07.04.26
Hazelwood is a very engaging writer on a sentence level but 'a couple clear up a misunderstanding and then have lots of sex' is not a plot. With no conflict nor any character development, it just wasn't all that interesting.
Showing posts with label 49. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 49. Show all posts
They Own the Night - Amy McCaw
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.
Ravensong - TJ Klune
22.04.25
As I said about the prequel to this book, Klune does good work but it doesn't always pay off. This was all over the place in terms of tone, plot and character, lurching from one thing to another - and it did such a poor job of establishing sympathy that I ended up wondering what made the goodies so sure they were good.
The Rules of Fortune - Danielle Prescod
06.02.25
What is it with all the telling and not showing in family dramas? This could have been a fascinating insight into an unfamiliar world, but it - the characters, the plot, the dialogue - felt cold and flat because everything was exposition. It really needed another edit - but would make a good TV show.
Midnight is the Darkest Hour - Ashley Winstead
07.07.24
The fact that the author had to write a really quite long essay at the end to 'explain' things is not a good sign. She insists, for example, that it wasn't that easy for the narrator to just leave town - but it was - it just wouldn't have helped the plot. It really all came down to none of the characters behaving convincingly for their time or place or doing anything an actual person might do. On the plus side, it's not quite as bad as that Crawdads nonsense, even if it was going for its tone - and audience.
Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett
49%
My excuse is that I wanted something easy to read while I had the flu and this had a nice cover. Of course, I should know that the cover is not the way to judge a book - in this case, I judge it - yet again! - on the Edwardian characters speaking like modern Americans. Nobody would have used that vocabulary, and clearly the author knows nothing about how Cambridge colleges work. Yes, it's fantasy, but jarring inaccuracies ruin the immersion. Again, I ask, why didn't an editor pick up on any of this? So that irritated me even without the very familiar storyline and unsympathetic characters behaving remarkably irrationally for scientists.
One True Loves - Taylor Jenkins Reid
29.01.23
I think this was TJR's last novel before she found herself a niche in fake celebrity memoirs. Those are better. Perhaps it's the more focused characters in the later books - the two men in this seemed to be exactly the same so no wonder the narrator struggled to choose between them. And I have no idea what they saw in her. Unsurprisingly, that made the whole premise a little rocky.
The Guest List - Lucy Foley
30.07.22
I heard Lucy Foley being interviewed recently - she sounded nice. This book, though, was like a low-budget British TV drama that couldn't afford the right cast or production team. If a story's main selling point is not revealing who has been murdered until 90% of the way through, then perhaps it's not a very strong story in the first place.
Maybe in Another Life - Taylor Jenkins Reid
24.07.22
This was TJR before she hit her stride with fictional celebrity memoirs and it's not good. It's hard to care about any of the self-centred protagonists. It's hard to care about what happens to them. It's certainly hard to care, or even read, about their fluffy thoughts on love and fate.
Write My Name Across the Sky - Barbara O'Neal
49%
I didn't get the point of this novel. More 'rich people drama' that shed no new light on anything. And there were so many continuity errors and 'But wait!' moments - not to mention the silly ending - that there was no chance of getting sucked into the story, such as it was.
Impossible - Sarah Lotz
06.06.22
Weird, maybe, convoluted, definitely, but impossible? Well, given I couldn't understand what the protagonists saw in each other, or why they did what they did, or why it resolved so awkwardly, then yes.
Also: 'pointless pandemic-themed epilogue' warning. Why did the publisher evidently insist on this 'realistic' afterthought when the whole point of the story is that it's 'impossible'?
The View was Exhausting - Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
05.02.22
I don't mind an occasional dive into the lives of the 0.1% and this was a fairly intelligent take on the old celebrity story. It was just a shame it lacked a plot and relatable characters.
The Gloaming - Kirsty Logan
26.03.20
I'm not sure why magical realism always seems so depressing and negative but this didn't make me change my mind. On the one hand, the writing was evocative and lyrical but, on the other, nothing really happened to the sketchily drawn characters.
My Name is Leon - Kit de Waal
24.02.19
Heavy-handed story of a deprived kid saved by foster mothers, substitute fathers and, er, the redemptive power of gardening.
The Chalk Pit - Elly Griffiths
14.02.18
The ninth book in the series creaks under the weight of the characters' emotional baggage. Not a great deal happens, except in their heads - the actual crimes seem to be an afterthought. Readable enough, as always, but not a particularly thrilling thriller.
The Ghost Fields - Elly Griffiths
11.01.17
The Ghost Story, more like, in the sense of it being hardly there. As this series goes on, it becomes more like a soap opera and less like a tightly plotted set of murder mysteries. There was only one candidate for the murder(s) this time, which killed the suspense, and even that took a back seat to the tedium of the characters' relationships. Disappointing.
Breaking Away - Anna Gavalda
31.10.16
Points gained for a good, colloquial translation (for once) of a rather forgettable snapshot of four irritating, self-entitled siblings. I think the reader is expected to be on their side, but they were all so selfish that I didn't care. Interestingly French atmosphere, though.
The Chimes - Anna Smaill
06.07.16
Reading a book about how music sounds is never going to quite work. Reading a retro-futuristic dystopian book about how types of music that don't exist sound is never going to work at all. Hampering characters with no memories is also going to make rounding them out a tad challenging. All in all, this reads more like an undeveloped first draft - or a heavily cut draft of a much longer book.
The Norfolk Mystery - Ian Sansom
03.03.15
Monica in my reading group warned me that this was boring. I thought, how can it possibly be boring? It's about my local area! But she was right.
(Though it takes some audacity to start a series with each book set in a different English county. I wonder how far he'll get?)
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