I love a book about running and this one is really thoughtful and offers a different vantage point on how race and body size can factor in to joyful running environments and belonging or not. I found it really refreshing to hear recommendations that are genuinely staggered but also take you from a jog to the end of the road to running multiple marathons. Niche but it really hit for me that Coach Corey has been running in the recreation ground I learned to walk in. He talks about not being seen in running spaces and it hit me that few of the running books I've read before (including the ones he mentions) are about people and places like the ones I know and love. 

This book handles the weight loss and diet side of books like this about as carefully as you might hope. Corey is really clear that you don't need to be any particular shape or size to be a runner and you don't need to run for the purpose of losing weight. That said, there is definitely content that idealises certain ways of being and running, which may not be for everyone. The balance of how he got here to running tips is also well-handled but I can imagine that there maybe too much story to running advice for some. I listened on audio via NetGalley and would definitely consider getting a hardcopy when it comes out. 

I LOVED Wrapped with a Beau. It was exactly the Christmas romance novel that I was looking for. Begrudging children's author goes to picturesque Christmas town to look after the estate of his beloved relative and meets the efficient and nerdy local girl who is obsessed with helping market her town for the remake of a Christmas film. It is cheesy, predictable, and funny. I particularly liked that there isn't a really cringy or bizarrely dramatic crisis even thought there is appropriately mild peril. It throws a lot of different ideas and tropes in but I really enjoyed it all and have listened to it all over again. 

This is a sharply witty satire about Chinese migrants in jazz age London. The humour is precise and bittersweet with buffoonish but absolutely real representations of the “benevolent” and “well meaning” British characters doing many racisms. It offers a fascinating antidote to Wodehouse. 

This is a really sweet, fun adventure story. Although it's marketed as a queer romance, I think the marriage in the centre of the story is, in some ways, the least interesting part of the story. Legendary fighter Logan "the Bear" is married to a bard, Pie. When Pie goes missing, Logan goes on a chaotic quest to find his husband. Magic, magical creatures, a kind of swashbuckling, puzzle-solving, late '90s/early '00s adventure film feel to the whole thing. I hope it gets optioned because it would make an excellent romp of a movie. I particularly liked all the side characters and the little touches. One for D&D nerds, cosy fantasy readers, and fans of films like The Mummy and Van Helsing.  

 3* (emotional 4*, execution 2.5*)

If you LOVE the Inheritance Cycle , then I think Murtagh will please you but also frustrate you. I was really happy to have it and I mostly enjoyed reading and listening to it but it suffers for having two main characters with such profound PTSD that everything is a trauma response. As a result, the book has a lot of the darkness of the later series that even the volume of easter eggs (if you know your Eragon really well) doesn't really solve. There are some extreme pacing issues and too many unfinished threads, especially as the questions Murtagh is trying to answer are almost all unanswered at the end of the book. We go through a lot without getting the same kind of progress as in the other four books even though this is clearly setting up another book. In comparison to the other rider/dragon relationships, I also find Murtagh and Thorn's pairing the least developed and the most superficial. I missed the humour of most of the other partnerships.

Minor spoiler in this paragraph only: I really didn't enjoy the number of mentions of Eragon in Murtagh when Eragon does not, then, appear in this book. It felt as though Paolini was teasing a cameo that he suddenly decided to save for the next one.

Multi-point-of-view story from the perspectives of an American GI, a teenage girl, and a mixed heritage (Black and Vietnamese) Amerasian man during and after the "Vietnam War".

Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai crafts an intricate, twisty, messy set of narratives that join up in ways I was not prepared for. Themes include guilt, shame, PTSD, anti-Blackness, anti-Asian hate, war, sexism, sex work, poverty, border and immigration politics.

So rich in telling this achingly sad story in which none of the characters win. A must read for colleagues and students interested in Miss Saigon.

Easily one of my books of the year.

Maame is a beautiful, touching debut about Maddie's journey from caring for her sick father to finding space in her own life. This book took me an immensely long time to finish because the writing really resonated with things I had personally felt. Jessica George writes discomfort and guilt and frustration and awkwardnes with lots of empathy and compassion. So much so that I kept having to put the book down because it hit several nerves. It's a brilliant modern picture of Black British life in London. This is clearly an author to watch and a book to read if you haven't.

This is a really interesting memoir. I was semi-aware of Barbara Blake Hannah. She was famous in the UK some while before I was born. The editor's introduction really caught my attention because Evaristo presents Blake Hannah as "not like normal Black people" and suggests her story will be unrelatable to most Black (or in my case, mixed heritage) readers. What I think she meant is that Blake Hannah is unapologetic about the class she was born into and the London society she ended up in. Even while Blake Hannah flexes about the famous people and exclusive environment she accessed, she shows up how her class/social privileges did not protect her, earn her considerable wealth, or stop her from feeling oppressed by pressures to assimilate or "play white". Meanwhile, she tells us how she became aware of the codes and trades and costs to her sense of self, to her Jamaicanness, to her understanding of being Black, and loving her Blackness. We actually follow her find peace through her reconnection with her identity and by rejecting many of the majority white contexts she lived in in London. 

I personally found the repetitions of information or introducing characters a bit annoying and think an editor could have helped with this. That said, I think it's fascinating reading, especially as someone who was raised close to one of the streets she lived in and has been nourished by one of the Black communities that was forming during her time in London. She narrates the audiobook which I'd definitely recommend. It's refreshing to hear/read her seemingly unfiltered voice, with fun anecdotes and problematic opinions. There's gossip and joy and play in among.

It's very rare that I read a whole series and although I'm *less* excited by this finale, it's a testament to how much I've enjoyed these books that I requested a NetGalley audio arc of the final book so I'd know what happened.

I really enjoyed all three of The Last Binding books and I think they each offer different things. Of the three, this is the most about magic, plot, and intrigue. It is tying up all the threads.

I really enjoyed the listening/reading experience of this book and I cared about what was going to happen. A couple of sections made me really anxious. Others reminded me of some of the action and government scenes in the most famous serious about wizards at school. That said, the writing of A Power Unbound is a 2.5* in execution for me as the joy of re-meeting established characters is dampened by most of the characters (mainly the female ones) being much flatter and trope-y than in the first and, most of, the second books. I will also say that, as a person from "working class" London, the depiction of working class London, is the most stereotypical, 2D, annoying rendering. The writing makes Sherlock Holmes' urchins look incredibly nuanced even if a few class points were made.

I enjoyed the main partnership of this book and I loved the new bit characters who were really interesting. I also love the quiet role of nature in the magic. Definitely enjoyable if slightly messy conclusion. A Marvellous Light has my heart but I'd re-read all three again.