This practical and highly-readable book is designed to create our own liturgy out of everyday rhythms. The idea is to be conscious of our everyday existence, introducing tiny practical changes to make room for God. She goes through the ordinary things of the day like choosing to make your bed instead of rushing into work, as a discipline of finding order and leaning on Go).

It’s really well-written, sharp and brief; full of interesting quotes and thought-provoking practical ideas. Best for those who are busy with family and work and looking for brief ways to refocus.

*I received a no-obligation review copy. This is my honest review*

Subtitled, ‘An anxious evangelical finds peace with God through contemplative prayer’ - it exactly describes its audience. This is a wonderful book on making contemplative prayer attractive, and I loved it. There are so many books on prayer that talk about prayer, yet don't result in you actually praying. The best way I can commend this book to you is the fact I kept pausing to pray as I read it, because it made me want to pray right then and there.

There are two things that make this book stand out: the sense of God’s unconditional love that runs throughout the book, and how he distils wisdom from mystics like Richard Rohr and Thomas Merton to make them much more accessible for newcomers to contemplative prayer. There are some who just talk about God’s unconditional love, and then follow up with a load of rules. For me, the sense of God’s love came through in every word, and the experience of reading the book on spiritual disciplines was a restful and nourishing one. I love all of Cyzewski’s work, but this was probably his best so far. Highly recommended.

*I received a no-obligation review copy. This is my honest review.*

Half-memoir, half-exploration of the concept of home, this is a fantastic book on where we find our belonging. Swinney’s background is fascinating, as someone who grew up in England and Portugal, moved to Canada and met an American husband, and now lives back in England.

I have a fondness for cross-cultural mission, and was always drawn to the idea that it is a better way of being, because we belong to the world rather than just one nation. However, this book points out the downsides to this: that if you move a lot as a kid you lose your sense of belonging and home, and that can have emotional repercussions. Through her story, she builds a defence for our innate need for a home, linking it with David’s life in the Bible.

Her writing is so absorbing that I found myself turning the pages to get to the next part of her story, and the Bible exegesis was fresh and thoughtful. This is one I have talked about a lot all summer, a real conversation-starter - definitely check it out. Highly recommended.

*I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review, which this is*

A young woman is chained to her sick mother, whose mysterious, undefined and variable illness has led them both to an eccentric alternative doctor in the desert and deserted south coast of Spain. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016, this was unlike anything I’d read before. The nearest I can get to describing it is a modern-day Hamlet, where the centre of the woman’s protagonist is whether she is free to live her life if she remains a carer for her difficult, negative, sick mother.

(Although the book is good, I do have to protest at this point at the familiar trope of the poor carer trapped in caring for the annoying invalid, who may or may not be faking her illness. Our media right now is saturated with two narratives about disabled people: 1) that those with fluctuating or ‘invisible’ illness are no doubt fakers, and 2) disabled people are burdens on others. It would be lovely for those of us who live with fluctuating illnesses to have disabled fictional characters who reflected the lived experience of most of us with disabilities – friendly, hardworking and resilient – instead of getting shunted into these categories).

The writing style is its main selling point: halfway to poetry, each short sentence is visually evocative and full of literary allusions. It has a dreamlike quality – strange, colourful, lucid scenes, with a background of stream of consciousness Woolf-esque inner monologue. You can smell the salt on the sea, the fish guts in the market, the sweat on her skin.

There’s not much of a plot, and none of the characters are particularly likeable. But it reads like a work of art. It does a lot with few words: exploring the power and weakness of women, the parent-child relationship and the ways we chain ourselves to each other, doomed love and the different ways we live in fantasies of our own making. Be warned: our book club was split, with many finding it plotless, slow and just plain weird.

But if you are a lover of poetry, alert to the classical allusions, the interplay of myth and psychology, this is a rich and rewarding read – and so different from anything else that it’s definitely worth your time. Highly recommended.

*I received a review copy and this is my honest review*

A young woman is chained to her sick mother, whose mysterious, undefined and variable illness has led them both to an eccentric alternative doctor in the desert and deserted south coast of Spain. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016, this was unlike anything I’d read before. The nearest I can get to describing it is a modern-day Hamlet, where the centre of the woman’s protagonist is whether she is free to live her life if she remains a carer for her difficult, negative, sick mother.

(Although the book is good, I do have to protest at this point at the familiar trope of the poor carer trapped in caring for the annoying invalid, who may or may not be faking her illness. Our media right now is saturated with two narratives about disabled people: 1) that those with fluctuating or ‘invisible’ illness are no doubt fakers, and 2) disabled people are burdens on others. It would be lovely for those of us who live with fluctuating illnesses to have disabled fictional characters who reflected the lived experience of most of us with disabilities – friendly, hardworking and resilient – instead of getting shunted into these categories).

The writing style is its main selling point: halfway to poetry, each short sentence is visually evocative and full of literary allusions. It has a dreamlike quality – strange, colourful, lucid scenes, with a background of stream of consciousness Woolf-esque inner monologue. You can smell the salt on the sea, the fish guts in the market, the sweat on her skin.

There’s not much of a plot, and none of the characters are particularly likeable. But it reads like a work of art. It does a lot with few words: exploring the power and weakness of women, the parent-child relationship and the ways we chain ourselves to each other, doomed love and the different ways we live in fantasies of our own making. Be warned: our book club was split, with many finding it plotless, slow and just plain weird.

But if you are a lover of poetry, alert to the classical allusions, the interplay of myth and psychology, this is a rich and rewarding read – and so different from anything else that it’s definitely worth your time. Highly recommended.

*I received a review copy and this is my honest review*