A gripping twisty little thriller set in a evocative - if underused - location and populated by a range of deeply unpleasant characters, one of whom doesn't survive much beyond the opening scene!
Book Review: Murder on Lake Garda, Tom Hindle
Category: Star Rating
Book Review: Maurice and Maralyn, Sophie Elmhirst
An eminently readable and accessible account of an extraordinary experience, rendered with clarity and precision; for me, however, it seemed to sacrifice the drama and horror of the events.
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Book Review: The Mars House, Natasha Pulley
A tender and sweet story that is in part a political thriller, in part a romance, set on Mars in the near future in which the kindest characters have the most objectionable politics. As a political commentary it was, for me, not unproblematic; as a character-driven romance, it was tender.
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Book Review: Prophet Song, Paul Lynch
"Prophet Song" is a chilling and propulsive novel set in an Ireland turning towards tyranny. When Eilish's husband, a trade unionist, disappears, she is faced with terrifying choices in a society unraveling into oppression and civil war. As she fights to save her family, the novel offers a devastating and deeply human portrait of a country at the brink of war.
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Book Review: Impossible Creatures, Katherine Rundell
A technically fascinating account as Burnet adopts the different voices of his two protagonists as they invent and reinvent and lose their own identities; the reading experience was rather let down but how unlikeable those characters were.
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Book Review: Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir
An incredibly engaging science fiction romp and buddy narrative, so replete in energy, enthusiasm and charm that we can forgive the occasional absurd plot premise and the meagre characterisation.
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Book Review: Lords of Uncreation, Adrian Tchaikovsky
A rewarding conclusion to a great series that plumbs the depths of unspace whilst remaining tethered in the real as well: each of our main Vulture God crew had their specific role to play and came into their powers in a deeply satisfying way.
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Book Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty
A fantastically enjoyable romp through the medieval Middle East with swashbuckling pirate queens, demons and djinni, giant squid and rapacious magically enhanced Europeans. A great, thrilling yarn!
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Book Review: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss [Re-Read]
Whilst this is still, certainly, a masterclass in world building and an intriguing narrative and a great read. However, am I still convinced that this is, as Amazon declares a "lyrical fantasy masterpiece" on a re-read?
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Book Review: Trespasses, Louise Kennedy
An incredible depiction of the sectarian violence and divisions in Belfast during the heights of the Troubles in the 1970s, and the ways in which people found the chance to connect despite that context...
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Book Review: Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver
Whilst this is a shoe-in for all the literary prizes of the year - there is no doubting its profundity and energy, its anger and its literary mastery - I found it an incredibly challenging read, piling unrelenting misery upon misery on young Demon's shoulders, robbing him of every joy or success or moment of peace, with only the incredible power of the narrative voice to stave off the bleakness.
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Book Review: The Murderbot Diaries, Martha Wells
A genuinely fun set of science fiction reads, featuring convincing world building and very capable plotting is elevated by a unique and compelling narrative voice in our favourite SecUnit: dangerous, compassionate, distant, a little obsessive and more than a touch neurodivergent.
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Book Review: Children of Paradise, Camilla Grudova
This is an extraordinary and very strange and elegiacal novel, a nightmarish phantasm of a read: it celebrates classic cinema and its creativity and originality; it lambasts the homogenised sanitised experience of modern cinema; it is cruelly loving of its characters and almost lyrical in its palpable sense of decay. This was unlike anything that I have read in a while...
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Book Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
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.
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Book Review: Birnam Wood, Eleanor Catton
Another wonderful gripping novel from Eleanor Catton. Populated with intriguing characters, powerful ideas and incredibly long sentences, this novel is a little like a tapestry: it draws threads from Shakespeare, thrillers, climate change, politics and weaves them together to make something new and unsettling.
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Book Review: The Twist of a Knife, Anthony Horowitz
Another thoroughly enjoyable criminal romp for Anthony Horowitz and the enigmatic Daniel Hawthorne, uncovering the murderer of a vicious theatre critic before Horowitz is re-arrested for the crime.
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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: Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
A highly entertaining and enjoyable read retelling Medusa's story, told with Haynes' trademark wit, erudition and caustic humour - although I wonder whether I come away from the book having learned anything new...
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Book Review: Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
My first Austen for an age - and I'm not sure I ever read this one - has revealed itself to be delightful: genuinely funny and literate with a well fleshed out protagonist and a surprisingly knowing and assured narrative voice - for a novel written when the author was but 28.
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Book Review: A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon
A fantastic romp through a richly imagined world filled with warrior mages, queens and empresses, dragons and knights, Shannon's characters are as fleshed out and convincing as the apocalypse that is visited on their world.
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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 Cloisters by Katy Hays
A book the teems with potential - an academic setting within a gothic museum, an unreliable narrator, intense relationships within the scholars, murder, tarot - and yet it somehow fell a little flat and slow.
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Book Review: The Library of the Dead, T. L. Huchu
A gripping and fast-moving young adult alternative-reality fantasy novel with really effective world building, a (somewhat precocious) thoroughly engaging protagonist and a well-crafted plot. Comparisons with the Rivers of London series are both inevitable and, in general terms, justified.
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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: The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, Janice Hallett
Another slippery little thriller with everything you would expect from Janice Hallett: an epistolary format using messages, emails, transcripts and, here, extracts from fictionalised accounts of events; vivid characters brought to life through their own (unreliable) voices, a twisty plot. A great, fun read to see the new year in with.
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
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