en-US Sun, 27 Apr 2025 11:24:27 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg 232106334
But outside her work, Grace is not a careful person. Her father's history as a police officer working across an infamous case shadows her life, as does the violent history entrenched across the Colne Valley landscape of her childhood, and her fears often surface as recklessness.

When Grace becomes unexpectedly pregnant, she tries to accommodate her boyfriend and the prospect of the baby in her life. But after the relief and strange joy of the birth, Grace starts to imagine all sorts of terrible injuries and deaths befalling her child. The steep stairs to her apartment, the kitchen scissors, a boiling kettle all suddenly hold visceral and overwhelming potential for disaster. The baby's vulnerability terrifies her: fault-lines in her relationship begin to show, and her family history and repressed memories of violence break to the surface.

Tender, gripping and life-affirming, raw content tells the story of a woman grappling with a new form of love that feels like a disaster.]]> 256 Naomi Booth 1472159357 Blair 4 4.00
author: Naomi Booth
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/27
date added: 2025/04/27
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, library-books
review:

]]> 21897196
He shuts up the bookshop no one ever comes to and drives out of London. When his car breaks down and he becomes lost on an isolated road, he goes looking for help, and stumbles into the grounds of a grand but dilapidated house.

Its residents welcome him with open arms - but there's more to this strange community than meets the eye. They all know him by name, they've prepared a room for him, and claim to have been waiting for him all along.

As nights and days pass John finds himself drawn into a baffling menagerie. There is Hester, their matriarchal, controlling host; Alex and Claire, siblings full of child-like wonder and delusions; the mercurial Eve; Elijah - a faithless former preacher haunted by the Bible; and chain-smoking Walker, wreathed in smoke and hostility. Who are these people? And what do they intend for John?

Elegant, gently sinister and psychologically complex, this is a haunting and hypnotic debut novel by a brilliant new voice.]]> 288 Sarah Perry Blair 5 After Me Comes the Flood. I adored this book unreservedly when I first read it, and remembered it as a favourite, but you only have to look at the average rating to see that it’s not very well regarded. As soon as I cracked it open, though, I fell straight into it again. It’s a book that reminds me (as if I needed a reminder) how interestingly subjective reading actually is. To me this is not only a brilliant, beautiful book, but easily Sarah Perry’s best.

After Me Comes the Flood was Perry’s debut, published three years before the much more successful The Essex Serpent. It presents an instantly intriguing scenario. In the midst of a heatwave, John Cole walks out of the bookshop he owns and sets off on a long drive. When his car breaks down, he knocks on the door of a big house for help�� only to be greeted by name and welcomed in, finding that the residents �� a strange mixture of individuals whose relationships to one another are obscure �� have been waiting for him and have a room prepared.

The way Perry writes these early scenes is sublime, the reader taken alongside John right into the moment, unwilling or unable to disturb the flow of the story that’s unfolding around him. It’s like being pulled down into a dream. And even though it turns out there’s an ordinary (albeit wildly coincidental) reason for the group’s embrace of John, that sense of the dreamlike never quite goes away. Shimmering, oppressive heat; slow-building tension; a vague sense of impending doom.

The story takes place across the course of a week, during which little happens yet everything carries meaning. While there are questions to be answered (who are these people? who’s sending distressing letters to fragile, anxious Alex?), the pace is slow, the atmosphere more important than the action. I loved this measured release of information, the way the reader is kept in the dark much like John is; understanding comes from tiny details, nuances of behaviour. There are some first-novel flaws �� John, somewhat unconvincingly, falls in love out of absolutely nowhere; one particular plot beat is an overused trope �� but the story holds up despite them, wrapped in its own special magic.

Rereading this reminded me of my experience with Sally Hinchcliffe’s Hare House, a book I completely and utterly adore, but unmistakably one that also felt precisely calibrated for me, so that I am very aware it wouldn’t work in the same way for most other readers. This time, it reminded me a little of Piranesi, too �� something to do with how self-contained the story feels, the sense that you can see how the whole thing’s constructed yet that only makes it stronger.]]> 2.93 2014
author: Sarah Perry
name: Blair
average rating: 2.93
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/01
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: 2014-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, favourites, first-novels, cults-communes-captivity, read-more-than-once
review:
(First read in 2014; reread April 2025.) I was nervous to revisit After Me Comes the Flood. I adored this book unreservedly when I first read it, and remembered it as a favourite, but you only have to look at the average rating to see that it’s not very well regarded. As soon as I cracked it open, though, I fell straight into it again. It’s a book that reminds me (as if I needed a reminder) how interestingly subjective reading actually is. To me this is not only a brilliant, beautiful book, but easily Sarah Perry’s best.

After Me Comes the Flood was Perry’s debut, published three years before the much more successful The Essex Serpent. It presents an instantly intriguing scenario. In the midst of a heatwave, John Cole walks out of the bookshop he owns and sets off on a long drive. When his car breaks down, he knocks on the door of a big house for help�� only to be greeted by name and welcomed in, finding that the residents �� a strange mixture of individuals whose relationships to one another are obscure �� have been waiting for him and have a room prepared.

The way Perry writes these early scenes is sublime, the reader taken alongside John right into the moment, unwilling or unable to disturb the flow of the story that’s unfolding around him. It’s like being pulled down into a dream. And even though it turns out there’s an ordinary (albeit wildly coincidental) reason for the group’s embrace of John, that sense of the dreamlike never quite goes away. Shimmering, oppressive heat; slow-building tension; a vague sense of impending doom.

The story takes place across the course of a week, during which little happens yet everything carries meaning. While there are questions to be answered (who are these people? who’s sending distressing letters to fragile, anxious Alex?), the pace is slow, the atmosphere more important than the action. I loved this measured release of information, the way the reader is kept in the dark much like John is; understanding comes from tiny details, nuances of behaviour. There are some first-novel flaws �� John, somewhat unconvincingly, falls in love out of absolutely nowhere; one particular plot beat is an overused trope �� but the story holds up despite them, wrapped in its own special magic.

Rereading this reminded me of my experience with Sally Hinchcliffe’s Hare House, a book I completely and utterly adore, but unmistakably one that also felt precisely calibrated for me, so that I am very aware it wouldn’t work in the same way for most other readers. This time, it reminded me a little of Piranesi, too �� something to do with how self-contained the story feels, the sense that you can see how the whole thing’s constructed yet that only makes it stronger.
]]> 220521346 From the author of Once More We Saw Stars comes a gripping novel about four intertwined lives that collide in the wake of a mysterious tragedy. Set in a near-future world where the boundaries between human and AI blur, the story challenges our understanding of consciousness and humanity.

Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,�� a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,�� having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist.

With UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred—between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward each other, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?]]> 224 Jayson Greene 0593802195 Blair 4 3.00
author: Jayson Greene
name: Blair
average rating: 3.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/24
date added: 2025/04/26
shelves: 2025-release, read-on-kindle, near-future-soft-sf, netgalley
review:

]]> 228996106 Newcomers to a town are strangely reminiscent of people lost in a recent flood.
Demonstrators on a peace march see the faces of sleeping children in the snow.
A failed musician meets his own ancestors getting off a midnight train. The Terrible Changes is a journey through the shadow-realm between reality and dream, between clarity and madness, between the living and the dead. In Joel Lane's fiction, the weird is a symbolic language expressing the chilling beauty, sadness and mystery of real life, combining the supernatural with themes of human loss, passion, solitude and despair, in the tradition of Robert Aickman, John Ramsey Campbell, and M. John Harrison.
From 'The Brand' (1983) to 'Alouette' (2008), these stories span a quarter-century of urban horror tales, elegiac ghost stories, erotic reveries and psychological fugues. Long unavailable, The Terrible Changes is now back in print for a new audience, adding to Joel Lane's legacy as a true master of the weird.]]> 160 Joel Lane 1914391128 Blair 0 may-read 4.00 2009
author: Joel Lane
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 216815329 A disturbing examination of toxic masculinity and the darkest pits of the Internet, Alex Gonzalez’s rekt traces a young man’s algorithmic descent into depravity in a future that’s nearly here.

> be me, 26
> about to end it all
> feels good, man

Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head—his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents�� mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet—didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world.

Then a car accident changed everything.

Spiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches—first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders.

The host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real? And who is Haruspx, the web handle who led him into this virtual nightmare? As Sammy watches compulsively, the darkness in his mind blooms, driving him down a twisted path to find the roots of chinsky, even if he must become a nightmare himself . . .

Not for the faint of heart, rekt combines the cautionary warnings of Black Mirror with the seedy rawness of Chuck Palahniuk in its unrelentless examination of the emotional holes we fill with content.]]> 352 Alex Gonzalez Blair 0 did-not-finish 4.00 2025
author: Alex Gonzalez
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/21
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 25455346
Flavian Bennett is trying to leave his past behind when he goes to work in his father’s bookshop in Paris. But a curious customer, Reginald Hopper, is desperate to resurrect his own murky origins. Hopper believes that a rare and mysterious book, The Dark Return of Time, may be the key to what happened before he arrived in Paris. In this quiet thriller by R.B. Russell, the futures �� and pasts �� of these two men will soon cross.

Soon to be a major motion picture.]]> 127 R.B. Russell Blair 4 The Dark Return of Time, the contents of which seem to tailor themselves to the reader. Thoughtfully written yet absorbing, this reminded me of Hugo Wilcken and a little of Paul Auster.]]> 3.00 2014
author: R.B. Russell
name: Blair
average rating: 3.00
book published: 2014
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: 2014-release, read-on-kindle, contemporary, macabre-slipstream-weird, ekphrasis
review:
This lowkey noir adventure has a weird twist so subtle you could almost miss it (and indeed I might not have approached it as a weird book at all, had it not been written by the co-founder of Tartarus Press). A British bookseller in Paris witnesses a kidnapping and is thrown into the orbit of a sinister collector, Hopper, as well as the troubled woman who seems to be stalking him. They’re all interested in a mysterious, valuable book called The Dark Return of Time, the contents of which seem to tailor themselves to the reader. Thoughtfully written yet absorbing, this reminded me of Hugo Wilcken and a little of Paul Auster.
]]> 57903731 Possession is an exhilarating novel of wit and romance, at once a literary detective novel and a triumphant love story. It is the tale of a pair of young scholars investigating the lives of two Victorian poets. Following a trail of letters, journals and poems they uncover a web of passion, deceit and tragedy, and their quest becomes a battle against time.]]> 606 A.S. Byatt 0099800403 Blair 4 3.84 1991
author: A.S. Byatt
name: Blair
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1991
rating: 4
read at: 2025/04/20
date added: 2025/04/20
shelves: 1990s-release, ekphrasis, past-and-present, booker-prize
review:

]]> 218445518
In this provocative, timely and highly personal account of our interdependent relationship with technology, she examines the early days of the internet, the encroachment of social media into our lives and how we might work with AI in the future. Brimming with candour, humour and a probing, roving intelligence, Searches anoints Vara, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, as an essential voice for our moment.]]> 406 Vauhini Vara Blair 0 may-read 0.0 2025
author: Vauhini Vara
name: Blair
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 219276875 Mystery Lights is a debut collection of stories about women and girls at the crossroads of mundane daily life and existential dread. From the all-too-real horror of a sexual predator on a college campus to a lost sister transformed by cave-dwelling creatures, Mystery Lights grapples with terrors both familiar and fantastic, introducing an electrifying new voice in contemporary fiction while bringing to light the many faces of the forces that haunt us.]]> 256 Lena Valencia Blair 4 Mystery Lights, sitting as it does somewhere between conventional literary fiction and the strange and speculative. Going in, I expected more of the latter, and I’ll admit to being disappointed that some of the stories are more straightforward than anticipated, and/or hinge on the overfamiliar idea that reality is scarier than an imagined supernatural threat. The thing is, though, when Valencia is firing on all cylinders, she’s really, really good, and the standout stories make the book well worth reading. Excellent sense of atmosphere and place here �� especially in the desert settings that appear across so many of the stories �� and Valencia has a gift for crafting characters swiftly. Favourites were ‘The Reclamation��, ‘Vermilion��, ‘Dogs��, ‘Reaper Ranch�� and ‘Trogloxene��. You might enjoy this if you liked Meagan Poland’s What Makes You Think You’re Awake? or Kate Folk’s Out There.]]> 3.80 2024
author: Lena Valencia
name: Blair
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/31
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: 2024-release, read-on-kindle, short-stories, contemporary, macabre-slipstream-weird
review:
(3.5) An odd, sometimes uneven collection, Mystery Lights, sitting as it does somewhere between conventional literary fiction and the strange and speculative. Going in, I expected more of the latter, and I’ll admit to being disappointed that some of the stories are more straightforward than anticipated, and/or hinge on the overfamiliar idea that reality is scarier than an imagined supernatural threat. The thing is, though, when Valencia is firing on all cylinders, she’s really, really good, and the standout stories make the book well worth reading. Excellent sense of atmosphere and place here �� especially in the desert settings that appear across so many of the stories �� and Valencia has a gift for crafting characters swiftly. Favourites were ‘The Reclamation��, ‘Vermilion��, ‘Dogs��, ‘Reaper Ranch�� and ‘Trogloxene��. You might enjoy this if you liked Meagan Poland’s What Makes You Think You’re Awake? or Kate Folk’s Out There.
]]> 22571561 384 Henry James 0141389796 Blair 0 may-read 4.05 1894
author: Henry James
name: Blair
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1894
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 54828890 259 Yevgeny Zamyatin Blair 0 may-read 2.57 1924
author: Yevgeny Zamyatin
name: Blair
average rating: 2.57
book published: 1924
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 216022012 A family saga following four generations on a time-bending journey from coastal Scotland to a colony on Mars.

Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It is a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah’s help. Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough—and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed’s intricately crafted novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars.

Roban lives in the Colony, one of the first generation born to this sterile new outpost, where he is consumed by longing for the lost wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face an uncertain future in a world that is falling apart. Andrew is a politician running to be Scotland’s First Minister. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, if only he can persuade people to band together. For his starkly rationalist daughter Kenzie, this idealism doesn’t offer the hard tools needed to keep the rising floods at bay. And so, she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond—in contravention of all Andrew stands for.

In considering which concerns should guide us in a time of crisis—social, technological, or familial—and reckoning with the question of whether there is meaning to be found in the pursuit of salvation beyond success itself, Joe Mungo Reed has written a novel of elegiac wonder and beauty.]]> 252 Joe Mungo Reed 132407938X Blair 0 may-read 4.00 2025
author: Joe Mungo Reed
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 216510556 In the tradition of Albert Camus, J. D. Salinger, and Osamu Dazai, the archetype of the savage young man at the precipice returns in Ben Faulkner's hypnotic debut, The Agonies.

Armand Bernal is breaking apart. The trials of youth become a torrential odyssey of dislocation and disorientation. In this bildungsroman for our modern age—an age of collapse—Ben Faulkner has created an unforgettable character wary of work, college, relationships, and the world at large, becoming an unstable young man moving toward an act of terrifying violence. Will he survive the gothic America of The Agonies?
���ձ�> 132 Ben Faulkner 1648211194 Blair 0 may-read 0.0
author: Ben Faulkner
name: Blair
average rating: 0.0
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 219250584 It seems so odd to me now, how one can be so unsettled by the improbable. When we know that our entire existence is founded on freak occurrences and improbable coincidences. That we wouldn't be here at all if it weren't for these curious twists of fate.
The first volume of the poetic, page-turning masterpiece about one woman's fall through the cracks of time.
Tara Selter has slipped out of time.

Every morning, she wakes up to the 18th of November. She no longer expects to wake up to the 19th of November, and she no longer remembers the 17th of November as if it were yesterday.

She comes to know the shape of the day like the back of her hand - the grey morning light in her Paris hotel; the moment a blackbird breaks into song; her husband's surprise at seeing her return home unannounced. But for everyone around her, this day is lived for the first and only time. They do not remember the other 18ths of November, and they do not believe her when she tries to explain.

As Tara approaches her 365th 18th of November, she can't shake the feeling that somewhere underneath the surface of this day, there's a way to escape.]]> 166 Solvej Balle 0571383386 Blair 0 may-read 3.91 2020
author: Solvej Balle
name: Blair
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 39079787 'What had happened to the lost manuscripts, what train of chances took Rolfe to his death in Venice? The Quest continued'

One summer afternoon A.J.A. Symons is handed a peculiar, eccentric novel that he cannot forget and, captivated by this unknown masterpiece, determines to learn everything he can about its mysterious author. The object of his search is Frederick Rolfe, self-titled Baron Corvo - artist, rejected candidate for priesthood and author of serially autobiographical fictions - and its story is told in this 'experiment in biography': a beguiling portrait of an insoluble tangle of talents, frustrated ambitions and self-destruction.]]> 258 A.J.A. Symons Blair 0 may-read 4.50 1934
author: A.J.A. Symons
name: Blair
average rating: 4.50
book published: 1934
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 218255002 TWO BOYS MEET. EVERYTHING CHANGES.

On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. As he contends with the expectations of his family, his burgeoning desire �� an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex �� threatens to unravel his shy exterior.

Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, but underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own.

With the passing seasons, the two teenagers grow closer and the bond that emerges between them transforms their lives. James falls deeply for Luke, yet he is never sure of Luke’s true feelings. And as the end of summer nears, he has a choice to make �� will he risk everything for the possibility of love?]]> 240 Seán Hewitt 1529935253 Blair 0 may-read 4.33 2025
author: Seán Hewitt
name: Blair
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 213943303 In this mesmerizing debut from a bright new talent, two enigmatic and unforgettable siblings confront what �� and who �� they’re willing to sacrifice for their art

On the eve of her first solo show, Ava is feeling defiant. The art gallery acolytes have insisted on writing “explanations�� of her paintings for an accompanying catalog, but what do they know of her work? What do they know of her brother, Demetri, whose face echoes across every canvas?

After all, Ava and Demetri have only ever had each other. Abandoned first by their mother, who drowned in the Long Island Sound, and then again by their father, who couldn’t see beyond his grief, each sibling has always been the other’s most ardent supporter: Demetri encouraged Ava’s raw talent as a painter, while Ava pushed Demetri to pursue filmmaking. But as they make their way in New York, the codependency that once sustained them soon threatens to be their undoing. Betrayals mount, fueled by Ava’s reckless acts and her disdain for Demetri’s last-ditch efforts to make something of consequence, but what ultimately and irreversibly tips the scales won’t be found on canvas or film. Because now, at thirty-one, Demetri is dying.

As Ava reckons with the meaning of her portraits, what soon emerges from her intimate, offhanded, and mischievous meditations is a stunning and unsettling confession of secrets, epiphanies, rivalry, and infidelity. Vaulting between childhood and the days leading up to Demetri’s death, here is a searing portrait of two remarkable siblings reckoning with the limits of loyalty. Heralding the arrival of an impressive new talent, What You Make of Me lays bare the thin line between success and sacrifice.]]> 287 Sophie Madeline Dess 0593830830 Blair 0 may-read 3.67 2025
author: Sophie Madeline Dess
name: Blair
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 21160754
When those around you insist that they see they world differently at least you can argue with them. But when you realise that you cannot rely on your own senses then the world becomes a terrifying place indeed]]> 249 R.B. Russell 1848632355 Blair 0 may-read 0.0 2010
author: R.B. Russell
name: Blair
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 199621289 A ghostwriter is locked in an interview room with a man who might be a murderer, in this gripping new mystery thriller from the #1 bestselling author of 56 Days and The Trap.

The night Jack Smyth ran into flames in a desperate attempt to save his wife from their burning home, he was, tragically, too late - but hailed a hero. Until it emerged that Kate was dead long before the fire began.

Suspicion has stalked him ever since. After all, there's no smoke without fire.

A year on, he's signed a book deal. He wants to tell his side of the story, to prove his own innocence in print. He just needs someone to help him write it.

Emily has never ghostwritten anything before, but she knows what it’s like to live with a guilty secret. And she's about to learn that there are some stories that should never be told...]]> 352 Catherine Ryan Howard 1529199018 Blair 0 may-read 3.81 2024
author: Catherine Ryan Howard
name: Blair
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 231620715 To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession.

Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn't. My first love was figure skating.

Katarina Shaw has always known she’s destined to become an Olympic skater. When she meets Heath Rocha, a lonely kid stuck in the foster care system, their instant connection makes them a formidable duo on the ice. Clinging to skating �� and each other �� to escape their turbulent lives, Kat and Heath go from childhood sweethearts to champion ice dancers, captivating fans with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style and rollercoaster relationship.

Until, at the Olympic Games, as the world holds its breath, a shocking incident instantly destroys their partnership.

Ten years later, an unauthorised tell-all documentary reignites the public obsession with Shaw and Rocha. If Kat wants to own her story, she must break her silence. As Kat’s account of her dramatic rise and fall alternates with scandalous interviews from the film, The Favourites spins into a dance between passion, ambition and what it truly means to win.

Sensational rumours have haunted Kat and Heath’s every step for years, but the truth may be even more outrageous than the headlines.]]> 448 Layne Fargo Blair 0 may-read 0.0 2025
author: Layne Fargo
name: Blair
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 233504 278 Tama Janowitz 074757460X Blair 0 dipped-in 3.54 1986
author: Tama Janowitz
name: Blair
average rating: 3.54
book published: 1986
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: dipped-in
review:

]]> 221488508 'I look. I can't stop looking. That's the deal, isn't it? We all know that's how it works. If someone wants to be seen - and oh, how they want to be seen - then someone has to watch.'

