Wow. This book is magnificent. Dark, brutal and violent. And lyrical, poetic. Tender. Honestly. I don't think I'm going to read better than this again this year.

*There is a very unpleasant scene with a puppy which may not be for everyone. I managed to skip the worst bit.

Patchy. A collection of essays and some I found really interesting and others bored me senseless.

This was an easy enough read. I was reading it and watching it on tv at the same time. I’m not sure I’d have been that bothered by it without the tv series, it gave it a bit more life to be able to hear someone’s interpretation of the music. But I did enjoy it this way.

This isn't a jolly read. Rubenhold does a great job of piecing together the itinerant and chaotic lives of the 5 victims of Jack the Ripper. It's well researched but also weaves a convincing narrative for each woman from what must have been fairly sketchy evidence. But it's all a bit bleak, unsurprisingly. It doesn't dwell at all on any of the murders or the details, in fact it doesn't discuss them at all, drawing a veil over each one. But there are 5 sad tales of vulnerable, destitute women here, who no one really cared about.

*listened on audiobook*

I am woefully uninformed about the history of Ireland so I thought this would be a way to provide a good overview.

I prefer my history to be a bit more narrative driven. I'm also always a bit more interested in the arts and culture as a way to drill down into a country's history. This is entirely politics and economics based and as such, it's a bit dry and fails to capture the essence of Ireland. Perhaps I'm expecting too much for a 'short history' which is essentially a what's what of the last 500 years but it did mean I zoned out sometimes.

It does what it says on the tin - I know more about the timeline of Irish history and this is a good condensed history of early modern Ireland to the millennium. It would certainly provide a decent launchpad to base any further reading upon.

This was my favourite Ronald Dahl as a kid. Read with the kids and they both loved it too.

Albie Mirrals is interminably stupid. And this was the fundamental problem I had with this otherwise half decent novel.

He is wilfully stupid. His absolute need to place all the women in his vicinity into little boxes and completely failing to notice or understand anything about any of them.

His relationship with his wife is baffling, he becomes obsessed with a woman he met once and hasn't seen for god knows how many years. He asserts his own knowledge of both of these women despite the clear evidence (to this man of science) that he knows neither of them one jot.

His scorn for the superstition of the rural population in contrast to his rational mind - which is overtaken the minute he enters the village, is laughable given his general idiocy.

I enjoyed the overall gist, the feel of the novel and pacing wasn't *too* bad. There was a lingering creepiness through the novel and his wife is depicted well as the would be changeling. I liked the treatment of the supernatural elements and I enjoyed the switcheroo technique at the end as he came back to himself. But I had seen this coming a mile off and it wasn't really surprising. I thought the actual explanation for it all was smart and well thought out.

All in all, a half decent novel but the main character made it difficult to enjoy.

Oh ok, so I know that there are several of these in this series but I didn’t realise that it’s really not remotely half a story in this first one and I am going to have to read all of them. Can’t really rate it properly as it just stops, has a super abrupt ending, practically ends in the middle of a sentence, I thought a page was missing! What I read was great and I’ll read the rest for sure. Then I’ll review my rating.

I was hesitant about this one as I had heard complaints of pacing problems but I didn't feel there were any problems there.

The plot kept my interest, the characters were interesting enough and varied and mostly well rounded. I enjoy a bit of a supernatural element, and water-lore is always interesting to read about - there is always something about novels around rivers that peak my interest.

My criticism is that it all felt a bit too tied up in a neat bow at the end. For a novel that explored some pretty messed up themes (rape, infanticide) it would have felt better to leave some things unresolved.