Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym

52%

26.09.26

Pym's debut novel is really a pilot for her more successful later ones. Dated and staid as it is, there are glimpses of Pym's wicked humour and sharp characterisation.

Ravenous Beasts / Savage Daemons - Lauretta Hignett

59%

10.09.26 / 12.09.26

Just as crazy and confused and surprisingly feminist as the first two in the series but just as much fun, especially the last book, which went off in all sorts of unexpected directions.

Vicious Creatures / Fractured Gods - Lauretta Hignett

59%

04.09.26 / 06.09.26

More dark fantasy fun, this one even more violent than usual. There was, however, just as much need for a proper proofread (e.g. using 'little' five times in one paragraph and the constant focus on a particularly 'masculine jawline') but Hignett's irrepressible heroines and wry humour mean she is one of the few authors for whom I can overlook her lack of editing.

The God of Good Looks - Breanne Mc Ivor

58%

14.07.26

I liked this book more than the Trinidad Tourist Office probably does, and more than I should when the author had to justify some of her narrative choices in an endnote. It did a good job of juxtaposing Trinidad's violence and poverty with its aspiration and luxury, and managed to stay engaging despite having so few sympathetic characters.

People Pleaser - Bryony Gordon

52%

25.06.26

I liked the bold feminism (and having a nice and not entirely useless husband seemed like a subversive move) but the main character was so unlikable and unrelatable both before and after her 'transformation', and the situations so exaggerated, that it didn't please me very much.

(Apparently, I read a book with the same title last year, which I have absolutely no memory of. I doubt I'll remember this one either.) 

The Book of Longings - Sue Monk Kidd

63%

26.04.26

This was well researched and compelling with a great two-word hook - Jesus's wife! - but I wondered at the choice of exiling her while he was doing all the messiah stuff. Then I realised that it was really about the first-century female experience and the biblical Easter eggs (ha!) were just for decoration.

The Corinthian - Georgette Heyer

54%

18.04.26

Many people say this is the best Heyer novel but it was pretty indistinguishable from the others - spirited heroine, noble hero, comedy supporting characters, unlikely coincidences. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Lady Tremaine - Rachel Hochhauser

60%

11.04.26

Promoting this as a fairytale retelling does it a disservice. There are no fairies or romance - it's in fact a dark tale of a flawed woman fighting for survival. But it's well written (if very American in tone and language) and unpredictable enough to keep one reading until midnight.

Fleishman is in Trouble - Taffy Brodesser-Akner

 61%

25.02.26

This is archetypal lit fic, in all senses. It's introspectively character driven with very little actual plot, and the New York setting almost a character in itself. It's vividly and wittily written, just on the edge of pretentiousness. It can be read at surface level or appreciated for its clever narrative device in which the omniscient narrator is a subtly critical friend of the protagonist. And the feminist message is fascinatingly complex. It's a book that can be admired and enjoyed but, while both are true for me, I don't think I'll remember much about it in a month.

A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym

72%

18.12.25

I hadn't heard of this but it was by far the best Pym novel I've read. The snobbish, judgemental narrator was, oddly, especially engaging and relatable - in fact, it's surprising how much of a 1950s, middle-class, religious housewife's life is still relatable through Pym's witty and perceptive writing. Her relationships with her mother-in-law and, later, her gay friends, were surprisingly positive. Overall: delightful.

All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West

59%

10.12.25

Although the style and much of the subject matter is dated, you could bump into many of the characters today. Everyone was eccentric in their own way - sometimes charmingly and sometimes obnoxiously but always vividly. And the message of women's sacrificing their individuality for men and family is still, sadly, relevant.

What You Did - Claire McGowan

45%

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.)

The Female Persuasion - Meg Wolitzer

54%
01.09.25

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. 

Behind Every Good Man - Sara Goodman Confino

54%

20.08.25

This 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.

 

The Siren of Sussex - Mimi Matthews

52%

11.07.25

Considering the author tells us in her afterword how much research she did, you'd think she'd have attempted to make the characters sound and act period appropriately, rather than being 21st-century Americans inexplicably stranded in Victorian London. Even if this was a deliberate choice, the constant Americanisms - as well as some stereotypes about mid-19th century British society that I doubt were quite true - kept taking me out of the otherwise fairly sweet and fun story.

Young Jane Young - Gabrielle Zevin

61%

15.06.25

This was clever, engaging and well written, and the strongly drawn female characters were all fighting the patriarchy in their own refreshing ways (compared with the depressing victimhood of the women in Birding, for example)... but a book making such a clear feminist point perhaps shouldn't seem quite so light - it needs more anger, more bite, more raw emotional veracity. Good but not as good as Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (but not much is). 

Birding - Rose Ruane

43%

08.06.25

This was longlisted for The Women's Prize for Fiction but read like a collection of writing exercises that tried to cram in as many metaphors as possible about pathetic women, horrible men and depressing seaside towns. It started out pretentious and ended up trite, thus losing any insights into (some specific) female experiences.

Susan, You're the Chosen One - Lauretta Hignett

48%

27.04.25

The idea was promising but the whole book just read like an introduction to the series rather than anything worth reading by itself.

Foils and Fury (series) - Lauretta Hignett

63%

13.04.25

Four books comprising:

• Oops I Ate a Vengeance Demon
• Dancing with the Vengeance Demon
• Dating with the Vengeance Demon
• Dying for My Vengeance Demon

A fun, feisty, feminist fantasy series that I read n about 5 days. A pretty biting political commentary too, marred only by a few jarring typos. 

The Beauty Queen - Sally-Anne Martyn

45%

06.04.25

I liked the evocative descriptions of the British seaside, both in the 1980s and today. I didn't like the apparent lack of editing - the lumpy pacing, the continuity errors, the inconsistent characters, the obvious baddie, the wrongly attributed chapters, the sentences that made no sense. And it all got a bit silly at the end. The author needs to ask her publisher to work harder for her.