Summer is coming and that is excuse enough for us to spend hours in the sun on the deck with a good book. Here is what our team of reviewers – Lucinda Diack, Belinda O’Keefe and Luisa Osborne – have been poring through this month.

Make It Make Sense
Lucy Blakiston & Bel Hawkins
Hachette New Zealand

This collection of essays is validation for anyone who has grown up in the digital age. Written by the brains behind Aotearoa’s online phenomenon Shit You Should Care About, it navigates the duality of a life online and real life.

Shit You Should Care About was started by a group of university friends in 2018, and has since amassed 3.3 million followers on Instagram, firmly cementing them in the global news space. They write with a Gen Z/Millennial lens in their daily newsletter, covering everything from Harry Styles to world politics.

Bel and Lucy aren’t just compelling in their online presence. Their unique voices drew me in, and had me nodding along with their musings.

What started as a quick flick-through turned into a late-night reading session! Perfect for the chronically online generation. LO

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Here One Moment
Liane Moriarty
Macmillan Australia

If you knew your future, would you try to fight fate? This is the theme of the latest novel from bestselling author Liane Moriarty, who once again has us enthralled with a mind-twisting, eccentric tale.

On a routine flight from Hobart to Sydney, one passenger changes the lives of everyone she comes into contact with – predicting how they will die and at what age. In the time that follows, as her predictions start to come true, the passengers are forced to think differently about their lives.

Told from several viewpoints it is at times a slow-moving storyline, but as the pieces start to fall into place I couldn’t put it down.

A book that will leave you focusing on the important things around you, it is another Moriarty masterpiece. LD

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The Suspect
Rob Rinder
Century

When Britain’s beloved breakfast TV presenter Jessica Holby dies live on air, junior barrister Adam Green is assigned to assist with the case. The evidence points towards celebrity chef Sebastian Brooks, but as Adam dives deeper, multiple suspects come to light.

The atmospheric court scenes are skilfully depicted (the author is a barrister, from TV series Judge Rinder), and the short punchy chapters dedicated to phone conversations with Adam’s interfering mother are hilarious.

The novel has a multitude of characters which took me a while to get my head around, but they all fell into place in the end. A fun, clever and entertaining whodunnit mystery.

This is the second novel featuring Adam Green, but is a great standalone read too. BO

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Women Uninterrupted
Brodie Kane
HarperCollins NZ

My husband will laugh that I am a bit of Brodie Kane fan girl, often quoting things I have learned on her Kiwi Yarns podcast, so I was delighted to get my hands on her book.

Whether you are a fan or not, there is plenty to take inspiration from here. She is from the ‘women can have it all club’ and whether it is illustrating how to fake it until you make it; how to push through the pit of despair or pick yourself up after redundancy, there are plenty of stories to draw from. Described as ‘yarns on a life lived at a million miles’, it is exactly that.

There are plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, and the odd cringe-worthy one, but at its heart this is an honest insight into the trials and tribulations of life, and how it is the stories and the learnings we take from them, that make us who we are. LD