For now our secrets are only ours. You press me to your chest and I am you and I am not you and we will not always belong to each other but for now it is us and here it is quiet. I rise and fall with your breath in this bed. We are safe in the pink together.” He wanted to dance to music and to enjoy the delicate nuance of spoken language. He learned the way that putting feelings into words and out into the world could ease the pressure inside, like letting air out of a balloon."

I thought I had chosen London as the place where I would make my own life, but its edges were sharp and cruel and I got caught on them, bloodying my ankles and wrists.Toon commented:“Jessica Andrews is one of the most exciting new authors writing in the UK today and I am thrilled to be publishing Milk Teeth in the wake of her sparkling debut, Saltwater. Milk Teeth is an unforgettable love story, set across some beautiful European cities, that will cause you to question what is important in relationships, how the past can influence our future decisions and how young, working-class women see themselves in contemporary Britain.” There are some really interesting themes - the feelings of a shared identity when a relationship deepens - how do we share our lives but separate our beings? And there is also plenty of chilling nostalgia around the industrialised body shaming, diet culture and magazine headlines from the mid 00s. The notion that taking up space (both literally, physically, and metaphorically through opinions and advocating for yourself) is a radical act and a really hard one to master after years of being told by society that you have to change yourself to be worthy, is really powerful. I loved a phrase used which was that our protagonist is desperately trying to be a person who is “unafraid of pleasure”

Chaney’s compelling, highly readable debut delves into the history of normality. It wasn’t until 200 years ago that the word “normal” was even applied to humans: prior to that it was purely a mathematical term. But 19th-century developments in science, and the growing popularity in statistics, prompted a search for averages – and subsequently norms – in human health, experience and behaviour. Encompassing everything from sex surveys to baby weight, beauty standards to sexuality, this is a brilliantly engaging work of popular science. Orwell’s Roses However, as is often the case in the novel, the narrator is riven by a sense that this decision is not really her own. She wrestles with the challenge of understanding what it is she wants and with finding ways to express and assert her agency. This book astonished me, both stylistically through its fluid imagery and its use of the second person narrative, making us feel impossibly close to the main female protagonist while keeping her unknown to us. And her - much like she does her friends and the man she is enraptured by - pushing us a safe distance away. It is that - the impossibly gorgeous language that is hard to define - and the way this book grapples with so many heavy themes, all of them ghosts that trail through her life, still able to graze their phantom hands against the reins of her life.Andrews’s 2019 debut novel, Saltwater(Sceptre),exploredthe experience of young women todayandwent on to win the 2020 Portico Prize, with the judges calling it a“powerful, provocative and poignant tale”. Not only does Andrews describe the world she's created in garish (read "vivid and lyrical"?) unnatural gradients and hues, but the characters of this world speak this way too. The love interest writes her a message at one point: regarding how Lucy would use the Shard as a landmark to orient herself in the city] "I feel an affinity with the Shard, even though it is a symbol of the wealth and status I am so far removed from." You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.

Also, it felt really important to write a book that had positive sex between a man and a woman in it. A lot of the books I read are about trauma and rape and sexual abuse. And while it’s really important that we have those conversations, I feel like there’s not much representation of positive sexual experiences. If we only have the trauma, and we don’t have the positive things as well, then how do we really move on from it, because then do you not feel afraid, and do you not feel hurt, and do you not feel scared?Can you write a simile?' I ask him. ‘If you had to compare pizza to something, what would you compare it to?' Our protagonist is disconnected from her body, from her aspirations. She worries whether people love her for herself or for how she looks. Milk Teeth is a story of loneliness, belonging, identity, and overall love - and how we’re deserving of it.