Review: THE PATIENT by Teri Terry

 

The Patient by Teri Terry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I feel the steady thump of my new heart beating inside me. The surgeon said everything went well. But I can’t stop thinking about my the girl who was killed. Her death saved my life. But now whoever took hers is coming for mine…
I can’t believe it when I learn my donor’s identity. The attack on Flora was all over the news. From my hospital bed I read every article, obsess over every word and soon I feel like I know the beautiful girl with flame-coloured hair, adored by everyone around her. Why would anyone hurt someone so perfect?
When Flora’s family reach out to me, I’m unsure. My hands are shaking as I arrive at their grand mansion with its golden stone and sprawling gardens, but they’re warm and welcoming, tears shining in her mother’s eyes as she smiles at me.
She even tells me to take anything I want from Flora’s things, as she can’t bear to go through them herself. I run my fingers over the racks of beautiful designer items, carefully choosing outfits in Flora’s signature yellow, the bright colour complementing the new flush in my cheeks. I think of the years I’ve wasted being ill, and the crushing loneliness I thought would never end. I deserve this.
But then there’s a violent attack on another patient who received one of Flora’s organs. My heart – Flora’s heart – races dangerously fast. Is it a coincidence?
Maybe I’ve made a mistake by stepping into Flora’s life. Has this second chance really saved me? Or has it cost me everything?

--

This was a heart-stopping read (excuse the pun!) about a woman who receives a heart transplant, only to find that her donor was murdered. And, what's more, soon all the other recipients of the donors' organs are being hunted down too...

I first became aware of this book when watching the author on a panel at CrimeFest last year, and I was very excited to read it. I knew nothing of the book's premise at that point (I'm a massive fan of her YA books) and then I learned what The Patient was about, I was gripped and just could not wait until release day was here. And what a read that was!

One thing I really loved was how fast-paced this narrative was, and how we have multiple narrators. Sometimes, this can be a bit hit-and-miss for me as I often find it hard to distinguish the different characters' narrations in my head, but I didn't have that problem here. The opening in particular really drew me in, enticing me to read as fast as I could from the very first page.

And let me just say this: Teri Terry is the queen of twists! Those twists at the end--I did not see them coming! Every time I thought I'd worked out who the villain was, another twist just blew me away.

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Review: COUNTERFEIT by Kirstin Chen

 

Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For fans of Hustlers and How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, the story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise--an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship from the author of Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners.

Money can't buy happiness... but it can buy a decent fake.

Ava Wong has always played it safe. As a strait-laced, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home--she's built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava's world is crumbling: her marriage is falling apart, her expensive law degree hasn't been used in years, and her toddler's tantrums are pushing her to the breaking point.

Enter Winnie Fang, Ava's enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out under mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, Winnie is looking to reconnect with her old friend. But the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business--someone who'd never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava. But when their spectacular success is threatened and Winnie vanishes once again, Ava is left to face the consequences.

Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.

--

This book has been on my radar forever. I'd borrowed it from the library a couple of times but then my loan was always due before I had a chance to start it, and when this was about to happen for the third time in a row I decided to knuckle down and get started. And I read this book soooooo quickly!

I love stories about con men and women. I love stories where the narrators lie. I love stories that are multiple POV and you never know who is the most reliable. I love stories with huge plot twists. So, essentially, this book was PERFECT for me!!!!

Counterfeit follows Ava Wong, a pretty 'ordinary' law-abiding woman, as she reunites with former best friend Winnie Fang--and becomes embroiled in Winnie's illegal, fraudulent business where she produces counterfeit designer handbags. So, like, I didn't realise that I would be so interested in the world of handbag production and counterfeits. This book has soooo much detail on this, and I found it fascinating. Like, we have pages and pages about it, and it's so eye-opening.

But the characterisation is what really makes this book amazing. And the plot twist. Okay, spoilers ahead! So, for the first half of the book, I was feeling sorry for Ava. She's married to a pretty awful guy who cuts off her money and controls her and throws strops. She's having to single-parent their child because he decides to move somewhere else for work, leaving his family for pretty much the whole week, every week. And when Ava dares go and visit her family, he throws a temper tantrum about that, and removes her from their joint bank account. Cue Winnie stepping in and giving her an easy way to make a lot of money. We see Ava struggling with the ethics of this and we see how once she gets started she can't get out. There are a lot of mind games, and she just seems so vulnerable. The narrative at this point also consists entirely of Ava recounting all these events to a police detective, as part of her interview, so it's first person. (I loved this as a narrative mode, plus we have no speechmarks for dialogue within this as the whole thing is pretty much the prose transcript of Ava's speech.)

