Welcome back to Book Break! This is our first video of 2021, and it's a good one:
this is our December book haul! So if you haven't seen one of these before,
every month I get a very exciting email from Elle, the other half of the Book Break team.
I never know what it's going to contain, but once I open it it has information about some of the
most exciting books that we have published over the last month. So we are now looking back at
December to see what a great publishing month that was. So let's go in! The first book in here is
The Hidden Girls by Rebecca Whitney. I have read this one. So it's starting with a fun mystery
thriller, everyone loves an unreliable narrator story and this is definitely one of those. So our
main character is a new mother recovering from postpartum psychosis so she's really struggling
to trust her own judgment. She's worried that even the things she sees and hears might not be real,
and then she hears a scream from the local petrol station, so she realizes that she has become the
key witness to this terrible crime going on but nobody trusts her, and she's not even sure if she
can trust herself. Absolutely terrifying situation to be in. OK next we've got The System by Ryan
Gattis. OK I've been waiting for this one. Also I haven't seen that cover before but I love this.
So this is a novel about the American criminal justice system. It tells the story of this crime
all the way through from right before the first shots are fired, through the justice system,
the verdict, the aftermath, and you get this whole chorus of different perspectives telling the
story, so we hear from the guilty, the innocent, the victim, the families, the people just doing
their jobs, it sounds like a really powerful story so I can't wait to read this one. Then we have
The Other Bennett Sister by Janice Hadlow. So this is the paperback cover, I love that! So I read The
Other Bennett Sister back in hardback and I filmed a video with the author Janice Hadlow which I will
link to, it's a really fun one. We were talking about Jane Austen's least popular characters and
why that is. One of her least popular characters is Mary Bennett, the middle Bennett sister from
Pride and Prejudice, who's basically just treated as a rather annoying joke most of the time. But
in The Other Bennett Sister, Janice Hadlow retells that story from Mary's perspective,
and then even extends the story beyond the events of Pride and Prejudice, and by the end of it you
will have a whole different perspective of Mary Bennett. I haven't yet tried rereading Pride and
Prejudice after reading this, but I think it will feel like a very different book. Next is The Manor
by Jessie Keane. Okay I don't know about this one. “This was her turf and she would do anything to
protect the manor,” is what it says on the front. Jessie Keane is a massive bestseller so I know
a lot of you are going to be very excited about this one. I'm just looking at the description now,
it sounds great, so it's about these two men who have been blood brothers since the cradle, they
grew up together in the East End, they're involved with the local mob, until Charlie, one of them,
took over the manor from the local mob and a twist of fate put him and his best mate on the road to
the high life. So now they are both married, they have kids, both families have everything they ever
wanted, until Charlie's adopted son Harlan starts to cause trouble. Then we have another Danielle
Steele, this is Moral Compass. We seem to have a Danielle Steele in almost every book haul,
she writes books like no one else, so let me just look up what moral compass is about.
Oh this one sounds intense, so this is about this rich boys prep school
where kind of the most privileged boys have been going for over 100 years, and now for the first
time they are letting girls in, and it's about the aftermath of this massive party on campus - that
sounds intense. Danielle Steele knows how to write drama. OK next is the Last Diet by Sharoo Izadi,
so this is a re-issue of this one. Sharoo Izadi is the author of The Kindness Method,
I did a video with her a few years ago, so I will link to that below where we talked about
what The Kindness Method is and it's basically all about changing habits by being kind to yourself,
rather than criticizing yourself, or saying that you need to be better. And The Last Diet is based
on her own experience of losing weight in a way that lasted for her because she was kind
to herself along the way. So this was described as a practical gentle guide which puts improved
mental health at the forefront, so that's really important. And then we have The How Not to Diet
Cookbook. Okay so this is by Michael Greger, he is the author of How Not to Die, so he is a physician
who wrote How Not to Die based on scientific facts about food and how food can impact our health and
allow us to live hopefully long healthy lives. This was then followed up by How Not to Diet
which was a similar approach to dieting, and this is the How Not to Diet Cookbook,
where he is actually giving his examples of recipes. So there's no calorie counting in here,
no juice cleanses, just genuine nutritious recipes that are good for our bodies. Next we've got
Confessions of a 40-something Fuck-up by Alexandra Potter. So you may have seen me talking about this
one recently in our video on books about being a hot mess, this is about a woman who is in her 40s
when a lot of her life seems to fall apart at once. She loses her fiance and her job and she
has to move back to london from the US and finds herself renting a room in someone else's flat,
because that's all she can afford in London. So it feels like she's suddenly a very different stage
of life to the rest of her friends, something that a lot of people at any age will find very
relatable, but she ends up striking up this very sweet unlikely friendship with a woman in her 80s
who also feels in her own way like her life is a bit of a mess too. That feels like a great one to
read at the beginning of the year when everyone's kind of making new year's resolutions and you feel
a bit like you're not sure what your resolutions are because you're not sure what you're doing!
Next we've got Pinch of Nom: Quick and Easy. So Pinch of Nom was an absolute sensation,
it was a complete phenomenon, again I will link to a video where I tried out one of their recipes
from the first book. This is Pinch of Nom: Quick and Easy, so it's really simple recipes,
minimum fuss maximum flavor is how they describe it, and just looking now at some of the recipes
included in here, veggie satay noodles, creamy cajun chicken pasta, and apple and apricot oat
crumble, yum I definitely want that one. Okay next we have Eat to Save the Planet by Annie Bell. So
again you may have heard me talking about this one recently in our video on new year's resolutions
for the greater good. So this is another recipe book, we are all going to be very well fed this
month, but this one is based on the planetary health guide. So all the recipes in here are
designed around being good for the environment, so there's lots of veggie and vegan plant-based
recipes in here which are obviously great for the environment, but if you're not vegetarian
don't worry, there are also recipes in here with fish in, with meat in, even with red meat in,
all done in an eco-friendly way. Then we have, oh this is exciting, All We Are Saying:
The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. So this is the 40th anniversary edition,
this interview was first published in Playboy in 1981 right after John Lennon was shot. And
this now has a new introduction reflecting on the 40 years since John Lennon's death. The interview
itself is absolutely amazing, this was this huge knockout interview, there's so much in there,
so now I'm really excited to see it all together with this new context. And then finally I’ve got
one more book in here which is Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. Okay this is the new Netflix
cover. Firefly Lane starts in the 70s and goes across 30 years of these two women's friendship,
all of the hurdles that they go through together, this one major act of betrayal,
and whether or not their friendship can recover from that, and I love this new cover. So this is
now being made into a Netflix show and this cover really sums up their friendship through the ages,
I think that's gorgeous and so much fun. So do leave a comment below letting us know which of
those you are most excited about, or any other books that you hauled in December that you want
to tell us about, and I will link here to a playlist of all of our other Book Break haul
videos so you can go back and look through for more shopping inspiration. See you next time!