The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: For Such A Time As This
Author: Shani Akilah
Published: 2024
Genre: Literary Short Stories
Themes: Friendship, Love, Mental Health

One sentence summary: A set of interconnected short stories, revolving around love and friendship found in Black British Londoners.

One sentence review: A must read for those looking to fall in love with short stories.

Review:

This beautiful debut is a set of interconnected short stories, revolving around love and friendship found in Black British Londoners.

Okay so this is a really easy one to review because I fell head over heels in love with each of these stories.

I closed the book after each story, wanting to savour it and digest it. I really wanted to not speed through this book but honestly I couldn’t help it. Although I didn’t speed and rush through, the stories are so compelling you won’t be able to put it down.

This book is like a literary hug and honestly it found me at the right time.

Akilah’s writing brings such a beautiful comfort and I needed that. If you’re looking for the kind of comfort that only literary love and friendship can bring then you absolutely have to get this one ordered.

Written in the pandemic and with references to it, it’s almost nostalgic in it’s reading. But it’s soft and gentle and delicate in it’s delivery. It really is quite beautiful. There’s a huge range of topics covered including mental health, greif, sick cell disease amongst others.

A must read for those looking to fall in love with short stories.

If reading more is something that you’re looking at doing this year then should check my reading challenge out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

If you’d like to get yourself a copy, you can support local bookshops while doing so on Bookshop.org with this link here.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 10/02/2025