Wow! This memoir was everything you’d hope for in a memoir; emotional, humorous in places and truly remarkable!

I have to  applaud Jeanette for sharing sure a vulnerable part of her life - rare behind the rosy tinted glasses of child fame. Her journey of mental illness manifesting and ultimately trying to overcome them when surrounded by toxic relationships both with herself and mother - really powerful and though provoking. 

Jeanette McCurdy is such a fantatsic storyteller in her writing style and the short chapters and chronological retelling of her life makes it an incredibly easy book to read and follow along in her emotional journey. 

I wish I had read this sooner and can absolutely see myself picking up a physical copy to read again in future. 

repetitive and nothing to really sink your teeth into (pardon the pun).

This book really felt more of a collection of short stories, with 6 dishes to uncover spending only about 30 pages each you don’t really get any character depth, development or discovery to keep it interesting for me.

Each short story fell into the exact same set up - character finds restaurant, eats set menu, gives little detail about the dish they are looking for, fast forwards to returning to eat and then is perfectly recreated first time - each time where the chef recounts how they worked it out.

I feel like if the book had cut back to perhaps 3 dishes rather than 6 it could have fleshed out the emotional stories more, perhaps took the reader along the journey of working out how to recreate the dish - or even having it fail on one occasion just for some variation would have made it more interesting - bonus points if the characters actually overlapped in some small way for depth! 

Overall, I liked the premise as a cosy read - but ultimately the lack of depth in plot or character development just made it a pretty ‘meh’ read for me. 

I want to preface this review by saying that though I am rating  this book 5 stars, I can’t recommend it as a read for everyone! It is incredibly graphic, violent and dark therefore anyone looking to read absolutely needs to check the content warnings!

The writing style and character detail around Irene - a fetish art photographer - and her trauma’s and addictions which create an incredibly raw and gritty world she lives in. 

It is a very intense read where we follow the spiral of Irena mental health decline and navigating the toxic relationships she has with friends and family.  There is so much trauma packed into this book which shapes her into this brutal and almost sociopathic young woman.

Eliza Clark certainly knows how to write an intense story and captures that morbid fascination - so much so it was almost impossible to put down! 

Though there is no clear resolve in the ending - I think it perfectly captures the  tortured and twisted mindset of Irene and  will  no doubt plague my thoughts for a long time! 

Truthfully the only reason I didn’t DNF this book was because I had access to both the physical copy and audio format so I could read the whole thing in only a few hours.

Unfortunately I just really didn’t enjoy this book. I found the main POV character quite dull and her romantic relationship wasn’t very interesting either.

The writing style left a lot to be desired for me as all the emotional points and character development felt very surface level for over 80% of the book. The short chapters would trick you into thinking it’s a fast moving plot, but really alot of it felt so unnecessary and just felt like padding. 

The plot overall was okay - though did feel like it took a while to get into, and whilst I didn’t 100% predict the ending as such - I had predicted a pretty large part of it by the 35% mark

(that at least one or more of the main characters are dead - granted I thought it may have been the MFC - but I was still very close)

so by the end of it all I felt very underwhelmed. 

Having previously read Daisy Darker by the same author, I was really excited to pick up another Alice Feeney book.

Once again her writing style in building tension and atmosphere is incredibly well done and I loved the unique concept of the plot itself. 

I am a sucker for an unreliable author trope as a device for character development so this book was a win for me in that regard.

I will say there were some plot points which I did predict quite early on and the pacing off the book is a bit odd as it becomes very slow in some places that it became a slog to read - whilst others (particularly in the end) - read so quickly it almost became confusing to keep track of what’s going on.

Overall the plot did pan out differently to what I had expected in many aspects and I really enjoyed each of the characters motivations and development - a solid read for book club! 

A harrowing book and glad to have listened to it –the writing style alone captured such depth of emotion and heartache in such a short book – incredibly written.

Each of the women’s stories felt unique and broke my heart to hear about their struggles with patience – which in this context just means to be submissive to their partners abuse and emotional torment as Muslims in Cameroon – and how they intwined with one another.

The story of Hindou being beaten and abused into a state on numbness and questioned sanity was for me the most devastating.

An incredibly powerful read about, unlike anything I have read before and will be keeping an eye out for a physical copy as I can see myself reading again!

The writing style of this book, mixed with Greek mythology made it such a beautiful read! I loved the character progression of Circe throughout this story as she navigates a doomed romance and later outcasted and targeted by the gods. The way her story intwines ever so slightly into various classic Greek mythologies stories also made for an interesting read.

There were parts of this book which read more like a series of short stories of travellers reaching her in exile - whilst I enjoyed how this pushed Circe’s character development - I preferred parts of the book where she as more of a catalyst to the plot – particularly around the very start (

turning her first love to a god

) and final 30% (

becoming a mother

).

Overall, whilst I did enjoy the story and progression of Circe – I wish we had more time dedicated to her witchery and own goals – but this is likely personal bias as I always tend to prefer more plot centred story lines over character-based books.

When reading the promise of this book I figured I would either love it or hate it… sadly for me this just fell into the latter.

I actually quite enjoyed the first few chapters; sharing a short story style of writing demonstrating various types of love and bonds was quite intriguing and emotional but sadly it went quickly down hill. 

After the first few ‘life’ iterations it became a slog to read as ultimately most of their lives were forgettable and boring - it didn’t feel like the characters really developed in any significant way and just had the same argument and conversations over and over again. I honestly felt like over the course of the first 60% that nothing had really happened to the characters or plot that I didn’t already or expect from very early on. 

There are some points in the book which were clearly meant to be emotional pivot points but a lot of them really didn’t delve deep enough to get a response for me - part of this may been cause I didn’t really care for the characters at all. I found Thora to be quite a grating personality and Santi was written in a way for him to come across as deeply profound - but really just talks a lot of none sense and rubbish constantly! 

Overall not a fan and probably should have DNF’d as this took me so long to get through as an audio book! 

Whilst yet another quick read with the writing style and retrospective POVs which I enjoy so much in this series - sadly this one just didn’t hit the mark with the others!

I feel like a lot of the plot points weren’t fleshed out nearly enough to make them impactful which just made the book fall quite flat:

the missing child, blackmailing Nico and Enzo being in the mafia. /

 I also felt like there were so many points which could of been delved into or had a shifted perspective to really be interesting

like having Enzo’s perspective when finding out about cleaning up the Penknife or finding out about Ada? Like we didn’t get any of this! Felt like a wasted opportunity when the book already has shifted POVs sections.

One of the things I love about this series is Millie’s character - but here she just feels so toned down and quite dull by comparison to the previous books. Whilst this does reflect an interesting development as she is now a mother and what not, it did make a slightly dull view point for the majority of the books. 

There were some really gripping moments and some plot points I didn’t see coming but I think it just didn’t live up to the other books in the series for me sadly! 

Another fantastic Frieda McFadden Book. Whilst this storyline is not as dark and twisted as it's predecessor, it was still very enjoyable and gripping.

Following a similar structure to the first book, I loved the dual POV, plot twist unravelling and short chapters writing style – all making it a very quick read. I found myself really empathising with Millie in her confusion and betrayals throughout the plot. Loveable isn't the first thought that comes to mind with the new characters - particularly Wendy – I really enjoyed watching the characters develop and shape over the course of this story.

My only critique is the romance aspects between Brock and Millie and later with Enzo felt very uneventful and surface level that I didn't really invest in the romance storyline and felt like a page filler at times – particularly as it became very repetitive with not wanting to tell Brock about her past. 

Overall a great read – whilst the format is still very true to the first book which I loved so much, it still felt like a completely different read for all the right reasons!