A books podcast made by readers
Welcome to The Book Club Review, the independent podcast about the books that get people talking, hosted by Kate and Laura. From literary prize shortlists to book club favourites we’re always on the hunt for those books that provoke conversations, the ones we can’t wait to share, the ones perfect for book club. With our cast of regular and special guests, we promise you honest opinions and lively debate. As featured in Vogue, Stylist, the iPaper, Waitrose Weekend and BBC Radio 5 Live. Listen via your favourite podcast player or browse our archive for back episodes full of book recommendations. If you want to find your way to some really good books, there’s no better place to start. Wondering if we’ve covered one of your favourites? Type the title into the search tab to find out.
Just out, listen to our most recent episode
Lucas Oakeley joins Kate to discuss Nearly Departed and literary love stories with complexity over happy endings. Book recommendations, The Boys Book Club, and Valentine’s menu ideas – everything you need for the perfect literary Valentine’s Day weekend. Listen via the media player or head to the episode page for full shownotes.
What makes a bestseller? Is it the quality of the writing, or just the right book at the right time? This week Kate is joined by co-host Laura Potter and returning guest Phil Chaffee to find out. Listen here or head to the episode page for full shownotes.
New Year, new intentions. Find the right book with Bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for the booklist and full shownotes.
We’re celebrating the end of the year with a look back over our favourite reads of 2025. With Phil Chaffee and Sarah Oliver. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for the booklist and full shownotes.
Explore this year’s Booker Prize shortlist on episode #182 of the Book Club Review! Hosts Kate and Laura are joined by contributors Phil Chaffee and Martin Vovk to discuss and debate the six shortlisted novels, plus hear our live reaction to the winner’s announcement. Head to the episode page for the booklist and shownotes.
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Reviews, recommendations and more.
NEW EPISODE • Nearly Departed, Love, Loss and Literary Fiction, with @lucasoakeley • Link in bio
As listeners will know, we love a good romance novel with a guaranteed happy ending. But what about literary fiction where love takes centre stage, but the reward is complexity rather than certainty? Recorded on location at London’s iconic Housmans bookshop, I’m joined by Lucas Oakeley, author of Nearly Departed - a novel that brilliantly combines rom-com tropes with real emotional depth. It’s the story of Joel, whose girlfriend Beth dies but doesn’t quite leave. She made him promise to find new love within three years, and now she’s back as a ghost to keep an eye on him.
We talk about how grief and humour can sit side by side in fiction, we swap recommendations for love stories that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page - think Kazuo Ishiguro, David Nicholls, and yes, Wuthering Heights.
Plus, Lucas shares his go-to Valentine’s recipe - a slow-simmered Sunday sauce - and tells us about The Boys Book Club, the organization he’s co-founded to get more men reading and talking about fiction.
Books, food, cocktails, and conversation. Everything you need for a literary Valentine’s weekend. Listen via the link in the bio, or wherever you get your pods.
#bookspodcast #nearlydeparted #romcombooks #boysbookclub #thebookclubreview @bedfordsq.publishers @lucasoakeley
This week’s Reading Diaries • Out now, free to read on Patreon - link in the bio • Reasons to read Heated Rivalry, the sauna master, The Blue Book by Amitava Kumar, Ludwig vs. The Count of Monte Cristo, does a canapé taste better when it has been handed to you at the Faber Books Spring Showcase?, Project Hail Mary audiobook, Doireann ní Ghriofa, and The Mother is Restless by Gemma Parker
New episode for Patreon subscribers • One of the great joys of having subscribers on Patreon is that some of them are also bookshop owners!
In this episode we’re travelling to Warrenpoint, Northern Ireland with Helene Heaney of Elk Books, an independent bookshop that opened just six months ago.
Helene made the leap from lifelong reader to bookshop owner, and we talk about what it really takes to turn that dream into reality: the scary moments, the joyful ones, and the books she’s hand-selling to everyone who walks through the door.
If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to open a bookshop - or you just love hearing about people who follow their passion - this conversation is for you.
Head to Patreon to listen now (link in bio) 📚
#bookshop #indiebookshop #newbusiness #bookpodcast #patreon northernireland
This week’s Reading Diaries • The Secret of Secrets, cafe curtains, the Prague sex museum, the pleasures of a lobster pot, the Giant Irish Elk, Big Kiss, Bye-Bye, how to spell ‘evaporate’ and an October release I’m excited about.
Sunday bookstack • THE SECRET OF SECRETS by Dan Brown, THE HAPPY YEARS DIARIES 1944-48 by Cecil Beaton, THE ROY STRONG DIARIES 1967-1987, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO and BIG KISS, BYE BYE by Claire-Louise Bennett
🎧📚 NEW EPISODE • New year feeling more bleak than brilliant? How about a reading reset. In our latest episode, I met up with bibliotherapist Ella Berthoud @infinite.bibliotherapy_in her beautiful art studio to talk about those problems that vex every reader: how to find more time to read, how to beat reading slumps and how to read more deeply without it all starting to feel like homework.
Listen in for loads of great reading recommendations, plus some ideas to help you feel more inspired about reading those books already waiting on your shelves.
