Manuela
[b:The Wax Child 223962951 The Wax Child Olga Ravn https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1747329432l/223962951.SY75.jpg 200881345] follows Christenze Kruckow, a real seventeenth-century Danish noblewoman whose life becomes entangled in the witch hunts of northern Jutland - all narrated by a strange, half-living wax doll she secretly creates and keeps close to her body. It's historical fiction filtered through an eerie, experimental lens, with misogyny and institutional violence at its core.I really wanted to love this more than I did. On paper, this book feels extremely my thing: witch trials, patriarchal paranoia, female friendship under siege, and a formally odd narrative experiment at the center. And to be fair, I did like the story itself - the bones are solid, bleak, and quietly awful in the way history so often is. But the way it's told kept me at a polite, slightly chilly distance.The decision to narrate the novel through the consciousness of the wax child is, intellectually, very compelling. It's eerie, uncanny, and conceptually clever: a witness who can observe, remember, and endure, but never intervene - metaphorically, it works beautifully. Emotionally, though, it's a double-edged sword. I often felt more aware of the craft than of the characters themselves, as if the book was gently tapping me on the shoulder to say, “Do you see what I'm doing here?” (Yes. I do. Repeatedly.)The prose is hypnotic and spare, and I can see why that will work perfectly for some readers. For me, it occasionally tipped into being a little too polished, a little too invested in mood. I kept waiting for a crack in the glass - a moment of rawness, mess, or emotional spill - and instead everything stayed beautifully preserved, like an exhibit behind glass. Impressive, but hard to touch.The Aalborg witch trial sections are where the novel really shines. The interrogations, the forced confessions, the way fear and authority collaborate to manufacture guilt - all of it is deeply unsettling. I appreciated how the book destabilizes the question of whether any “magic” is real, making it clear that the system doesn't actually care. Witches are needed, therefore witches will be found. The deaths of Maren, Dorte, and Apelone are especially harrowing in their restraint - no heroics, no speeches, just terror, exhaustion, and spectacle. And Christenze's fate, spared the stake only because of her status, is a brutal reminder that even “mercy” under patriarchy is still violence, just better dressed. In the end, this is a book I admire more than I love. It's thoughtful, strange, and clearly doing something deliberate with voice and form, but that deliberateness sometimes felt like a barrier rather than an invitation. The misogyny and institutional violence at its core are horrifying - I just wish the book had trusted that horror a little more, and its own lyricism a little less.
Okay, so: Four teenage girls. Emotions running on fumes. College looming. Friendship already cracking. Naturally, the logical next step is to do a ritual that rips the moon out of the sky, as one does.[b:We Hexed the Moon 230472293 We Hexed the Moon Mollyhall Seeley https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1743105184l/230472293.SY75.jpg 242919212] is about a friend group imploding in real time and accidentally making it everyone else's problem. The moon shows up in their lives as an angry, sarcastic, all-powerful young woman and basically says: congrats on the emotional spiral, now clean up your mess.What absolutely worked for me is that this book is not here to be polite. It doesn't do the whole “girlhood is magical and healing and we all grow from our mistakes” thing. These girls love each other deeply and are also kind of awful to each other. They're jealous, defensive, cruel, loyal in the wrong ways, and convinced that whatever they're doing right now doesn't really count yet. Which, unfortunately, is how consequences are born.The magic isn't aspirational - it's impulsive. It feels like a physical manifestation of teenage feelings hitting critical mass, and I loved how raw that felt. No smoothing the edges, no neat moral lesson, just: here is what happens when you don't know who you are yet but your feelings are already strong enough to break things.The voice is snarky, chaotic, genuinely funny, and then out of nowhere it'll drop something sincere and you're like wait, hold on, why am I feeling things??. I inhaled this. It's short, punchy, and weird in a way that feels intentional rather than try-hard.I've seen it described as The Secret History meets Stranger Things, or Pitch Perfect but make it cosmic, or even Bunny meets The Craft, and honestly? All of those comparisons just tell me the same thing: this book refuses to behave. It doesn't sit nicely in one genre, it steals bits from several, shakes them together, and somehow lands on its feet.My one real gripe: I wanted MORE. More moon. More fallout. More “so how is the world dealing with the fact that the moon is... walking around now?” The novella length makes everything sharp and fast, but I would've happily stayed longer in the wreckage. I also loved the idea of the moon as the literal embodiment of their mistake, I just wanted the consequences to spread wider instead of staying mostly internal. Let it be messier! Let it be louder! (It probably says something about me that that's what I was craving reading this but.. oh well..)Bottom line: funny, sharp, emotionally messy, and way more honest about girlhood than most witchy teen books dare to be. I finished it thinking “oh no, this author knows exactly what she's doing,” which is both exciting and dangerous. I will be keeping an eye out for anything else this author puts out!
3.5 stars!
I'm honestly a little obsessed with how well this book handles the intersection of reality TV logic + late capitalist consumerism + the absolute feral psychology that emerges when you combine the two. Rawle takes that familiar “competition show” structure, throws it into a desert dystopia, and lets the social dynamics rot in a way that feels uncomfortably plausible. The low-stakes horror of it — the scarcity, the surveillance, the performative authenticity — is incredibly effective. It captures that very modern anxiety of wanting outside validation so badly that you'll bend your instincts, your morals, and sometimes your entire sense of self just to be seen.
