I just loved this book. After really enjoying her biography of Anne Bronte, I jumped at the chance to read this when my colleague offered to lend it to me. How to be Heroine begins with Ellis having an argument with a friend about the relative merits of Cathy Earnshaw and Jane Eyre; which results in Ellis re-examining her relationship with the heroines of all her favourite books.

How to be a Heroine is half a literary criticism, exploring numerous novels from Ballet Shoes and What Katy Did to Riders and Valley of the Dolls; and half memoir, with Ellis exploring why the women inhabiting inspired her so much as a young woman. Ellis' experience as an Iraqi Jewish woman was one that I have never really heard much about, and the memoir aspects of this were just as effective and moving as the literary criticism.

It's hard to explain why I connected so much to this book, but as someone who also grew up devouring books and relating hard to their heroines, this just felt like chatting to a really good, well-read friend.