Exceptional... a beautifully crafted portrait of men slipping almost imperceptibly from childhood to middle-age...Combining the wistfulness of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones with the formal daring of David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, it's hard to imagine a better debut this year.

Forcibly reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides's hit The Virgin Suicides ... this deeply readable novel concerns itself with mysteries that are at once more mundane and more profound - innocence, longing, the winding journey to adulthood.

It's hard not to think of The Virgin Suicides when reading this novel...The tone is wistful, lustful, gossipy, guilty ... undoubtedly a writer to watch

A startling piece of work...Pittard powerfully evokes the intense contradictions of adolescence: the capacity to feel dread, boldness, vulnerability, nostalgia and desire in a single instant...It is an unflinching account of the dark undercurrents of youthful sexuality

A haunting debut with echoes of The Virgin Suicides...By turn dreamy, regretful and melancholy, the velvety prose explores "what if" territory, offering alternative endings for the missing girl.

Dreamlike...Unusual and compelling.

THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY is about the way our imaginations can carry us from a dispiriting selfishness to a nascent empathy, and the way we continue to inflict-or even just observe-pain until that empathy arrives.

Impressive...A story about the dark matter of adolescent desire that pulls on the heart across decades...A Poignant testimony of male adolescence, steeped in nostalgia and regret...Chilling and touching. Pittard can be harrowingly wise about the melancholy process of growing up.

One of the most impressive aspects of The Fates Will Find Their Way is how it summons up the elements of a suburban youth...Deeply felt...At its core it's about how children become adults.

Diary of an Ordinary Woman is certainly more gripping and more immediate than many novels...Forster has pulled off an imaginative feat

Captivating... Like a beloved granny's visit, we're a little bit sorry to see the end approaching

This rich novel, full of pathos, concerns the unbridgeable gaps between generations

Faulks's most vivid character is the odious John Veals, a hedge-fund manager, who relishes all the money that he makes and the power that he quietly exerts... Veals is brilliantly insidious... A thoughtful page-turner... The handsome sunset is heavily, and rightly, weighed down by dark clouds

A tragedy at sea, a miracle on paper... Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human.

This mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses

Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this

The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love

Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real

Profoundly moving, beautifully written book

A marvellous book

A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.

Lose yourself in a fantastical gastronomical journey ... This novel explores familial love in an unexpected way, and you'll be hooked from the first taste

This emotional and moving tale blew us away with its beauty

It's as beautiful as it is strange. Bender writes such lyrical sentences, you pause over them in wonder. She has an unusual take on life; and makes even the ordinary extraordinary. It's a compulsive page turner. This book is already a best seller in America, and has been embraced by book clubs. I loved it. It's one of those books you don't want to finish - and even when you have - it stays in your mind. Bender has written three previous novels. I intend to savour them all

This novel, in the style of stories like Chocolat, is a dreamy feast of gorgeous writing ... Gently, beautiful, odd, this is a story to sip and savour

An intriguing premise for an original novel about a family and its relationships

Moving and highly original, this book will make you look at food in a whole new light