The Alcohol Experiment
ANNIE GRACE
(HQ, 256 PP, £12.99)
Tablet bookshop price £11.69 • Tel 020 7799 4064

“This is exciting!” Annie Grace chirrups at the start of my month without booze. “You are embarking on an amazing journey!” It doesn’t feel amazing – as journeys go, 30 days of abstinence is hardly a fortnight on the Trans-Siberian. But the journey that The Alcohol Experiment invites its readers on is a worthwhile one, a 30-day, 30-chapter opportunity to challenge our relationship with alcohol that would make an ideal companion for Lent.

Part-workbook, part-personal trainer, the book inspires the strongest criticism in its opening chapters, when Grace’s evangelism – she admits that she’s given up booze completely and she thinks you should do the same – and a strong desire for a glass of Malbec make poor companions.

Frustratingly, for a moderate drinker, a lot of what she writes proves to be true. On day four I have a low-level headache: that day’s chapter is “Dealing with discomfort”, and Grace tells me to see symptoms of withdrawal as “signs that my amazing body is healing itself”. “Dealing with sugar cravings”, day 10, coincides with my burning desire to scoff a carton of ice cream.