Mandy

This hovers between 3.5 to 4 stars for me, but I'd round it up to 4. This started off pretty interesting with some low magic and slight supernatural powers, but then it quickly became a delectable page-turner with a deep mystery revolving around an isolated, cult-like community in the middle of nowhere, America.

We start off meeting Travis Wren, who is gifted with the power of seeing the memories of people when he touches an object that they used to own or had come into contact with recently. It's both a blessing and a curse for Travis, but he chooses to use his talents to help people locate missing friends and family. This time, he's on the trail of Maggie St. James, a children's author who had gone missed a few years prior. In following the ghostly after-images of Maggie St. James, Travis stumbles upon a community called Pastoral. We then hop years later into the perspective of married couple Theo and Calla who have built their lives in Pastoral. The community is isolated because they are afraid of a mysterious pox-like disease from the elm trees around them, that infects and kills anyone who wanders past their village borders. But Theo is persistently haunted by the thought of seeing what lies outside of Pastoral, especially after he stumbles upon a derelict and abandoned truck belonging to Travis Wren not far beyond their borders.

This book was just really exciting. Right from the get-go there were so many questions and tidbits that were dropped for the reader's benefit in solving the overarching mystery. Part One was the part that felt the longest, primarily because it was one huge, long chapter spanning 70+ ebook pages for me. Nevertheless, it was still interesting enough as we follow Travis's story, understand the powers he had, and find out about the way his powers have both wrecked his life but also given him the ability to bring salvation or closure to others. After that, Part Two and after all have amazingly short chapters which probably contribute to how fast-paced the book felt. I probably read 80% of it in one sitting and wasn't able to put it down until 5am when I finally finished it.

Our three main protagonists are Theo, Calla, and Calla's younger sister Bee, who had mysteriously lost her vision more than a decade ago as a teenager. This being a mystery, we don't actually have the chance for much character development. Theo and Calla just seemed to me like a regular married couple except that they're dealing with increasing suspicions about each other and also with this whole elm pox situation with Pastoral. Despite Theo and Calla being the primary movers and shakers in the mystery, I kinda feel that we actually got a lot more character development out of Bee. Being visually impaired, Bee is gifted with an almost supernatural way of sensing everything else. She moves through the world and senses people and things around her even better than sighted people would. She assists with the pregnancies and births in Pastoral by listening to fetal heartbeats and somehow determining the health of the fetus - basically a human stethoscope. She can even locate her sister Calla in a crowd, because she “smells like yellow and like sunshine”. Furthermore, because Bee is so introspective, we see a lot more about her thoughts, her life, her hopes and expectations, her emotions, etc. With Theo and Calla, it felt a bit flat in comparison.

Pastoral was also a really interesting concept. I don't usually like stories revolving around cults because they tend to be heavily based in some kind of Judeo-Christian tenets which I've just kinda lost interest in reading about at this point. Pastoral, though, doesn't seem to be based in any kind of religious values, so that already made it rather more refreshing to read about. Instead, the community is pretty nature-centric, believing that nature is both healing and destructive at the same time. When people wander too far from the village and are brought back, they are cleansed with a “ritual”. I won't spoil what exactly it entails, but the principle behind it is that the community believes strongly that the earth itself is able to heal the infectious pox. The irony is that they also believe the pox originates from the elm trees which stems from the earth.

Pastoral is also not as heavily militarized as some other cults I've read in other stories. People seem to be somewhat free to leave the community so it's not like a hostage situation, but choose not to because of their fear of the pox. The community have sometimes also welcomed new joiners who either stumble upon them accidentally or have intentionally sought them out, although it is mentioned that no new joiners have come for the past decade. The gates of Pastoral are lightly guarded with armed sentries (Theo being one of the night guards) but they seem to be merely keeping an eye out for any movement in or out of the community, which is extremely rare in the first place, rather than to shoot trespassers or defectors on sight.

The central mystery of the book is very compelling, kind of in parallel with the excerpts of the children's book authored by Maggie St. James, and revolving around the fate of Travis Wren and Maggie. I correctly guessed some parts of the solution but it was still a good enough development that I felt accomplished for managing to guess it out rather than disappointed that it had been predictable. Some spoilery thoughts on the ending and solution of the mystery: I had somehow, at about a 50% mark and on a limb, guessed that Theo was actually Travis and Calla was Maggie with false memories. I think I just figured that if Travis had been in the house and everything pointed to him still being in Pastoral, the easiest place for him to be is still to be in that house, i.e. be Theo. Plus, Bee kept talking about how the name of Travis Wren was so familiar but it was shrouded in her memory, there was such a big element of hidden memories which led me to that theory about Theo being Travis. I was suspecting some kind of mass hallucination because the rot can't be real. We already saw the outside world in Part One and there's no plague happening, so it was either that 1) there is a real rot but somehow only specifically infecting inhabitants of Pastoral, like perhaps a secret injection somewhere, or 2) the rot was an illusion somehow. I also kept wondering why Maggie's mother knew to point Travis in the direction of Pastoral and was glad that it was thoroughly addressed at the end of the book. Even though I guessed some of these correctly, I didn't feel disappointed because it felt earned. I felt like the author did a great job at sprinkling these hints right from the very beginning for readers to be able to make that conclusion, rather than having a deus ex machina or some completely off-the-wall solution right at the end. Things I didn't quite like about the ending: the fact that the antagonist really was Levi. He just felt like such an obvious choice right from the very beginning so I was hoping for a twist there. I also lol'ed a bit at how he kinda did that whole “villain unnecessarily explaining every single detail of their plot before failing to kill the hero” monologue with Bee at the end. I also wish the aftermath was a bit more fleshed out, it seemed a bit convenient that everybody would just happily go along with Bee's explanation and even though it had been a hypnotism thing, I think having been drummed with the same story and values for more than a decade might entrench a belief system much more deeply than was depicted here.

Overall though, a very very enjoyable mystery that really kept me going, “One more chapter. Just another chapter. I need to find out what's going on.” all the way to the end.

OK, this probably won't be much of a review because I pretty much just skimmed through 500 pages of this book.

I started skimming through because by about page 200, or around Chapter 20 or so, I was getting really bored. I'm usually extremely spoiler-sensitive, but this time I felt like I needed to know something to spur me on. So I just kinda skipped through huge chunks of the book to intentionally spoil myself about something to motivate myself to continue.

But nope, basically nothing new happened. So I just skimmed all the way to the end, and precious little has changed from the beginning.

I did, however, appreciate the characterisation of Vin. I don't think she had a ton of character growth in this instalment, but I like that she's both strong and vulnerable at the same time. I liked Sazed and his plotline. I was deliciously creeped out and on edge with Marsh and really wanted to know where his allegiances are going to lie.

But I think the problem with this book is that we get hooked by a lot of questions posed in the beginning, but nothing happens to resolve almost any of those big questions by the end. Such as who was the apparent spy or kandra amongst Vin's friends? Because I skimmed, I have no idea whether this was resolved or not but it seems that all the old hands are still well and alive and apparently not a spy - Ham, Dockson, Breeze, Clubs, Spook. So I can only assume that it was either not answered explicitly, or that it was resolved without taking any casualties from the band. What happened to Marsh? We don't know. He tried to kill Sazed but then got hammered (but non-fatally) over the head by Ham, and basically nothing happens. It seems like we're asked these big questions, we just uncover like 30% of the answer and the book ends that way.

