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.
Category: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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...
Book Review: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
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.
Book Review: The Twist of a Knife, Anthony Horowitz
Book Review: Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes
Book Review: Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Book Review: A Day of Fallen Night, Samantha Shannon
Book Review: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, Shehan Karunatilaka
Book Review: The Library of the Dead, T. L. Huchu
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.
Book Review: When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro
Book Review: The Bullet That Missed, Richard Osman
A cosy series that just seems to get cosier and more tightly plotted with each entry: the warm and close world of Cooper's Chase and its inhabitants is as charming as ever; the vagaries of old age and dementia is explored with tenderness and insight; the decade old murder that propels this novel and the underworld that complicates it are all well balanced, and charming.
Book Review: Small Things Like These, Claire Keegan
Book Review: Nevermoor, The Trials of Morrigan Crow, Jessica Townsend
Book Review: Woman Eating, Claire Kohda
Book Review: Case Study, Graeme Macrae Burnet
Book Review: Oh William! Elizabeth Strout
Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband - and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters,… Continue reading Book Review: Oh William! Elizabeth Strout
Book Review: Unraveller, Frances Hardinge
In a world where anyone can cast a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them. Kellen does not fully understand his unique gift, but helps those who are cursed, like his friend Nettle who was trapped in the body of a bird for years. She is now Kellen's constant companion and… Continue reading Book Review: Unraveller, Frances Hardinge
Book Review: The Paper Palace, Miranda Cowley Helller
On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below 'The Paper Palace'—her family's holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her… Continue reading Book Review: The Paper Palace, Miranda Cowley Helller
Book Review: A Kind of Spark, Elle McNicholl
Ever since Ms. Murphy told us about the witch trials that happened centuries ago right here in Juniper, I can't stop thinking about them. Those people weren't magic. They were like me. Different like me.I'm autistic. I see things that others do not. I hear sounds that they can ignore. And sometimes I feel things… Continue reading Book Review: A Kind of Spark, Elle McNicholl
Book Review: Big Sky, Kate Atkinson
Jackson Brodie has relocated to a quiet seaside village in North Yorkshire, in the occasional company of his recalcitrant teenage son Nathan and ageing Labrador Dido, both at the discretion of his former partner Julia. It’s a picturesque setting, but there’s something darker lurking behind the scenes.Jackson’s current job, gathering proof of an unfaithful husband… Continue reading Book Review: Big Sky, Kate Atkinson
Book Review: Real Tigers, Mick Herron
Slough House is the Intelligence Service outpost for failed spies called the 'slow horses'. One of them, Catherine Standish, knows that chance encounters never happen to spooks.She's worked in the Intelligence Service long enough to understand treachery, double-dealing and stabbing in the back. What she doesn't know is why anyone would target her: a recovering… Continue reading Book Review: Real Tigers, Mick Herron
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
Book Review: The Half-Life of Valery K, Natasha Pulley
In 1963, in a Siberian prison, former nuclear specialist Valery Kolkhanov has mastered what it takes to survive: the right connections to the guards for access to food and cigarettes, the right pair of warm boots, and the right attitude toward the small pleasures of life so he won't go insane. But one day, all… Continue reading Book Review: The Half-Life of Valery K, Natasha Pulley
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