abbie_'s Reviews (1.79k)

Listened to this one for a ‘silly’ prompt for Queer Your Year, and while it is quite silly, I unfortunately was often a bored gay abbie while listening 😭 How is a book about gay werewolves just living in the city and getting sucked into a MLM, manosphere scheme boring?? Not sure but sadly this book manages it. The ending was kinda fun, a bit out of left field. Not sure if I’ll read Shy Trans Banshee or not… possibly not. 

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! Although this is the ‘new’ Sayaka Murata in English, it’s actually one of the earliest she wrote and I do think that’s evident. I didn’t find Vanishing World as compelling from the get go as I have with her others, but it did pull me in more as I reached the second half. It’s got her usual themes of picking apart modern society, with marriage and reproduction on the chopping block. In this world, sex with your spouse is seen as incest, and couples take lovers (sometimes fictional) instead, as well as use artificial insemination to have babies. I got a bit tired of the repetition of the MC’s relationships with various anime characters. 

But the second half where the MC and her husband move to ‘Experiment City’ kicks the weirdness up a notch. All babies are everyone’s babies, kept in a sort of communal holding pen where people go to spend time with them - utterly bizarre. It’s not a Murata novel if you don’t say ‘what the fuck’ out loud at least once. I certainly was by the ending, but I really don’t know how I felt about the end - apart from icky.

Not as strong as her others, including the collection of short stories she has out in English. 

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC! I absolutely loved this novel, it broke my heart but did do its best to put the pieces back together. TW, it does deal with domestic abuse in a queer relationship. I know the comparison is too easy since there aren’t many books dealing with the subject, but if you loved Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House then I’d definitely recommend reading this fiction novel to explore the topic further.

Sorcha is tired of the fleeting hook ups that litter her late 20s, so when she meets Chris, looking like a dyke Leo di Caprio from the 90s, at the farmer’s market, she lets herself be swept off her feet, tugged along by her desire for a stable relationship and a child. What follows is a devastating spiral which sees Sorcha trapped in an increasingly (emotionally) abusive relationship, all the while gaslighting herself that everything’s fine. This book really nails the ‘frog in a pot of boiling water’ analogy. Chris really gets under your skin, like I felt anxious and claustrophobic as a reader so I’d say Burnet does an excellent job of depicting an abusive relationship.

There’s also some mystery and intrigue in the form of a family drama, and I enjoyed the way Burnet wove Sorcha’s backstory throughout the book. I definitely agree with another reviewer than some of Sorcha’s behaviour/inner monologues in the second half come off as biphobic, but I think (hope) it’s meant more as something Sorcha has to unpack and unlearn than an actual representation of something normal to think - if that makes sense!

Overall, a fantastic debut full of emotional depth. 

I didn’t read Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes because I could not care less about Snow’s backstory, but Haymitch?? Absolutely, had to jump on board and it felt SO nostalgic to be back reading a Hunger Games novel. I must have read these books initially when I was maybe 13 and they had me in a chokehold. Given that I devoured this fairly chunky book in about 2 days, I’d say they still do. 

I knew this would be a tearjerker, and while I didn’t shed any actual tears until the epilogue, it definitely has serious emotional heft to it! I did think the pace felt a bit weird once they’d been in the arena for a day or two, like it didn’t flow as well as the rest of the book. But still, excellent storytelling. I loved the crossovers with the original books, and I genuinely would just love for Suzanne Collins to write a book for every Hunger Games 🥲 It was amazingly terrible to learn why Haymitch is the way he is. The film is going to wreck me. 

I quite liked this quirky little novel about being in your late twenties and feeling like you’ve achieved very little, like your dreams have long been abandoned. Together with some acquaintances, she begins to carry out small acts of rebellion, pranks as they call them in the book, against people in their lives who they feel deserve to be taken down a peg. 

But I didn’t love it, it lost my attention at times, and the narrator’s voice for the male characters were extremely aggravating. It’s definitely not a book that I’ll think about for long after finishing, unfortunately. 

I am still interested in seeking out Almond, the author’s first novel. 