I totally believed her--and then part two gives us Winnie's third-person narration where we begin to piece together that Ava has been lying to the police the whole time (and lying to us!). She's not innocent, being swept along by Winnie. She too is a con woman (she conned us all!). And that reveal is just FANTASTIC. So, so, so good!!!! We then alternate between the rest of Ava's dialogue to the detective and Winnie's narration, which give quite different versions of the same events. And I loved this, because who are we supposed to believe? Winnie's narration seems more objective as it's third person, but it's still close third person, so can she be trusted either?

I am a sucker for unreliable narrators and this book was great!

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Review: HER MAJESTY'S ROYAL COVEN by Juno Dawson

 

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this the first installment of this epic fantasy trilogy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches.

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we're there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.

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At the moment, this is a DNF for me. I really wanted to love this book, and don't get me wrong, for the right reader, this would be a great book. I adore all of Juno's other books, but this is more of a personal issue taste for me, because I've found I just don't really like adult stories about witches covens and the politics among them. I couldn't get through A Discovery of Witches for the same reason, but I read more of this one than that. And yes, I knew going into this book that this was going to be about covens. I felt compelled to try it because of loving the author's other books, but I just couldn't get on with it. Having said that, this book is very well written and I was impressed with how modern it felt, blending traditional coven life with modern life/technology. This worldbuilding was phenomenal, and when I next update my class reading list when I'm teaching worldbuilding, I will be including this.

The characterisation was also fantastic and I loved that it was multiple POV third-person. Normally, if I get a book where I'm not sure I'll like it because it's about covens, I only manage to read a chapter or so, but I read about six of this one, which is testament to how strong it is.

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Review: I'M GLAD MY MOM DIED by Jennette McCurdy

 

I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction,” eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income.

In I’m Glad My Mom Died , Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail—just as she chronicles what happens when the dream finally comes true. Cast in a new Nickelodeon series called iCarly , she is thrust into fame. Though Mom is ecstatic, emailing fan club moderators and getting on a first-name basis with the paparazzi (“Hi Gale!”), Jennette is riddled with anxiety, shame, and self-loathing, which manifest into eating disorders, addiction, and a series of unhealthy relationships. These issues only get worse when, soon after taking the lead in the iCarly spinoff Sam & Cat alongside Ariana Grande, her mother dies of cancer. Finally, after discovering therapy and quitting acting, Jennette embarks on recovery and decides for the first time in her life what she really wants.

Told with refreshing candor and dark humor, I’m Glad My Mom Died is an inspiring story of resilience, independence, and the joy of shampooing your own hair.

--- 

So, I was kind of reluctant to read this memoir when I first heard about it (though knowing nothing about the book) as I didn't like the title. It felt clickbait-y to me, and I just didn't like that at all. But then I got it from the library, and wow. Jennette McCurdy had such a difficult childhood as a child actress. She was forced into this work by her mum and abused for years by her. Reading this was difficult. McCurdy's story is traumatic and complicated. I really do applaud her for writing this.

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Review: BUNNY by Mona Awad

 

Bunny by Mona Awad
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Vegetarian meets Heathers in this darkly funny, seductively strange novel about a lonely graduate student drawn into a clique of rich girls who seem to move and speak as one

"We were just these innocent girls in the night trying to make something beautiful. We nearly died. We very nearly did, didn't we?"

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort--a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other "Bunny," and are often found entangled in a group hug so tight they become one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies' fabled "Smut Salon," and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door--ditching her only friend, Ava, a caustic art school dropout, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the sinister yet saccharine world of the Bunny cult and starts to take part in their ritualistic off-campus "Workshop" where they magically conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur, and her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies are brought into deadly collision.

A spellbinding, down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, creativity and agency, and friendship and desire, Bunny is a dazzlingly original second book.

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Oh, wow. This book. THIS BOOK!

Joining a cult while studying your MFA in creative writing? A cult where you summon monsters? This was the perfect book for me to read while finishing my MFA in creative writing.

The writing is just so trippy, so psychedelic, and it's the exact kind of horror I love. And I don't even want to say any more than that, because I think going into this book with no idea or expectations about it meant I had the best reading experience possible.

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Review: LULLABY by Leïla Slimani

 

Lullaby by Leïla Slimani and translated by Sam Taylor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Myriam, a French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work after having children, she and her husband look for the perfect caretaker for their two young children. They never dreamed they would find Louise: a quiet, polite and devoted woman who sings to their children, cleans the family's chic apartment in Paris's upscale tenth arrondissement, stays late without complaint and is able to host enviable birthday parties.

The couple and nanny become more dependent on each other. But as jealousy, resentment and suspicions increase, Myriam and Paul's idyllic tableau is shattered...

---

I really enjoyed this novel. It was recommended to me by thriller and crime-writer Sophie McKenzie as an example of a novel that begins with an omniscient narrator, and I just fell in love with the style.

