The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya - Review

 

My friend Sam bought me gift vouchers for The Bookish Type for Christmas. It's the LGBTQ+ bookshop in Leeds and I've been before, but I hadn't been since it moved to its new premises. So when Sam and Jac and I were meeting in Leeds for an afternoon out, I suggested we went. I took my vouchers and I got three books. I'm determined to get to them soon because they all sounded so interesting! So I picked this up and took it away with me for a weekend by the seaside. It was good company. 

Neela is an indie musician. She's not exactly that well known, but she's around. The book is set in Toronto, which I liked. Neela has paid her dues, worked hard, all of that. But she isn't very well known. Then an internet star called RUK-MINI covers one of her songs and it goes viral. Neela gets more well known which she does like, but she doesn't really like Rukmini's cover. Rukmini messages her and the two meet up in a coffee shop and start a friendship. 

Neela isn't sure about Rukmini, though. I feel like she felt like Rukmini wasn't a 'real' musician because she made music with a computer and stuff. She seems to think she's better than Rukmini, so she's very jealous when Rukmini is offered a world tour as support act for another female musician. This is exacerbated when she finds out that her keyboardist is joining Rukmini on tour. While Rukmini's on tour they try to speak often, but Neela does feel left behind.

For her part, Rukmini is a great character too. It turns out that she records an album with a friend in college and it gets leaked and goes viral too. It sounds really interesting in how it's described. 

Someone writes a subtweet and the friendship implodes. I actually wish there had been a confrontation between the two women, but I think it was more realistic that there wasn't. 

It's a good book and I would definitely read something else by the same author. I'm giving this four out of five. 

Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell - Review

I love Rainbow Rowell and I've read a lot of her Young Adult stuff, so when I saw this on Netgalley I was intrigued as it's an adult novel. I wanted to read it, and was pleased to get it approved. Thank you so much to Penguin Random House for granting me access to this book. I was provided with an electronic copy of the book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The book is about Shiloh and Cary. At the beginning of the book they are both in Omaha, their home town, for a friend's wedding. They are about thirty three at this point. Their mutual friend Mikey is getting married to someone he knew in high school, Janine. Shiloh and Cary were best friends with Mikey at high school; the three of them ran together and were pretty attached at the hip. Shiloh got out and went to university elsewhere. Cary joined the navy, where he still is. Mikey is an artist and was in like New York or something but he's now back at home too. Shiloh never really felt like she fitted in at high school, I think, but she met Ryan at college and was lucky to find a job in theater in Omaha, so ended up living there. She and Ryan had two children, Juniper and Gus, who in the book are six and three. She and Ryan got divorced and she is now living in her childhood home with her mother, Gloria. She and Ryan supposedly have 50/50 custody but he isn't that reliable. He is also seeing someone new, which Shiloh isn't happy about. 

She and Cary had this kind of mutual attraction in high school but never really acted on it. There are flashbacks to high school in the book, which really reminded me of Rainbow's YA novels, and I do think this is where her strength lies. I love how painful it is to be seventeen and eighteen in her books; I think those bits work really well. Especially as all three main characters desperately want to get out of Omaha and be someone. Shiloh's mom was not the most reliable of parents (although she seems a better grandmother) and Cary's family is complicated. The woman he calls Mom, Lois, is actually his grandma. His real mum is his 'sister' Jackie. This is never spoken about, though, but it is painful for Cary. 

When they meet up they dance and they leave together, but they don't end up having sex. Cary is leaving again for his deployment on a ship, but there is obviously chemistry between them. Then Lois falls and Cary asks Shiloh for help. When he comes back they meet up. He meets her kids. They almost get together - and then don't. It's an absolutely delicious dance, I really enjoyed it. Shiloh and Cary are both great people and I liked the depth of their feelings and self awareness. Shiloh almost seems asexual, which she seems pretty okay with, and I liked how this was dealt with. Her kids are a little precocious, which is a criticism, but I sort of forgave them. 

I liked the kind of romancing part, when Cary is away and they're emailing each other. The latter part of the book, when Mikey gets married, is set in 2006, so the internet does exist but smartphones don't. I think this was a deliberate choice because Rainbow is the same age; she would have been the same age as them in high school in 1991. Shiloh is coming into herself in her thirties which I think is something a lot of women do. I would love to see this book set today and then high school in the mid noughties, but I liked it this way too. 