The Things We Do To Our Friends is the last of the physical books I bought to take on holiday with me, and I have to admit I was suckered into all the comparisons to The Secret History and If We Were Villains and, unsurprisingly, it did not live up to those books. There is an academic setting, sure, and unlikeable 18 year olds cavorting about committing crime and causing chaos, but it lacks the dark magic of the two comparisons. Also, a lot of the appeal of dark academia for me is in the academia portions, and the characters in TTWDTOF may well have not been attending uni at all. I did love the depiction of Edinburgh as the setting though, absolutely gorgeous city. 

I both want to give this book points and detract them for being so blindsided by one of the twists. Like cool that I didn’t see it coming, but also, where did that come from? it didn’t quite fit with the story and character as we’d got to know them for the last 200 pages. It felt like two different books mashed together. I did like the ending, but overall I was left feeling somewhat underwhelmed. 

Considering this book follows a girl who finds a sentient blob next to a bin and takes it home to mould the perfect boyfriend, it’s actually surprisingly relatable. It was another one of my holiday picks, all selected specifically because I wanted to read about people being messy as fuck. I really loved Vi, chaotic and often selfish as she is, and some of her antics had me cackling and cringing one minute, then feeling desperately for her the next. I enjoyed the alternate chapters about her childhood which was blighted by racism, the casual cruelty of children. It offered valuable insight into why she is the way she is as a 20 something.

Funny and poignant, I really picked great reads for my holiday!!

I really enjoy Kristen Arnett’s off beat work, having read With Teeth and now Mostly Dead Things, I’m looking forward to Stop Me If You’ve Heard this One. They’ve got heart but they’re also just absolutely whacky. This one involves a (less than legal) taxidermist business with a love triangle including a brother and sister (no relationship between the two!!)

Please bear in mind that this book contains only characters which are MESSY. If you have little patience for that then I wouldn’t recommend this one. But if you love books about people just muddling on through and making questionable decisions, you’ll eat this one up. It deals with grief experienced both individually and as a family, for people both dead and alive but gone from their loved ones’ lives. Arnett does a great job of balancing humour, weirdness and the occasional gut punch. 

Also it seems obvious since it’s about taxidermy but there’s a LOT of animal death/gore in this book, so tread carefully there. 

Big thank you to one of the editors of this collection who sent me a free digital ARC for review! Obviously a huge proponent for chaotic queers, and this anthology is chock full of them!

There were 16 stories total, 8 I thought were excellent, chef’s kiss, either great fun or honestly a bit emotionally wrecking. There were a couple that felt rushed, or just left me feeling like ‘and what?’. Others were a lot of fun while reading but not hugely impactful. But given my track record with anthologies, I feel like 7 stellar stories is a win for me, and that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy (most) of the others! I appreciated the breadth of the crime in the pages, not all were showy, flashy bank heists (one is, and I LOVED it lol), some were quieter. 

My standouts were Fuck You Money by francesca ekwuyasi, where an artist discovers the mysterious and unexpected root of her recent bad luck, Distraction by Maame Blue, where a girl falls for a sticky fingered thief, Grand Beaver Cabin, a sweet and silly and sad story where a woman enters children’s colouring contests, and Hyacinth Forever. This last is my absolute favourite of the collection, and involves the aforementioned bank heist. I’ve never read any Sam Cohen before but I’ll definitely be seeking out Sarahland after falling in love with this story, featuring a ragtag group of queers fighting to save their home from developers. Peep Show, Redistribution, Bad Dog and The Meaning of Life were my other faves. 

I was a bit disappointed by Priya Guns’ story, Black Mirror-esque near future dystopian which felt jumbled and confusing - a shame cause I loved Your Driver Is Waiting. I’m also a fan of SJ Sindu’s work, but Wild Ale lost me completely - I simply have no interest in home brewing lol. 

Overall a really solid, fun collection of chaos with some unexpectedly tender moments thrown in for good measure. Happy that I have some more authors to explore now too!

Probably the scariest book I’ve read in a while! One morning I genuinely did not listen to it while walking my dog in the dark because it was up to such a creepy part 👀 I loved the mash up of very real horrors like racism and covid together with traditional hungry ghosts. Baker’s depictions of the hungry ghosts were truly spine-chilling, some really good evocative writing! She also does a brilliant job with the more human horror of gore, murder, and racism. I thought the ending was incredible, terrifying stuff.