It is Cooke's dual ability to pick apart beautifully the daytime details of cosy family life while also exploring much loftier themes of God, truth, memory and love that set her aside as a mature, intensely emotional and intelligent writer

This is a complex, clever novel which on the whole succeeds in its high ambitions

Sublime writing... Cooke is excellent on unspoken family tensions and her characters' psychological motivations always ring true with a density that recalls Virginia Woolf. Of the younger generation of Scottish writers being published now, Cooke is one of the best.

A wise, ambitious and involving work flowering in psychological insight, it leaves less nuanced epics in its shade

Steamy, romantic and hilarious

A PERFECT book for the plane or the beach. I couldn't put it down

Another feel-good romantic romp

A juicy, saucy, hilarious read - I loved it!

This feel-good read follows a colourful cast. ****

Sex, lies and secrets - this is chick-lit at its very best

This is a book for grown-up fans of children's fantasy and would also appeal to those who loved Donna Tartt's The Secret History . Highly recommended

The Magicians is the most dazzling, erudite and thoughtful fantasy novel to date. You'll be bedazzled by the magic but also brought short by what it has to say about the world we live in

The Magicians is a spellbinding, fast-moving, dark fantasy book for grownups that feels like an instant classic. I read it in a niffin-blue blaze of page turning, enthralled by Grossman's verbal and imaginative wizardry, his complex characters and most of all, his superb, brilliant inquiry into the wondrous, dangerous world of magic

The Magicians is Harry Potter as it might have been written by John Crowley...This is one of the best fantasies I've read in ages

The author has taken all that is held dear in the fantasy genre, reverently (most of the time) tipping the hat to Rowling, Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin and others, and shown it from a completely different and unique angle

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

Jonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...

Grotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable

Compelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel

It's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned