Review of 'My Sister the Serial Killer' by Oyinkan Braithwaite

When I read this book I'd gotten into a bit of a rut with my kindle. I'd spent the last two months reading a book that went on seemingly forever and that I really didn't enjoy (I need to work on my inability to DNF a book). This was the perfect 'I'm breaking out of my rut' book - short, fast paced and different to anything else I read all of last year, this was the breath of fresh air that I needed.

Korede and her sister Ayoode live together with their mother in Nigeria, and although their lives changed quite a lot after their father's death, Korede's hoping things calm down a little. That is, until her sister calls her out of her shift at the hospital because she's killed her boyfriend. Again. Feeling like she has to help her sister (and knowing that as the older sister her mum would blame her if Ayoode was caught), she helps Ayoode hide the body. The book follows the two women's frantic need to cover up the fact that Ayoode is a serial killer. However, Korede's fears peak when Ayoode starts dating a man she likes at the hospital.

I really enjoyed this book. I felt like it gave snippets of insights into what it's like to grow up in a Nigerian household without making this disjointed from the tense murder plot. Although it was such a short book, the bond between the sisters was explored very well and I really did want to read it all as soon as possible. My one issue with the book was that it ended in a very odd place - the story stopped very abruptly without any kind of crux or resolution to what was happening in the plot. I would have loved another 50 pages or so more to reach some kind of conclusion, or tie the story off in a different place.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'The Antiquary' by Walter Scott

As I'm reading, I always try to dog-ear (I'm a monster) or bookmark pages on my book or kindle with quotes I love. I can usually tell if I didn't *really* enjoy a book if I've not saved any pages to go back to. This is one of those books, and it took me a LONG time to find something I thought was half decent to use for this post. 

The Antiquary starts with a journey that a man named Lovel and an antiquary called Oldbuck take together to Scotland. At the centre of the book is mystery surrounding who Lovel really is, and we start to discover more and more about him through his interactions with the antiquary. 

I really struggled with this book - it's something I just couldn't wrap my head around. There is a lot of text in this written in Scottish dialect that made it a very slow read. I found I was focusing more on deciphering what was being said than thinking about the meaning behind the words and then missed a lot of that. It was a fairly hefty read (at over 500 pages), but there just wasn't masses of plot to keep me interested. 

I gave this 1 star and can't say I'd really recommend it.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'Someone we Know' by Shari Lapena*

*This was a gifted book to discuss on Instagram (no obligation to write a full review)

Clearly I had a bit of a thriller rampage last summer (which is absolutely where I'm up to on catching up with book reviews *clenches teeth*). Shari Lapena's fast becoming one of my favourite thriller authors, and I've been eyeing up reading her other books for a couple of months now. She seems to be really great at making you think you're clever and that you know who the culprit is, and then switching things up and making you realise that you weren't as clever as you thought. BUT, the culprit is still really believable and the signs were there throughout the book. I love it, and have been totally duped by her on both of her books I've read.

This book is set in suburban New York where Olivia Cole has just found out that her teenage son has been breaking into people's homes and hacking into their computers. Unfortunately for their family, he's broken into the home of a woman who's gone missing, and as the police become more and more convinced she's no longer alive, the family begin to worry about their son's fingerprints all over the house. The reader enters the lives of a whole group of neighbours from their quiet street, including the husband of the missing woman, as we become more embroiled in this story of revenge and betrayal and secrets.

This wasn't my favourite book of Lapena's, but I did really enjoy it. I loved the fact that none of the characters were wholly good, and you could suspect everyone. It had a very Pretty Little Liars gossip-y small town feel, and worked really well in showing how all of the neighbours' lives intertwined. I'd recommend this for fans of fast-paced thrillers who want a quick read as it's slightly on the short side (just under 300pgs).

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'Keep You Close' by Karen Cleveland*

*This book was gifted to me to discuss on Instagram*

I'm a big crime thriller fan, and this book was one of my favourite ones I read last year. It reminded me a LOT of TV shows like Homeland, and was a really fast-paced, FBI-laced drama.

Keep You Close's Steph Maddox is an internal investigations officer at the FBI, tackling those inside the bureau who are accused of wrongdoing. Her whole world gets titled on its axis when a colleague warns her that the bureau are looking into her son on some alleged terrorist charges. She knows her son wouldn't be involved in an online terror group, or at least thinks she does until she finds a gun in his room. The book follows her own attempts to find who could be framing her son whilst trying to wrap her head around the fact that there's a chance it *might* be him.

I loved almost all of this book, and would gave given it 5 stars right up until the ending. It's one of those stories where the writer tries to make the culprit someone you would never guess, and in doing so ruins the entire plot (I'm looking at you Pretty Little Liars). The book was left very open ended: most of the strands of the plot weren't tied up and the resolution was left as a sort of suggestion that could be undermined. It was pretty clear that there's a sequel in the works and a lot of the answers are being left for that, but having read it without the sequel available it was a bit disappointing.

If you are a fan of US crime dramas/thrillers or shows like Homeland I would really recommend this still as it keeps you guessing throughout and the writing and pacing is genuinely very good. It's just the open ending that let it down a bit IMO.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'As You Like It' by William Shakespeare

I absolutely thought that 'As You Like It' was one of the Shakespeare plays I'd never bothered to get around to. But, as I started to read it, hints of familiarity came flooding back and I realised that one of my favourite Shakespeare quotes (and what I named this whole blog after) came from this play!

'As You Like it' is one of Shakespeare's comedies, attributed to his mid-career in terms of the time frame of his plays. It follows the story of Rosalind, whose father is exiled by her uncle and ultimately is exiled by her uncle. Orlando, exiled by his own brother, meets Rosalind and her cousin Celia who are now living in a forest. Rosalind is disguised as a man, Ganymede, to protect her and Celia. When 'Ganymede' meets Orlando, he learns of his love for Rosalind. 

