Books Worth Your Time - Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler

I love reading - of course I do, I'm a writer. Fiction is a big love. But I find it hard to read much of it when I'm writing a novel of my own, and I fall asleep not long after my head hits the pillow these days, and lazy Sunday afternoons with a book aren't quite the same when a small child is sitting on your head demanding to be fed raisins with a toy spoon so her fingers don't get sticky. I end up reading fewer books than I used to (often using the Kindle app on my phone), and abandoning books far more frequently than I used to. I actually don't see the latter as a bad thing - books need to earn their keep both on my bedside table and in my headspace. Life's too short to stick with novels you aren't enjoying out of some sense of duty.

So, the books that I'll be recommending on here will be ones that have done just that - earned their place on my shelves, in my head and often, in my heart, and this first novel is one of those in every sense. Shotgun Lovesongs is a fantastic debut novel from author Nickolas Butler, and it's everything I want in a book. Great characters, a compelling and well constructed story, a strong sense of place - a real atmosphere of its own. It's about four friends - Hank, Leland, Kip and Ronny - from a small town, Little Wing in Wisconsin. One of them is a rock star, one's a rodeo rider - it's all-American but utterly universal as well. I'm really proud to be quoted in the UK hardback, and what I say there stands true:

'It's nostalgic, touching, funny and wonderfully written, full of characters who you fall in love with and who keep you reading to the very end. It's about growing up, friendship, the mistakes we make along the way and the people we keep coming back to - it's about home, and it's just lovely.'