Review of 'The Starless Sea' by Erin Morgenstern

 

Despite having had The Night Circus sat on my shelf for a couple of years (I'm 100% intimidated by it), this is the first Erin Morgenstern book I've read. 2020 is my year of reading fantasy, but this is one of the few high fantasy books I've gone for. It was completely out of my comfort zone, but something I'm really glad I read.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins was living a normal life until he came across a book in his local library that has a short story about his own life and how he came across a painted door as a kid in it. Determined to discover how his life has ended up in a book, Zachary ends up on a total adventure into a world he never imagines. He's on a voyage to find the starless sea, and his life and whole understanding of what life is changes as he moves deeper into this unknown world.

This felt in part like a story about stories: not only are the chapters interspersed by parts of short stories included in the book as fairytales/fables in Zachary's world, but everything in the book is spurred on by stories. This is one of the few high fantasy novels I've read and it was something that I only felt I started to understand right in the last quarter of the book or so. The imagery was very vivid, but I felt a little like I was clutching at straws the whole way through. It made for a beautiful read, although definitely one that I feel like I'd need to read another couple of times to really properly understand. 

My one main gripe with it is that I wasn't really feeling the love story. It felt very forced, and almost as though it was an afterthought that was written into the book later as a way to add another dimension to the story and make things a little more dramatic. I would have loved to see the pair really get to know each other? Or have a bit more chemistry? 

I gave this four stars because I really enjoyed all the stories and how they worked together, but there were moments I felt a little lost. 

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Review of 'Half a World Away' by Mike Gayle

 

Everyone who I've seen reading this has said it make them bawl, and I (someone who cries at literally everything) somehow still thought this wouldn't make me cry? This is one of the books that's lasted with me the longest this year because the characters were so vivid and touching. I honestly wept for about the last quarter of the book, reading through my tears and I'm now torn between really wanting to read another Mike Gayle book and being afraid for how hard it will stomp on my heart. 

Kerry's a single mum trying to give her won the best life. She grew up in care and is desperate to make her son's childhood a better one than hers. Noah is a high-flying lawyer whose inability to open up has his marriage on the rocks. Noah has no idea he had an older sister, until he receives a letter from her. Kerry wants to get in touch, and finally get to know her younger brother again: separated in care, he was adopted whilst she bounced around foster homes until adulthood. However, Kerry's reason for contacting him is a little more complex than just wanting to get to know him as an adult. You see, Kerry's got a secret that will change both their lives forever.

This next part is going to have a whole bunch of spoilers, so if you haven't read the book yet and want to, this is your warning!

Review of 'To All The Boys I've Loved Before' by Jenny Han

 

Normally I'm always a 'read the book before you watch the film' advocate, but with this one I did it the other way around. I adored the film (a cute YA watch), and wanted to read the trilogy before seeing the second. I was reading this over summer in a bit of a slump after reading a few books I really didn't enjoy and it was the perfect fix to get me out of it.

Lara Jean writes a letter to every boy she loves when she falls out of love with him as a way to say goodbye. She never sends the letters, but keeps them in an old hatbox of her mother's. When one of the boys tells her he got her letter, Lara Jean realises they all must have been sent out somehow. Desperate to not let anyone know that she used to have a major crush on her sister's boyfriend (especially not her sister) who she wrote one of the letters to, she hatches a fake dating plan with one of the other boys.

This was a very dramatic love triangle-y romance that I totally devoured. I loved Lara Jean's character in this - she's sensitive, a little artsy and is always baking. The sister relationships between LJ and her older sister Margot as well as little sister Kitty were fab, and I felt like it was important that they occupied such a large space in the novel. The dynamic between them and as well more largely as a family missing a mother added a layer of depth outside the romance that the book really needed. 

I would recommend this if you enjoy YA romance books, especially Sarah Dessen's and Nicola Yoon's books.

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Review of 'The Hidden Beach' by Karen Swan

 

Karen Swan's The Christmas Lights was my favourite festive book I read in 2019, so I was excited to see what her summery reads are like. I totally expected a straight up holiday romance style book, so was a little surprised by the thriller aspect - I love a good thriller, so it didn't go amiss with me, but I could see how the title and cover might draw romance readers in for a book that would ultimately not be what they wanted.

Bell is working as a nanny for the Von Greyerz when Hanna, the mother, receives a call telling her that her husband has woken up from his coma. Bell always assumed the parents of the family were married, and Hanna is now stuck with a difficult choice of whether to stay in Stockholm with her family, or visit her now-awake husband. Bell's called on to go way above and beyond what should be expected of her role, and ends up on a set of small islands for the summer. Meeting Hanna's ex is different to how she expected, and no one is prepared for how much this summer will change their lives.

I found the book a little jarring if I'm honest. I felt like it was trying to be a cute romance novel, but at the same time a dark gripping thriller and the two styles, which were separated a little by current events vs flashbacks, clashed. I really struggled to like Hanna as a character - she was so obsessed with the family she nannied that she didn't have her own life and seemed quite happy with things being that way. I felt like the ending and story just weren't believable enough for me. I did however get caught up in wanting to know exactly what was happening in the thriller parts and I enjoyed Bell's mystery love interest at first.

I gave this three stars because I did find myself looking forward to reading the book to find out what was happening, but the romance just didn't do it for me.