The whole play, as with many of his comedies is all about disguise and misunderstandings. Rosalind was played by a boy pretending to be a girl pretending to be a man who then pretends to be a woman to faux-woo Orlando. A woman falls in love with 'Ganymede' who does not really exist, whilst Orlando is in love with Rosalind but does not know Ganymede and Rosalind are the same person.

It's not one of my favourite plays, but is a great one of the comedies, so I'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube 

Review of 'One Day in December' by Josie Silver

I was so looking forward to reading this - a hyped up romance is almost always going to be right up my street. Maybe I shouldn't have read an obviously Christmassy/wintery book in the summer last year (yes I am that behind on reviews and desperately trying to catch up as quickly as possible), but this just didn't hit the spot for me.

Laurie falls in love at first sight on a snowy London day in December. She confesses her need to find this man she locked eyes with to her best friend Sarah, but after months of trying to find him after their one encounter was her gazing at him from a bus, she gives up. Soon Sarah's excited to introduce her new boyfriend to Laurie: it's the man she fell in love with.

The book takes place over ten years, tracking Laurie's ever-growing love for a man that she can't admit to Sarah is her man from the bus. It encompasses friendship, other relationships for Laurie, and a big theme of missed opportunities. 

I'm still a bit disappointed that I didn't enjoy this? I felt as though the book really dragged and could have had the same exact plot whilst being 100 pages shorter. I also really struggled with not liking the characters and really not wanting the two main lovers to get together. In some books not liking the main characters is par for the course, but I just feel as though with a romance novel you really need to be rooting for them, and I just wasn't.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'The Hunting of the Last Dragon' by Sherryl Jordan

You know how they say 'never meet your heroes'? Well I think maybe we should have a 'never revisit an author you loved as a teen just in case they turn out to be problematic AF'. That's what happened with this book. I'd read Secret Sacrament and The Raging Quiet when I was at school and loved them, but now I'm not sure if they were like this book and I just didn't pick up on it.

Jude, the main character, lives in a land that had been riddled by dragons. After extensive hunting the people thought they were near wiped out, until one started burning towns again. Jude loses his home and family to the dragon's fire, and ends up on a mission to try and slay the last dragon. On his way he meets a Chinese lady, Jing-Wei, who's kept captive in a circus. Together they share the burden of the mission.

I realised quite early on that the book was more teen than YA, which in itself was fine. However, Jude's attitude and the general message of the book was where things really went downhill. Jude is the knightly hero of the book, and his 'kindness' to Jing Wei in taking her out of a cage and washing her to put her back in the cage is something that's written as though its admirable. The whole story encapsulates in a 'romance' where Jude has to get over the disgust he feels at Jing-Wei's 'otherness' and only really accepts her as a person when other people do. The whole thing was actually pretty gross and made the book my least favourite read last year.

It's not something I'd really recommend - there's so much great teen/YA fantasy fiction out there that doesn't have these issues.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'Conversations with Friends' by Sally Rooney

Before we properly get going with this review, I'm just going to put it out there that I'm not the *biggest* fan of literary realism. It's one of those genres that I want to love, but every time I dip into it I'm reminded of the fact that reading is a form of escapism for me, and I don't want to read to explore the mundanity of every day life like my own.

Conversations with Friends is a story about Frances and her best friend/ex-girlfriend Bobbi, who become friends with a married couple called Nick and Melissa. The four live in Dublin, and the boundaries of friendship are blurred when Frances and Nick begin to have an affair. The whole book sits around these boundaries of friendship - Frances and Bobbi were lovers but now live together platonically, Bobbi's friendship with Melissa is based on adoration of her work, Frances and Nick aren't 'together' - it's a friends with benefits situation. 

At the same time, the author also looks at the boundaries of conversation. There are no speech marks in the text, so written communication between the characters, verbal communication and the normal narrative are not made distinct from one another.

I think the book is done very cleverly as an exploration of these two things. The characters weren't overly likeable, but again this falls into part of it being literary realism: they're not meant to be. It's the first book I've ever read that actually discusses endometriosis openly, which I think is very important. I gave this book 3 stars because whilst I could appreciate it was a good book in its own right it wasn't something I enjoyed too much.

Follow me on Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube

Review of 'The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp' by Sarra Manning

I love retellings of older stories: give me '10 Things I Hate About You' to watch, or 'Circe' to read any day of the week. The Rise and Fall of Becky Sharp is a modern retelling of Vanity Fair. Looking back, maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I'd read Vanity Fair in the first place, and could come into this book as something building upon the original story, but I just found it a bit ... lacking?

Becky Sharp's just *almost* won Big Brother, and now she's out of the BB House she's determined to build upon her fledgling fame. An orphan, the only person she has as 'family' is a woman called Babs who's determined to squeeze as much money out of her as possible. Becky stays friends with the winner of Big Brother, a girl named Amanda who was (unlike Becky) born into a very rich family. The whole story is about Becky's attempts to woo rich men into marriage (or at least a roof over her head and some presents thrown into the mix) and climb as high as possible on the social ladder.

I really couldn't gt on board with this book. I'm not sure if it's because I haven't read Vanity Fair or if it's because I have some kind of need to like the main character of a book, but this was a 1 star read for me. I felt as though the plot didn't really add up - it was more of a series of events in Becky's life that just didn't flow together, and the whole thing seemed disjointed. The moments of tension didn't hit the spot with me because I felt so apathetic towards the characters that I didn't really care if things went downhill for them.

This isn't one I'd really recommend unless you've read Vanity Fair, as hopefully knowing the storyline for that might fill in some of the plot holes of this book.

Bloglovin | Twitter | Instagram | Youtube