Love letters can be haunting

POSTSCRIPT by Cecelia Ahern (HarperCollins £16.99, 400 pp) THIS is the sequel to Ahern’s bestseller P.S. I Love You, which sold more than 1 million copies and was made into a film starring Hilary Swank.

Here, it’s seven years since Holly’s husband died and left her a series of letters to open in the months afterwards. Thanks to her job and new relationship, Holly is sure she’s moved away from the misery and confusion of that all-encompassing grief.

Well, that is until a group inspired by her husband’s letters get in touch wanting help with orchestrating their own goodbyes. She quickly finds herself back in a place she thought she’d left.

Holly has to confront difficult questions about whether embracing the future means betraying the past, and whether her husband’s intentions behind writing the letters were not as selfless as she believed.

Fans will love this update. THE GRACE YEAR by Kim Liggett (Del Rey £14.99, 416 pp) I REALLY wanted to love this feminist dystopia, but the further I got, the more I found myself thinking about many other long-adored books.

It’s like being inside a crazy mash-up of Vox, The Hunger Games, Lord Of The Flies and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Protagonist Tierney lives in a patriarchal society where a woman’s only value is her ability to breed and hideous punishments are doled out for even the slightest transgression.

When girls reach 16, they are sent into a deeply hostile forest environment where they must fend for themselves, trying to avoid the poachers who are paid handsomely for each girl they kill.

They turn against each other, but Tierney realises this is all part of the oppressive plan against them. The tale doesn’t feel original. OVERDRAWN by N.J. Crosskey (Legend £8.99, 288 pp) ANOTHER dystopian read but, this time, ageism is the focus. Crosskey paints a terrifying and profoundly upsetting portrait of a future in which the ‘snowflake’ generation is being culled by euthanasia.

This is promoted as a choice, but it’s hardly voluntary in a society that insists living with dementia is an unpatriotic act. The NHS is long gone, and patients must purchase medicines themselves, using credits that pass to children upon a parent’s death.

The children, mostly in dire financial straits, don’t want their inheritance wasted, so encourage their parents to do the ‘right thing’.

Old Henry, however, won’t give up on his beloved wife, while twentysomething Kaitlyn is determined to keep her brother’s life support on.

This compelling page-turner is so disturbingly real, I can’t stop thinking about it.