Emma Lee-Potter | Writer • Journalist • Blogger

My Dark Vanessa is one of the most harrowing novels I’ve read in a long time.
The story of an abusive relationship between a 15-year-old girl and her teacher, it’s dark and disturbing, yet utterly compelling.
Once you’ve read it you won’t be able to forget it....

I started writing my blog in 2011 and I’ve never had such a long gap between posts before.
But even though I’ve written thousands of journalistic words this year I couldn’t bring myself to post a blog.
It seemed inconsequential and pointless during the pandemic and anyway, it always got banished to the bottom of the to-do list, along with paperwork, tidying up my office and sorting out the massive pile of books scattered across the floor....

I’ve been an admirer of Liz Jones’s column in the Mail on Sunday’s You magazine for years. She’s outspoken and controversial – and SO readable.
As I wrote in my blog back in 2011: “I turn to her page before anything else. I occasionally get fed up with accounts of her huge menagerie of animals but even so, she writes so well and with such disarming frankness that her diary is a must-read.”...

Stubborn Archivist is one of the most original novels I’ve read in a long time. Told in an eclectic mix of prose, dialogue, poetry, lists and snatches of Portuguese, it’s ambitious to say the least. However, this tender portrait of a young girl growing...