I really enjoyed this one!

It's brilliantly funny and you can really hear Gina Yashere's voice throughout. There's a balance between humour and offering insight into her life and experiences. I think memoir's can be really hard at times to get into

Thanks to NetGalley for the advanced copy in return for a review.

This was one of my 23 for '23 picks that I've been waiting for the right moment to pick up. After seeing it all over bookstagram this month, it seemed like that moment had come... and boy was it perfect!

This one is tense and atmospheric from the start. It almost feels like we're on the back foot from page one, thrown into the action with characters who all know each other whilst we know nothing. It creates a really interesting dynamic as a reader and one I really enjoyed.

As we get to know the characters, you learn to love (and hate) them. They're really well-developed, with super interesting and unique connections between them. I loved finding how each character sees the others and having to weave these opinions together. The way you experience this book will be so different depending on the characters you trust and who you suspect.

The way the natural and supernatural are at odds was so entertaining. You can feel the fear growing on the ship and as the plot thickens, you too are pulled into the mounting fear. You're not quite sure whether to believe someone is behind the acts or whether it is a something instead. I won't give any spoilers, but I really loved how Turton kept us guessing throughout.

This is a perfect Halloween read! I'm so glad I saved this for October and finally gave it a read. It may be a long book, but boy it's a good 'un.

Get yourself work buddies that lent amazing books!

This is a powerful memoir and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading.

Rather than tell her story chronologically, Lamya uses stories from the Qur'an to mark stound out moments in her journey as a Muslcim and a lesbian. With an original and powerful feminist, queer reading of the Qur'an, it was really interesting for me to discover more about how we can interpret these taching as someone who hasn't really been exposed to much more than secondary school religious studies.

I've got a fever so this may make no sense when I read it back... but this was a really wonderful memoir. A beautiful voice sharing her lived experience whist also sharing teachings from her religion which means so much to her.

I'm really unsure about how I feel about this one. I read and loved The Long Song, but this one was a little bit harder to get through.

I found Hortense and Queenie fairly unlikable which made it hard to want to keep reading it. Having said that, it was a powerful story of racism in World War Two. It was upsetting, hard-hitting and eye-opening. Exploring the story through four characters who grow and change in differing degrees.

Whilst I struggled for the first 100/150 pages, as the stories began weaving together and get more and more complex it was harder and harder to put down. And the ending came out of nowhere, but such a good ending for each of the characters.

This was a lovely, silly, cozy crime which was an enjoyable read.

I never really connected with Richard though, I felt as a main character he was just a little too bland and oblivious. Though this was intentional (I’m guessing as a lot of characters needle him about this), I felt it just didn’t really work.

I’ll probably pick up the next one in the series and it’s definitely a cozy crime to snuggle up with. Full of twists, with some action scenes, but somehow it just feels a little distant/disconnected.

Yep, didn’t like this one. It felt repetitive and completely unnecessary. There’s no moral or character development. Wade is just as pathetic as Halliday, without the genius to go along with it.

The first book was great, I just wish it had been left there. This felt like a fan fiction - a poorly written fan fiction.

Am I saying I’ve found ANOTHER favourite book of the year? Yes. Am I also saying this may well be the BEST fantasy I’ve ever read? Also yes.

The Pomegranate Gate is the perfect type of fantasy book. A complex and interesting magic system and world with characters full of sass and depth and complex relationships between them all.

Throughout the book, we follow three main arcs that cross-cross with each other in the most tension-filled way possible. It’s a relatively slow-build, setting the scene for the drama in book two, but you’ll end up loving the characters so much that it doesn’t matter. I’d happily read an entire series of these characters just living their life.

As if this book couldn’t get any better, it has some amazing queer rep (with one of the most wonderful gay romances in a queer book I’ve ever read) and Jewish rep. I really loved how aspects of Jewish culture were woven into this - it made for such an interesting and original fantasy as so many of the popular books are inspired by Christianity.

It’s political, hilarious, heartbreaking. This is such an amazing book I could genuinely write an essay on it. (And if you’ve read this and also loved it please do message me because I can and will talk about this for days.)

If you’re looking for an original, addictive high-fantasy that you want to step into - The Pomegranate Gate is the one for you.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC

If I could give this zero stars I would.

The audio book made this so much worse. Ridiculous that some of these passages were ever written, crazy it made it past an editor and completely insane that he then recorded the words and still didn’t think this was strange.

There were some moments of interest - mostly the last few chapters. But completely overshadowed by how diabolically awful most of this is.

This was a fairly fun read. But, his enthusiasm for the science, method and description of processes did eventually turn me off.

I picked this up after really enjoying The Seven Ancient Wonders, but this one just lacked the action and danger. There was too much explained to us leaving no space for our own imagination.

Also, why is every male ex-forces smart guy called Jack?

I so wanted to love this one!! Parts of it were a 5 star and others closer to a 2, so settled for a 4 though I may change my mind…

This was SO slow to start. By page 120 nothing had really happened. I’d put the book down once already so it was sheer will power that forced me to give it another go.

But once it got going I couldn’t put it down! It’s a beast of a book and I still managed most of it in one sitting.

I really loved the twisted take on fairy tales, challenging our expectations of certain character types and just being generally darker.

There were moments where it just got a little boring so I will say I skim read a little…

All in all, another good book from King - definitely not the best I’ve read but pretty accessible for those who may not be horror fans.