04.05.25
'Gripping', says the cover, 'Unforgettable', 'Extraordinary'. It was none of those things, but it was a prettily written - if unsubtle - examination of what makes us human. I suppose all novels are about that, but this refreshingly British sci fi shone a specific silvery light upon it. The romance was overdone, and stars could shine through the plot holes, but the ending was just right.
29.01.25
Objectively, this isn't a particularly good novel but it's so sweet and positive that it's easy to overlook the general lack of drama and conflict, and the unrelentingly 'nice' characters. It's also refreshing to note that it barely features any men - the girls are definitely able to do it by themselves!
06.01.25
New year, old favourites. This was a middling-to-good Heyer. The dialogue in particular was a masterclass - every character had a distinct way of speaking that reflected their personality and the effect was reliably entertaining. Yet the novel was overlong and portrayed gender-based behaviours that are discomforting to a modern reader (the hero occasionally resorts to what we'd regard as domestic violence) - although, as usual, the hints at gay characters were sympathetic.
60%
08.12.24If you confuse this with the Georgette Heyer novel of the same name, you'll get quite a shock. I'm not generally a horror fan but I enjoyed the way this ramped up from 'disaffected daughter reluctantly returns home' to full-on blood sacrifices before the fires of Hell. The wry tone was well judged and the structure engaging, but what's with the annoying trend for omitting conjunctions and gerunds? ('Julia read the sentence, shouted at her Kindle in frustration. She didn't like it, took her out of immersion.')
09.10.24
I think people are getting the concept of an unreliable narrator mixed up with the concept of plot twists. Nothing that happened in this story (within a story within a story) was much of a surprise - information was just withheld and filtered by the narrator. Which made the story more engaging than a third-person omniscient narrator would have been, even if it was, overall, totally farfetched.
I really liked this, as long as I ignored the apparent lack of copy editing (continuity errors, misplaced Americanisms, grammatical mistakes that didn't seem to be related to the narrator's voice... why?! I've deducted points for being yanked out of immersion). Its intriguing premise developed into a thoughtful take on the nature of experience, memory, the media and potentially abusive relationships.
Well, although the female protagonist was strong and independent, this wouldn't pass the Bechdel Test for all the time she and the Villain spent mooning over each other. But it was good fun - apart from the non-ending, which will force me to read the next one.
More Heyer, more fun, more predictable romance with a less predictable mystery which, nevertheless, was resolved with panache by the engaging and resourceful characters.
Despite the quirky cover and the '13 going on 30' (or 16 going on 40) premise, this was solid literary fiction that interrogated all the big questions. Its knowing references to the 'Back to the Future' tropes prevented it getting too bogged down in its own dynamics, but it still lacked cohesion in many place - and the characters (which included New York) weren't particularly interesting. But, overall, a fun and thoughtful read.
This was an entertaining and thought-provoking read but overall it didn't quite hit the mark. Despite its narrator's obsessive focus on an old murder, it ended up too flabby, too meandering, too in need of a decent line edit. And it would have been far more interesting if the narrator had actually been the murderer - perhaps the reader was led that way a little - but instead the ending was just flat. Also I suppose I need to resign myself to tedious pandemic-related content in any novel written after 2020.
60%
Delightful as ever, with the usual strongly drawn characters and (fairly) feisty heroine. Not particularly romantic for Heyer, though - it's mainly a mystery story with 'oh, we might as well get married' on the last page.
03.11.22
Heyer's stories are always a product of her time. By modern standards, this 'hero' is really not the sort of guy you'd ever want to meet, let alone marry, even if he is described as kinda hot. It's uncomfortable to buy into the feisty-yet-virtuous heroine eventually submitting to his overbearing persuasions. There's also the author's patronising treatment of anyone who doesn't happen to be of the nobility. That said, Heyer's stories are also always crammed with more vivid characters and relatable humour than most modern novels, with plots that roll out and resolve satisfactorily. And that balance of great and dodgy is what keeps her endless supply of Regency romances interesting.
08.03.22
No, not Victor Hugo. Now, that would be interesting. This, on the other hand, while diverting, was like an early Daisy Jones and the Six (by the same author) - the story of an alluring woman in a glamorous world reflected through the medium of the media. And, like that book, not as profound as it would like to be.
29.07.21
I'm all for relationship-based novels and beautifully written character studies - and this excelled at that - but I also expect something to actually happen in a story. There was no narrative tension to this at all, beyond 'bereaved man finds friend's diary, feels better' (spoiler!).
This was compared to Barbara Pym and Anne Tyler - well, it's a low-key story about women struggling through society but otherwise it was too heavy handed to reach those dizzy heights. Readable enough but from all the smog 'n' smoking (yes, we get it, it was the 50s) to the unnecessarily tragic or possibly open-ended ending (not a spoiler - the preface prefigured the probable death of a character), it just needed a lighter touch.