We zoom in and out of characters' heads as we learn the story of an unreliable and murderous nanny. Ultimately, it's the plot of quite a lot of nanny thrillers--I can think of several others that follow this rough plot where the nanny is a danger to the kids--but the execution of this is phenomenal. The depth of characterisation is impressive.

And what really got me was how this novel is based on a specific real-life case too.

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Review: ANY OTHER FAMILY by Eleanor Brown

 

Any Other Family by Eleanor Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

he New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters returns with a striking and intimate new novel about three very different women facing an impossible question: What makes a family?

They look just like any other family. But they aren't a family like any other – not quite. Instead, they are three sets of parents who adopted four biological siblings, committing to keeping the children connected after the death of their grandmother.



Tabitha, who adopted the twins, is the planner of the group, responsible for coordinating playdates and birthdays and Sunday night dinners, insistent that everything happens just so. Quiet and steady Ginger, single mother to the eldest daughter, resists the forced togetherness, her own unsettled childhood leaving her wary of trusting too much. And Elizabeth is still reeling from going directly from failed fertility treatments into adopting a newborn, terrified that her unhappiness means she was not meant to be a mother at all.

But when the three women receive a surprising call from their children’s birth mother, announcing she is pregnant again and wants them to help her find an adoptive family for this child too, the delicate bonds they are still struggling to form threaten to collapse. As tensions rise, the women reckon with their own feelings about what it means to be a mother and what they owe each other as a family.

Set across the span of a family vacation, one full of boisterous laughter and emotional upheaval, Any Other Family is a thought-provoking and poignant look at how families shift and evolve and a striking portrait of motherhood in all its forms.

--

I don't normally read contemporary fiction like this, but I'm really glad I did. It has a slower pace to what I'm used to, but the character portraits in this are phenomenal. I honestly can't get over that. They're so, so good. Like, it's all close-third person, being narrated by the three main women, and each feels so distinct. I was particularly impressed with how different Elizabeth's narrative voice was. Because this takes skill.

I read this when I was having a miscarriage, and surprisingly, reading a book all about motherhood was actually really cathartic and soothing.

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Review: ME VS BRAIN by Hayley Morris

 

Me vs Brain: An Overthinker’s Guide to Life by Hayley Morris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Brain: We left the oven on!
Me: No don't say that, I've not got time for this!
Brain: The house is probably on fire!
Me: Stop it, I need to write this book description.
Brain: But the blazing fire.
Me: We didn't even use the oven today.
Brain: But what if -
Me: No. We're not doing this, I'm finishing this description.

Hello there! Hayley Morris here. Or you might know me as the Brain Girl, and don't be fooled...it's not because I'm outrageously smart. Just an avid overthinker. I'm on a mission to prove once and for all that You. Are. Normal. Running through imaginary arguments whilst showering, hiding your knickers in the nurse's office before they look directly into your vagina, or not knowing how to be a normal human when you have the plumber over. I've spent the majority of my life saying and doing embarrassing things that wake me up in a cold sweat at 3am as my Brain reminds me of every minor detail.

In this book, I've overthought absolutely everything so you don't have to. I'll be talking about everything from dating to discharge, mental health to menstrual cups. I might not be able to banish your anxiety or make you feel 100% comfortable in your skin, but I hope I can at least give you a break from the constant brain chatter and we can rejoice and laugh at how similar we actually all are.

---

I follow Hayley Morris on Instagram and think the videos she makes are wonderful, so I was interested in reading this as soon as it came out. And it's the first book I've read in a long time that I devoured in less than 24 hours.

This is a wonderful memoir-style book, and it's great for people like me who've got anxiety as it's reassuring. It's normalising so many symptoms of anxiety and saying it's okay to speak about them, it's okay to laugh about them, and it's okay to get help for them.

It's fun, and it's powerful, and it's sad at times too. You'll laugh and cry as you read this.

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Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit in with her family. Her parents favor her sister, and her best friend is a plush toy hedgehog named Piyyut, who talks to her. He tells her that he has come from the planet Popinpobopia on a special quest to help her save the Earth. One summer, on vacation with her family and her cousin Yuu in her grandparents’ ramshackle wooden house in the mountains of Nagano, Natsuki decides that she must be an alien, which would explain why she can’t seem to fit in like everyone else. Later, as a grown woman, living a quiet life with her asexual husband, Natsuki is still pursued by dark shadows from her childhood, and decides to flee the “baby factory” of society for good, searching for answers about the vast and frightening mysteries of the universe--answers only Natsuki has the power to uncover.

Dreamlike, sometimes shocking, and always strange and wonderful, Earthlings asks what it means to be happy in a stifling world, and cements Sayaka Murata’s status as a master chronicler of the outsider experience and our own uncanny universe.

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This was... weird

Weird. So weird.

I need to think about this one… a lot. It’s disturbing and creepy and… weird.

Content warnings for child sexual abuse.