Ruth is alone, unnoticed and at a loss: her marriage has ended, her daughter is leaving home and her job is leading nowhere.

But luckily Sookie is back in her life - vivid, self-assured Sookie, who never spared the time for Ruth when they were teenagers, but who now seems to want to be friends. What could possibly go wrong?

As Ruth is caught up in Sookie's life, she sees that everything is not as simple and Instagrammable as Sookie would have you believe. But what has that got to do with Ruth, and what can she do about it?

Unputdownable, funny, spiky and subtle, Other People's Fun is a novel about modern life and the lies we tell our neighbours, friends, families and selves through the hall of mirrors that is social media. Filled with Harriet Lane's trademark creeping unease and forensic observation, this marks the long-awaited return of the mistress of literary suspense.]]> 208 Harriet Lane 1474602851 Blair 5 5.00 2025
author: Harriet Lane
name: Blair
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/18
date added: 2025/04/19
shelves: 2025-release, recent-favourites, contemporary, dark-character-study, read-on-kindle, other-review-copy
review:

]]> 216638889 One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two. An exhilarating, destabilising novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love

Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant. She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere. He’s attractive, troubling, young �� young enough to be her son. Who is he to her, and who is she to him? In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day �� partner, parent, creator, muse �� and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.

Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.]]> 208 Katie Kitamura 1529937280 Blair 4 Audition opens in a restaurant, where our narrator �� a successful, well-established actress �� is having dinner with a younger man. The nature of their relationship is ambiguous, but she’s convinced onlookers assume she’s paid him to be there (although in true Kitamura style, it’s not at all clear whether anyone is really thinking this. The line between perception and projection is smudged beyond recognition �� something that’s spelled out when the narrator pulls up the memory of a time, years ago, when she was mistaken for an escort while dining with her father).

We soon learn that the young man, Xavier, initially approached the actress with a misunderstanding about their connection to each other. This is (seemingly) quickly dispensed with; still, she doesn’t dismiss him outright, and he becomes a sort of avatar for existing anxieties around her career and life choices. The narrator is in the middle of rehearsals for a play, and much of her energy is focused on her inability to grasp a transformative scene. Then there’s a break in the novel in which she seems to nail it; she goes from frustration to enlightenment without us seeing anything of how she achieves that. Except that isn’t all that’s changed. Her family is mysteriously transformed.

If Kitamura’s work might already be described as a fiction of overthinking, Audition takes her characters�� trademark maladaptive daydreaming to its not-so-logical conclusion. Lines blur between performance and reality, art and truth �� between one’s real life and a what-could-have-been version of it spun out from a fleeting thought. So thick are the layers of meaning, so stark the gaps in any explanation offered, that it’s difficult to discern whether we are being presented with an elaborate roleplaying exercise, a deep-rooted delusion, a thought experiment or an alternate reality. No answer is forthcoming. The gaps are part of the architecture.

And yet, for all its conceptual ambition, Audition fell a little flat for me. Maybe that was inevitable �� I’ve been really impressed by the two Kitamura books I’ve read so far, and this one has been hyped as a breakthrough moment, a new peak. Expectations were, possibly, too high. I still think she’s a phenomenal stylist, and no one writes obsessive rumination quite like her, but the high concept here works against her usual strengths. Compared to A Separation and, especially, Intimacies, Audition feels thinner. Kitamura thrives on the friction between people, the way perception warps in relation to others; here, that interplay is transposed onto big, splashy themes rather than playing out a hundred little times in minor interactions.

There’s plenty to chew on, as always with this author, but Audition left me hungry for something more substantial. Kitamura’s best work burrows deep into psychological ambiguity while still maintaining a strong sense of narrative momentum; here, the ambiguity feels untethered, the story fragmented to the point of weightlessness. That’s the point of course, and I did find it interesting to read something more postmodern from Kitamura �� this makes a lot of sense as a direction for her work, and framing the story within a performance theme is really clever. I just found the core questions of the novel less appealing than the broader-ranging, yet more intimate, concerns of A Separation and Intimacies, both of which I’d recommend above this.

I received an advance review copy of Audition from the publisher through .]]> 3.76 2025
author: Katie Kitamura
name: Blair
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/24
date added: 2025/04/17
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, edelweiss, ekphrasis, read-on-kindle
review:
(3.5) Audition opens in a restaurant, where our narrator �� a successful, well-established actress �� is having dinner with a younger man. The nature of their relationship is ambiguous, but she’s convinced onlookers assume she’s paid him to be there (although in true Kitamura style, it’s not at all clear whether anyone is really thinking this. The line between perception and projection is smudged beyond recognition �� something that’s spelled out when the narrator pulls up the memory of a time, years ago, when she was mistaken for an escort while dining with her father).

We soon learn that the young man, Xavier, initially approached the actress with a misunderstanding about their connection to each other. This is (seemingly) quickly dispensed with; still, she doesn’t dismiss him outright, and he becomes a sort of avatar for existing anxieties around her career and life choices. The narrator is in the middle of rehearsals for a play, and much of her energy is focused on her inability to grasp a transformative scene. Then there’s a break in the novel in which she seems to nail it; she goes from frustration to enlightenment without us seeing anything of how she achieves that. Except that isn’t all that’s changed. Her family is mysteriously transformed.

If Kitamura’s work might already be described as a fiction of overthinking, Audition takes her characters�� trademark maladaptive daydreaming to its not-so-logical conclusion. Lines blur between performance and reality, art and truth �� between one’s real life and a what-could-have-been version of it spun out from a fleeting thought. So thick are the layers of meaning, so stark the gaps in any explanation offered, that it’s difficult to discern whether we are being presented with an elaborate roleplaying exercise, a deep-rooted delusion, a thought experiment or an alternate reality. No answer is forthcoming. The gaps are part of the architecture.

And yet, for all its conceptual ambition, Audition fell a little flat for me. Maybe that was inevitable �� I’ve been really impressed by the two Kitamura books I’ve read so far, and this one has been hyped as a breakthrough moment, a new peak. Expectations were, possibly, too high. I still think she’s a phenomenal stylist, and no one writes obsessive rumination quite like her, but the high concept here works against her usual strengths. Compared to A Separation and, especially, Intimacies, Audition feels thinner. Kitamura thrives on the friction between people, the way perception warps in relation to others; here, that interplay is transposed onto big, splashy themes rather than playing out a hundred little times in minor interactions.

There’s plenty to chew on, as always with this author, but Audition left me hungry for something more substantial. Kitamura’s best work burrows deep into psychological ambiguity while still maintaining a strong sense of narrative momentum; here, the ambiguity feels untethered, the story fragmented to the point of weightlessness. That’s the point of course, and I did find it interesting to read something more postmodern from Kitamura �� this makes a lot of sense as a direction for her work, and framing the story within a performance theme is really clever. I just found the core questions of the novel less appealing than the broader-ranging, yet more intimate, concerns of A Separation and Intimacies, both of which I’d recommend above this.

I received an advance review copy of Audition from the publisher through .
]]> 220650499 A Granite Silence is an exploration - a journey through time to a particular house, in a particular street, Urquhart Road, Aberdeen in 1934, where eight-year-old Helen Priestly lives with her mother and father.

Among this long, grey corridor of four-storey tenements, a daunting expanse of granite, working families are squashed together like pickled herrings in their narrow flats. Here are Helen's the Topps, the Josses, the Mitchells, the Gordons, the Donalds, the Coulls and the Hunts.

Returning home from school for her midday meal, Helen is sent by her mother Agnes to buy a loaf from the bakery at the end of the street. Agnes never sees her daughter alive again.

Nina Allan explores the aftermath of Helen's disappearance, turning a probing eye to the close-knit neighbourhood - where everyone knows everyone, at least by sight - and with subtlety and sympathy, explores the intricate layers of truth and falsehood that can coexist in one moment of history.

Full of echoes, allusions and eerie diversions, A Granite Silence is an investigation into a notorious true crime case, but also a stylish, imaginative inquiry into who gets to tell a story, how it is told, and why . ]]> 352 Nina Allan 1529435587 Blair 5 5.00
author: Nina Allan
name: Blair
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/12
date added: 2025/04/12
shelves: 2025-release, historical, read-on-kindle, nina-allan, recent-favourites
review:

]]> 211285706 The darkly funny, moving debut novel from acclaimed Scottish author of Hings and HWFG, Chris McQueer

Since dropping out of school three years ago with no qualifications, no pals, and no ambition, Jamie Skelton spends most of his days asleep and most of his nights wanking, playing video games with his online friend, Lee, and occasionally making the journey downstairs to the kitchen for a microwave burger. He hasn't left the house in months, and now he's not sure he can.

Fiona, Jamie's maw, is trying her best, but since finding the courage to kick out her abusive husband her confidence has never recovered. She goes to work every day, but otherwise she's not that different from her son - withdrawn from life, without friends. She knows their lives can't carry on like this, but she's at a loss to know how to change things.

When Fiona tries to get Jamie to apply for a job, he sees her as the cause for all of his problems. Then Lee tells Jamie he's realised there's a name for what they are - incels - and that there's a guy he's met through the forums they can go stay with in London, to get away from their nagging mams.

But running away from his problems at home, Jamie may actually run towards something much worse.


Praise for Chris
'Charlie Brooker on Buckfast' Martin Compston, Line of Duty
'[McQueer's] talent zings off the page' Guardian
'Impressive' Eric Idle, Monty Python]]> 334 Chris McQueer 1035409828 Blair 4 4.24 2025
author: Chris McQueer
name: Blair
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/26
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, the-internet, first-novels
review:
A reclusive, depressed young man gets pulled into incel stuff by an online friend. Meanwhile, his anxious mother tries to deal with her own problems and feels like she’s a failure as a parent. This is a good balance of realism and a relatively gentle, funny plot; as much as disturbing things do indeed happen, I actually found it to be a pretty light exploration of the themes. Jamie is a useful avatar through which to explore them: while his personal hygiene may be terrible, he’s a sweet boy at heart, and borders on asexual (his sexuality is an underexplored aspect of the story). None of this is a criticism �� the light-touch approach is the whole reason it all works. But I'm surprised I’ve seen reviews describing it as a harrowing and shocking book. There were plenty of laugh-out-loud moments for me, especially Jamie’s reaction when he first sees Seb’s flat (‘if they’re sharing a room like that, how do they manage to have a wank? This looks horrific��), and his gran’s when the police conduct a cursory search for Jamie in the garden of Fiona’s small council house (‘did ye no find him oot there then, naw?��)
]]> 879617 208 J.G. Ballard 0099334712 Blair 4
Together, ‘Myths of the Near Future�� and ‘News from the Sun�� clearly form the centrepiece of the book. They’re the most substantial and also, I discovered, the only two stories original to this collection; the others were all first published in magazines. The echoes between them reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Ice and some of her other novels, the way her arrangement of three character archetypes recurs across different novels in different guises. Here Ballard’s central group is of a similar makeup but slightly refracted, there’s the doubling of obsessions with voyeurism, sickness, abandoned Americana �� plus the idea of space travel as an aberration that’s thrown humanity so out of joint it's resulted in mass infirmity and madness.

Ballard is a writer I always think I’ve read more than I actually have, and apart from anything else, this was incredibly useful as a snapshot of his short fiction. I can now see connections with both Ballard's peers and contemporaries, and writers I love who were clearly inspired by him (Nina Allan and Joel Lane, to name a couple). ‘The Smile�� would make a great pairing with Daphne du Maurier’s similarly macabre ‘The Doll��, and ‘The Intensive Care Unit�� reminded me so much of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom�� (has anyone done an anthology of 20th-century stories that predicted a video-centric society? If not, they should).]]> 3.89 1982
author: J.G. Ballard
name: Blair
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: 1980s-release, short-stories, sff
review:
Sometimes brilliant, sometimes maddening, always fascinating. Unusually, the best stories are grouped together towards the end. Apart from the delightful ‘Having a Wonderful Time��, the first two-thirds are a mixture of weaker pieces (‘Zodiac 2000��) and acquired taste (the two longest stories; see below). I wasn’t sold on the book until I hit ‘The Dead Time��, after which every story �� ‘The Smile��, ‘Motel Architecture��, ‘The Intensive Care Unit�� �� was a hit.

Together, ‘Myths of the Near Future�� and ‘News from the Sun�� clearly form the centrepiece of the book. They’re the most substantial and also, I discovered, the only two stories original to this collection; the others were all first published in magazines. The echoes between them reminded me of Anna Kavan’s Ice and some of her other novels, the way her arrangement of three character archetypes recurs across different novels in different guises. Here Ballard’s central group is of a similar makeup but slightly refracted, there’s the doubling of obsessions with voyeurism, sickness, abandoned Americana �� plus the idea of space travel as an aberration that’s thrown humanity so out of joint it's resulted in mass infirmity and madness.

Ballard is a writer I always think I’ve read more than I actually have, and apart from anything else, this was incredibly useful as a snapshot of his short fiction. I can now see connections with both Ballard's peers and contemporaries, and writers I love who were clearly inspired by him (Nina Allan and Joel Lane, to name a couple). ‘The Smile�� would make a great pairing with Daphne du Maurier’s similarly macabre ‘The Doll��, and ‘The Intensive Care Unit�� reminded me so much of Izumi Suzuki’s ‘Terminal Boredom�� (has anyone done an anthology of 20th-century stories that predicted a video-centric society? If not, they should).
]]> 213942715 Subversive and unexpectedly heartwarming, Sky Daddy hijacks the classic love story, exploring desire, fate, and the longing to be accepted for who we truly are.

Linda is doing her best to lead a life that would appear normal to the casual observer. Weekdays, she earns $20 an hour moderating comments for a video-sharing platform, then rides the bus home to the windowless garage she rents on the outskirts of San Francisco. But on the last Friday of each month, she indulges in her true passion: taking BART to SFO for a round-trip flight to a regional hub. The destination is irrelevant because each trip means a new date with a handsome stranger—a stranger whose intelligent windscreens, sleek fuselages, and powerful engines make Linda feel a way that no human ever could.

Linda knows that she can’t tell anyone she’s sexually obsessed with planes—nor can she reveal her belief her destiny is to “marry�� one of her suitors by dying in a plane crash, thereby uniting her with her soulmate plane for eternity. But when an opportunity arises to hasten her dream of eternal partnership, and the carefully balanced elements of her life begin to spin out of control, she must choose between maintaining the trappings of normalcy and launching herself headlong toward the love she’s always dreamed of.]]> 368 Kate Folk 1529372682 Blair 4 Out There, which I liked a lot less than many of you, feeling it very much conformed to the currently fashionable template for a debut short story collection: modern disenchantment combined with speculative elements and/or light body horror, listless narration and stuff about dating/sex. I've read loads of these books (and probably abandoned even more), and Folk’s didn’t stand out from the crowd. Approaching Sky Daddy, I thought: this has a hell of a hook, but it too seems like typical short-story material, far too gimmicky to build an entire novel around. I’m happy to say I was very wrong about this.

Sky Daddy’s narrator, Linda, has much in common with the protagonists of countless 21st-century urban-ennui novels. She lives in undesirable conditions (an illegal windowless bedsit housed in a family’s garage) in a prosperous city (San Francisco) and has a depressing, low-paid job (moderating offensive comments posted online). But it doesn’t take long for her particular quirk (kink?) to become apparent. Linda is attracted to aeroplanes �� not just aesthetically, but sexually �� and more than that, she is convinced she will one day marry her ‘soulmate plane�� by... dying in a plane crash. When she discovers her colleague Karina is part of a group who make vision boards to ‘manifest�� the things they want out of life, she sees an opportunity to make her dream a reality.

Like I said, I initially feared the plane-sexuality of it all would overwhelm anything else the book had going for it. In fact, Linda’s obsession �� how it infuses her whole personality and being �� is exactly what makes it so strong. Her voice is flawlessly honed (I’d love to know how many times this was redrafted; it is unusually smooth and consistent). Folk perfectly marries the story’s innate deranged irreverence with just the right number of heartfelt moments. Also so zippy it’s difficult to believe this thing is 370 pages in print.

Even though the plot hits all its marks �� a trigger, a sort of quest, at least some character development for Linda, a couple of heartfelt moments and a really well-crafted ending �� it’s still difficult to find anything to compare Sky Daddy to. I mean, can you imagine a combination of Convenience Store Woman and The Necrophiliac? (Probably not.) Linda’s delusion and obsessiveness also reminded me of The Paper Wasp and A Touch of Jen.

I received an advance review copy of Sky Daddy from the publisher through .]]> 4.08 2025
author: Kate Folk
name: Blair
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/04/08
shelves: 2025-release, edelweiss, contemporary, first-novels
review:
I know of Kate Folk’s writing from Out There, which I liked a lot less than many of you, feeling it very much conformed to the currently fashionable template for a debut short story collection: modern disenchantment combined with speculative elements and/or light body horror, listless narration and stuff about dating/sex. I've read loads of these books (and probably abandoned even more), and Folk’s didn’t stand out from the crowd. Approaching Sky Daddy, I thought: this has a hell of a hook, but it too seems like typical short-story material, far too gimmicky to build an entire novel around. I’m happy to say I was very wrong about this.

Sky Daddy’s narrator, Linda, has much in common with the protagonists of countless 21st-century urban-ennui novels. She lives in undesirable conditions (an illegal windowless bedsit housed in a family’s garage) in a prosperous city (San Francisco) and has a depressing, low-paid job (moderating offensive comments posted online). But it doesn’t take long for her particular quirk (kink?) to become apparent. Linda is attracted to aeroplanes �� not just aesthetically, but sexually �� and more than that, she is convinced she will one day marry her ‘soulmate plane�� by... dying in a plane crash. When she discovers her colleague Karina is part of a group who make vision boards to ‘manifest�� the things they want out of life, she sees an opportunity to make her dream a reality.

Like I said, I initially feared the plane-sexuality of it all would overwhelm anything else the book had going for it. In fact, Linda’s obsession �� how it infuses her whole personality and being �� is exactly what makes it so strong. Her voice is flawlessly honed (I’d love to know how many times this was redrafted; it is unusually smooth and consistent). Folk perfectly marries the story’s innate deranged irreverence with just the right number of heartfelt moments. Also so zippy it’s difficult to believe this thing is 370 pages in print.

Even though the plot hits all its marks �� a trigger, a sort of quest, at least some character development for Linda, a couple of heartfelt moments and a really well-crafted ending �� it’s still difficult to find anything to compare Sky Daddy to. I mean, can you imagine a combination of Convenience Store Woman and The Necrophiliac? (Probably not.) Linda’s delusion and obsessiveness also reminded me of The Paper Wasp and A Touch of Jen.

I received an advance review copy of Sky Daddy from the publisher through .
]]> 219383745 How We Know Our Time Travelers: Stories is a dark, intellectual, and surreal collection inspired by the uncertainty of time that explores themes of technology, climate change, reality, love and loss. Atmospheric, speculative stories examine our post-pandemic reality and future. Anita Felicelli introduces readers to a bickering couple who use an app to track their fights in “Keeping Score,�� a woman who learns that an unseen lodger is in her home in “A Minor Disturbance,�� a group of creepy friends who sell jars of fog in “The Fog Catchers,�� and a woman who encounters a younger version of her own husband at her art exhibition in the title story. Time travel, as the book envisions it, happens all the time, if not in the way we're used to considering it. Unsettling, uncanny, cerebral and genre-bending, the book reminds us of the fragility and unreliability of memory, and its invisible impact on the larger moments of our lives.]]> 209 Anita Felicelli Blair 3
Overall the book is intriguing and definitely cohesive, with a sense of all the stories taking place in the same universe, both because specific details recur, and because the themes are consistent: time travel, climate change, how relationships are impacted by technology. However there’s a repeating problem of inconclusive endings, and so many stories feel like they could have been tighter and more focused �� actually, it almost feels like they haven’t been critiqued at all. ‘The Encroachment of Waking Life�� has a promising setup, but as soon as you ask a few questions about the premise it falls apart. ‘A Minor Disturbance�� builds tension without payoff. Another story is a retelling of a classic fairytale that telegraphs its whole deal within the first few sentences; why make it so obvious what’s going on?

Felicelli obviously has talent, but I just don’t think these stories have been through the sort of editing process that would help them reach their full potential. Too many weak endings here, too many similar protagonists.]]> 4.00 2024
author: Anita Felicelli
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves: 2024-release, short-stories, near-future-soft-sf, read-on-kindle
review:
A so-so short story collection that drew me in by putting its best foot first. ‘Until the Seas Rise��, which sees a thwarted crush play out against the backdrop of a tsunami warning, took me straight into the world of the book. It’s a vivid, tangible story with instantly real characters. Unfortunately, there’s only one other in the book that comes anywhere close to this standard. Coincidentally, or maybe not, it’s one that expands on a detail from ‘Until the Seas Rise��: the presence of ‘fog catchers��, who quite literally trap fog in jars. In ‘The Fog Catchers��, a paranoid conwoman hooks up with a guy she meets at a hotel, only to attract exactly the type of attention she’s trying to avoid. Lots of interesting ideas and details.

Overall the book is intriguing and definitely cohesive, with a sense of all the stories taking place in the same universe, both because specific details recur, and because the themes are consistent: time travel, climate change, how relationships are impacted by technology. However there’s a repeating problem of inconclusive endings, and so many stories feel like they could have been tighter and more focused �� actually, it almost feels like they haven’t been critiqued at all. ‘The Encroachment of Waking Life�� has a promising setup, but as soon as you ask a few questions about the premise it falls apart. ‘A Minor Disturbance�� builds tension without payoff. Another story is a retelling of a classic fairytale that telegraphs its whole deal within the first few sentences; why make it so obvious what’s going on?

