en-US Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:25:22 -0700 60 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg ReadStatus9237516249 Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:25:22 -0700 /review/show/7438958994 Cari is currently reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
]]> Review6679729045 Thu, 27 Mar 2025 00:23:24 -0700 /review/show/6679729045 Cari gave 3 stars to The Last Devil to Die (Thursday Murder Club, #4) by Richard Osman
]]> Review7089023230 Mon, 10 Feb 2025 23:18:06 -0800 /review/show/7089023230 Cari gave 3 stars to Shrines of Gaiety (Paperback) by Kate Atkinson
I enjoyed this. It's fun and witty and romps along at a fair old pace. But it does all feel like a romp, something Atkinson wrote because she had a good old wheeze of an idea and fancied mucking around with it. The characters are all roaring cliches, and nothing in the plot (such as it is) has any real sense of depth or jeopardy. The narrative technique of chopping the timeline about and leaving a development unfinished until that POV character rolls around again grew old PDQ as well. ]]> Review7055887749 Thu, 12 Dec 2024 01:07:27 -0800 /review/show/7055887749 Cari gave 2 stars to The Fell (Paperback) by Sarah Moss
Kate can't possibly bear the thought of two weeks covid self-isolation in her country cottage with her teenage lad and inability to think of anything besides her own needs, so she buggers off up into the Peak District hills and promptly falls off a rock, snapping every bone in her body and forcing a major search and rescue attempt. The Fell puts you in her whiny stream of consciousness, alongside that of her son, neighbour, and a random bloke on the Mountain Rescue team who seems to feature for no real reason whatsoever. And I really do mean stream of consciousness. This is a 184 page book that contains about 6 commas (okay, slight exaggeration, though not by much.) The prose might think it's doing something dead clever as it meanders and skips from one thought to the next but my gods, it's an absolute pain in the arse to read. Kate is one of those insufferable, self-justifying Karen-types who goes out for a walk because "no one will catch covid from me in the fierce wind up on the fells" missing the point that that wasn't the bloody point. The bloody point was, something might happen to you and then you're taking up a hospital bed that the NHS cannot afford to spare right now.
So yeah, if you want to rage and slog your way through unpunctuated prose, this is a great book. Otherwise, don't bother.
PS - I've walked these hills for years and no one, not a single person, not once, has ever called them "The fells." Lake District, yes. Peak District, nope. I guess The Boggy Hill just didn't have the same ring to it. ]]> Review5809247532 Wed, 04 Dec 2024 00:01:43 -0800 /review/show/5809247532 Cari gave 4 stars to Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2) by Leigh Bardugo
Threequel me now!

I am stupidly happy this is not the end for Alex Stern and her rag-tag bunch of buddies. This book wasn't at all what I expected it to be and it was all the better for it. A summary is just going to sound like nonsense, so suffice to say, I really liked where the characters ended up (Darlington is much more fun to be around these days), I really liked how eerie and genuinely creepy it was in places, Alex is still the anti-heroine I need in my life, and that last chapter was just fab.

ETA. Just as good the second time around. I honestly can't believe this is the same author who wrote the utter dirge of The Familiar. ]]> Review6064673195 Wed, 09 Oct 2024 23:56:34 -0700 /review/show/6064673195 Cari gave 2 stars to The Familiar (Hardcover) by Leigh Bardugo
It pains me to say this, but it's been a while since I've been this bored by a book. Anyone looking for the sparky dark humour of Ninth House and Hell Bent is going to be sorely disappointed by this tale of magic in the Spanish Golden Age (I have no idea about the history here, it's all Inquisition and religion and men doing shitty things.) The biggest trial is getting through the story and its lumbering prose - everyone seems to have a quadruple-barrel Spanish name which slows the whole thing down when they're repeated ad infinitum - and the plot meanders through a series of set pieces that never form a coherent whole. On occasion, the story sparks to life (there's a great scene where Luzia accidentally tears a man apart) but these occasions are few and far between and they're nowhere near enough to hold the interest through almost 400 pages. Devastating because I was so looking forward to this. ]]> Review6704348628 Fri, 13 Sep 2024 08:33:13 -0700 /review/show/6704348628 Cari gave 4 stars to Demon Copperhead (Paperback) by Barbara Kingsolver
I enjoyed this, but I never fell in love with it and I honestly don't know why because it's beautifully written. It's a book I'm glad I read but it's one I'll never reread, and it never stuck with me from one day to the next, urging me to pick it up again.
3.5 rounded up. ]]> ReadStatus8312842156 Wed, 21 Aug 2024 08:28:15 -0700 /review/show/6778620047 Cari wants to read We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
]]> ReadStatus8206893751 Fri, 26 Jul 2024 13:16:30 -0700 /review/show/6704348628 Cari is currently reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
]]> ReadStatus8172414057 Wed, 17 Jul 2024 23:10:43 -0700 /review/show/6679729045 Cari wants to read The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
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