A winner at Music Week’s Women In Music Awards in 2019, Mac staged her second AMP Conference earlier this year. MacManus is a listener, but there’s a sense that she’s now listening to her own professional desires. I watch my eldest when he reads his books to me at night, his little flat voice bulldozing through the words. It can be easy to force references into a story to get a sense of place and space but every word of MacManus’ writing has purpose.

The story follows Orla’s “coming of age” in London, relationships, drug taking, partying and getting a foot on the ladder in the music world. Photograph: Stephanie Sian Smith View image in fullscreen Annie Macmanus ‘captures a time and a place with heart and irresistible momentum’. I found lots of it very relatable - the drunken ‘encounters’, whether the boy you like is going to reply to your messages, navigating relationships in a foreign city and trying to find where you fit in.

I enjoyed reading about London itself and the memories I have as well of house sharing, meeting new people, the excitement of the city, but ultimately I found it too difficult to like. Alongside the Mill Road gang, we also get to explore the workers of two different record labels Orla works at, as well as the delightful group of Irish immigrants that patronize the Irish pub Orla works in - not to mention its owner, Pat, a no-nonsense woman holding on to her heritage through the pub.

At one point it felt like I was reading an edgier but far less enjoyable version of Marian Keyes' Rachel's Holiday. The Mess We’re In by Annie Macmanus published May 11th with Wildfire and is described by Sara Cox as ‘beautifully painted, well set up and realistic’. It’s a look at a fairly ordinary, albeit tragic family who have to overcome heartache and addiction - this isn’t a novel with one big defining moment or sudden plot twist, but one that captures the sadness of living with these things every day, and feels all the more powerful for that. Orla has moved to London from Ireland in pursuit of a career in the music industry- Orla sings, produces and plays guitar, so music is a huge part of her existence. Sean's storyline is topical and realistic, a heartbreaking portrayal of the human cost of addiction and its legacy.spanning almost four decades, macmanus engrosses us in mary's world and journey from a motherless girl to a girl who must grow up quickly in a society that lays stagnant and in the grips of civil war. Macmanus's writing is really compelling, and I loved how the dialogue was interwoven with the main narrative - emphasising how much of this book is steeped in memory and our relationships with our past. She lived with her older brother Sean, to whom she was very close, and their father who drowns his sorrows in drink. For the Irish broadcaster, DJ, events producer and now novelist, songs and music offer a creative portal through which she imagines scenes, places, people and feelings.

EXCLUSIVEKate is reunited with her three children for the first time in two weeks after leaving hospital. Back in Ireland her parents’ marriage has crumbled, she’s not speaking to her father, and her mother and sister are drinking too much. Published by Wildfire under the presenter's full name, Mother Mother is due to launch in hardback in May next year and is billed as a “gritty coming of age novel” that tells the story of a young Belfast woman named Mary McConnell. She becomes very centred on her own circumstances, wallowing in self-pity to the point of disregarding her relationships. It’s no accident, then, that the spirit of Sweet Thing is imbued in her debut novel, Mother Mother, the book itself a new doorway she assembled, the threshold of which she’s crossing into the next phase of her creative life.

I did find it a bit directionless at times, and the story kept repeating itself with just a few different characters in the mix which I found hard to keep track of. Orla lives with her friend Neema and Neema's brother's band in a rundown building on Mill Road, and as you read about this gang, you get a sense of their personalities, even those like Richie who is perhaps less prominent than other characters. Mother Mother is described as a "gritty, affecting coming-of-age novel" which follows a young woman, Mary McConnell. She has been a key music industry figure championing female and LGBTQ+ artists and advocating for positive, inclusive change. Truth about Neighbours star Troy Beckwith's death at age 48 as family announce there will be no funeral: 'He fought a tough battle.

Celebrating great artists playing their new and live music on Radio 1 is a huge honour and we can't wait to put our RMC twist on it! I’m sure this was not Anne Enright’s intention, but it feels like it’s so exceptionally good, that it feels like she’s showing off. At the start, there were enthusiastic attempts to include the children’s grandparents in their home-schooling curriculum, but, as the weeks rolled by, the kids stopped engaging. I wanted to convey the intensity of moving to London as a young Irish woman at the start of adulthood; dizzy with freedom and thrashing through life, making mistakes and feeling everything viscerally.

Rickie Haywood-Williams, Melvin Odoom and Charlie Hedges will take on Live Lounge from Monday to Thursday from 10:30am to 1pm. I wanted more though- more emotion, more of the important relationships between sisters and friends. She also hosts her own podcast, Changes with Annie Mac, and her debut book, Mother Mother was released in 2021. Although Orla is nothing like me, I felt I understood where she was coming from and in particular her relationships with her family.