Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on or the music we’re loving.

Chris Gordon is reading Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

I have fallen in love with Dolly Alderton – completely head-over-heels. I want to gift Everything I Know About Love to everyone that I love – already, I have made sure that my daughter and my best friend are reading it.

This is a wisecracking, honest memoir about being young, hopeful and hurt, and ready to get completely smashed at any old moment. It’s Alderton’s story of making it to thirty – through those terrible years of teenage angst, through her twenties when conversations with girlfriends lasted for years and absolutely everything was relevant. The book tackles feminism, friendship, sharehouses, and quite a lot of sex. Alderton writes without fear and for that reason alone, read it. We need more women sharing their stories and god knows, we need more opportunities to simply laugh out loud.

And in excellent news, Alderton also has her first novel coming out this year. Lucky us.

Bronte Coates is reading The Better Liar by Tanen Jones

I picked up this debut crime novel last week based on a friend’s recommendation and to my delight, found that I was physically unable to put it down again…

In this twisty thriller, a woman (Leslie) hires an aspiring actress (Mary) to play her long-estranged and newly dead sister (Robin) in order to collect their father’s inheritance. Under the terms of the will, no funds can be dispersed without both sisters present – a condition the father hoped would force a reconciliation – and Leslie needs the money so desperately that she can’t wait on the court to process the paperwork around Robin’s death. Told from the perspectives of all three women, dark secrets bubble to the surface as the story unfolds including details of the sibling’s history, and the reason why Leslie needs the money so badly. The Better Liar is gripping and highly entertaining, and like the best of crime fiction, grappling with bigger ideas below the surface. Highly recommended.

Jackie Tang is reading Loveboat, Taipei by Abigail Hing Wen

I picked up this YA debut off the back of a strong recommendation by my colleague Leanne Hall and I finished it in the two voracious sittings. It’s a classic fish-out-of-water coming-of-age story about high school leaver Ever Wong, whose parents send her to Taiwan for a summer holiday program that’s meant to improve her mandarin and help her reconnect with her heritage. What she finds is less of a ‘cultural’ exchange and more of a physical one, with the other teens nicknaming the camp the ‘Loveboat’ on account of all the hooking up that happens.

Abigail Hing Wen’s summer camp romcom is perfect for fans of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before or Jenna Guillaume’s What I Like About Me. One of my favourite tropes in YA is summer camp style stories where disparate groups of people are forced into close proximity, and where several characters are given a chance to shine. Loveboat, Taipei has that kind of generosity in spades. It also packs more into its carry-on luggage than you’d expect: in among all the (very frothy and fun) wooing and pashing, Wen also touches on privilege, cultural identity, filial piety, mental illness in diasporic Asian communities and much more.