As a reader, the verse novel is one of my favorites. Stanzaic and terse, syncopated and euphonic, a narrative told in verse entrances the reader with every line and silence; hence why I was thrilled when Unbound’s creative director Isobel Kieran briefed me Giles Paley-Phillips’ first adult book One Hundred and Fifty-Two Days. Written in a stream-of-consciousness free verse, the novel minutely follows a teenage boy’s vulnerability during his mother’s stint in the hospital.