I hope the image of our beloved leader Theresa May hand in hand with the newly-inaugurated president Donald J. Trump was enough to warm the cockles of your heart and confirm that 2017 is going to be a year in which love wins. That’s the message I took from it at least. *Quietly bangs face against wall until the world makes sense again*

In these parts I have been busy during January. Admittedly, I haven’t attempted to claim ownership of anyone’s reproductive rights or banned any Muslim nations from my vicinity but we can’t all be go-getters like the Donald. I have, though, overseen a bit of a revamp of my Facebook page and finally (yes, really) completed changes to the blog’s layout. I have also discovered that vlogging is a lot harder than flicking a camera on in your bedroom and talking into it for 15 minutes. I am therefore re-evaluating my plans to be a YouTube millionaire by March and pushing them back a month or two. I wouldn’t know what to do with the riches until I could waste them in the 2p arcade machines in summer anyway. Not only that but, for the first time ever, I went entirely vegetarian for January, which means that I am two things: (1) better than you, and (2) hungry.

February won’t be any quieter either. For starters, I will be taking part in my first blog tour for I don’t know how long. I figured tours are all part of being in the book blogging community so I have kicked my curmudgeonly ass into gear. The lucky tourist who I will be hosting is Susanna Beard, who will join me for an interview on 27th February to talk about her debut novel Dare to Remember. I will also be reviewing this psychological thriller at the end of the month.

I should also be writing about one of the most talked about books of 2016 this coming month: The Essex Serpent. If you are a frequenter of chain bookshops this book cannot have escaped your notice as it has been front and centre of displays for what feels like months. Behind its beautiful cover supposedly lies a story of Victorian monsters and fragile relationships to rival Dickens. I will look forward to judging this for myself.

Another book I am rather late to is The Cuckoo’s Calling. In honesty, after J. K. Rowling’s turgid Casual Vacancy, I was planning to give her post-Potter work a wide berth but I am assured by a friend that her detective stories, famously written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, are actually worth dipping into. Although Rowling is not the greatest writer in the world, she does construct plots very well and the Harry Potter series succeeds as a set of mysteries as much as anything else so I hold out some hope.

Other than that, I shall fish out my thoughts on books that are now fading into distant memories and write something up so long as I find time.

I wish you all a lovely 28 days – keep in touch!