Bubbly and addictive, the best romantic comedy we've read in ages

Will keep you up all night in a sweaty, addicted reading frenzy

Very entertaining and very funny

Jewell writes with invigorating zest and lashings of emotional intelligence - pop fiction at its proudest

Warm, funny, realistic and immensely readable

A lovely book . . . informed with a wholesome desire to please and entertain

This is a gem

Stands out from the mass of chick-fic like a poppy in a cornfield . . . Glitters with insight

Praise for Lisa Jewell

Addictively readable

Terrific

A joy . . . a fun summer read

Tackles serious issues with humour - proving that chick-lit can be intelligent, interesting and huge fun

A triumph

Top marks. Fantastic

Moving and intelligent

Magnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners

Jewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction

Fans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into

The Parisian is extraordinary—wise, ambitious, and lavishly rewarding. With luminous prose and rare compassion, Bella Hammad offers her readers an absorbing story of war and identity, of love and independence, of hope and history. It’s an astonishing novel, heralding the arrival of a major talent.

With masterful lyricism and unflinching insight, The Parisian captures the personal passion and political violence of a nascent nation’s struggle for independence. Hammad has written a profound and intoxicating epic, brimming with unexpected, vivid imagery and unforgettable characters. Hers is a fresh voice of the first order.

Superb… There’s romance and adventure and adversity… sublimely written.

Isabella Hammad shows a rare maturity, both in her marshalling of a huge cast of characters and in her ability to illuminate such a politically charged period of history without didacticism or literary showboating.

Sumptuous and sharply observed – an old-school novel to lose yourself in.

Hammad taps into the satisfying slow-burn style of classic literature with a storyline that captures both the heart and the mind…This is an immensely rewarding novel that readers will sink into and savor.

An assured debut novel that sets the life of one man against the tumultuous backdrop of Palestine in the waning years of British occupation… Closely observed and elegantly written.

Undeniably beautiful.

An engrossing, sweeping novel.

The are moments of such lyric beauty in The Parisian, Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, that you want what they describe to be permanently closed, hers to be the final word… [The Parisian] also has a close grasp of history, and the high quality of its writing never fades.

The Parisian by Isabella Hammad has already won advance praise from Zadie Smith, and deservedly so: this tale of a Palestinian immigrant... is beautiful historical fiction.

Hammad traces her protagonist’s emotional journey with great sensitivity, against a backdrop of historical events… a vivid, capacious historical novel.

The Parisian is a graceful and balanced book, animated throughout by an immense social intelligence… a pleasure to read.

A sweeping historical novel that opens in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire… The Parisian calls to mind a 19th-century novel.

Complex, subtle and challenging… [The Parisian is] excelling––with a powerful ending that is moving in the way it knits together the themes of self-betrayal and social and political treachery.

Reconciling oneself with the pain and pleasure of the ties that bind one to certain people and places is something that lies at the heart of Hammad’s novel… the world Hammad paints is a rich one.

Hammad… convincingly weaves the conversations and arguments around the Palestinian table, inviting the reader to join the friends and family who are full of complexity and humanity, and refuse to be defined by the tragedy that is befalling them… To read The Parisian is to gradually get to know a friend, like drinking tea with a favourite uncle and hearing about family stories, gossip and politics.

A timely reminder of what matters: kindness and love

This gloriously warm novel felt heaven-sent when it appeared in deepest lockdown

A new book from this wonderful writer is always a joy... Tyler packs feeling and insight into every single sentence

I adored Redhead by the Side of the Road... It is so subtle, and so brilliant as are all Tyler's novels... Witty and warm, its only fault was that I wanted it to be twice as long!

Tender and beautifully paced

Compassionate and alert to the complexities in even the most ordinary lives, the book reminds us why, at 79, Tyler is held in such high regard

The qualities that have long won Tyler admiration and affection - wry humour, shrewd perception, characters who leap off the page with authenticity - are in generous supply

You can't go wrong with Anne Tyler. She makes it look easy creating characters that feel so believable, so three-dimensional

Tyler engrosses with the 'and-thenand-then' of domestic detail

I do think the world would probably be a better place if everyone read Anne Tyler . . . She's such a brilliantly empathetic writer - there's no 'them' and 'us' in Tyler's world - and she often writes from the perspective of the kind of people who you would walk past and barely notice in the street . . . Reading Tyler helps people to become better people, and I really fully believe that

Tyler's irresistibly readable 23rd novel follows Micah, a socially inept, OCD-ish IT man whose orderly life is turned upside down by the arrival of a son

Tyler's affectionate and quietly observant novel reveals her deep empathy for the hidden struggles of everyday lives

Another shrewd yet kindly novel about the mysterious business of family life by one of the world's great writers

A charmingly offbeat love story

The narration here is a joy: you will be leaning towards the speaker to catch every nuance of Tyler's gently comediccharacterstudy of the Baltimore bachelor and fix-it man Micah Mortimer