I am excited to announce that I am going to be spending tomorrow reading Kathleen Jowitt‘s debut novel, Speak Its Name.  I love Kathleen’s writing and am excited that this book is seeing the light of day at last.

A new year at the University of Stancester, and Lydia Hawkins is trying to balance the demands of her studies with her responsibilities as an officer for the Christian Fellowship. Her mission: to make sure all the Christians in her hall stay on the straight and narrow, and to convert the remaining residents if possible. To pass her second year. And to ensure a certain secret stays very secret indeed.

When she encounters the eccentric, ecumenical student household at 27 Alma Road, Lydia is forced to expand her assumptions about who’s a Christian to include radical Quaker activist Becky, bells-and-smells bus-spotter Peter, and out (bisexual) and proud (Methodist) Colette. As the year unfolds, Lydia discovers that there are more ways to be Christian – and more ways to be herself – than she had ever imagined.

Then a disgruntled member of the Catholic Society starts asking whether the Christian Fellowship is really as Christian as it claims to be, and Lydia finds herself at the centre of a row that will reach far beyond the campus. Speak Its Name explores what happens when faith, love and politics mix and explode.

Read an extract here

To be honest I would probably have jumped on this book even if I didn’t know the author, because BOOKS WITH BISEXUALS IN YES PLEASE and also I had my share of bewilderment at student Christian organisations when I was at university and trying to find God, mostly, I admit, because of a Christian boy I fancied.  (I was a late developer.  Also, to be totally fair, I think they were just as befuddled by me.  There was one moment when a friend of a friend said ‘Well, if you don’t believe in God, who do you think made you?’ and I blurted out ‘Are you asking me to explain how babies are made?’)

Speak Its Name will be available in paperback through Lulu and via Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other good online bookstores, and in ebook formats through Lulu, on the iBookstore, and on Kindle and Kobo.

This is not a sponsored post.  No one sponsors this blog.  Though the cats keep attempting to bribe me with rubber bands and bits of balled-up parcel tape in the hope that I will stop typing and feed them Dreamies instead.