Caroline O’Donoghue’s foray into YA will definitely appeal to fans of the genre. Although I do have a few criticisms I can safely say that I found All Our Hidden Gifts to be an entertaining read. Set in Ireland, our narrator and protagonist is sixteen-year old Maeve Chambers, the youngest in a big family. She […]
More“He doesn’t like the feeling, or the fact that he recognises it and understands it perfectly; it’s as familiar to him as hunger or thirst. Cal never could stand to leave a case unresolved.” If I’d read The Searcher without knowing the author’s identity, I’d never have guessed that it was a novel by Tana […]
More“We all lived in an unwalled city, that was it. I saw lines scored across the map of Ireland; carved all over the globe. Train tracks, roads, shipping channels, a web of human traffic that connected all all nations into one great suffer body.” This is the third novel I’ve read by Emma Donoghue and […]
More“I felt I had hitherto woefully misdirected my energies in attempting to cultivate a personality. If you didn’t have one then that left more room for everyone else’s.” With so many professional reviewers hailing Exciting Times as one of the best debut novels of 2020, praising Naoise Dolan for her wit and her razor-sharp social […]
MoreThe opening lines of this novel are wonderfully theatrical: “All three of the Drumm brothers were at the funeral, although one of us was in a coffin.” Our Little Cruelties by Liz Nugent is a gleefully dark novel, filled with mean, selfish, and cruel individuals. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Nugent’s latest […]
MoreAt first I was intrigued by the prologue featuring young Garda Cormac Reilly who—after answering a call out—is faced with his first dead body and two neglected children. The rest of the book, which is set years later and follows a newly transferred to Galway Reilly, was markedly less engaging. Maybe readers who haven’t read […]
MoreReview of Normal People by Sally Rooney ★★✰✰✰ 2 of 5 stars If you believe that characters who dislike themselves, shrug a lot and say “I don’t know” a lot, are very deep and realistic, well this is the perfect read for you. If you are thinking about reading this novel, I suggest you listen […]
MoreIn this collection of articles and diary entries, Marian Keyes provides readers with plenty of fun. She writes in a way that is always genuinely relatable; her observations, accounts, ramblings, are witty and heartfelt. It isn’t easy to be consistently funny, but I found myself always smiling, giggling and laughing out loud, while reading Making […]
MoreI won’t deny that –initially– there is an underlying tension that renders some portions of the story to be gripping. The first opening lines propel us into what promises – and fails – to be an intriguing mystery. My main reservation about this novel is that it switches tones too often: there is an unbalanced […]
MoreThis was quite an epic. This novel follows Cyril Avery and depicts the hardships and misadventures he experiences throughout his life. Adopted by two rather distant parents his views on love and family are, from the very start, somewhat unusual. He falls in love with his best friend Julian, a person whom he admires far […]
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