Welcome! I’m Lucy Fuggle, the writer, reader, and editor behind Tolstoy Therapy, where I’ve shared my best book recommendations since 2012. In particular, I love sharing the most feel-good, cozy, and beautiful books.

I first started Tolstoy Therapy to share my love of books and their impact on my mental health, in particular, anxiety disorders and autism spectrum disorder. A decade later – and after reading and recommending thousands of books to millions of readers – I’m still sharing the best books to add to your shelves, whether they’re modern fiction, classics, or non-fiction.

Some of my favourite books? War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy inspired me to create this website, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver is the book I wish I’d written, and I’ll always love Haruki Murakami and Tan Twan Eng.

I’ve always recommended books, including the 5 years I spent working in a cosy little bookshop in my rural hometown in East Sussex. In 2015, I finished my degree in English Literature and Spanish at the University of Exeter (my thesis was on Pierre’s transformation in War and Peace), travelled solo around Europe, and met my now-husband, Iain, before moving to Switzerland.

I lived alone by the mountains for a few years, which you can read about in my book, Mountain Song: A Journey to Finding Quiet in the Swiss Alps. (I loved the solitude: I’m an INTJ and probably the most introverted person I’ve ever met.)

On my twenty-fifth birthday in 2018, I left my marketing job at a tech company and started my own business. For the next few years, I worked as a marketing consultant and content writing specialist for leading brands like HubSpot, all the while reading a lot of books in my free time. After finally realising that I could apply my skills to my own projects, I started scaling Tolstoy Therapy to be my full-time-ish focus in late 2022.

When I’m at my happiest, I’m pottering about, making things, and sharing what I figure out along the way. You can read about my business journey in my book, Simple Business.

After getting married in remote Scotland, I now live in Copenhagen with Iain (where I spend a lot of time in bookshops and coffee shops, as well as growing tomatoes, aubergines, lemons, and much more on our balcony garden).

I also love being outdoors in nature and hiking. While in Switzerland, I hiked 400km across Switzerland on the Via Alpina. I also spent 10 days hiking the Arctic Circle Trail in Greenland, completely isolated and with everything I needed on my back (heaven).

You can also find me at…

  • Live Wildly, where I write about living adventurously, creatively, and close to nature.
  • Simple Living Business, where I write about my journey to creating a chill business.

Want to say hi? You can reach out anytime via [email protected] or find me on LinkedIn or Goodreads. I also love sharing bookish inspiration on Pinterest.

Interested in working together?

Tolstoy Therapy is a popular book blog with a community of 100,000+ monthly readers who regularly visit for feel-good, cozy, and beautiful book recommendations.

I share books that I know and love and rarely publish sponsored content. However, if you have a project that seems like a natural fit for the website and its readership, feel free to get in touch via the email above.