The Wishing Game - Meg Shaffer

53%

05.01.26

I knew I had to write a review for a book I'd finished yesterday but it took me a good ten seconds to remember what that book was. Which isn't a great sign. I really liked Shaffer's The Lost Story but this, while competently written, was somehow both emotionally detached and overly sentimental. 

The Storied Life of AJ Fikry - Gabrielle Zevin

46%

27.06.25

Was 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). 

The Giver of Stars - Jojo Moyes

61%

26.12.23

Reviews want to categorise this as a romance but that wasn't really what is was about. The main story covered a surprisingly neglected historical moment that centralised books - and women. The details of the hard lives and harder climate of the area were pretty vivid, although the ramping up of the plot towards the end was probably unnecessary.
 

The Binding - Bridget Collins

66%
03.01.20

Although this book is flawed in many ways - overwritten on a sentence level and underwritten on a plot level, with leads that are hard to root for - it nevertheless magically sweeps you into its quasi-historical world and scientifically reveals the many implications of its central conceit. I don't normally get on with magic realism but this is a fine holiday read.

(Unfortunately, I read it on my Kindle so missed out on the beautiful hard copies - but it's good to see that high production values are (sometimes) still maintained.)

Camino Island - John Grisham

45%
20.02.19

If this is by 'the best thriller writer alive', let's hope a few more are born very soon. This was terrible in almost every respect but at least I learned something about the second-hand books market so it wasn't a complete waste of time.