Welcome back to Book Break! Today I am sitting out here in the sun feeling very cheerful with
a big stack of uplifting books next to me, to talk to you about these - all books that
will make you smile. So starting with one I have been anticipating for a very long time.
I've got my proof copy here of Yours Cheerfully by AJ Pearce. So this is the sequel to Dear Mrs Bird,
one of my all-time favorite books to be honest. Now we are returning to the same wonderful
characters in Yours Cheerfully, so this is about best friends Emmy and Bunty, who are still reeling
from the horrors of the Blitz, but are putting on a brave face and are determined to make a go of
it. So it's really about bravery and female friendship, and it's also about the really
important role that female workers played in the war effort. Just to prove how happy that book is,
the sun came out right as I was talking about it, right into my eyes. Then I've got this charming
book The Village Green Bookshop by Rachael Lucas. So this is about a woman called Hannah who moves
to this delightful Cotswolds village to start a new life there. It's a very very tight-knit
community where outsiders aren't always initially welcome, especially outsiders like
Hannah who come armed with such radical ideas as setting up a bookshop in the post office.
So she definitely hits some bumps in the road. But in this gorgeous little village Hannah and her son
start to finally find their joy. Sofia Khan Is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik is a fab book.
This is about unlucky-in-love Sofia Khan, whose boss convinces her to write an expose about the
Muslim dating scene. I know it's a cliche to compare book characters to Bridget Jones
but it's just such a good comparison. Sofia Khan is so funny, and in this book we follow her as she
meets even more eccentric characters on her dating adventures in search for stories for her book.
So it's a really funny, really romantic book that smashes stereotypes about Muslim women and dating.
The lighting in this video is going to be all over the place because the sun keeps coming in and out
from behind the clouds. In Bring on the Blessings by Beverly Jenkins, Bernardine Brown is 52 years
old when she discovers her husband is having an affair, divorces him and finds herself the richest
divorcee in town with a cool 275 million dollars in her pocket. So she uses this money to buy a
town, a historic town that was founded by freed slaves after the civil war. And there she sets up
a centre for foster children, so it's a complete escape from reality. It's a hallmark movie in book
form. Then Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean. So I am a huge fan of the Princess Diaries series,
so I was very very excited to see this Japanese American revamp. This is about Izumi who has
always struggled to fit in in her very small, very white, Californian hometown where she lives with
her mum. Until one day she discovers a clue to her long-lost father's identity: he is literally the
crown prince of Japan. So we get to follow her as she journeys to Japan and learns all about
this culture that's new to her - all while wearing tiaras and ball gowns, being hounded by the press,
and being followed everywhere by a bodyguard who is actually pretty cute. In Boy Queen by George
Lester, all of Robin's friends are heading off to university. Meanwhile Robin has been rejected by
all of the drama schools he applied to, and isn't sure what to do with his life next - until he
discovers his local drag scene and finally feels like he belongs. So this book is all about the
joy of finding your path, finding your community, and believing in yourself enough to follow it.
Then I've got Love Is for Losers by Wibke Brueggemann. I'm sure you've heard me talk
about this before. I will never stop raving about this hilarious queer, sex positive, body positive,
YA novel. Phoebe isn't talking to her best friend, her mum works with Doctors without Borders,
so she's always volunteering at the front lines of the biggest humanitarian crises, so Phoebe
is very worried about her a lot of the time, and she's pretty overwhelmed with exam stress.
But when she gets a job volunteering at her local charity shop, she meets the best group of friends,
including potential love interest Emma. Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q Sutanto is a murder
mystery rom-com - great combination there - that is one big celebration of mothers and daughters
and of Chinese-Indonesian culture. So it starts when our main character Meddy accidentally kills
her blind date, and calling in her meddlesome mother and aunties to help only makes everything
a lot worse. So now Meddy has one weekend to pull off the family business's biggest wedding yet,
cope with the fact that her ex just showed up again who she's still in love with,
and escape murder charges. For the second half of this video, I am relocating, because the
garage across from my house started their loudest building project yet. So I'm not outside anymore,
but I am standing next to some nice greenery which hopefully will help continue the uplifting theme.
So the next book I've got here is The Light Years by Elizabeth Jane Howard. This is the first book
in the Cazalet Chronicles, which is a whole series about the Cazalet family following them through
the generations, through the challenges and ups and downs of their life. And it all starts in
this first one, The Light Years. So in this book we spend two months with the Cazalets,
all of the Cazalet siblings with their spouses and children return to the Cazalet family home
for two idyllic months one summer. So this is the first in a beautiful and beloved saga. Then I've
got two classics here about unstoppably cheerful orphans, starting with Pollyanna, who is a little
girl whose father taught her to play the “glad game”: find a way to be glad about any situation.
And she really does! Pollyanna goes through a lot of hardships but she always finds a way to
be optimistic. And calling someone Pollyanna-ish can kind of be an insult now, calling them sort of
naively optimistic, but really it's never a bad thing. And then in Anne of Green Gables by L.M.
Montgomery. Anne is different from Pollyanna in that she's not just happy about every situation,
in fact she's a bit of a daydreamer, and often mourns not being the beautiful romantic heroine
of her dreams, but she's got such a passion for life that just gets her through every situation,
and wins the hearts of everyone around her. And the book is also just adorable and hilarious, the
scrapes that Anne gets herself into while she's daydreaming about something else are brilliant.
And then I've got two uplifting non-fiction books here to remind us that wonderful things
do happen in real life too. Starting with Making it by Jay Blades. Jay Blades is a TV presenter and
furniture restorer. He's the star of the show The Repair Shop - and he's very beloved now, but his
life hasn't always been easy. And in his memoir he talks about how he rebuilt his life after some
of the hardest things that he's gone through. So it'll really restore your faith in kindness and
community. And then Stronger by Poorna Bell is a really empowering manifesto about female strength.
So Poorna Bell turned to weightlifting while grieving the loss of her husband,
and discovered strength she never knew she had. She's now a competitive amateur powerlifter
who can lift twice her own body weight. So this book completely challenges everything we've been
taught about female strength, and completely separates it from weight loss to show us all how
we can tap into our inner strength. And finally, some beautiful poems to make you smile. So this
collection is Poems to Fall in Love, with the artist Chris Riddell has chosen his favorite poems
about love and illustrated them in his gorgeous trademark style. His artwork really brings these
poems to life and just captures the universal experience of love in all its forms. So if you're
looking for even more uplifting reads, I will link here to a video we made last year all about books
with happy endings. And I'd also love to hear your own recommendations for uplifting books
that make you smile. So do leave your suggestions in the comments below, and I'll see you next time!