09.10.26
Despite TJR being very, very keen to show off her extensive research at the expense of pace, despite the boringly self-righteous main character, despite the sometimes overwhelming sentimentality, even despite no-one from her previous Celebrityverse books wandering into scenes as they usually do... I really enjoyed this.
54%
17.09.26I mean, this was fine - an undemanding, wistfully positive, contemporary queer romance. The author clearly has never met any British people or knows anything about British universities (where you don't tend to have roommates or call yourself a freshman; at least she didn't try to set it in the UK) and the academics could have been STEM rather than art, and nothing much happened, but generally it was... fine.
41%
20.08.26An engaging concept with strong (if overcomplicated) worldbuilding and much darker and more political than the cover suggests. But it had the whiff of AI about it that became stronger towards the (entirely unresolved) ending. If this author did write it all herself, she needs to humanise - and generally improve - her style, sci fi theme or not.
47%
06.07.26Passable Heyer / Austen / Quinn fanfic that would have worked better if it hadn't tried so hard to shove in irrelevant historical events and 21st-century sensibilities.
60%
17.06.26Who doesn't love a psychopathic narrator with no redemption arc? Well, lots of readers if you go by the reviews. But a bad person does not make a bad novel - in fact, it's cleverly paced and the emphasis here is definitely on the fun. (Apart from when she killed a cat. Oh, yeah, and a couple of people too, but there's no excuse for killing a cat.)
23.03.26
An education in overwrought, badly paced, over-adjectification. Yet another book very loosely based on Carmilla (in the sense of there being some vampires, girls in love and a character called Carmilla) but it didn't seem to make any particular point. Although if I'd drunk a shot of blood every time I read the word 'delicate', I'd be immortal by now.
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).
05.02.26
Well written, vivid, exciting, clever and fun, this story throws you straight into the careful worldbuilding, with strong female characters taking charge and the men mostly just afterthoughts. But it did lack a little something emotionally - neither the romantic nor the maternal love were quite convincing enough.
12.01.26
The genre might vary but a Klune novel will always have a male/male romance, found family, a supernatural element, awkward dialogue and jokes in surprising (sometimes inappropriate) places. This was essentially an action thriller with an eye on a Netflix adaptation but that made it feel rather superficial and I doubt I'll remember much about it in six months.
02.01.26
The new year's off to a strong reading start with this engaging, funny, moving and ultimately satisfying character-driven story that uses every type of narrative voice to convey many types of identity. I was less keen on the underplaying of the inappropriateness of the teacher/student relationship, and the lack of trans men amongst the vivid queer cast, but overall a good read.
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.
19.11.25
You know what I said about Lacey's Stars Collide? That. Except this had some minor manufactured angst that got boring fast.
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.
01.10.25
Predating (ha!) Dracula by 25 years, this is celebrated as the original queer vampire story. But that's misleading - the lesbian implications seem mainly a metaphor for power imbalance and a blunt condemnation of 'unnatural' behaviour. The story, atmospheric as it was, didn't make much sense and rushed the ending.
11.09.25
Subtle and many-layered as this book aimed to be, the stubborn and childish protagonist prevented any emotional connection and therefore it became just a long examination on all the different ways that families and the (Irish) Catholic church can fail you. And, this being lit fic, nothing much happened except random jumps to and from other times when nothing much happened.
07.09.25
An unexceptional queer romance with rather annoying protagonists who need to get over themselves. Never leaving town and/or taking 40 years to notice your privilege don't gain my empathy. I did like how they were a bit older than typical romantic leads, and that nearly everyone was LGBTQ+.
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.
26.05.25
I really enjoyed the first book but this was, well, so much less. It wasn't as clever or funny as it thought it was (it wasn't funny at all), and I had no emotional connection with Less's muddled and rather tedious journey through America. What was the point of this book other than to remind me that I'm British?
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.
06.03.25
Sarah Waters hasn't published a novel for more than 10 years so I was pleased to remember there was one I hadn't read. In her anniversary afterword, she's pretty critical of this, her debut novel, but I think she's too harsh on herself. From the start, the reader is clearly in the hands of a confident and sophisticated storyteller, a late-20th-century Dickens. Yes, it was a bit messy, and the main character is self-serving to the end - and it wasn't quite as good as The Little Stranger, for example - but it's certainly a good read.
