I haven’t done a reading round-up since the summer, so if you want to read my last one – you can find it here. I’ve also hit book 70 this year, of my reading goal of 75 books. If you’d like to follow my Goodreads account, you can find it here.
Reading Recently:
Ubu Roi by Alfred Jarry
This play is truly bizarre and grotesque, but that’s also the point. The satire is very heavy-handed and whilst I can admire it’s bold choices for the time… it’s not for me.
2 stars
The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
Witty and funny, Mitford follows the chaotic Radlett family and all their choices around love, careers and relationships.
4 stars
Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic by Daisy Butcher
The collection does what it says: it’s a collection of Gothic short stories and evil flora and fauna. Some of them were great, others less so.
3 stars
A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J Maas
This novella very strongly felt like filler and I wish I had just bought the forth novel to see Nesta was instead. It just felt very useless and didn’t move the plot forward at all.
2 stars
For the Wolf by Hannah Whitten
This new fantasy release has been all over social media. It’s a semi-retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (with major twists) and some of the language is beautiful. The romance is a little overwrought and the characters are slightly under-developed but I’ll excited to see what the sequel will bring.
3 stars
Our Stop by Laura Jane Williams
Light, but enjoyable fluff. If you follow LJW on social media, you’ll get the very strong impression that the heroine of her rom com is based on herself.
3 stars
The Wicked Cometh by Laura Carlin
This struck me as very Sarah Waters-esque. There are some surprisingly gruesome passages in this mystery set in Victorian England with medical advances, graverobbing and an interesting but not unexpected twist.
3 stars
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This magical realism, Gothic horror journey is fantastic. I couldn’t put it down. It was one of my favourite reads in the past few years. It is incredibly atmospheric and the world-building is impeccable.
5 stars
Frankenstein, based on the novel by Mary Shelley by Nick Dear
This play is a fantastic adaptation of Frankenstein. Dear really hones the text to its core. It’s a very powerful adaptation.
4 stars
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
It is hard to express how awful I thought this novel was. Cultural appropriation and nativism galore. The twist was terrible and ruined what little there was to redeem about it.
1 star
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
This Russian classic is a wild ride. The devil comes to Moscow and chaos ensues. I enjoyed the second half of the novel and Margarita’s storyline much more than the first half. I could have spent an entire book at that horrifying ball.
3 stars
The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore
I was family with the history of Essex and the Witchfinder General, so this was an easy read that slotted into that era and plot. A nice autumnal read.
3 stars
Hamilton and Me by Giles Terera
This is Terara’s biography from his time playing Aaron Burr in Hamilton. As a Hamilton fan, and someone who say Terera in the original London production, it was very interesting to read about the process.
3 stars
Foul is Fair by Hannah Capin
I thoroughly enjoyed this Macbeth adaptation – set in the world of rich, elitist private schools, you end up rooting for the Witches/Lady Macbeth as they enact their vengeance on the boys that have wronged them and the society that enables them.
5 stars
Bunny by Mona Awad
This book is a journey. It is literally impossible to explain. It felt part hallucinogenic, part Dark Academia, part Alice in Wonderland. You can only read it to experience it.
3 stars
A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J Maas
Finally, Nesta gets the page space that she deserves. I absolutely raced through this latest installment of ACOTAR. It is probably the raciest book in the series so far.
4 stars
Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin
A witch and a witch hunter forced into marriage? It sounds cliche but the novel found a way to be interesting and fresh. I adored some of the secondary characters and will definitely be picking up the second in the series.
4 stars
Killing November by Adriana Mather
This was a fun read set in a highly secretive private school for assassins. My biggest criticism was that it was a bit light on character. I probably won’t pick up the sequel.
3 stars
A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro
I love a good Sherlock Holmes adaptation, this one was okay. Decent, but not good enough for me to add to my collection so it was donated promptly to a charity shop.
3 stars
A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St Clair
On retrospection, I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a Persephone/Hades re-telling where the Greek pantheon of Gods lives in the modern world. I enjoyed it enough to definitely want to read the subsequent novels.
3 stars
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
This was a quick, nice, gentle read, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Conversations with Friends. I’m sure it’s already been snapped up and optioned for film/tv.
3 stars
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
The world-building in this novel was absolutely incredible and complicated. It was just reasonably light on plot. I’m sure this novel was just the set-up for an exciting world to follow, but it just did not get there yet. I do want to see what’s next in the world of Scholomance, though.
3 stars
Have you read anything good lately? My recommendation out of all of these is Mexican Gothic.
If you want to read my last round-up, you can find it here.