Felicelli obviously has talent, but I just don’t think these stories have been through the sort of editing process that would help them reach their full potential. Too many weak endings here, too many similar protagonists.
]]> 228136704
A cursed NHS file brings doom to whoever handles it. A memory-foam mattress breaks down the walls of sleep. A marketing executive for a property developer turns to the occult. And horror seeps from the most unexpected eBay purchases, boxes of holiday photographs, and the hidden corners of the smart TV menu.

While mostly modern in setting, this is a collection steeped in the tradition of the weird tale and the ghost story, and includes homages to the greats of the previous a doomed Edwardian antiquarian is drawn into a murderous plot involving a Roman mosaic, and river boatmen uncover eldritch terror in a deserted mining town.

You'll never look at some things the same way again.]]> 159 Will Wiles 1784633291 Blair 4
And then we hit the real highlights. ‘T�������������� is nothing short of stunning, a perfectly constructed historical horror story that’s as elegant as it is inevitable. An academic, an earl’s collection of artefacts, and a creeping realisation that those tiny, seemingly innocent mosaic tiles are arranging themselves into a pattern no-one should ever see. ‘A Private Square of Sky�� is a superb slow burn in which the protagonist’s visit to a Barcelona apartment complex becomes an architectural fever dream. Then there’s ‘D�������, the funniest and most caustic story here, in which an author is roped into writing for a property developer’s vacuous arts initiative (you get the sense Wiles is having a lot of fun with this one).

Other stories range from clever and fun (‘Notes on London’s Housing Crisis��, a biting little dystopian satire) to ‘great concept but slightly wobbly landing�� (I adored the characterisation and detail in ‘M�dzٳ����, but felt it ended too soon; ‘The Meat Stream��, which wouldn’t be out of place in a collection like Eliza Clark’s She’s Always Hungry, is fun but possibly the most conventional piece here). But even the less spectacular entries still bring something interesting to the table.

I feel like I talk too much about urban horror, and to be fair, The Anechoic Chamber isn’t solely that; it’s not purely London- or city-focused but flexible, ranging from the folkloric to the futuristic, always with Wiles�� sharp eye for unsettling detail. But I do think if you enjoyed Ray Newman’s Municipal Gothic, Gary Budden’s London Incognita, Daniel Carpenter’s Hunting by the River or Nicholas Royle’s London Gothic, you’d get a lot out of this. Highly recommended.]]> 4.00
author: Will Wiles
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/18
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: 2025-release, ghosts-and-horror, read-on-kindle, short-stories
review:
Unsettling domestic spaces, the absurdity of modern life, isolation and disconnection... these are some of the themes running through Will Wiles�� excellent collection. The title story kicks things off with a clean, controlled unease. A man renting an anechoic chamber (a virtually soundless room) for a work test finds himself drawn into its silence, convinced there’s something �� or someone �� whispering in the void. It’s a solid piece that establishes the mood: introspective, subtly eerie, with a touch of psychological dissonance.

And then we hit the real highlights. ‘T�������������� is nothing short of stunning, a perfectly constructed historical horror story that’s as elegant as it is inevitable. An academic, an earl’s collection of artefacts, and a creeping realisation that those tiny, seemingly innocent mosaic tiles are arranging themselves into a pattern no-one should ever see. ‘A Private Square of Sky�� is a superb slow burn in which the protagonist’s visit to a Barcelona apartment complex becomes an architectural fever dream. Then there’s ‘D�������, the funniest and most caustic story here, in which an author is roped into writing for a property developer’s vacuous arts initiative (you get the sense Wiles is having a lot of fun with this one).

Other stories range from clever and fun (‘Notes on London’s Housing Crisis��, a biting little dystopian satire) to ‘great concept but slightly wobbly landing�� (I adored the characterisation and detail in ‘M�dzٳ����, but felt it ended too soon; ‘The Meat Stream��, which wouldn’t be out of place in a collection like Eliza Clark’s She’s Always Hungry, is fun but possibly the most conventional piece here). But even the less spectacular entries still bring something interesting to the table.

I feel like I talk too much about urban horror, and to be fair, The Anechoic Chamber isn’t solely that; it’s not purely London- or city-focused but flexible, ranging from the folkloric to the futuristic, always with Wiles�� sharp eye for unsettling detail. But I do think if you enjoyed Ray Newman’s Municipal Gothic, Gary Budden’s London Incognita, Daniel Carpenter’s Hunting by the River or Nicholas Royle’s London Gothic, you’d get a lot out of this. Highly recommended.
]]> 208503453 Did Vivienne Volker Kill Wilma Lang?

This question has dogged Vivienne ever since Wilma jumped from a window to her death shortly��after Volker stole her lover, the visionary artist Hans Bellmer, in the 1970s. Once a famous artist and fashion icon, Volker is now in her eighties and spends her days in religious contemplation in rural Pennsylvania alongside her daughter Velour Bellmer, her granddaughter Vesta Furio, her much younger boyfriend—a garbageman named Lou—and Franz, the family dog. Their quiet lives are disrupted when Vivienne’s work is selected for inclusion in a high-profile retrospective called "Forgotten Women Surrealists" at the prestigious NAT Museum. However, when rumors of her past misdeeds begin to circulate and she is dropped from the show, a gallery curator enters the picture hoping to capitalize on the buzz generated by the controversy, sending the family's tensions, hopes, and dreams to a dizzying��peak.

Set over the course of a fateful week, Vivienne��deftly weaves surreal prose with a Greek chorus of internet comments and text messages, to ask the what is the cost of vision, what is the price of art? What connects creation and procreation, a life and an afterlife?
���ձ�> 247 Emmalea Russo 1648210651 Blair 0 may-read 3.27 2024
author: Emmalea Russo
name: Blair
average rating: 3.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 59478158 An aging white male college professor develops a dangerous obsession with his new Pakistani colleague in this modern, iconoclastic novel that is as powerful, riveting, and disturbing as Lolita, Disgrace, and A Little Life.

Dr. Oliver Harding, a tenured professor of English, is long settled into the routines of a divorced, aging academic. But his quiet, staid life is upended by his new colleague, Ruhaba Khan, a dynamic Pakistani Muslim law professor.

Ruhaba unexpectedly ignites Oliver's long-dormant passions, a secret desire that quickly tips towards obsession after her teenaged nephew, Adil Alam, arrives from France to stay with her. Oliver becomes a mentor to Adil, using his friendship with the boy to draw closer to his aunt. Getting to know them, Oliver tries to reconcile his discomfort with the worlds from which they come, and to quiet his sense of dismay at the encroaching change they represent--both in background and in Ruhaba's spirited engagement with the student movements on campus.

After protests break out on campus demanding diversity across the university, Harding finds himself and his beliefs under fire, even as his past reveals a picture more complicated than it seems. As Ruhaba seems attainable yet not, and as the women of his past taunt his memory, Harding reacts in ways shocking and devastating.

Sonora Jha has created a complex character both in tune and out of step with our time, an erudite man who inspires and challenges our sympathies. As the novel reaches its astonishing conclusion, Jha compels us to reexamine scenes in a new light, revealing a depth of loneliness in unlikely places, the subjectivity of innocence, and the looming peril of white rage in America.

An explosive, tense, and illuminating work of fiction, The Laughter is a fascinating portrait of privilege, radicalization, class, and modern academia that forces us to confront the assumptions we make, as both readers and as citizens.]]> 320 Sonora Jha 0063240289 Blair 0 may-read 4.06 2023
author: Sonora Jha
name: Blair
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 227900994 498 Jeanne Thornton 1915368782 Blair 0 may-read 4.00 2025
author: Jeanne Thornton
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 228892568 WHAT IF YOU COULD REMEMBER EVERYTHING, EXCEPT THE DAY YOU DISAPPEARED?

A young woman, Jane O., arrives in a psychiatrist's office. She's been suffering a series of worrying episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations and an inexplicable sense of dread. But as the psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening in Jane's mind, she suddenly goes missing. When she is found a day later, unconscious in a park, she has no memory of what has happened to her.

Are Jane's strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of disaster ahead? Jane's symptoms will lead her psychiatrist to question everything he once thought he knew...

Profound and beautifully written, THE STRANGE CASE OF JANE O. is a speculative mystery about memory, identity and fate, a mesmerising story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and the haunting, unexplained mysteries of the human mind.]]> 278 Karen Thompson Walker Blair 0 may-read 4.11 2025
author: Karen Thompson Walker
name: Blair
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 103893020 Get one �� or get left behind.

Val and Julie just want what's best for their kids, David and Sophie. So when David comes home from school begging for a new brain implant to help with his studies, they're torn. Julie grew up poor and knows what it's like to be the only kid in school without the new technology, but Val is terrified by the risks and the implications.

Soon, everyone at Julie's work has the implant and she's struggling to keep pace. It's clear that she'll have to get one too if she's not to be left behind.

Before long, Val and Sophie are the only two in the family without the device, and part of an ever-shrinking minority in their town. With government subsidies and no apparent downside, why would anyone refuse?

But Sophie can't shake the feeling that something sinister is going on behind the scenes and she's going to do whatever it takes to find out �� even if it pits her against a powerful tech company and the people she loves most.]]> 402 Sarah Pinsker 180024391X Blair 0 may-read 3.67 2021
author: Sarah Pinsker
name: Blair
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 199465423 Deeply uncanny and hauntingly relatable �� strange stories about modern America, for fans of George Saunders, Mariana Enriquez and Paul Beatty

A young family is trapped in a time loop in an idyllic holiday cabin. A middle-aged man becomes convinced that his disappointing son is an impostor. Two brothers take a midnight ride in a golf cart and run into trouble. The elderly tour guide at an alien contact site loses control of his guests. Meanwhile, all around them, America is dissolving, fragmenting, distorting beyond recognition.

The antiheroes of Beautiful Days are chronic underachievers: men lost in their own lives and plagued by loneliness, self-doubt, suppressed rage. When the worst happens, they take to the road �� crossing the wilderness in stolen cars, riding trains to the end of the line, or cruising along ruined monorails as the skyline burns.

Zach Williams' stories are haunted by the ghosts of America �� its lost illusions, its dark aspirations, its boundless, disquieting potential. They leak through the fabric of reality and out into the void beyond. And they reach, ever-hopeful, toward a moment of connection that might pull a body back from the brink.]]> 240 Zach Williams 0241999472 Blair 0 may-read 3.82 2024
author: Zach Williams
name: Blair
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 216970593 A taut and lyrical coming-of-age debut about a young American woman navigating class, lies, and love amid London’s jet-set elite.

I would arrive, blank like a sheet of notebook paper, and write myself new.

Anna first fell in love with London at her hometown library—its Jane Austen balls a far cry from her life of food stamps and hand-me-downs. But when she finally arrives after college, the real London is a moldy flat and the same paycheck-to-paycheck grind—that fairy-tale life still out of reach.

Then Anna meets the Wilders, who fly her to Saint-Tropez to tutor their teenage daughter. Swept up by the sphinxlike elder sister, Anna soon finds herself plunged into a heady whirlpool of parties and excess, a place where confidence is a birthright. There she meets two handsome young men—one who wants to whisk her into his world in a chauffeured car, the other who sees through Anna’s struggle to outrun her past. It’s like she’s stepped into the pages of a glittering new novel, but what will it cost her to play the part?

Sparkling with intelligence and insight, All That Life Can Afford peels back the glossy layers of class and privilege, exploring what it means to create a new life for yourself that still honors the one you’ve left behind.]]> 376 Emily Everett 0593545168 Blair 0 may-read 4.04 2025
author: Emily Everett
name: Blair
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 206665425 Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and trays of congealing food carried up to her with little regularity. Marguerite has been confined by her mother, Cécile, who is concerned about her engagement to an older, near-penniless solicitor, Mr Lewis, and wishes to educate her daughter on ‘proper�� married conduct �� lest she drag the family’s good name into disrepute. But why is Marguerite pursuing the aged Mr Lewis in the first place? Why are her mother’s visits seemingly becoming less frequent? And just how much time has passed since the lock closed on the attic’s hatch?

Carrion Crow is a transportive and gloriously gothic commentary on the constraints of polite society �� and the even greater danger of conformity �� that unfurls one family’s festering secrets.]]> 249 Heather Parry 1529938708 Blair 0 may-read 3.91
author: Heather Parry
name: Blair
average rating: 3.91
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 133204282 THREE WOMEN. ONE BUILDING. 111 YEARS...

East London, 1909. When her family fall on hard times, Ellen finds work in a box factory and is drawn into a tight-knit circle of friendship, one that will transform her life and test her in unexpected ways.

In 1984, the factory is now derelict. Eighteen-year- old Frances moves in with a group of squatters and activists who have taken over the abandoned building. As she tries to build a new life, an unsettling relationship develops, forcing her to question who she is and where her loyalties lie.

In 2020, the squat is now a gentrified conversion in a fashionable corner of the city. Amanda feels trapped in her tiny flat, overwhelmed by the demands of new motherhood and unsure of what the future holds - until the possibility of an alternative life presents itself...

From acclaimed author Kate Murray-Browne, One Girl Began is a vibrant, enthralling and moving novel about three women across three very different moments in time, connected by the same building and the forces that shape our lives.]]> 449 Kate Murray-Browne 1399613685 Blair 0 may-read 3.74
author: Kate Murray-Browne
name: Blair
average rating: 3.74
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 218462356 From the bestselling author of The Cloisters comes this electrifying thriller about an affluent family whose annual retreat to Italy is shattered when a decades-old murder resurfaces . . . think The Talented Mr Ripley meets Succession meets The White Lotus . . .

[Published in the US as Saltwater]

On the glittering island of Capri, anything can be a mirage. But one thing is there's nothing deadlier than a family with everything to lose . . .

The world was shocked by playwright Sarah Lingate’s death thirty years ago at an opulent,
white-washed villa on the island of Capri. Absolved of the crime, the Lingate family maintains that what happened that night was a tragic accident. And every July they return to Capri to prove it’s true.

This time, Helen Lingate - sole heir to the family fortune - has a plan. Tightly controlled by her father, she enlists the help of the family assistant, Lorna Silva, to free herself from her family’s stranglehold on her life. And yet, behind closed doors, the legendary Lingate family unity is at breaking point. Upon arrival at the villa in Capri, a anonymous gift awaits the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.

In the aftermath, the paranoid, insular Lingates begin to unravel. As the investigation into her mother’s death is reopened, Helen begins to lose trust in everyone around her controlling father Richard, drug-addled aunt Naomi, aloof uncle Marcus, and even Lorna, whose past she realizes is frustratingly opaque. And as the family fractures, the long-hidden truth about that night and the secrets they’ve kept from one another boil to the surface - and they might not leave the island alive.]]> 320 Katy Hays 1529928524 Blair 0 may-read 3.73 2025
author: Katy Hays
name: Blair
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 210171428 200 Udith Dematagoda 1916376711 Blair 0 4.33
author: Udith Dematagoda
name: Blair
average rating: 4.33
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/04
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2024-release, contemporary, the-internet
review:

]]> 213789693 THEN

Alone in New Orleans, Selina is struggling to fit in until a charismatic stranger invites her for a drink. It feels like fate, but who is Daniel, and what does he want from her? Just as the humidity and the hangovers start to take their toll, Daniel vanishes

NOW

Daniel is missing. No one has seen or heard from him in weeks. Beside herself with worry, his sister Caroline hosts an intimate gathering in her London home so those closest to Daniel can come together and compare notes. But what should have been five courses of a Cajun-style feast has now become an interrogation. Those left behind must piece together their shared understanding of the man they thought they knew.

And all isn't quite as it seems: Caroline has invited a stranger to the table, an accomplished psychic who claims to have met Daniel four thousand miles away in New Orleans. As evening turns to night, the dark truth of what really happened begins to emerge...]]> 336 Alice Slater 1529385393 Blair 5 4.35
author: Alice Slater
name: Blair
average rating: 4.35
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves: 2025-release, mystery-thriller-etc, contemporary, read-on-kindle, netgalley
review:

]]> 220605957
When a striking visitor turns up, an American who oozes glamour, Tom thinks it’s a good deal �� show him around the misty coast in exchange for enough money to raise an eyebrow at the bank, maybe enough to broaden the narrow horizons he’s begun to strain against. Mr Acheson says he’s in the movie business, but how much of what he says is Hollywood magic?

SEASCRAPER is a mesmerising portrait of a young man confined in by his class and the ghosts of his family's past, dreaming of artistic fulfilment. It confirms Benjamin Wood as an exceptional talent in British literature.]]> 176 Benjamin Wood 1405975083 Blair 0 may-read 4.30
author: Benjamin Wood
name: Blair
average rating: 4.30
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 28932162 An Unreliable Guide to London brings together 26 stories about the lesser known parts of a world renowned city. Stories that stretch the reader's definition of the truth, questioning reality and fiction simultaneously. Stories of wind nymphs in North Clapham tube station, the horse sized swan at Brentford Ait, Sleeping Clinics in NW3 and the celebrations for St Margaret's Day of the Dead.

Taking its cue from travel guides, London histories and books like Tired of London, Tired of Life, An Unreliable Guide to London shakes up the canon of London writing with a tongue firmly rooted in its cheek.

An Unreliable Guide to London is the perfect summer read for city dwellers up and down the country. With a list of contributors reflecting the multi-layered, complex social structures of the city, it is the essential guide to London, showing you everything you never knew existed.]]> 288 Kit Caless 1910312223 Blair 0 may-read 3.78 2016
author: Kit Caless
name: Blair
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 214405102 If their new new home doesn't break them, their secrets will...

When Emily wakes from a coma following an accident that nearly kills her, she finds herself agreeing to move from London to the wild moors of Devon with her husband Freddie. A fresh start is exactly what their marriage needs.

As their car pulls up to Larkin Lodge, their dream country home, Emily's heart sinks. Outside, everything is covered in an icy grey mist. Inside, the air is filled with dust and abandonment.

And then she finds the empty suite on the second floor. A room so bleak, so cold, so void of anything good. Something bad happened in here. Someone dies in here. Why can't Freddie feel the darkness that stirs within its walls?

There's something wrong with the house, this strange house, where the floorboards creak at night, the doors rattle, the windows slam shut, the taps turn on and off - and on and off.

But if the house is hiding something, so are Emily and Freddie...]]> 336 Sarah Pinborough 1398722634 Blair 4 We Live Here Now gave me exactly what I wanted from it: a couple with secrets, a spooky house on the foggy moors, and some suspiciously friendly villagers. Not forgetting a bit of the ‘is any of this really happening�� mindfuckery that Pinborough does so well.

A freak accident leaves Emily in a coma, and when she finally recovers, she finds her husband Freddie has sold their house in London and bought Larkin Lodge, a country home in Devon. After a few strange incidents, Emily becomes convinced the house is haunted and obsessed with finding out what happened to its previous residents. Meanwhile, both halves of the couple are keeping things from each other (and they’re not the only ones).

Pinborough drip-feeds information in just the right way: the reader is always a few steps ahead of the characters, but it’s still difficult to guess how it’s all going to end. We Live Here Now doesn’t break the mould, but if you’re looking for a gripping read it definitely fits the bill. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I received an advance review copy of We Live Here Now from the publisher through . ]]> 4.17 2025
author: Sarah Pinborough
name: Blair
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/24
date added: 2025/03/31
shelves: 2025-release, read-on-kindle, edelweiss, contemporary, mystery-thriller-etc, ghosts-and-horror
review:
A thriller with a generous helping of the gothic, We Live Here Now gave me exactly what I wanted from it: a couple with secrets, a spooky house on the foggy moors, and some suspiciously friendly villagers. Not forgetting a bit of the ‘is any of this really happening�� mindfuckery that Pinborough does so well.

A freak accident leaves Emily in a coma, and when she finally recovers, she finds her husband Freddie has sold their house in London and bought Larkin Lodge, a country home in Devon. After a few strange incidents, Emily becomes convinced the house is haunted and obsessed with finding out what happened to its previous residents. Meanwhile, both halves of the couple are keeping things from each other (and they’re not the only ones).

Pinborough drip-feeds information in just the right way: the reader is always a few steps ahead of the characters, but it’s still difficult to guess how it’s all going to end. We Live Here Now doesn’t break the mould, but if you’re looking for a gripping read it definitely fits the bill. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I received an advance review copy of We Live Here Now from the publisher through .
]]> 218194313 In this staggeringly mind-bending speculative thriller for fans of Blake Crouch and Ted Chiang, a woman dives into her husband’s memories to uncover a decades-old threat to reality itself��

Maggie Webb has lived the last decade caring for her elderly husband, Stanley, as memory loss gradually erases all the beautiful moments they created together. It’s the loneliest she’s ever felt in her life.

When a mysterious stranger named Hassan appears at her door, he reveals a shocking truth: Stanley isn’t losing his memories. Someone is actively removing them to hide a long-buried secret from coming to light. If Maggie does what she’s told, she can reverse it. She can get her husband back.

Led by Hassan and his technological marvels, Maggie breaks into her husband’s mind, probing the depths of his memories in an effort to save him. The deeper she dives, the more she unravels a mystery spanning continents and centuries, each layer more complex than the last.

