Zoe Adams

This was not a nice story. The crime at the heart of it was really quite harrowing, and it was not an enjoyable read for that reason. But it was VERY well written. The characters were believable, and the trauma so well represented. I had also been impressed with Girl A, but this one was even better. While not my genre at all, this was very good.

3.75 stars. I enjoyed this book. It was well written, and an important insight into a historical context not much explored, especially from an Irish perspective.

This didn't work for me. Yes, it was beautifully written, and that was enough to get me to the end, but the religious musings were unexacting and unwelcome, the six day ‘snapshots' really didn't work, and I found the narrative voice incredibly irritating. There was no character development, and the whole thing felt very derivative.

I loved the None Stood Taller Books 1-3, but was very aware that the quality of the writing was poor. Sadly, I couldn't look past that in this book. The narrative voice is completely undeveloped; the author is completely unable to understand how women think, and everything is far too ‘but it was all okay in the end, because Britain is great'.

3.75 stars. I did enjoy this, but John Boyne's writing is usually so beautiful, and his stories have so much depth, that I couldn't help feeling a bit let down. The characters were not believable or consistent, and while interesting, there was less nuance and complexity than is usually true of Boyne novels. Still, I enjoyed this, and have always found the abdication interesting.

3.5 stars. This was better than I was expecting. The humour was much more dry than I had expected, and while the story was ridiculous, there was also some depth to it. However, I did get bored towards the end, and realised I didn't really care how it all turned out.

3 stars - just - but with a an enjoyment factor of 2. I absolutely despised this book. I got the point of it, I appreciate the validity of the basic critique, and it wasn't badly written. But the characters were absolutely vile. I don't need the characters to be likeable, but they do at least to need to be believable. These were not. And this almost made it difficult to accept the import of the wider critique the author was making. At times, I also felt that the allegations of racism were reductive, and missed some of the more nuanced ways in which racism manifests itself in the cultural industries. I get the comparison with Yellowface (which I didn't enjoy, but respected), but Yellowface had nuance and complexity that this book really lacked.

3.75 stars - enjoyment factor 4. This was so much fun! It wasn't deep, but it was well crafted, and it neither glorified celebrity culture, nor went too deep with its critique. The characters were great, and the whole thing was such a pleasant surprise.

3.75. This was really well crafted. It wasn't a nice story, and it was one that's been a bit ‘overdone' recently, but it was a new spin on it, and I thought the overall construction of the narrative worked really well.

I really enjoyed the reading experience. I loved the narrative voice, and was enjoying the main character's commentary. But the story didn't develop; it just fizzled out. The characters, which I found complex and intriguing, were static, and didn't develop. I actually thought I'd accidentally skipped a few chapters when it came to the end because I couldn't believe it had actually ended. A great concept, but wasted.

3.75 stars - but with an enjoyment factor of 5 stars. I didn't stop grinning throughout the whole of this book. Was it cheesy? Yes. Was it predictable? Yes. But it was also very aware that it was; it contained a lovely life message that not many rom-coms do, the characters were lovely ,and it was just great fun. I'm really pleased because the first KATHERINE CENTER I read I thought was really awful. This has given me more faith in the author and encouraged me to explore others.

It's a while since I read a Stella Riley, and I always forget just how great her books are. I love that they follow the genre tropes brilliantly, but with additional depth and complexity, humour, and great characters - and this one was particularly great.

This book confirmed my feelings about William Boyd. His writing is ‘lovely'. He writes ‘well', and I can't ‘not ‘like listening to his work/reading his writing. But I find all of his characters impossible to relate to; I am never remotely interested in the plot, and feel absolutely nothing about any of the characters or relationships. So beyond pure language, it really does very little for me.

3.75 stars. BUT - 5 stars for enjoyment factor. I just don't feel I can give 5 stars to a book that lacks literary merit (however snobbish that makes me).

