The Bookish Mindset

Overview:

Title: Overspill
Author: Charlotte Paradise
Published: April 2025
Genre: Literary
Themes: Relationships, Love, PTSD

One sentence summary: Sara meets Miles and it feels like that for the first time a happy relationship might just be possible, but trauma is never far behind.

One sentence review:  Slow and meaningful and truly tender.

Review:

Sara meets Miles and it feels like that for the first time a happy relationship might just be possible. It’s easy with him. He’s patient with her, he adores her. But how will this new relationship stand the test of time and more difficult yet, the test of trauma? 

Love and trauma are the two halves of this novel and the delicacy and intimacy that they are written with is set to blow readers away. This is delicate and beautiful love in its purest form and it’s a joy to read. Overspill really asks us to hear and understand each other and meet us where we’re at. It will ask you to question society’s obsession with sexual intimacy in relationships and the outward expectations that come from this.

Reading Overspill is the equivalent watching people fall in love messily and in slow motion. It’s slow and meaningful and truly tender. Readers will feel the warmth spreading through them slowly and it certainly takes a special kind of writing to do that and especially brilliant from a debut author.

But Overspill isn’t a novel set for the romance genre, it’s stood firmly in the literary fiction zone with deep, deep characters and the trauma they’ve been through. The dark areas are handled so delicately, in the same manner that the love is, and it’s absolutely written with care. 

The fierce friendships formed with our main character is a delightful addition to the story. Anji is stubbornly supportive, yet incredibly tender with Sara. Those with friendships like this will appreciate their in life friends so much more having read something that mirrors quite so beautifully on page.

Overspill is a groundbreaking debut and one that readers will love to share with each other and between friends.

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. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

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 25/04/2025