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Spoilt Creatures Review

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This book came to be through Goodreads, as one of my friends had it on her TBR and the plot looked interesting enough for me to buy it the next time I went to my local Waterstones. The plot follows Iris, a newly single thirty something year old woman, fresh off her breakup and living with her mother, working a mediocre job as she learns of Breach House. This place was promised to be a kind of commune for women who want to get off the grid and find support in other women. But once she moves to that place, it soon becomes clear that this place is not all that it was promised it would be at the start. Unfortunately, I did not care too much for this book and what was happening in it. Perhaps the issue was simply in the expectations I had of this book. I expected a more unhinged Yellowjacket style of narrative, examining how isolation and cult-like following can lead to insane outcomes, but it left me feeling quite disappointed as all the themes it touched upon were left on a pretty shallow...
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The Emperor of Gladness Review

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  This was a book that I have had in my collection for a while, but with many other books I also purchased and also the sheer size and intensity of Ocean Vuong’s writing, I only recently got around to reading and reviewing it. I had very little knowledge about this novel, except that I knew it was by Ocean Vuong and after he had ripped my heart out in ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’, I decided that was enough to purchase a hard copy at my local Waterstones. However, while this was undoubtedly a master class in beautiful prose that at times started reading like poetry, I am afraid that his previous novel was a lot more effective and emotional than this one. ‘The Emperor of Gladness’ follows Hai, a young Vietnamese- American queer man and his relationship with an old Lithuanian woman suffering from dementia as he becomes her caretaker. Other characters include Hai’s co-workers at the local fast food restaurant he becomes a part of and their developing relationships. Additionally, I...
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Atmosphere Review

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  For some reason, I keep reading books by  Taylor Jenkins Reid, although every time so far I have been left quite a bit disappointed with her writing. However, ‘Atmosphere’ seemed like it could be a fun one, so I decided to give it a chance. Unfortunately, I found it to have the same exact issues as almost all of the other books by this author I have read and I have read a few by now. ‘Atmosphere’ is set in the 1980s and it follows Joan Goodwin and her journey to being one of the first women in space, as she joins the NASA program. Throughout the novel, we are introduced to a myriad of other characters, although the majority of the story is told through Joan’s perspective through third person narration. The narration also switches between a crucial event in 1984 and then goes back and forth to get to that point, focusing on Joan’s story. My first and perhaps the biggest problem with the story is Joan herself. There were a lot of compelling and interesting parts of her charact...
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The Dry Review

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  I have wanted to read this book for a while now, ever since I have watched the movie based on it. Finally, I found a used copy in a charity shop and decided to purchase it. It has been a while since I have watched a movie, at least a few years, so I have forgotten some details, but enough have remained in my mind that I’m sure it has impacted my reading experience, especially when it came to the big reveal towards the end of the novel. Jane Harper’s debut novel ‘The Dry’ follows Aaron Falk, as he hesitantly returns to his hometown of Kiewarra, a small farming community in the outback of Australia. He is now a federal investigator, working on financial cases, but when he gets a letter from his childhood best friend’s father, asking him to return, he cannot refuse it. Luke Hadler, his friend, is being accused of murdering his wife and a young son and then himself, but as Falk begins to investigate this more, he realizes that everything is not as it seems in this small, crumbling co...
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These Violent Delights

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  This was another book that I found out through booktook and was convinced I would enjoy. All I knew about it before I got it was that it was LGBT, dark academia and that the main characters were quite horrible and pretentious people. Everything about that sounded like it would be right up my alley, so I decided to purchase this from my local Waterstones. Unfortunately, while ‘These Violent Delights’ was compared to ‘The Secret History’, it only served to remind me of how much Donna Tartt’s novel was superior, even if I did not enjoy that one very much either. The novel follows Paul and Julian, who meet as college freshmen in Pittsburgh and strike up a relationship that soon turns into a dangerous game of obsession and desire. We learn that they are from different classes entirely, Paul is from a working class Jewish family while Julian is an epitome of WASP-iness. Still, they see each other as only intellectual equals, and look down on pretty much everyone else. Their two charact...
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Fourth Wing Review

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  For a while, it was impossible to exist in any of the book review spaces on the internet without someone bringing up this book and praising it intensely. However, a few of my friends whose opinion I cherish have read it, and hated it. This is also the story of how I ended up adding it to my goodreads want to read list that my husband stalked in order to buy me books for my birthday. Since I had a physical copy, courtesy of my amazing husband (love you very much) I decided to see this for myself. This is just as much of a train wreck as I expected it to be. The premise of the novel is that we follow Violet (or Violence as her enemy-to-lovers guy insists on calling her) who was supposed to be studying to be a squire get thrown into school where they will learn how to become riders or die trying. Violet has no personality beyond being small, not like other girls, has silver hair (how many times can an author remind us how special Violet is because of this) and horny to all hell. The...
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Severance Review

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This book has been on my TBR for this year since the start of the year and as we are nearing the end of 2024, I decided it was finally time. Perhaps, the fact I did not check the novel summary before reading it influenced my experience reading it, as I was not in the mood for the post apocalyptic novel where the end of the world has been caused by a disease. Fair or not, I did not enjoy this novel at all, as I found it rather dull and uninspiring, leaving a lot to be desired. Unfortunately, it was another case of a somewhat interesting idea done not so well. The main character and the narrator is a young woman of Chinese heritage, Candace Chen, living in New York city. The narration is split between the now where the world has already ended and the past. In the new, Candace joins a group of survivors, who are all led by Bob as they try to make it to ‘The Facility’, scavenging for what they need along the way while her past is showing her mostly dull daily routines until the two timel...
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