The December Edit / 2024 Round Up

Everything that caught my eye over the past month + my favourite books of last year + a bit of a 2024 round-up

Happy new year!

Apologies for vanishing for the past couple of weeks. I had grand plans to continue writing newsletters over the festive break, but found that I really really needed a proper break. I didn’t open my laptop for 13 entire days, and it was bliss. Not only did completely switching off allow me to properly rest for the first time all year, but it seems to have sparked a big reset button in my mind, giving me fresh inspiration and excitement for the year ahead. Basically, I completely disconnected from my emails, writing work and the constant worry about finding new clients, and now I feel ready to go.

In some ways, last year seems to have flown by (how has it been eight months since my two week solo Greek island hopping trip?!) but I also seem to have crammed in so much these past twelve months. I wrote two round-ups of my 2024 work achievements on my Instagram (here and here) and surprised myself with how pleased I am with the clients I’ve shot and wrote for this past year. Sometimes I start to panic that I’m not getting enough work, so it felt very reassuring to write up everything I’ve achieved in 2024, give myself a little pat on the back and feel raring to go for what lies ahead this year.

This newsletter is going to be a long one (perhaps best read in your browser or on the app — I imagine it’s going to cut off in your inbox) to make up for vanishing over the festive break. And, as always, my monthly edit is completely free for everyone to read. I’m going to begin with my usual edit of everything that has caught my eye over the past month, followed by a short recap of where I travelled to in 2024. Then I’ll dive into books: my favourite reads of last year, plus the new releases I’m excited to read in 2025. Finally, I’ll be sharing a few thoughts on what to expect from me on Postcards this coming year.

I stumbled across Courtney Hassman striking ceramics over the festive break and instantly fell down a rabbit hole. Her raw clay vessels, mugs and candle holders are glazed in organic colours with fun geometric patterns — I’d love to fill my kitchen cupboards with her various cups. She recently collaborated with fellow Albuquerque creative, stained glass artist Hannah Hazel to create the most beautiful lamps I’ve ever seen. They only seem to be available via a pop-up in an independent store in Houston, Texas, and I have to admit I’m tempted to hop on a flight. See more on Courtney’s Instagram.

I spend far too much time scrolling through Kip Hideaway’s properties, dreaming of potential staycations. One which recently caught my eye is Glasbury River Cottage, located in one of my favourite corners of the UK close to Hay-on-Wye and the Brecon Beacons. This dining room/greenhouse is literally straight out of my dreams. If I had a large, sprawling garden, I would definitely invest in something like this, so a stay here would give me a chance to live out my dreams of dining by candlelight in a glass house. There’s also a huge bathroom with the perfect tub for long soaks, a firepit area, beautiful bucolic views — and the River Wye literally winds straight past the garden, allowing for wild swims and paddle boarding. Bliss!

I had my heart set on spending a couple of nights in Riad Yasmine’s pink suite during my upcoming trip to Marrakech but, alas, it isn’t available on my dates (which is a real shame as it is significantly cheaper than other riad suites at just 200€pn).. The Merzouga suite boasts a bed nestled behind a canopy, a cosy lounge area and a red tiled bathroom with a large bathtub. The colour scheme of soft blush pinks, deep reds and rich rusts has really inspired my initial inspiration for our upcoming kitchen renovations. Photo by Tess Kelly.

More Moroccan riads on my radar here.

When this image popped up on my Instagram feed, I instantly saved it and keep on returning to examine every little detail. The 1940’s sun sconce (which I’m now obsessively searching for on eBay). The rich tones of the wooden door and staircase. The still life painting by the client’s grandmother, echoed by the display of flowers beneath it. The unusual shape of the lamp base. Perfection.

Meghan Eisenberg interior design / Haris Kenjar photography.

It’s freezing cold outside, so I’m very pleased that bonnets are still an acceptable form of headwear. I hate having a cold head/ears/neck/chin/face so there’s really nothing better than enveloping your entire head in cosy wool. I have a couple of bonnets/woollen hoods that I’ve been alternating whenever I leave the house, paired with my warmest coat. I’ve been referencing this photograph of Catarina Skoglund and realising that a bonnet/hood can be worn with lighter jackets too. I fully intend on wearing mine all through winter and will also be pulling them on to warm up post-early-spring swims. If you’re feeling flush, I love this design that ties beneath your chin by Straw London X HERD.

