dear evan hansen and an ode to loneliness

4 Oct 2022

I'm just back from a solo trip to London. I was over for a few days for a concert. I was seeing Cornelia Jakobs, she was the Swedish entrant in Eurovision this year and was my personal favourite of the year so when she announced a UK tour date I absolutely had to go. Naturally, all gigs take place in London and London alone (I've been here with Il Volo before) so if I wanted to see Cornelia, it meant a trip to London. I love London and I genuinely like exploring it so this wasn't too much of a hardship even if it meant that I did have to go all by myself.

While I was there I decided to stay an extra day so that I could finally go and see Dear Evan Hansen, a show I've loved since they released the first song back in 2016. I had planned to go and see it while I was in New York in 2017 but didn't so then when it opened in the West End in 2019 I had also always planned on going to see it but somehow never managed to get around to it. That meant that when it was announced that it was closing, I urgently needed to find an excuse to finally go and my Cornelia Jakobs concert seemed like the perfect opportunity. 

five books I've read recently

31 Aug 2022

Hi again, It's been a while since I last did a bookish update. It's actually been a while since any update but I'm back to reading and I'm back to blogging so I thought, what better way to catch you up than with some of the things I've been reading lately! Almost all of these are from August but I find that when I did my monthly wrap-ups before, I ended up reading just so I had something to post about rather than because I wanted to and I don't want to fall into that trap again so for now here are some recent reads. I enjoyed all of them but nothing has been a five-star read for me yet this year so hopefully, I'll land on one soon.


a barcelona travel diary

22 Aug 2022

I'm a pretty well-travelled person. My parents were the sort of parents who really valued travel in the early years; hence, I had visited seven different countries before I turned two! That wasn't something that slowed down as we got older either and we continued to take European trips almost every year of my childhood. One place I had never actually been to though was Spain. The classic British destination. While everyone else was out seeking sun and beaches we were wandering around some old dutch cathedral or tasting cheese (I've been to the Netherlands 10 times). That all changed though this summer when I finally took my Spanish virginity with a trip to Barcelona!

Books I Read in January 2022

1 Feb 2022

Well well well, It's been a minute since I updated here. I've been taking a break from blogging and forcing myself to post on social media in general to allow myself to fall in love with it again. And I think I'm finally ready to kick things off again. I also fell of the reading wagon a bit for a similar reason. I felt like I was reading in order to post about the books rather than just reading because I wanted to. But I've been reading again which has been great so I thought I should start with what I read last month. I got through four books all of them very different but all of them enjoyable nonetheless.

You'll Be The Death Of Me

Karen M McManus

Gifted by Penguin for TikTok content creation purposes

Ivy, Mateo, and Cal were best friends in middle school and when they all by chance run into each other in the parking lot in the midst of different personal crises they decide to skip school for the day. However while there, they discover another classmate murdered in an abandoned building and are suddenly part of a murder investigation. Not quite the day off they had in mind.

I loved One of Us is Lying and I’m always so keen to read more of Karen M McManus but I’m generally not a mystery thriller reader. It was the character arc that sold me on OOUIL rather than the mystery aspect and I guess it was similar for this one too. I just didn’t love it as much. Still a great read and story though. (also who let me make actual proper TikTok content for actual penguin. MADNESS)

Swimming In The Dark

Tomasz Jedrowski


Growing up in a communist Poland, Ludwig struggles to be himself. In this love letter to his former lover he unpacks his past - an early encounter with a local boy, his blossoming relationship with the elusive Janusz and the ever-escalating political climate in Poland.

This book managed to perfectly encompass my comfort movie genre of chill european social issue dramas in the most beautiful way. If this was an indie film on Netflix I would have ABSORBED it immediately but it's something I've never really read before. The language was so beautiful and ornate that I needed to write down my favourite quotes to come back to again and again. Words are powerful and Tomasz Jedrowski does an absolutely amazing job of stringing them together to make you see and feel and experience everything so vividly. I read it all in one sitting which is something I've struggled to do lately as well. It was heartbreaking yet had so much heart at the same time and just PLEASE READ THIS BOOK OKAY!

Franny and Zooey

J.D. Salinger


Franny and Zooey are the youngest members of the Glass family and in 1950s New York they’re trying to figure out their place in the world. In these two short stories from J.D. Salinger we learn about the Glass family and how growing up has affected each of them differently.

This is a book I’ve been planning to read for years, I’ve looked for it countless times in bookshops and never managed to find it so when I saw it on the shelf of WH Smith at the airport I figured it was destiny. I’m a little mixed on how I feel about it because I loved ‘Franny’ a lot but I really didn’t enjoy ‘Zooey’ all that much so it was very much a story of two halves for me but I’m still very glad to finally have read it after so long.

Pachinko

Min Jin Lee


Sunja is born in a village in Korea as the only surviving child of a crippled fisherman and his wife who run a boarding house. As a teenager, she falls in love with a wealthy yakuza who promises her the world but when she falls pregnant she learns that he is already married. To prevent shame on her family a kind young minister passing through on his way to a church in Japan offers to marry her instead and take on the child as his own. As she journeys with him to a new land where Koreans are not often welcomed she and her family face many trials as we follow them through almost 100 years and four generations.