But Hassan cannot be trusted. Not just memories are disappearing, but pieces of reality itself. If Maggie cannot find out what Stanley did all those years ago, and what Hassan is after, she risks far more than her husband’s life. The very course of human history hangs in the balance.]]> 384 Nicholas Binge 0008668841 Blair 4
The best parts, by far, are the chapters that explore Stanley’s perspective �� his miserable childhood, his strained friendships, his introduction to the theory and science of memory via an eccentric mentor. Margaret’s sections, though? Trickier. The whole thing is framed as a transcript of everything she tells Hassan, and it takes intense suspension of disbelief to buy into that. There are some MacGuffins to explain Margaret’s improbably perfect and novelistic recall: Hassan gives her a memory-enhancing drug that supposedly ‘encourages verbalisation of your inner monologue��. But, needless to say, one’s inner monologue doesn’t generally involve describing dialogue the same way it’s written in a book.

I kept bouncing between ‘this is way too polished�� and ‘ooh, that was actually a really good twist��. Dissolution is one of the most obvious examples I’ve read recently of something that feels like it’s written with the express aim of being adapted into a film or TV series. Whether or not that’s an issue is a matter of taste. I think it’s fair to say that although I enjoyed the book �� because it’s slick and compelling and all those things you’d expect from a story like this �� I wished the style had been pared back a bit. I wanted more ambiguity, more restraint, something with a little less of a relentless drive towards the next big action sequence.

This is Binge’s third novel; I’ve read them all, liking each a little less than its predecessor. I think this is because his writing is moving in a more commercial direction, which, fair enough, good for him, that’s its own kind of skill; it’s just not for me. Dissolution might appeal to those who have enjoyed books by the likes of Blake Crouch, Claire North and Stuart Turton. Personally, this action-packed, kinetic style just doesn’t represent what I want to get out of, or find most rewarding about, speculative fiction in general. Nevertheless, it’s undeniably gripping and fun �� and look, if that big-budget adaptation does happen, I’ll definitely be watching.

I received an advance review copy of Dissolution from the publisher through .]]> 4.35 2025
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Blair
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/03/27
shelves: 2025-release, sff, read-on-kindle, netgalley
review:
(3.5) An elderly woman, Margaret, wakes up in a bizarre situation. She’s in an abandoned swimming pool, getting interrogated by a menacing yet oddly charismatic guy, Hassan, who’s desperate for her to recount the events of the last few days in perfect detail. Why? Because her husband, Stanley, apparently discovered something that could change the course of human history. And since Stanley now has Alzheimer’s, Hassan needs Margaret to literally enter his memories and retrieve whatever it was. Quickly, too �� powerful people are willing to kill for this secret (they might even have engineered Stanley’s memory loss in the first place). If this all sounds overly convoluted on paper, Binge makes it pleasingly easy to fall into.

The best parts, by far, are the chapters that explore Stanley’s perspective �� his miserable childhood, his strained friendships, his introduction to the theory and science of memory via an eccentric mentor. Margaret’s sections, though? Trickier. The whole thing is framed as a transcript of everything she tells Hassan, and it takes intense suspension of disbelief to buy into that. There are some MacGuffins to explain Margaret’s improbably perfect and novelistic recall: Hassan gives her a memory-enhancing drug that supposedly ‘encourages verbalisation of your inner monologue��. But, needless to say, one’s inner monologue doesn’t generally involve describing dialogue the same way it’s written in a book.

I kept bouncing between ‘this is way too polished�� and ‘ooh, that was actually a really good twist��. Dissolution is one of the most obvious examples I’ve read recently of something that feels like it’s written with the express aim of being adapted into a film or TV series. Whether or not that’s an issue is a matter of taste. I think it’s fair to say that although I enjoyed the book �� because it’s slick and compelling and all those things you’d expect from a story like this �� I wished the style had been pared back a bit. I wanted more ambiguity, more restraint, something with a little less of a relentless drive towards the next big action sequence.

This is Binge’s third novel; I’ve read them all, liking each a little less than its predecessor. I think this is because his writing is moving in a more commercial direction, which, fair enough, good for him, that’s its own kind of skill; it’s just not for me. Dissolution might appeal to those who have enjoyed books by the likes of Blake Crouch, Claire North and Stuart Turton. Personally, this action-packed, kinetic style just doesn’t represent what I want to get out of, or find most rewarding about, speculative fiction in general. Nevertheless, it’s undeniably gripping and fun �� and look, if that big-budget adaptation does happen, I’ll definitely be watching.

I received an advance review copy of Dissolution from the publisher through .
]]> 45691810
Through many layers, including letters, a ‘zine made by a teenage horror film fan, and a memoir written by Mori’s college roommate and muse, film historian and debut novelist Brian Hauser delves deep into Tina Mori’s life and legacy, exploring the strange depths and fathomless shadows situated between truth, fiction, fantasy, and the uncanny.]]> 258 Brian Hauser 1939905494 Blair 4 Final Grrl, a feminist horror zine penned by missing teenager Billie Jacobs shortly before her disappearance; and then, finally, the meat of the book: ‘Memento Mori�� itself, a biography of the mysterious (and also missing) auteur Tina Mori, written by her friend and collaborator C.C. Waite. It’s a great setup and these are fantastic ingredients for lost-media horror.

Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows is, it turns out, heavily �� and I do mean heavily �� indebted to Robert W. Chambers�� The King in Yellow, which is referenced frequently. I’ve never finished The King in Yellow �� from what I can remember, I think my problem with it was simply that the tiny glimpses we get of the play are so much more interesting than anything else. Funnily enough, this book has the opposite problem. I was deeply unconvinced by the idea that Tina’s work would become legendary. Tina and C.C. are not in themselves interesting, and most of the descriptions of Tina’s films make them sound like exactly the sort of stuff any first-year student might come up with. (Maybe this, the focus on pretentious students, is also a King in Yellow reference, albeit referencing the part nobody likes.)

I kept reading for the cursed-film stuff plus some sense of how these characters�� fates might tie up with that of the missing girl. I found the book slower going than expected, although when the weird scenes do come, they are well executed. There are some truly creepy sequences with serious atmosphere, but I would have liked more Billie (her voice in the zine is great, really convincing), more of a mixed-media approach, something to break up the faux-biography. Those deeply into The King in Yellow and its lore will no doubt appreciate this the most.]]> 4.33 2019
author: Brian Hauser
name: Blair
average rating: 4.33
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/12
date added: 2025/03/26
shelves: 2019-release, ghosts-and-horror, ekphrasis, first-novels, read-on-kindle
review:
(3.5) This opens with a neat little nesting doll of narratives: first, a foreword from the author positioning everything that follows as a true story (a good reality-blurring gimmick is guaranteed to pull me in); then an issue of Final Grrl, a feminist horror zine penned by missing teenager Billie Jacobs shortly before her disappearance; and then, finally, the meat of the book: ‘Memento Mori�� itself, a biography of the mysterious (and also missing) auteur Tina Mori, written by her friend and collaborator C.C. Waite. It’s a great setup and these are fantastic ingredients for lost-media horror.

Memento Mori: The Fathomless Shadows is, it turns out, heavily �� and I do mean heavily �� indebted to Robert W. Chambers�� The King in Yellow, which is referenced frequently. I’ve never finished The King in Yellow �� from what I can remember, I think my problem with it was simply that the tiny glimpses we get of the play are so much more interesting than anything else. Funnily enough, this book has the opposite problem. I was deeply unconvinced by the idea that Tina’s work would become legendary. Tina and C.C. are not in themselves interesting, and most of the descriptions of Tina’s films make them sound like exactly the sort of stuff any first-year student might come up with. (Maybe this, the focus on pretentious students, is also a King in Yellow reference, albeit referencing the part nobody likes.)

I kept reading for the cursed-film stuff plus some sense of how these characters�� fates might tie up with that of the missing girl. I found the book slower going than expected, although when the weird scenes do come, they are well executed. There are some truly creepy sequences with serious atmosphere, but I would have liked more Billie (her voice in the zine is great, really convincing), more of a mixed-media approach, something to break up the faux-biography. Those deeply into The King in Yellow and its lore will no doubt appreciate this the most.
]]> 203766374 Eclectic, experimental, and wildly imaginative climate fictions from a familiar world hauntingly transformed

Climate disaster–induced fugue states, mutinous polar bears, support groups for recently displaced millionaires, men who hear trees, and women who lose their wives on environmental refugee resettlement trips. In these dispatches from a weirding world, the absurd and fantastic are increasingly indistinguishable from reality. Exploring this liminal moment, Ashley Shelby’s collection of climate fictions imagines a near future that is both unnervingly familiar and subversively strange.

Set in the same post-climate-impact era, these stories range from playfully satirical to poignantly humane, bending traditional narrative forms and coming together into a brilliant and unusual contemplation of our changing world. Featuring the Hugo-nominated novelette “Muri,�� Honeymoons in Temporary Locations processes the unthinkable through riotous inventions like guided tours of submerged cities, Craigslist ads placed by climate refugees, and cynical pharmaceutical efforts to market a drug to treat solastalgia, the existential distress caused by environmental change.

Shelby reengineers the dystopic bleakness that characterizes so much climate fiction by embracing an eclectic experimentalism leavened with humor, irony, and the inevitable bathos that characterizes the human experience. Unexpected and clever, this innovative collection confirms her status as a visionary writer whose work expands the forms, attitudes, and possibilities of climate fiction.]]> 159 Ashley Shelby 145297148X Blair 0 may-read 5.00
author: Ashley Shelby
name: Blair
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 228936945 126 Cormack Baldwin Blair 4 4.00 2025
author: Cormack Baldwin
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/19
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2025-release, read-on-kindle, short-stories, anthology, ghosts-and-horror, sff
review:
Always a good day when there’s a new issue of Archive of the Odd to read. This one contains a spectacular standout story by Ash Egan, ‘Alice is Missing��, which fleshes out the story of a missing girl in the form of an oral history (Ash Egan please write a novel in this format!!). I also loved ‘A Gradient Descent�� by David Worn, the juicy, entertaining story of a programmer's futile battle with an evil AI, and the simple-but-creepy approach of Martin Taulbut’s ‘The Ogilvie Transcript��. As for the visual aspect, the found documents in Biscuit Starberry’s ‘You Are Going to Die�� take the prize for best presentation, and with ‘Making a Claim��, Louise Hughes delivers an actually original twist on climate change satire. Great fun as ever, I loved the creativity of every approach here.
]]> 227748866
Tommy soon discovers a secret desire his father has been harbouring for his entire life.

A story of what it means to be family with a light touch of magic and healing.]]> 96 Jodie Robins 1739458095 Blair 0 The Off-Season expecting the pulse-quickening weirdness of the other Northern Weird Project books, adjust your expectations. Jodie Robins trades overt strangeness for a more delicate, emotional magic, making this a quieter but no less affecting entry in the series.

At its heart, this is a story about a father-son relationship. Tommy has returned to Blackpool, his hometown, to look after his ageing, widowed father. Tommy and Al’s dynamic �� understated but deeply felt �� is the strongest part of the book. Robins captures the unspoken weight of shared history, the push and pull of love and duty, the way grief settles into the cracks of a family.

On a winter’s day, as they prepare for yet another funeral, a mysterious group arrives on the seafront, and in their presence, Al is motivated to reveal something deeply buried. The weird aspect here tends towards the whimsical, and I admit I’d expected more of a ghost story, but the atmosphere and setting are well realised. Robins�� off-season Blackpool is haunted more by memories of better days than by actual ghosts. If you’ve ever visited a seaside town in the dead of winter, you’ll feel the damp chill in your bones while reading this.

If you’re looking for something gentler, introspective with just a shimmer of the otherworldly, The Off-Season delivers. It’s softer and more personal than the other books in the series so far, exploring the things we never say (even to family) and how second chances can arrive in the most unexpected of ways.

I received an advance review copy of The Off-Season from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books. ]]> 4.14
author: Jodie Robins
name: Blair
average rating: 4.14
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/20
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves: 2025-release, macabre-slipstream-weird, contemporary, other-review-copy, read-on-kindle
review:
If you’re coming to The Off-Season expecting the pulse-quickening weirdness of the other Northern Weird Project books, adjust your expectations. Jodie Robins trades overt strangeness for a more delicate, emotional magic, making this a quieter but no less affecting entry in the series.

At its heart, this is a story about a father-son relationship. Tommy has returned to Blackpool, his hometown, to look after his ageing, widowed father. Tommy and Al’s dynamic �� understated but deeply felt �� is the strongest part of the book. Robins captures the unspoken weight of shared history, the push and pull of love and duty, the way grief settles into the cracks of a family.

On a winter’s day, as they prepare for yet another funeral, a mysterious group arrives on the seafront, and in their presence, Al is motivated to reveal something deeply buried. The weird aspect here tends towards the whimsical, and I admit I’d expected more of a ghost story, but the atmosphere and setting are well realised. Robins�� off-season Blackpool is haunted more by memories of better days than by actual ghosts. If you’ve ever visited a seaside town in the dead of winter, you’ll feel the damp chill in your bones while reading this.

If you’re looking for something gentler, introspective with just a shimmer of the otherworldly, The Off-Season delivers. It’s softer and more personal than the other books in the series so far, exploring the things we never say (even to family) and how second chances can arrive in the most unexpected of ways.

I received an advance review copy of The Off-Season from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books.
]]> 215073599 Renting is a nightmare...

Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can't shake the sense that there's something not quite right about the place...

It's not just the humourless estate agent and nameless it's the chill that seeps through the draughty windows; the damp spreading from the cellar door; the way the organic fruit and veg never lasts as long as it should. And most of all, it's the upstairs neighbours, whose very existence makes peaceful coexistence very difficult indeed.

The longer Áine spends inside the flat - pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her - the less it feels like home. And as Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott...

Brilliantly observed and darkly funny, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. A wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.]]> 288 Róisín Lanigan 0241668557 Blair 4 I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There, it might sound pretty straightforward. Áine is a twentysomething Irish woman in London who’s just moved in with her boyfriend Elliott. While the move was born out of necessity, they seem to have hit the jackpot with their new flat: it’s affordable, quiet, in a ‘good�� area, and even has a garden. Áine, however, struggles to feel at home there, growing increasingly uneasy: about the persistent mould, the creepy upstairs neighbour, and, more broadly, the discomfort of inhabiting a space that isn’t truly hers.

The book grabbed my attention partly because of its perfect one-line pitch: ‘a ghost story set in the rental crisis��. I commend whoever managed to come up with that, because �� like another recent read, Chris Kohler’s Phantom Limb �� it’s actually very hard to categorise. If this novel is any kind of ghost story, it’s an existential one.

Put another way: Áine and Elliott finding an affordable flat in a leafy London suburb is such a fantasy that it can only be, underneath that, a horror story. It’s the inherent uncanniness of living in places that don’t belong to you: the destabilising effect of frequent moves, rising prices, poor conditions, all the limitations those things place on the rest of your life. It’s also the story of the disintegration of a relationship in which nothing is really wrong, and yet, everything is. You could even argue it’s a story about depression. The atmosphere is suffocatingly mundane, filled with long, inert stretches of life that feel just slightly off, a quality it shares with books like The Trick is to Keep Breathing (with its sense of numbness) and Nightshift (for the London alienation).

Formally, though, I found it closest to a bunch of books I’ve read that were originally published in the 90s or 2000s, like Helen Smith’s Alison Wonderland , Matt Thorne’s Tourist and Cherry , and Scarlett Thomas’s Lily Pascale novels. These are all books that were positioned as being ‘about�� something (usually some sort of mystery) but are really a lot baggier than that. They’re filled with highly detailed writing about quotidian things, an approach that immerses us in the world of the character, so we’re taken along with them whatever happens, whether banal or fantastical. Too readable to be ‘literary��, too character-led to be ‘genre��, too plotless to be ‘commercial��, they don’t fit into any modern marketing category.

This is a class of novel that I didn’t think existed any more; it’s a genuinely pleasant surprise to encounter one in the wild. At the same time, because I Want to Go Home... takes this freewheeling, discursive approach, I’ve found it very difficult to articulate why I liked it. It can be a little too baggy: there are some episodes (the dog??) that could have been cut in their entirety without making any difference to the story overall. Then again, if Áine sometimes feels too passive, too stuck in her own inertia �� that’s kind of the point. And if I’ve rambled on too much about all this in my review... well, that very much suits the book.

I received an advance review copy of I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There from the publisher through .]]> 3.61
author: Róisín Lanigan
name: Blair
average rating: 3.61
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/15
date added: 2025/03/23
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, netgalley, first-novels
review:
I’ve had to think long and hard to decide what I want to say about this book. Not because I didn’t like it (I liked it a lot), but because it’s a dense and circuitous story that’s difficult to pin down �� something that’s unlikely to be clear from a summary of the plot. In fact, if I sum up I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There, it might sound pretty straightforward. Áine is a twentysomething Irish woman in London who’s just moved in with her boyfriend Elliott. While the move was born out of necessity, they seem to have hit the jackpot with their new flat: it’s affordable, quiet, in a ‘good�� area, and even has a garden. Áine, however, struggles to feel at home there, growing increasingly uneasy: about the persistent mould, the creepy upstairs neighbour, and, more broadly, the discomfort of inhabiting a space that isn’t truly hers.

The book grabbed my attention partly because of its perfect one-line pitch: ‘a ghost story set in the rental crisis��. I commend whoever managed to come up with that, because �� like another recent read, Chris Kohler’s Phantom Limb �� it’s actually very hard to categorise. If this novel is any kind of ghost story, it’s an existential one.

Put another way: Áine and Elliott finding an affordable flat in a leafy London suburb is such a fantasy that it can only be, underneath that, a horror story. It’s the inherent uncanniness of living in places that don’t belong to you: the destabilising effect of frequent moves, rising prices, poor conditions, all the limitations those things place on the rest of your life. It’s also the story of the disintegration of a relationship in which nothing is really wrong, and yet, everything is. You could even argue it’s a story about depression. The atmosphere is suffocatingly mundane, filled with long, inert stretches of life that feel just slightly off, a quality it shares with books like The Trick is to Keep Breathing (with its sense of numbness) and Nightshift (for the London alienation).

Formally, though, I found it closest to a bunch of books I’ve read that were originally published in the 90s or 2000s, like Helen Smith’s Alison Wonderland , Matt Thorne’s Tourist and Cherry , and Scarlett Thomas’s Lily Pascale novels. These are all books that were positioned as being ‘about�� something (usually some sort of mystery) but are really a lot baggier than that. They’re filled with highly detailed writing about quotidian things, an approach that immerses us in the world of the character, so we’re taken along with them whatever happens, whether banal or fantastical. Too readable to be ‘literary��, too character-led to be ‘genre��, too plotless to be ‘commercial��, they don’t fit into any modern marketing category.

This is a class of novel that I didn’t think existed any more; it’s a genuinely pleasant surprise to encounter one in the wild. At the same time, because I Want to Go Home... takes this freewheeling, discursive approach, I’ve found it very difficult to articulate why I liked it. It can be a little too baggy: there are some episodes (the dog??) that could have been cut in their entirety without making any difference to the story overall. Then again, if Áine sometimes feels too passive, too stuck in her own inertia �� that’s kind of the point. And if I’ve rambled on too much about all this in my review... well, that very much suits the book.

I received an advance review copy of I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There from the publisher through .
]]> 219728281 “Perhaps never before has there been a book better timed or more urgent.�� ��Washington Post

“Michael Lewis has this incredible ability to zoom in on one person's story, and from there reveals something much bigger about our culture. His books leave you seeing the world differently, and his books about federal workers are no exception.�� —Katie Couric

As seen on CBS Mornings, CNN Anderson Cooper, ABC News Live, MSNBC Morning Joe, and many more

Who works for the government and why does their work matter? An urgent and absorbing civics lesson from an all-star team of writers and storytellers.

The government is a vast, complex system that Americans pay for, rebel against, rely upon, dismiss, and celebrate. It’s also our shared resource for addressing the biggest problems of society. And it’s made up of people, mostly unrecognized and uncelebrated, doing work that can be deeply consequential and beneficial to everyone.

Michael Lewis invited his favorite writers, including Casey Cep, Dave Eggers, John Lanchester, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Vowell, and W. Kamau Bell, to join him in finding someone doing an interesting job for the government and writing about them. The stories they found are unexpected, riveting, and inspiring, including a former coal miner devoted to making mine roofs less likely to collapse, saving thousands of lives; an IRS agent straight out of a crime thriller; and the manager who made the National Cemetery Administration the best-run organization, public or private, in the entire country. Each essay shines a spotlight on the essential behind-the-scenes work of exemplary federal employees.

Whether they’re digitizing archives, chasing down cybercriminals, or discovering new planets, these public servants are committed to their work and universally reluctant to take credit. Expanding on the Washington Post series, the vivid profiles in Who Is Government? blow up the stereotype of the irrelevant bureaucrat. They show how the essential business of government makes our lives possible, and how much it matters.]]> 266 Michael Lewis Blair 0 non-fiction-to-look-at 4.54 2025
author: Michael Lewis
name: Blair
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: non-fiction-to-look-at
review:

]]> 217371353 The lonely worlds of three very unusual siblings collide in this breathtaking tale of what it means to be human

In a fictional near-future Korea, robots have integrated seamlessly into society. They are housekeepers and policemen, teachers and bus drivers. They are our lovers. They are even our children.

Siblings Jun and Morgan Cho haven’t spoken to each other in several years. The children of a celebrated robot designer, both are still grieving the loss of their brother Yoyo, the earliest prototype for what humanoid robots have now become—nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. But Yoyo was always bound for a darker purpose, and his absence has left a chasm in the siblings�� lives.

