“Action, cut, action, cut, action, cut, action, cut. These aren’t commands, not for me. They’re more like everyday punctuation. A capital letter. A period. An indication that I should pay attention to what’s going on in the middle.” Pretty as a Picture tells a slow-burn type of suspenseful story, one that I would definitely recommend […]
MoreReaders, I am disappointed. Plain Bad Heroines was one of my most anticipated 2020 releases…maybe I should have ‘hyped’ it so much. This is certainly an ambitious novel, one that is a few hundred pages too long. There were elements that I liked, but these were ultimately outweighed by my frustration toward the tone of […]
More“We become eternal by being held in memory’s loving arms.” After I read Richard Wagamese’s Medicine Walk, I was looking forward to reading more of his work. And Ragged Company did not disappoint. Similarly to Medicine Walk, which felt like a long conversation between a dying man and his son, Ragged Company presents its readers […]
MoreAyoade on Top is a hilariously strange book. Richard Ayoade’s critical analysis of ‘View from the Top’ (a 2003 romcom starring Gwyneth Paltrow) is a delight to read. Throughout the course of this short book Ayoade argues that this long-forgotten film is a modern masterpiece. I found Ayoade’s dry wit and his clever observations regarding […]
More“That’s what it comes down to, I suppose. I was obsessed with what I was, because I had no idea who I was.” Scenes of a Graphic Nature is a thought-provoking and engrossing novel that is far darker than its brightly coloured cover suggests. After reading and being captivated by Caroline O’Donoghue’s debut novel, Promising […]
MoreTW: mentions of self-harm Not only was Too Much not enough but what little it offers is wholly problematic. This book would have made slightly more sense if it had been published in 2010 instead of 2020. Its analysis of the social norms and literature emerging from the Victorian era are far from insightful or […]
MoreWhat Red Was by Rosie Price ★★★★✰ 4 stars What Red Was is a stark and riveting debut novel that vividly depicts the lasting effects of rape on a young woman’s mind, body, and life. This is not for the ‘faint of heart’, and I am not writing this as some sort of snide but […]
MoreReview of Night Film by Marisha Pessl ★★★★★ 5 of 5 stars “As much as some people would like to believe, for their own peace of mind, that the appearance of evil in this world had a clean cause, the truth was never that simple.” Sometimes, if we are lucky enough, we ‘bump’ into […]
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