Thankfully, I'm also reading Way of Kings at the same time by Sanderson. Although it's a 1000-page instalment of another series, there's something happening in every chapter. Not so much this one. I'm starting to think I just maybe gravitate towards Stormlight more than Mistborn.

3.5 stars. This was a serviceable enough mystery. It was pretty engaging while it lasted and had a pretty decent cast of characters. I just thought that the gimmick of it could've been better developed. The murder victim is our narrator Willowjean Parker's old friend from the circus she used to travel with before she left and found an alternative job as assistant to the detective Lillian Pentecost. Ruby Donner was hired by the circus for the number of tattoos she had inked on her body, but was discovered stabbed to death one night, and the only person with the biggest motive is the Russian knifethrower Val, who also happens to be Willow's mentor.

My issue with the gimmick of the story might be a spoilery so hidden under spoilers here: The title, “Murder Under Her Skin”, makes it sounds like Ruby's tattooes would play a big role in the resolution of the murder. Indeed, we do focus a lot on the various designs inked on Ruby's skin, especially since Will was offered the chance to dress her body for the funeral. In the end, there is only one clue to the murder tattooed on Ruby - the daisies on her chest, somehow alluding to a past pregnancy which only has a very, very slight connection to the bigger conspiracy that is unearthed at the end. For a book that pretty much references tattooing in its title, I would expect tattooes to play a much larger role somehow.

It was hard to rate this one. On one hand, it's a pretty solid mystery without being overly generic. On the other, it doesn't pack oomph-y plot twists that make a mystery truly hard to forget.

This was a pretty tight mystery and does raise the interesting question of: how do you deal with people who've almost certainly committed a crime but in a way that the justice system is unable to convict them?

For me, the standout part of this mystery is how it bounces off Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. There are plot elements that are very similar to the conclusion of that book (though it does not explicitly spoil that book), and if you've read it before, it feels like the book invites you to decide whether the mystery is going to play out in the same way or not, and if it will be different, in what ways? The book explicitly names Orient Express, Agatha Christie, and Hercule Poirot at least once each, so it's quite certainly trying to draw a connection to that.

Spoilery thoughts about that, spoiling both this book's ending as well as Murder on the Orient Express: The whole cast of suspects all had a hand in killing the victim on the Orient Express, and each of them had their own different reasons for wanting him dead. In this book, it's something similar where Hasunuma has made an enemy essentially out of this little clique of villagers frequenting Namiki-ya. But knowing Higashino, I felt like he wouldn't do a straight copy & paste from Orient Express, and would find a way to pull the rug out from under our feet. And indeed he does. I was satisfied with the ending overall. I was a little worried that we'd even remotely touch on the gross bits about possible sexual assaults (and one involving a child), but luckily we didn't. The only part that made me remotely uncomfortable was where Rumi confessed that Hasunuma blackmailed her into sleeping with him. *BARF*. Anyway, overall the mystery kept me going and I enjoyed it all.

Higashino remains my most read author in 2023 and for good reason. Would absolutely be reading more.

4.5 stars. The biggest questions that came to mind after reading this were: how is this not already a major movie franchise? Why isn't this a bigger thing in mainstream pop culture?

The Wizard of Earthsea feels like part-Tolkien and part-Enid Blyton. It tells about a precocious boy, known to most people as Sparrowhawk, who begins his tutelage under a mage after learning that he has a capacity for magical prowess that has rarely been seen. Pride, however, is Sparrowhawk's downfall and it unleashes a shadow that begins to hunt him down.

This is my first time reading Le Guin and, boy, people weren't kidding when they said her writing was beautiful. There's just something so whimsical and entrancing about the way she writes. It's reminiscent of Tolkien, except less dense and easier to follow - this is a book expressly written for teenagers after all.

This is surely a precedessor to modern icons like Name of the Wind and even Harry Potter. The magic system in this one places heavy emphasis on the concept of naming as a way to wield magic power over something or someone. To tell someone your true name is to show ultimate trust in them, for it gives them power over you. In Sparrowhawk's sojourn at the School for Wizards, we see an unexpected glimpse of the magic boarding-school element popularised by Rowling, complete with Masters (or teachers) and its principal, the Archmage, being one of the most powerful wizards in the world.

It's a simplified version of the common quest trope, but it is by no means watered down. While our hero is, as usual, powerful, precocious, and talented, he is not flawless. In fact, the entire driving force of the book is how the hero suffers a downfall, not from external circumstances like being thrown into the dumps by the villains, but because of his own internal flaws. He is brought down by his own youthful pride, the sense that he is invincible because he is both young and strong - something that I think a lot of teenagers can resonate with. The downfall triggers a domino effect, and Sparrowhawk is brought on a physical and mental journey that is so refreshing in its tenets and its eventual resolution.

Unlike so many popular books with a similar storyline, Le Guin's world doesn't harp on power, strength, and control. In fact, the most powerful wizards in this book preach about balance, empathy, and a lively appreciation for one's surroundings. Sparrowhawk's first and original teacher, Ogion, is almost monastic in the way he sits for hours in silence in the rain. One of Sparrowhawk's teachers in school advocates kindness to all living things, and not committing the usual human folly of thinking ourselves superior and apart from everything else in nature. It almost feels like we're learning about yin and yang, and zen.

From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not, and in later year he strove long to learn what can be learned, in silence, from eyes of animals, the flights of birds, the great slow gestures of trees.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of this book (and why this isn't a straight up 5 star review) is in its representation of female characters, something that I've read that Le Guin regretted in later life. Female characters in this book are absent, unimportant, incompetent, or malicious. Furthermore, it seems like the major systems of magic can only be practised by men. The magic-wielding females in this book are all witches, and it was implied multiple times throughout the story that witches' magic is inferior and frivolous compared to those practised by mages, wizards, and sorcerors - who are all men. Normally, this is something that might make or break a book for me, but after finding out about Le Guin's reflection about her writing, and also being bowled over by the rest of the book, this is probably something I could close one eye about, especially since Le Guin has since contributed a ton of feminist literature.

It's getting late so I'll just summarise this whole review in a short and simple line: If you love fantasy at all, this is absolutely a must-read.

Somewhere between 3.5 to 3.75. The premise of this one was really great, so many chaotic moving parts but it somehow came together in the end really nicely. We have Lan Tran, a donut-selling alien bringing her family to escape her war-torn planet. We have Shizuka Satomi, a violinist casually known as the Queen of Hell who has made a deal with the devil to send him seven souls in order to get her own back, and she's already done six. Then we have Katrina Nguyen, a trans female protagonist running away from a life of brutality, oppression, and exploitation because she also just so happens to be a prodigy with the violin.

Everything meshes together really well and the book has a lot of heart. It also has a very strong message against the repression and exploitation of queer people, especially those from the trans community. I support this message, but I also found that it was too on-the-nose here, and sometimes almost felt a bit didactic. But I acknowledge that perhaps this on-the-nose-ness is necessary in order to reach out and perhaps help some teens out there struggling the same way Katrina did, and to provide just that bit of encouragement and affirmation that they are seen, and that's great for them. Personally, it dampened my enjoyment a bit which is why my rating is the way it is, but hey, if this book does some good in the world, I'm all for it.

Maybe a 3.25/5 for me. I still enjoyed the world and the shenanigans we get up to in this one, but overall I found that story generally weaker than the first book. Hopefully this is just 2nd book syndrome or something.