I really liked how the book examines what happens when recognition becomes currency. When comfort is a reward. When your “storyline” matters more than your actual feelings. It's a sharp critique, and honestly, a pretty addictive reading experience.
That said, I do wish the story had more depth in a few places. The dystopian world-building is intriguing but frustratingly thin. Why is the compound in the middle of the desert? What is this war happening off-page? How did the men spend days fighting across the wasteland to get there, while the women simply... materialized? These questions feel intentionally open but end up weakening the stakes a bit.
The relationships also felt uneven. The friendship between Lily and Jacinda is the clearest, warmest, most fully realized bond in the book, and I loved their dynamic. But when it came to Lily and the guys — especially the two relationships that should have carried more emotional weight — the foundation wasn't quite strong enough for the ending to land as hard as it could have. I understood the narrative function of those relationships, but not really the emotional depth behind them.
I found Lily's isolated victory really compelling, but I wanted more groundwork to make her final emotional state feel earned. Her loneliness at the end is sharp, but it would have been devastating with more clarity on what she truly lost.
Still, the core idea is excellent and well-executed: a slow, unsettling unraveling of people who crave being perceived more than they crave being safe. Smart, eerie, and disturbingly fun to read. If you like reality-TV-gone-feral stories, quiet dystopias, or social experiments that say way too much about modern life, this is a great pick.
Flesh is one of those novels that feels deceptively simple as you're reading it... until you realise your entire nervous system has been quietly clenching the whole time. David Szalay writes with such a stripped-down, almost skeletal style that you start to feel like you're reading the outline of someone's life rather than the life itself — and somehow that makes everything ten times more unsettling.
What really struck me is how emotionally bare the book is. Not in a “raw, confessional, pour your heart out” kind of way, but in a “did someone redact every internal thought this man ever had?” kind of way. István goes through every stage of life — adolescence, violence, sex, war, marriage, wealth, tragedy — and we rarely get more than an “okay.” I genuinely don't want to know how many times that word appears in this novel because by the halfway point I was tempted to shake him by the shoulders and scream “react to something!!”
But that, I think, is the point.
This flatness reveals something about masculinity that we don't really talk about: how boys grow up without being taught how to process emotions; how men are socialised into silence; how their inner world isn't nurtured the way ours is. The writing style isn't just a stylistic choice — it's a commentary on a life lived without emotional vocabulary. A life observed, endured, reacted to, but rarely steered.
István doesn't live his life as much as life happens to him. Even when he tries to assert himself — like the affair that spirals into tragedy, his bleak military service, or the surreal rise into extreme wealth through marriage — he's not an active agent. He's a witness to his own story. The book is so sparse that you feel the emptiness around him, the lack of interiority, the unspoken grief of never having learned how to exist in your own skin.
And honestly? It made me uncomfortable.
I've talked to friends about it, and many said they recognised men in their lives in István — which terrified me. Surely society isn't this broken? Surely there are more tools available for men to process something? But maybe that's the quiet horror of this novel: that this emotional vacancy is far more common than we admit. That the men around us are just moving forward the way István does — by inertia, not intention.
As a reading experience, it's both fascinating and frustrating. Part of me wanted a sharper criticism, a clearer interrogation of the psychological damage. I would've liked something from inside István — a thought, a fear, a flicker of anger — instead of needing to infer everything through silence. But at the same time, maybe the silence is the message.
Flesh is a brilliant conversation starter because you can interpret it in so many different directions:
– a portrait of masculinity built on emotional starvation
– a study of how class mobility warps the self
– a life lived in quiet trauma, where no one ever asks the right questions
– a European novel about power, displacement, and drift
– or simply a deeply unsettling character study of a man who never learned how to be a person
Whatever the interpretation, the impact is the same: a lingering discomfort, a quiet ache, and a strange fear for the men in our lives who move through the world without ever being taught how to feel.
It's a great book — but don't expect comfort. Expect a very long “okay,” stretched across an entire human life.
Victorian Psycho reads like an attempt to reimagine American Psycho in corsets and crinolines - all the same biting satire and social rot, just filtered through the suffocating manners of Victorian England. Told entirely through Winifred Notty's perspective, the book gives us a front-row seat to her scathing, hilariously cruel inner monologue as she navigates life as a governess in a household of self-important, oblivious aristocrats. Her voice is viciously funny - her insults feel like duels fought with parasols and arsenic.
The first half of the novel is where Feito's sharpness shines: Winifred's wit slices through class hypocrisy and gender expectations with the precision of a scalpel. It's a satire of propriety and repression - and, like American Psycho, it works best when it exposes how social decorum masks rot. There's real rage simmering under the humor - rage at how women and the working class are confined, patronized, and stripped of agency.
But when the story turns violent, it tips too far into spectacle. The grotesque elements — the gore, the carnage — feel more performative than psychological, as if Feito wanted to echo the excesses of American Psycho without quite earning its internal horror. The result is something both fascinating and frustrating: the blood flows, but the dread never quite lands.
