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.
01.10.25
Predating (ha!) Dracula by 25 years, this is celebrated as the original queer vampire story. But that's misleading - the lesbian implications seem mainly a metaphor for power imbalance and a blunt condemnation of 'unnatural' behaviour. The story, atmospheric as it was, didn't make much sense and rushed the ending.
26.09.25
I wish this really did begin at the end, so I wouldn't have had to force my way through this overlong, overblown, overwritten and under-edited melodrama.
25.09.25
Fun, and sneakily clever, short story/novella, in which much symbolic use is made of penetration by stakes and steel.
24.09.25
I've read all of Liane Moriarty's books but luckily her sister writes in a very similar, entertaining style. It uses the same formula of bubbling domestic and social resentments, leading to an unlikely but somehow satisfying conclusion. The Moriartys make suburban Australia sound much more interesting that it probably is.
21.09.25
I read this because the author went to the same college as me, and a sort-of unnamed version of it did feature - but it was nothing like my experience. She seems to have hated it as much as she hated her protagonist, who has so few redeeming features that I hoped she sank under the increasingly heavy pile of increasingly ridiculous Bad Things that happened to her. It was hardly the gritty realism I suspect it was intended to be.
(I didn't realise this was by the same author - it was both similar and quite different.)
