12.05.26
I liked the refreshingly fun, irreverent tone and vivid worldbuilding. I didn't like the inevitable power-imbalanced, male-possessive romance, the narrative inconsistencies or the main couple being the only characters with character, and not particularly likable ones at that. But a refreshingly fun, irreverent tone and vivid worldbuilding counts for a lot.
63%
26.04.26This 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.
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.
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.
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.')
09.07.24
The word that best describes this story is 'breezy'. There's nothing particularly deep or disturbing but it's still engaging and readable - the holiday read I didn't know I needed.
46%
06.06.24
This was clearly semi-autobiographical, and took an unusual lens to important cultural issues that the author clearly feels passionate about. But worthiness doesn't make it a good novel. The poor writing undermined any emotional, political, psychological or spiritual points the author was trying to make. The main problem, of many, was the relentless telling not showing - pages and pages of exposition with very little to ground it, set the stakes or to make the reader engage with the narrator's predicament. Apparently, it has been edited but you wouldn't know it.
30.06.22
A sweet and funny YA LGBTQ+ romantic drama set in an Alabama Christian high school. Compulsively readable, with some clever turns of phrase, the number of gay characters (spoiler: almost everyone) heroically tries to rebalance the usual straight stories. There is, strangely, no hint of sex - other than kissing, of course - and only a nod towards the real issues faced by kids in such communities, but it is a tonic to take in the relentlessly positive message.
27.06.21
This late Barbara Pym novel is as sharp and occasionally as funny as her earlier ones, but it's shot through with the poignancy not only of the regrets of old age but also of relentlessly changing times.
63%
20.11.20
This was my first J Trollope and actually it was quite good, in a rather dated, middle-class, tropes of little England sort of way.
68%
15.10.20
I much enjoyed Kneale's English Passengers nearly 20 years ago and, while not quite in the same league, this was a similarly well-researched, well-characterised and entertaining insight into all the aspects of the extraordinary 13th-century trend for walking from Britain to Rome (and back).
