5 new books to read this week

A very fun time-bending young adult novel and Kathy Wang’s new one about finding satisfaction make the list this week…

Fiction

The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang is published in hardback by Abacus, priced £16.99 (ebook £11.99). Available June 26

Joan Liang, born in Taiwan, never imagined her life would lead to falling in love and marrying a wealthy American, on his fourth marriage, and raising his young children. Yet, through a series of unexpected events, that’s where she finds herself. She constantly questions what it means to be fully satisfied and what brings true happiness as she negotiates the highs and lows of life’s journey. As she gets older and wiser it culminates in the creation of The Satisfaction Café, a place where people go to be heard and connect through conversation. This novel offers an intimate portrait of a woman navigating life’s many complexities. Wonderfully written, with real depth and empathy, it reveals the strengths and flaws of its characters with warmth and honesty. A captivating, thought-provoking read.
9/10
Review by Jacqueline Ling

Havoc by Rebecca Wait is published in hardback by riverrun, priced £16.99 (ebook £7.99). Available July 3 

Rebecca Wait has a glorious turn of phrase and a dazzling ability to go on peculiar tangents that never detract, but only ever add to a character’s experience. Her last book, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, tackled an odd, strained relationship between a mother and her three children, and Havoc begins with another disastrous mother-daughter relationship. It’s one that pushes 16-year-old Ida to flee the remote Scottish island she lives on with her mum and bolshy sister Charlotte, for a scholarship at a ramshackle girls’ boarding school perched on a cliff in Eighties England. Once there though, neither the students nor the teachers create the peaceful sanctuary Ida hoped to settle into, and then a bizarre sickness of seizures begins to spread through the school. Not laugh-out-loud funny, Wait’s writing is dry and droll, her characters twisty, thoughtful and highly specific, and Havoc is a total blast of a read, perfectly pinpointing where tragedy and wryness meet.
8/10
Review by Ella Walker

Bitter Honey by Caryl Lewis is published in hardback by Doubleday, priced £16.99 (ebook £8.99). Available now

Bitter Honey is a story about three women, who have been forced together by grief, dealing with a harsh Welsh winter in a secluded orchard house. They slowly open up and learn to understand one another’s varied experiences of womanhood and emerge in the spring with a new appreciation for each other and the living world around them. Caryl Lewis roots the novel in the static location of the orchard and lets time unfold around her characters. Although the letter interludes and extended beehive metaphor are a little pretentious at times, they create a looming presence that is successfully felt throughout. While Bitter Honey is a story built on loss, identity is at its heart, alongside a simple reassurance that it is never too late to find yourself, and let others find you, too.
7/10
Review by Laura Kee

Non-fiction

The World Within by Guy Stagg is published in hardback by Scribner UK, priced £20 (ebook £10.99). Available July 3

New arrival. pic.twitter.com/tDvCPcF6cq

— Guy Stagg (@GuyStagg) June 13, 2025

In The World Within, Guy Stagg – author of The Crossway – explores the lives of three 20th-century thinkers: philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, poet and painter David Jones, and writer Simone Weil. Travelling to Klosterneuburg, Austria, Caldey Island, Wales, and Solesmes, France, Stagg visits the places where they found quiet solace in times of crisis and examines how their solitude influenced their work and genius. Stagg’s curiosity gives us a fresh perspective on their lives as he draws connections between place, mental health and creativity. Yet the book should not be viewed solely as research. At times, it feels as if we are reading Stagg’s diary while he searches for parts of himself through the paths of his three subjects. In an age riddled with noise and distraction, The World Within feels timely. It reminds us that silence and solitude are vital for self-discovery.
7/10
Review by Svetlana Chigozie Onye

Children’s book of the week

Skipshock by Caroline O’Donoghue is published in paperback by Walker Books, priced £16.99 (ebook £12.34). Available now

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Skipshock is so clever and novel. When Margot curls up on the train to boarding school in Dublin, she is utterly bewildered to wake up on an ornate train where the staff’s faces have been inlaid with metal plates to make them look like pigs. With no ticket and Ireland not appearing on any map in this place, a curious boy with a salesman’s suitcase, luminous skin and a crescent scar on his face steps in to help. As Moon instructs Margot in this new dimension where travel is banned but for the select few, and each world has a different number of hours in a day, determining how quickly you age, it dawns on them that there must be a reason Margot has slipped into this parallel timeline outside of her own. Brilliantly detailed, packed with peril and fraught with first love, it’s young adult fiction at its best. The (multiple) world building is superb (especially one where the buildings move, so you don’t have to), the pacing lively and the themes – of migration made illegal, communities obliterated, families separated and life being cut short – draw on news headlines without being preachy. Book two can’t come soon enough.
8/10
Review by Ella Walker

CHARTS

BOOK CHARTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING JUNE 21

HARDBACK (FICTION)
1. THe Protest by Rob Rinder
2. My Friends by Fredrik Backman
3. Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
4. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E Schwab
5. The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
6. Never Flinch by Stephen King
7. The Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa
8. A Death on Location by Reverend Richard Coles
9. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
10. The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
(Compiled by Waterstones)

HARDBACK (NON-FICTION)
1. Teen Skincare by Caroline Hirons
2. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins
3. Live to Eat by Emily English
4. How Not to Be a Political Wife by Sarah Vine
5. Boustany:A celebration of vegetables from my Palestine by Sami Tamimi
6. A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Ardern
7. The Greatest Story Ever Told by Bear Grylls
8. Don’t Believe Everything You Think By Joseph Nguyen
9. Free Ride by Noraly Schoenmaker
10. The Art and Making of Arcane by Elisabeth Vincentelli
(Compiled by Waterstones)

AUDIOBOOKS (FICTION AND NONFICTION)
1. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins
2. By Your Side by Ruth Jones
3. The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
4. The Devils by Joe Abercrombie
5. The Protest by Rob Rinder
6. Caught Up by Navessa Allen
7. Atomic Habits by James Clear
8. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Book 1 by J.K. Rowling
9. The Hotel Avocado by Bob Mortimer
10. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
(Compiled by Audible)