Beth

3.5.

This is a domestic drama set in contemporary Ghana that follows the marriage of Afi to Eli Ganyos. This marriage is much more complicated than most however and you feel for Afi and the sticky situations she finds herself in. I did however find Afi a very empowering character. While things happened to her, she actively challenged them and didn't allow herself the less confrontational happier ending.

I love novels that focus on close intimate relationships like marriages or familial bonds so this book was always going to be a hit with me. This is along a very similar genre line to An American Marriage by Tayari Jones so if you enjoyed that you will certainly enjoy this book. Similarly to that novel it plays around with the traditional structure of a marriage and leaves you feeling like the sanctity of marriage has let the characters down, more than there being bad and good guys in the marriage. A very strong debut and I cannot wait to see what this author will write in the future.

Thanks to the author Peace Adzo Medie, Oneworld Publications and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

A very strong collection! Angela Carter writes so beautifully and I loved the visceral nature of her storytelling. I think listening to this on audiobook however dampened my reading experience and made it harder for me to lose myself in the individual stories. I think I will re read this collection in a physical format at some stage as I think I will really enjoy it when I have the time to devour it in one sitting. Overall though I though this was a fascinating and well crafted short story collection that intertwines themes of femininity, hunger, desire and lust and turns common fairy tales on their heads!

I am not really a fan of self help. Some of the concepts in here were reasonable but I couldn't connect with the parable and I found some gaping holes in its logic. Over all a lovely simplistic idea but with no practical relevancy. This book does not provide a full proof plan to sort your life out and adapt to change as advertised. It simply regurgitates some rather badly worded cliche lines about finding success by visualising it. I was made to read this by my sister and I was not impressed.

This book is full of juxtapositions. One minute it is steamy. The next it is disturbing. Soul destroying and then epically poignant. The characters constantly straddle a line between shame and acceptance, desire and disgust, expression and repression.

Vivek Oji is a a gay man who likes to wear drag and lives in contemporary Nigeria where just being gay is a death wish. Against all odds he manages to hide his secret and his sexuality from his parents but comes out to his friends and his cousin who agree to keep his secret. But his blissful bubble bursts and somewhat inevitably we start the novel with his death.

This started of as a slow burn but by chapter three, I was engrossed. Following a mystery set up of who killed Vivek and why? We traverse time periods, from Vivek's childhood, to his death and then from the perspectives of his loved ones, particularly his cousin following his death. These time periods are not chronological so we only get all the pieces of the puzzle at the end of the novel which I found satisfying and compelling.

This book will haunt me for a while. The sadness imbued as a reader by knowing and accepting Vivek's identity but knowing the Nigerian community never would, is painful. The pseudo sexual incestual relationship between the two cousins also made for extremely uncomfortable reading. I loved both characters and wanted them to be happy in their own skin but found their familial and sexual feelings for one another disturbing.

This story is complex and the relationships between characters are gnarly and deeply hidden. Emezi is an extremely talented storyteller and this novel is well layered and multifaceted. Vivek will stay with me. An incandescent character. I am very impressed with this novel and will be going back and reading this authors other works. A sweeping and bittersweet story of love and loss.

Thanks to Faber and Faber, the author and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This novel was completely different from Homegoing, the authors debut. But it was equally as impressive. This novel follows Gifty, raised by Ghanaian parents in Alabama, Texas. This is a very understated, slow novel that muses on a plethora of topics such as addition issues, the opioid crisis in the US in particular, the religious vs scientific debate, racism in the US, mental illness and the complexity of familial relationships. Gifty thrusts herself into the scientific world of neuroscience and spends the majority of the novel hiding away in her university laboratory, experimenting on lab rats. She socially isolates herself from people and from her formative years being raised in a very religious upbringing by hiding herself in the security of science. I found the emotional losses in her life and her need to protect herself from others as a result very interesting. I also found the themes raised in this book and the beautiful way Yaa Gyasi was able to write about them incredibly remarkable and it made for a stunning, highly impactful reading experience.

Thanks to the author Yaa Gyasi, Penguin UK and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This was a powerfully politically charged novel. This story follows three main characters in contemporary India. Lovely a transgender female aspiring to be an actress, PT Sir a P.E teacher aspiring to work in politics and Jivan a poor young girl living in the slums suddenly accused of being recruited by terrorists. Through twists and turns of fate these three characters and their narratives become intertwined and that makes up the bulk of the plot.

I found this story incredibly poignant and sad. But very of these current times we are living in politically, with the rise of social media and news media and its influences on the public and public opinion. There is lots of rich material within this book to unpack. But also the short and snappy chapters make this book a pleasure to fly through. This book deals with hard hitting subject material but writes about it in such a compelling and propulsive way. An incredibly addictive and impressive debut.

