14.07.25
This was a weird mix of genres, starting off as a family drama and abruptly changing to a police procedural halfway through. While the focus on family relationships, and the lasting effects of trauma, was refreshingly unusual for a murder mystery, it was still a lumpy and ultimately unsatisfying read.
52%
11.07.25Considering the author tells us in her afterword how much research she did, you'd think she'd have attempted to make the characters sound and act period appropriately, rather than being 21st-century Americans inexplicably stranded in Victorian London. Even if this was a deliberate choice, the constant Americanisms - as well as some stereotypes about mid-19th century British society that I doubt were quite true - kept taking me out of the otherwise fairly sweet and fun story.
09.07.25
Apparently, the author is a well-known screenwriter so you'd think the pacing would be better. It did read like a TV drama, but that's not necessarily what you want in a novel. And here was yet another 'cynical female detective approaching middle age while bringing up teenage son and dealing with iffy husband'. But it was fairly well written and the update to typical English village stock characters was refreshing.
57%
05.07.25This was prettily written and started out well but was ultimately disappointing. It didn't seem to know what it was about - a competition? An expedition? A romance? A fantasy adventure? All of those things but never settling on one, with an irritatingly open ending for the next book.
47%
29.06.25Pretty run-of-the-mill 'perils of fame' story, with uninteresting characters and the murderer obvious from their first appearance.
46%
27.06.25Was 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).
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.
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.
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).
61%
15.06.25This 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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
53%
16.05.25I 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.
