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.)
17.09.25
I'm not much of a Greenwood fan but how could I resist a story set in my oft-ignored home town? Unfortunately, the town didn't feature at all and so the very occasional mention of local businesses - plus the use of the actual names of many racecourse staff - were the only high points in this poorly written and deadly boring (ha!) police procedural, where there were more police officers than suspects.
13.09.25
I think I was supposed to root for the very flawed protagonist in this domestic thriller but she was so unlikable and her actions so inexplicable that the best I can say is at least she did protag, unlike all those passive lit fic main characters. Almost as annoying were the endless detailed descriptions of every room and every outfit that kept stalling the plot. Just sum it up in a pithy sentence and move on.
11.09.25
Subtle and many-layered as this book aimed to be, the stubborn and childish protagonist prevented any emotional connection and therefore it became just a long examination on all the different ways that families and the (Irish) Catholic church can fail you. And, this being lit fic, nothing much happened except random jumps to and from other times when nothing much happened.
07.09.25
An unexceptional queer romance with rather annoying protagonists who need to get over themselves. Never leaving town and/or taking 40 years to notice your privilege don't gain my empathy. I did like how they were a bit older than typical romantic leads, and that nearly everyone was LGBTQ+.
The problem with literary fiction is that the characters all feel very strongly about stuff without actually doing anything about it, and making bad decisions if they do. There were some nice turns of phrase but this was rather untethered, with an odd choice of emphasis ("Oh yeah, that computer game I spent 20 pages describing? It failed." "By the way, the main characters got married and had a baby two years ago, didn't I say?"). I'm all for a character-driven plot but I can't help thinking that they might as well be feeling very strongly about stuff in a fantasy world or a murder mystery, because at least then there's something tangible to focus on.
27.08.25
Hugely clichéd, hugely predictable and yet somehow hugely entertaining. I must like a folk horror that's leavened with humour - the light tone at times seemed to battle with the dark atmosphere but that's probably what made it so engaging, despite the uneven pacing.
(Interestingly, this very different but in some ways quite similar book is by the same author, particularly in terms of portraying the female experience.)
22.08.25
I was 15% of the way through and wondering when the plot was going to kick in before I realised this was non-fiction. Even having experienced my own version of what the author describes, it did nothing to change my mind about the point of memoirs beyond therapy for the writer. It was well written but, oh, the endless descriptions of bonding over food - yes, I get it.
54%
20.08.25This was well researched but I suspect the misogyny of the time was exaggerated for effect. It was hard to warm to the main character - or, indeed, any of the characters - and it was all a bit predictable, making the story rather lacklustre.
13.08.25
The only engaging and empathetic character in this mildly amusing but entirely plotless novel was New Zealand. I wanted less of the twentysomethings behaving like tiresome children and more of the secretly complex country.
06.08.25
I'm all for a story set in Norwich but there was too much time spent on (the admittedly intriguing) worldbuilding and not enough on plot, character development and continuity. There were, in fact, so many annoying continuity errors and unnecessary typos that I wondered if anyone, including the author, had actually read the book before (self)publishing it.
31.07.25
Bardugo is a fine writer. Her worldbuilding is vivid and her characters are complex. I enjoyed the first book in this series. So why was this one so boring? I had to force my way through it, in search of a real plot, anything that wasn't adolescent heartache and confusing economics. And then, of course, at the end, nothing was as it seemed. Except for the things that were.
29.07.25
I think this book works best if you read it ironically - as a satire with more than one unreliable narrator. Whether that was the author's intention is another matter, but it's dark and fun and gritty and silly and generally so full of contradictions that you just have to go with it.
64%
22.07.25
This was almost a murder-mystery-fantasy, such was the world-building of the life of a '90s junior doctor fighting addiction. Both very funny and profound (often at the same time), the detached tone worked well with the descriptions of an underfunded hospital and the unnamed narrator's weakening grasp on a rather dystopian reality. The end was a bit silly, though.
19.07.25
At first, the poor grammar made this really hard to follow, and then the confusing time-shifting plot and inconsistently drawn characters made it even harder. I still don't understand whodunnit or whytheydunnit or how someone who hadn't dunnit ended up in prison too. Nice cover, though.
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.