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Review of 'Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas' by Adam Kay

 

I am *that* person who read a Christmassy book over Summer because sometimes you just need an extra bit of festivity inserted into your life, right? I LOVED This is Going to Hurt, but if I'm brutally honest the thing that made me so slow to read this second book was that it was the same price as a full novel for a TINY book. I managed to borrow this from a friend, which I'm really glad about because otherwise I just don't think I could have justified the price to read it.

Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas is a memoir in the same style as This is Going to Hurt, with stories by Adam Kay about his time working as a junior doctor for the NHS in the UK. It shares the funny and the brutally sad tales he remembers, with these ones all taking place between Christmas and New Year over the years he worked as a doctor.

The book is really great at showing how tough life working for the NHS can be over Christmas, particularly as Kay spent every single Christmas Day working. There are some really beautiful moments he depicts involving births, but his story about people trying to get their elderly relatives admitted to hospital so they don't have to spend the day together really broke my heart a bit.

If you enjoyed This is Going to Hurt, or like medical memoirs then I would recommend this. It was a quick read that helped me get out of a slump, and put a smile on my face as well as making me cry.

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Review of 'A Court of Mist and Fury'

I don't even know where to start with this. It's hands down the best book I've read all year, and I'm fully obsessed with Sarah J Maas' writing now and understand why she has such a cult following. This was such an incredible read that as I was getting through it I felt almost upset because I thought I'd never ever read a book as good as this ever again. I am already thinking of re-reading the series despite still having the fourth book to go, and I'm desperate for a really great TV series of the book series, with a Game of Thrones-esque budget to do it justice and make it perfect.

A Court of  Wings and Ruin follows on from the end of A Court of Thorns and Roses, where Feyre has agreed a bargain with Rhysand, Lord of the Night Court, to spend one week of every month with him as part of a bargain in which he saved her life. She goes back to the Spring court with Tamlin and dreads the idea of this monthly excursion, but for a while Rhysand doesn't act on it. She feels more and more trapped in her life with Tamlin: after defeating Amarantha and the changes that have happened to her, Feyre feels like she finally deserves a bit more independence, but instead she's expected more to sit and look pretty. On their wedding day, she starts to have some doubts, and as she walks down the aisle, Rhys swoops in and demands his promised week. 

Feyre dreads spending the week at the Night Court, and is petrified of Rhysand and his close courtiers. She's determined to spend all her time in her room and interact with him as little as possible, but gradually she begins to almost not want to go home, back to being constrained by Tamlin and lied to by the people closest to her. 

I'm trying not to give *too* much away with this review, but it's pretty hard. Because it's such a long book (over 600 pages), a LOT happens, and we get into the action straightaway. Having now read the third book in the series, and with just the very short fourth to go, I'm pretty sure this is going to remain my favourite of them. The world building was incredible - the descriptions of the Night Court made it sound like the most beautiful place I could imagine, and I thought things couldn't improve after the Spring Court. We also get glimpses of another court as the book goes on, and it's introduced in an equally spell-binding way.

There's so much character progression in this - Feyre really starts to come into her own, moving away from the girl she used to be who always had to depend on others, and really starts to learn what she wants. I also loved seeing a new perspective on both Rhys and Tamlin, and the book was so great at switching up what you thought was the case that I really want to go back and read ACOTAR now I know what I know.

A special mention also has to go to the smut in this book because wow no one does sexual tension like Maas do they? I mean, I am in LOVE. I'd heard so many things about the paint scene, and now I totally understand why people talk about it, but there were so many scenes in the book where the tension was so insane that I was *almost* disappointed when it was released. 

I have been recommending this to anyone who will listen, but mostly fantasy fans need to read this series if you haven't already, especially if you enjoy YA fantasy. 

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Review of 'Liar' by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen

 

I really had high hopes for this novel. The cover is beautiful (and I'm always a big believer in judging a book by its cover), the plot sounded really intriguing and the praise for it seemed good, but when it came down to it I really struggled to enjoy this at all.

Liar is largely about a teen girl called Nofar who, desperate for attention as a lonely teenage girl, lets people believe that a washed up celeb sexually assaulted her. She knows he's innocent, but when people see her crying in an alleyway because he's been rude to her, she does not correct their assumptions. From here the lie spirals - the man's life is being ruined, but can she bite the bullet and admit that she wasn't entirely honest, risking losing all the new-found respect she's received? 

Later in the book we meet Raymonde, an elderly lady who similarly tells a small lie and watches it snowball: she is mistaken for a deceased friend, and winds up giving tours of concentration camps, despite not being a survivor of one unlike her friend. Will either of the pair battle out their consciences?

As I said, I really loved the premise for this, and thought the book could be a really interesting one about how a small lie can really grow, fold in other lies and become insurmountable. However, I really struggled to suspend my belief whilst reading this. I just don't think that, unfortunately, in our world a man would be jailed and have his life turned upside down based solely on the word of a teenage girl with absolutely no evidence for the sexual assault or attempted assault. The police imply that Nofar has been a victim of attempted assault and she just agrees, rather than really telling them what happened, and then there's not any proper investigation after that. 

I found both Nofar and Raymonde really difficult characters to get on board with, but it's no flaw for a character to be unlikeable. I just find it hard to enjoy books where I can't get on board with the main characters at all. In Nofar's case the guy was really nasty, but didn't deserve his entire life ruining, but with Raymonde there was no 'bad guy' on the other end of the lie, unless you count the people attending the talk who couldn't recognise this woman was not really a holocaust survivor.

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