Edited to add: Yesterday I finished Earthlings by Sayaka Murata and it’s one of the creepiest books that just gets more and more disturbing and weird as you read.

The plot is ridiculous, but it’s also dark, about child sexual abuse, and I’ve never seen that tackled in this way before. I also wasn't quite prepared for how dark this book was going to be as the marketing blurb doesn't really indicate that. I was expecting a semi-dark story about a woman whose best friend is her childhood toy and who believes she herself is an alien.

But this book is so much more than that, in a very dark and twisted way. Natsuki's sexually abused by a teacher as a child, which leads her to have sex with her cousin when she's eleven years old--she does this as a way to 'survive, no matter what', and the POV is so close to her as a child that you can kind of see why she'd think that.

This book is well written, there's no doubt about that. But then we have the rest of the plot. Natsuki's shunned for her actions with her cousin, and she's abused physically and verbally by her family. She murders her teacher, and eventually marries her husband in a marriage of convenience. He definitely seems to be ace-coded and they say multiple times how they're not friends. They're marrying to get their families off their backs.

And their families are so obsessed with them having children. Natsuki refers to this as 'the factory' and she wants to be an 'earthling' and want this, because she wants to fit in. But she doesn't--as she still thinks she's an alien... Yet marriage and babies are all society wants from Natsuki. And so the book also shines a light on acephobia too. There are so many conversations between characters that Natsuki witnesses/overhears/has directed at her that really focus around the acephobia, though it's never named as such.

I’m not really sure how I feel about the ace rep in the book either. Like, the term asexuality isn’t even used on page, but it’s in a lot of marketing copy, and just… I felt at times that celibacy was actually being looked at in relation to Natsuki... but then other times it did seem to be ace-coded. Yet if this is supposed to be ace rep then it’s problematic. —hello ace husband who at one point tries to commit actual incest to be normal, and likening an character to an alien/having the ace character be one of the three in the book who think they are aliens as they're not indoctorined into the family.

And, like, that ending—I have to talk about it. Natsuki, her husband, and her cousin can't fit into society so they live together outside of society. They talk about how they don't have sex but now don't mind nudity (before this was triggering for Natsuki and her husband). I thought the romantic attraction discourse was quite interesting, as I believe all three characters were also coded as aro too at the start of the part of the book where they choose to live together as their own platonic unit... But then we watch these three characters almost 'degenerate', becoming animalistic... They talk a lot about sexual attraction and how they either don't experience it or they do but don't feel any need to act on it. And then they turn into cannibals. ACTUAL CANNIBALS.

Is this what supposedly happens to all ace or aro people? Is it the factory/society that tries to keep ace-spec people on track? And when these people escape society, they turn into cannibals? If so, then that is so, so offensive.

But like, also, is any of the plot at the end even real?

This book has confused me a lot and I’ve got all these tangled thoughts about it.

Review: GIRL FRIENDS by Holly Bourne

 

Girl Friends by Holly Bourne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"Men see women in two separate categories. There are the women they sleep with, and the women they fall in love with. And they will treat you differently based on that."

From the day they first meet as teenagers Fern and Jessica are best friends. Despite their differences, they are there for each other throughout everything, navigating the difficulties of growing up and fitting in. That is until Jessica crosses a line that Fern can't forgive.

But now, more than ten years later, Jessica has unexpectedly reappeared in Fern's life.

A lot has changed for them both - but can their relationship be different now they are older? Is it possible for either of them to rewrite the role that they have been cast in? Or will their shared history ultimately be doomed to repeat itself again?

Set between the present day and the past, GIRL FRIENDS is a blisteringly funny and devastating novel: both a joyful celebration of female friendship and a razor-sharp look at the damage we can all cause to those we claim to love the most.

---

So, I am a massive fan of Holly Bourne's YA novels, and I've been meaning to pick up one of her adult novels for quite a while. So when I discovered I could get a signed copy of Girl Friends, I was so, so excited. And it's... different to what I was expecting.

I was intrigued to see how she delivers a book for an adult readership. There's a lot more contemplation in this book, a slower pace, and more time to explore important themes and topics of debate, such as feminism and the different kinds of friendships. The writing was definitely denser, and structurally, it was a little slower too. We have dual timelines: when Fern is in her thirties, and also Fern as a teenager. These timelines alternate, but even within these timelines, we have some pretty big time gaps between their chapters--this was something that felt noticeably 'adult' to me rather than 'YA', as I'm a YA writer who's now writing for adults as well, it's something that really interested me.

Characterisation, as always with Holly Bourne's books, is great. Seriously great. Every character felt so real, but we could also see their flaws too. They weren't perfect. They felt authentic and genuine, and we could see how no one person was 100% 'all good' or 'all bad'.

