MFB welcomes Gavin from NextRead

Mark, Sarah and I are so excited to have Gavin from Nextread join MFB as the occasional guest reviewer. *does the dance of joy*

Gav and I have been mates for too many years to count - we started out at the same time, when blogging was new and publishers thought we were crazy people.  We've weathered a lot of storms together and have been encouraging each other behind the scenes to keep doing what we love so much: reading and reviewing.  We've attended shedloads of events and covered for each other at other events.  We've geeked together and moaned together and bragged about books and meeting authors...so basically, it was almost like we were married.

Some of the books on Gav's TBR pile

When Gav emailed me a few weeks ago to say that he's going to close down his own site Nextread as he thinks he's reached the end of the line, my heart was sad.  But then I read the rest of the email where he said he would love to do the occasional review for MFB and then my heart was clapping like a demented seal.  But also, I was incredibly flattered.  I emailed Sarah and Mark and told them and we were all "wow, this is going to be so cool!"

I actually think that having Gav on MFB is a bit of a scoop.  The way I see it, MFB started out ever so long ago as a genre site...but that quickly changed when publishers realised that we were happy to read very widely across all ages and genres and so we started receiving this insanely eclectic mix of books.  Added into that all the books we bought ourselves, making our various libraries look a bit like a rook's next.

Having Gav on board means that MFB's remit will expand - we're looking at more science fiction books, we're looking at crime novels being reviewed and probably more literary stuff too.  Having four really talented readers and enthusiastic reviewers as part of MFB means that we will genuinely be able to cover a wider variety of books but I think it means that between the four of us, there will be a lot of swapping of books to try and in-house challenges too.

So, to Gav - a huge welcome on board the happy ship MFB.  May you sail with us a long old time and not get bored!