11.12.24
Talking cats! Comedy villains! What a shame the premise was better than the execution. It just all seemed so half-hearted - it needed more action, more conflict, more coherent plot, more character development, more humour - and less pointless paragraphs of nothing. And how disappointing (spoiler) that the main character gave up villainy before he even got started.
60%
08.12.24If you confuse this with the Georgette Heyer novel of the same name, you'll get quite a shock. I'm not generally a horror fan but I enjoyed the way this ramped up from 'disaffected daughter reluctantly returns home' to full-on blood sacrifices before the fires of Hell. The wry tone was well judged and the structure engaging, but what's with the annoying trend for omitting conjunctions and gerunds? ('Julia read the sentence, shouted at her Kindle in frustration. She didn't like it, took her out of immersion.')
02.12.24
The trouble with this novel was the uneasy mix of paying homage to Austen/Gaskell and the 21st-century turns of phrase and sensibilities of the characters. It worked best when it interrogated class assumptions, using a light yet skewering humour, and not always taking the easy way out. But the main character was unlikable (and not in the 'Emma' sense) and many conversations and actions were just unconvincing.
25.11.24
This was delightful - in fact, not just full of delight but brimming over with many and varied delights. The worldbuilding, the humorous dialogue, the nods to other fairy tales all just worked, and at no time did phrasing make me cringe, which is unusual, frankly. Was it too saccharine? Maybe. Did it end too abruptly? Certainly. But what fun!
21.11.24
First of all, the murdered person does not solve their own murder (because she's, yer know, dead). Other examples of the many annoying things about this book are the endless punctuation errors, the wimpy, undeserving 'heroine', a plot and structure that made no sense, and the tiny village with its own two ambulances (complete with assigned paramedics), police station (complete with assigned detective who can't even find the cannabis farm), solicitors' practice, walk-in doctors' surgery, iPhone store and Oxfam shop.
17.11.24
All the buckles were swashed in this well-written, well-researched feminist adventure. With its vivid historical and fantasy world building, interesting characterisation and enough humour to balance out the violence and grit, it makes other books seem rather lame. I mean, what's the point of a novel unless it stars a badass female pirate?
43%
13.11.24
I was really looking forward to reading this sequel but it started out muddled and confusing and didn't stop being muddled and confusing. The annoying characters, boring romance and lack of explanation of what on earth was going on didn't help. And so much more could have been made of the 'villain' idea. How disappointing.
05.11.24
I maintain that Heyer was one of the best authors of the 20th century and isn't taken seriously because she wrote romances. This is a particularly delightful example, with sparkling dialogue and the usual strongly drawn characters (except, oddly, for the love interest, who was a bit of a bore).
30.10.24
You wouldn't want to meet any of the horrible, entitled characters in this book (especially the sanctimonious 'main' character) but that's OK, because nobody actually behaves like them in real life. It was all tedious telling and not showing, with no real emotional engagement. And it didn't actually address the ultimate point - even if (spoiler) the cash was not ill-gotten, the rest of the estate probably was.
29.10.24
No realistic people were harmed in the making of this novel.
24.10.24
Moriarty's tenth novel is about to come out so finding the only other one I hadn't read in the library was serendipitous. This was a fun yet surprisingly complex read - a woman forgetting the last ten years was almost like time travel but it cleverly stopped short of 'young her undoes the mistakes of older her', examining all the implications. Talking of mistakes, I enjoyed it all the way up to the ending(s), which were hugely disappointing, considering what had gone before.
58%
21.10.24
Fair play to Stevenson for tackling that difficult 'second in the series' with so much meta energy. His decision to continue with the trademark self-referential elements livened up the old 'murder on a train' cliche, but the characters and plot were still too confusing and I don't think I'll remember much about it.
18.10.24
Ali Hazelwood is The Current Thing so I thought I'd give this a go. Romantasy isn't her usual genre and in many ways this read like a very good satire of the slightly problematic 'fated mate' trope, improved by the heroine being a feisty vampire instead of the usual passive girl-next-door. The sex was overdone and the twists (such as they were) telescoped but it was hugely entertaining, with an engaging tone of voice and non-stop action - other writers should take note.
13.10.24
I was bewildered about the point of this book. As with The Rachel Incident, what's interesting about young adults behaving like teenagers? It was readable enough but not particularly well written - I often had to stop and reread passages to work out who was doing what and when. The perfect tense exists for a reason and that reason is clarity.
(This also belongs to a subset of contemporary books with a prejudice against people with no siblings. Usually, kids are quite happy to be only children and their parents are quite happy to have only one. It is not going to mess anyone up or make them somehow incomplete.)
09.10.24
I think people are getting the concept of an unreliable narrator mixed up with the concept of plot twists. Nothing that happened in this story (within a story within a story) was much of a surprise - information was just withheld and filtered by the narrator. Which made the story more engaging than a third-person omniscient narrator would have been, even if it was, overall, totally farfetched.
03.10.24
Despite the sometimes clunky phrasing, despite having too many characters, despite the confusing plot with an ending that had me asking, "OK, but what about...?", despite not being a fan of gory horror, despite the moral messaging that was as subtle as, well, a vampire, I kind of loved this. The tone, the pacing, the ethical grey areas, the setting and above all the clever worldbuilding all had me caught up in this alternative - yet maybe not so alternative after all - universe.
29.09.24
I didn't really get the point of this book. It read as if it was semi-autobiographical but that doesn't make the tedious non-dramas of self-indulgent young adults who behave like children any more interesting or deep. The quality of the writing was fine but I was left thinking, so what?
And I've only just realised the also-disappointing All Our Hidden Gifts is by the same author.
26.10.24
I have no memory of buying this so I read it - and I only remembered I'd read it after finishing the book I'd read after it, a few days later, which isn't a good sign. It was fine - amusing, with good worldbuilding, but the story was confusing and not particularly exciting for a YA adventure. It was (Fforde's adult fantasy/satire) Shades of Grey lite.