This book covers a lot of important topics: sexual assault, rape, peer pressure, drug and alcohol abuse (particularly among teens), self-harm, mental illness, jealousy, and self-esteem issues. I'm probably forgetting some others too, but I'd say the heart of this book is about relationships, both romantic and sexual relationships, and friendships.

This novel makes some pretty strong statements about men and how they act and behave--insinuating that all straight men are like this. Of course, these statements are from the mouth of Jessica, I think, and she's a pretty opinionated character, but we see how these things sit with Fern for years and change the way she looks at her own partner. And of course this makes the reader do this too. One scene in particular made me feel quite uneasy, as I wondered if this would also apply to my husband...

Jessica is also a fantastic character. She's the popular girl at school--but mainly popular among boys for her 'sex uses' and not popular among girls. Fern is pretty much her only friend. Fern feels plain and boring compared to her. Jessica is the one all the boys want. And, across the teen years, Jessica also gets with three boys that Fern is either interested in or with--which really paints Jessica in a not-so-great light. I was right on Fern's side with that, but then the ending twists things magnificently. Jessica points out that each time when this happened, she was either drunk or high and being taken advantage of. She needed help from her girl friends (Fern) but Fern had begun to see her as just the 'slut' that the boys painted her as. And this just really got me thinking, as I fell into this trap too, judging Jessica and thinking she wasn't a great friend.

This book makes you think a lot about society and the way women and girls are programmed to look down upon other women and girls who are perhaps obviously more sexual. But then it makes you think about how men and boys also shape those same women to be more sexual, and opens your eyes to the abuse and sexual assaults that go on there too.

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Review: CURSED BUNNY by Bora Chung

 

Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cursed Bunny is a genre-defying collection of short stories by Korean author Bora Chung. Blurring the lines between magical realism, horror, and science-fiction, Chung uses elements of the fantastic and surreal to address the very real horrors and cruelties of patriarchy and capitalism in modern society.

Anton Hur’s translation skilfully captures the way Chung’s prose effortlessly glides from being terrifying to wryly humorous. Winner of a PEN/Heim Grant.

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Recommended

I picked up this book because of the cover, and quite simply, it is stunning. This is a tricky collection to write about because it contains so much. Each story is so different and the collection spans multiple genres. The darker, more disturbing stories are at the start—mostly—and I have to say these were my favourites. I definitely enjoyed the first two-thirds of the stories, where we’ve got the absurd, dark, weird, creepy stories. I found the ones at the end to be much slower and more contemporary, not really what I’d been looking for as I’m drawn to horror.

Out of all the stories, the first one was probably my favourite. Just the first sentence is amazing, and I still find myself thinking about the monster made from body matter that rises out of the toilet and forces its maker to swap places with it.

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Review: THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR by Shari Lapena

 

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It all started at a dinner party. . .

A domestic suspense debut about a young couple and their apparently friendly neighbors--a twisty, rollercoaster ride of lies, betrayal, and the secrets between husbands and wives. . .

Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all--a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.

Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they've kept for years.

What follows is the nerve-racking unraveling of a family--a chilling tale of deception, duplicity, and unfaithfulness that will keep you breathless until the final shocking twist.

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This is the first Shari Lapena novel I've read, and it was an easy read. I was having intensive medical treatment for 6 weeks in hospital and I had a pile of books that I'd got from a secondhand book shop. This was one of them, and yeah, it kept me entertained. But I found the first half of the story was much better.

The set-up is good in terms of execution and tension and pacing--there's a missing baby and suspicion is cast from one character to another--but I also found the set-up not that plausible. Would parents really leave their six-month-old daughter at home on her own? Would they assume that she really would be fine? Because as soon as we had this set-up, I knew what was going to happen. It was kind of obvious and so, so predictable. And it also really annoyed me and made me not like the parents too.

What wasn't obvious though were developments in the second half--yes, I love when a story does this, but it didn't quite feel organic enough to the story for me. There were also so many twists being piled on top of each other by the end, and it almost felt that the author was just trying to make the reader more and more surprised. So by the time I was finishing the book, my disbelief was no longer suspended. I wasn't as on-page in the story as I had been before. I felt like I was reading the ending of a book, rather than learning what was actually going on. It was a bit infuriating really to be pulled out of the story, when on a craft level, this book had started so well in terms of set-up.

However, there was an issue with the writing that bothered me, and this was the dialogue tags. Just so many of them... I kept thinking, why not just use 'said'? But I haven't deducted a star from the review though as this book did what I wanted it to: it kept me entertained and distracted from my medical treatment, and there's no doubt that it's compulsive and a page-turner. I will be picking up more books by this author in the future.

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Review: BEAUTIFUL WORLD, WHERE ARE YOU by Sally Rooney

 

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

---

I struggled with this book, which is odd, because I also rate it highly. To me, this is one of those more experimental writings. It feels very literary, and you have to concentrate a lot to read it. Plot isn't really the point in this story. It's about character--and the characterisation is phenomenal. Rooney really paints vivid pictures of all her characters. They feel real and I felt connected at times to them, but there was also this incredible distance, like I could never truly understand them. And it was this balance between being kept close and being pushed away that really kept me coming back to the story.