I liked how much of their lives just happened. They want to be together but LIFE keeps happening and happy endings are rarely straightforward. I really liked the book and am glad I read it. I'm giving it four out of five. 

The Garden Party by B P Walter - Review

 

A few years ago I read The Dinner Party by B P Walter and I wasn't too impressed with it, but than I saw a synopsis for this and thought I would give him another go. However I didn't like this either so that's it, he's getting no more grace from me and I'm never reading any of his books again. 

As you can see I requested this from the library and I'm glad I didn't spend any money on it. Like The Dinner Party it's full of rich posh people who it's hard to have any sympathy for. The main protagonist I guess is Harris. At the beginning of the book he is around twenty years old. His parents are dead, having been killed in a car crash, and Harris has been adopted by the Moncrieff family. He's been there about five years now but he hates them all and they basically hate him, too.

There's Raphael, the son, who is only a little bit older than Harris. At the beginning of the book he is in his final year at uni but he has to get married. He has had a fling with a woman called Lauren, who was his tutor, and who is 8 years older than him, and she is pregnant. It has been decided that they have to get married, and quickly. The family is throwing a big engagement party at their fancy mansion hall thing, before it is obvious that she's pregnant. Then they'll get married privately and quickly, and then Isabelle and Patrick don't have to deal with the scandal of Raphael having a baby out of wedlock. Raphael really doesn't want to get married and wonders how his life has spiralled so much, but he's kind of stuck. 

He and Harris have never got on and when Harris first moved in Raphael was outright hostile towards him. Harris bears grudges hard. I did have some sympathy for him because he had just lost his parents, but, you know. It's shown at the beginning of the book that Harris and someone called Rhys have done something to Patrick, Isabelle, and Raphael and then the book shows each of the Moncrieffs' "crimes". 

Isabelle has also never liked Harris and has resented his presence in her house. She works in films and her "crime" has to do with her job and Harris. It is honestly very disgusting. She is a terrible human and deserves no sympathy. She had choices that mostly no one else in the book has, and she still stayed. It's stupid. 

Then there's Patrick. I think he is trying to do the right thing when Harris' parents die, but he is still a terrible human. I also thought the twists around his story were obvious and cliched and I didn't like them. He is trying with Harris but he just gets it wrong. 

But Harris is ALSO a terrible person and needs to just like.... not. I thought the story was just hackneyed. THEN I have to talk about the typos. There were SO many. My grammar is very good so I know I pick up stuff others wouldn't necessarily, but I read a few reviews on Goodreads that mentioned them. At one point Isabelle is called Eleanor, for absolutely no reason. Then there's just so many mistakes like Moncrieff's house. The house belongs to just one Moncrieff? Does it? The apostrophe is wrong. It annoyed me SO much. 

So really I am only giving this two and a half out of five. And I will NOT read anything by him again. Be gone, B P Walter! 

Notes on Infinity by Austion Taylor - Review

I saw this book while I was browsing Netgalley and I was intrigued by the premise. It's billed as Normal People meets The Dropout meets Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. So yeah that got me! I loved Normal People when I read that six years ago, and I know the story of The Dropout after I read Bad Blood a couple of years ago. I haven't read Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow yet but I have so many friends who have raved about it and it's a book club choice for this year so I will get to it then. So this book definitely IS kind of those three things all mixed together, and I am very grateful to Penguin Random House for granting me access to it. The book will be published on the 10th of July, so it's a few months away yet, but not that far. I think the hype around this book is going to be a LOT!

I was provided with an electronic copy of the book for review purposes but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The main protagonist of the book is Zoe. She is at university at Harvard when she meets Jack in a Chemistry class. She's instantly intrigued by him, especially when she learns he is the undergrad who is famously working in the lab belonging to an eminent professor, David Li. No other undergrad has the honour. He is almost as smart as Zoe and the two of them face off against each other. Then he drops out, just disappears. He has been working insanely much, and the two make friends and start working on lab stuff together. Zoe has a theory about anti aging and epigenomes (I didn't fully understand the science) and Jack gets the two of them into this lab belonging to a guy called Brenna, and he unlocks something to do with yeast, and basically the two of them think they can extend people's lives by up to fifteen or twenty years. 

Both Jack and Zoe start working around the clock and neglecting their classes. They bring other people on board - Jack's roommate Carter, who Zoe goes out with for a long time, and Zoe's brother Alex - and they start looking for investors. They have a start up and venture capitalists are really interested in them, but really they don't have a product. They both drop out of Harvard and then they're living this like very rich life where they can buy whatever they want, and they're working insanely, and the business is like a billion dollar business, but there's no actual thing. It completely reminded me of Elizabeth Holmes and her debacle. 

