Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce

I know this will be a surprise to a lot of you but my book of the year is, drumroll... Miss Benson’s Beetle by Rachel Joyce! I loved every single page of this book, it’s just so brilliant. I’ll share my original review on my stories later but let me tell you a little bit about why I loved this book so much.

I read this one in August and it was the most perfect book for me to have picked up. At the time life was good (by 2020 standards anyway), restrictions had lifted slightly, homeschooling had finished and we’d just got Roddy (look how tiny he was in picture 2) but my mental health wasn’t great at all and I was kind of in denial about how bad it was.

Picking up Miss Benson’s Beetle allowed me to escape and head off on a wonderful journey with Margery and Enid. I wanted devour their story, but I also never wanted it to end. It made me laugh and it made me cry. At the very end of the book there’s a line which I immediately copied down on to a post-it note and stuck on my bathroom mirror and it was this line that gave me the nudge that I needed. At 43 years old I decided it was time to finally get some help to try and deal with my anxiety and I’m so glad I have.

Miss Benson’s Beetle is such a wonderful life-affirming story of female friendships and following your dreams and reading it brought me joy in a year when I needed it most. Rachel Joyce always creates the most wonderful characters, if you haven’t read Harold Fry and Queenie Hennessy yet add them to your list, but for me this one was just such a special read.

I think sometimes the right books fall into our hands at the right time and for me this year Miss Benson’s Beetle was that book.

If you haven’t read it yet, I would obviously highly recommend it and I think it would be a brilliant book to read in January to help chase those blues away.

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one, have you read it yet and did you love it as much as I did? Also let me know what your favourite book of the year has been.

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Have a great day 💕