The prose was challenging at times. I was in hospital at some of the points when I was dipping into this story, and I did skim-read a lot of the letters in this story, because I found I was preferring the 'present day' action, rather than when Alice and Eileen write to each other. The topics they talk about are quite 'high-brow', and I found some of this difficult to concentrate on, particularly when I wanted a light read and entertainment.

The writing craft is amazing though. There are so many amazing paragraphs to analyse. It's a story about friendship and relationships, about growing up and being an adult, about love and loss and moving forward, about expectations and societal pressure, about climate change and politics, about mental health, and about what it means to be human.

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Review: ONE TRUE LOVES by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

One True Loves by Taylor Jenkins Reid
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In her twenties, Emma Blair marries her high school sweetheart, Jesse. They build a life for themselves, far away from the expectations of their parents and the people of their hometown in Massachusetts. They travel the world together, living life to the fullest and seizing every opportunity for adventure.

On their first wedding anniversary, Jesse is on a helicopter over the Pacific when it goes missing. Just like that, Jesse is gone forever.

Emma quits her job and moves home in an effort to put her life back together. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma runs into an old friend, Sam, and finds herself falling in love again. When Emma and Sam get engaged, it feels like Emma’s second chance at happiness.

That is, until Jesse is found. He’s alive, and he’s been trying all these years to come home to her. With a husband and a fiancé, Emma has to now figure out who she is and what she wants, while trying to protect the ones she loves.

Who is her one true love? What does it mean to love truly?

Emma knows she has to listen to her heart. She’s just not sure what it’s saying.

—-

This is the second Taylor Jenkins Reid book I’ve read, and she’s now a firm favourite author. I absolutely loved her Malibu Rising and this book was even better. I connected to the first person narration so easily, and this is exactly the kind of love story I adore. It’s a story with heart. It’s a story that has the perfect setup and the plot is about learning which choice Emma will make.

This is a story that’s heartbreaking and gut-wrenching, but every choice Emma makes does make sense. I was particularly impressed with how both Jesse and Sam felt like real love interests—they both could be ‘the one’. I found myself rooting for each of them just as much, which meant I shared Emma’s exact dilemma.

I loved how the novel started with the day that Jesse returned, and then we go back in time to see how teenage Emma met and fell in love (in different ways) with both the love interests, Jesse and Sam. We see her travel into adulthood, and there’s so much character growth in this book.

This book is light on the sex, which I really appreciated, instead being much more emotion-based. This has to be one of my favourite reads of 2022.

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Review: ROSEMARY’S BABY by Ira Levin

 

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse, an ordinary young couple, settle into a New York City apartment, unaware that the elderly neighbors and their bizarre group of friends have taken a disturbing interest in them. But by the time Rosemary discovers the horrifying truth, it may be far too late!

— 
I read this one for horror research for my MFA, and this book is incredible. Horror set in an apartment block. It starts off slowly, with just a few hints that the neighbours aren’t quite what they seem. And it just gains momentum from then on, until we’re dealing with a creepy Satanic cult who steal Rosemary’s baby. It is SO creepy!

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Review: THE GIRLS ARE ALL SO NICE HERE by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

 

The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A USA TODAY Best Book of 2021

Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this “propulsive” (Megan Miranda, bestselling author of The Girl from Widow Hills) psychological thriller.

A lot has changed in years since Ambrosia Wellington graduated from college, and she’s worked hard to create a new life for herself. But then an invitation to her ten-year reunion arrives in the mail, along with an anonymous note that reads, “We need to talk about what we did that night.”

It seems that the secrets of Ambrosia’s past—and the people she thought she’d left there—aren’t as buried as she believed. Amb can’t stop fixating on what she did or who she did it with: larger-than-life Sloane “Sully” Sullivan, Amb’s former best friend, who could make anyone do anything.

At the reunion, Amb and Sully receive increasingly menacing messages, and it becomes clear that they’re being pursued by someone who wants more than just the truth of what happened that first semester. This person wants revenge for what they did and the damage they caused—the extent of which Amb is only now fully understanding. And it was all because of the game they played to get a boy who belonged to someone else and the girl who paid the price.

Alternating between the reunion and Amb’s freshman year, The Girls Are All So Nice Here is a “chilling and twisty thriller” (Book Riot) about the brutal lengths girls can go to get what they think they’re owed, and what happens when the games we play in college become matters of life and death. 

— 

Dark, toxic female friendships. A stunning debut adult thriller. I’ve loved L.E. Flynn’s YA thrillers, and her first adult novel did not disappoint. 

