Pour a cuppa, pull up a chair... because Dymphna's April Book Club is in session!
Thanks to the always gorgeous Book Centre, Waterford, Dymphna has browsed the shelves, the bestseller lists, and found the top four must-read books this month.
Stave off the April showers and crack the spine on one of this month's books.
Children's April Book of the Month
The Mystery of the Forever Weekend by Lisa Thompson
A gripping, page-turning mystery adventure from the bestselling author of modern classic The Goldfish Boy, Cory dreads Sunday evenings. It's school the next day, where a bully is picking on him and he's struggling to keep up in class.
The night before a Monday that will include a maths test and another lonely lunch break, Cory wishes that the weekend would never end... and when he wakes up the next day, time has reset itself to Sunday morning. This is amazing! He
can lounge about all day watching TV, have pizza for dinner over and over again and play the lottery knowing which numbers will win big! But Cory soon longs for life to move on - can he break the time loop and bring the forever weekend
to a close?
Ideal for children aged 7 and up, depending on emotional maturity, the book sees Cory try to navigate a world where adult problems upend a child's world. He learns to develop his coping skills and to love his world, rather than run from
it. A gorgeous, funny, uplifting book which trusts young readers with challenging experiences.
Adult April Books of the Month
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
The Walsh family are back, and it's like putting on the warmest comfort blanket.
Anna has a life to envy. An apartment in New York. A well-meaning (too well-meaning?) partner. And a high-flying job in beauty PR. Who wouldn’t want all that? Anna - it turns out.
She heads back to Ireland, and gets a PR job for a super-high-end coastal retreat.
Newsflash: the locals hate it. So much so, there have been threats - and violence.
Anna, however, worked in the beauty industry. There’s no ugliness she hasn’t seen. No wrinkle she can’t smooth over. Anna’s got this.
Once upon a time she’d had a best friend, she’d loved a man. Now she has neither. And now she has to face them.
Fans of Marian Keyes should walk, not run to the Book Centre to grab a copy (and at almost 600 pages, it is a friend to keep with you for some time.)
Our first adult book for Dymphna's April Book Club.
The queen of crime fiction is back with psychological, head-spinning, compulsive read.
2014, Dublin: at St Edmunds, an elite college on the outskirts of the city, twenty-year-old medical student Theo gets up one morning, leaving behind his sleeping girlfriend, Dani, and his studies - never to be seen again.
With too many unanswered questions, Dani simply can't accept Theo's disappearance and reports him missing, even though no one else seems concerned, including Theo's father.
Ten years later, Dani returns to the college as a history professor.
With her mother suffering from severe dementia, and her past at St Edmunds still haunting her, she's trying for a new start.
But not all is as it seems behind the cloistered college walls - meanwhile, Dani is hiding secrets of her own.
Fans of Liz Nugent, Catherine Ryan Howard, Jane Casey and Andrea Mara will just lap this up.
This “beautiful, brave book,” (Jenna Bush Hager, the Today show) is the story of Rebel Wilson’s remarkable personal transformation, from a painfully shy child in Australia who literally had to be dragged to drama classes and achieved
break-out success in the US through iconic roles in Pitch Perfect, Bridesmaids, and Isn’t It Romantic.
Through “stunningly personal revelations” (The New York Times), Rebel shares the extraordinary experiences that shaped her life. A malaria-induced hallucination? An all-style martial arts fighting tournament? Junior handling at dog
shows? And this was all BEFORE she moved to Hollywood!
From her painful relationship with her father, weight gain and loss, a late-in-life sexual awakening and fertility issues, Rebel shares her incredible journey to self-love in writing that is “frank and fun.” (CBS Sunday Morning) Rebel leads
you through her hard-fought path to “making it,” constantly questioning, “Am I good enough? Will I ever find love? Will I ever change and become healthy?”
This extraordinarily entertaining memoir addresses the stories making the headlines this week, as well as documenting her personal rise to fame.
If, like me, you do not enjoy autobiographies, you will love this!
Thanks for joining me for Dymphna's April Book Club, if you would like your young reader to appear on air with me, email me on [email protected] with a short piece of audio.
You can listen back to interviews in full on The Big Breakfast Blaa