The gothic atmosphere is impeccable - fog-drenched, claustrophobic, filled with that delicious sense of moral decay - yet I kept wishing the novel delved deeper into the why behind Winifred's madness rather than just the what. The title promises psychological horror, but the execution leans toward aestheticized grotesque.
Stylistically, the prose occasionally stumbles between Victorian imitation and modern irony, which makes for a slightly uneven rhythm. Still, Feito's ambition is clear: to marry satire, horror, and feminist fury in one grand gothic performance.
I can absolutely see why it's being adapted for film - it's vivid, cinematic, and tonally chaotic in a way that could thrive on screen. As a novel, though, it feels like a strong idea that never fully descends into the madness it gestures toward.
Witty, angry, and stylish - but ultimately more parody than possession.
4.5 stars ⭐
Glasgow Boys follows two boys from Glasgow—Finlay and Banjo—who grew up in the care system and are now trying to build their adult lives, each carrying the emotional weight of their shared past. Finlay is 18 and just starting university, determined to hold himself together despite having no safety net. Banjo is 17, still in foster care, trying to keep his anger and self-destructive instincts at bay. They were once inseparable, but something that happened three years earlier fractured their bond, an event neither of them has fully recovered from.
Margaret McDonald captures their story with a rare balance of humour and heartbreak. The book is marketed as YA, but it reads more like adult fiction due to its themes: trauma, forgiveness, friendship, identity, and the messy process of learning to trust again. Both boys are searching—for belonging, for connection, for a sense of family—and the novel never romanticises that search. It shows the awkward, painful, deeply human process of unlearning survival habits and reaching out anyway.
I particularly loved how the story portrays anxiety, panic attacks, and intrusive thoughts with honesty and care. It doesn't sensationalise their pain; instead, it focuses on the small, tentative moments of hope that make healing possible. The writing feels alive, emotionally precise, and quietly devastating.
If I had one small wish, it would be for slightly more depth in the characters' long-term growth arcs—but in a way, the book's restraint feels intentional (and seeing as it is a YA novel, I can't really fault it for that lack of depth). It reflects how limited their emotional resources are; it's about what it means to keep going when you don't yet know how to ask for help.
In the end, this is a story about love in its most necessary form—the kind that isn't always pretty or permanent, but teaches you how to be seen, how to forgive, and how to start again.
ITCH! by Gemma Amor absolutely lives up to its name - I don't think I've ever felt so physically uncomfortable while reading a book, and I mean that as a compliment. The horror here doesn't rely on jump scares or shock value; it's that slow, creeping tension that makes your skin crawl and your stomach twist. I was reading this in public and had to stop myself from grimacing more than once because I was genuinely disgusted (in the best possible way).
The story follows Josie, who returns to her hometown after an abusive relationship, hoping to start over. Instead, she stumbles upon a decaying body in the woods - and from there, things spiral fast. What I really loved is how Amor balances the psychological with the physical: the body horror is relentless, but it's also a reflection of Josie's trauma, her loss of control, and the way abuse leaves marks that never quite fade.
It's also refreshing to read a folk horror that's grounded in the present - no distant, eerie village that time forgot, but a very real, recognizable setting that makes everything feel closer to home (and therefore way more disturbing). The themes around abusive relationships are handled with empathy and care, showing how hard it is to walk away and stay away, and how healing can be just as messy as the horror itself.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say a few of the more surreal moments stretched believability for me, especially since most of the story feels so rooted in reality. I think I wanted just a bit more buildup to Josie's descent to fully buy into her unraveling. But honestly, that's minor - the book delivers exactly what I want from horror: something tense, visceral, and emotionally sharp.
ITCH! is the kind of story that makes you want to shower immediately after finishing it, but you'll be thinking about it long after you do.
Merged review:
ITCH! by Gemma Amor absolutely lives up to its name - I don't think I've ever felt so physically uncomfortable while reading a book, and I mean that as a compliment. The horror here doesn't rely on jump scares or shock value; it's that slow, creeping tension that makes your skin crawl and your stomach twist. I was reading this in public and had to stop myself from grimacing more than once because I was genuinely disgusted (in the best possible way).
The story follows Josie, who returns to her hometown after an abusive relationship, hoping to start over. Instead, she stumbles upon a decaying body in the woods - and from there, things spiral fast. What I really loved is how Amor balances the psychological with the physical: the body horror is relentless, but it's also a reflection of Josie's trauma, her loss of control, and the way abuse leaves marks that never quite fade.
It's also refreshing to read a folk horror that's grounded in the present - no distant, eerie village that time forgot, but a very real, recognizable setting that makes everything feel closer to home (and therefore way more disturbing). The themes around abusive relationships are handled with empathy and care, showing how hard it is to walk away and stay away, and how healing can be just as messy as the horror itself.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say a few of the more surreal moments stretched believability for me, especially since most of the story feels so rooted in reality. I think I wanted just a bit more buildup to Josie's descent to fully buy into her unraveling. But honestly, that's minor - the book delivers exactly what I want from horror: something tense, visceral, and emotionally sharp.
ITCH! is the kind of story that makes you want to shower immediately after finishing it, but you'll be thinking about it long after you do.
