What makes a good story for you? For me, it is all about life and death, about birth and tears, about the stuffing makes up human experience. I feel  short hanged if I leave a cinema without having laughed, or cried,  or both. I remember reading Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You one Christmas Eve, tear s streaming down my face. I was sad, but I was also content because that book had transported me, because I was living a fresh human experience through the written word. An in many ways, that is what I have just experienced while reading Life and Other Near-Death Experiences by Camille Pagan.

This is the story of a young woman hit by a double blow. Everything that she takes for granted – her relationship, her health – suddenly shifts, and she does what many of us might do in the circumstances. She takes off. Fortunately for Libby she is in a fictional world where, when she runs away to spend a month of a beach she meets a supportive older woman and an attractive pilot! Her time is full of ups and downs but by the end she is coming to terms with her changed life and ready to take on the challenges it poses.

I read this straight through on a two hour train journey, so it is a fairly quick read, but a good one. Life and Other Near-Death Experiences costs from £3.99 on Kindle and is out on 1 November.