I did feel like the middle dragged a bit but then it picked up a lot. I liked Zoe and her family - her dad is a respected professor and whatever she does it never lives up to him or what her brother has done, which she finds frustrating. She and Jack do have an on again off again thing. Jack is mostly a bit of a dickhead which is completely allowed because he's the science genius etc, but Zoe really does feel in the final third that she also has the science knowledge it's just she's now busy being CEO and can't actually do the lab work. 

I did wonder how it was all going to fall apart and I'm glad to say I was pleased with what happened. It is an interesting book and I am intrigued as to what the writer writes next. I'm giving it four out of five. 

All The Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman - Review

I had seen someone reading this and I was really intrigued, so I went looking for it but discovered it's not out until the 10th of April. So I went looking for it on Netgalley and lo and behold, there it was! So thank you very much to Fourth Estate for granting me access to this. I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes, but was not otherwise compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own. 

So, Florence is thirty one years old and lives in London with her ten year old son, Dylan. She is American, though; she grew up in quite a white trash kind of family in Florida, but the family moved over when she was a teenager. Florence was then in a girl pop band called Girls Night. Will, Dylan's dad, was their manager, but he's now married to her ex bandmate Rose, and doesn't have much to do with Dylan. Florence is a chaotic person and honestly, she's just not that nice. She leaves Dylan alone overnight to go on dates (he's TEN) and they're rarely at school on time, stuff like that. And all the other mothers do hate her. 

Dylan goes to a private school with a ton of posh boys so the mums are a cut above, and I honestly did like how they were portrayed. They think Florence just basically isn't good enough for them, and some past information does come to light about why this is exactly. Dylan has also had some problems with a kid called Alfie. When these problems are explained it's obvious what has happened, but still, there are problems. Alfie's parents are super rich and super well connected, too.

Which is why all hell breaks loose when Alfie goes missing on a school trip. The parents go to pick the kids up and discover that he is missing and didn't return on the bus. Florence quickly takes Dylan home as she suspects that Dylan might have had something to do with the disappearance. Her suspicions deepen and she doesn't know what to do except protect her son. She meets a new mum, who is also American. She and Jenny team up to try to find where Alfie is. 

I did like this story. I wanted to know what had happened to Alfie, and I mostly liked Florence and I liked Jenny. So from a story point of view it would be a four out of five, and I would be recommending this to everyone I know. 

However, I found there were just a few bits that I couldn't get to grips with. I didn't feel like we were shown enough about what went wrong with the girl band - if it was relevant. And if it wasn't, then why spend so much time on it? That was annoying. I expected some information about Rose that never came. Similarly, I thought there needed to be more about Jenny and her background because otherwise she just felt like a device to have someone who didn't hate Florence, someone she could bounce off. They also do really stupid things and make really stupid decisions. 

And the end of the mystery just didn't quite ring true to me. I didn't quite get it, it just wasn't satisfactory enough. I'm not sure I understand it now. So all these criticisms would make me give it a three out of five. 

So basically I guess that's a three and a half out of five. I would read something else by the author, for sure, so I didn't hate it, but... it had problems. 

Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell - Review

I love Maggie O'Farrell, as you probably know, as I've read and reviewed a few of her books over the course of this blog, and I recommend The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox a lot because I really like it. I follow Maggie's Facebook page so I had heard of this book, but I hadn't ever picked it up. But then it was a book club choice for this year, so when I saw it in a sale in WH Smith I picked it up for a fiver. I was apprehensive because I wasn't sure if it would be a bit too high brow for me. But I picked it up.

And I ended up loving it and I now want everyone I know to read it! I lent it to someone at book club but then I will lend it to my mum because I think she will like it. 

So, if you don't know, Hamnet was the only son of William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. I knew that, and I knew he died as a child, of the plague. I also knew that he had a twin, Judith, and an older sister, Susanna. But I didn't know much else about his life. And I had a vague impression that the play Hamlet was called that after him. 

Which, indeed, it was. The book starts by saying that the names Hamnet and Hamlet were interchangeable at the time. Then Hamnet himself is watching Judith as she becomes unwell with what is the bubonic plague. He goes downstairs in the house looking for his mother, his sister, or his grandmother, but can't find any of them. Susanna and his grandmother, Mary, are running errands. His mother is out at Hewlands, her familial home. Hamnet fears his sister will die. 