Fancy a long weekend getaway that combines cosy cabin and private spa? Camelot, the newest addition to The Orchard at Fenny Castle’s repetoire of self catering accommodation, has been tempting me since Canopy & Star launching it on their site last month. The essentials: three king-size bedrooms, two large wet rooms, a fully stocked kitchen that has everything you need to actually cook a meal (I’ve previously stayed in tiny cabins where it’s near impossible to cook), plus an outdoor kitchen complete with pizza oven and bbq. Now for the features that are giving me itchy feet to find five friends and make a booking: a private indoor spa with sunken bath and sauna, a wellness area with yoga mats and massages available on request, a six-person copper roll tub outdoor bath, double outdoor shower, indoor wood burner and outdoor firepit area, projector screen for cinema nights, indoor gym, and complimentary bicycles. It’s available to book from £499pn, which is actually super affordable split between six people.

I’ve been eyeing up Shaina Mote’s jeans for a few years now. I love the cuts and the washes, and can imagine wearing them every single day. From the relaxed Regular fit to the high-waisted balloon-leg Lune pants, these are the kind of jeans I dream of. The vintage-wash slouchy Wide Leg jeans (pictured below) are top of my list for comfort and because I’ve been on the look-out for this fit for a while now — but I’ve just discovered the flat-front Chore pants which boast my favoured elasticated waist at the back. Annoyingly, I can’t really justify buying expensive jeans without trying them on and knowing I’d wear them everyday, so I’ll be admiring these from afar for now.

Luke Edward Hall can do no wrong in my eyes. Everything he touches turns to gold. So it’s no surprise that I currently can’t stop thinking about Amaru, the restaurant in the Kulm Hotel in St Moritz that he designed the interiors for. The painted ceiling, the clashing fabrics, the bold colours, the chequerboard bar — every little detail is so considered. Luke himself describes his approach to decorating the space as “eclectic, romantic and theatrical”, which perfectly sums it up. I’m dying to dine there. You can see more photos here, on Luke’s website.

Finally, I’ve ordered my 2025 dahlias and thought I’d share what I’ve ordered. I’ve gone big this year and ordered 11 tubers that I’ll be completely filling one of my beds with. In previous years, I’ve planted six (staggered, as shown at the bottom of the image below) with a row of kale behind them. This year, I’m moving the kale elsewhere in my garden and planting another row of dahlias, as they bring me so much joy for such a long time. They’re a mixture from Sarah Raven and Farmer Gracey and here are the names (in the order they’re shown below) if any of them catch your eye for your own garden:

Row 1 L-R: Brown Sugar, Molly Raven, Dark Spirit, Red Labyrinth, Fairway Pilot.

Row 2 L-R: Rembrandt, Jowey Winnie, Viking, Cafe Au Lait, Arthur Hambley, Copper Boy.

Last year I visited eight destinations outside of the UK, plus several staycations and work trips by road and rail within these shores.

I began the year with a couple of UK staycations and work trips, not too far from home. A couple of nights at Rothay Manor in Ambleside (which perfectly coincided with a heavy snowfall), a cosy trip away in a cabin tucked away in the trees in the North Lakes, and a shoot in a converted railway carriage in North Yorkshire.

My first trip abroad of the year was to visit my friends in the French Alps, spending a few glorious days holed up in the Landscape Lodge and skiing for the first time since I was a child. I then travelled home by train, via Paris for a delectable commission sampling the city’s finest bakeries for Small Luxury Hotels.

In early spring, I took my first ever solo trip island hopping from Athens — Andros — Mykonos — Syros, writing and shooting for Small Luxury Hotels along the way. During this trip, I spent a couple of nights at Nomad Mykonos and Aristide Syros, two memorable hotels that I’d highly recommend.

A month later, I headed to the Swiss Alps with my boyfriend to shoot for Road Surfer on an adventure through mountains, valleys and luscious lakes. This trip alternated between wild swims and soaking up the sunshine, and attempting to avoid heavy thunderstorms.

I twice stayed at Rest & Wild’s new Yorkshire site to shoot their pink and red cabins: once in summer and once in autumn, seeing the surrounding landscape change with the seasons.