When a strange disappearance thrusts the siblings back together, neither of them realizes that the investigation will not only force them to confront their fractured family’s past, but will also bring them back to Yoyo himself.

At once a thrilling page-turner and a heartfelt story of the ties between siblings, Luminous is an unforgettable literary debut.]]> 400 Silvia Park Blair 4 Luminous, and I’d be lying if I said I could follow 100% of its threads 100% of the time. This is a book with such a busy, colourful setting that the worldbuilding threatens to overwhelm everything (think Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits), although there is, eventually, an actual plot emerging from the tangle (think Grace Chan’s Every Version of You). Park is good at introducing just enough emotional context to ground the characters. Speaking of which, Stephen is a great character through which to explore ideas about personhood, and the group of teen friends is well-drawn (Mars is the MVP). Really good stuff: evocative style, great worldbuilding, chewy themes.

I received an advance review copy of Luminous from the publisher through .]]> 3.50 2025
author: Silvia Park
name: Blair
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/21
date added: 2025/03/20
shelves: 2025-release, first-novels, sff, read-on-kindle, netgalley
review:
In a future, ostensibly unified Korea, robots are integrated into society as servants, companions and even ersatz children. We explore this world through three characters: Jun, a detective in the ‘Robot Crimes�� division; his sister Morgan, a programmer for robot-making corporation Imagine Friends; and Ruijie, a disabled girl who befriends an unusual robot she meets in a junkyard. Linking them all is Yoyo, Jun and Morgan’s missing-presumed-dead robot sibling. There’s a lot going on in Luminous, and I’d be lying if I said I could follow 100% of its threads 100% of the time. This is a book with such a busy, colourful setting that the worldbuilding threatens to overwhelm everything (think Samit Basu’s Chosen Spirits), although there is, eventually, an actual plot emerging from the tangle (think Grace Chan’s Every Version of You). Park is good at introducing just enough emotional context to ground the characters. Speaking of which, Stephen is a great character through which to explore ideas about personhood, and the group of teen friends is well-drawn (Mars is the MVP). Really good stuff: evocative style, great worldbuilding, chewy themes.

I received an advance review copy of Luminous from the publisher through .
]]> 215548433 A propulsive, hypnotic novel about a man who is unravelled by a series of events beyond his grasp.

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour �� a married woman close to his mother’s age �� as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control.

As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

Spare and penetrating, Flesh is the finest novel yet by a master of realism, asking profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.]]> 334 David Szalay 152992684X Blair 0 may-read 4.11 2025
author: David Szalay
name: Blair
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 220296540 A chilling historical horror set in the American west in 1912 following a Lutheran priest who transcribes the life of a vampire who haunts the fields of the Blackfeet reservation looking for justice. Perfect for fans of Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab and Interview With The Vampire by Anne Rice.

Etsy Beaucarne is an academic, who needs to get published. So when a journal, written in 1912 by a Arthur Beaucarne, a Lutheran pastor and her grandfather, is discovered within a wall during renovations, she sees her chance. She can uncover the lost secrets of her family, and get tenure.

As she researches, she comes to learn of her grandfather's life, and the life of a Blackfeet called Good Stab, who came to Arthur to share the story of his extraordinary life. She discovers the journals detail a slow massacre, a chain of events charting the history of Montana state as it formed. A cycle of violence that leads all the way back to 217 Blackfeet murdered in the snow.

A blood-soaked and unflinching saga of the violence of colonial America, a revenge story like no other, and the chilling reinvention of vampire lore from the master of horror.]]> 447 Stephen Graham Jones Blair 0 may-read 4.40 2025
author: Stephen Graham Jones
name: Blair
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 209240236 283 Amy Shearn 1636281230 Blair 0 may-read 3.96
author: Amy Shearn
name: Blair
average rating: 3.96
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/19
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 9872044
Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh's tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.]]> 236 Nina Bawden 1853814342 Blair 3 1980s-release, contemporary The Ice House is an adult novel by Nina Bawden, better known for her kids�� books (at least to me, and a scan of other reviews confirms this seems to be the case generally). When children’s authors write adult fiction it’s often pretty dark, but not so here �� opening chapter aside, this is a gentle story with a combination of rather depressing central themes (unhappy marriages abound) and light humour. Its main focus is the friendship between two women, Ruth and Daisy. In the short, compelling first part of the book, we meet them as teenagers, and Daisy realises that while Ruth seems to have the upper hand socially, her home life is miserable. But for the rest of the story, they are middle-aged. When Daisy’s husband Luke dies in an accident, various secrets are revealed. Ruth begins to realise she’s been naive not just about what her neighbours get up to, but about her own family too. The ensuing revelations crack open her marriage.

First published in 1983, it feels solidly mid-century despite signs of encroaching modernity; certain details feel like they’re only there to situate the story in the 80s �� most obviously, a random subplot about a boy injured during a clash between National Front and anti-fascist protestors. The main plot involves a twist that’s very obvious from the start, but I can forgive that, as we’re seeing things from Ruth’s blinkered perspective. What I most struggled with was the story’s lack of structure. Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in, and little of it is connected to anything else. Side characters (gossipy shopkeeper Molly, randy retiree Simon, Luke’s formidable mother Stella) are introduced and then largely disappear. Ruth has a caustic inner monologue she calls ‘Rude Ruthie��, which I assumed was introduced to foreshadow some shift in her character, but no, this too is dropped. Things just keep happening without any impact.

Maybe none of this would matter if Ruth and Daisy’s marriages, the central concern here, were interesting, but they’re not. The men are shallowly written; Joe is barely a character. I’d rather have read more about the two main characters as girls, about Ruth’s brutal father and the subtle differences between their families�� flavours of middle class, all of which comes across so effectively in the first couple of chapters. This hasn’t made me especially keen to read more Bawden; there is, after all, no shortage of 20th-century novelists who write well about middle-class people in depressing relationships.]]> 3.08 1983
author: Nina Bawden
name: Blair
average rating: 3.08
book published: 1983
rating: 3
read at: 2025/03/16
date added: 2025/03/18
shelves: 1980s-release, contemporary
review:
The Ice House is an adult novel by Nina Bawden, better known for her kids�� books (at least to me, and a scan of other reviews confirms this seems to be the case generally). When children’s authors write adult fiction it’s often pretty dark, but not so here �� opening chapter aside, this is a gentle story with a combination of rather depressing central themes (unhappy marriages abound) and light humour. Its main focus is the friendship between two women, Ruth and Daisy. In the short, compelling first part of the book, we meet them as teenagers, and Daisy realises that while Ruth seems to have the upper hand socially, her home life is miserable. But for the rest of the story, they are middle-aged. When Daisy’s husband Luke dies in an accident, various secrets are revealed. Ruth begins to realise she’s been naive not just about what her neighbours get up to, but about her own family too. The ensuing revelations crack open her marriage.

First published in 1983, it feels solidly mid-century despite signs of encroaching modernity; certain details feel like they’re only there to situate the story in the 80s �� most obviously, a random subplot about a boy injured during a clash between National Front and anti-fascist protestors. The main plot involves a twist that’s very obvious from the start, but I can forgive that, as we’re seeing things from Ruth’s blinkered perspective. What I most struggled with was the story’s lack of structure. Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in, and little of it is connected to anything else. Side characters (gossipy shopkeeper Molly, randy retiree Simon, Luke’s formidable mother Stella) are introduced and then largely disappear. Ruth has a caustic inner monologue she calls ‘Rude Ruthie��, which I assumed was introduced to foreshadow some shift in her character, but no, this too is dropped. Things just keep happening without any impact.

Maybe none of this would matter if Ruth and Daisy’s marriages, the central concern here, were interesting, but they’re not. The men are shallowly written; Joe is barely a character. I’d rather have read more about the two main characters as girls, about Ruth’s brutal father and the subtle differences between their families�� flavours of middle class, all of which comes across so effectively in the first couple of chapters. This hasn’t made me especially keen to read more Bawden; there is, after all, no shortage of 20th-century novelists who write well about middle-class people in depressing relationships.
]]> 221224878 A one woman show
A one night stand
A one star review

At the Edinburgh Fringe, vicious theatre critic Alex Lyons is dashing off his latest hatchet job.

When Alex meets the show’s performer, Hayley, in a bar afterwards, she has no idea who he is. It’s only after they’ve spent the night together that Alex’s well-meaning flatmate, Sophie, accidentally shows Hayley the one-star review.

Humiliated and furious, Hayley revamps her show into a one-star review of Alex’s entire life. Starring every bad thing he’s ever done to anyone. Sparing absolutely no details.

Hayley’s show is an instant hit, setting off a cultural earthquake. With Alex’s life in ruins, Sophie has a front-row seat to the carnage. Which is how she discovers that, sometimes, the audience is the most dangerous place to be.

Funny and thrilling, for readers of Cleopatra and Frankenstein or Fleishman is in Trouble, this is an extraordinary debut novel about bad art and good art and who gets to say what. About the one-star reviews we wish we could give out, and the personal criticism we would rather not face.]]> 320 Charlotte Runcie 0008688036 Blair 4 Bring the House Down, I couldn’t help but read on... and on... and on. As it was the first time in a while I’ve actually felt like this about a book, the only thing to do was to continue.

At the Edinburgh festival, womanising theatre critic Alex watches a one-woman show, files a scathing one-star review, then promptly sleeps with the performer he’s just trashed. When she finds out, the performer �� Hayley �� retaliates by turning her show into ‘The Alex Lyons Experience��, a rebuke of the review... and of Alex as a person, which transforms it into a viral success. It’s one of those simple-but-rich ideas that makes a perfect starting point for this kind of chatty, accessible litfic, acting as a springboard for bigger questions about art, power, bad behaviour and the nature of criticism.

Simultaneously the book’s masterstroke and biggest flaw is its narration. The story is told not by Hayley or Alex or a chorus, but by Sophie, a long-time journalist colleague of Alex’s who is also at the festival and effectively (sometimes literally) has a ringside seat to the whole thing. Sophie is sympathetic to Hayley while remaining Alex’s friend, which allows for an arm’s-length ambiguity in the story’s approach to its characters. Of course, the use of Sophie’s perspective means her own life inevitably becomes part of the plot; some of this is comparatively tedious, if useful as a foil to the chaos surrounding Alex. Sometimes it feels like we’re following a subplot that wandered in from a different book, and while it all ties together in the end, it doesn’t totally land. Sophie doesn’t get the ending I’d hoped for (... was I supposed to feel sorry for Josh?), though admittedly, this is entirely in keeping with the themes.

Another big advantage of Bring the House Down is the way it plays with perspective. Alex, it turns out, has caused a lot of harm, but mostly inadvertently, within consensual relationships; at what point do we move someone out of the ‘bit of a cad�� category and into ‘creep�� or even ‘abuser��, and what then? What of the fact that Hayley’s show would never have become successful without the catalyst of his review? Then there’s Sophie, who has a lazy approach to criticism (stock phrases, insincere praise for things she didn’t even understand). Is her generous dishonesty any better than Alex’s brutal truth? Plus there’s Alex’s own privilege; as the well-connected son of a famous actress, he’s cushioned from real-world consequences in a way the likes of Hayley and Sophie aren’t. Even if he gets thoroughly cancelled, what’s at stake for him, really?

The book certainly packs a lot in, combining its conversation-starting central themes with reflections on grief and an examination of relationships, family and parenthood. Bring the House Down is thoughtful but it could also easily be a read-in-one-sitting kind of book, such is the momentum it gathers. It strikes the right balance between taking a stance and allowing the reader to make up their own mind; it’d make a great book club choice.

I received an advance review copy of Bring the House Down from the publisher through . ]]> 4.00 2025
author: Charlotte Runcie
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/05
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, edelweiss, first-novels, ekphrasis
review:
Early March is way too soon to read a book that comes out in June, but when I skimmed the first few pages of Bring the House Down, I couldn’t help but read on... and on... and on. As it was the first time in a while I’ve actually felt like this about a book, the only thing to do was to continue.

At the Edinburgh festival, womanising theatre critic Alex watches a one-woman show, files a scathing one-star review, then promptly sleeps with the performer he’s just trashed. When she finds out, the performer �� Hayley �� retaliates by turning her show into ‘The Alex Lyons Experience��, a rebuke of the review... and of Alex as a person, which transforms it into a viral success. It’s one of those simple-but-rich ideas that makes a perfect starting point for this kind of chatty, accessible litfic, acting as a springboard for bigger questions about art, power, bad behaviour and the nature of criticism.

Simultaneously the book’s masterstroke and biggest flaw is its narration. The story is told not by Hayley or Alex or a chorus, but by Sophie, a long-time journalist colleague of Alex’s who is also at the festival and effectively (sometimes literally) has a ringside seat to the whole thing. Sophie is sympathetic to Hayley while remaining Alex’s friend, which allows for an arm’s-length ambiguity in the story’s approach to its characters. Of course, the use of Sophie’s perspective means her own life inevitably becomes part of the plot; some of this is comparatively tedious, if useful as a foil to the chaos surrounding Alex. Sometimes it feels like we’re following a subplot that wandered in from a different book, and while it all ties together in the end, it doesn’t totally land. Sophie doesn’t get the ending I’d hoped for (... was I supposed to feel sorry for Josh?), though admittedly, this is entirely in keeping with the themes.

Another big advantage of Bring the House Down is the way it plays with perspective. Alex, it turns out, has caused a lot of harm, but mostly inadvertently, within consensual relationships; at what point do we move someone out of the ‘bit of a cad�� category and into ‘creep�� or even ‘abuser��, and what then? What of the fact that Hayley’s show would never have become successful without the catalyst of his review? Then there’s Sophie, who has a lazy approach to criticism (stock phrases, insincere praise for things she didn’t even understand). Is her generous dishonesty any better than Alex’s brutal truth? Plus there’s Alex’s own privilege; as the well-connected son of a famous actress, he’s cushioned from real-world consequences in a way the likes of Hayley and Sophie aren’t. Even if he gets thoroughly cancelled, what’s at stake for him, really?

The book certainly packs a lot in, combining its conversation-starting central themes with reflections on grief and an examination of relationships, family and parenthood. Bring the House Down is thoughtful but it could also easily be a read-in-one-sitting kind of book, such is the momentum it gathers. It strikes the right balance between taking a stance and allowing the reader to make up their own mind; it’d make a great book club choice.

I received an advance review copy of Bring the House Down from the publisher through .
]]> 228791667 From the Booker Prize finalist and bestselling a perceptive novel about a gay Black painter navigating the worlds of art, desire, and creativity

A newcomer to New York, Wyeth is a Black painter who grew up in the South and is trying to find his place in the contemporary Manhattan art scene. It’s challenging. Gallery shows displaying bad art. Pretentious artists jockeying for attention. The gossip and the backstabbing. While his part-time work for an art restorer is engaging, Wyeth suffers from artist’s block with his painting and he is finding it increasingly difficult to spark his creativity. When he meets Keating, a white former seminarian who left the priesthood, Wyeth begins to reconsider how to observe the world, in the process facing questions about the conflicts between Black and white art, the white gaze on the Black body, and the compromises we make �� in art and in life.

As he did so adeptly in Booker finalist Real Life and the bestselling The Late Americans, Brandon Taylor brings to life in Minor Black Figures a fascinating set of characters, this time in the competitive art world, and the lives they lead with each and on their own. Minor Black Figures is an involving and tender portrait of friendship, creativity, and the connections between them.]]> 320 Brandon Taylor 0593332385 Blair 0 to-read 0.0 2025
author: Brandon Taylor
name: Blair
average rating: 0.0
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> 188054766
Matt Langley used to be somebody. Back in the late '90s his star shone bright. Thanks to his debut novel, the shocking The Devil's Debt , he was at the forefront of the Bright Young Things. He was on chat shows and culture shows. He was the man of the moment. And then it all stopped, because there was no second book.

Now, with his marriage to Naz on the rocks, they're trying to start over. They've sold the house that The Devil's Debt built and moved to a farmhouse deep in the wilds of Northumbria, where no one knows them, and for a while their new life is fragile but good. Furthermore, Matt's leading a writing group at the library and is even thinking about writing again.

Marlin is part of that writing group. He's a quiet young man who has survived things no kid should ever have to. On meeting Matt he shows him his battered copy of The Devil's Debt . The book is filled with underlinings and notes and, he soon discovers, messages from the young man's dead mother.

That book serves as the basis for a bond between the two. Matt feels like they have a kinship, and wants to help the young writer. So, when he and Naz find him sleeping rough they invite him into their house for a week or so, until Marlin is back on his feet. But Marlin is a malevolent cuckoo they've brought into their home. And that was their first big mistake...

PRAISE FOR NICK CURRAN

'Grabs the reader from the very first page - and never lets go' DAILY MAIL

'Taut and properly disturbing. . . Impressive' The Critic


'Oh boy, this is going to keep you up at night, or abandoning everything else to race through the pages' Peterborough Telegraph

'Throws out a great hook and then twists and turns its way to a heartstopping climax' Stephen Gallagher

'Not just a ruthlessly compelling novel of suspense but an unflinching examination of the repercussions of a crime. Disturbing, harrowing and moving, it signals the arrival of a new master of crime fiction.' Ramsey Campbell

'Taut, compelling, original. An emotionally charged story that will leave you thinking of the main character long after finishing the book. A true page-turner' J A Corrigan

'Curran's debut is an absorbing, dark and suspenseful thriller. He is a writer to watch' David Fennell

'An utterly gripping Cobenesque mystery keeps you turning the pages fiercely to find out what's happening' Crime Podcast FM]]> 310 Nick Curran 140871728X Blair 0 did-not-finish 3.64 2024
author: Nick Curran
name: Blair
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 75859241 A dark, glittering debut novel echoing Hitchcock's Vertigo, The Body Double is the suspenseful story of a young woman who is recruited by a stranger to give up her old life and identity to impersonate a reclusive Hollywood star.

A strange man discovers our nameless narrator selling popcorn at a decrepit small-town movie theater and offers her an odd and lucrative position: she will forget her job, her acquaintances, even her name, and move to Los Angeles, where she will become the body double of the famous and troubled celebrity Rosanna Feld. A nervous breakdown has forced Rosanna out of the public eye, and she needs a look-alike to take her place in the tabloid media circus of Hollywood. Overseen by Max, who hired her for the job, our narrator spends her days locked up in a small apartment in the hills watching hidden camera footage of Rosanna, wearing Rosanna's clothes, eating the food Rosanna likes, practicing her mannerisms, learning to become Rosanna in every way. But as she makes her public debut as Rosanna, dining at elegant restaurants, shopping in stylish boutiques, and finally risking a dinner party with Rosanna's true inner circle, alarming questions begin to arise. What really caused Rosanna's mental collapse? Will she ever return? And is Max truly her ally, or something more sinister? The Body Double is a fabulously plotted noir about fame, beauty, and the darkness of Hollywood.]]> 290 Emily Beyda 0385545282 Blair 0 did-not-finish 1.50 2020
author: Emily Beyda
name: Blair
average rating: 1.50
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/13
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 217511607 From “one of our great artists of catastrophe�� (Laura van den Berg) comes North Sun, or the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther—an allegory of extraction and a tale of adventure and endurance during the waning days of the American whaling industry.

Setting out from New Bedford in 1878, the crew of the Esther is confident the sea will be in addition to cruising the Pacific for whale, they intend to hunt the teeming northern grounds before the ice closes. But as they sail to their final destination in the Chukchi Sea, where their captain Arnold Lovejoy has an urgent directive of his own to attend to, their encounters with the natural world become more brutal, harrowing, ghostly, and strange.

With one foot firmly planted in the traditional sea-voyage narrative, and another in a blazing mythos of its own, this debut novel looks unsparingly at the cost of environmental exploitation and predation, and in doing so feverishly sings not only of the past, but to the present and future as well.]]> 386 Ethan Rutherford 1646053702 Blair 4 Esther, and find their daughter’s husband, who has settled on the ice and refuses to return home. This voyage is stark and punishing, rendered in long, brutal scenes of whale-hunting. But as it progresses, it grows stranger. Notably, there’s the presence of a giant bird-man who can only be seen by the ship’s two youngest sailors. And of course the climactic sequence, when Lovejoy and Thule actually reach Leander’s cabin; I won’t spoil it except to say it is wonderfully dreamlike, surreal and lucid.

Told in more than two hundred short chapters, North Sun has a pleasingly abstract texture and is full of evocative description. Characters talk in riddles �� Lovejoy’s first line of dialogue is this: ‘Your frown is like a symbol in some long-lost alphabet.�� It’s as if a story about adventure at sea had been reworked by a writer like Sarah Bernstein or M. John Harrison. This is a novel that would slot straight in to one of those ‘books that feel like A24 films�� lists.

I received an advance review copy of North Sun from the publisher through .]]> 4.20
author: Ethan Rutherford
name: Blair
average rating: 4.20
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/19
date added: 2025/03/12
shelves: 2025-release, macabre-slipstream-weird, historical, edelweiss, read-on-kindle
review:
(3.5) It’s the late 19th century and a discontented sailor, Arnold Lovejoy, has been charged with a task by the Ashleys, a powerful whaling family. He must cross the Chukchi Sea on board a ship, the Esther, and find their daughter’s husband, who has settled on the ice and refuses to return home. This voyage is stark and punishing, rendered in long, brutal scenes of whale-hunting. But as it progresses, it grows stranger. Notably, there’s the presence of a giant bird-man who can only be seen by the ship’s two youngest sailors. And of course the climactic sequence, when Lovejoy and Thule actually reach Leander’s cabin; I won’t spoil it except to say it is wonderfully dreamlike, surreal and lucid.

