The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands - Sarah Brooks

64%

15.02.26

Strange and beautiful, the world and characters drawn with care, and the plot, such as it was, gathering speed like a train on the tracks. This  leisurely, intelligent story perhaps needed a little more steam power to really get going.

The Thrashers - Julie Soto

60%

10.02.26

A fun and thoughtful high-school supernatural thriller that leaned into the ridiculous horror tropes while also tackling the universal desire to belong. It could have been developed a little more - there were parts that needed more (and others that needed less) focus, and the protagonist didn't really have enough conflict, but generally it was engaging and mostly unpredictable.

Check and Mate - Ali Hazelwood

57%

06.02.26

You can tell from the title that this is ridiculous in almost every way but Hazelwood is good at what she does and somehow it's still cute and engaging and relatively unpredictable (and quite educational about chess) if you don't think too carefully about the Cinderella fantasy of it all or the disappointingly flat ending.

The Last Hour Between Worlds - Melissa Caruso

64%

05.02.26

Well written, vivid, exciting, clever and fun, this story throws you straight into the careful worldbuilding, with strong female characters taking charge and the men mostly just afterthoughts. But it did lack a little something emotionally - neither the romantic nor the maternal love were quite convincing enough.

Always On My Mind - Carys Green

40%

02.02.26

An interesting premise, poorly executed. The author needed to spend less time thinking about how it would adapt for Netflix and more time improving her writing skills. 

Learning to Swim - Clare Chambers

61%

28.01.26

I could say exactly what I said about Back Trouble but this was slightly more memorable, with more vivid characters. I didn't like the anti-only-child rhetoric though!

A Beginner's Guide to Breaking and Entering - Andrew Hunter Murray

44%

24.01.26

This couldn't be more different to the previous book I read - it's all action and gentle British humour. What it does have in common is the lack of character development and emotional engagement, making it instantly forgettable.

The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

41%

19.01.26

Gosh, but this was boring. Was there even a plot or was it just badly written, pretentious philosophical worldbuilding featuring eight or nine characters with an interchangeable personality? 

The Perfect Golden Circle - Benjamin Myers

54%

14.01.26

This is lit fic at its most self-referential, like the crop circles it describes - carefully crafted and ultimately meaning whatever you want it to. 
 

The Bones Beneath My Skin - TJ Klune

57%

12.01.26

The genre might vary but a Klune novel will always have a male/male romance, found family, a supernatural element, awkward dialogue and jokes in surprising (sometimes inappropriate) places. This was essentially an action thriller with an eye on a Netflix adaptation but that made it feel rather superficial and I doubt I'll remember much about it in six months.

The Unknown Ajax - Georgette Heyer

53%

09.01.26

Heyer is a dependable comfort read when I'm under the weather (I've been winged but not by a pistol) and this, as usual, featured vivid characters and gentle humour, but it's also a little dull (despite the smuggling subplot). Much of it hasn't aged well since the 1950s - marrying one's cousin and bullying a queer relation lands rather differently these days.

The Wishing Game - Meg Shaffer

53%

05.01.26

I knew I had to write a review for a book I'd finished yesterday but it took me a good ten seconds to remember what that book was. Which isn't a great sign. I really liked Shaffer's The Lost Story but this, while competently written, was somehow both emotionally detached and overly sentimental. 

Woodworking - Emily St James

69%

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.

Novels I started but didn't finish in 2025

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:

• One Day With You - Shari Low: just no.
• The Hungry Dark - Jen Williams: I got three-quarters of the way through this but it was so unrelentingly grim, and the characters so improbable, that I couldn't finish it.
• The Year of the Child - Niall Williams: too pretentious to bear.

I started and wasn't enthralled by but may come back to:

• The Friend - Dorothy Koomson
• Aphrodite - Phoenicia Rogerson

The Golden Age of Magic - Luanne G. Smith

43% 

29.12.25

The author tried hard with the worldbuilding but maybe should have spent more time thinking about plot, pace and clarity.

Born For This - Caitlin Devlin

45%

26.12.25

I 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.

A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym

72%

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.

Snowblind - Ragnar Jonasson

37%

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.

All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West

59%

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.

The House Across the Lake - Riley Sager

54%

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.