Lee and I visited Shakespeare's house in Stratford on Avon back in 2020 so it was great that I could envisage the house perfectly. We also went to Anne Hathaway's house but couldn't go in because it was closed due to Covid. But it meant I knew what it looked like. 

So in the book Shakespeare himself is away in London, working and acting and earning his living. The book goes back in time, though, to when he and Anne met. In the book she is called Agnes, because apparently her father's will named her as so. Maggie has really done her research! 

Agnes' mother is portrayed as having been a bit of a witch, a healer, that kind of thing. She died and Agnes' father married Joan, and they had several more children. Agnes and her brother Bartholemew are close in the novel, but she and Joan don't get on. John Shakespeare - William's dad, who he's portrayed as having a volatile relationship with, and who was a glove maker by trade - owed Agnes' dad some money or something and as payment John arranged for William - aged just eighteen - to go tutor some of the younger boys. There he met Agnes, who was older than him and a bit of a wild girl, and who was desperate to leave her stepmother's house. They clearly got married and had Susanna and then the twins. 

The books flips backwards and forwards in time to William and Agnes' relationship and Agnes in particular and how she dealt with her husband and how unhappy he was in Stratford. I don't know how much of this is true but I don't care. It was a good narrative. I also learnt that Hamnet's cause of death is not actually recorded, but it's assumed he did die of the plague. I loved Agnes as a character and I think the book really showed just how difficult life was back then. She didn't have it easy and neither did the rest of the family. 

I think my book club will as a whole have really enjoyed the book but I'm interested for the discussion! I'm giving it five out of five because I loved it. 

Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson - Review

I saw someone on my Instagram reading this book and was really intrigued by the premise. It isn't out yet so I went looking on Netgalley and found it! So I requested it and got it soon after! So thank you very much to Hodder & Stoughton for granting me access to this book. I absolutely raced through it, it's very compelling and I couldn't stop reading. 

I was provided with an electronic copy of this book for review purposes. I was not otherwise compensated for this post and all thoughts and opinions are my own. 

The protagonist of the book is Rachel. She is Irish and is a nurse. She is driving home from visiting her in laws one March day. Her husband Tom is driving; he has been suffering from depression for a while. Their two children, a boy and a girl, are in the back of the car. They are four and almost three. Tom drives the car off the road, intending to kill all four of them. 

The narrative goes backwards and forwards in time, showing Rachel very soon after the 'incident' and then further on in her life when she has managed to put herself back together and forge a new life for herself, even though it looks really different from the life she had planned out. Then it also goes back in time to when Rachel and Tom first met, and their relationship and marriage, having their children, and Tom's illness and how that came about. 

It isn't clear to begin with whether Tom has survived or not, so I don't really want to spoil that. The narrative is told in little vignettes, so it isn't straightfoward prose at all. There were a few times when I really wanted to know more - for instance, there's a part where Rachel gives an interview to someone, and I would really have liked to see the aftermath of that, but no, we then go backwards in time to see what's happening in the past. But for me that's really the sign of a good novel, that I really want to know more. 

I really think this book is going to go viral once it's out. It is going to get everyone talking - what would YOU do? How would you survive? It's the type of book to definitely be picked for a Richard and Judy book club type of thing, and for good reason. It is beautiful about grief and doesn't flinch away from it. It's brutal about living with someone with a severe mental illness (something I have a lot of personal experience with). But it is also so beautiful. Rachel does manage to make a new life for herself but she also has to make new relationships with her family; her parents, who love her but are removed from her, and her sister Rebecca, who has been wayward in the past but who has two children only slightly older than Rachel's. There's stuff in the past about her relationships with her in laws and with Tom, of course. 

The children aren't named in the book which I actually really liked - they're known more by their attributes then than anything else. I thought this was a really effective way of writing a book. I've read that Claire Gleeson is a short story writer primarily and I think that really shows, but I really do hope she writes another novel in the future as I would really like to read something else by her. I'm giving this four out of five. 

The Cottage by Lisa Stone - Review

For my birthday my friend Leanne sent me this book in a very cute gift box. The book was wrapped, so it was like a 'blind date' book, and in the box was hot chocolate and some self care things, so it was a very cute gift. This was the book inside and I was really intrigued by the premise, so I picked it up in mid February. However, I didn't think it lived up to the premise at all and just got annoyed with it by the end. 