Told in more than two hundred short chapters, North Sun has a pleasingly abstract texture and is full of evocative description. Characters talk in riddles �� Lovejoy’s first line of dialogue is this: ‘Your frown is like a symbol in some long-lost alphabet.�� It’s as if a story about adventure at sea had been reworked by a writer like Sarah Bernstein or M. John Harrison. This is a novel that would slot straight in to one of those ‘books that feel like A24 films�� lists.

I received an advance review copy of North Sun from the publisher through .
]]> 29075201 ��
Lay provost Eldon Fochs is a happily married father of four. Based on his disturbing dreams, he may also be a sex criminal. His therapist isn’t sure, and his church is determined to protect its reputation. Written from the perspectives of Fochs, his analyst Dr. Alexander Feshtig, and the letters exchanged between Feshtig and his superiors in the church hierarchy, Father of Lies is Brian Evenson’s fable of power, paranoia, and the dangers of blind obedience. It offers a terrifying vision of how far institutions will go to protect themselves against the innocents who may be their victims.
��
This edition includes an introduction by Samuel R.��Delaney ( Dhalgren ).
��
“Evenson’s literary genius lay in his ability to spread reasonable doubt and blur lines of inquiry.�� —New York Journal of Books
��
�� Father of Lies stands out among Evenson’s work as the most institutionally critical, morally unsettling.�� —Vice
��
“Packed with the kind of psychological tension that creates classics and a critique of organized religion that’s too loud, clear, and sharp to ignore.�� —Horror Talk
��
“[Evenson’s] scary fictional treatment of church hypocrisy has the feeling of a reasoned attack on blind religious obedience.�� —Publishers Weekly]]> 200 Brian Evenson Blair 4 Father of Lies revolves around a church official, Eldon Fochs, who comes to a psychiatrist with descriptions of disturbing, violent dreams. But are they dreams or confessions? When these conversations coincide with real-life allegations, Fochs�� church �� the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb, or Bloodites as they’re more casually known �� insists the psychiatrist must surrender his notes. As well as being a horror story, this is a vicious religious satire, and it comes as no surprise to learn the author is ex-LDS.

It’s a short, sharp nightmare of a book that deals with religious institutions, repression, and the monstrous things lurking beneath the surface of seemingly normal lives. Evenson’s writing is clinical in a way that makes everything feel even more disturbing �� he never lingers too long on the details, which somehow makes it worse. My only complaint: I’d have preferred it if the narrative had stuck with the mixed-media format it has at the beginning, rather than switching to the rather flat perspective of the villain.]]> 3.99 1998
author: Brian Evenson
name: Blair
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1998
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves: 1990s-release, contemporary, dark-character-study, ghosts-and-horror, read-on-kindle
review:
A story that mixes supernatural horror with the much more frightening realities of human transgression, Father of Lies revolves around a church official, Eldon Fochs, who comes to a psychiatrist with descriptions of disturbing, violent dreams. But are they dreams or confessions? When these conversations coincide with real-life allegations, Fochs�� church �� the Corporation of the Blood of the Lamb, or Bloodites as they’re more casually known �� insists the psychiatrist must surrender his notes. As well as being a horror story, this is a vicious religious satire, and it comes as no surprise to learn the author is ex-LDS.

It’s a short, sharp nightmare of a book that deals with religious institutions, repression, and the monstrous things lurking beneath the surface of seemingly normal lives. Evenson’s writing is clinical in a way that makes everything feel even more disturbing �� he never lingers too long on the details, which somehow makes it worse. My only complaint: I’d have preferred it if the narrative had stuck with the mixed-media format it has at the beginning, rather than switching to the rather flat perspective of the villain.
]]> 20328492 200 Scott McClanahan 0985023562 Blair 4 Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman and Young God by Katherine Faw Morris, and also seems like a precursor to more recent alt-lit-adjacent stuff like Gabriel Smith’s BRAT (albeit better, as more authentic-feeling).]]> 3.73 2013
author: Scott McClanahan
name: Blair
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2013
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/06
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: 2013-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle
review:
Linked short stories about a boy’s hardscrabble coming-of-age in a small West Virginia town. Felt like a window into a place and way of life I know little about and aspects of American life that are rarely explored in contemporary fiction. Sometimes harrowing (scenes of child abuse, animal cruelty etc) but there’s beauty too, and it’s effective. Reminded me of a couple of novels I read years ago and otherwise wouldn’t have recalled, Girlchild by Tupelo Hassman and Young God by Katherine Faw Morris, and also seems like a precursor to more recent alt-lit-adjacent stuff like Gabriel Smith’s BRAT (albeit better, as more authentic-feeling).
]]> 228904071
Eurotrash is a bitterly funny, vertiginous mirror-cabinet of familial and historical reckoning. The pair's tragicomic quest is punctuated by the tenderness and spite meted out between two people who cannot escape one another. Intensely personal and unsparingly critical, Eurotrash is a disorientatingly brilliant novel by a writer at the pinnacle of his powers.]]> 192 Christian Kracht 1805223054 Blair 0 may-read 4.00 2021
author: Christian Kracht
name: Blair
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 219802412 It was as if the present and the past were a spider’s web, wherein a shock to one strand could make the whole structure shake.
��
The Kelly family’s��idyllic holiday in the south��of��France is disturbed when Cass, a thirteen-year-old girl, goes missing.��She’s discovered several hours later with no visible��signs��of��injury. Everyone present dismisses the incident as a close brush with tragedy.��
��
Sixteen years later, at a funeral for a member��of��the Kelly family, Cass collapses. The present and the past start to collide as buried secrets come to light and old doubts resurface. What really happened to Cass in the south��of��France? And what’s wrong with her now?
��
A gripping tale��of��unravelling memories and moral ambiguities,��Signs of Damage��wrestles with the difference between understanding other people, and trying to explain them.]]> 304 Diana Reid 176115110X Blair 0 may-read 3.53 2025
author: Diana Reid
name: Blair
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 124198450
But simply vanishing?

That ripped a hole in the world the size of a life, and through that hole sighed a terrible wind repeating a single note:

Gone.

For years, Aggie had forgotten the real Joanne, the way her sister had laughed, fought, been.

But now that the videotape made her real again—no matter how many times the recording changed, no matter how terrifying the flickering images—it was all Aggie wanted. To trade the Gone for the One. She owed Joanne that much. To say she was sorry. That it had been her fault.

It had been all their faults.]]> 113 Laura Keating Blair 0 may-read 3.97 2023
author: Laura Keating
name: Blair
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 216298685 She's the woman who has everything. But she wants more. She wants you...

Everyone knows Marina, the A-list movie star. But very few know Marina, the absolute monster.

Years at the top have proved that whatever Marina wants, she gets. But when she meets bartender Anna, Marina discovers something that can't be bought: Anna's affection. As Anna remains unmoved, Marina's advances become more desperate - and her obsession more dangerous.

The price of fame is heavy - and someone will have to pay for it...]]> 288 Hannah Beer 1805460250 Blair 0 may-read 3.88
author: Hannah Beer
name: Blair
average rating: 3.88
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 221476456
But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility's strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended �� and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour . . .

The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us �� even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.]]> 333 Laila Lalami 1526687186 Blair 0 may-read 3.70 2025
author: Laila Lalami
name: Blair
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/08
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 56419848 He tells you you’re special��
As a barrister, Ingrid Lewis is used to dealing with tricky clients, but no one has ever come close to John Webster. After Ingrid defended Webster against a stalking charge, he then turned on her �� following her, ruining her relationship, even destroying her home.

He tells you he wants to protect you��
Now, Ingrid believes she has finally escaped his clutches. But when one of her colleagues is run down on a busy London road, Ingrid is sure she was the intended victim. And then Webster shows up at her door��

But can you believe him?
Webster claims Ingrid is in danger �� and that only he can protect her. Stalker or saviour? Murderer or protector? The clock is ticking for Ingrid to decide. Because the killer is ready to strike again.]]> 474 Jane Casey 0008404941 Blair 4 Apple Tree Yard; I wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, but I loved it. The Killing Kind didn’t quite hit the same highs for me, though it did keep me hooked. Plus it turns out the book is significantly different from the show, which made for a less predictable reading experience than I’d expected.

Plot-wise, we’re following Ingrid, a barrister, who’s been the victim of stalking by a former client, John Webster. When a colleague of hers dies in a supposed accident, Ingrid suspects she was the intended victim, and thinks Webster may have been involved. But as things spiral, it starts to seem Webster himself might be the only person who can help her figure out what’s going on. He’s almost definitely a sociopath, but he’s also very competent and disturbingly invested in her safety.

The writing is a cut above what I would have expected based on the cheap-looking cover (another similarity to Apple Tree Yard). I think my perfect version of The Killing Kind would involve elements of both show and book �� I was surprised to find that a big part of the show’s plot, in fact the thing I liked most about it, does not happen in the book at all. I enjoyed reading about different versions of the characters, though; I think it’s fair to say the book versions are less plausible but arguably more entertaining.]]> 4.11 2021
author: Jane Casey
name: Blair
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/04
date added: 2025/03/06
shelves: 2021-release, mystery-thriller-etc, contemporary, read-on-kindle
review:
(3.5) So, we have another case of ‘I watched the TV adaptation and it made me want to read the book��, which is becoming a habit at this point. The same thing happened with Apple Tree Yard; I wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise, but I loved it. The Killing Kind didn’t quite hit the same highs for me, though it did keep me hooked. Plus it turns out the book is significantly different from the show, which made for a less predictable reading experience than I’d expected.

Plot-wise, we’re following Ingrid, a barrister, who’s been the victim of stalking by a former client, John Webster. When a colleague of hers dies in a supposed accident, Ingrid suspects she was the intended victim, and thinks Webster may have been involved. But as things spiral, it starts to seem Webster himself might be the only person who can help her figure out what’s going on. He’s almost definitely a sociopath, but he’s also very competent and disturbingly invested in her safety.

The writing is a cut above what I would have expected based on the cheap-looking cover (another similarity to Apple Tree Yard). I think my perfect version of The Killing Kind would involve elements of both show and book �� I was surprised to find that a big part of the show’s plot, in fact the thing I liked most about it, does not happen in the book at all. I enjoyed reading about different versions of the characters, though; I think it’s fair to say the book versions are less plausible but arguably more entertaining.
]]> 219847059 106 Stephen Howard 1739458079 Blair 0 4.28
author: Stephen Howard
name: Blair
average rating: 4.28
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, ghosts-and-horror, read-on-kindle
review:

]]> 203562677 A debut novel of remarkable beauty and invention, The Fortunate Fall is back in print for the first time in almost three decades as a Tor Essential, with a new introduction by Jo Walton

Tor Essentials presents new editions of science fiction and fantasy titles of proven merit and lasting value, each volume introduced by an appropriate literary figure.

On its first publication in 1996, The Fortunate Fall was hailed as an SF novel of a wired future on par with the debuts of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. Now it returns to print, in advance of forthcoming new work by the same author. It is one of the great underground classics of the last several decades in SF.

Maya Andreyeva is a "camera," a reporter with virtual-reality-broadcasting equipment implanted in her brain. What she sees, millions see; what she feels, millions share.

And what Maya is seeing is the cover-up of a massacre. As she probes into the covert political power plays of a radically strange near-future Russia, she comes upon secrets that have been hidden from the world...and memories that AI-controlled thought police have forced her to hide from herself. Because in a world where no thought or desire is safe, the price of survival is betrayal - of your lover, your ideals, and yourself.

This new Tor Essentials edition of The Fortunate Fall includes a new introduction by Jo Walton, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 290 Cameron Reed 1250364884 Blair 0 4.25 1996
author: Cameron Reed
name: Blair
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/26
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: 1990s-release, read-on-kindle, sff, first-novels
review:
A lesser-known �� but cult classic �� cyberpunk novel, originally published in 1996 and reissued by Tor last year. Does that typical cyberpunk thing of being prescient in some ways while very much of its time in others (the language and pop-culture references are so very 90s/Gen X it’s difficult to situate yourself in the book’s centuries-into-the-future setting). I found this interesting in parts, but very much not for me overall. You can’t love everything!
]]> 57092968 A claustrophobic, literary dystopia set in the hot, luscious landscape of Andalusia from the author of The Golden Key.

After the ravages of the Green Winter, Earth is a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. The last of the human race is divided into surface dwellers and the people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the Earth's atmosphere.

Bearing witness to this divided planet is Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, who lives in the isolated forests of Gobari, navigating her mad mother and the strange blue light in the sky. But Pearl's stepfather promises her to a starborn called Arlo, and the world Pearl thought she knew will never be the same again.

Set in the luscious landscape of Andalusia, this claustrophobic, dystopian reimagining of Wide Sargasso Sea is a fever dream, a blazing vision of self-destruction and transformation.]]> 352 Marian Womack 1789095921 Blair 0 may-read 3.67 2021
author: Marian Womack
name: Blair
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 219561171 A city is always a cemetery.

When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning on the brick wall beside the body, scrawled in coral nail 'Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.'

After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? While more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and the darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city.

From one of Mexico's greatest living writers, Death Takes Me is a dark and dazzling literary thriller that flips the traditional crime narrative on its head, in a world where death is rampant and violence is gendered. Unfolding with the charged logic of a dream in sentences as sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims �� a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine �� it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.]]> 302 Cristina Rivera Garza 1526649446 Blair 0 may-read 1.00 2007
author: Cristina Rivera Garza
name: Blair
average rating: 1.00
book published: 2007
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 221794804 Valya’s neural implant is amazing.

Its game-like app, CASUAL, has managed her depression and anxiety, stabilized her mood, and helped the infertile Valya get pregnant. But new laws forbid her from using the device when she's sole caregiver for her infant. Her gaslighting ex won't help her, and she can't afford a nanny, so her obstetrician insists that Valya wean off CASUAL before giving birth.

Despite a will to quit and a supportive new love interest in her birthing class, disabling CASUAL turns Valya's anxiety into full-blown panic attacks. Her psychiatrist offers to enroll her in a controversial clinical trial that would place a tandem implant in the baby and allow Valya to keep hers active. Valya must decide whether she should attempt parenting without CASUAL or install a minimally tested device in her vulnerable child.

Casual is a stark and cutting glance at a near future that looks uncannily like our present, exploring themes of bodily autonomy and the struggle for mental health in a world increasingly divided.

“Complex, compelling, and incredibly imagined. Akin to classic dystopian literature like 1984 and Brave New World. It left me reeling."

Ivy Grimes, author of Glass Stories]]> 292 Koji A. Dae Blair 0 may-read 3.80 2025
author: Koji A. Dae
name: Blair
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 219250246
Danny's family live in a large house close to the school where his father is headmaster. At school, his father's importance gives Danny certain privileges, but it also sets him apart from his classmates. When new boy Philip, for whom everything seems easy, arrives, he surprises Danny by wanting to be friends. So when he and Philip are invited to work after school with inspiring, artistic teacher Mr. Miller, Danny believes he has found somewhere he can shine.

Until Danny's world tilts: his father loses his job, and their house. And then Danny finds himself shut out from Mr. Miller and Philip's world too. Desperate to make amends, he keeps trying to find a way back in, but will Danny's efforts send things spinning beyond everyone's control?]]> 208 Michael Amherst 0571387624 Blair 0 may-read 3.56 2025
author: Michael Amherst
name: Blair
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 214199207 'A genre-busting inquiry into life and art, youth and Virginia Woolf' Guardian, Books to Look Forward to 2025

'I loved Theory & Practice ... raw, funny, truthful, youthful' Tessa Hadley

'Michelle de Kretser is to my mind one of the finest writers alive and Theory & Practice a lightning strike of a book' Ali Smith

It's 1986, and 'beautiful, radical ideas' are in the air. A young woman arrives in Melbourne to research the novels of Virginia Woolf. In bohemian St Kilda, she meets artists, activists, students - and Kit. He claims to be in a 'deconstructed' relationship, and they become lovers. Meanwhile, a dismaying discovery throws her work on 'the Woolfmother' into disarray.

Theory & Practice is a mesmerising account of desire and jealousy, truth and shame. It makes and unmakes fiction as we read, expanding our notion of what a novel can contain. Michelle de Kretser, one of Australia's most celebrated writers, bends fiction, essay and memoir into exhilarating new shapes to uncover what happens when life smashes through the boundaries of art.]]> 192 Michelle de Kretser 1914502175 Blair 0 may-read 4.38 2024
author: Michelle de Kretser
name: Blair
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 211049697 Some secrets we keep even from ourselves

Philosophy professor Neil Weber can' t think of one good reason to get up in the morning. His wife has left him, his academic research has sputtered, and the prospect of tenure is more remote than ever.

Until Lucia Vanotti disappears.

A college student at the Southern university where Neil teaches, Lucia has a secret of her own�� one that haunts her relationships and leads to destructive, reckless behavior. When Neil is drawn into the mystery of her disappearance, he finds himself suddenly relevant again. But at what cost? Each clue pulls him deeper into Lucia' s dark past, but also into the hidden lives of his closest friends and colleagues.

What drove Lucia to risk everything? And why does Neil, a professor who hardly knew her, care to find her? From campus classrooms to sex dens to backwoods hideaways, The Department shows the world through the eyes of Lucia and Neil as they descend into obsession, delusion, and the dangerous terrain of memory�� uncovering the trauma that drives them to behave in ways even they themselves could never have predicted.

Perfect for fans of Tana French and Gillian Flynn]]> 412 Jacqueline Faber 1608096351 Blair 0 may-read 3.90
author: Jacqueline Faber
name: Blair
average rating: 3.90
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 213145375
One, she is watching a star in the making.

Two, she can shape his music into something extraordinary.

Three, she will always be on the sidelines.

She swallows her jealousy and throws herself into collaboration, transforming Joe’s songs into indie hits with her blistering critiques.

But there’s an undercurrent to the music they’re making �� something undeniably electric, hurtling towards love. And then, almost inevitably, towards heartbreak.

As Joe steps into the spotlight, can Percy bear to watch on in silence?

And can he exist there without her?

Deep Cuts is an irresistible novel about passion and obsession, love and longing and, above all, our need to be heard.]]> 288 Holly Brickley 0008695849 Blair 0 may-read 3.83 2025
author: Holly Brickley
name: Blair
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 213429267 From��USA Today��bestselling and Edgar and Shamus Award–winning author Alison Gaylin comes a slick, riveting, and all-too-plausible tale of psychological suspense where a mother is desperate to protect her family as they become targets of a group of violent conspiracy theorists.

Sometimes the world is out to get you.

Meg Russo was behind the wheel when it happened. She and her husband Justin were driving their daughter Lily to Ithaca College, the family celebrating the eighteen-year-old music prodigy’s future. Then a car swerved up beside them, the young men inside it behaving bizarrely—and Meg lost control of her own vehicle. The family road trip turned into a tragedy. Justin didn’t survive the accident.

Four months later, Meg works to distract herself from her grief and guilt, reopening her small local bookstore. But soon after she returns to work, bizarre messages and visitors begin to arrive, with strangers threatening Meg and Lily in increasingly terrifying ways. They are obsessed with a young adult novel titled��The Prophesy, which was published thirty years earlier. An online group of believers are convinced that it heralds the apocalypse, and social media posts link the book—and Meg’s reclusive musician father—to Satanism. These conspiracy theorists vow to seek revenge on The Prophesy’s author...Meg.

As the threats turn violent, Meg begins to suspect that Justin’s death may not have been an accident. To find answers and save her daughter, her father, and herself, Meg must get to the root of these dangerous lies—and find a way to face the believers head-on �� before it’s too late.]]> 333 Alison Gaylin Blair 0 may-read 3.67 2025
author: Alison Gaylin
name: Blair
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/25
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 182181234
Finding herself on the run with Jones across America's Southwest, the discoveries awaiting Gracie will undermine everything she knows about the universe. Her story will reveal how scores of lives - an identity-swapping rock star, a mourning lover in ancient China, Nazi hunters in pursuit of a terrible secret, a crazed artist in pre-revolutionary France, an astronaut struggling with a turbulent interplanetary future, and many more - are interconnected across space and time by love, grief, and quantum entanglement.

Spanning continents, centuries, and dimensions, this exquisitely crafted and madly inventive novel - a triple-disc concept album of a book - is the perfect immersive read for fans of David Mitchell, Emily St. John Mandel, Neil Gaiman and Margaret Atwood.]]> 550 Cole Haddon 1472286677 Blair 0 did-not-finish 3.95
author: Cole Haddon
name: Blair
average rating: 3.95
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 38794279 294 Alex Hourston Blair 4 In My House, is one of those books that has always lingered in my mind, partly because the writing struck me as remarkable, but also because I seem to be in a minority by actually liking it. It’s taken me a while to get round to Love After Love, which seems to have suffered the same fate; low ratings across the board, lukewarm reviews. Like so many of my faves, this is a book that’s hard to categorise, with the cadence of a thriller but little in the plot to reflect that. Hourston hasn’t published anything since, which is a shame, because this was exactly the sort of reading experience that would usually have me running to snap up the rest of the author’s work.

Nancy is a married therapist in early middle age who bumps into Adam, whom she briefly knew at university, at a conference. Later, they set up a practice together, and eventually, after a long period of walking around their obvious attraction to one another, they start an affair and fall in love. Nancy, a mother of three, doesn't want to leave the family home, especially with teen daughter Frieda going through a difficult phase; still, she's walking a fine line, and of course it all eventually starts to come undone. None of this happens in a dramatic way, though; this is a reflective first-person narrative about Nancy trying to untangle the threads of herself �� as a mother, wife, therapist and, arguably (& controversially) most precious to her, as Adam’s lover.