For the first 20 pages of an Abby Jiminez book, I find myself thinking ‘ I can't believe you thought you liked this author'. And then, all of a sudden, I'm swept away. I just love these books. They are traditional rom-coms, but they are not over-cheesy, they avoid some of the more irritating tropes, the characters feel real and believable, and the stories are heart-warming without being sickly sweet. So pleased I read this - probably my favourite by this author.

3.5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn't particularly memorable; there was nothing particularly profound, complex, or beautiful about it. But nor was there anything wrong with it at all. It was a pleasurable exploration of life in early 20th Century Oxford, with an exaggerated portrayal of classism and sexism. But it was a lot of fun and a very enjoyable read.

Okay, so in terms of historical fiction, this is the ‘good kind'. It isn't just a story set in the past, where historical detail is presented through the lens of the present. The author makes an attempt to recreate the era, and to really make the characters ‘true' to. their time. But there were aspects of this that just drove me mad. For example, the author's approach to recreating a dialect was just to place ‘besides' at the end of nearly every single sentence, and ‘to. boot' at the end of almost every other sentence. That got so annoying I nearly gave up for that reason alone. Equally, Tibb's naivety varied from adorable and believable, to just plain stupid. The author seemed to keep forgetting the ages of her characters, and so, the characterisation was just uneven and inconsistent. So, while I really praise the idea and effort, this just fell short.

I am a huge Beth O'Leary fan. She is probably the best UK rom-com author at the moment. I have loved every previous book, mostly because she manages to infuse depth in what are ultimately light-hearted books. But this one was under-whelming. I think the premise was partly the problem; the whole swept away on a life-boat thing felt really contrived. But I found the characters - particularly the main female character - just weak and unbelievable. There was not much by way of relationship development, so the predictable narrative seemed very forced. Maybe I'm judging harshly because I expect so much from O'Leary, but I found this disappointing.

2.5 stars. This did not work for me. It was completely vacuous and I found the main character so irritating. I also found the constant use of ‘aks' instead of ‘ask' so so frustrating. I get that it's a dialect thing, associated with Black-Carribbean English. But if that's the case, when a White, British policeman uses the word, he should pronounce it ‘ask'! It drove me so mad it ruined the whole novel for me.

I did not like this at all. It is an example of a genre that has become too common - written with a view to being nominated for the women's prize for fiction, deliberately crude, controversial, and completely vacuous. Not for me at all.

3.75 stars - maybe even 4 stars. This was a slow, very character-driven book, and it took me a long time to get into. But the relationships had a lot more depth than I thought at first, and I ended up finding it very moving.

I loved Bellies; it was tenderly written, complex, nuanced, and explored trans issues in a really sensitive way. This book was all that with the added bonus of being positively enjoyable, with genuinely likeable and relatable characters. I was hesitant at first that this would be too ‘samey' and that it would be too similar to Bellies. But while it explored similar themes, this was pleasantly different, and showed a greater level of maturity. I can't wait to see what Dinan writes next.

This was such a pleasant surprise. It took me a while to get into it; and I was a bit confused to start with about what the book was about. But it soon settled into a lovely character study, and just a beautifully written exploration of grief, trauma, and family in all its dimensions.

I hesitated at giving this 4 stars, because it was a 4 star read right until the very end, but I was a bit disappointed by the conclusion. However, that aside, I thought this was such an important and brave examination of an important issue, written with such wry humour it kept me smiling cynically despite the seriousness of the topic.

I really wanted to enjoy this. But it was just so badly written. The religious stereotypes were horrific. It was about as subtle as a sledge-hammer, and was actually quite immature. Such a disappointment.

3.75 stars. This was very close to 4 stars. [putting aside the AWFUL narration. I couldn't believe how bad the Irish accent was....] It was such an odd storyline, which seemed so far-fetched at first, but the book was actually a very sensitive exploration of different types of loss, and the different ways in which we lose ourselves and each other.