little has actually been confirmed about the Haunting Adeline film. There is no cast, no director, no studio and no release date. What there is, in enormous quantity, is opinion. Since H.D. Carlton announced in mid-July that her bestselling novel is being adapted, the reaction has been fast, loud and frequently unkind on all sides. Petitions have been launched. Readers have been abused for defending the book, and others abused for criticising it. Underneath all of it si

Somewhere in the last few years, reading quietly became cool again. Actual, physical, dog-eared-paperback reading, not just the Kindle-in-secret kind. Bookshops that were meant to be dying out are opening in record numbers, teenagers are picking Colleen Hoover over their phones (well, sometimes both at once), and “what are you reading” has become a genuine icebreaker rather than something only your English teacher asked.

You know the feeling. Endless fluorescent-lit corridors. Carpet that smells faintly of damp. A room that should have an exit but somehow doesn’t.

hey, bunny! let’s sulk in sad girl MFA vibes for a bit together. i promise i won’t waste your time. you wanna know what i think? one of the most challenging aspects of writing to achieve as a fiction author is the ability to immerse readers in your novel’s world. but mona awad has proven time and time again that she excels at this. she did it with bunny, and she did it again with we love you, bunny: a prequel‑sequel hybrid that’s equal parts eerie and magnetic.

If you left the cinema feeling equal parts thrilled and unsettled, you’re not alone. Curry Barker’s horror-romance became one of the breakout hits of the year, and it’s easy to see why. A hopeless romantic breaks a mysterious trinket called the One Wish Willow to win his crush’s heart, only to discover that getting exactly what you wished for can be its own kind of nightmare. What starts as a sweet, slightly awkward love story tips, scene by scene, into something much darker: