In news that will absolutely shock you all, it turns out that if you don’t write a blog post for 20 days, you end up REALLY FAR BEHIND WITH YOUR WEEKLY WRAP UPS AGAIN.
*shakes fist at self*
Anyway. Here’s what I read between 25th November and 1st December.
Books read: 8
Pages read: 2,481 pages
#1: The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Audience: Adult
Genre: Literature/Crime/???
Plot summary: The second book in the Cemetery of Lost Books series (which started with The Shadow of the Wind), this tells the story of a young author in 1920s Barcelona who realises there’s a connection between his slightly mysterious house and the book he’s being paid to write.
Thoughts: I’ve been meaning to read this book for literally years now. I absolutely ADORE The Shadow of the Wind, and I was super excited to read more by the same author. This one is set years earlier, but has a very similar feeling of devotion to Barcelona and a slightly eerie sensation to the absolutely stunning writing.
There was something about this one that I can’t put my finger on that stopped me from loving it as much as I did the first book, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and I’m excited to continue with the series!
Rating: 4 stars
#2: Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
Audience: Adult
Genre: Thriller
Plot summary: The story of a woman who slowly comes to realise that the actions of her seven year old daughter are less about intelligence and more about something utterly nefarious…
Thoughts: I thought for SURE I was going to love this book, because I really love stories about creepy children. And Hanna is 100% a creepy child. HOWEVER. For the majority of this book, the story felt more like a domestic drama than a thriller, which was a little disappointing.
I flew through the story, but I was left feeling that if we hadn’t had alternating perspectives between Suzette and Hanna, the story could have been a lot more tense and gripping than it was – less about Hanna giggling to herself as she planned creepy things and more about Suzette not being able to work out if she’s imagining things or if her daughter is genuinely doing what she thinks she’s doing. You know?
Still, the creep factor was definitely there, so that’s something!
Rating: 3.5 stars
#3: Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (Reread)
Audience: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Plot summary: Terry Pratchett does Christmas, basically. The Hogfather (i.e. Santa) has disappeared mysteriously, so Death decides to step in and fill the void.
Thoughts: I love this book. Like, a LOT. It’s definitely one of my favourite Terry Pratchett books, because it’s absolutely hilarious but it also heavily pokes fun at the commercialisation of Christmas and the way that people refuse to recognise that it’s a pagan holiday that’s been converted into a Christian holiday.
Everything about it is magnificent. EVERYTHING. I honestly reread this book every December because that’s how good it is.
Rating: 5 stars
#4: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Audience: Adult
Genre: Contemporary
Plot summary: A single mother and her teenage daughter move to an idyllic planned community in 1990s Ohio, only to find themselves heavily involved when a couple in the community try to adopt a Chinese-American baby and a custody battle breaks out.
Thoughts: Lianne very sweetly sent this to me right at the start of the year and I’d always planned on using it as my pick for Ohio in my read-all-the-US-states challenge. But it wasn’t until the very end of November that I actually got around to picking it up. Whoops??
Anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed this book – the characters are wonderful, and the writing is fantastic. But at the same time, I struggled to get through more than two or three chapters in a sitting. Eventually, I forced myself to prioritise it over anything else, and once I pushed through those couple of chapters I sped through the rest of the book. Go figure…
Essentially, this was a beautifully told story and I was incredibly invested in the lives of the characters. But it’s definitely not an easy book to read, given some of the subject matter.
Rating: 4 stars
#5: How the Dukes Stole Christmas by Tessa Dare, Sarah MacLean, Sophie Jordan and Joanna Shupe
Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance
Plot summary: Four novellas featuring dukes and romance and Christmas.
Thoughts: I bought this because I was craving a new Tessa Dare book. And in the absence of a new Tessa Dare book, a Tessa Dare novella would more than suffice! My favourite in this collection was actually Sarah MacLean’s story about two childhood best friends who reunite in their 30s, because apparently I’m trash for a second chance story.
If you’re looking for historical accuracy or even historical plausibility, you definitely won’t get it here. But if you’re looking for fun romances that feature Christmas and dukes? Yeah, check this collection out because it was pretty stinking great.
Rating: 4.25 stars
#6: Loving vs Virginia by Patricia Hruby Powell
Audience: YA
Genre: Historical fiction
Plot summary: Told in verse and historical documents, this book tells the story of the Lovings, an interracial married couple who wanted to live in Virginia, where interracial marriage was against the law.
Thoughts: I have been meaning to read this book for years because it sounded FASCINATING and it was based on true events. What I didn’t know going in was that their struggle to live in Virginia after their marriage went on for NEARLY A DECADE, from the 1950s through until the late 1960s. Which is…utterly ridiculous and yet not at all surprising.
I read it cover to cover in under an hour, and while it’s a very sparsely told story (seeing as it’s in verse), it was also a very compelling and important story and I’m incredibly glad that I finally read it.
Rating: 4 stars
#7: A Notorious Vow by Joanna Shupe
Audience: Adult
Genre: Romance
Plot summary: A young woman doomed to marry for money to save her parents from disgrace meets the deaf inventor who lives next door to her cousin. He agrees to marry her to save her from a much worse fate, but didn’t bargain on falling in love with her.
Thoughts: I bought this one solely because there was an excerpt for it in How the Dukes Stole Christmas and I was really intrigued to see how Shupe would handle the male lead’s deafness, given that it’s set in the 1880s. And from that perspective, this was definitely solid! There’s sign language and lip reading and the female lead goes out of her way to learn to sign (unlike some female leads *cough* COLLEEN HOOVER *cough*). So all of that was really fantastic, especially given that the author’s note at the end talks about how her mother-in-law is fluent in ASL, having been raised by two Deaf parents.
However. I was utterly icked out by the fact that he’s 29 and she’s 19. Like…I get that she has to be under her parents’ thumb and her finding her independence is a big part of the story. But noooooooooooo. I don’t care if it’s authentic to the time period. I don’t want to read about romanticised sexual relationships between teenage girls and grown ass men. Just… Just have her be 21. Or 24. She could come into her majority at 25, for God’s sake. The story would work just as effectively but it would have grossed me out a whole lot less!
Rating: 3 stars
#8: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Reread)
Audience: Adult
Genre: Classic
Plot summary: On Christmas Eve, a capitalist pig is visited by four ghosts to teach him the error of his capitalist pig ways.
Thoughts: Okay, look. That plot summary may be SLIGHTLY over the top, but it’s not dramatically far from the truth. I make no secret of the fact that I’m absolute trash for Charles Dickens’ stories, and this is one I’ve been reading and loving since I was nine or ten.
The characters are fantastic. The writing is brilliant. The use of staves instead of chapters? Utterly inspired. It’s short and snappy without any of Dickens’ tendency to pad out his stories because he was being paid by the word, and I love absolutely everything about it. Also, Muppet’s Christmas Carol is the best adaptation, hands down. Fight me.
Rating: 5 stars
What have you been reading recently?
The Tea is Also Cursed 