People Pleaser - Catriona Stewart

47%

29.06.25

Pretty run-of-the-mill 'perils of fame' story, with uninteresting characters and the murderer obvious from their first appearance. 

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

46%

27.06.25

Was this really by the same author as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow? I'd been looking for a light read but this was basically helium: sentimental slush, with improbable, two-dimensional characters, terrible pacing and constant metaphors about novels that weren't as cute or clever as they were evidently intended to be. I feel sticky and manipulated (but not enough to care enough to cry at the end, as I was clearly supposed to). 

Death and the Harlot - Georgina Clarke

64%

24.06.25

I want to describe this as a Regency romp, but it's set too late to be Regency and is too serious in places to be a romp. But it's a fun read with well-drawn characters, good world-building and no embarrassing attempts at realistic period dialogue. Yes, the identity of the villain quickly becomes obvious but it's an entertaining journey to their unveiling.

The Girl on the Ice - Amy McCulloch

52%

21.06.25

The author clearly wanted to write about her holiday in Antarctica but felt compelled to add a far-fetched murder mystery and a particularly annoying protagonist to make it interesting enough. Not cool.

The Nonesuch - Georgette Heyer

55%

17.06.25

The only memorable thing about this middling Heyer was its excellent use of The Tiffany Effect (even if it is a nickname for Theophania).

Young Jane Young - Gabrielle Zevin

61%

15.06.25

This was clever, engaging and well written, and the strongly drawn female characters were all fighting the patriarchy in their own refreshing ways (compared with the depressing victimhood of the women in Birding, for example)... but a book making such a clear feminist point perhaps shouldn't seem quite so light - it needs more anger, more bite, more raw emotional veracity. Good but not as good as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (but not much is). 

The Frozen People - Elly Griffiths

59%

13.06.25

Griffiths' depictions of North Norfolk have always been fanciful, so perhaps it's no surprise that she's gone full sci fi with her new time-travel series. It made no sense, the characters were poorly developed and the plot full of unresolved (worm)holes but it was a lot of fun - the culture-clash scenes set in Victorian London were particularly engaging.

Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo

 67%

11.06.25

This was structured like the card tricks that appear throughout the story - carefully planned, carefully dealt, only revealing the full hand at the right time. The worldbuilding was impeccable and the characters mostly three-dimensional. All that makes it a little easier to overlook the fact that those characters (as usual for Bardugo) are unrealistically precocious teens and the apparently independent women don't pass the Bechdel test.

Birding - Rose Ruane

43%

08.06.25

This was longlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction but read like a collection of writing exercises that tried to cram in as many metaphors as possible about pathetic women, horrible men and depressing seaside towns. It started out pretentious and ended up trite, thus losing any insights into (some specific) female experiences.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice to Murderers - Jesse Sutanto

54%

04.06.25

I don't really understand the concept of a 'cosy' murder mystery - someone dying violently really isn't very cosy. But in this case, everyone hated the victim, so that apparently made it OK. It also seemed to be a given that readers would love the highly irritating main character so much that little time was spent on developing the supporting cast. It was entertaining enough but too light to be memorable.

Leave No Trace - Jo Callaghan

56%

31.05.25

This didn't contain the irritating factual errors of the first book (or at least not that I noticed), but it was frustrating in a different way. It wasn't emotionally involving, and the murderer was obvious as soon as I gave some thought to whodunnit. Mainly, though, it could have done so much more with the series' whole USP, the AI detective. 

Less is Lost - Andrew Sean Greer

52%

26.05.25

I really enjoyed the first book but this was, well, so much less. It wasn't as clever or funny as it thought it was (it wasn't funny at all), and I had no emotional connection with Less's muddled and rather tedious journey through America. What was the point of this book other than to remind me that I'm British? 

The Space Between Trees - Katie Williams

61%

23.05.25

Katie Williams is an inexplicably overlooked author: she sure knows how to string a sentence together. She also knows how to reach into the mysterious, awkward core of teenagers. There's a murder but it's not a murder mystery; this strange, beautiful, ugly story gets out its magnifying glass to examine - and to burn - that difficult age from all angles. 

For an actual murder mystery, see Williams' My Murder, and for more teenage angst, see Absent.

A Cruel Thirst - Angela Montoya

52%

22.05.25

The sense of place (and therefore, I suppose, the worldbuilding) was strong, but it read like a stilted translation. And the main male character had a fatal flaw - well, yeah, he was a vampire, but, more significantly, he was so incredibly boring that he was defined only via his beauty. Which, while a nice change from women being characterised entirely by their looks, didn't create much empathy in this reader.

The Silent Wife - Andy Maslen

53%

16.05.25

I enjoyed the first in this series but this third book feels much more off the production line. Maslen takes pains to make the main detective realistically ordinary, but that only draws attention to the unrealistically evil villains (and there are several) without bothering to build any emotional engagement. The murderer here was obvious from the start, so it seemed like a lot of faffing went on before they were finally taken down.
 

The Theatre of Glass and Shadows - Anne Corlett

47%

11.05.25

This was promising - after all, immersive theatre is inherently ripe for endless stories. And the author obviously loves the idea of it, spending page after page describing every detail. But I'm not a visual person and all that worldbuilding didn't necessarily progress the (ultimately very confusing) plot or make the dopey main character any less annoying. As with the otherwise very different Life of Zanna, an unsympathetic protagonist needs to have something for you to root for, but this one just kept running back to trouble and spurning potential friends for no good reason. And it needed a better edit - I started playing 'the older woman' - and, later, 'the other girl' - bingo. It's so distracting not to use the character's name or 'her'.

Life of Zanna - Emily Jane Hodgkin

 45%

10.05.25

I don't mind an unsympathetic narrator if they're charismatic or intelligent or are at least interesting in some way but every single character in this story was horrible, boring and stupid so I didn't care what happened to them. Maybe that was the point, but when you hope the main character dies at the end for all her wrong choices, that's not a good sign.

Silver - Olivia Levez

60%

04.05.25

'Gripping', says the cover, 'Unforgettable', 'Extraordinary'. It was none of those things, but it was a prettily written - if unsubtle - examination of what makes us human. I suppose all novels are about that, but this refreshingly British sci fi shone a specific silvery light upon it. The romance was overdone, and stars could shine through the plot holes, but the ending was just right.

Immortal - Lauretta Hignett

56%

01.05.25

This'll be the last Hignett for a while, promise as I have many, more literary, novels to read. That said, while there's no doubt her books are entertaining, she also sneaks in more serious political or emotional messages, adding a little depth to what could be cliched wish-fulfillment stories. This series starter was better than Susan's and Prue's but still seemed a little transitory - on its way to somewhere else later in the series, where I don't feel very strongly about going.

A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J Maas

43%

29.04.25

So this is the book that spawned a thousand romantasies. Why? How, when it's so laughably badly written, poorly paced and dull? (And that hilarious map!) Worse, the romance part, such as it was, promoted that trendy misogynist trope of dominant 'alpha' male power dynamics that rendered all the (unsympathetic) female protagonist's relationships frankly abusive. It's concerning that this is the message that young women are being fed.