Reviews and Comments

This was cute, but a bit underwhelming having seen so many five star reviews. Every problem was resolved so quickly and easily, cleverly explained away by a magic stone.

To be fair, I thought this was going to be near-future, but it’s actually contemporary and that meant my brain refused to excuse some things. I couldn’t get past the fact that a teenager built an open-world, highly customisable, VR game with half a million users, in her spare time and no one has noticed.

It does raise some great discussion points about safe spaces and black identity though. I found the controlling relationship difficult to read about and the in-game action didn't really hold my attention, even though I liked the idea of the game.

This was fun. It was a bit quick to go from soul-bargaining to mushiness but there was plenty of other plot things happening to keep me invested. Full review to follow.

Beautifully written gothic horror, with all the necessary ingredients: house as a character, anonymous spouse narrator, a mysterious absent person from the past, and a hint of supernatural. I did guess the ending but it was an atmospheric, journey getting there. Full review to follow.

Poor Babbit Rabbit. At least the cover makes sense now. Was a little slow to get going, but once it did, I loved the whole literal going to hell and back story. Lots of things introduced in this one that makes me hope there's more in this series.

A big helping of nerdy fun!

This is a gripping thriller, set entirely in an RV. I'm not sure all the reasoning behind it was believable, but I liked the rising tension between the characters and that you didn't know if the bigger danger was within or outside or RV.

Deliciously dark story, interweaving the messages of fairytales into a story of control and oppression, and one mother's fight to protect her child, against all odds.

A post-apocalyptic story brimming with kindness and compassion! Full review to follow.

If all the rich people abandoning the planet counts as an apocalypse, it sounds quite nice to me.

It's rare that I read such a beast of a book, but the 880 pages flew by. I had forgotten a lot of the details of The Priory of the Orange Tree and I was a bit distracted by trying to work out who or what I was meant to know about already. It's an entirely new cast except for some of the dragons, I think. Once all the new people are set out, it's a pacey and highly enjoyable tale, maybe a bit predictable in places, but perhaps that was info from the first book creeping through my subconscious.

Full review to follow.

I guess Maureen Johnson wanted to do an Agatha Christie style country house mystery and came up with a very tenuous reason for Stevie to be involved. Half of this book is just the gang going round doing London tourist stuff and the mystery is wholly separate to that. Definitely needs some suspension of disbelief to enjoy it.

Slow to get going, the first half of this duology focuses on the oppression of women, the suffrage movement and police corruption, and is light on the magic. It picks up towards the end but leaves everything unresolved. So definitely prepare to have to read both books for this one.