Happy New Year, you filthy animals! Hope Christmas and New Year approached you in pack formation and pincered you in a joint headlock of glee.

The holiday period has been so jammed that I haven’t been able to read as much as I’d like BUT…

Finished the luxuriously nuanced tale of An English Ghost Story by Kim Newman, and went straight into Carnosaur by Harry Adam Knight (John Brosnan’s pseudonym). The tonal shift could literally not have been more severe, but I found Carnosaur an absolute RIOT. As a big fan of dinosaurs in fiction, non-fiction and film, it kind of appealed to me on all sorts of different levels, but my word was it fun. Light, fast and easy to read, you’re thrown straight in at the deep end and the book just whizzes by. I’m going to have to dig out the film now…

Moved straight from that to the much-vaunted Long Way Home by Eva Dolan, which I’m now about halfway through. I assure you, the fuss is justified. It’s gripping in all the right ways, and surprising and enthralling to boot. It feels like the work of an old literary hand, sure and steady, but this is Dolan’s debut. What a career she has ahead of her, and her releases will surely be ones I will look out for for years to come.