What book are you curling up with this winter?

There are some things I love about winter, I love wearing ugg boots, I love eating mashed potato and I love lying curled up in bed and reading.

At the moment I am reading Under the Influence by Jacqueline Lunn and loving it.  In fact I am trying to read particularly slowly not just so that I can absorb every word, but also because I just don’t want the book to end.

I get like that with books when I get attached to the characters, I don’t want to finish because I don’t want to lose touch with these new friends and I don’t want to even try and imagine my day to day life without them.

The book cover reads:

Eve Hardy is exactly where she wants to be in life. She is a successful concert cellist for the Royal Opera, living with her handsome partner in his London apartment. Everything is possible.

Sarah lives in Sydney with her husband and two young children. She thrives on being the centre of their world.

When the sudden death of their old school friend Meg brings them back together for her funeral in country New South Wales, it is time to face the past and the secret they all shared.

A secret that began at boarding school with that girl, Rebecca Thornton – beautiful, wanted, gifted at maths, English and spotting losers who didn’t know they were losers yet. A schoolgirl secret that changed the women they became.

Sometimes, you can bury your past. Sometimes, the past tries to bury you.

I’ve befriended all the characters in Under the Influence (even though I am fully aware that the one character is no longer alive and the one is a real right bitch).  That said they were easy to befriend – as the book is told they are only ever so slightly younger than I am (and how great is at to see a book centred around people in their mid thirties) but when the book flashes back to their days at boarding school and where the friendship began I can relate even more so. God teenagers can be hideous.  The character are  real and they live lives I can relate to – hell one of the characters is even a frequent blog commenter.

The story, of three childhood friends who have bonded at boarding school and gather again for the funeral of one of the friends is magnificently told, heart-achingly raw and exceptionally relateable. Read it – you will love it.

What are you reading at the moment? Are you loving it?