Read This is a weekly post written by a guest author – often a friend of mine, or someone I’ve met on my writerly travels, each of whom recommends three books that they think deserve more recognition. If you’re interested in buying any of the books, please on the covers and give these under-rated books some love.

Read This: Louise Morrish recommends three under-rated books

Louise and I got to know each other after she invited me to come to her book group which was reading Unsettled Ground. She is incredibly generous with her support for other published writers and those just starting out, and does a lot of work with the wonderful Goldfinch Books in Alton. Here’s a bit more about her:

Louise Morrish is an author and librarian from Hampshire. She writes stories inspired by the lives of women in the past, who achieved extraordinary things, but whom history has forgotten. Her debut novel, Operation Moonlight, won the Penguin Random House First Novel competition and was published in 2022. Louise’s next novel, Women of War, will be published next year. It is based on the real life adventures of two women in World War One – Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson and Dorothy Lawrence – who defied the limits placed upon them by the patriarchy, and ultimately achieved their dreams.

Passionate about books, Louise also loves to trail run. You can find her at louisemorrish.com, on X, on Instagram and Facebook. Here are Louise’s recommendations:

Reading Lessons by Carol Atherton

A beautiful, thoughtful, vital book about the importance of stories. I loved every page. Atherton, an English teacher with a passion for literature, has spent her life teaching students all manner of novels, and trying to imbue in them the same love that she has for books. I currently manage a Secondary school library, and ink runs in my veins, just like Atherton’s I suspect, and I’ve loved books all my life. Atherton takes us through a selection of the novels and poems she has taught over her career, and for each one she explains its importance, and how she tried to teach this to her students. Her story is fascinating and moving and one everybody should read, but especially any teacher of English who might be wondering if there’s any point to what they’re doing…there’s every point!

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

A brilliant, beguiling, darkly funny tale of a spirited, subversive young ghost called Blanca, outraged that her life was cut short in her prime, determined to enjoy death to the full, who falls in love with the very much alive, cross-dressing writer George Sand. George has moved her family – two children and her lover, the composer Chopin – to Mallorca, in search of a better climate. Chopin’s health is precarious, and George longs for creative freedom, away from the constraints of home. The odd family “were strangers and strange and strangely insouciant about their strangeness.” Nothing goes to plan. I loved this!

Devotion by Hannah Kent

One of the most beautiful, evocative, heart breaking and hopeful novels I’ve read in a very long time. It follows the story of Hanne, a solitary, sensitive young woman who ‘hears’ the natural world, and who finds herself falling in love with her best and only friend Thea. When Hanne’s family and the rest of her Lutheran community are forced into exile, Hanne journeys with Thea by sea to an Australian colony. It is on this voyage that the novel takes a totally unexpected curve, and the writing sings on the page. The exquisite prose really placed me in the moment, and I was haunted by Hanne  and her story long after I finished the book. Absolutely wonderful.

Thank you Louise for being my first author on Read This. I’ve read Briefly, a Delicious Life and I agree it definitely deserves more readers and more attention. I loved it so much I included it in my top ten reads of 2023.

Have you read any of these? Do any catch your attention? Let me know in the comments. And if you’d like to be told about future Read This recommendations, you can follow me on Instagram, or subscribe to my newsletter.