20.03.26
Epistolary stories might be the original novel format (see the amazing Clarissa, 1748) but that doesn't mean they successfully build emotional engagement or a gripping plot. This, to me, did neither. What was it actually about, other than an unrealistic woman writing letters? Yeah, I know it's all in what is not said but it was so introspective - and yet also so performative - that it ultimately didn't reach its destination.
51%
01.03.26This read like a first attempt at writing a novel by someone who'd had some guidance but not enough editing. The best thing about it was the almost-accidental fantasy elements - they just happened to be there, in that world. But otherwise it was all a bit awkward, and the drawn-out romantic difficulties could have been resolved after a quick chat (and a development edit).
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.
18.03.25
Some reviewers enjoy the more serious approach to relationships (and class and politics) that make this a rather untypical Heyer but it bored me and lacked the light touch of the better Heyers. The male lead was totally unsympathetic, and the female lead remained as dull as she first appeared. The class clashes were handled awkwardly - although the vulgar new-money father was one of the few vivid (if overdone) characterisations.
15.01.25
This was better than Ralph's Party but it was still poorly written (can't an item of clothing be described without naming its brand?) with a lot of unquestioned assumptions about what makes a family. Lots of babies, apparently, which, well, yeah, taken literally, it is. Oddly for a novel of this type, found family, while valuable, came much further down the value chain than blood relations, even if those relations failed you.
21.09.24
Vampires, sure, I can suspend my disbelief about them. The coincidences and continuity errors, though? No way. Also, while the author tried hard to present the female lead as an independent and successful career woman (who amusingly brought down the villain with her accountancy superpowers), these types of books follow a problematic formula of 'woman tamed by monster' that I can't buy into.
I listen to Elizabeth Day's podcast, 'How To Fail' and, while I wouldn't be as crass as to say, 'Here's an example!', this is not a particularly successful novel. It seemed poorly planned and plotted, and not only were the (universally unlikable) characters inconsistent and unconvincing but so was the genre - it seemed to be heading for a thriller and then suddenly it was just a dull domestic drama. It certainly wasn't unsettling, gothic or terrifying, as billed (billed! Magpie! Ha!).
Apparently, I had similar thoughts about another Day novel.
26.03.24
This really put the procedure into police procedural. The author clearly did his research and wanted us to know it. If only he had put the thrill into thriller as well. Still, the local (to me) setting added a little something and my town, which is usually ignored, even got a dishonourable mention.
51%
I've struggled with Moreno-Garcia's style before - it feels awkwardly translated even though it was originally written in English. This story was also awkward - "walk through rooms, hallucinate, argue, repeat" with a final few chapters that didn't make sense. Not at all creepy, anyway, and, the colonial point was lost as the baddies could have been any nationality, as long as they were outsiders.
01.01.23
This book is so popular that my library reservation took three months to come through in the form of an enormous hardback. But I might as well have stood in line to be hit over the head with it, so heavy-handed is its execution. So women were disrespected in the 1950s - we get the point but the descriptions are so exaggerated they fail to ring true. Apparently also children were Roald Dahl's Matilda, you could become a champion rower by reading, not rowing, dogs were basically people who couldn't speak and people were, including and especially the main character, unlikeable and entirely unsympathetic.
13.08.22
Garth Nix is a prolific and experienced (Australian) writer, so it's odd that this urban fantasy could have been so much better. The British characters all speak like Americans (but throw in uniquely British references to remind us that they aren't) and, despite explaining everything to each other at least three times, it's still not clear what's going on most of the time. The plot is a series of self-contained set-pieces that don't really hang together. It doesn't seem to have been proofread. Oh, and here's yet another book that is set 40 years ago purely to overcome plot points that would be made redundant by mobile phones and the internet.
51%
Nora Ephron was probably great fun to hang out with, full of wicked gossip and wry advice, but I'm not sure her writing entirely lives up to the hype. Her very specific brand of humour, based on her affluent New York lifestyle, is hard to relate to (as I found with her novel, Heartburn). There are some laughs but even more 'so whats?'.
51%
Copy and paste what I said abut False Colours and Faro's Daughter. Because it was even slightly less memorable than them.
08.04.21
I would never have chosen to read something so unrelentingly bleak but, hey, this won the Booker Prize, and was the first choice of my new reading group so sometimes the challenge is worthwhile. Not in this case. It was heavy in every sense: weighed down by endless, meaningless adjectives, metaphors and similes, by the interchangeable sex-and-power-hungry men, by the interchangeable weak-and-untrustworthy women, by its lack of nuance, by layer upon layer upon tedious layer of Bad Things Happening. A grim semi-autobiographical novel isn't automatically a good novel.