We rejoin sigil agent Al MacBharrais on yet another adventure, but this time in Australia, as he helps an agent-in-training, Ya-Ping, track down her missing mentor and fellow sigil agent, Lin Shu-hua. He's joined, of course, by his hobgoblin Buck Foi, and then also by the Iron Druid, who now goes by Connor. The adventure quickly turns deadly, of course, with demons popping up committing brutal murders along a nature trail.

So... I usually listen to a lot of audiobooks and it's pretty crucial to my reading progress. For this book, however, I found that I wasn't able to keep up at all with the audiobook. I'm honestly conflicted with how I feel about the narrator, Luke Daniels, though - he's definitely not bad. It might even be because he's too performative that I found that I couldn't get into the audiobook. He does a great job performing the various accents in this book - beyond Scottish, we now also have Australian. Because the whole book is from the MaBharrais's perspective, the whole audiobook was read in a Scottish accent. I'm personally not used to listening to audiobooks with Scottish accents so I found that I simply could not, for the life of me, keep up. I had to slow down the audiobook a lot more than my usual speed in order to even understand what was happening. I also wasn't a fan of Daniels's interpretation of Buck Foi. Foi is definitely boisterous but Daniels performed him as perpetually boisterous, which got a little grating and tiring. He sounded a lot like an Austin Powers character all the time.

That aside, I also felt like the book lacked focus. Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for anything actually serious in these books - in fact, that's why I love the Iron Druid and now the Ink & Sigil series - because it's irreverent and doesn't take itself too seriously. But I also felt like most of the time I simply had no idea what was going on or why I should care. I did keep going however, because the action on hand was engaging enough, but I wasn't very invested in anything as a whole.

I also didn't like the involvement of the Iron Druid. I have nothing against him as a character, but I'm only 2 books into the Iron Druid series and I was going through this book perpetually afraid that I would get spoiled for something in the series. I'm not even sure if I did or not, probably because I'm not far in enough to know what counts as a spoiler and what doesn't. Nevertheless, if you're going to be writing a spin-off series that seems to be chronologically after another established and completed series, either declare very prominently that this series contains spoilers for another, or just don't include stories/characters from the other series so you don't accidentally spoil your readers.

Some spoilery thoughts: It was fine and dandy that the Morrigan showed up and swore Al and Buck to secrecy about her identity, but then it was really silly that she went about essentially tearing down her own disguise after that. I know she said she wasn't really adept at acting like an Australian woman but at some points she didn't even seem like she was trying, when she suggests to Ya-ping something about murdering men who dishonour them. Overall, although she was trying to keep her presence a secret from the Iron Druid, I felt like she was also trying her darnedest to expose herself.I guess perhaps the only thing that I really cared something about was the identity of Gladys Who Has Seen Some Shite. Her whole deal and how every god/goddess out there defers to her was really hilarious to watch, and it was one of the highlights of the book that I bothered to tell my husband about.

Despite all that though, I'm still invested enough in the series overall to want to continue on this and will put the next installment on my TBR.

OK, this was a pretty great and engaging read but it's also really complex that I can't even think of how to write a review. Like even writing a review requires some mental bandwidth that I don't feel like I have at the moment.

So I'll just summarize my experience: I enjoyed it. This was fun and satisfying. It wasn't always the most pleasant read because some graphic, horrible things do happen in it (nothing too triggering for me thankfully), but overall it all seems to serve a purpose and comes together in a pretty cohesive whole. I'm due to read The Vanished Birds some time early next year and I look forward to it.

3.75* rounded up. This is not so much a random number. The book was more enjoyable and enthralling than a 3.5* read, but also, I think, not quite as polished as I'd expect a 4* read to be.

An homage to slasher films with some fairly sensitive social commentary on the side, this book was a fun and engaging ride that keot me guessing till the end. It wasn't so much horror though, probably more like a chick lit-style thriller. Don't get me wrong, there were graphic bits but compared to some of the truly triggering books I've read in recent times, this book was fairly tame in that department.

The Final Girl Support Group is a therapy circle for Final Girls: the one girl left standing at the end of a massacre by a deranged mass murderer and who often is the one who kills him in order to save herself. Lynnette Tarkington is one of the six Final Girls in this group. She has lived the past 16 years of her life in paranoia, afraid that history is going to repeat itself or that old ghosts from her past are going to revisit her. Then, it feels like someone is plucking off each of the six Final Girls one by one, and wants them all dead.

Lynnette is not an endearing narrator, and shows very early on that she's not a reliable one either. I felt sorry for her but I never liked her, and her perspective sure as hell kept me guessing. In that sense, Hendrix wrote her masterfully, casually playing with the reader's trust in a first person narrator, pushing and pulling us by turns to and away from Lynnette. I just wish that more was said about the mental health conditions that Lynnette clearly has. The ending of the book wasn't rushed in its plot but it certainly gave an unsatisfactory conclusion to how Lynnette managed to improve her mental health, like "getting shot at in the head" was all she needed to get at least significantly better.

Of all the other characters, my heart went out the most to Dani and Michelle. We are introduced to Dani's story in the first half of the book, how she became a Final Girl, and of all their stories, hers hit me the hardest for some reason. Similarly, of all the graphic deaths in this book, it was Michelle's quiet, long-drawn death that really punched me in the feels. Having Lynnette and co. just casually leave her body in the park and have some random old man to look after her without realising she was dead, after which he "tried to kiss her" - that was actually the hardest bit for me to read, far more so than all the massacres. I particularly liked the reflection about why pop culture and people in general are obsessed and fascinated with the fast, messy deaths but can't seem to stomach the slow, drawn-out fade.

The plot twists in this one weren't omg mind blowing but it certainly did bring me on a ride and a wild goose chase, so I'll give it that. I enjoyed the action overall, although some parts (thankfully few) felt a little unnecessarily detailed and long. Then again, I'm not one for reading overwrought action sequences so perhaps I'm not the target demographic here.

For a fairly light read, this was pretty enjoyable and fun. I'd recommend it for anyone who enjoys slasher films or who simply just want a good action-y thriller/mystery revolving around a somewhat interesting premise of Final Girls.

Probably closer to 3.5/5 for me. This was a pretty entertaining high school mystery-thriller that is occasionally a little hard to read with the hard-hitting social commentary that it includes. It touches upon the injustices of being Black in many Western countries around the world, but specifically America in this book, while also appealing to a YA demographic with a touch of Gossip Girl in the mix.

Chiamaka Adebayo is the Queen Bee of her high school, the prestigious Niveus Academy, and she's worked hard to get there, hoping to continue on her perfect life to Yale and then med school. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have social outcast Devon Richards from a single-parent family struggling to make ends meet and only affording his tuition fees at Niveus on scholarship, hoping to make it to Julliard one day with his talent with music. Despite having nothing socially in common, Chiamaka and Devon are inexplicably targeted by Aces, an anonymous cyber-bully spreading malicious gossip about them shortly after school begins, but then things start coming to light that are more dangerous secrets than just mere gossip.

