02.01.26
The new year's off to a strong reading start with this engaging, funny, moving and ultimately satisfying character-driven story that uses every type of narrative voice to convey many types of identity. I was less keen on the underplaying of the inappropriateness of the teacher/student relationship, and the lack of trans men amongst the vivid queer cast, but overall a good read.
While I read just a chapter or two of some novels and just didn't come back to them, there were only few this year that I devoted time to and then abandoned.
In alphabetical order by author:
29.12.25
The author tried hard with the worldbuilding but maybe should have spent more time thinking about plot, pace and clarity.
45%
26.12.25I can sort of see what Devlin was going for here - but it didn't really work. Trying to add nuances to perceived nepotism - and actual privilege is fine if we care about the characters. But everyone was either awful (the main character and her friends) or unrelatable (her aunt and mother) so the stakes would have been higher if they'd all tried to go into accountancy instead of the family business of acting.
18.12.25
I hadn't heard of this but it was by far the best Pym novel I've read. The snobbish, judgemental narrator was, oddly, especially engaging and relatable - in fact, it's surprising how much of a 1950s, middle-class, religious housewife's life is still relatable through Pym's witty and perceptive writing. Her relationships with her mother-in-law and, later, her gay friends, were surprisingly positive. Overall: delightful.
14.12.25
A stilted translation, one-dimensional characters who were hard to tell apart, poor pacing, a plot that made no sense, and being told everything instead of being shown it - the much-celebrated (and rather monotonous) descriptions of snow were not enough to save this weak novel.
10.12.25
Although the style and much of the subject matter is dated, you could bump into many of the characters today. Everyone was eccentric in their own way - sometimes charmingly and sometimes obnoxiously but always vividly. And the message of women's sacrificing their individuality for men and family is still, sadly, relevant.
07.12.25
Someone pointed out that all Riley Sager's books can be summarised as 'Young down-on-her-luck woman moves house, discovers neighbours' secrets, has secrets of her own.' This one definitely fits that mould, and is also pretty similar to Sarah Pinborough's supernatural domestic thrillers (like the one I've just read). Despite its cliches, this was still quite well written and pretty entertaining, if not all that engaging.
01.12.25
Well, this certainly didn't keep me awake at night, in fact, quite the opposite, what with the slow pace and boring characters.
23.11.25
You know the phrase 'So bad it's good?' Yeah, well, that doesn't apply here. This is so bad in so many ways that it's like a first-time author's first draft that nobody's bothered to read or revise or comment on or edit or proofread before it was published.
19.11.25
You know what I said about Lacey's Stars Collide? That. Except this had some minor manufactured angst that got boring fast.
14.11.25
This had an unusual and intriguing premise that was unfortunately fumbled in the execution. Readable enough but too many 'but whats?', 'but whys?' and 'but hows?' to feel like a final draft.
10.11.25
Perhaps it's my own fault for reading the original story of characters I didn't know from a series I haven't read but it was supposed to be standalone and, well, funny and exciting, but instead it felt like an in-joke that hadn't been explained with a very ragged plot. And it would have been much more interesting if they hadn't (spoiler) fallen in love at the end.
(This novel gets incredibly high ratings on Amazon and Goodreads but I've tried and failed to get on with Taylor's books before so clearly everyone else is wrong.)
06.11.25
This inexplicably has an almost-perfect Amazon score but I found it dull, confusing and poorly structured. With updates like this, no longer Dracula won't die.
23.10.25
Wry humour, sharp observation and a strong sense of place and time - yes, it's a Clare Chambers novel. I have a few to read and this was engaging and interestingly structured, if not ultimately memorable or profound.
43%
19.10.25There was an atmospheric Southern Gothic thriller fighting to free itself from this poorly paced, poorly edited book. I'm all for genre fluidity but it didn't know what it was (Romance? Apocalyptic horror? Murder mystery? Not enough of any of those) and so ended up as an unfocused muddle.
13.10.25
Hallett rehashes her trademark 'murder by email' style, and then rehashes it all over again halfway through, for added WTF flavour. It's probably meant to be a critique of the inherent dishonesty of e-communications but mostly it's just plain crazy.
60%
09.10.25All talk of this book is about the twist - or rather, twists - the first of which I guessed and the second I didn't, because it was, frankly, crazy (if not, on reflection, particularly surprising or original). But maybe I should have, as it was a crazy story in general, with so much booze consumed that it's no wonder it ends up like a fever dream. Although some of the weirdness never quite works, and characters are frustratingly inconsistent, the genre-bending approach worked for me and it was, in the end, simply entertaining.
05.10.25
This was such a lovely story: pleasing turns of phrase, funny in the right places, sweet without being cloying yet secretly quite complex - and surprisingly wholesome, given the sex 'n' drugs 'n' rock 'n' roll at its heart.