Love After Love is just as beautifully written as I remember In My House being, the descriptions so precise (Nancy and Adam’s office is so vividly realised I felt like I’d been there), and incredibly well-controlled in its emotional weight. It’s also bold, because Nancy �� as a protagonist, as a narrator, as a person �� is such a tough nut to crack, so often withholding, sometimes seemingly even to herself. She’s not just secretive because she’s having an affair (although obviously, that’s part of it), but because that’s who she is: reluctant to let anyone, including the reader to whom she’s addressing this account, all the way in. It’s an unusual choice for a first-person narrative, which typically comes with a sense of built-in intimacy, and it’s exactly what made the book work so well for me. Nancy’s inscrutability is her characterisation, you’re meant to feel shut out.

This whole theme �� the ways people hide from themselves �� gets neatly reflected in Nancy’s therapy sessions with her client Marie, who at first insists she had a perfectly normal, happy upbringing before eventually cracking and admitting, flatly: I hated it as a child. All of it. All the time. It’s a pivotal moment not just because of what it tells us about Marie, but because it underlines so much about Nancy too �� what she’s refusing to face, what she’s unable to say out loud.

Certain scenes are charged with tension �� so much of this book is unbearably taut in a way I wasn’t expecting, especially considering how quiet and interior it is. A family party, a school talent show, an encounter with strangers in a bar; moments that feel loaded, like something is just about to tip over. And then there’s the ending, sombre and understated, giving you just enough to project whatever you want onto it. I loved it.

Not that I don’t have nitpicks. There are a lot of characters to keep track of in Nancy’s family (I was fine with the subplots about her children and brother, but do we really need all the aunts and uncles as well?). Some of the therapy sessions, if they unfolded exactly as written, would last about five minutes (should’ve been caught in edits), and the mechanics of the plot become a little too visible towards the end. But none of that really mattered to me because the book as a whole is just so good.

The writing reminded me of Louise Doughty in its elegance and emotional precision, with something of Katie Kitamura in all the layers of meaning. One of my standouts of the year so far. ]]> 3.37
author: Alex Hourston
name: Blair
average rating: 3.37
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/10
date added: 2025/02/24
shelves: 2018-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle, recent-favourites
review:
Alex Hourston’s debut, In My House, is one of those books that has always lingered in my mind, partly because the writing struck me as remarkable, but also because I seem to be in a minority by actually liking it. It’s taken me a while to get round to Love After Love, which seems to have suffered the same fate; low ratings across the board, lukewarm reviews. Like so many of my faves, this is a book that’s hard to categorise, with the cadence of a thriller but little in the plot to reflect that. Hourston hasn’t published anything since, which is a shame, because this was exactly the sort of reading experience that would usually have me running to snap up the rest of the author’s work.

Nancy is a married therapist in early middle age who bumps into Adam, whom she briefly knew at university, at a conference. Later, they set up a practice together, and eventually, after a long period of walking around their obvious attraction to one another, they start an affair and fall in love. Nancy, a mother of three, doesn't want to leave the family home, especially with teen daughter Frieda going through a difficult phase; still, she's walking a fine line, and of course it all eventually starts to come undone. None of this happens in a dramatic way, though; this is a reflective first-person narrative about Nancy trying to untangle the threads of herself �� as a mother, wife, therapist and, arguably (& controversially) most precious to her, as Adam’s lover.

Love After Love is just as beautifully written as I remember In My House being, the descriptions so precise (Nancy and Adam’s office is so vividly realised I felt like I’d been there), and incredibly well-controlled in its emotional weight. It’s also bold, because Nancy �� as a protagonist, as a narrator, as a person �� is such a tough nut to crack, so often withholding, sometimes seemingly even to herself. She’s not just secretive because she’s having an affair (although obviously, that’s part of it), but because that’s who she is: reluctant to let anyone, including the reader to whom she’s addressing this account, all the way in. It’s an unusual choice for a first-person narrative, which typically comes with a sense of built-in intimacy, and it’s exactly what made the book work so well for me. Nancy’s inscrutability is her characterisation, you’re meant to feel shut out.

This whole theme �� the ways people hide from themselves �� gets neatly reflected in Nancy’s therapy sessions with her client Marie, who at first insists she had a perfectly normal, happy upbringing before eventually cracking and admitting, flatly: I hated it as a child. All of it. All the time. It’s a pivotal moment not just because of what it tells us about Marie, but because it underlines so much about Nancy too �� what she’s refusing to face, what she’s unable to say out loud.

Certain scenes are charged with tension �� so much of this book is unbearably taut in a way I wasn’t expecting, especially considering how quiet and interior it is. A family party, a school talent show, an encounter with strangers in a bar; moments that feel loaded, like something is just about to tip over. And then there’s the ending, sombre and understated, giving you just enough to project whatever you want onto it. I loved it.

Not that I don’t have nitpicks. There are a lot of characters to keep track of in Nancy’s family (I was fine with the subplots about her children and brother, but do we really need all the aunts and uncles as well?). Some of the therapy sessions, if they unfolded exactly as written, would last about five minutes (should’ve been caught in edits), and the mechanics of the plot become a little too visible towards the end. But none of that really mattered to me because the book as a whole is just so good.

The writing reminded me of Louise Doughty in its elegance and emotional precision, with something of Katie Kitamura in all the layers of meaning. One of my standouts of the year so far.
]]> 213713197 A gut-punch novel of girlhood in early noughties Yorkshire from a blazing new voice.

Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.

But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They shared everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs and trips to the FP (Family Planning) when they’re late. Never mind that Rach is sceptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace �� their friendship as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.

Written in a Yorkshire dialect that brings a place and its people magnificently to life, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh takes you by the hand and drags you through Doncaster’s schoolyards, alleyways and nightclubs, bringing back the intimate treachery of adolescence and how we betray ourselves when we don’t trust our friends. Like The Glorious Heresies and Shuggie Bain, it tracks hard-edged lives and makes them sing, turning one overlooked and forgotten place into the very centre of the world.]]> 336 Colwill Brown 1529929520 Blair 5 We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, I ended up staying up all night to read it, hugely energised by the book, these girls already real to me. I knew straight away this was something very special. Since then, every time I’ve sat down to write about it I’ve baulked at doing so, unsure I would be able to capture what makes it so good. But here goes.

This is a novel about three girls from Doncaster, related, in its entirety, in its characters�� South Yorks dialect. In the first couple of chapters we’re introduced to the friendship between Rach, Kel and Shaz and the things that ripple out from it: love, envy, lust, resentment. The book follows them from childhood (in the late 90s) to their reunion in a future that looks nothing like any of them imagined (circa late 2010s). We meet them at various ages; still, it’s their teen years, their coming of age, that is the main focus.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is told as a series of stories, jumping time periods, jumping perspectives. Because of this, the characters become whole while in some senses remaining unknowable. We learn more about what makes Kel tick as an adult, whereas most of what we know of Rach is about her teen self. Meanwhile, Shaz �� who, in another’s hands, might seem the least likeable, or the most enigmatic, due to her defensiveness and her social status �� becomes the beating heart of the story. Some threads drawn through the book, like a crucial secret Shaz keeps from the others, don’t come to fruition until the very end. Others never do. This is a story about people, about lives that feel true, so there’s no neat plotting.

I’m going to talk about the use of dialect a bit more, because I really loved the accuracy of Brown’s writing here. Her characters correctly use wa �� was without the s �� rather than were (which is common in less careful renderings of Yorkshire accents). She writes intut and ont rather than into t��, on t��; the latter examples ring false because in speech, the last t is attached to the end of the preceding word and doesn’t stand alone as a harsh sound; it retains some of the shape of the. Indeed, sometimes it’s so soft it’s barely there; here Brown omits it, as in a phrase like down front path. Niche analysis aside (and I could keep going!), the dialect is important. It’s a bold move by Brown �� potentially divisive �� but it is essential to these characters�� story. The power of their narratives cannot be separated from the fact that it’s related in their own voices. If you think this story could be told without it, you’ve misunderstood what this book is.

These girls�� lives were not quite mine (my friends and I were older than these characters before sex, drugs and nightclubs entered the picture) but, you know, it’s still a story about working-class northern girls in the late 90s/early 00s. How could it not feel close to my heart? The details are specific enough to spark some long-dormant memories: prank calling the operator, ‘chuddy�� and ‘IDST��, a boyfriend referring to you as our lass. (And making ‘top ten�� lists of boys you fancied was something I’d long thought was unique to me and my friends. How did these things spread before the internet?)

I was so in love with the details and the voice(s) that it took until I was two-thirds of the way through to pick up on something else I loved about it: I never knew where any of these stories were going. When I broke off in the middle of a chapter, I didn’t know what I would find when I returned to the book. Apart from anything else, it’s exciting. Brilliant storytelling. If I have one small criticism it would actually be that I’m not keen on the title, which reads as whimsical and twee next to the blunt poetry of the narration.

Coming-of-age stories about working-class people from nowhere towns are so often about getting out, but what happens when you don’t? Or when you have to come back? I loved that Brown envisions lives for these women that bring them home; their horizons may not expand in the way they’d hoped, but they’re not small, never that. The narrative is really good at being both compassionate and down to earth (for example, it’s sensitive to topics like chronic illness without making characters think or speak in ways unrealistic for them). I think there is also something here about how a working-class upbringing shapes you forever no matter how your life pans out later �� again underlining why we keep coming back to the characters as teens. I haven’t read anything else like this book, so the best I can do for a comparison is: take the raucous energy of a ‘girls fucking up�� story, say Animals, and give it the fierceness, authenticity and political slant of an Ironopolis. Shaz, Rach and Kel are so vivid and alive in my heart that I can’t quite believe they aren’t real people. Glorious. Devastating.

I received an advance review copy of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh from the publisher through .]]> 4.35 2025
author: Colwill Brown
name: Blair
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves: 2025-release, past-and-present, first-novels, edelweiss, read-on-kindle, recent-favourites
review:
The day I started reading We Pretty Pieces of Flesh, I ended up staying up all night to read it, hugely energised by the book, these girls already real to me. I knew straight away this was something very special. Since then, every time I’ve sat down to write about it I’ve baulked at doing so, unsure I would be able to capture what makes it so good. But here goes.

This is a novel about three girls from Doncaster, related, in its entirety, in its characters�� South Yorks dialect. In the first couple of chapters we’re introduced to the friendship between Rach, Kel and Shaz and the things that ripple out from it: love, envy, lust, resentment. The book follows them from childhood (in the late 90s) to their reunion in a future that looks nothing like any of them imagined (circa late 2010s). We meet them at various ages; still, it’s their teen years, their coming of age, that is the main focus.

We Pretty Pieces of Flesh is told as a series of stories, jumping time periods, jumping perspectives. Because of this, the characters become whole while in some senses remaining unknowable. We learn more about what makes Kel tick as an adult, whereas most of what we know of Rach is about her teen self. Meanwhile, Shaz �� who, in another’s hands, might seem the least likeable, or the most enigmatic, due to her defensiveness and her social status �� becomes the beating heart of the story. Some threads drawn through the book, like a crucial secret Shaz keeps from the others, don’t come to fruition until the very end. Others never do. This is a story about people, about lives that feel true, so there’s no neat plotting.

I’m going to talk about the use of dialect a bit more, because I really loved the accuracy of Brown’s writing here. Her characters correctly use wa �� was without the s �� rather than were (which is common in less careful renderings of Yorkshire accents). She writes intut and ont rather than into t��, on t��; the latter examples ring false because in speech, the last t is attached to the end of the preceding word and doesn’t stand alone as a harsh sound; it retains some of the shape of the. Indeed, sometimes it’s so soft it’s barely there; here Brown omits it, as in a phrase like down front path. Niche analysis aside (and I could keep going!), the dialect is important. It’s a bold move by Brown �� potentially divisive �� but it is essential to these characters�� story. The power of their narratives cannot be separated from the fact that it’s related in their own voices. If you think this story could be told without it, you’ve misunderstood what this book is.

These girls�� lives were not quite mine (my friends and I were older than these characters before sex, drugs and nightclubs entered the picture) but, you know, it’s still a story about working-class northern girls in the late 90s/early 00s. How could it not feel close to my heart? The details are specific enough to spark some long-dormant memories: prank calling the operator, ‘chuddy�� and ‘IDST��, a boyfriend referring to you as our lass. (And making ‘top ten�� lists of boys you fancied was something I’d long thought was unique to me and my friends. How did these things spread before the internet?)

I was so in love with the details and the voice(s) that it took until I was two-thirds of the way through to pick up on something else I loved about it: I never knew where any of these stories were going. When I broke off in the middle of a chapter, I didn’t know what I would find when I returned to the book. Apart from anything else, it’s exciting. Brilliant storytelling. If I have one small criticism it would actually be that I’m not keen on the title, which reads as whimsical and twee next to the blunt poetry of the narration.

Coming-of-age stories about working-class people from nowhere towns are so often about getting out, but what happens when you don’t? Or when you have to come back? I loved that Brown envisions lives for these women that bring them home; their horizons may not expand in the way they’d hoped, but they’re not small, never that. The narrative is really good at being both compassionate and down to earth (for example, it’s sensitive to topics like chronic illness without making characters think or speak in ways unrealistic for them). I think there is also something here about how a working-class upbringing shapes you forever no matter how your life pans out later �� again underlining why we keep coming back to the characters as teens. I haven’t read anything else like this book, so the best I can do for a comparison is: take the raucous energy of a ‘girls fucking up�� story, say Animals, and give it the fierceness, authenticity and political slant of an Ironopolis. Shaz, Rach and Kel are so vivid and alive in my heart that I can’t quite believe they aren’t real people. Glorious. Devastating.

I received an advance review copy of We Pretty Pieces of Flesh from the publisher through .
]]> 219876693 HE ALWAYS COMES FOR YOU��

Leo is just trying to catch his train back home to the village of Malacstone in North East England. But there’s disorder at the station, and when a loud young man heading for London boards the train accidentally, a usually easy journey descends into darkness and chaos. The train soon breaks down in the middle of nowhere, and as night falls, something...or someone steps out of the distance. Is it a man or something far more sinister?
When one of the passengers goes missing, Leo fears that a folkloric tale whispered to him in childhood might be the culprit.
(Don’t) Call Mum blends Matt Wesolowski’s trademark voice of mystery, folklore and humour in this heart-racing tale.]]> 93 Matt Wesolowski Blair 4 really hard not to think about the Gangral, a childhood horror story that still freaks him out. Then the weirdness escalates: a doppelganger, a phantom phone, the kind of creeping dread that Wesolowski does so well.

(Don’t) Call Mum is part of Wild Hunt Books�� , a new series promising ‘novellas from authors based in the North of England and who are also engaging with the North as setting, subject and character��. Keeping the story almost entirely on the train works brilliantly �� it’s claustrophobic, eerie, the definition of a liminal space �� the perfect setting for a slow slide into the surreal. Wesolowski’s talent for invented folklore is on full display, and the choice to stay in Leo’s perspective is a smart one: not only does it amp up the paranoia, but it exposes his own insecurities and prejudices along the way. Great stuff, can’t wait to see where the series goes next.

I received an advance review copy of (Don’t) Call Mum from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books.]]> 4.34
author: Matt Wesolowski
name: Blair
average rating: 4.34
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/04
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: 2025-release, contemporary, ghosts-and-horror, other-review-copy, read-on-kindle
review:
Leo, a postgrad with a chip on his shoulder, is dragging himself back to his Northern hometown on one of those Sprinter trains (if you know, you know). The journey is exactly as miserable as you’d expect: endless delays, an insufferable fellow passenger and, possibly, something weird lurking outside in the dark. Leo’s trying really hard not to think about the Gangral, a childhood horror story that still freaks him out. Then the weirdness escalates: a doppelganger, a phantom phone, the kind of creeping dread that Wesolowski does so well.

(Don’t) Call Mum is part of Wild Hunt Books�� , a new series promising ‘novellas from authors based in the North of England and who are also engaging with the North as setting, subject and character��. Keeping the story almost entirely on the train works brilliantly �� it’s claustrophobic, eerie, the definition of a liminal space �� the perfect setting for a slow slide into the surreal. Wesolowski’s talent for invented folklore is on full display, and the choice to stay in Leo’s perspective is a smart one: not only does it amp up the paranoia, but it exposes his own insecurities and prejudices along the way. Great stuff, can’t wait to see where the series goes next.

I received an advance review copy of (Don’t) Call Mum from the publisher, Wild Hunt Books.
]]> 220951614
As Bird tries to work out who exactly is on her trail, she must also decide who - if anyone - she can trust. Is her greatest fear that she will be hunted down, or that she will never be found?]]> 368 Louise Doughty Blair 4 A Bird in Winter wastes no time pulling you in. It opens with a woman walking out of a meeting and immediately going on the run, her actions so precise it’s obvious they’re planned and rehearsed. There’s no context, no exposition, just the sudden urgency of escape. It’s an unusual structure �� following the main character’s flight while knowing little about why it’s happening or even who she is �� and it’s to Doughty’s credit that it’s instantly gripping. Once the story got its teeth into me, I read huge chunks without even looking up.

After the initial exhilarating stretch of action, the frame expands to show us more about the woman �� Heather, a long-time employee of British intelligence, aka ‘the Service��. Having spent most of her life in a secretive admin role, she now believes she’s been betrayed, although the exact nature of this betrayal takes time to come into focus. The story unfolds in two main strands: Heather’s frantic escape, and the reflective process of piecing together how she got here. It’s a very thoughtful type of espionage novel. Stretches of it are riveting, while others are slow, and it’s driven far more by character than plot.

Eventually, we get to know a lot about Heather, although I would still have liked to know more. Her friendship with Flavia, an army colleague, is particularly intriguing, not least because it seems somewhat one-sided; as we never see any other perspective, it’s hard to judge. Perhaps Doughty really does mean us to believe they have a deep and unusual bond, but to me it seemed more likely Flavia was just a generally warm and passionate person �� the ‘everyone’s best mate�� type we’ve all met at some point �� with Heather, whose life (necessarily) lacks close connections, overstating their relationship. This raises the question: how much of Heather’s perspective can we trust? Doughty doesn’t go out of her way to frame Heather as an unreliable narrator, but it’s something I kept circling back to.

As a latecomer to Doughty’s fiction, and having only read Apple Tree Yard a few months ago, I couldn’t help comparing Heather to Yvonne (who is, of course, a classically unreliable narrator). They could almost be alternate versions of the same person: an extremely capable and professional middle-aged woman who, for all her intelligence, has a certain naivety when it comes to personal relationships. Both protagonists share a tendency to fantasise that made me deeply sceptical of what they tell us. The structure �� a narrator looking back to figure out where they went wrong �� is similar too. And both books involve an affair that sends everything off the rails. None of this is exactly a problem, although I do think ATY is the stronger book.

This one’s been rattling around in my brain since I finished it, and I’m still not sure I’ve fully settled on how I feel about all of it. Which is probably a good sign. Some books hit hardest after you put them down, and this feels like one that would be especially rewarding on a reread.]]> 3.83 2023
author: Louise Doughty
name: Blair
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/02/14
shelves: 2023-release, contemporary, read-on-kindle
review:
A Bird in Winter wastes no time pulling you in. It opens with a woman walking out of a meeting and immediately going on the run, her actions so precise it’s obvious they’re planned and rehearsed. There’s no context, no exposition, just the sudden urgency of escape. It’s an unusual structure �� following the main character’s flight while knowing little about why it’s happening or even who she is �� and it’s to Doughty’s credit that it’s instantly gripping. Once the story got its teeth into me, I read huge chunks without even looking up.

After the initial exhilarating stretch of action, the frame expands to show us more about the woman �� Heather, a long-time employee of British intelligence, aka ‘the Service��. Having spent most of her life in a secretive admin role, she now believes she’s been betrayed, although the exact nature of this betrayal takes time to come into focus. The story unfolds in two main strands: Heather’s frantic escape, and the reflective process of piecing together how she got here. It’s a very thoughtful type of espionage novel. Stretches of it are riveting, while others are slow, and it’s driven far more by character than plot.

Eventually, we get to know a lot about Heather, although I would still have liked to know more. Her friendship with Flavia, an army colleague, is particularly intriguing, not least because it seems somewhat one-sided; as we never see any other perspective, it’s hard to judge. Perhaps Doughty really does mean us to believe they have a deep and unusual bond, but to me it seemed more likely Flavia was just a generally warm and passionate person �� the ‘everyone’s best mate�� type we’ve all met at some point �� with Heather, whose life (necessarily) lacks close connections, overstating their relationship. This raises the question: how much of Heather’s perspective can we trust? Doughty doesn’t go out of her way to frame Heather as an unreliable narrator, but it’s something I kept circling back to.

As a latecomer to Doughty’s fiction, and having only read Apple Tree Yard a few months ago, I couldn’t help comparing Heather to Yvonne (who is, of course, a classically unreliable narrator). They could almost be alternate versions of the same person: an extremely capable and professional middle-aged woman who, for all her intelligence, has a certain naivety when it comes to personal relationships. Both protagonists share a tendency to fantasise that made me deeply sceptical of what they tell us. The structure �� a narrator looking back to figure out where they went wrong �� is similar too. And both books involve an affair that sends everything off the rails. None of this is exactly a problem, although I do think ATY is the stronger book.

