'I'm a book expert and have read more than 650 books - these are my top 5'

Claire Handscombe is in a league of her own when it comes to book knowledge. The author has worked across the book industry, having been a bookseller, working for an audiobooks company, and various publishers. She also had her own book podcast for four years, wrote for Book Riot, a book recommendations and review website, for 10 years, and now has her own Substack newsletter, If You Love That, Read This, where she recommends books for all sorts of interests.

In addition to being the author of Unscripted, a "well-written" and "lovely" romantic novel, and a few other books. Ms Handscombe has read an impressive 650 books, not including the ones she hasn't completed. Now the book master has revealed to the Express her top five recommendations for all book lovers to get on their reading list.

The first book Ms Handscombe shared with the Express is Christina Haag's New York Times bestseller, Come to the Edge. The memoir, published in 2011, is by the actress who is also a former girlfriend of John Kennedy Jr.

The pair grew up and later became housemates at university. After graduating, they saw their friendship blossom into a five-year relationship.

Ms Handscombe said: "Christina Hagg writes so elegantly, and makes not just John but also New York come alive - along with many other places. The Washington Post says this book 'lyrically precisely captures the frenetic ecstasy of early love', and I couldn't put it better myself."

Out of the hundreds of books read by the expert, one reason Hagg's Come to the Edge made the cut is its "emotional depth," and despite Hagg's association with the Kennedys, this memoir is far from "gossipy" but rather just "a really tender and personal kind of account of time with him," the expert added.

Ms Handscombe says this is a great book for anyone interested in theatre, the Kennedys, and those who love New York, as "a lot of it takes place in New York and she [Hagg] writes really beautifully about the city and what it was like to grow up in the 80s there."

Next on the list of recommendations is The Idea of You by Robinne Lee, which Ms Handscome says "is another beautifully written love story, albeit in a different vein".

She added: "This one is fiction, about an art gallery owner who takes her teenage daughter backstage after a boy band concert and then begins a passionate affair with one of the guys in the band. It's an intense read set in glamorous locales, literary fiction rather than a rom-com, and smartly explores important themes like motherhood, ageing, and fame."

Ms Handscombe read the book when she was working at a bookshop during the pandemic. A colleague recommended it to her, and she explained that, reading it during a time when everything was at a standstill and people were unable to travel, the book, being "set in lots of different places," was almost a "nice way of being able to travel in that way."

Many might be familiar with the story of One Day through the feature film released in August 2011 or the 2024 Netflix series. However, the book expert says that David Nicholls' novel is a masterclass and gives it a special mention in her top recommendations.

She said: "Many writers of my vintage cite David Nicholls' One Day as an inspiration, and I'm no exception. It's an absolute masterclass in writing characters' inner lives against the backdrop of a changing society over twenty years. It's a great will-they-won't-they love story, and also brilliant social commentary."

But how does the book stand out from its adaptations? The expert highlighted that David Nicholls does a great job of painting the characters and how they change over the years, as well as their interior monologue and what they're thinking about.

There's also one particular moment in the book where Nicholls uses the changing of wedding invitations to depict getting older.

Ms Handscombe added: "I think about it all the time, where he's talking about how wedding invitations change over [the course of] your life.

"How, when you're young and it's the round of first weddings, it's like big thick envelopes landing on your doormat, and everybody's showing off and trying to have amazing weddings and then how that changes when maybe it's the second wedding and the third wedding.

"And it's like this page of just really well-described and really emotionally intelligent sort of description of how things like that change as you get older. And I think that page is a really good example of how he sort of depicts getting older and how your friendship changes, how your way of going through life changes as well."

Describing this novel as a "true gem", Ms Handscome explained: "It tells the story of Japanese picture brides in the early twentieth century, and it does so in a haunting lyrical style that packs an emotional punch, using anaphora - deliberate repetition - and the collective 'we', which is an interesting literary device that works incredibly well here. I can only aspire to write as powerfully as this."

This is a great book for an aspiring writer who would benefit from studying how Otsuka uses a variety of literary devices to tell such an emotional story, particularly the "small details" in "very often quite spare sentences" to bring it to life.

What makes the book "so emotionally powerful" is the contrast between the actual story and the language used.

Ms Handscombe said: "It's told as the collective we, 'we got on a boat', 'we travelled' and that makes it feel like it's kind of almost a fairytale in the way that it's told, but actually it's the opposite.

"It's like a broken fairytale for these women. And I think that makes it feel really emotionally resonant because it's kind of the difference between what the sound of language feels like it's telling you, but what the content is telling you. They're so different."

Piglettes is "a wonderfully quirky book about three teenagers who form an unlikely friendship after being voted the ugliest girls in their school. They spend some of their summer cycling around France, selling sausages out of a trailer (of all things!), and each with their own reason for wanting to reach Paris on Bastille Day."

The novel found its way onto Ms Handcombe's recommendations for clear reasoning - "it's a delightful read, full of heart, and unlike anything else I've ever read".

Piglettes is actually translated from French. Ms Handcombe said: "French books don't really have rules. It's like the author writes the story how they want to write, and if the characters don't change by the end, that's fine. Because people don't always change."

The girls selling sausages out of a trailer might sound pretty random, but there is actually a smart little link. In the French version they are selling "boudin", which is not only French for black pudding, but also used as an insult to describe a woman as 'ugly', which is where the link between the characters' shared experience and the sausage-selling comes in.

Although the book is "technically a young adult novel," don't let that stop you. The fun story can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone.

Ms Handscombe said: "It's fun and it's quirky, but it's also emotionally resonant, and I think that's what makes it really unique."