In August, I captured a walking holiday on the edge of the Cairngorms for Inntravel, hiking up mountains and through ancient forests with my camera in hand. Fast forward a couple of months, and they sent me to the Costa Brava for a memorable shoot photographing the region’s idyllic hidden coves and coastal towns.

My favourite corner of the UK is the south-west, so it was a delight to spend two whole weeks down there at the end of September, combining work and pleasure. I shot for (and fell in love with) Prussia Cove, photographed Rosie Harbottle’s studio, and captured a cabin tucked away in an apple orchard. While in Cornwall, I also stayed at Bedruthan Hotel, Scarlet Hotel and a very rustic campsite near the Helford River.

Other autumn adventures included photographing a beautifully designed cabin in Cumbria and a vast estate of cabins and cottages on the Welsh coast. I also squeezed in a couple of trips to Brighton to visit one of my best friends, and numerous shoots in both London and Devon.

It’s been nice to have a little time out at home over the past month, but I now have itchy feet to travel again. Next week, I’ll be spending a couple of days somewhere that’s been on my list for a while, then I’m off skiing and visiting my friends in the Alps at the end of January, and travelling to Marrakech next month — so there’ll be plenty to share very soon.

View more of my 2024 travels on my Instagram.

Rather than sharing reviews of the books I read in December, I’m going to reveal my favourite reads of the past year. Some of the links below are affiliate links.

Elmet by Fiona Mozley — I don’t know how I hadn’t read this sooner. It was definitely one of my top three reads of the year, and I’ll recommend it to anyone who will listen (although I will give a trigger warning for violence). It’s the story of a young boy and his sister who are moved to a woodland copse by their bare-knuckle boxer father. He builds them a house and teaches them all the survival skills they need for living off grid — although this idyllic life is shattered as the violent undertone of the book grows, threatening to consume them. The ending had me in tears.

The Unwilding by Marina Kemp — Another of my top three books of the year, I completely devoured this on holiday in Greece, unable to put it down. The plot kept me gripped, Kemp writes incredibly well, and I also found myself bewitched by the two protagonists. The story is split between two time periods — a summer in Sicily when a young woman is invited to join a family for their annual summer trip, and 30 years later when the youngest member of that family is reunited with that stranger. I particularly loved the wonderful descriptions of the summer in Italy.

Glass Houses by Francesca Reece — I adored Reece’s debut book, so was thrilled that her sophmore release measured up. I loved everything about this: the rural North Wales setting, the coming-of-age stories of the two main characters, their on-again off-again relationship, the sub-plot of the holiday home burnings in Wales in the 1980’s, and Reece’s beautiful writing. My own qualm was that I felt the ending was somewhat rushed.

The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller — I’m often drawn to literary dystopian books, and found myself completely consumed with The Memory of Animals. Set in a world-changing pandemic, this is more character-driven than action-packed, reminding me of the likes of Station Eleven and Severance. The story revolves around a woman who has volunteered for a pioneering vaccine trial when the pandemic raging outside suddenly takes a turn for the worst. She is stuck inside with four other participants — but can she trust them?

The Group by Sigge Eklund — Anything that draws comparisons to The Secret History and The Talented Mr Ripley is sure to suck me in. I loved this translation of a best-selling Swedish novel, chronicling an outsider infiltrating an exclusive group of friends while becoming increasingly obsessed with them. The descriptions of the southern European destinations where this is set are wonderful, and I always love an unreliable narrator.

Playground by Richard Powers — Richard Powers’s The Overstory is one of my absolute favourite books, so I was highly anticipating this release. For me, it wasn’t quite as good, but still brilliant. It tries to do for the oceans what The Overstory did for trees, but there’s an AI sub-plot which ultimately lost me a little bit. Regardless, I adored one of the protagonist’s stories so much (Evie) that this made it into my top ten reads of the year.

Albion by Anna Hope — I love a sweeping family saga, especially when the family is stinking rich, bohemian and a little bit batshit brazy. This is beautifully written and I found every single character utterly compelling, even those I detested. Ultimately, it is the story of an estranged family and their closest friends coming together for the funeral of their patriarch, but it also tackles subjects as varied as climate change and the dark undertones of British history.