Merged review:
ITCH! by Gemma Amor absolutely lives up to its name - I don't think I've ever felt so physically uncomfortable while reading a book, and I mean that as a compliment. The horror here doesn't rely on jump scares or shock value; it's that slow, creeping tension that makes your skin crawl and your stomach twist. I was reading this in public and had to stop myself from grimacing more than once because I was genuinely disgusted (in the best possible way).
The story follows Josie, who returns to her hometown after an abusive relationship, hoping to start over. Instead, she stumbles upon a decaying body in the woods - and from there, things spiral fast. What I really loved is how Amor balances the psychological with the physical: the body horror is relentless, but it's also a reflection of Josie's trauma, her loss of control, and the way abuse leaves marks that never quite fade.
It's also refreshing to read a folk horror that's grounded in the present - no distant, eerie village that time forgot, but a very real, recognizable setting that makes everything feel closer to home (and therefore way more disturbing). The themes around abusive relationships are handled with empathy and care, showing how hard it is to walk away and stay away, and how healing can be just as messy as the horror itself.
If I had to nitpick, I'd say a few of the more surreal moments stretched believability for me, especially since most of the story feels so rooted in reality. I think I wanted just a bit more buildup to Josie's descent to fully buy into her unraveling. But honestly, that's minor - the book delivers exactly what I want from horror: something tense, visceral, and emotionally sharp.
ITCH! is the kind of story that makes you want to shower immediately after finishing it, but you'll be thinking about it long after you do.
What a fascinating and haunting collection! This is one of those books that successfully traces the evolution of a whole genre – from gothic moral terror to psychological and cosmic horror, it's both a reading experience and a mini literary history lesson.
I loved seeing how each era reshaped what “weird” meant. Poe's The Masque of the Red Death (★★★★) is still a masterclass in symbolism and atmosphere – the kind of story that made me fall in love with literature in the first place. Jacobs' The Monkey's Paw (★★★½) feels like the blueprint for so much later horror, eerie in its simplicity and fatalistic twist.
M. R. James's Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad (★★★) has great tension but didn't grip me as much; whereas Conan Doyle's The Horror of the Heights (★★★★) completely did – the prose is superb, and it's fascinating to see early sci-fi meet Gothic dread.
Edith Wharton's Kerfol (★★★★½) might be my favorite of the bunch: feminist, tragic, and quietly vengeful – it turns haunting into justice. May Sinclair's Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched (★★★★½) absolutely nails psychological horror; the idea of looping your worst mistakes forever is one of the most chilling reimaginings of hell I've ever read.
Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu (★★★) is iconic, though cosmic horror just isn't my thing – I admire the concept more than I enjoy it. And Broster's Couching at the Door (★★★½) closes the collection with moral dread and corruption that feels like an echo of the earlier Gothic, reimagined through psychological horror.
What makes this anthology stand out is how clearly you can see the shifts in tone, theme, and worldview across the stories – from fear of divine punishment, to guilt and repression, to cosmic indifference. It's like watching weird fiction evolve from the moral to the existential.
Overall, this is a brilliant and beautifully curated collection, one that rewards readers who enjoy tracing literary threads and seeing how the uncanny changes with each generation. A perfect pick for anyone who loves classic horror with substance and symbolism.
I'll be picking up future genre anthologies that Penguin releases, this was a great read!
There's something timeless about Frankenstein. It's a story we all think we know - the mad scientist, the monster, the lightning bolt - but reading Mary Shelley's actual novel is a completely different experience. Beneath the gothic drama and fog-covered graveyards is a surprisingly introspective book about ambition, isolation, and the unbearable consequences of playing God.
What struck me most is how human the creature is. He starts out gentle and curious, only to become vengeful after being abandoned and rejected by everyone he meets - including his own creator. In many ways, Victor is the real “monster”: brilliant but arrogant, consumed by guilt, and too cowardly to face what he's done. The push and pull between these two tragic figures feels more psychological than supernatural, and that's what makes it powerful even two centuries later.
Shelley wrote this at 18 (!!), and it still feels unsettlingly modern - a warning about scientific overreach, but also about loneliness, responsibility, and what happens when we create something we refuse to care for. The language can be a little dense (hello, 19th-century prose), but the emotional core is as sharp as ever.
If you think you know Frankenstein, read it again. It's less about the monster under the bed and more about the one inside us.
This is one of those books that I can see why it's considered a modern classic — but my reading experience was a little more complicated.
Arundhati Roy's writing is absolutely beautiful, poetic even, but the way the book handles time really threw me off. The narrative jumps back and forth in flashes, and for at least the first 100 pages I felt like I was trying to put together a puzzle without knowing what the final image was supposed to look like. Eventually it clicked, but I still found the structure more distracting than immersive.
What really stood out to me though was how deeply this book engages with the caste system, oppression, and trauma. Even without knowing much about Indian culture, I could still feel how layered and brutal these dynamics are, and at the same time recognize patterns that felt familiar to my own reality. Societies may be progressing slowly towards something more inclusive and compassionate, but reading this makes you pause and think of all the people harmed and erased along the way. The amount of unspoken pain in this story is heartbreaking.