Ambrosia Wellington is one hell of a character. Complex, hurting, haunted, and trying to forget her past and her involvement in her roommate’s death.

The twists here were shocking, the voice compelling, and I couldn’t listen to this audiobook fast enough. The storyline deftly weaves between past and present, showing how the effects of toxic female friendship are never really over. This is exactly the type of adult thriller I love.

I wasn’t entirely sure about one of the narrators at first, but she turned out being the perfect choice.

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Review: Never Tell A Lie by Gail Schimmel

 

Never Tell A Lie by Gail Schimmel
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

This is my first book by Gail Schimmel and I will definitely be reading more. Never Tell a Lie is a rather tame domestic suspense novel, but it’s engaging and I couldn’t read it fast enough. I love stories about complex friendships and complex female characters. A school reunion has main character Mary becoming best friends with old schoolmate April—even if Mary can’t actually remember April from them.

There are so many secrets wrapped up inside this novel. April has a dark past linking to an event at school; April and Leo’s marriage is abusive but the big question for a long time is who is the abuser; and Mary discovers her long dead mother isn’t actually dead.

But the big plot centres around April—Mary believes her husband is abusing her, as all the signs are there, but Leo spins a convincing tale as he tries to persuade Mary that he’s the one being abused. Given we know April has done bad things in the past, this is plausible too, and the plot evolves into this twisty narrative where we and Mary are trying to work out who is telling the truth.

Spoilers ahead: So, April’s character was so well written and developed for a long time. Leo’s character had less page-time, and so when he managed to persuade Mary to help get April sectioned in a psychiatric unit, I was surprised by how quickly that happened. And then we end up with time-jumps
Suddenly weeks have passed and Mary is on her third date with Leo—where she discovers the truth, that April was telling the truth all along. And while I like that this is a great #MeToo story showing how men can hide their abusive actions and appear charming to others, I really felt like this ending was just too rushed. It felt like it all happened too quickly, like the pacing was off. This is my only complaint about the book, and so it’s a 4.5 star read for me.

All the characters were all so well written, especially Mary’s son Django and her new boyfriend Joshua and her old friend Stacey. Even Mary’s parents felt real.

The writing is well done and sophisticated.

While I usually gravitate toward suspense novels with more action, this one still had me gripped. 

Thank you to NetGalley for the arc. 

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Review: THE MAID by Nita Prose

 

The Maid by Nita Prose
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a phenomenal book.

The writing is so, so strong, and Molly’s voice is fantastic. Molly Gray is twenty-five, a maid, and she sees the world differently to most people. She struggles with social interactions, taking everything at face value and interpreting things literally. She’s not a good judge of character as she’s way too trusting. And that becomes her downfall when others use this against her to set her up for the murder of a pm important client at the hotel she works for.

Molly discovers wealthy client Mr Black is dead when she goes to clean his room, and because she doesn’t act as others expect her to, she quickly becomes a suspect in the police investigation. The real murderers realise this and use it to their advantage, framing her more and more.

I couldn’t get over how amazingly well written Molly is. It’s first-person narrative and we’re in her head, seeing her thought processes and how she reacts differently. Yet it also very much clear to readers who the bad characters are from the start, despite us only ever seeing them through Molly!s eyes where she believes they are good and trustworthy. This is simply a masterful piece of craft.

All the characters are so well written, and every time I felt like I knew Molly, there was a surprise or a twist in store. This book is tense, and I read the whole thing in a couple of days. Really, really recommend it to everyone who likes stories of neurodivergence, thrillers, suspense, and strong characters. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.   

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Review: Chloe Cates is Missing by Mandy McHugh

 

Chloe Cates is Missing by Mandy McHugh
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

AThe disappearance of a young internet celebrity ignites a firestorm of speculation on social media, and to find her a detective will have to extinguish the blaze. 

Chloe Cates is missing. The 13-year-old star of the hit YouTube series, “CC and Me,” has disappeared, and nobody knows where she’s gone — least of all ruthless momager Jennifer Scarborough, who has spent much of her daughter’s young life crafting a child celebrity persona that is finally beginning to pay off. And in Chloe’s absence, the faux-fairytale world that supported that persona begins to fracture, revealing secrets capable of reducing the highly-dysfunctional Scarborough family to rubble. 

Anxious to find her daughter and preserve the life she’s worked so hard to build, Jennifer turns to social media for help, but the hearsay, false claims, and salacious suspicions only multiply. As the search becomes as sensational as Chloe’s series, Missing Persons detective Emilina Stone steps in, only to realize she has a connection to this case herself. Will she be able to stay objective and cut through the rumors to find the truth before it’s too late?

Told from multiple points of view including Jennifer, Emilina, and pages from Chloe’s lost diary, Chloe Cates Is Missing is a suspenseful novel of a child pushed to the brink, and of the troubled family that desperately needs her back.