This one’s been rattling around in my brain since I finished it, and I’m still not sure I’ve fully settled on how I feel about all of it. Which is probably a good sign. Some books hit hardest after you put them down, and this feels like one that would be especially rewarding on a reread.
]]> 209284659 The complete critical companion to AMC’s Emmy- and Golden Globe–nominated series Better Call Saul from the author of Breaking Bad 101 and The Sopranos Sessions

Across six critically acclaimed seasons, Better Call Saul surprised audiences and subverted Breaking Bad fans�� expectations for what a prequel/sequel series could be. Bob Odenkirk reprised his role as the morally compromised defensive attorney and revealed the tragic and inevitable downfall of Jimmy McGill, a small-time con artist with big dreams and even bigger schemes. Audiences were introduced to now iconic characters, including Rhea Seahorn’s Kim and Michael McKean’s Chuck, as well as villains like Tony Dalton’s Lalo, who rivaled Breaking Bad’s most sinister creations. In Saul Goodman v. Jimmy The Better Call Saul Critical Companion collects chief TV critic at Rolling Stone Alan Sepinwall’s critical essays on every episode of the Emmy- and Golden Globe–nominated series. Sepinwall covered Better Call Saul from start to finish, and conducted exhaustive interviews with creator Vince Gilligan and stars Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seahorn, reproduced here alongside new interviews with series cocreator Peter Gould. Timed to the 10th anniversary of the first season, this ultimate companion book, and follow-up to Breaking Bad 101, serves as a guide to the series�� greatness and place in pop-culture history as fan’s kickoff celebratory rewatches and new fans discover the series for the first time.]]> 320 Alan Sepinwall Blair 0 may-read 4.38
author: Alan Sepinwall
name: Blair
average rating: 4.38
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 20197357 194 David Szalay Blair 4
In 1948, Aleksandr is sent to Metelyev Log, ‘a sort of hospital��, to assess the aforementioned pianist, Yudin, who was shot in the head and is now unable to remember anything beyond a few scraps of childhood. While there, Aleksandr stays with a doctor, Lozovsky. Years later, his loyalty to the state causes him to turn on Lozovsky, who refuses to sign Yudin over to the authorities and is consequently accused of anti-communist sentiment and, ultimately, imprisoned. In the aftermath, Aleksandr starts spending time with Lozovsky’s wife, Nadezhda. Their affair is emotional rather than physical in nature, but it’s enough to demolish Aleksandr’s marriage.

A couple of thriller-like threads �� the Yudin thing, the revelation that Lozovsky published an incendiary book under a pseudonym �� come to little. It’s sparsely written, switching between first and second person, which mostly works (although a couple of stylistic choices grated on me �� why does Aleksandr switch from addressing his brother to his ex-wife halfway through?) The overall effect is contemplative and quietly haunting. ]]> 3.17 2009
author: David Szalay
name: Blair
average rating: 3.17
book published: 2009
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/30
date added: 2025/02/13
shelves: 2000s-release, historical, russia, read-on-kindle
review:
(3.5) I wanted to try something by Szalay, and although this seems to be his least-known, lowest-rated novel, the setting �� mid-20th-century Russia �� appealed to me. It’s not the book I thought I was getting when I read the first chapter (a mystery about a pianist who might be faking brain damage). Instead, it’s about the choices the protagonist, Aleksandr, makes to survive in a police state, and how they affect his life and relationships.

In 1948, Aleksandr is sent to Metelyev Log, ‘a sort of hospital��, to assess the aforementioned pianist, Yudin, who was shot in the head and is now unable to remember anything beyond a few scraps of childhood. While there, Aleksandr stays with a doctor, Lozovsky. Years later, his loyalty to the state causes him to turn on Lozovsky, who refuses to sign Yudin over to the authorities and is consequently accused of anti-communist sentiment and, ultimately, imprisoned. In the aftermath, Aleksandr starts spending time with Lozovsky’s wife, Nadezhda. Their affair is emotional rather than physical in nature, but it’s enough to demolish Aleksandr’s marriage.

A couple of thriller-like threads �� the Yudin thing, the revelation that Lozovsky published an incendiary book under a pseudonym �� come to little. It’s sparsely written, switching between first and second person, which mostly works (although a couple of stylistic choices grated on me �� why does Aleksandr switch from addressing his brother to his ex-wife halfway through?) The overall effect is contemplative and quietly haunting.
]]> 25493491
It is perhaps the finest art collection of its kind, acquired through a lifetime of sacrifice - but when a dealer comes to see it, he finds something quite unexpected, and is drawn into a peculiar deception of the collector himself...

Stefan Zweig was a wildly popular writer of compelling short fiction: in this collection there are peaks of extraordinary emotion, stories of all that is human crushed by the movements of history, of letters that fill a young heart or drive a person towards death, of obsession and desire. They will stay with the reader for ever.]]> 385 Stefan Zweig Blair 0 may-read 4.60 1929
author: Stefan Zweig
name: Blair
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1929
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/12
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 57687640
Or so the story goes. In truth, no one has ever seen the supposed Duncan Tape, presumably because it doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost story perpetuated on the forums and chat rooms of the internet, another handful of bytes scattered across the Information Superhighway at blistering 56K modem speeds.

For Robby and his friends, an urban legend is the last thing on their minds when a boring Friday night presents a chance to download porn. But the short clip they watch turns out to be something far more graphic and disturbing, and in the coming days, they’ll learn even the most outlandish urban legends possess a shred of truth…]]> 83 Todd Keisling Blair 0 did-not-finish 3.67 2020
author: Todd Keisling
name: Blair
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 75630697 An alternative cover edition for this ASIN can be found here.

On the edge of the Antarctic Circle, in the years after World War One, a steamship approaches a desolate island, far from all shipping lanes. On board is a young man on his way to assume the post of weather observer, to live in solitude for a year at the end of the earth. But on shore he finds no trace of the man whom he has been sent to replace, instead just a deranged castaway who has witnessed a horror he refuses to name. The rest is woods, a deserted cabin, rocks, silence, and the surrounding sea. Then night begins to fall...]]> 241 Albert Sánchez Piñol 1847676200 Blair 0 did-not-finish 3.33 2002
author: Albert Sánchez Piñol
name: Blair
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2002
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/10
shelves: did-not-finish
review:

]]> 213209133
Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared.

Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw.

And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered, and as Jake races to discover who, or what she is, she has already made her next choice.

But will knowing her secret be enough to stop her?]]> 352 Susan Barker Blair 4 Old Soul, in which a teacher finds he has something very unusual in common with a woman he meets on a trip to Osaka. From this first scene onwards, this book is utterly compelling. It switches between a continuing narrative �� titled ‘Badlands�� �� and a series of testimonies that almost act as self-contained short stories. The latter are connected by the presence of Jake, the teacher from the first chapter, who goes all over the world in search of them. Together, these entwined narratives slowly paint a picture of the character at the book’s heart: a woman who takes on many guises, an immortal, the ‘old soul�� of the title, a dangerous and unknowable creature. In spite of all that, this isn’t a story with a clear-cut villain. As I read, I frequently found my sympathies shifting.

There are definite similarities to Barker’s earlier novel The Incarnations, which also follows a centuries-old character with many different faces, but this is clearly the superior product �� slicker and impeccably paced, so unbearably tense I was constantly tempted to skip ahead because I just needed to find out where it was going next. (I tended to enjoy the testimonies most, but ‘Badlands�� is electric with suspense, like a taut wire pulled through the middle of the book.) It reminded me of The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, or even a supernatural version of Liz Nugent’s Skin Deep. I already want to read it again.

I received an advance review copy of Old Soul from the publisher through .]]> 3.88 2025
author: Susan Barker
name: Blair
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/14
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: 2025-release, ghosts-and-horror, past-and-present, netgalley, read-on-kindle
review:
I was instantly mesmerised by the opening chapter of Old Soul, in which a teacher finds he has something very unusual in common with a woman he meets on a trip to Osaka. From this first scene onwards, this book is utterly compelling. It switches between a continuing narrative �� titled ‘Badlands�� �� and a series of testimonies that almost act as self-contained short stories. The latter are connected by the presence of Jake, the teacher from the first chapter, who goes all over the world in search of them. Together, these entwined narratives slowly paint a picture of the character at the book’s heart: a woman who takes on many guises, an immortal, the ‘old soul�� of the title, a dangerous and unknowable creature. In spite of all that, this isn’t a story with a clear-cut villain. As I read, I frequently found my sympathies shifting.

There are definite similarities to Barker’s earlier novel The Incarnations, which also follows a centuries-old character with many different faces, but this is clearly the superior product �� slicker and impeccably paced, so unbearably tense I was constantly tempted to skip ahead because I just needed to find out where it was going next. (I tended to enjoy the testimonies most, but ‘Badlands�� is electric with suspense, like a taut wire pulled through the middle of the book.) It reminded me of The Gilda Stories by Jewelle Gomez, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, or even a supernatural version of Liz Nugent’s Skin Deep. I already want to read it again.

I received an advance review copy of Old Soul from the publisher through .
]]> 59763160 Girl in the Walls), Charles Austin Muir (Slippery When Metastasized), Jo Quenell (The Mud Ballad), Brendan Vidito (Nightmares in Ecstasy), and Sam Richard (Sabbath of the Fox-Devils) each bring you their own disturbing vision of what lurks in the darkness of your local movie theater.

Not gonna lie, this shit is a lot darker than we thought it would be.

Make sure to grab some popcorn...]]> 161 Sam Richard 1951658205 Blair 0 may-read 5.00 2021
author: Sam Richard
name: Blair
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 16631 Steppenwolf is a poetical self-portrait of a man who felt himself to be half-human and half-wolf. This Faust-like and magical story is evidence of Hesse's searching philosophy and extraordinary sense of humanity as he tells of the humanization of a middle-aged misanthrope. Yet his novel can also be seen as a plea for rigorous self-examination and an indictment of the intellectual hypocrisy of the period. As Hesse himself remarked, "Of all my books Steppenwolf is the one that was more often and more violently misunderstood than any of the others".]]> 256 Hermann Hesse 0140282580 Blair 2 4.15 1927
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Blair
average rating: 4.15
book published: 1927
rating: 2
read at: 2025/02/01
date added: 2025/02/01
shelves: 1920s-30s-release, classics, translated, contemporary
review:

]]> 214906962 A murderous aunt, strangely gifted children and witchcraft come together in Camilla Bruce’s new intensely dark adult Gothic fairytale. For fans of Catriona Ward and C.J. Cooke

‘All the elegance and all the venom of one of E.Nesbit’s supernatural stories served with a side of arsenic.�� Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House

The dead won’t stay silent forever��

Clara Woods has a secret. At the bottom of the garden is a flowerbed, long overgrown, where her murdered husband rests in peace �� or so she always thought. Then the girls arrived.

Lily and Violet, her adolescent nieces, are recently orphaned and in urgent need of care. Raising teenagers is certainly not what Clara had envisioned for herself, but they come with a hefty sum attached.

There is only one both girls are untrained witches. Lily can literally see how people feel. And young Violet can see the dead man wandering at the bottom of the garden. In fact, she can see all the dead and call them back.

Soon, Clara finds herself surrounded by apparitions �� and two girls who know far more about her dark past than they should. A war is waging in this house, and only one side can win��

'Theatrical and deliciously dark, this book is pure magic' A.J. West, author of The Spirit Engineer

'One gorgeously morbid gothic novel that's just as gleeful as it is gashlycrumb.' Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters]]> 384 Camilla Bruce 0861549937 Blair 3 The Canterville Ghost than The Turn of the Screw �� and the joke wears thin after a while. While Aunt Clara is cartoonish in her villainy, the girls are so dull and smug that I found myself rooting for Clara anyway (at least she’s entertaining), and the ghosts�� antics are repetitive. Once the setup is established, which happens early on, there’s only so much that can be done with it. The ending is a letdown too; I was hoping for a ghoulish twist. Good as undemanding fun, a bit disappointing as a spooky season pick, and not a patch on Bruce’s You Let Me In.

I received an advance review copy of At the Bottom of the Garden from the publisher through .]]> 3.88 2025
author: Camilla Bruce
name: Blair
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2024/09/25
date added: 2025/01/30
shelves: 2025-release, edelweiss, ghosts-and-horror, historical, read-on-kindle
review:
Camilla Bruce’s fifth novel is a light-hearted supernatural confection about a conniving woman’s battle of wits with her wily nieces. Clara Woods is a social-climbing, diamond-loving widow who’s quietly delighted when her wealthier half-brother dies, leaving her in charge of his daughters. She assumes their fortune will now be hers, but it turns out to be locked away until they’re older �� plus the girls are rather savvier than anticipated, and come with strange and unexpected abilities (Lily can sense people’s true emotions; Violet can talk to the dead). This wasn’t the creepy gothic novel I was expecting, but rather a horror-comedy �� more The Canterville Ghost than The Turn of the Screw �� and the joke wears thin after a while. While Aunt Clara is cartoonish in her villainy, the girls are so dull and smug that I found myself rooting for Clara anyway (at least she’s entertaining), and the ghosts�� antics are repetitive. Once the setup is established, which happens early on, there’s only so much that can be done with it. The ending is a letdown too; I was hoping for a ghoulish twist. Good as undemanding fun, a bit disappointing as a spooky season pick, and not a patch on Bruce’s You Let Me In.

I received an advance review copy of At the Bottom of the Garden from the publisher through .
]]> 37540019 The Other Passenger (1944), Keir Cross demonstrates that he deserves a place alongside those authors as a writer of highly original and effective macabre tales.

With a wide range of themes and styles, ranging from traditional ghost stories to contes cruels, black humor, tales of dark fantasy and surreal nightmare, and perhaps the best story about a ventriloquist and his dummy ever written, there are stories here to suit the tastes of any connoisseur of horror and weird fiction.

This first unabridged edition of Keir Cross’s landmark collection in over 70 years includes a new introduction by J. F. Norris.]]> 260 John Keir Cross Blair 0 dipped-in 3.88 1944
author: John Keir Cross
name: Blair
average rating: 3.88
book published: 1944
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves: dipped-in
review:

]]> 223880233 WHEN YOU’RE LIVING A LIE, YOU FIND IT’S BEST TO AVOID CLOSE ATTACHMENTS��

Lynch, a burned out con-artist, arrives, broke, in London, trying not to dwell on the mistakes that got him there. When he bumps into Bobbie, a rehab-bound heiress - and when she briefly mistakes him for her missing brother - Lynch senses the opportunity, as well as the danger��

Bobbie’s brother, Heydon, was a troubled young man. Five years ago, he walked out of the family home and never went back. His car was found parked on a bridge overlooking the Thames, in the early hours of the same morning. Unsettled by Bobbie’s story, and suffering from a rare attack of conscience, Lynch tries to back off.

But when Bobbie leaves for rehab the following day, he finds himself drawn to her luxurious family home, and into a meeting with her mother, the formidable Miranda. Seeing the same resemblance that her daughter did, Miranda proposes she hire Lynch to assume her son’s identity, in a last-ditch effort to try and flush out his killer.

As Lynch begins to impersonate him, dark forces are lured out of the shadows, and he realises too late that Heydon wasn’t paranoid at all. Someone was watching his every move, and they’ll kill to keep it a secret.

For the first time, Lynch is in a life or death situation he can’t lie his way out of.]]> 384 Joseph Knox Blair 3 True Crime Story, this worked much better for me on audio than on the page, partly because it allowed me to get past the dull opening chapters and into the meat of the story. There’s a whole section in the middle where Imposter Syndrome turns into a weird gangstalking conspiracy thriller. This is great: with a madcap clue-chasing quest through London and characters called things like Vincent Control and Gym Morrison, it remined me of Ned Beauman’s Glow mixed with Erin Kelly’s The Ties That Bind. Unfortunately, the stuff that pads it out at the beginning and end is much less engaging. I couldn’t summon up any investment in either Lynch (a character left purposely blank) or the Pierce family. I wasn’t surprised by the double twist, not really because I’d anticipated it, but because I just didn’t care. I had some fun with this, in the same way I have fun watching Netflix thriller miniseries that look good but don’t really make sense.]]> 3.33 2024
author: Joseph Knox
name: Blair
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/24
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 2024-release, audiobook, mystery-thriller-etc, contemporary
review:
Knox is great at narrating his own books �� just like True Crime Story, this worked much better for me on audio than on the page, partly because it allowed me to get past the dull opening chapters and into the meat of the story. There’s a whole section in the middle where Imposter Syndrome turns into a weird gangstalking conspiracy thriller. This is great: with a madcap clue-chasing quest through London and characters called things like Vincent Control and Gym Morrison, it remined me of Ned Beauman’s Glow mixed with Erin Kelly’s The Ties That Bind. Unfortunately, the stuff that pads it out at the beginning and end is much less engaging. I couldn’t summon up any investment in either Lynch (a character left purposely blank) or the Pierce family. I wasn’t surprised by the double twist, not really because I’d anticipated it, but because I just didn’t care. I had some fun with this, in the same way I have fun watching Netflix thriller miniseries that look good but don’t really make sense.
]]> 567678
The Wasp Factory is a work of horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all. A novel of extraordinary originality, imagination and comic ferocity.]]> 184 Iain Banks 0684853159 Blair 4 We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Patrick McGrath’s Spider and a little bit of American Psycho. Frank is a peculiar, solitary teenager who lives on an island with his eccentric father. He claims to be a triple murderer and is obsessed with performing bizarre experiments, many of which involve living creatures, including the titular ‘Wasp Factory��, which he uses as a form of divination. The inciting incident of the novel, however, is not any of this but the news that Frank’s even more disturbed brother Eric has ‘escaped�� and is heading back to the island. It’s an unrelentingly dark story that is also uproarious at times, a strong streak of madcap humour running through it. There’s an odd twist in the tale �� though not the one I expected. Also one of those books it’s interesting to read in a joining-the-dots kind of way: I can now see it its influence in plenty of others (Lesley Glaister’s Honour Thy Father and Grace McCleen’s The Offering being two that spring to mind).]]> 3.78 1984
author: Iain Banks
name: Blair
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1984
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/26
shelves: 1980s-release, dark-character-study, first-novels, read-on-kindle, contemporary
review:
Iain Banks�� weird, sadistic debut is what you might get if you crossed We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Patrick McGrath’s Spider and a little bit of American Psycho. Frank is a peculiar, solitary teenager who lives on an island with his eccentric father. He claims to be a triple murderer and is obsessed with performing bizarre experiments, many of which involve living creatures, including the titular ‘Wasp Factory��, which he uses as a form of divination. The inciting incident of the novel, however, is not any of this but the news that Frank’s even more disturbed brother Eric has ‘escaped�� and is heading back to the island. It’s an unrelentingly dark story that is also uproarious at times, a strong streak of madcap humour running through it. There’s an odd twist in the tale �� though not the one I expected. Also one of those books it’s interesting to read in a joining-the-dots kind of way: I can now see it its influence in plenty of others (Lesley Glaister’s Honour Thy Father and Grace McCleen’s The Offering being two that spring to mind).
]]> 223959868
A Little Luck is the story about the debilitating weight of lies, the messy line between bravery and cowardice, and the tragedies, big and small, that can ripple out from a single decisive event. In a place she had determined to forget forever, both anticipated encounters and unanticipated revelations show her, and us, that sometimes life is neither fate nor chance: perhaps it’s nothing more than a little luck.]]> 194 Claudia Piñeiro 1913867560 Blair 0 may-read 4.25 2015
author: Claudia Piñeiro
name: Blair
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 60553693
Hiruko soon makes new friends to join her in her travels searching for anyone who can still speak her mother tongue: Knut, a graduate student in linguistics, who is fascinated by her Panska; Akash, an Indian man who lives as a woman, wearing a red sari; Nanook, an Eskimo from Greenland, first mistaken as another refugee from the land of sushi; and Nora, who works at the Karl Marx House in Trier. All these characters take turns narrating chapters, which feature an umami cooking competition; a dead whale; an ultra- nationalist named Breivik; Kakuzo robots; uranium; and an Andalusian bull fight. Episodic, vividly imagined and mesmerising, Scattered All Over the Earth is another sui generis masterwork by Yoko Tawada.]]> 261 Yōko Tawada 1783789042 Blair 0 may-read 3.15 2018
author: Yōko Tawada
name: Blair
average rating: 3.15
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 58302387 "The scorpion hunts while the rest of us dream. That's why he knows all the secrets of the world."

It's 1981 in Sacramento and 13-year-old Lorena Saenz has just been paired with Jenny Stallworth for the science fair by a well-meaning teacher hoping to unite two girls from starkly different worlds. The unlikely friendship they form will draw their families into a web of secrets and lies, one that sends Lorena on an unforgiving odyssey through the desert, past the gates of a religious cult in Mexico, and into the dark heart of America's criminal justice system.

A sweeping social novel, All the Secrets of the World introduces readers to a cast of indelible characters while illuminating the moment in our national history when the call for law and order became the dominant force within our public life. For fans of both Little Fires Everywhere and Breaking Bad, Steve Almond's long-awaited debut novel is a propulsive tour de force--the sheer scope, moral complexities, and piercing insights mark a writer at the height of his powers.]]> 416 Steve Almond 1638930031 Blair 0 may-read 4.28 2022
author: Steve Almond
name: Blair
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: may-read
review:

]]> 24798724 368 Steve Stern Blair 0 may-read 4.23 2015
author: Steve Stern
name: Blair
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves: may-read
review:

]]>