The central tragedy — Sophie Mol's death, Velutha's brutal fate, and the twins' coerced “betrayal” — is devastating and lingers long after you close the book. What gutted me the most wasn't just what happened, but how inevitable it all felt under the weight of family, caste, and societal expectations. The way trauma binds and silences Estha and Rahel, and the forbidden love between Ammu and Velutha, left me thinking about this book long after I finished.
This wasn't an easy read — emotionally or structurally — but I do think it's worth it. If you like novels that dissect family, trauma, and the way systemic oppression seeps into every corner of personal life, it's definitely one to pick up. For me, it sat somewhere between the emotional punch of Khaled Hosseini and the fragmented, lyrical style of Toni Morrison.
Rating: 3.5
A Cambridge postgraduate studying analytic magick—a near-forgotten, soul-crushing discipline—Alice finds herself at the center of disaster when her thesis advisor, the infamous Professor Grimes, literally explodes during a spell gone wrong. Convinced she's to blame, Alice resolves to descend into Hell and drag his soul back, the ultimate proof of her academic brilliance (and a guarantee of the recommendation letter that could define her future). The catch? Her academic rival, Peter Murdoch—the golden boy of the department—insists on coming along. What begins as a rescue mission quickly becomes an uneasy partnership through the Eight Courts of Hell, part philosophical pilgrimage, part test of their own ambitions, and eventually, the start of something more.
The setup is irresistible: dark academia meets Inferno with a side of enemies-to-lovers. And in many ways, it worked for me. I loved the intellectual puzzles, the satirical punishments in Hell (the Court of Pride, where people are damned for bragging about exam results, was both clever and brutal), and the way Kuang reimagines the underworld through a mix of Western and Chinese mythologies. My nerdy heart was happily geeking out at the logic games and paradoxes scattered throughout.
But the reading experience also demanded a lot of patience. The narrative constantly slows down for philosophical digressions—less optional footnotes, more mandatory lectures. Sometimes they're fascinating, sometimes they stop the momentum cold.
And while the book is framed as a dark academia romance, that thread never quite comes to life. Alice and Peter admire each other too much, too soon; their rivalry is surface-level, so the eventual romance feels more like a polite slide into inevitability than a hard-earned payoff. I wanted more bite, more obsession, more edge to make their descent feel truly desperate.
All in all, Katabasis is ambitious, clever, and often very funny in its satire of academia, but it's also uneven. I enjoyed the ride because it fed my inner academic nerd, but stepping back, I can't help but feel underwhelmed.
Rating: 3.75
This was... fine. A good book in parts, but also one that frustrated me a lot because of what it could've been.
At its core, Notes on Infinity tries to grapple with tech's founder culture — ambition, ethics, the seduction of image over substance — but it feels a little late to the party. We've been reading and hearing about this for over a decade now, and aside from centering a female main character, the book doesn't add much new to the conversation.
The setup is clearly meant to echo Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes, but flipped: instead of the woman being the one distorting the science, here it's her male partner who does all the dirty work, while she's portrayed as naïve and innocent. For me, this really undercut what could've been a more interesting exploration of gender and power in STEM. Why does the book shy away from asking the bigger, more uncomfortable questions? Like: why was Holmes vilified in ways many male founders never were? How much of the Silicon Valley “boy wonder” myth is gendered? Instead, the narrative lets Zoe off the hook almost entirely, which made her arc feel less compelling.
And then there's Jack's ending. His suicide and “confession” letter that supposedly exonerates Zoe? To me, that wasn't redemption — it was him running away from accountability and leaving her with the mess. The book frames it as a sort of tragic gesture, but what it really is is another man escaping consequences. I also wish the book had given Zoe space to be angry about that, rather than folding it into a fairly neat redemption arc.
The romance between Zoe and Jack also never landed for me. Their attraction felt surface-level at best, and without emotional depth, I wasn't invested in their relationship, which made the later betrayals and heartbreaks less powerful than they could've been.
So overall, it is not a bad book per se — the writing is clean, the pacing moves, and there are some smart observations about image-making in science and startup culture. But for me, it felt unoriginal, outdated, and unwilling to take the risks it could have.
The Stepdaughter is a quietly unnerving novella that invites you into a claustrophobic domestic interior, only to slowly twist the knife. Written in sharp, incisive prose, Caroline Blackwood peels back the layers of family life, exposing the psychological erosion that occurs behind closed doors.
We follow J—a woman who seems to be on the verge of a breakdown, or perhaps merely a product of a deeply fractured environment—as she obsesses over her teenage stepdaughter. What begins as concern quickly curdles into resentment, then suspicion, and finally something more sinister. The brilliance of the book lies in its ambiguity: is the stepdaughter truly malicious, or is the narrator simply unraveling?
Blackwood masterfully explores themes of motherhood, displacement, jealousy, and female rage, all while offering a biting critique of bourgeois pretensions. The novella's brevity only adds to its intensity; every sentence carries weight, and the lack of resolution leaves you lingering in the discomfort.
This new edition is a perfect excuse to (re)discover Blackwood's unsettling work. A must-read for fans of literary horror, domestic noir, and women on the brink.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
I'm rating this 3.5, but rouding up here on Goodreads
This was a good book — nothing groundbreaking, but definitely enjoyable. I actually read it in just two sittings, which says a lot about how smooth and engaging the writing is. Carley Fortune knows how to capture that summery, wistful vibe that makes you want to curl up and read straight through.
