Come and escape from the world in some great books!
Stories can sense happiness and snuff it out like a candle. I have a certain weakness in my reading, and that is fairytales. Fairytales that cleave to the dark and unnerving quality of pre-Disney versions. Fairytales which are anything but children's stories. Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is one of my favourite books and a… Continue reading Book Review: Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado
“Hate is loud, but I think you'll learn it's because it's only a few people shouting, desperate to be heard. You might not ever be able to change their minds, but so long as your remember you're not alone, you will overcome.” You know what it is like where there is a book that you… Continue reading Book Review: The House In The Cerulean Sea, T. J. Klune
“Our weakness doesn’t make us weak. Our weakness makes us strong. For we had to carry it all these years.” How Sanderson churns out these tomes so quickly, I am not sure. But he does and he rarely disappoints: all the pleasure of a Marvel movie, a popcorn novel. Not a guilty pleasure - no… Continue reading Book Review: Rhythm of War, Brandon Sanderson
“They don’t disappear, the dead. It’d be easier if they did. I can see her so clearly. If she walked up those steps now, part of me wouldn’t be surprised. She was such a vivid person.” This fifth installment of Robert Galbraith's - yes, we all know it is J. K. Rowling - offers up… Continue reading Book Review: Troubled Blood, Robert Galbraith
“The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel,” “But then, what constituted real? Wasn’t everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?” Kate Atkinson is such a pleasure to read! Human and emotional, thoughtful and smart at the same time. Whether it be detective fiction in… Continue reading Transcription, Kate Atkinson
“The morning has turned lavishly beautiful. The autumn sun gave the greens of the fields an impossible, mythic radiance and transformed the back roads into light-muddled paths where a goblin with a fiddle, or a pretty maiden with a basket, could be waiting around every game and-bramble bend. Cal is in no mood to appreciate… Continue reading The Searcher, Tana French
“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
“Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.” How do you review a book like Gideon the Ninth? It is a book that I loved! But it is also a book that has many flaws, alongside all those elements that rightly deserve praise. A book that gloriously refuses to… Continue reading Book Review: Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
“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
For a novel so deeply deeply contemporary, there is a timelessness about Smith's writing and prose, accentuated by the interplay of ideas and characters between the four novels in the Quartet. These are luminous books that recognise and celebrate the presence of the past in the present.
All it would take - so I believed - was one ruler willing to allow people of different faiths to live alongside one another without persecution, and surely they would begin to recognise that their common humanity superseded the division they had been taught to fear? The Tudor period does hold such a firm and… Continue reading Execution, S. J. Parris
“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?
Aleja is a dreamer who longs for a life of magic and adventure. So when a mysterious ship arrives in her Spanish harbour city, crewed by a band of ruthless women, Aleja knows it's sailed right out of a legend.And it wants her.But life aboard the Ship of Shadows is more than even she bargained for. It will… Continue reading The Ship of Shadows, Maria Kuzniar
I remember seeing Daisy on the dance floor one night at the Whisky. Everybody saw her. Your eye went right to her. If the rest of the world was silver, Daisy was gold.
Anthony Horowitz... creator of Alex Rider and Christopher Foyle, writer for Midsomer Murders from its inception, trusted with the legacy of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. If you were ever looking for a safe pair of hands for a light-hearted, entertaining detective novel, Anthony Horowitz is it! His two recent (currently unconnected but very similar)… Continue reading Moonflower Murders, Anthony Horowitz
For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family
Aeons passed… worlds span and whirled… Time was motionless… It stood still - it passed through a thousand ages… No, it was only a minute or so… Two people were standing looking down on a dead man…
So much more than a "black Bridget Jones"
It does look like this blog has become a Natasha Pulley fanclub recently! Some of that has been catching up with my reviews, amd I have been reading other people - in fact, this is the first of three reviews needing to be written so I had better get on with it - but if… Continue reading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, Natasha Pulley
Who wouldn't fancy a jaunt out into the wilderness in these days of social isolation and lockdowns? And the jungles and mountains of darkest Peru - I'm sorry, but Peru is forever linked to Paddington Bear and Aunt Lucy for me - retain a mystery and a mystique even today. Imagining ourselves in 1859, heading… Continue reading The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley
At first glance, this novel appeared to be treading familiar ground: the gaslit streets of a fogbound London, hanson cabs, Fenian plots. One expects to be run down by Sherlock Holmes at any moment whenever Thaniel Steepleton ventures outside. Yet, from the outset, Pulley's novel bursts with a lively prose and wry narrative voice which… Continue reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
“All you can do, Rosemary — all any of us can do — is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play. And what I see in you is a woman who has a clear idea of what she wants to be... You’re trying to be someone good.”
“We used to live out there, among the stars,” he whispered. “That’s where we belong, not in those caverns. The kids who make fun of you, they’re trapped on this rock. Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock. Set your sights on something higher. Something more grand.”
“It’s about to be gay DEFCON five in this administration. For God’s sake, put some clothes on.”
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
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