Emma Goto

Sophy bursts into her cousins' lives, all 5'9” of her, with a pet monkey, a parrot and a dog. Unlike the women in an Austen novel, she can handle horses, her father's finances, and even owns a pistol. Schemes and matchmaking attempts ensue.

This is a Regency-era novel, both in the time period and the style of writing. Since it was written in the 50s the author had a bit more imagination as to the level of independence a woman could achieve, so it reads like a more fast-paced Austen novel.

I would've liked to see a better romance for Sophy, though. After writing such an impressive character, I'm surprised anyone could tie her down that easily.

At the old age of 24, Frederica Merriville has no plans on marriage of her own, and is instead keen to see her younger sister Charis matched with a husband worthy of her beauty. She enlists the help of a distant cousin, Alverstoke, to hold a ball to debut Charis into London society.

Alverstoke is a lazy and never one to help out anyone, let alone a bunch of distant cousins. But somehow he finds himself involved in the Merrivilles' lives, even taking on a fatherly (or big brother) role to Frederica's younger brothers, Felix and Jessamy.

The romance itself wasn't bad, but the relationships Alverstoke builds, especially with the brothers, was the most heartwarming part of the story to me.

As a poor cousin sent to live amongst her more privileged relations, Fanny Price is a fairly meek and boring leading character, as far as Jane Austen books go. She's content to be a wallflower, and her poor self-esteem isn't helped by comments from her aunts like “remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and the last”. Yikes.

Even the dude she is pining for says “she is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife” - and he's not talking about her! Ouch.

The romance all gets summarised in a “at some point in the future, this and this happens” which is fairly unsatisfying as an ending.

So I knew this book was originally a Kylo Ren / Rey fanfic before I started reading it. Which made things unintentionally funny because you can't help but imagine Kylo Ren doing all this weird romance novel shit (pushing a car shirtless across a carpark? Ok). And when he repeatedly gets described as being “broad” and “massive” (kind of cringey tbh) all I could think of was that Ben swolo meme which made me laugh too.



The author made 0 effort to change the physical appearances of the characters - she literally named the guy Adam. Because she's just straight up describing Adam Driver in the book it's almost creepy. I feel like there's a difference between gushing over the physical appearance of a fictional person versus a real-life person?

Gotta give it a 4/5 though because the Reylo stan in me just wants a happy Reylo ending for once.

Beautiful, drug-addicted singer Daisy and the band The Six come together to write an album in the 70s. The entire book is told in an interview format, which I think works really well, since it lets the different characters give their own (slightly different) perspectives on certain events.

The author tried to incorporate some sort of twist to the ending but it wasn't a particularly revelatory or “wow” moment for me. Nonetheless, Taylor Jenkins Reid has once again done a really good job with writing out a cast of believable, very human characters.

This book outlines “attachment theory” - how people express themselves in relationships falls into roughly three buckets:

* Secure: doesn't have any issues expressing love
* Anxious: is more of the “clingy” type
* Avoidant: is cold, tends to withdraw or easily break things off

Basically if you're a secure type, you're all good but if you're an insecure type (anxious or avoidant), and your partner is also an insecure type, you're probably going to experience some relationship issues. Actually the book goes one step further and basically says “if you're both insecure types you're probably never going to be as happy as you would be if you dated a secure person, but whatever”. A bit of a spicy take but could be true though.

Some of the criticism I saw previously when reading reviews for this book is that it's pro-anxious and anti-avoidant. While I did feel that vibe a bit (the author definitely seemed a tad more sympathetic to anxious types) as a self-diagnosed avoidant I didn't really feel personally attacked or anything. If anything I could agree with a lot of the things the author pointed out (although reading about it is one thing, actually putting it into practice is a hell of a lot harder...).

I was expecting a continuation from the first Wayfarers book but this can almost be read as a standalone. A ship AI struggles with finding her identity and sense of purpose after being placed (illegally) in a human-like body. At the same time we follow the story of a genetically modified girl, Jane 23, destined to spend her life working in a factory, who escapes and has to figure out how to live in the outside world. Even though it tackles some heavy subjects, it's just such a cozy, comfy sci-fi thanks to the relationships the different aliens and AIs build with each other.

Basically the plot of the story is that there's an alternate reality earth with huge kaiju (think Godzilla) and it's the Kaiju Preservation Society's job to look after them.

The main character is a fan of sci-fi novels, so as a fellow sci-fi fan it was fun picking up on the references (is this what it's like to read and actually enjoy Ready Player One??).

