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Thank you for picking up this book. If you’re new to BookCrossing and find this book and this site (www.bookcrossing.com), please make a journal entry to let me know that this book has found a good home with you. You may choose to remain anonymous or to join (it's free). If you join, you’ll be alerted by e-mail each time someone makes another journal entry for this specific copy of this book (other copies of the book are travelling with their own ID number. Every copy of every book has a unique ID).

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Enjoy the site, the book and hopefully the BookCrossing community. If you’re already a BookCrossing member, thank you for picking up this book.

Happy BookCrossing!

Join UK Bookcrossers at the BCUK Sheffield Unconvention from 4-6 July 2025

Read this in 2021. This isn't my copy but here are my thoughts at the time:

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Good

A well hyped book, I think everyone probably knows that this is based on Shakespeare's son that died of plague at a young age.

I've never read any Maggie O'Farrell before. For some reason I thought she wrote romances and that isn't my cup of tea. It turns out she has a way of evoking the times and emotions of the period. Whilst never mentioning Shakespeare by name, she introduces us to all his family, their lives and stories and then the shock and emotion of losing the boy.

I suspect you have to be a mother to really get the full emotional impact as I've seen so many people say how the book affected them and to be honest, it didn't hit me anywhere near as hard. The only bit that made me even slightly sad was when she described Hamnet's mother not moving his things, wanting them to stay exactly where he last touched them. I did something very similar with Dad's things last year. Couldn't move them initially and only did so when I absolutely had to.

Good book, well worth reading. If you are a parent, maybe have a box of tissues on standby.

Although this book is registered at www.bookcrossing.com, you don't have to be a member. It's perfectly OK to just take the book and enjoy it. Of course, if you can visit the website and let us know that you've picked it up, that would be even better - you don't even have to join, you can add your comments anonymously - you can also post your review when you've read it, then return it or pass it on to someone else.

If you do join Bookcrossing, you'll be able to see what happens to it afterwards - for ever!

Join UK Bookcrossers at the BCUK Sheffield Unconvention from 4-6 July 2025