Thanks to the author Megha Majumdar, Simon and Schuster and NetGalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was short but impactful. This book is clearly designed for young adults and children and is a tool to start a discussion on some wider and deeper topics. I prefer reads that are more text based and go into more detail and plot but I can appreciate what the purpose of this book is.The illustrations were brilliant and the narrative heartfelt.

Considering this isn't often regarded as Alice Feeney's strongest work, I was incredibly impressed. This had a cast of characters who were all unreliable and anyone of them could have been the Blackdown murderer. I had a few people I thought it could be but the final reveal of the murderer was a surprise to me. This was sharp and propulsive and while it follows young teenage girls and the repercussions of their actions when they were 16 into adulthood. It was so much more interesting than it sounds and I couldn't stop flipping pages. However I will warn people that there are some gritty and dark places explored in this book. Some physical and psychological cruelties played out, I wasn't expecting and some people might find distressing. However it added a grittier level to the thriller plot line that I found intriguing to read about.

3.5

My expectation of this novel was that it was a chunky thriller. In reality this is much grittier. Set in Philadelphia, Michaela a female street cop who works the rough streets and slums of Philadelphia is working a murder investigation alongside, trying to find out what has happened to her sister who seems to have disappeared. Her sister Kacey is a heroin and opioid user and Michaela hasn't seen her on the streets in a while. They have a somewhat estranged relationship but when there are signs that female drug users are being targeted in the area and it looks like there is a murderer on the loose, Michaela is terrified her sister might become the next victim.

This is a very drawn out slow paced novel. It had its own gritty harsh tone to it that I don't think will appeal to everyone but I found very intriguing. These characters felt more flawed and therefore more endearing than usual stock caricatures used in police procedural style novels. But this book certainly isn't plot heavy so don't go into this book expecting plot twists or high drama. I really enjoyed the nuances of this novel and it's commentary on abuses of the police, America's opioid crisis and the treatment of sex workers.

Thanks to Liz Moore, Random House UK and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is a superb and intriguing novel. The concepts and musings around the preservation of the written word in the face of a dystopian world in which books are destroyed is fascinatingly and incitefull . This book packs a lot of punch in such a short space of time and therefore I believe I can only adequately glean the best out of this book after a re-read. I love the premise and the idea of this dystopian world. I loved the description of fire and the poetic beauty of literature. I loved the character of Clarissa and wish there had been more of her brilliance sprinkled within the narrative. I loved the faulted and conflicted character of Gus. I was blown away by Bradbury's predictions around headphones and television technology. I loved the influence of history and historical repression of the written world in Stalin's Russia and Hitlers Germany. The only reason this novel isn't gifted the 5 stars I believe Bradbury deserves for this beautiful and haunting novel is that I felt I missed an utter connection with this book at the time of reading. This may be due to reading this book in instalments or the fact I wasn't fully immersed in the story but I lacked the gut reaction of adoration for this novel that I felt reading slaughterhouse 5 and brave new world. I hope and wish however that upon re reading this book I can glean the 5 star beauty of this book. It's an incredible story and I am so happy I have finally got round to reading it! A 4/ 4.5 star read for me.

On the surface this book looks like a conventional mystery set up with a holiday/vacation angle. A teenager goes missing on her Caribbean holiday. What happened to her? But this book traverses so much more than the core mystery. Each of the different elements of the story cleverly propel the narrative forward.

I loved the multiple different character perspectives we were given from both minor and major players in the narrative. I loved the descriptions of the fictional Saint X island. I found Clairey's character (the young sister of the missing girl) really absorbing and her impressive imaginings of her sisters experiences and life before her disappearance were very sad but also very captivating.

This is a book that delves deeply into intimate relationships between friends, siblings and addresses more broadly the relationship between western tourists and the destinations they visit. It gives a commentary on how tourism provides economic opportunities for people living in tourist destination countries but it has an exploitative nature.

Overall a brilliant book and well worth a read. The ending brought it all together satisfyingly.

Thanks to the author Alexis Schaitkin, Picador and Netgalley for a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

2.5/3 stars. I loved the concept of this story and loved the fantasy elements. But I found the execution so frustrating and disappointing. The last third of the book seriously needed to be re worked. Up until we got the diary of Zachary's friend Kat, I was on board. But after that it just lost me I am afraid! I wanted to love this book. But the last third undid all the enjoyment that I had been building up to earlier in the book.

