Read With Us: The Spring 2025 Announcement

These announcement days only come 4 times a year and, before I get to the big reveal, I thought I’d share how we go about choosing our titles for Read With Us.

Generally, one of us (but usually not me) sends an email a few weeks before our discussion to get the ball rolling on this. Prize lists are scrutinized. GoodReads reviews and TBR lists are studied. Things like page numbers and author reputation and subject matter (no nuns, please) are considered.

We have a zoom call. This is something we’ve only started doing more recently and it makes the process go more smoothly. Plus we get to hang out, in a manner of speaking, and that’s pretty fun. During this zoom we talk a lot about our lives and what’s going on . . . and we eventually even talk about the books we are considering. Sometimes, it’s the right book but the timing just doesn’t work. James is a great example of that. I really wanted us to read it and discuss it but by the time it would have fit into our timeline most of you had already read it and the shipped on that had, metaphorically speaking, sailed.

The book we have chosen this time is one I had not heard of before it was proposed at our zoom call but that matters very little to me because I have immense faith in my fellow Read With Us collaborators. And, without further delay, that book is

Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell.

The author is Irish and this is her first novel, but she has won prizes for her short fiction.

From the publisher:

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.

This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

What will it take for Ciara to reinvent her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?

I think it sounds like the perfect book for us and I hope you will join Bonny and Kym and I in reading it over the next few weeks and discussing it on June 10th.