That said, the story itself felt pretty typical for the genre. It follows the usual romance recipe, and while I liked both Alice and Charlie, the main obstacle they had to overcome felt a little underwhelming (and honestly, kind of silly) considering they're both in their 30s. If they were younger, I think I'd have bought into the drama more easily.
Still, there's a lot to enjoy here. I appreciated that the characters were in their 30s — it gave the book a slightly more mature feel than your average twenty-something romance, even if it wasn't perfect. The themes of nostalgia, grief, and learning to be truly seen gave the story some nice depth alongside the romance.
If you're looking for a low-stakes romance that isn't too sensational or over the top, this is definitely the one for you. Warm, easy to read, and overall a pleasant summer love story — even if it didn't wow me.
I can't remember the last time I read a novel that juggled this much emotional weight — betrayal, illness, motherhood, identity — with such precision and restraint. Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar is a debut that's as inventive as it is quietly devastating. But while I admired a lot of what it did, I couldn't quite connect with it the way I hoped to.
The premise alone is unforgettable: a woman finds out her husband is cheating on her with someone named Maggie, and then shortly after, is diagnosed with breast cancer. She names the tumor Maggie too. And that's the setup — a dark, metaphor-rich duality that runs through the whole book.
Told in fragmented, sharp vignettes, the novel charts her quiet survival — talking to her tumor, creating a “user manual” for the woman who replaced her, and retelling Chinese myths to her children in an effort to anchor them (and herself) to something lasting. The writing is smart, darkly funny, and stylistically compelling.
But where it lost me a bit was in the narrator's almost clinical detachment from it all. She never fully expresses anger, even as her life is split apart by betrayal and illness. And while I can respect the choice to avoid melodrama or self-pity, I sometimes craved a flicker of real rage or emotional chaos — something human and messy to break through the cool surface. Her distance, while understandable, created a bit of distance for me too.
Still, there's a lot to admire. Katie Yee's voice is unique, her structure bold, and the way she weaves humour into pain is nothing short of impressive. This isn't a tidy, linear story — and it's better for it. If you're drawn to fragmentary narratives, quiet emotional journeys, and characters who process the unthinkable with a deadpan sense of humour, this might hit the spot. It didn't quite gut me the way I hoped it would, but I won't forget it either.
This was such a fun read! It really hit the sweet spot for me when it comes to murder mysteries—it's got a big cast of characters, layers of intrigue, and the kind of whodunit vibes that keep you second-guessing right up to the reveal.
I'll admit, in the first few chapters I had to practically sketch out a family tree to keep everyone straight
I really wanted to love this. A fictional retelling of Cleopatra's life? Sign me up. But instead of a rich, complex portrait of one of history's most intriguing women, what I got was... Cleopatra: The Girlfriend Years™.
This book markets itself as a retelling of Cleopatra's life — but it's really just the Cleopatra-and-Caesar show. The moment he enters the story, Cleopatra's entire narrative collapses into her proximity to him. She ceases to exist outside of their relationship. The result is a frustratingly narrow lens that skips over some of the most fascinating parts of her life (including everything that happens after Caesar's death — you know, when things really get spicy).
The book says it wants to give voice to Cleopatra, a woman maligned by Roman historians and filtered through the eyes of her enemies. But instead of reclaiming her agency, it reduces her to someone who, despite her own claims of power and brilliance, becomes unrecognizable in the face of her romantic entanglements. Her grandeur is spoken of, not shown. Her ruthlessness is referenced, not explored. Her downfall, apparently, is men. Groundbreaking.
We also get alternating POVs between Cleopatra and Servilia (Caesar's mistress and Brutus' mother), which could've been a fascinating juxtaposition — but ends up making Cleopatra's chapters feel even flatter. Servilia is by far the more compelling narrator: clever, sharp, and emotionally layered. Meanwhile, Cleopatra reads as distant, sometimes even clueless, especially when pondering why her brother (whom she forced into marriage, after helping orchestrate the deaths of their siblings) might be upset. Gosh, the mystery!
The writing itself is fine — accessible, easy to follow — and the structure had potential. I didn't mind the inclusion of Servilia's voice at all. But ultimately, this novel had no fresh insight to offer, no bold reinterpretation, and certainly no Cleopatra who felt like a real person. If you're already familiar with her story, you won't learn anything new and might actually leave questioning why someone would describe her like this. And if you're not, this isn't the place to start.
A retelling that promised a queen but gave me a woman lost in the shadows of the men around her.
Concept: 5 stars. Execution: trapped-in-eternity-with-a-woman-who-does-nothing stars.
This book had so much potential. The premise is fascinating. A woman wakes up to the same day—November 18th—again and again and again. Time loop, but make it literary. I was ready for existential dread, surreal self-discovery, emotional breakdowns, and maybe some chaotic reinventions. Instead... I got beige. Just pure existential beige.
Tara, our narrator, instead of doing anything remotely interesting with her infinite November 18ths, she mostly walks around being vaguely distressed and not particularly curious. Philosophical undertones? Sure. Emotional claustrophobia? Definitely. But plot? Action? Evolution? Not really. Just vibes. And not even strong ones.