This book had such a strong start. I was already familiar with the plot line of this novel and the twist at the end as I had watched the film a good few years back. The first section of the novel that focuses on the pi the main protagonists childhood memories in India blew me away. I also liked that this section also presented pi's present life with his family in Canada. I enjoyed the bits in which the narrator interviews Pi Patel and discovers his wife and his children alongside gaining the wider story from pi of how he survived his ordeal in the Pacific. This section was beautifully written. I also really enjoyed the style and lyrical deliverance of Martel's writing within this section. Unfortunately, the rest of the novel was a continuous disappointment. The middle section which was the biggest segment of the book was a rather dry and tedious blow by blow account of pi's survival in a lifeboat stranded at sea. While it sounds insensitive, a detailed description of pi dissecting fish and turtles and building a raft don't provide the most riveting of pieces for a reader. I had to skim read through most of this section as it proved rather tiresome and repetitive. Then the endings big reveal seemed to lack the shock and horror and emotional revelation I remembered from the film. I found the revelation of the animals being symbolic of his fellow survivors and himself rather hollow and the reveal lacked the big crescendo I had anticipated. Overall Yann Martel is an incredibly talented writer and this book was an original concept and an intriguing idea . However the survival elements of this novel left me unengaged and frustrated and the reveal didn't give me the feels I really wanted. So for that reason, unfortunately this novel sits between a 3 and a 3.5 stars for me.

4/4.5. Really reminded me of the Virgin Suicides.

4.5

While this book didn't have a structured narrative and lacked focus, it provides a rather interesting and transparent viewpoint of the UK's current prison service. It raises some really relevant issues surrounding the faults within our current prison system. This book also contacts some harrowing incidents and I applaud Samworth for his openness and honesty in expressing his psychological demise while working as a prison officer which lead him to leave the profession due to being diagnosed with PTSD. This book however lacked a wider point of focus and I found the end chapter a rather idealised and oversimplified proposal of an improvement for the prison service issues. This book is clearly not written by an author but it provides a reader with an invaluable and authentic fly on the wall expose of the current prison system and allows the British public to be privy to the way in which the prison service is being let down by the lack of training, poor recruitment drives and not providing P.O's with the mental support they need while on the job. A valuable and informative read but without the academic and thought out craftsmanship of a journalist/ academic/ non-fiction author.

I will need to go back and read the rotters club and the closed circle now!

Between a 3.5/4 out of 5 star reads. I was intrigued by the two different paths that Irina's life could end up. Some elements of the alternative lives I didn't feel were realistic but overall I felt Shriver creates realistic, raw and honest alternative lives for Irina. Some mirroring of scenarios and repeated sentences within the text was rather tedious but overall I was emotionally engaged with Irina's story and her romantic engagements to both Ramsey and Lawrence. This book could have been slightly shorter and I think the structure of this novel is limited as a style. However I think the characters will stay with me long after finishing this book and I will mull over which path she should have chosen for some time to come. And doesn't that say all it needs to about Shriver's skill as a writer?

Wow. This is probably the wildest thing I have ever read. I couldn't stop reading it. I cannot stop thinking about it. This blew my little socks off!

4.5. A love letter to Savannah, Georgia with a host of eccentric misfit characters. While murder and scandal were themes that jumped off the pages. This was not a gory true crime non fiction but a narrative non fiction , that was as much about the history of Savannah and the incredible characters of its inhabitants. While some of the residents had questionable intentions and morals they certainly made fascinating characters to put in a book!

A 4.5/4.8 star read. Only just missed out on a 5 star rating for me as I didn't have a gut reflex 5 star response. Deeply haunting and startlingly relevant read. A disturbing dystopian novel (but when is a dystopian ever anything but disturbing right?). A must read for any Feminists. Atwood writes beautiful prose and has a wickedly vivid imagination. It's a world that you become immersed and invested in. A must read novel for not just Atwood and dystopian fans but anyone who wants to read a multi-layered story that provokes many questions around morality and ethics.

Upon finishing this book I am emotionally very conflicted. I started reading this book with such gusto and was so immersed and invested in Connell and Marianne's complicated relationship. However the very end of the book took on a sour note and presented the relationship between the two as problematic. The ambiguous ending did nothing to resolve my issues with their relationship.I feel that both characters have much deeper issues that they need to separately address away from each other's toxic influence. The fact that Connell's power over Marianne is meant to be seen as charming or romantic is very peculiar to me. I think the way Connell treats Marianne and his lack of empathy for her feelings is certainly not very endearing and I feel that most things that didn't sit well with me about the book didn't get resolved. However I loved Sally Rooney's writing style and the fact she could weave such an intriguing story from two young people and their relationship is something to be applauded and praised. Sally Rooney has so much promise as a writer but I didn't feel fully convinced by this novel and so I am settling on a rating of 3.5/ 4 stars.

I've unfortunately had to DNF this book. I expected this to have some interesting true case stories or anecdotes. However in reality this book describes the process of criminal law in cripplingly tedious detail. It was very hard to follow and enjoy on audiobook. And after listening to this audio book for four hours and not enjoying it, I decided that enough was enough unfortunately!