Only Ever Yours - Louise O'Neill

I rated this book 6/10

frieda and isabel have been best friends their whole lives.

Now, aged sixteen and in their final year at the School, they expect to be selected as companions - wives to wealthy and powerful men. The alternative - life as a concubine - is too horrible to contemplate.

But as the intensity of the final year takes hold, the pressure to remain perfect becomes almost unbearable. isabel starts to self-destruct, putting her beauty - her only asset - in peril.

A re-worked YA Handmaid's Tale.

Surprisingly relevant. The comparisons that I could make between O'Neill's creation and our own world are shockingly close.

'Only Ever Yours' turns a magnifying glass onto a world in which celebrity magazines draw rings around a woman who has a touch of cellulite. It satirises the waxing regimes, the plastic surgery, hair dye, laser treatments, weight loss pills, marriage traditions, fashion trends and reality shows that women find themselves sucked into. It turns a mirror on a world in which women are constantly asked "So when are you having children?" as soon as they reach their twenties.

The book also touches briefly on the idea that young men are not supposed to discuss emotions, thoughts or feelings with other people.

Dramatic, bleak and quick to read - "Only Ever Yours" is YA dystopia; a re-worked 'Handmaid's Tale' that throws up feminist issues with no holds barred.

Available at Waterstones.com

The Story of the Lost Child - Elena Ferrante

I rated this book 8/10

Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, the story of a lifelong friendship is told with unmatched honesty and brilliance. The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and every return will bring with it new revelations.

A beautifully bleak conclusion to the Neapolitan Novels.

The Neapolitan novels absorbed me from the very first book, and rarely have I been so enchanted by a cast of characters. Ferrante's writing is brutal, honest and full of depth, allowing the reader to really fall in to the difficulties of growing up and starting a family in Naples from the 50s to the present day.

Lila and Elena are friends and rivals - constantly clashing with each other or sharing emotional moments together. In this, the fourth book, they are arguing more often than they are civil to each other. 

'The Story of the Lost Child' took me a good long time to read in comparison to the first three, it was much more difficult to digest, and towards the end the real heartbreak is apparent. I rarely find myself with a "book hangover", but I did feel a sense of loss when I realised that I had finished the last sentence.

This touching and deeply crafted story makes for bleak and beautiful reading. Start at book one 'My Brilliant Friend'.

Thank you to Turnaround Books for the Advanced Proof Copy.

Available at Waterstones