However I did feel like the climax/resolution was a bit of a letdown, a bit too much of an invincible, main characters can do no wrong, vibe. But otherwise fun if you don't take it too seriously. Hence why I couldn't give it a 5 star!

Science fiction with a romance subplot is by far my favourite genre, and there sadly isn't enough of it so for that reason I'm biased into giving this book a 5, but would probably dock half a star or more otherwise. I binged this one in one sitting on the plane so I definitely enjoyed it!

Basically the plot revolves around people with the ability to influence minds (architects) as well as those with the ability to read them (readers). For some reason architects are accepted in society and it's the readers that have to keep their powers a secret. And I struggled a bit to wrap my head around that one since manipulating thoughts seems a lot more dangerous than just reading them. And then they smash in that romance subplot by forcing an architect to mind-bond with a reader (yes sounds cheesy but it's good I promise).

Yet another comfy read from Becky Chambers. Pity it is only a novella - is it quite short. This was my first time reading solarpunk and I want to read more of it! Robots don't want to work in factories anymore because they've developed consciousness? No problems, just shut down your factories, send them on their way and work around it. It's a very utopian-seeming future, unlike steampunk/sci-fi which is usually quite gritty and dark. I guess it's almost like a fantasy in how unrealistic it is lol.

A book about a team reintroducing wolves back into Scotland to help restore the ecosystem. It's fiction, but does take real-life inspiration from how wolves were successfully reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park. The story comes with a side of romance and murder mystery which is not quite as compelling as the wolves, though.

Not a big fan of the ending - it felt absurd that the sister was responsible for killing a grown man, nearly killing another, and killing a dog (the biggest crime of all, tbh) and then she gets away with it, no psychiatric treatment necessary, and conveniently goes off to die in the forest on her own.

A collection of Asian-inspired short stories. My personal favourite was “State Change”, where everyone's soul manifests as an object such as an ice cube or a candle, and you have to focus on keeping it intact to stay alive. Another standout was “Mono no aware”, a heartwarming story about Go and being the last Japanese person aboard a spaceship. Some of the stories are inspired by more serious topics from history such as the discrimination faced by Chinese immigrants during the 1850s American gold rush and Japan's WW2 war crimes.

I really struggled to get into this one. I found the story quite hard to follow, because of how many different characters get introduced throughout the book. It's a pity because there's a lot of cool sci-fi concepts here (i.e. uploading your brain to another body). Also this guy is horny AF, there is random unnecessary sex everywhere (aren't you a trained soldier, just do your job!) and sometimes it just doesn't make sense when the woman jumps on him like it's very male fantasy. So if you're a dude and you're into sex and violence this may be the sci-fi novel for you.

I guess this book is about becoming a woman? Or wanting to become a mother? Kind of hard to sum up. It also had some slightly surrealist, Murakami vibes - which makes me wonder is that because it is similar, or do Japanese books translated to English generally end up like this?

Also interesting to note is that the original book was written in Kansai-ben (a more rough-sounding Japanese dialect) but the book hasn't made any attempt to translate that and has done it purely in standard English. Which makes me wonder how different the experience would be if you read it in Japanese.

Every decade 6 of the world's top magicians are chosen to join a secret society that has access to the Library of Alexandria. Only 5 will make it through to their second year of study.

The (small) romance portion didn't pan out the way I expected, which was nice. The most annoying part for me was there was a whole lot of plot suddenly vomited out in the last 20% (which I didn't really care about?) and ends on a cliffhanger as a set up for the next book.

Otherwise I enjoyed this one. Although the whole secret society thing as a concept seemed iffy, considering most of them are kind of bad/selfish people, and they'll go on to assume leadership positions across the world with the knowledge and skills they gain.

Random thought that I had while reading - the fact that 3 women and 3 men were chosen is great but doesn't feel realistic when you think about the gender ratios of positions of power in the world today and idk if that needed to be addressed? Or I guess magic causes a true meritocracy (but then again this is a fantasy book so maybe I shouldn't complain about realism when there's magic involved).

This book was very... different. The main plot involves a house that defies science and is larger on the inside. But instead of just being a straightforward story it's told from the perspective of a researcher who wrote a manuscript compiling all the research and references from people who are discussing the film tapes that were made from exploring the house. (However the film tapes don't seem to exist). Sometimes there will be a page in French, or a page full of literally a list of 100 (irrelevant) names that you just have to skip over. So I guess it's a very artsy sort of book? But the mystery of the plot is compelling enough to keep it going.

