Reviews of the 9 Books I Read in March 2026

1. The Two Roberts by Damian Barr

Scotland, 1933. Bobby MacBryde is on his way. After years grafting at Lees Boot Factory, he’s off to the Glasgow School of Art, to his future. On his first day he will meet another Robert, a quiet man with loose dark curls – and never leave his side.

Together they will spend every penny and every minute devouring Glasgow, all the while loving each other behind closed doors. They will become stars as the bombs fall, hosting wild parties with the likes of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon and Elizabeth Smart. But the brightest stars burn fastest.

The Two Roberts is a profoundly moving story of devotion and obsession, art and class. A love letter to MacBryde and Colquhoun, the almost-forgotten artists who tried to change the way the world sees – and paid a devastating price.

My Rating: ★★★★★

I picked this up by mistake, thinking I had picked up a new Douglas Stuart novel. However, I’d already read a book by Damian Barr previously (Maggie and Me) and knew that I’d enjoyed it, so was happy to read The Two Roberts. Plus, I would say there’s not much difference between Damian Barr and Douglas Stuart’s work with both writing about working-class Glasgow.

This was a fictionalised version of a true story, featuring Robert Colquhoun and Bobby MacBryde. Two art students that became famous and rich, then poor and forgotten quite quickly. It was a beautiful story that had me Googling a lot of the names featured to learn more about these artists and the circles they ran in.

2. Love to Hate You by Camilla Isley

If Samantha’s Baker’s life were as simple as one of the movies she produces, when she – a latte-loving city girl – gets banished to the country and fights with the local hunk cowboy soon afterwards they’d fall in love.

Travis Hunt knows what it’s like to miss the city. He’s given up everything to take over the family ranch and become mayor of Emerald Creek. But how does he convince a hot-shot executive like Samantha to swap her stilettos for cowboy boots?

Small town life just can’t compete with all the hustle and bustle of New York City.

My Rating: ★★★

This was my first Camilla Isley book and I bought it in the Kindle sale as it was depicted as a small town country romance. And that it was.

However, it wasn’t anything significant and I didn’t feel much for the characters so found the love story fell quite flat for me.

I do have another Camilla Isley book on my Kindle, but of the 250+ other books on there, I don’t think I’ll be rushing to read it any time soon.

3. The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new housing development, the last thing they expected to uncover was a human skeleton. Who the skeleton was and how it got buried there were just two of the long-held secrets that had been kept for decades by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side, sharing ambitions and sorrows.

As the novel unfolds, it becomes clear how much the people of Chicken Hill have to struggle to survive at the margins of white Christian America and how damaging bigotry, hypocrisy, and deceit can be to a community.

My Rating: ★★★★

I’m very slowly making my way though the list of best 100 books of the 21st Century, and this book comes in at number 3. It was slow and a bit of a slog to get into, but it was around 100 pages in that I felt myself starting to get to grips with the story and the characters.

The overall meaning of the story was evident throughout, in terms of fairness and equality, especially given the state of the world (and in particular, America) today.

4. Pitcher Perfect (4) by Tessa Bailey

Boston Bearcats rookie Robbie Corrigan is living the dream. He’s made it to the NHL, his best friend/teammate is his roomie—and the women of Boston love them both. Life is sweet, until he meets Skylar Paige, division 1 softball pitcher, girl least likely to take anyone’s bull…and the one member of the opposite sex immune to his charms. Robbie might be dazzled by the badass pitcher, but Skylar pegs him as a filthy player and wants nothing to do with him.

Before Robbie knows it, he’s agreed to be Skylar’s fake boyfriend/love coach at an upcoming family wilderness competition where her crush will be in attendance. What could go wrong?

My Rating: ★★★

I’m deep in this series by Tessa Bailey now, with book 5 in the series already on my Kindle and waiting for me. If you’re looking for a good time with some flirty banter, some smut (a lot of smut really) and some sports thrown in, then this series is for you.

I needed something lighthearted after the last two books that I’d read and this did the trick. It’s nothing extraordinary but I’ve enjoyed the series.

5. Heart the Lover by Lily King

In the fall of her senior year of college, our narrator meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off-campus in the elegant house of a professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games.

They nickname her Jordan, and she quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. Youthful passion is unpredictable though, and she soon finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. As graduation comes and goes, choices made will alter these three lives forever.