I love literary fiction, I crave quiet meditations on time and being—but this one made me feel like I was stuck in the loop too, rereading the same sentence emotionally, if not literally. The book contemplates what it means to live when everything else stays the same, but it doesn't offer much more than a shrug.
I'm glad I read it, mostly because now I can stop reading it. I won't be continuing the series (six more books?? of this??). But hey—if slow abstract narratives with minimal plot and maximum thought spirals are your jam, this might just be your personal hell-loop of heaven.
Sharp, introspective, and full of millennial ache. This one hit like a memory you didn't know you still had. Written in second person—a bold choice that completely works—this book lets you step right into the life of a girl growing up in 2000s Ireland. You're not just reading her story; you're reliving a version of your own.
The story starts with a nine-year-old on her family's annual beach trip, navigating that weird in-between space where adults think you're too young to understand—but you do. Her world shifts when her dad brings home a desktop computer. Cue the chaotic timeline of early internet life: chatrooms, Neopets, predatory strangers, awkward self-discovery, porn, MySpace, bullying, self-hate, social masks, and an ache to be seen that never quite goes away.
It's a coming-of-age novel, sure—but it's also a story about fractured identity, gender, memory, and the strange ways we learn to shape ourselves for other people. There's a gutting honesty to the narrator's voice, and Prasifka never lets you look away from it. Especially when it hurts.
Things I loved:
- The use of second person POV—it made the whole book feel like watching my own memory unfold.
- The nostalgia: the seaside trips, the games, the invisible rules of teenage girlhood, the digital growing pains of the early 2000s.
- The aching loneliness of girlhood when no one teaches you how to love yourself—and the slow realization that you've internalized that absence.
- The weird push-pull relationship with Lorcan: the only “real” person in a sea of curated, cruel online avatars.
This deserves to be everywhere. If you grew up learning about yourself online—too fast, too raw, too exposed—This Is How You Remember It will bury itself in your ribcage. It's unsettling, nostalgic, and unflinchingly honest. And frankly? It's the millennial summer read we should all be talking about.
Coralie followed the script. She moved to London, got the job, fell for the guy with the charming kid, built the life. Ten years later? She's burnt out, bored, and barely holding herself together. It's giving: midlife crisis in lowercase, with a side of silent sobbing in the bathroom after everyone's asleep.
This book is basically a decade-long look at what happens when you do everything “right” and still end up feeling like a background character in your own life. It captures that weird in-between where you're not young anymore, but not old enough to completely give up. You're just... tired. The kind of tired that seeps into your bones because you've been everything for everyone and forgot to leave space for yourself.
I appreciated the honesty. The emotional unraveling felt real—especially the bits about motherhood, marriage, career, and how womanhood becomes a juggling act no one claps for. There's also some quietly sharp commentary on immigration and the not-so-loud microaggressions of being a foreigner in the UK that hit hard in the best way.
But let's be real: the pacing dragged in places. Some scenes felt like filler episodes. And while I fully believed Coralie's slow breakdown, her glow-up came out of nowhere. Like—ma'am, did you go to therapy? Have a secret spiritual awakening off-page? Because I missed the memo on how we went from emotionally numb to ✨renewed✨ in a few chapters.
Still, this is one of those books that makes you sit with yourself for a second. It reminded me how easy it is to disappear into your own life. That maybe checking all the boxes doesn't guarantee clarity—just exhaustion. It's thoughtful, it's tender, it's occasionally slow enough to test your patience, but it's real. And sometimes that's enough.
This is an engrossing character study that had me hooked from the first page, even if it didn't completely blow me away. We follow a nameless young Palestinian woman who relocates to New York, funded by family money but driven by a restless need to understand the social order she's become part of.
I was most struck by how deftly Zaher critiques consumer culture and social status through the narrator's obsession with luxury brands and cleanliness - the Birkin bag as both armor and mask, her elaborate skincare rituals as both comfort and compulsion. It's a fascinating, if sometimes frustrating, portrait of someone navigating identity, privilege, and desire in a city that seems determined to test her resolve.
The prose itself was surprisingly accessible despite its edge, and it fit perfectly with the narrator's heightened self-awareness and the constant sense of surveillance she imposes on herself. While I found her a little annoying at first, her voice eventually drew me in completely. She's a character who's at once self-aware and self-destructive, both intensely private and almost painfully exposed.
If you're into messy but rich character studies that interrogate capitalism, trauma, and race, this is definitely one to add to your list. Despite some narrative dips and the sense that the ending was a bit too neat, I found it highly readable and would absolutely recommend it.