Confessions by Catherine Airey — This is wonderful, and I urge you all to read it when it’s released this month. It’s just so beautifully written, and I cared so much for all of the characters. It’s the story of three generations of women in one Irish family, and how the secrets between them transcend time. Based from 1970’s Ireland to NYC as the twin towers fall, every moment grips you.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan — I racd through this in a couple of hours, and completely see why this novella is so adored. If you’re going to watch the new film, make sure you read the book first. A snapshot of Ireland in the 1980’s, told by a coal merchant who uncovers dark secrets around a town’s covent.

Withered Hill by David Barnettt — This was my last read of 2024, which I completely devoured in a couple of days. If you love folk horror (think films like Wicker Man and Midsommar, TV shows like From and books like Hagstone) then definitely add this to your reading pile. It’s dark, twisted and utterly absorbing. I don’t want to give away any spoilers, but expect a mysterious town, ancient festivals, sacrifices and townsfolk wearing creepy animal masks. I desperately want someone to make this into a film.

My to-read list for the year ahead keeps totting up. There are so many new releases I’m increasingly excited to read, that I couldn’t possibly share them all in one email. So here are the books on my radar that will be released during the next three months. Some of the links below are affiliate links.

Ask Me Again by Clare Sestanovich

“As her grandmother is dying, sixteen-year-old Eva wanders the halls of a hospital. There, she spots Jamie. Despite having little in common, from this chance-encounter stems a life-changing platonic love.
She is sixteen, living in middle-class Brooklyn; he is the same age, but from the super-rich of Upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s bold, mysterious, eccentric. Eva’s family is warm and welcoming, but Jamie avoids going home to his.
As Eva goes off to university and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out and is drawn towards radical experiments in politics and religion. Their separate spheres seem to be spiralling away from each other, but it soon becomes clear that they are both circling the same question: how do you define yourself and your beliefs in a divided and unjust world?”

Nesting by Roisin O’Donnell

“On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.
This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back. Because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.
What will it take for Ciara to rebuild her life? Can she ever truly break away from Ryan’s control – and what will be the cost?”

Old Soul by Susan Barker

“When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.
Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.
And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.
But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?”

Cloudless by Rupert Dastur

“It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonizing wait for their son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son.
Catrin’s childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, giving the boys’ doting mother a glimpse into the life she could have had. And John, their father, falls once more into his gambling habit, even as the farm sits on the brink of bankruptcy.
As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another – until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door.
Written in luminous, exquisitely calibrated prose, Cloudless is a masterful portrayal of the fragility and resilience of human connection.”

Deviants by Santanu Bhattacharya

“Vivaan, a teenager in India’s silicon plateau, has discovered love on his smartphone. Intoxicating, boundary-breaking love. His parents know he is gay, and their support is something Vivaan can count on, but they don’t know what exactly their son gets up to in the online world.
For his uncle, born thirty years earlier, things were very different. Mambro’s life changed forever when he fell for a male classmate at a time, and in a country, where the persecution of gay people was rife under a colonial-era law criminalising homosexuality.
And before that was Mambro’s uncle Sukumar, a young man hopelessly in love with another young man, but forced by social taboos to keep their relationship a secret at all costs. Sukumar would never live the life he yearned for, but his story would ignite and inspire his nephew and grand-nephew after him.
Bold and bracing, intimate and heartbreaking, Deviants examines the histories we inherit and the legacies we leave behind.”

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh by Colwill Brown

“Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.
But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They share everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs to trips to the Family Planning clinic when they are late. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace — their friendship is as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.
We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and leads you through Doncaster’s schoolyards, alleyways and nightclubs, laying bare the intimate treacheries of adolescence and the ways we betray ourselves when we don’t trust our friends. Like The Glorious Heresies and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked place into the very centre of the world.”

The Swell by Kat Gordon

“Iceland, 1910. In the middle of a severe storm two sisters - Freyja and Gudrun - rescue a mysterious, charismatic man from a shipwreck near their remote farm.
Sixty-five years later, a young woman - Sigga - is spending time with her grandmother when they learn a body has been discovered on a mountainside near Reykjavik, perfectly preserved in ice.
Moving between the turn of the 20th century and the 1970s as a dark mystery is unravelled, The Swell is a spellbinding, beautifully atmospheric read, rich in Icelandic myth.”

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

“A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it's too late--and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.”

Elergy Southwest by Madeleine Watts

“Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American Southwest. While wildfires rage, the couple trace the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Eloise, an academic, researches the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry, while Lewis grieves his mother and struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never felt quite at home.