Jan is around thirty years old and she is staying in this isolated cottage. It belongs to Camile, but she's off doing something so she advertised for a lodger and someone to look after her dog, Tinder. Jan lost her boyfriend and her job in the same week so she's decided to take this job to have a bit of a breather and to maybe write. Camile's friend Chris lives close by and keeps dropping in to help Jan. The cottage is on the end of a dense woods and nearish to a village. A village where everyone knows each other. The local shop owner is Chris' sister in law or something. 

Anyway, Jan and Tinder keep getting disturbed every night by someone or something coming into the garden. Jan keeps trying to open the door to see what it is but can't catch proper sight of it. Tinder keeps chasing whatever it is and gets through the hedge and disappears for a couple of hours. Jan is really disturbed, a few nights in a row, but instead of doing the sensible thing and going to stay with a friend, she decides she can't go because Tinder doesn't travel in a car well. I mean fine but I would rather deal with a dog sick in the car that a spooky thing in the garden night after night!

I couldn't decide if this book was going to be supernatural or more basic crime thriller, so that did keep me guessing. But Jan just kept making the most stupid decisions. There's a motion sensor light which Jan turns back on but then Chris and Camile both discourage her from doing it. I guess this is supposed to make you doubt Chris, but it just didn't work for me much. 

And the writing in places is just so stupid. Lisa Stone also writes under the name Cathy Glass, and she's written loads of books, but if they're all as badly written as this I can't understand why she's sold so many. There's so many parts where something is implied... and then it's completely explained as to what the author means. And it's like... let the reader understand your meaning. You don't have to explain it all to me! 

There's a secondary plotline concerning Ian and his wife Emma. Emma is pregnant and gives birth at home in the presence of a midwife called Anne. Baby David is born stillborn, so Anne takes the body away. But a neighbour becomes concerned about the baby and phones the police. The police are mildly involved which I thought would go further... but no. The two plotlines do intersect but in such a ridiculous way. Plus I felt the middle was just too long. The tensions keeps ramping up and so on and so on, but then it just went on and on and I needed there to be a resolution. 

I can't give this any more than two out of five. It's just not good. 

My Heart is Hurting by S E Reed - Blog Tour and Review

Hello and welcome to my turn on the blog tour for My Heart Is Hurting by S E Reed. It is a pleasure to welcome you here. Please do have a click around and read some of my other reviews. I read a lot of Young Adult so when I saw this book I signed up for the tour. 

This book was one of the entries for BBNYA which is a competition where indie authors can get their novels read and judged. I was a reader a few years ago but didn't have time to sign up for the full thing, but I was happy to get to read this one. 

Here's the blurb and author bio:

Blurb

Jinny Buffett is lonely…

She’s never had the comfort of a white picket fence with a loving family. Her subsidized apartment in Hollywood Florida echoes with the void of her dead Daddy, and the nights drag long into twilight while her Mama works the block outside the Margaritaville resort.

It’s idealistic Ms. Fleming, who’s brave enough to come knocking first. She wants to see Jinny rise up and use her ace scores to escape the wheel of poverty, convincing Jinny to start a school book club, where she finds the friends and boyfriend she never knew she needed.

But when her Mama spirals out of control and threatens her entire existence, it’s Jinny’s Everglade ancestors who arrive in a mist of magic, bringing the swamp and hope with them.

Author Bio

S.E. Reed lives in the south and writes strange, haunting, real stories of people and places along old highways.

Winner of the 2024 Florida Book Awards and the 2024 Paterson Prize for Books for Young People.

Additionally, she's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won honorable mention twice in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest.

You can find her on X @writingwithreed or visit her website www.writingwithreed.com .

I really liked Jinny and loved her story. She's incredibly lonely. Her mother is neglectful and disappears for weeks at a time. Jinny doesn't trust people easily, so she doesn't trust Ms Fleming. There's a new boy at school, though. Tom. He's just moved and he and Jinny become close. Plus two friends from a while ago reappear and Jinny eventually lets them in. She realises everyone has problems. 

There is some magic with regards to Jinny's dad's family, but I wish it had been a bit more overt and that there was more of it. I also want to say that using the word 'said' is absolutely fine. There were so many synonyms that it was really jarring. That's my critcism really. But generally I liked Jinny and wanted her to succeed.