Bookish Christmas Presents #RaisingHare #ChloeDalton #ShyCreatures #ClareChambers #ChristmasPresents

Good morning everyone I hope you had a great Christmas. Here are some of the fabulous Christmas presents I received this year.

The two books I bought with vouchers I received at work and the reading journal I received from my lovely sister. I’m very excited to read the two books as I’ve been hearing lots of great things about them and I can’t wait to start my new reading journal. There’s only 32 entries so I’ll either just put my favourite reads in there or I’ll ask for another one for my birthday. There’s a blue one which might be nice.

I’m back to work today which should be fun as we’ll hopefully have people coming in to spend their Christmas vouchers. I’m then taking the boys for a haircut – always stressful as my youngest doesn’t like the clippers. We’re then going to see my mum as my aunty and uncle are over which will be lovely as I haven’t seen them this Christmas time.

Did you get any bookish Christmas presents?

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end. This happened to me.

When lockdown led busy professional Chloe to leave the city and return to the countryside of her childhood, she never expected to find herself custodian of a newly born hare. Yet when she finds the creature, endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm, she is compelled to give it a chance at survival.

Raising Hare chronicles their journey together and the challenges of caring for the leveret and preparing for its return to the wild. We witness an extraordinary relationship between human and animal, rekindling our sense of awe towards nature and wildlife. This improbable bond of trust serves to remind us that the most remarkable experiences, inspiring the most hope, often arise when we least expect them.

Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers

In all failed relationships there is a point that passes unnoticed at the time, which can later be identified as the beginning of the decline. For Helen it was the weekend that the Hidden Man came to Westbury Park.

Croydon, 1964. Helen Hansford is in her thirties and an art therapist in a psychiatric hospital where she has been having a long love affair with Gil: a charismatic, married doctor.

One spring afternoon they receive a call about a disturbance from a derelict house not far from Helen’s home. A thirty-seven-year-old man called William Tapping, with a beard down to his waist, has been discovered along with his elderly aunt. It is clear he has been shut up in the house for decades, but when it emerges that William is a talented artist, Helen is determined to discover his story.

Shy Creatures is a life-affirming novel about all the different ways we can be confined, how ordinary lives are built of delicate layers of experience, the joy of freedom and the transformative power of kindness.