The Memory Police is one of those quiet dystopias that stays with you long after you finish — not because it shouts its message, but because it whispers truths that feel eerily familiar.Set on an unnamed island where objects periodically “disappear” — not just physically, but from memory — the story follows a novelist who tries to hold on to what's been lost. As these disappearances grow more frequent and inexplicable, the mysterious Memory Police ensure that what's gone stays gone. When she learns someone close to her is in danger of being erased in a more literal sense, she hides him in her home, an act of resistance that becomes increasingly risky as her world narrows.What stood out to me the most was how understated yet powerful Yoko Ogawa's writing is. The story isn't interested in explaining the mechanics of its world or shouting out a single, clear moral. Instead, it offers a poetic, almost dreamlike allegory that can be interpreted in countless ways — about memory, trauma, authoritarianism, censorship, or even the quiet erosion of identity. Rather than focusing on the “how” or “why,” Ogawa lets us live with the characters' feelings, and that emotional undercurrent is what makes the book so impactful.If I had one wish, it would be for the ending to unfold more gradually. It hits hard (and makes a lot of sense thematically), but I found myself craving just a bit more time to sit with it emotionally before it closed. Still, it's a brilliant and memorable conclusion.The atmosphere reminded me of [b:1984 61439040 1984 George Orwell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657781256l/61439040.SX50.jpg 153313] — but more delicate, more intimate. At the same time, it evoked the [b:The Diary of Anne Frank 5507 The Diary of Anne Frank Anne Frank https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1165522626l/5507.SY75.jpg 3532896] in its sense of claustrophobia and quiet resistance, which is chilling when you consider that Anne Frank's story was a real one.I'd recommend this to everyone. There's a reason this novel — originally published decades ago — is resonating so strongly now. It speaks volumes about memory, control, and the slow, unnoticed ways freedom can disappear. Subtle, haunting, and brilliant.
Oddbody by Rose Keating is a bold and deeply unsettling collection of short stories that really gets under your skin - sometimes literally. These ten stories delve into themes of body horror, desire, shame, fear, and the surreal aspects of the feminine experience, often in disturbingly creative ways.
The writing is straightforward and consistent, which makes the bizarre premises feel even more jarring in contrast. While the opening stories felt a little too on-the-nose with their metaphors (a shame, since early DNF-ers might miss the collection's real brilliance), the latter half is absolutely worth sticking around for.
Some of the highlights for me were Pineapple, where a woman undergoes extreme body modifications and begins to reassess her relationship (it's a razor-sharp portrayal of intimacy that feels off in all the right (and wrong) ways), and Squirm, which is possibly one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read: a woman takes care of her father, who is literally a giant worm in a bathtub. It hit me on a personal, psychological level and stuck with me for days.
While the themes do repeat somewhat across stories - body image, mental health, shame - they're each executed with such vivid imagination that none of them feel like filler. Every story here leaves a mark.
I'd recommended this book for fans of weird lit, body horror, or anyone looking for horror that doesn't rely on gore but still manages to be almost unbearable in its emotional and psychological intensity.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC!
Love in Exile is a deeply needed book - part memoir, part political and cultural critique, and part invitation to reimagine what love really is in a world that often distorts it.
Shon Faye writes about the pain of heartbreak, the ache for connection, and the way social structures- capitalism, heteronormativity, state power - shape our most intimate relationships. The argument is clear: love is not apolitical. It's regulated, restricted, and weaponized. And those who fall outside the traditional mold - queer people, trans people, single people, childfree people, the lonely - are often left in a kind of emotional and social exile.
What resonated most with me were the memoir-like passages. Faye's personal stories are vivid, moving, and layered. Her reflections on a breakup, the search for belonging, and the internalized narratives she had to unlearn really brought her theoretical ideas to life. I found myself underlining whole paragraphs - not just for what she said, but how she said it. These parts felt rich and alive in a way that some of the more analytical chapters didn't always match.
My only critique is that I sometimes wished the book stayed closer to Faye's own experience throughout. The theoretical and historical detours—though important and often insightful—occasionally felt disjointed from the emotional thread. But overall, the book balances its dual aims well.
This isn't a book solely about trans experience, though that is its beating heart. It's also about all of us - and how we've inherited broken ideas about love, gender, and worth. In a world where even the definition of “woman” is being stripped of its nuance and history by powerful institutions, Faye's work feels urgent.
Recommended for anyone who's ever felt unlovable, alienated, or tired of bending themselves to fit the shape of someone else's life. Anyone who's ever wondered if there's another way to love, and be loved. A poignant, beautifully written reflection on what it means to seek connection while living in a society that often denies it.
Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Press UK for this ARC, this one will definitely stick with me!
This book had vibes. Big, strange, surreal vibes. Buildings playing musical chairs across New York City? I was in. The whole concept of The Unmapping is so weird and chaotic that I couldn't help but buckle in for the ride - and honestly, riding that chaos alongside different characters was probably my favorite part.
BUT.
I need to be real: this could've been shorter. There's a fine line between introspective and meandering into oblivion, and this book crossed it more than once. The narrative kept drifting away from the main storyline, wandering through character thoughts that didn't always earn their page time - then casually circling back like “oh hey, remember the plot?”
Esme and Arjun, the two main characters, were a rollercoaster. Esme gave me “woman trapped in her own mess” energy while Arjun was like a lost teenage boy cosplaying as a hero - I didn't particularly love either of them. They do grow (eventually), but their development kind of popped up like “surprise!” in the final chapters, and I wasn't fully convinced by it.
The book touches on big themes—climate change, social unrest, belief systems—but more like background noise than a central conversation. Still, I appreciated how it showed people shaping their own realities in the face of chaos - I'm always interested in how freaking adaptable we are as humans.
All in all, it's a solid read with a brilliant premise and a whole lot of ambition. I just wish the execution had been a little sharper and the thought spirals a little less... spirally.