From the beginning, I thought Chiamaka's chapters were easier to get into but also more annoying to read especially since it's contrasted with Devon's chapters. Chi's problems stem mainly from how to be the best and most powerful Mean Girl in school, and being very cognizant of the social hierarchies that she actively climbs in order to get to her present position. But these chapters are interspersed with those from Devon's perspective, where we see him dealing with loneliness, ostracism, keeping his homosexuality in the closet at home, the vicious cycle of poverty and lack of opportunities that he's trying desperately to break out of even if it means having to suck up being in a school he absolutely hates, and how the system forces people like him into crime and prisons. His chapters are harder and more unpleasant to read, and also make Chi's chapters sound really frivolous and silly. I'm not sure if this was the author's intention though.

The book also felt a little draggy in the middle. There's not a wealth of secrets or plot twists in the middle, so the whole process of events unfolding for Chiamaka and Devon inevitably felt rather slow. Even when the anonymous Aces releases another piece of news, we pretty much already know what are Chi and Devon's secrets already so there's a lack of tension there.

The ending was unexpected and pretty interesting, though I would say a bit flawed and absolute. I'm not mad at the way it ended though and do think there's a lot of real-life validity in how Àbíké-Íyímídé decided to wrap up the story than how it may initially appear. Spoilery thoughts: I'm not sure if I liked the plot twist about Aces being not just one person but the whole school, but I guess it was a pretty acceptable way for things to go. If it had just been one person, it would've undermined Àbíké-Íyímídé's message that Black students aren't being just targeted by one specific person but in fact by the whole system that they live in. It was a rather heavy-handed way of conveying that message IMO and also runs a high risk of overgeneralization, where people (especially younger audiences) may fall into the trap of painting entire groups of people with the same brush, but I do think the message itself is valid. There're a lot of things that had the dramatic factor dialed up to eleven for entertainment purposes, like the school values lining up to make an acrostic message, or having the masked person turning out to be Belle's sister who Chiamaka had “run over” beforehand when presumably she doesn't attend the school so why would she be the one running the errand? And also Belle adding Chi to her Facebook but Martha not thinking that Chi would see her profile when she commented on Belle's photo? I mean, the whole idea of a school banding together to specifically target 2 Black students every decade just sounds super over the top (although I guess sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, so who knows if this might be a possibility?).

This was entertaining enough though, and I'd recommend this to anyone looking for a YA high school mystery-thriller.

3 stars. I was struggling to continue this book for the first 50% but then I devoured the last half in one evening - although I'm still trying to decide whether it's in a good or bad way.

Sally Lockhart has set up as a teenage independent woman in Victorian London by establishing herself as a financial consultant. An elderly lady client comes in to ask her about her latest investment which had totally sunk all her money when the Anglo-Baltic Company unexpectedly collapsed. Sally suspects fraud and immediately begins investigating, along with her friends Jim Taylor and Frederick Garland.

The writing style felt very middle-grade so at the beginning I was a little unsure about whether this was meant for a younger audience. Imagine how jarring the contrast was when, after the 50% mark, the plot developed in a way that certainly wasn't meant for middle-grade audiences.

The central mystery of this story has a lot to do with complicated machinery (unsurprising considering Pullman's experience in the steampunk-ish genre), and Pullman doesn't pull any punches with the technical details. I personally found it rather boring, and coupled with an ebook copy with messed-up formatting, I couldn't help skimming through a lot of passages in the book. I definitely found the side-mystery of Alastair McKinnon much more engaging and interesting than the central one with the Anglo-Baltic Company.

About the second half of the book: WHAT JUST HAPPENED? It's like the story went from being ye olde regular Victorian mystery to pulling out all the stops and becoming a full-fledged soap opera at the drop of a hat. The first sign to me that shit was going down was when Chaka died, that really upset me. I do not like it when pets die in books :( After that, everything went on fairly well until suddenly Sally initiated a one night passion with Frederick after they had confessed to each other? I found that super out of character. I get that Sally may have been emotionally affected by the attack on her shop and the death of Chaka, all because she had pig-headedly (in my opinion) refused to go live with the Garlands for her own safety. But even so... why would she just randomly decide to have sex with Fred just because they established that they loved each other. Immediately after that, the evil henchmen set fire to the house, in which Frederick immediately dies while saving Isabel Meredith, who conveniently turns batty just at that moment of the fire when she's never really displayed any sign of mental instability??? We never really get any hint that she's going off her rocker even after she finds out about McKinnon's marriage - things were happening too quickly and we never get the chance to explore that, and the onset of her mental instability was just too conveniently sudden too.So after Frederick dies, Sally immediately goes to find Mr Bellmann to seek her revenge. He immediately proposes marriage to her, and she rather quickly accepts his hand, especially after she has fleeced him of the money/gold that she had set out to recover for Miss Walsh in the first place. Then later she asks Bellmann for a very-unsuspicious tour of his factory and Steam Gun production, during which she shoots something and the whole thing explodes.But of course, Sally is blown conveniently out of the way during the first detonation, so she survives almost unscathed while Bellmann is blown to pieces. Oh, and later she of course finds out that she is pregnant with Frederick's baby because everything is super convenient. Why is everything so convenient in the second half of this book!??!?!

Despite all the rants I have for the second half of the book, I won't deny that it was still a very entertaining read just for the drama, which is why this book is even 3 stars at all. I read the first book a really long time ago so I can't quite remember much about it, but I don't think I recall having the same thoughts about this. I'll probably continue the series at some point since I own the last 2 books, but it's fairly low on my priority at the moment. I might just want to check out The Golden Compass by Pullman, which I hope is a much better read.

I really discovered this series on a whim because the first instalment was on sale on Audible one day, but wow has it paid off in spades. I usually don't pay much attention to the marketing blurb but the one for the Heathcliff Lennox mysteries describes it as a mix of Downton Abbey, Agatha Christie with a dash of P. G. Wodehouse, and it is actually remarkably accurate.

While an opera troupe is performing privately for an aristocratic family, a black cat shrieks, startling the two main singers on stage. They later fall through a stage trapdoor which gives way beneath them, leading to the death of one. Major Lennox arrives on the scene with his trusty canine companion, Mr Fogg, to attend the wedding of his childhood friend Lady Caroline Bloxford, daughter of the house in question, and is so caught up in a series of murders along with Inspector Jonathan Swift.

Being a great fan of the 1920s-1940s era of cosy mysteries, I've also tried many contemporarily written cosy mysteries but none of them have really made a huge impression on me - except this series. The humour is on point and not overdone, the writing is engaging and avoids the pitfalls of trying too hard to sound like Christie, the characters are engaging and relatable, and the mysteries are just a whole lot of fun but also complex and intricate at the same time.

I'm bummed that we only have 5 Heathcliff Lennox mysteries to devour, and really hope that I'll be seeing more from Menuhin, seeing as the latest one was only just published in Aug 2020. This series is highly recommended for fans of cosy mysteries, Agatha Christie, and especially so if you enjoy a touch of Wodehouse-esque humour.

A semi-cozy mystery with a lot of heart but also without being too sugar-coated idyllic. Hovering between 4 and 4.5 because I can't decide. I thoroughly enjoyed this one from start to finish, with an endearing protagonist that I was rooting for almost from the very beginning. This book also touched some of my soft spots and made me tear up a few times, though it's not meant to be anything of a tearjerker.

Molly Gray is as unassuming as her name. She works as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel, a dream job for her since her passion in life is cleaning up. Everything seems to be almost idyllic at the Regency Grand until one day Molly goes in to clean the suite of Charles Black, one of the hotel's richest and most important guests, only to discover him dead on the bed.

