But this twist, I saw it coming, I had worked a little of it out, and I put the book down at the unravelling point and said out loud, ‘Oh my god. She is thrown out of her house, loses her livelihood and all her friends and is subject to spot checks of her house to make sure she is no longer reading or writing fiction. By the time you reach the end of this book, you are left with a creative look at loss, heartbreak and unexpected friendships. Her memoir, Daffodils, was released in audiobook in 2022, and as Eighteen Seconds in Paperback 2023.

And, just like her life has soured, so it seems has all of the MILK 🥛 she comes in contact with-it always seems to be spoiling. It feels perfect that though it’s the other way around (I wrote End of Story after Eighteen Seconds, but it will be first) they belong almost side by side. I hadn't realised until I read this just how engrained fiction is in my own life and that of my children.

Trust me, this is one of those stories where you will be well rewarded for going in completely blind! To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. It's also one of the stronger aspects of this story, and one of the reasons End Of Story will stay with me for a long time. She is mourning her lost life and is going through the five stages of grief-Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Wrapped in one of the most original and deeply-realised storylines I have read in a long time, this genre-blending book hits breathtaking new heights in contemporary fiction.

If you want a genuinely affecting book about the horrors of grief; read 'This Thing Between Us' by Gus Moreno. Pick it up when you can focus on it, because it is not to be speed-read – every chapter contains many clues that you will require as you move ahead. This book had the author’s gorgeous prose and unfaltering style stamped all over it, but with a dystopian twist.End of Story is a bold and highly imaginative tale from an author who knows how to pack an emotional punch. And though the memoir is my own truth, there’s a lot of that in End of Story too, a novel that explores themes of grief, loss, isolation, and the absolute power of the arts to heal and uplift and unite. It has often been said that the pen is mightier than the sword, and Louise Swanson paints a vivid portrayal of just how frightening the stroke of a pen can be to some people.

Swanson took me on Fern’s journey without a roadmap and where I ended up was totally unexpected and in many ways, emotional and heartbreaking. As a parent of readers, as a lifelong reader and a mother of boys, this was painful in the extreme in more than one way. I also enjoy some contemporary fiction, literary fiction and romance with a smattering of non-fiction. Fern Dostoy, once a fiction laureate with a bright future, has been robbed of her house by the river and a lifestyle that once complimented her bestselling status. So she has found a creative way of going against the ban: she is writing about her routine life in her notepad.

She had created a dystopian future where two major policies were being adopted as standard practice.