Featuring 📚 The Novel Cure by @infinite.ellaberthoud (@canongatebooks) 📚 Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid (@hutchheinnemann) 📚 Cursed Daughters by @oyinkan.braithwaite @oyinbraithwaite (@atlanticbooks) 📚 The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (@williamcollinsbooks) 📚 A Place Called Winter by Patrick Gale @trevilley (@tinder_press) 📚 Metamorphoses by Ovid (@penguinclassics) 📚 Look Closer by @robertdouglasfairhurst (@penguinukbooks) 📚 A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (@pushkinpress) 📚 Dálvi by @authorlauragalloway (@allenandunwin) 📚 The Artist by @lucysteeds (@johnmurrays) 📚 The Hounding by @xenobepurvis (@hutchheinnemann) 📚 Call Me Ishmaelle by Xiaolu Guo @xiaolu_impressions (@chattobooks @vintagebooks) - and many more!
Out now wherever you get your pods or at the link in the bio 🎧
#bookrecommendations #bibliotherapy #readinglist #bookpodcast #newyearreading whattoread
SUNDAY BOOKSTACK • Sun 11th February • MOTHER MARY COMES TO ME by Arundhati Roy, NONESUCH by Francis Spufford, BIG KISS, BYE-BYE by Claire Louise Bennett, THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO by Alexandre Dumas and THE NOVEL CURE by @infinite.ellaberthoud and Susan Elderkin
Next episode of the pod #186, featuring Ella and all kinds of good ideas for beating the January blues and busting reading slumps plus some brilliant book recommendations - out tomorrow.
Upcoming • NONESUCH, the new novel from Francis Spufford. @faberbooks
NONESUCH is set in London during World War 2 and we meet Iris Hawkins, a young woman who works as a secretary in a city bank but dreams of becoming an investor herself – a career path that as a woman is completely closed to her. But Iris is no ordinary young woman, she’s smart and resourceful, and looking for opportunity. And it’s a time of change as war is coming. She meets Geoff who works in television at the BBC. She also meets Geoff’s father who turns out to be connected with a battle that is being fought along supernatural lines. As the blurb says
BOOK
‘soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand. And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.’
If you love Francis Spufford’s writing this will not disappoint – I think he gets better and better with every book, and that’s saying something because Golden Hill was so great. The characters are vivid, London is brilliantly evoked, it feels like a novel that touches all the senses, you can really lose yourself in it. It has something of the magic of children’s stories about it, but in a firmly grown-up setting. If you like Phillip Pullman I think you’ll love this, and he also does something else I love which is this sense of something ineffable, spiritual, the meaning hidden away behind ordinary moments, the mystery and magic.
I was so lucky I got to read it over Christmas, because there’s one scene in a church with carols sung by candlelight that seemed to me one of the most perfect things I’d ever read.
My husband’s grandfather lived to 104 and he said the secret to a long life was you always had to have something to look forward to. So I give you Nonesuch which is out here in the UK on February 26th. I hope you love it as much as I did.
#nonesuch #francisspufford #bookspodcast #bookpodcast #bestbooksof2026
More recent episodes
Kate and Laura swap notes on their Autumn reading, while gearing up to dive into the Booker Prize shortlist. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Kate and Laura dive into two recent book club reads, Universality by Natasha Brown and Sparks of Bright Matter by Leeanne O’Donnell. Did they make for good book club books? Plus recent reads and we hear from a book club with a brilliant twist. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Kate and Joseph Dance discuss a favourite topic among literary aficionados, books that explore the world of books and reading. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Kate and Laura talk books in Seattle, including recent reads and bookshop favourites. Also featured, literary cocktails. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Join Kate in New York as she drinks cocktails and chats books with Christopher Hermelin of So Many Damn Books and Drew Broussard of The Lit Hub Podcast. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Inspired by the recent Apple adaptation of Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, we’re diving in to all things book to TV and film. Find out our favourites, plus we hear from Philippa Donovan, literary scout, who gives us the inside track on what it takes for a book to succeed on the screen. Listen via the media player below or head to the episode page for full shownotes and a transcript.
Daisy Buchanan joins Kate to explore the healing power of books and reading to inspire, comfort and fortify – and generally bring us joy Listen here or head to the episode page for full show notes.
With New Year’s resolutions still in mind it’s the perfect time to step into a world of philosophical musings and practical wisdom with Oliver Burkeman. Meditations for Mortals is his latest book designed as a four-week mental retreat, promising to help readers lead a ‘saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life’. He joins Kate to discuss it. Listen here or head to the episode page for full show notes.
Join Kate, Sarah, Phil and Laura as they consider the NYT’s Best Books of the 21st Century list, and come up with a Book Club Review Top 20 picking up on the ones they think were overlooked. Listen in to find out if they’ve picked any of your favourites. Listen here or head to the episode page for full show notes.
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Discussion, debate, even a little dispute
Every month we bring you a new episode. That could be Book Club where we chat about the book read most recently by one of our book clubs. An interview with a book club, bookshop or book lover. Or Bookshelf, an episode dedicated to the books we’re reading outside of book club – the ones we get to pick and choose.