A thoroughly entertaining and engaging tale of friendship which, whilst I enjoyed the reading experience, does not quite justify the social media hype that it has received.
Book Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
Category: Race
Book Review: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires, Grady Hendrix
A fun vampire novel whose setting was one of its strongest features, divided between middle class white suburbs and poor black communities; it built tension well in the first half but revelled a little too much in visceral body horror to the point where it became inadvertently funny.
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Book Review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
A kaleidoscopic performance: a colourful, dizzying and disorientating exploration of the turmoil in Sri Lanka in the 1980s and 1990s, and our host for this exploration is the recently deceased Maali Almeida, "Photographer. Gambler. Slut."
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Book Review: The Trees, Percival Everett
A truly strange and disturbing novel, simultaneously horrific and hilarious, brutal and humane - a coruscating satire of American racial conflict and politics, embedded in both Trump's America and the lynching of Emmett Till in the 1955.
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Book Review: When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro
Occasionally brilliant, but somehow less satisfying than I would expect from an Ishiguro novel, When We Were Orphans explores familiar themes and characters but feels perhaps shackled by the weight of its own detective fiction baggage.
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Book Review: Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade his mind in the war. And one of humanity’s heroes now scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers.Eighty years ago, Earth was destroyed by an alien enemy. Many escaped, but millions more died. So mankind created enhanced humans such… Continue reading Book Review: Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky
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Book Review: The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Starr lives in two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she was born and raised and her posh high school in the suburbs. The uneasy balance between them is shattered when Starr is the only witness to the fatal shooting of her unarmed best friend, Khalil, by a police officer. Now what Starr says could… Continue reading Book Review: The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas
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Book Review: Build Your House Around My Body, Violet Kupersmith
1986: The teenage daughter of a wealthy Vietnamese family gets lost in an abandoned rubber plantation while fleeing her angry father, and is forever changed by the experience. 2011: Twenty-five years later, a young, unhappy Vietnamese-American disappears from her new home in Saigon without a trace.The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and… Continue reading Book Review: Build Your House Around My Body, Violet Kupersmith
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Book Review: Careless, Kirsty Capes
At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant.She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless.She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand.She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks.Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come… Continue reading Book Review: Careless, Kirsty Capes
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Book Review: The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi
Raised by a distant father and an understanding but overprotective mother, Vivek suffers disorienting blackouts, moments of disconnection between self and surroundings. As adolescence gives way to adulthood, Vivek finds solace in friendships with the warm, boisterous daughters of the Nigerwives, foreign-born women married to Nigerian men. But Vivek’s closest bond is with Osita, the… Continue reading Book Review: The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi
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Book Review: The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
As Kirabo enters her teens, questions begin to gnaw at her – questions which the adults in her life will do anything to ignore. Where is the mother she has never known? And why would she choose to leave her daughter behind? Inquisitive, headstrong, and unwilling to take no for an answer, Kirabo sets out… Continue reading Book Review: The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
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Book Review: The Mermaid of Black Conch, Monique Roffey
Near the island of Black Conch, a fisherman sings to himself while waiting for a catch. But David attracts a sea-dweller that he never expected - Aycayia, an innocent young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid.When American tourists capture Aycayia, David rescues her and vows to win her trust. Slowly, painfully,… Continue reading Book Review: The Mermaid of Black Conch, Monique Roffey
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Book Review: One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston
“But, you know, that feeling? When you wake up in the morning and you have somebody to think about? Somewhere for hope to go? It's good. Even when it's bad, it's good.” Synopsis For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love… Continue reading Book Review: One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston
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Book Review: Luster, Raven Leilani
“I’m an open book,” I say, thinking of all the men who have found it illegible.” Synopsis Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting.… Continue reading Book Review: Luster, Raven Leilani
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Mini Book Review: Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
When glamorous socialite Noemí Taboada receives a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging to be rescued from a mysterious doom, it's clear something is desperately amiss. Catalina has always had a flair for the dramatic, but her claims that her husband, Virgil Doyle, is poisoning her and her visions of restless ghosts seem remarkable,… Continue reading Mini Book Review: Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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Book Review: White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
“But then, maybe “I don’t believe in you” is the cruelest way to kill a monster.” Oyeyemi has been on my radar for a while, but has been languishing on my bookshelf for longer than she deserves. There were words and phrases connected to her which tantalised - fairy tale, gothic, ghost, unconventional - and… Continue reading Book Review: White is for Witching, Helen Oyeyemi
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Book Review: Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid
“I don't need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like... happens.” I have been holding fire on reviewing this book for a few weeks because it is a - a difficult, problematic novel in my view. A novel which is almost good, almost dealt with… Continue reading Book Review: Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid
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Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara
“Believe me,” the badshah says, “today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We… Continue reading Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara
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