Decades later, Jordan is living the life she dreamed of, and the vulnerable days of her youth seem comfortably behind her. But when a surprise visit and unexpected news brings the past crashing into the present, Jordan returns to a world she left behind and is forced to confront the decisions and deceptions of her younger self.

My Rating: ★★★★

I read this in one day. I had to wait months for my turn to read this from my local library, but it was definitely worth the wait. I’ve seen this book highly hyped across social media, and I can now see why.

Heart the Lover is so fast-paced that I couldn’t put it down, continuously wanting to know what happened next. Another book I read this month that begs the question, Can you love two people at once?

A heartbreaking ending that will give you a book hangover for a few days.

6. Woman Down by Colleen Hoover

Her words used to set the page on fire. But a viral backlash over her latest film adaptation forced Petra Rose to take a hiatus, resulting in missed deadlines and an overdue mortgage. Branded a fraud and fame-hungry opportunist, she learned the hard way what happens when the internet turns on you. And she’s been uninspired to write ever since.

Now, with her next suspense novel outlined and savings nearly gone, she retreats to a secluded lakeside cabin, hoping to find inspiration.

Then he shows up.

My Rating: ★★★

The newest release from Colleen Hoover, following the publicity fiasco around the movie adaptation of her popular book, ‘It Ends With Us’.

I read a review on Goodreads that said ‘the title of this book should be changed to ‘Woman Put the Pen Down’ and I can see why.

It’s the strangest thing to write a work of fiction that is so close to your own life and then beg the readers not to compare/see any similarities when it’s so clearly based on what happened with It Ends With Us.

7. Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan

It’s 1990 in London and Tom Hargreaves has it all: a burgeoning career as a reporter, fierce ambition and a brisk disregard for the “peasants” – ordinary people, his readers, easy tabloid fodder. His star looks set to rise when he stumbles across a scoop: a dead child on a London estate, grieving parents loved across the neighbourhood, and the finger of suspicion pointing at one reclusive family of Irish immigrants and ‘bad apples’: the Greens.

At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, otherworldly, broken, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Crushed by failure and surrounded by disappointment, there’s nowhere for her to go and no chance of escape. Now, with the police closing in on a suspect and the tabloids hunting their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.

My Rating: ★★

I usually love Irish fiction, but this really fell short for me. We start the book with the death of a young child with all fingers pointing at another child from a troubled family. The book could have ended there because *spoiler* it was said suspected child.

A journalist scoops the story and tries to find out more about the troubled family, but it turns out they’re just what it says on the tin, nothing exciting lying underneath. Quite like the book itself.

8. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried. When Beth’s brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn’t realize that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives. For the dog belonged to none other than Gabriel Wolfe, the man Beth loved as a teenager—the man who broke her heart years ago. Gabriel has returned to the village with his young son Leo, a boy who reminds Beth very much of her own son, who died in a tragic accident.

As Beth is pulled back into Gabriel’s life, tensions around the village rise and dangerous secrets and jealousies from the past resurface, this time with deadly consequences. Beth is forced to make a choice between the woman she once was, and the woman she has become.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Wow, wow, wow. A very strong contender for my favourite book of the year even though we’re only in March. Heartbreaking, real, raw and conflicting.

Can you really love two people at the same time? This book asks that question, while also asking how far you’d go for the people you really do love.

I can’t recommend this enough, please read it and thank me later!

9. Sugartown by Caragh Maxwell

Forced to move back in with her mother after a bad breakup, Saoirse finds herself living alongside three younger sisters she barely knows. Worse still, the brittle, distant woman who raised her is gone, replaced by a doting mother who showers her younger children with affection.

Saoirse throws herself into a new relationship (fun), rekindling childhood friendships (mostly fun), and reacquainting herself with the pubs and clubs that were the backdrop to her teenage years (somehow less fun than it once was).

It takes a chance accident to force Saoirse to face up to all the questions she’s been running away from, not least, what does it mean to return home to a place you barely recognise?

My Rating: ★★★★

Sugartown was almost too close to home for me, and has been added to my list of great Irish books by great Irish writers.

I don’t know how they do it but Irish writers like Sally Rooney, Naoise Dolan and Michelle Gallen write books that could have been my teenage diaries.

Sugartown follows a young woman returning to her hometown, living with her family and feeling like she’s regressed to being a teenager again. Incredibly relatable (and painfully so), it’s a book for anyone in their 20s who has moved away from home.