Together they cruise past gaping canyons, blinking motels and lonely stretches of wilderness, trying to understand this uncanny landscape where Georgia O'Keeffe built her home and avant-garde artists dig mysterious installations in the sand. When Eloise begins to suspect she might be pregnant, she hopes to turn Lewis's attention from the past to the future, but their relationship continues to fracture as they head towards a destination unknown.

Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.”

Raw Content by Naomi Booth

“Grace's work requires her to be careful. She spends her days reading and editing legal case files, making sure the latest judgments are published as quickly and accurately as possible.
But outside of her work, Grace is not a careful person. Her father's history as a police officer working across an infamous case shadows her life, as does the violent history entrenched across the Colne Valley landscape of her childhood, and her fears often surface as recklessness.
When Grace becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she tries to accommodate her boyfriend and the prospect of the baby in her life. But after the relief and strange joy of the birth, Grace starts to imagine all sorts of terrible injuries and deaths befalling her child. The steep stairs to her apartment, the kitchen scissors, a boiling kettle all suddenly hold visceral and overwhelming potential for disaster. The baby's vulnerability terrifies her: fault-lines in her relationship begin to show, and her family history and repressed memories of violence break to the surface.
Tender, gripping and life-affirming, raw content tells the story of a woman grappling with a new form of love that feels like a disaster.”

Tilt by Emma Pattee

“Annie is 37 weeks pregnant, standing in IKEA, finally about to take home the crib she should have bought months ago. That’s when it happens – the long-anticipated Cascadia Earthquake, dismantling Portland and the entire Pacific Northwest in a matter of minutes.

Propulsive, disruptive, funny, terrifying, Tilt is a novel about how the foundations of our lives are built and shaken. About a woman trying to walk back to the husband she’s long been pushing away. About put-off dreams and inevitability and what makes us keep moving forward.”

Greater Sins by Gabrille Griffiths

“1915, the Cabrach, Aberdeenshire. An isolated Scottish community is disturbed by a strange discovery: a body in a peat bog, perfectly preserved. Two people haul the body from the ground: Lizzie, the wife of a wealthy local landowner, and Johnny, a nomadic singer and farm hand. At hearthside and inn, people whisper: what have we unearthed?

One unveiling brings others. For Lizzie, tenacious but trapped, the discovery reveals unanswered questions about her past while for Johnny, it threatens to uncover a history he’s trying to outrun.

As their stories entwine, a series of unsettling events befalls the isolated community: ruinous weather, a damaged soldier, strange occurrences that cannot be explained. Against the echoes of distant war, and with the boundaries blurring between right and wrong, everyone is looking for someone to blame…”

To close this newsletter, which began as my last newsletter of 2024 but has become instead my first newsletter of the new year, I wanted to thank each and everyone of you for subscribing. I had a secret goal of reaching 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year, and I’m so pleased to have surpassed that number. I barely make any money out of this newsletter, but I have to justify my time spent writing it therefore an extra special thank you to those of you who are paid subscribers.

I wish I could spend more time writing here, but I’m also well aware that I need to actually be making money as a self employed person who is terrible at saving and is always panicking she hasn’t booked enough work for the months ahead. Today’s newsletter took me an entire day to write and put together, and I really need to be more careful with my time. Going ahead, I am committing to writing this one monthly edit that will be available for everyone to read, but I have to keep the majority of my content for paid subs eyes only. Every newsletter will have a short preview that everyone can read. There will be between 2-4 exclusive newsletters for paid subs each month. You can also chat privately with me in DM’s if you’re a paid sub — I’m happy to answer any questions or dish out travel advice.

It costs just £5 per month to subscribe — and you can cancel at any time. You could also save by opting for an annual plan for £50 for the entire year. Upcoming newsletters will include: my travel and personal goals for the year, the hotels at the very top of my wish list, a detailed summary of my week in Marrakech in February, and regular work diaries sharing the realities of freelance writing and photography work.

If you can’t afford to upgrade your subscription or don’t fancy it, I completely understand. Substack is overwhelming now with so many incredible newsletters to read — it’s impossible to upgrade your subscription to your entire reading list. You could also help me out by leaving a comment or sharing this post, to help it reach a wider audience.

Happy new year!

Emma x