Emma Goto

Some of this was really beautifully written (and funny at times) but then oh boy, the main female characters are SO sexualised. And they just read like a male fantasy, not like a real human beings.

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. It's a book about two people who have broken up due to a huge lack of communication and misunderstandings (which is actually very realistic?) but makes it frustrating to read. There's a side plot with the friendship which I actually enjoy a bit more. Didn't want to give it a 3 because it has more depth than your average romance novel, but more of a 3.5 rounded up.

A new book by Alistair Reynolds, yay! I quite like some of his sci-fi books but I found this one to be a little bit boring in comparison. I think because it lacks some of the epic or space opera-ness as it's more of a self-contained story? But nevertheless it touches on some interesting concepts as the main character finds himself reliving events across different eras.

This one's been on my list for a good couple of years now, and I finally got around to reading it. Basically it tries to dispel some of the myths around the Columbine school shooting. The shooters weren't loners - they had friends, went to prom, and they weren't the trench coat-wearing, loner goths that the media initially painted them to be.

I'm a fan of true crime and I'm not sure if this technically falls into this category, but this one felt really heavy to read. Maybe because it spends a lot more time with the survivors and victims of the shooting? Or maybe because it's a more recent event that I was already aware of, the book felt a little bit less interesting to read.

Somehow Tchaikovsky continues to get better and better with these books. But it's impossible to give a plot summary without major spoilers (honestly I feel like it's better to go in blind with all the books in this series).

A satisfying follow-up to Six of Crows! I came back to this one after I finished watching Shadow and Bone season 2 - I found that I enjoyed the bits with the Crows characters way more than I enjoyed the Alina plot-line so that enticed me to pick this one up.

Another epic fantasy masterpiece!! A lot of fun to read with the women-centric plot focusing on warriors, a dragon rider and a queen.

This is a prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree, and I had completely forgotten what happens in it, but still found this book easy to follow nonetheless. I probably should have refreshed my memory and it might have made the plot line a bit more impactful.

I struggled with whether to give this one a 3 stars or a 4 stars. It's not bad - but it felt very long, and my small brain got lost in the plot in amongst all the different characters introduced.

When I saw there was a new Brandon Sanderson book I had to read it! The quirky tone at the beginning was offputting, but it either got toned down or I got used to it, after which it became a fairly pleasant (if straightforward) read.

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!

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.

I'm an Alistair Reynolds fan but I had some issues with this one. Without any spoilers, it's a bit of a mashup between sci-fi space travel and an alternate history 1950s Paris. The overall concept was excellent, the Paris bit was good, but the space part not so much. Also there was an attempted romance which didn't feel very convincing.

A book about an American Indian returning to India to report on rural India's flawed justice system. Quite a depressing read as it covers the conflicts between Muslims and Hindus in India and violence against women. It does end on a happier note which almost feels a bit out of place with the rest of the book.

I read this and was bad as the reviews made it out to be.

A story about a farming colony that receives a spaceship every 15 years that comes and picks up their produce. Due to the effects of space travel, those on the ship don't see that much time pass in comparison, so each time they return to the planet the people there have aged significantly, which I thought was a pretty neat plot point. Overall it has quite a bittersweet tone but I really enjoyed it! Could be my new favourite sci-fi book.

Honestly I was hating on this book - it gave me Christian Grey, Edward Cullen bordering-on-abuse vibes but then it redeemed itself by the girl leaving the guy!! Yes, thank you!!

In saying that though, it still started off pretty cliche, with the girl getting a lot of help in running her flower shop for free so I can't say it was good enough for a 4 stars.

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...).

Everyone wakes up one morning to find a box with a length of string inside of it, which shows how much life they have left. Besides the immediate implications of knowing how many years of life you have left, the book dives into how society would change - if you only had a year left to live, why would someone want to employ you, for example? - plus people would want to approach relationships knowing their own or their partner's lifespan.

A coming-of-age story about creating video games. You'd think something about video games would be right up my alley, but for some reason I found this book didn't grip me as much as it could have?

The book is set across three different eras - the first I found the most interesting, with it being an alternate history late 1800s America where gay marriage is legal (and people even do arranged marriages for it). We then jump 100 years forward to a Hawaiian living in America. It gets a bit confusing here because the main character's names are reused (which made me think this was going to be like Cloud Atlas?) but they're not actually connected in some tangible way, although storywise they are sort of similar. Then we jump forward another 100 years for a dystopian, pandemic-ridden America where gay marriage is now banned in an attempt to increase the population. Honestly you could have just turned one of these eras into it's own book and I probably would have preferred it more!

A common theme across all 3 stories is the uselessness of at least one of the characters in each due to their passivity. Which I visit makes for some frustrating reading. And then I finished the book and it's like, well what was the point? But maybe that's what you get with Yanagihara books. A bunch of people suffering.

This one's about a tennis star (seems very heavily inspired by Serena Williams) who comes out of retirement for one last attempt at a grand slam.

Even though Carrie Soto as a character shouldn't be likeable, Taylor Jenkins Reid just writes really good characters!!

The plot revolves around a mother who left her partner for dead on the side of a road, who consequently loses custody of her child and then gets with the dead partner's best friend. Like she redeems herself in the end but I found her really hard to like as a character, and also how easily the best friend is won over by her because she's hot I guess??

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?

I really enjoy T Kingfisher books, but I think it's more for the romance more than anything else so this was pretty light on it and hence the 4 stars. Still a cosy fantasy read.

I stopped and started this one a couple of times, but I found the beginning to be really confusing, and I didn't really connect with the characters either so I didn't find the middle or ending to be all that impactful either. Which is a shame, because I like some of the author's other books!