Our last book choice of 2025 is The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell. Alex joins Sara for a chat about the novel, the inspiration behind it, the obstacles that come with writing a time travel narrative and working out a writing routine for busy working mums. We also hear a clip from the audiobook - and - Alex gives us a great book recommendation too. (one that keeps cropping up!)Here's a little more info on The White Octopus Hotel:London, 2015When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her London office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her. His name is Max Everly – curiously, the same name as Eve’s favourite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she can’t shake the feeling that she’s held his hand before . . . but where, and when?The White Octopus Hotel, 1935Decades earlier, high in the snowy Swiss Alps, Eve and a young Max Everly wander the winding halls of the grand belle epoque White Octopus Hotel, lost in time. Each of them has been through the trenches – Eve in a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War – but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away . . . if only they have the courage to step through the door.

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.