This was a historical fiction book about the Nigerian Civil War that took place in the 1960s. It covers 5 viewpoints - upper-class twin sisters, a professor, a boy from a village and a British journalist - and the relationships they share with each other. Obviously as a wartime story it's very gripping and can be quite sad to read, but there was also drama just in the interpersonal relationships between the main characters as well. Going into the book I knew absolutely nothing about the war, so it was really nice to be able to enjoy reading a book plus learn something new at the same time!

The plot follows a couple of criminals plus a monk who hates women, plus a 3ft tall badger-person (who is honestly so cute) as they go on a suicide mission.

T Kingfisher just writes really comfy fantasy with a dash of romance (usually with proper adults with issues instead of your more typical teen fantasy romance) and this was definitely more of the same but a good one!

It felt really hard to rate this one on its own, because it honestly felt like half a book with the way it ended on a cliffhanger. But it was compelling enough that I read the sequel back to back. Combined the two of them are 5 stars!!

This was an interesting one. It's about women having the ability to turn into dragons en masse and leaving behind the patriarchy of the 1960s. Where it gets weird is it's not really straight fantasy (which would have been fun to read!) but more so some sort of menstruation allegory (almost? Or something similar anyway) in that the fact that women are capable of turning into dragons is considered embarrassing to talk about and people turn a complete blind eye to. Which it's dragons! Hello! Can you really ignore that?

Gave this one a read because I saw it had a movie trailer and I quite like the way TJR writes her characters. But is this one of her older books or something because this is NOT IT. The plot centres around the main character realising her dead husband is alive 3 years later, and her having sex with him while keeping her current fiancé on the back burner. And then he's like totally cool with it, she gets back with the fiancé and has a happy ending?? This could have worked if she didn't get either guy in the end, I think I just hated how she basically cheated on her fiancé but there was absolutely no remorse or consequences for it.

A woman living in 1950s America who wants to be a scientist and not a housewife, and also ends up starring in a TV cooking show. On one hand there's misogyny and sexual assault but also some positive, uplifting female empowerment. I can't quite put my finger on why but the female empowerment bit doesn't feel very realistic.. like we are supposed to read this as a book set in the 1950s but something feels off, as though the way it's written is a bit too fantastical and too good to be true. Which also makes the tonal shifts with the sexual assault parts a bit weird as well.

I still found it entertaining though!

A book about a summer romance with a movie star, which jumps between that summer and 30 years later when the woman, now a mother, narrates the story to her grown daughters. The romance is a bit more towards nostalgia and melancholy than romcom.

I don't know what it is about the book, like it's just straight fiction but it really gripped me? I think also the jumps between the two time periods lets the mother to reflect on her naivety at the time and also to see the story from her daughters' perspectives.

A multigenerational story set in 20th century India. The book touches on India's independence movement, but mostly focuses on the story of a 12 year old girl who marries a 40 year old window, and the family and community she helps to create in her small town.

Honestly the age gap marriage is a yikes, but with the way the widowed man is portrayed from the POV of the girl you never really get that icky feeling. (Should you? I don't know). Nonetheless she goes on to become the matriarch of the family so in that sense it is empowering (relatively speaking).

Definitely not a super uplifting novel (there's a looot of tragedy) but although this book has 700+ pages (which I didn't realise since I read on a Kindle), I really felt like a flew through this one.

I felt pretty let down by this one - I find some of Emily Henry's books to be pretty decent for romance novels but this plot felt a bit too boring? Not sure that boring is the right word considering that it involves the girl dating her ex fiancés new girlfriend's ex-boyfriend (basically a couple swap) but I was expecting a bit more of a twist to the plot but the whole thing just kind of plodded along. Also the main characters had some emotional issues which were maybe realistic but also annoying.

... in saying that, I went back and looked through my other Emily Henry reviews and it looks like I only really liked one of her books and the rest were kind of mid, and so maybe this is just par for the course.

About a white writer stealing a story from Chinese American author and passing it off as her own, while making her penname be racially ambiguous hence the title “yellowface”.

The main character doesn't think of herself as a racist but is very obviously one (a lot of little microaggressions throughout the whole book like being surprised when an Asian character speaks good English). So you start off by obviously hating her, but the way it's done feels quite heavy handed. And as she gets sucked more into her lie towards the end you can't help but feel some sympathy for her but at the same time you don't want her to succeed so it feels pretty conflicting.

The ending also acts more as a set up for a second novel but I can't help but wish it was resolved a bit more satisfyingly.