Nina Kenwood, It Sounded Better in My Head.

- From the get-go this is a thoroughly delightful read. In fact it’s the definition of delightful. I don’t usually read YA novels, but this is a book for adults as well as newly arrived ones. Perhaps branding and marketing it as a YA novel will unfortunately confine it to a niche when it deserves a much wider audience.

- Natalie, the narrator, is shy, complex, intelligent, pimpled, massively self-conscious and full of your standard teenage anxiety. She’s also very funny: ‘I honestly shouldn’t be allowed to talk to people’; ‘I scream into a pillow, which feels good the first time I do it but very over the top the second time’. 

- The constant phone texting between these 18 year olds is so good and true. It’s such an essential part of personal and group interaction these days, yet most contemporary authors don’t feature it. 

- I kept thinking of Sally Rooney's Ordinary People but this is Rooney with a mischievous wit. Kenwood has a light touch but a sure hand in rendering the subtlety of personal relationships and family dynamics. 

- I absolutely gobbled this book up. It's a real treasure.