As a protagonist and the first person narrator through which we experience the story, Molly is as endearing as they come. She talks about how she's not so good at reading social cues and body language and tends to take things literally, which seems to likely put her somewhere on the spectrum. Though the story never explicitly says so, it's only all too obvious from other characters' reception of her as well as the various behavior that Molly exhibits that she's meant to be a neurodivergent character. As a neurotypical reader, I cannot speak to how authentic or accurate this portrayal of ND people is so I won't touch on that,. I understand that the author is herself neurotypical as well.

Nevertheless, I found Molly endearing in her kindness and the immense love between herself and her Gran. Molly is one of those people who want to see the world and the people in it as inherently good unless proven otherwise, and that sometimes made me feel so bad for her. I occasionally wanted to scream at her for not seeing how other characters were manipulating her, but I was always rooting for her from the beginning, and I'm usually pretty blase about protagonists in general.

The mystery itself was fairly simple. At first Charles Black's death was suspected to be of natural causes, but soon we learn that the death as well as the entire hotel itself is not quite what it seems. While Molly is our central protagonist and we experience the story through her eyes, she isn't exactly an investigator and doesn't do any active sleuthing. She isn't passive per se, but she also isn't going to be the sleuthing star of her own cozy mystery series anytime soon. The mystery is resolved by other people while Molly simply follows the instructions requested of her to usher the case to a close.

What really shines through in this book is the human relationships, both past and present, that Molly mulls about, reminisces on, or forges throughout the book. Of particular note is her relationship with her grandma, revealed to us through timely flashbacks and which brought tears to my eyes.

Thoughts on the ending: I thought the book could've ended well enough with Rodney getting arrested and then charged with the murder of Black. Everything that happened after that sent me into a tail spin.I'm really not sure how I felt about the reveal that Molly was the unwitting accomplice in essentially euthanizing her grandma. It kinda put a bit of a dent in the perfect relationship between them that I was enjoying thus far. Not so much on Molly's part but on Gran's for asking her granddaughter to do such a thing and continue living with the trauma of having committed such an action. That sounds completely out of character for such a sweet character like Gran to have asked Molly to do. And then also the final reveal that Black's Murderer was in fact his ex-wife. I didn't mind this reveal so much but I was very confused how Molly could reveal that much in a courtroom and then get away with not revealing who the figure was. At the very least I would expect the police to have to reopen investigations into the murder. And why would she withhold that information right to the end? If she was trying to protect the first Mrs Black, then why say it at all? If she wasn't, then why not volunteer that earlier? Why at that specific moment when Rodney was just about to get convicted, an outcome that I'd assume Molly would've wanted. Also, why did Giselle send her that last cheque out of nowhere? I actually expected that it had been her who murdered Black and that Molly was now blackmailing her. I was just so confused.

Overall, this was still a fun and easy read, highly recommended for anyone looking for a cozy or light hearted mystery.

Originally published on Unravellations.

I'm not sure what made me pick up this book, so different as it is from my usual reading. However, it wasn't a bad choice at all. Books That Changed The World is basically a comprehensive list of books that have asserted a great influence on thought and literature, and Andrew Taylor also provides concise and relevant background information regarding the time period and culture that the book was written and published in. He does not center his list around books of literary importance, also including those of scientific, philosophical and political importance.

I like that he also disclaimed in his introduction that this list was, of course, subjective and that it was his own take of what were the most influential books in history. If this disclaimer had been missing, I would have things to say about the subjectivity and Eurocentric view of history the book posits. In any case, he also provides evidence of the influence that each book enjoys and how it has altered humans' way of thinking over time.

Confession: I did skip past certain books that I wasn't interested in, particularly the ones on economics but also some others. Nevertheless, I gleaned plenty of interesting facts and cleared up some of my own misconceptions about certain books (especially the Greco-Roman classics which I am very unfamiliar with) along the way. For example, I never knew that the Kama Sutra was actually an unillustrated volume of text, and much like the rest of the world, I had thought it only to be some kind of kinky sex manual. I was enlightened on this point. I did not know also that before William Harvey's groundbreaking work on hemology, men thought that an infinite supply of blood was made from the liver. I also learned that William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge paved the way for poetry as it is written today, an intimate way of looking at human experience, and that before Lyrical Ballads was published, poetry were usually story-like epics dealing with philosophy, religion or history, such as in Iliad or Paradise Lost.

The only complaint that I have, I guess, isn't really much of a complaint - I was spoiled for Madame Bovary before I even read it! :( If there are any books on the list that you have yet to read and want to remain un-spoilt, I would recommend that you skip its relevant chapter in this book. Taylor provides a short synopsis of each book's plot, which may reveal important plot points.

Contents:
1. Homer - Iliad (c. 8th century)
2. Herodotus - The Histories (c. 5th century BC)
3. Confucius - The Analects (5th century BC)
4. Plato - The Republic (4th century BC)
5. The Bible (2nd century BC - 2nd century AD)
6. Horace - Odes (23 - 13 BC)
7. Ptolemy - Geographia (c. AD 100 - 170)
8. Mallanaga Vatsyayana - Kama Sutra (2nd or 3rd century AD)
9. The Qu'ran (7th century)
10. Avicenna - Canon of Medicine (1025)
11. Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales (1380s-90s)
12. Niccolo Machiavelli - The Prince (1532)
13. Gerard Mercator - Atlas, or, Cosmographic Meditations (1585-95)
14. Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote (1605-15)
15. William Shakespeare - First Folio (1623)
16. William Harvey - An Anatomical Study of the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals (1628)
17. Galileo Galilei - Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
18. Isaac Newton - Principia mathematica (1687)
19. Samuel Johnson - A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
20. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
21. Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations (1776)
22. Thomas Paine - Common Sense (1776)
23. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Lyrical Ballads (1798)
24. Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice (1813)
25. Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol (1843)
26. Karl Marx - The Communist Manifesto (1848)
27. Herman Melville - Moby-Dick (1851)
28. Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)
30. Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary (1857)
31. Charles Darwin - On the Origin of Species (1859)
32. John Stuart Mill - On Liberty (1859)
33. Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace (1869)
34. New Haven District Telephone Company - The Telephone Directory (1878)
35. Sir Richard Burton (translator) - The Thousand and One Nights (1885)
36. Arthur Conan Doyle - A Study in Scarlet (1888)
37. Sigmund Freud - The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
38. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1905)
39. Wilfred Owen - Poems (1920)
40. Albert Einstein - Relativity: The Special and the General Theory (1920)
41. James Joyce - Ulysses (1922)
42. D. H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)
43. John Maynard Keynes - The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936)
44. Primo Levi - If This is a Man (1947)
45. George Orwell - Nineteen Eighty-four (1949)
46. Simone de Beauvoir - The Second Sex (1949)
47. J. D. Salinger - The Catcher In The Rye (1951)
48. Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart (1958)
49. Rachel Carson - Silent Spring (1962)
50. Mao Zhedong - Quotations from Chairman Mao (1964)
51. J. K. Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (1997)

One thing that I realised from reading this book, however, is that there is usually great resistance and controversy whenever a new revelation is made that contradicts everything that people at that time thought to be true, as in the case of medical experts denouncing William Harvey for his discovery of the way blood is circulated, or the Catholic Church's anger and rejection of Galileo's heliocentric theories on astronomy, or even the ban on D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, the overturning of which paving the way for the modern attitude to sexual openness.

It makes me question the things that we consider “controversial” and defying reason in our time and age. Would they one day also become known as works of genius or progressive thought, and the rest of us derided by posterity for our backward thinking?

I came off a slate of fairly heavy and intense novels in January and just really wanted something light-hearted but not completely shallow to give my brain a break. This book really hit the spot. As usual, Dunmore's romances make a great attempt to strike a balance between feel-good romance tropes and hard-hitting social issues that are still relatable for the readers of today. In this one, we explore socioeconomic inequalities and how even something like the suffragette movement, controversial as it may have been at the time, may yet still be a privilege to even be part of when contrasted with the struggles of working-class women who don't have the time, attention, or luxury of fighting for a vote when they're just fighting to put food on the table.

The romance in this one pays a slight homage to some famous literary tropes: Hades and Persephone, Jane and Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, Cathy and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, even Anne and Wentworth in Persuasion. Both of the central characters have traits I don't completely agree with, but these are slowly worked through in the course of the novel. My interest in the romance fluctuated through the book, but overall I ended up pretty invested and enjoying them by the end of it.

I did find the author's notes very fascinating, in how she took inspiration from the real-life disaster in a Scottish coal mine during the 19th century, as well as how photographers of the time were more preoccupied with the “nudity” of the women working in those mines (they wore pants instead of skirts for ease of working, which would be as good as naked in those times).

This was a good, even better than average romance novel and I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but I didn't give it a complete 5 stars just because it was just shy of leaping past the ”wow, this is amazing!” barrier. There were a lot of tropes, a lot of convenient developments, and a lot of 21st century values in this one which makes the book more comfortably formulaic and pleasant, but not something that breaks the mold. Nevertheless though, this is the perfect choice for pick up if you're in the mood for something comfortably formulaic but without being obnoxiously shallow or misogynistic as some romance novels (especially older ones) can tend to be.

Enjoyed this book thoroughly, primarily due to the frolicking and engaging narrative voices of both protagonist Anne Beddingfield and secondary character, Sir Eustace Pedlar. Sometimes the adventure got a little too out of hand and I started to lose track of exactly which African city were our characters in now, or heading towards, but it didn't take away anything from the mystery and the plot.

This is a sweet comfort read more than anything, really. I'm not sure if it delves very deeply into a lot of topics (as far as I can tell, at least), but it was entertaining enough and just - a sweet depiction of rural life, particularly centering upon family.

Silas Marner is a linen-weaver in the town of Raveloe, where he's regarded as a bit of a harmless loner oddball. He is unexpectedly burglared one night, an incident that makes its rounds throughout the town and earns him some sympathy. Even stranger still, an unfamiliar woman dies of cold just outside his door, leaving behind a 2 year old baby girl who Silas immediately opens his heart to and adopts. Unbeknownst to Silas, these incidents are all entwined and will eventually be unravelled.

I found this particularly easy to read for a piece of classic literature written in the 1860s. It's incredibly short, and the action is perpetually ongoing. Excepting a couple of obligatory chapters with old men gossiping in a tavern in convoluted English accents, which was a whole lot easier to grasp with the aid of an audiobook and a good narrator (thank you, Andrew Sachs), the story flows extremely smoothly and there's something happening in every chapter.

The story in itself is easy to follow and there's a nice sort of symmetry to it (i.e. Silas losing his gold, but then gaining back "gold" in the form of Eppie and her golden curls, but then later when he does recover his gold back, he almost loses her again). It's all kinda rural farm life sweet, but also lacks a certain punch to it that I would've expected. I don't know how else to describe it. Aside from Dunstan Cass, who was thoroughly repulsive but doesn't have a lot of page time in the book, all the other characters were all such well-meaning, mild-mannered farm people. Despite the drama, everything seemed to be pulled off without a hitch. Even the ending denouement resolving the central conflict lasted barely a chapter. I was legit surprised that the ending was basically just: Gordon Cass staking his claim on Eppie, Eppie saying nope sorry, and Gordon Cass retreating with his wife and both of them finding it in themselves to be happy for Eppie's choice to stay with Silas and to marry Aaron.

On some level, I'm not really complaining, because sometimes I just need a nice, short perk-me-up of a book that gives you all the good vibes in the vehicle of a serviceable story with characters that work, and this is really what Silas Marner is about. If you're looking for something with a bigger punch, or which dwells a bit more on social commentary of the mid 19th century, this is probably not it.

I wasn't engaged by this book at the very beginning, probably because it featured side characters from the Stormlight Archive so far whom I'm not that interested in, and seemed to be primarily set aboard a ship. Naval stories aren't my most preferred subgenre and I've read a few consecutively recently so I wasn't thrilled to be honest. But Dawnshard really turns things around.

In this one, Rysn, who has generally been relegated to interludes in previous Stormlight books, is now sent on a journey by Navani Kholin to investigate the mythical island of Akinah, from whence a ghost ship devoid of its crew had appeared. She embarks on the voyage accompanied by Knights Radiant the Lopen and Huio, as well as her assistant Nikli. Secretly, Rysn was also given to hope that Akinah might provide an answer or treatment for her ailing pet larkin, Chiri Chiri.

This is a short enough novella and, at least past the 20-30% mark, makes for an entertaining read. Rysn and the Lopen have not been interesting characters to me thus far which made the beginning of the book drag a bit, but by the end I definitely appreciated them a lot more than I had in the whole series (even if I wouldn't say they're new favourites).

Unlike Edgedancer, where we're introduced to a prominent new character who will be playing a significant part in subsequent Stormlight Archive books, Dawnshard doesn't do any such thing. Instead, Dawnshard introduces things and concepts that are entirely different from anything we've read before in the series thus far, which leads me to believe that this is a set-up not for the rest of the SA books in this first arc, but really a taste of the second arc to come (books 6 to 10). Sanderson has mentioned before that SA will split into two arcs like that, and it makes sense to me if the second arc was going to concern a very different type of magic system set in the same world.

That's as far as I will say without going into spoilers. Also that I always visualize the Lopen as Pedro Pascal.

4.5 stars! I thoroughly enjoyed this lighthearted little adventure that just had so much creativity behind it. I was honestly shocked to read in the Acknowledgments that the author had had issues finding a publisher who would publish it, saying it was “too dark” for a children's book. I can't say much about children at large but I think I would absolutely love something like this back when I was a kid.

It's about a young 14 year old wizard and baker's apprentice. Mona whose only magical talent had to do with bread of all things. She can only manipulate bread and only by trying to persuade it to do things, like not burn in the oven. The book opens engagingly when Mona trips over a dead body in her bakery, which then leads her against her will into the heart of a treacherous plot. At some point, she really gets into some very serious defensive baking. You might expect that she has a stale gingerbread man sidekick, but what I particularly liked was her familiar: a feisty carnivorous sourdough starter named Bob. Isn't that just amazing?!

The world in this one is reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones - whimsical, sparkling with wit, a child-like black and white perspective on people that's still sprinkled with touches of harsh reality. It's perfect for its target middle grade audience who are just starting on that tough transition from the overly ideal world of children's fairy tales to the jaded adult world.

Mona is herself a relatable protagonist. She's just a 14 year old girl who just wanted to do the right thing but then continued to find herself being pulled into more and more complex plots agaisnt her will just to make up for the incompetence or malignancies of adults. She isn't a Mary Sue or finding a deeper true purpose or calling. She just does what needed to be done because there was no one else to, and so that she could keep her loved ones safe.

