Because I’m such a big fan of the prize, I’ve tried to read the entire longlist of the Baileys Prize for the past several years. It was always a massive undertaking since the longlist used to include 20 novels. But, just when I thought the longlist had been cut down to a more manageable 12 novels, the announcement of the 2017 longlist revealed the judges had still chosen 16! So I haven’t been able to get to all the titles on the short time between the March 8th longlist announcement and the shortlist announcement on April 3rd. It’s been a particularly busy time for me as I’ve also been judging The British Book Awards, chairing a discussion about the new film adaptation of ‘The Sense of an Ending’ and going through the process of buying a new flat.

However, I have read a number of the longlisted novels and I'm still making my way through a couple more. I can now see why the judges had such trouble eliminating books from the list because it’s truly a really strong group of novels. Nevertheless, Anna James and I got together to debate the books on the longlist and come up with our shortlist predictions. You can watch that video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT4oEQ0lwi4

It’s interesting how “The Lonely Hearts Hotel” is turning out to be a novel as controversial as “A Little Life” which was shortlisted for last year’s prize. I'm having extremely engaging debates about the novels longlisted with the shadow panel I'm on. I only succeeded in guessing 3 novels correctly for my longlist predictions (but then I only limited myself to 12 guesses). So I’m hoping I do better with these shortlist predictions. Click on the titles below for my full reviews.

What novels do you think will be shortlisted?