The year's most notable anthology is 100 Queer Poems, edited by Mary Jean Chan and Andrew McMillan. It has at its core a generous and expansive definition of queerness that finds room for poets such as WH Auden, John Ashbery and Elizabeth Bishop, while including modern, innovative voices such as Verity Spott and Harry Josephine Giles. With a thematic arrangement ranging across relationships and families, the urban and natural world, and queer histories and futures, there is a great sense of kinship running through the poems

A diverse and gratifying new anthology of LGBTQ+ verse... this is an abundantly rich and rewarding collection, capturing how queer poets and their work speak to one another across generations

100 Queer Poems is more than a landmark volume; it offers a golden opportunity for readers and writers to check in, refresh, reconnect. Old favourites sit alongside emerging stars and some surprises, gifting us with an anthology that marks the present moment and ushers in a new one

[A]n exciting new voice in YA . . . this moving debut is not to be missed.

Its effortless evocations of the tides and pulls of small-town life are note perfect . . . It's often very funny, sometimes sad, always authentic and perceptive, and hugely entertaining. Beautiful

A cracker of a book. Think Kevin Barry crossed with Elizabeth Strout. The writing is that good

[The setting of] Tramore is not only a character - it is the main character of The Amusements, with its quotidian dramas and failed epiphanies and the magnetic pull it has over everyone who encounters it, from those on a family holiday, to those who are born, bred and die there. It was a joy to read

A fascinating portrait of small-town life. A joy to read

A fresh, funny, fiercely Irish novel about the vagaries of friendship, and Aingeala Flannery - wholly in charge of her lovable, eccentric cast - writes like a dream

A vibrant, evocative debut that brings the exploits of an Irish coastal town brilliantly to life

A deft collage of a novel. Ambitious and fun . . . a wonderful debut

A brilliant book. I loved meeting all these characters, who jumped off the page and stayed in my head. Aingeala Flannery is a real talent

The Amusements kept me up half the night. Aingeala Flannery is a brilliant writer. Her sentences crackle with life, energy and devastating insight into the human condition. She writes with a rare combination of compassion and black humour. Her characters live on in my mind like people I have always known

A fantastic debut novel . . . it paints a vivid picture of this seaside town, we were gripped

[Flannery] skilfully observes life in a small town and roads that are dreamed of but not taken. Characters that have a great sense of longing & yearning to leave this town behind, and yet somehow always get pulled back. A great read!

As addictive as slot machines and as exhilarating as waltzers. A great sense of place and compelling characters

[Carries] notes of Donal Ryan and Roddy Doyle for me . . . A nostalgic masterpiece, loaded with possibility and weighed down with reality, guaranteed to be this summer's must-read

Sharp as a vogue tomato slicer, it's seaside Ireland minus the dreary caravan mentality or sentimentality

If you buy just one novel next month make sure to buy Aingeala Flannery's debut. Funny, sad and most of all beautifully written

A compelling and satisfying read

Brilliant

I loved it - so good

Glorious

Beautiful

Like [William] Trevor, a wry wit permeates Flannery's storytelling

Flannery's depiction of the sounds, smells and seediness of the typical seaside resort is sharp and vivid

Charming and empathetic . . . Flannery's immense skill lies in her ability to inhabit such a wide range of characters, stepping into their shoes and capturing the nuance of each voice, each set of hopes and dreams and private, devastating heartaches

THIS BOOK is EVERYTHING. The characters are painfully, beautifully real, the writing is IMPECCABLE. Brutally honest about what we want for ourselves versus what we actually get, I LOVED it

Blackly funny

Impossibly compelling

My book of the year . . . I loved every page

Flannery excels at working that counterpoint of dark and light, comedy in the face of tragedy . . . A brilliant debut

Quietly beautiful . . . Flannery's characters are very well drawn, as is her understanding of small-town mores and idle gossip. It's a book that leaves and impression long after the final page

An amazing story