I also never thought I would feel any kind of empathy for gingerbread men or a bucket of sourdough starter in my life, but here we are.

For fans of light fantasy with humour, Diana Wynne Jones, and/or baking, this is a must read.

3.5 stars. I was pretty excited for this one because I've been discovering a newfound love for Filipino food and this is probably the first book I've read with a Filipino family in the foreground. The beginning started off a little choppy and rough and I've been burnt by contemporary chick lit mysteries recently so I was really afraid I wouldn't enjoy it much, but tbh it improved upon further reading and I got really engaged by the end.

Let's start off with what I liked about it. Being from an Asian family living in Asia, the protagonist Lila's family is incredibly relatable with their “family first” values, their emphasis on hospitality, that community spirit, and the very real obsession with food. I live in Singapore, where there's a big enough population of Filipinos to make this book feel pretty close to home. I liked that the book actually had an emphasis on all kinds of food, mostly Filipino but really any food and beverage gets their spotlight in here. It certainly made me hungry. This is in contrast to some other entries in the same genre that are supposedly food-centric but which barely featured food at all except for the protagonist having something remotely to do with a restaurant.

The writing in here was generally entertaining and light enough, and the mystery wasn't just a touch-and-go thing. It was complex and I liked the pacing of revelations. The solution was enough of a twist for me too - At some point halfway through the book, I suspected everyone except Kevin. I even vividly remember thinking to myself: I like Kevin. It can't be Kevin. Welp. Kudos to the author for managing to mislead me. The cast of characters were also distinct enough from each other to be memorable, and a good number of them had enough motive and sus-ness for me to be unclear about who the murderer could possibly be.

What I didn't like about it. There were some moments in the book that just seemed a bit too wild for belief, even if I wanted to suspend my disbelief for what is obviously supposed to be a light-hearted mystery. This was especially whenever Lila had anything to do with the local police. She was constantly uncooperative, angry, and said a lot of questionable things in front of them and just not doing herself any favours. And she doesn't get why the detective finds her suspicious? Most of these moments are clustered around the beginning few chapters though (like when a guy (and not just any guy, actually Lila's on-and-off-again boyfriend who she just broke up) literally just falls dead in their restaurant and then Lila is more concerned about how her makeup is going to look in front of a news crew?), so after you get past the first 20-30%, the story, action, and mystery definitely gets going. There were also some plot developments that seemed a little too convenient, like Adeena's very sudden decision to give Lila the cold shoulder over Amir when neither of them have actually done anything? Sure, they may have sparks flying between them, but that's not a new development in their relationship, and Adeena had seemed perfectly fine with the both of them hanging out since the very beginning of the book.

Overall though, I quite enjoyed my time with this one and I'd recommend it for anyone who loves a light-hearted cosy mystery, especially if you love food too. Time to go find your nearest Filipino restaurant!

Man, I fell in love with this series in the first couple of books but the last two instalments have been rather disappointing.

In this one, Veronica is relegated to masquerading as a missing princess for pretty much all of the book, Stoker seems almost like an afterthought sometimes, and then every chapter we're somehow reminded about how Veronica is the illegitimate daughter of the Prince of Wales and how all this royal pomp could have been her life! That is essentially a summary of events for the whole book.

There is a mystery somewhere here—how an experienced female mountain climber fell to her death—but we only seem to spend time discussing it and occasionally finding out titbits of information when it drops into our protagonists' laps, and then having the whole conclusion basically served up on a silver platter to them. The ending was pretty unsatisfying too: Princess Gisela was simply caught up in a snowstorm? It seems like an all together too convenient excuse for Veronica to keep up her masquerade as a princess.

While at the beginning of the series, Veronica's liberalism and independence was fun and endearing, of late she has begun to morph into basically a 21st century liberal American woman only dressing up in 19th century clothes. There are a lot of 21st century ideals in this book and while it's not exactly a cause for complaint, it often felt a bit like “The Victorian English were so backward, we are so much better and freer now.” I won't deny that there is an overall truth to that sentiment but it also felt so black and white here, leaving no room for nuances. Nothing is as binary as that.

There was one particular throwaway line in the book that also didn't sit well with me: when the mountain climber Alice Baker-Greene talked about how she got her summit stolen from her by a man, she noted that it was the other British alpinists who sided with the other dude because they love to side with their own gender, “while the Americans sided with me”. Uhh, misogyny was and is very much alive all around the world, in all echelons of society, on every side of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and every other ocean, so it just felt a bit too binary once again. Veronica and Stoker felt like they hated ye olde England just a bit too much, which makes one question why Raybourne chose this period and setting in the first place if her characters are going to hate it? It just seemed a bit like, choose a time period and country for its ~aesthetics~ but then spend most of your time focusing solely on the negative parts of its society and values and the people who lived in it.

I also felt that there was just no character development either. Veronica was headstrong and impulsive at the beginning of the book, basically insisting that there was foul play involved in Baker-Greene's climbing accident just because she wished it to be so. By the end of the book, she hasn't really changed. Stoker was only present in the capacity of bodyguard and occasional lover, rather than actually being Veronica's partner in crime. And, lest we forget from the continual assertions since one or two books ago, we are constantly reminded by Veronica about her royal lineage despite how much she disdained it and was glad that she hadn't turned out to be a princess after all. If she isn't thinking about how the diamonds are choking her, she's sniffing about how much she wanted to avoid seeing her grandmother, Queen Victoria, or suddenly in the presence of another royal relative or another for no real plot reason except to let the readers see how she's actually so royal beneath that devil-may-care exterior. This brings me back to my point in the earlier paragraph about setting this in the Victorian world. You can't say, “I'm using going to use the grandeur of royalty to puff my character up” while also saying, “royalty sucks and is a gilded cage and an outdated institution”. It just felt really contradictory sometimes.

But there are reasons why I fell in love with this series to begin with. I loved Veronica's voice and the writing. Some of that is still present here, a bit more in the first half. I did love the development of the characters, the action, and the mystery, but that is not so present here. So overall I'm probably going to give this a 3/5 for the remnants of Veronica's voice that I loved, and for old time's sake.

I read this in one sitting during a weekend sojourn in the library with my friends. Honestly, this was pretty entertaining and engaging enough. I've enjoy watching Benedict Cumberbatch's work and only know a smattering of his history. This book provided a pretty good overview of his life thus far, and I suppose it is no coincidence that half the book is dedicated to his career after Sherlock.

Actually the most interesting thing I picked up from this book is an interesting divide/debate that I never knew existed in the UK: about how public school boys like Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Damian Lewis, etc. seem to have an easier time at hitting the big time in acting, and perhaps whether there is a divide between this seemingly elite circles and all the other struggling actors who may not have such a prestigious background. The book is not primarily concerned with this topic so it doesn't go too far into this except citing what Cumberbatch himself has said about it. He is himself actually from a relatively modest background, even if he did attend the prestigious Harrow School (though his parents apparently had to really scrape the barrel to fund that) and thereafter Manchester University. Though we don't actually get to know much more about the matter, it's just a little food for thought that stuck with me through the book.