—-

Chloe Cates is missing is a phenomenal debut. Seriously. It’s SO good.

I started it late evening yesterday and read until the early hours, and then picked it up again as soon as I could today. Within twenty-four hours of starting this book, I’d finished it. I simply couldn’t read it fast enough. Chloe Cates is Missing is a twisty, complicated story that spirals around Jennifer, the mother of Abigail who is more publicly known as Chloe. Jennifer began a ‘mommy blog’ when Abby was little, and ‘Chloe’ is its main character. While Jennifer’s son is allowed a normal life, Abby isn’t. She’s not allowed to go to school, have friends, or make any of her own choices. She has to constantly perform as Chloe, and we see the horrific things that this leads to. And the story begins when Jennifer finds that her precious daughter is missing…

Jennifer is such a fascinating character. She’s dark and twisty. She sees her daughter only in terms of what Chloe can provide her. She treats her like a doll, wanting to control every aspect of her life. And she’ll do anything to make sure she gets her own way. And she lies. She lies a lot, and I was never quite sure when she was telling the truth. This made the tension so, so high. I couldn’t stop reading. She’d engineered an entire fake life for her daughter for her followers to watch. Chloe’s ‘friends’ were photoshopped models. Any time Abby really did start making friends of her own, Jennifer put a stop to it. She wanted her daughter isolated and dependent, and Jackson, Jennifer’s husband and Chloe’s father just lets it happen.

Jennifer is also a murderer. Part of the narrative is from the perspective of Emilina, the former best friend of Jennifer and the now detective investigating Chloe’s disappearance. Emilina knows exactly what kind of person Jennifer is, as Jennifer forced her to cover up the murder when they were kids. 

And that’s not the only murder in the book. We’ve also got the murder of Missy, a girl the same age as Chloe and who looks pretty similar to her. And it soon becomes clear the murder of Missy and the disappearance of Chloe are intrinsically connected.

Chloe/Abby is a fascinating character. I really felt for her, could feel her desperation through her journal entries as she tried to fight her controlling mother. Indeed, the journal was quite horrifying to read when it became apparent just how far Jennifer would go to make sure her daughter was doing what she wanted. There was a fantastic twist about the boy whom Abby was secretly getting to know. And we really see the effect of all this emotional abuse on Abby and learn how her mother’s behaviour has shaped her. Nothing is as it seems!

There are so many twists in this book. The pacing is spot-on, and I simply had to read it as quickly as possible to find out who was the evil mastermind—because no matter how hard I tried to work it out, I just couldn’t. Every time I thought I had a handle on one of the suspects, a new curveball was thrown into the mix.

We’ve got a lot of first person narrators—Jennifer, Emilina, Abby, and Jackson (Jennifer’s husband)—but it didn’t feel like too many and I was able to separate the narratives quite easily.

All in all, this is a highly recommended read. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

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Review: STILLHOUSE LAKE by Rachel Caine

Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Gina Royal is the definition of average—a shy Midwestern housewife with a happy marriage and two adorable children. But when a car accident reveals her husband’s secret life as a serial killer, she must remake herself as Gwen Proctor—the ultimate warrior mom.

With her ex now in prison, Gwen has finally found refuge in a new home on remote Stillhouse Lake. Though still the target of stalkers and Internet trolls who think she had something to do with her husband’s crimes, Gwen dares to think her kids can finally grow up in peace.

But just when she’s starting to feel at ease in her new identity, a body turns up in the lake—and threatening letters start arriving from an all-too-familiar address. Gwen Proctor must keep friends close and enemies at bay to avoid being exposed—or watch her kids fall victim to a killer who takes pleasure in tormenting her. One thing is certain: she’s learned how to fight evil. And she’ll never stop.

--- 
I listened to the audiobook shortly after Rachel Caine passed away, and it definitely was poignant listening to this as she was such a great writer. I'd had the ebook of this for a while, but when I joined audible and saw this was there too, I thought I'd try it out that way as I'd been having problems with my vision.

I ended up listening to this in quite intense chunks--several hours at a time--as it was when we had the really hot weather and I needed to sit outside with my guinea pigs to make sure they weren't getting too hot. They always like the sound of the radio and so on, so I put the audio on out loud for them all to hear--and we all enjoyed it.

In Stillhouse Lake, Caine proved once again that she is a master of writing. This is the first of her adult books I've read--and the first thriller from her, given I was obsessed with her YA fantasy Morganville series and was a bit scared to try something new from her for so long due to being afraid of being disappointed. But I wasn't disappointed at all.

From the moment I started listening to this book, I was drawn in. The characters are just so, so real, and the emotion in the writing is incredible.

I'll admit, I found the first half of the book a tiny bit slow at times--but this is just nitpicking really, because it really is amazing. And that ending! Wow. Just wow.

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