I picked this one up when I was at John Sandoe in London (one of my all-time favourite book shops and definitely worth a visit next time you’re in the city). I loved this story and it had so much heart. I really felt like I was journeying through life with Sunja. I read it over the course of the whole month which I think helped with the span. I definitely cared for some characters more than others but it was so interesting to learn about a whole piece of history that I’d never read about before. This is definitely a book that I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
That's a wrap on January's reads. I'm really happy to be back to reading again and I have a lot of exciting books lined up for the next few months which I can't wait to get stuck into. Make sure to follow me on Goodreads (and also StoryGraph because I've been trying to use it more) to keep up with all my latest reading ventures. Let me know down below what you've been reading to give me some inspiration!

book recommendations based on red (taylor's version)

28 Nov 2021

It's been a HOT MINUTE since I last did a bookish post, mainly because I've not really been reading that many books. I'm sort of only averaging one or two a month at the minute so I don't feel like it's worth updating. You can see all that on Goodreads if you follow me there! I actually think my last one was book recommendations based on the Eurovision top five so maybe I'm carving myself a niche here.

Something I have been doing a lot of recently is listening to a LOT of Taylor Swift! You Belong With Me was one of the very first songs I ever bought on iTunes so I’ve been a Taylor Swift fan for as long as I’ve been a music fan. I even have my original copy of Red on CD still to this day so Red (Taylor’s Version) was something that I personally was very excited for.

I’ve tried to include a wide variety of genres and vibes here – this was a MAMMOTH task okay, she released thirty songs – that’s almost as many books as I’ve read this year alone. I ended up just opting for all the songs on the original release of the album rather than the vault songs because truly nobody has time to read that, but in case you were wondering, my favourite vault songs are Better Man, Nothing New and obviously the ten minute All Too Well!

For this post I’ve got the song, a line of the song I think is particularly poignant and connects to the book, a summary of the book and a brief thought from me on why I picked it. There’s a lot going on so I guess we’ll just jump right in.

simple ways to get your room holiday ready

22 Nov 2021

*THIS POST IS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH POSTER STORE AND CONTAINS GIFTED ITEMS*


I simply adore the festive season. It’s something that’s fairly obvious about me if you spend any time with me at all during the November/December period. I’m famous in my friendship group for always being the first one to watch and review all the latest Netflix Christmas movies so naturally I’m the first person people come to in order to get into that Christmassy mood. However, while my days are spent filled with my favourite Christmas music and the rest of the house it covered with tinsel, my room always ends up looking the same as always. I think I’ve always put it down to the space being too small to fit anything extra in but there are some really great ways to spruce up your current décor to give it a bit of a festive twist. I have lots of different posters and prints all over my room throughout the year and they usually stay fairly consistent but grabbing some new festive ones, like these ones I got from Poster Store are a really great place to start!
I’ve worked with Poster Store in the past and I’m always so impressed with the quality of the prints. So naturally, when the idea arose to spruce up my room for Christmas, I knew I could rely on them for some cute festive prints. All the posters are printed on sustainable but high-quality paper coming from responsibly managed forests which meet the highest environmental and social standards.

I already had these frames with prints in them so all I had to do was switch them up for the holiday season but if you don’t Poster Store also sell frames to fit whatever posters you choose so you’re guaranteed a perfect fit. I opted for one 21x30 sized print and one 30x40 sized print to add a little bit of intrigue with the different sizes. I mentioned that my room is quite small so I’m often apprehensive about going for massive prints so they don’t overpower the room, but I find that these sizes work perfectly together to fill the space I need.
The prints that I opted for are these two typography prints with the words ‘Let It Snow’ and ‘It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year’. I just really love the simplicity of them, and I think they add such a fun but simple festive touch. A funny coincidence about this is that I’m a massive Il Volo fan, they’re an Italian operatic pop trio if you’re unfamiliar and they actually do a Christmas Medley featuring both of these songs, the only one that’s missing is Jingle Bell Rock!
Some other easy ways to spruce up your décor for the winter season is to add some fairy lights because although they work all year round there’s just something so so festive and joyous about them at this time of year. Also light a festive candle and relax with a cup of hot chocolate in a festive mug and snuggle under some festive bedding. Have I said the word festive enough?
One really great thing about Christmas décor is that, if you do it properly, it’s sustainable. While you only use these things once a year a lot of the joy of Christmas is nostalgia and so you end up using the same things year after year because of the memories associated with them. I still use the same stocking that I got for my first Christmas in 1998. So the memories that you make with your Christmas décor now will be things that you’ll remember every time you go to put them up every year afterwards. It reminds me of the Taylor Swift song New Year’s Day - ‘Hold on to these memories and they will hold on to you”!
If you want to switch up some of your prints for the festive season, there are so many other great ones on Poster Store that you can check out and they’ve even given me a discount code for you so you can get 55% off! Use ALICE/55 at checkout for your discount and make your Christmas magical! This code is valid until 29th November for all posters, not just festive ones (except Selection) and it is not combinable with other discount campaigns and can’t be used for frames. What is your favourite way to decorate for the holidays?
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