The book also made me realise how Cumberbatch is friends with a lot of the other British actors whose works I've followed through the years - James McAvoy, Jonny Lee Miller, Matt Smith, and of course Martin Freeman. I now also have a few other shows from Cumberbatch to check out - Fortysomething also starring Hugh Laurie (of Blackadder, Jeeves and Wooster, and House MD fame) and Anna Chancellor (Caroline Bingley from 1995's Pride and Prejudice), Parade's End sometimes touted as “the thinking man's Downton Abbey”, and of course the BBC radio sitcom Cabin Pressure.

This is pretty much a chick lit murder mystery with 21st century characters casually dressing up as P&P characters and with a Regency painted backdrop. Pretty mindless entertainment, but entertainment nevertheless. It's a very quick and easy read, sometimes a little silly.

The story kind of, but also kind of doesn't, follow the story of Pride & Prejudice. On one hand, it sticks to it enough that, if you're familiar with the original, a lot of character personalities and dynamics aren't out of place - and you might have some idea about the solution of the mystery pretty early on. But on the other, it does diverge enough from the source material that there is something fresh at every turn in the plot, and the complete picture of the solution probably will still catch you by surprise, so props to the author for that.

I wasn't a huge fan of the main character, Elizabeth. She came across mostly as petulant, impulsive, and sometimes “thick for a solicitor”. She rushed around blurting out unfiltered comments and remarks to every character even while she was trying to investigate the mystery on hand. She jumped to conclusions so often, and seemed to snap back at every male character in the book, “Are you telling me this because I'm a woman?!” I mean, I get that her struggles against the patriarchal society that she's in is a huge part of the plot - after all, she's been overlooked by her dad in getting an employment position in his law firm and constantly has credit stolen from her to bolster Mr Collins's career. But I found that the overcompensation with immediately accusing everyone around her of misogyny without the slightest basis was counterproductive to her cause. I varied between feeling indifferent to annoyed at her, and never really found myself rooting for her honestly.

Needless to say, the book is rife with historical inaccuracies, some of them intended (as the author acknowledged in her notes at the end of the novel) while others weren't. If you are able to put aside qualms relating to that, and go in just expecting a very, very casual modern take on P&P characters (despite being set in the Regency) romping around London solving murders, you might enjoy this. (Of course, it helps that the cover is one of the most gorgeous I've seen this year)

2.5 stars. I feel like I am the perfect audience for this book but I didn't glean as much from it as I wish I had. I did, however, like the tip Kross had about mental distancing and relating your stressors from a second or third person perspective, which might help me out when I next go into an anxiety spiral.

A major problem with this book is that it assumes a very specific, neurotypical perspective. While I don't necessarily think Kross needed to have gone into every different type of neurodivergence out there since that isn't the objective of his book, a simple statement to acknowledge that this isn't “one size fits all” advice would've been very much appreciated. Not everyone has inner voices nor do they think in words. I would consider myself neurotypical, but I don't think in words to myself all the time - my anxiety spiral tends to serve me images and scenes, often upsetting ones.

Similarly, a lot of concepts in the book is painted with very broad strokes. I understand that this is, on some level, necessary for the book's marketability and simply because it's aimed to cater to the most “common” mental behaviours, but it sometimes feels a bit alienating, even for myself.

Kross provides about 7 tips for reducing chatter and I don't think all of them would help for everyone out there, so I wish there was more, and also more hands-on advice. I felt like I only really had one good tip from this whole book. I'm thankful for that, but also wished there was more.

Eh. Love the cover, was excited to read some historical-pharmacist-murder mystery but it was none of those, basically.

In present-day London, Caroline Parcewell is taking a solo trip to London to recover from the shock of finding out about her husband's infidelity. While mudlarking on the River Thames, she finds a mysterious engraved vial that leads her on an investigative journey to find out the truth behind an “apothecary serial killer” from the 1790s.

While I never felt that the central mystery was boring per se, and I never felt like the book dragged, at the same time I also had no burning desire to find out anything about the characters, their relationship, or the answers to anything happening at all. The dual timelines happening here felt a little unnecessary, and I kind of wished that we had simply one linear timeline with more horizontal development for the characters and issues there.

I went into this a little worried that this was going to turn into a blanket “all men are trash” hate-fest. I'm all for female empowerment and exploring issues revolving around women, but I don't feel that this has to be achieved at the price of falling back on just another form of sexism. The book skirts around that, but luckily doesn't quite toe the line there, IMO. The narrative just shies away from going all out on the misandry, although there was certainly a lot more of that in the historical timeline (although understandably so given the gender inequalities of that time period).

What the book perhaps lacked doing was having actually more redeeming male characters. There were only two prominent male characters here (Mr Amwell and James) and I thoroughly hated both of them. The one and only redeeming male character, Tom Pepper, was barely around for 5 pages. I was also largely indifferent to the main female characters, Eliza, Nella, and Caroline. While both their timelines took turns being the more interesting one, I never really felt attached to any of them. The writing for Nella's perspective felt a little too involved, over-serious, and overwrought in a way, that I was either annoyed, or couldn't take it seriously. Eliza was slightly better, but nothing much happens with her or to her (aside from that horrifying incident with Mr Amwell which was thankfully averted - I really would not have wanted to read about that). Caroline and her marriage was just a constant source of frustration and annoyance to me throughout the book, although she got more tolerable as a character as the book wore on and as she drew further apart from James.

I just didn't understand what was the whole point of the adventures, both in 1790s and in the present-day, and why they were supposed to relate to each other? I get that Caroline had some character development in the sense that she went from gaslighting herself about how she felt about James, to properly realising that she needed to pursue her own dreams and get away from him - that's fine, but i don't feel like it was clear how that related to her whole adventure with the apothecary's bottle. I'm even more unclear about what Eliza's role was, aside from her last sacrificial act and magic trick of turning up alive again. Also, how did she make such a strong, amazing, and effective tincture to protect her from drowning and frigid waters on her first try?! She barely got any tutelage from Nella before this! I just felt like the connection between the storylines in the 1790s and present-day wasn't very strong.

The central mystery with Lady Clarence just really fell flat for me. When I checked my progress and saw it at about 75% through, I was like, “Wait, you mean this is the main mystery of the book?!” It all felt like a side story leading up to something bigger because the stakes never felt high to me. The overall ending was okay - I didn't even expect it to be super mind-blowing but it still fell a little flat for me. The twist about Eliza surviving her fall just felt a bit... eh whatever. And we never even really found out what happened to Nella after she reunited with Eliza at the end.

I was also super confused about this whole big deal they made out of this “apothecary serial killer” in both the blurb for the book as well as in the story itself. There wasn't a lot of focus on the whole apothecary aspect aside from those two poisons that Nella made. There wasn't a ton of serial-killing-ness as I was led to believe either since only two men died in the whole course of the book, really. In terms of the narrative, how on earth did she become associated as a serial killer or having it termed as "murders" when the police really only knew about her involvement with Lord Clarence's death?. The book felt mainly focused on these 3 women struggling with individual issues around their relationship with men, which is fine but definitely wasn't what I expected going in and didn't come through in the blurb of the book. Even then, I also felt like that wasn't properly explored because all those gimmicks around it regarding the dual timelines, the apothecary murders, etc. really distracted the narrative from that, so everything felt really disjointed and “what's the point of this?” in the end.

All in all, I'm hovering between 2 and 3 for this one. In the first 2 chapters, i was already feeling a 3/5 but hoped it would prove me wrong. Oh well.