A procedural police drama peppered with romance. A twisty mystery that isn’t so easy to figure out. A time-travel tale steeped in social issues that never respect the passing of time, yet the author respects this historical context, even as she addresses these things from a modern perspective—and she doesn’t allow for excuses. 

 

This series of stories are clean (apart from a few cusses throughout), informative, intelligent, with well-paced plots that keep moving forward. In plot, character development, and dialogue, there’s never a dull lull—and all of it is purposeful to unfolding the intricate parts of the case at hand and the ongoing relationships in the background. 

 

I’m beginning to wonder how much longer Mallory’s body can sustain being held in a coma in the present while she gallivants in Catriona’s body in the past… We don’t get much explanation of how that works, which I think is honest—cos Mallory doesn’t know either—and it adds to the suspense of not knowing just how much longer she has with Duncan Grey…though they are certainly taking their sweet time as if they have plenty of it… 

Amazing.

You trust a trusted author… they weren’t kidding when they said that the start of this story is nothing like what you think this story is going to be all about—but my advice is please do not read synopses and reviews before you read this novel!! Trust the author. If you liked The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, then don’t be swayed: Go with this. (Even if you have a few moments where you’re cringing. Me: I don’t like overly intimate scenes that involve anatomy, but ‘the bits’ were given more literary terms here, and the bedroom scenes, though they appear aplenty, weren’t drawn out till I was gagging with extended eye-rolls; yes, trust the author on this one…)

This was a work of art, a work of heart, a genre-defying masterpiece. Gripping and terrifying and sorrowful and shocking—and still extracted an incredulous laugh here and there, with flowing tears of complex origins.

I’ll admit: by two hours in, I was wondering what I was reading and why I should continue. I was about to give up, I was going to let it go—but I’m stubborn. Good thing. I would have missed out on this apotheosis of Schwab’s career. I’m glad I seldom DNF novels, and I’m very glad I persisted with this one. By the time I reached a third of the way, I was hooked and couldn’t stop. Couldn’t put it down, couldn’t get it out of my head. This took over my life for the two days it took me to finish… indeed, it’s still rolling over and over in my brain…along with that poem, and the deep-rooted allegory and all the interpretable implications…

Actually I listened, and I highly recommend the audiobook for this one, it was a soul-clutching, heart-pounding, blood-stopping drama. Incredibly addictive writing read by incredibly mesmerising narrators.

Katie Leung reads Alice as if she stepped out of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting and you feeeel that influence jumping off Alice’s character, her anxiety, her pent up rage, her jitters and reserve and being on the verge of something about to explode. If they make a movie of this, they better cast Katie Leung as Alice cos she nailed this part from tone of voice to traumatic memories and every toxic thought between.

Julia Whelan reads Maria, and the woman doesn’t have all those audio-awards for nothing, people. She infuses Maria with a sultry tone and conniving spirit that rises up from her early years of oppression in medieval Spain, and in Julia Whelan’s intoxicating whisper, Maria transcends the page with a deeply rooted terror that will not let you go…

Marisa Calin effortlessly embodies her character, Charlotte, who might initially be described as dull and submissive, though beneath that clean Victorian image, she is anything but. Charlotte needs to learn things the hard way though, and she pays for her naivety through painful experiences over her lifetime, through the influence of valuable and manipulative relationships, by moments of loss and loneliness and a looming lore that dictates she can never be loved.

Ultimately, though I was fascinated by Alice as a modern Gen Z who doesn’t really know herself but will fight tooth and nail for — well, she’s not sure what, yet, but it’s there (such aptly applied immaturity of the inward-facing generation), and while Maria was a captivating and chilling woman who digs under your skin and sticks her nails in your soul, Charlotte is the one we connect with, feel for, root for, break for, and hope for…

I went to bed listening to this, and when I woke up at 4:30am I was right back at it; I considered skipping work to keep reading. I didn’t, but as soon as I got home after work, it was in my ears till I finished long after the sun went down.

Honestly, don’t read anything more about this novel, just read it. Trust the author. She knows what she’s doing, and she is one of the best at what she does. 5 shining stars. This woman can write the hell out of a story. This will be one of my (shocking) faves of the year; def in the top 5 reads of 2025, so far (...73 and counting).

Not initially compelling as you start in…but then it takes off like wildfire and you’re in the thick of this world and rooting for Vin and Kel (yes, another fantasy world Kel, ‘Kelsier’ here—though to be fair, this one was written nearly 20 years before Clare’s Kel in Sword Catcher, and about 10 years before Schwab’s Kell in her Shades of Magic series, and I’m sure Kel Kade is that fantasy author’s real name…I digress…).

The serpentine politics are easy to follow, despite the multiple characters and secret alliances made in public arenas, the rampaging gossip and rumours and the shifting loyalties…

I see why they call this brother the king of fantasy….

I was yanked into this molasses-thick plot driven by 4D characters at play in an immersive 4K setting, banging with shocks & twists, a yearning pre-romance, sorrowful tears and joyful tears, deep agony and righteous anger…The man gave it all in this novel—and we’ve only just begun the saga…

Thoroughly loved it.

The only thing I’d say was missing were dragons, but I hear he has other novels that feature hordes of fire-breathing reptiles… I just need to read more Sanderson… don’t know what took me so long…

Bonus (for me, at least): I can recommend this to my students & nieces in good conscience. Material, while deals with some adult politics and has battle scenes and deaths, is clean, with a cusslessly decent vocabulary and PG relationships. Thank you!

I like McConaghy’s modern style amid modern writers who try this same method, but don’t quite pull it off as she does. It’s bare. A stark naked collection of thoughts and dialogue streamed onto the page in short sentences, each word intentional, selected to deliver full impact, rife with darkness and ecological emotion and raging realities. And she unfolds these layered stories in this way, hitting us over the head with their meaning, the history they embody, pushing us down into the freezing waters to see what we’ll do about it… 

 

In a dying world, a little boy’s hope for a future collides with the adult evils he’s naive to, and the consequences are disastrous for many of these suspicious people—some who have become like family to him. He and his workaholic father think there might still be a chance to save the world, to save the earth and its inhabitants, even if they don't necessarily want to live with many of them. The woman, a suspicious newcomer, mysterious in her strange appearance among them, joins in their passion and belief, and it seems life and hope might be possible. But they're all keeping secrets from one another here, and on an island of 9 people (4 dead, 1 missing), it's a hard job to keep all these things under wraps for very long.

A storm is coming (every day), and in it, there will be a reckoning...

 

My favourite happy moment in the book (I could count these on 2 fingers), is when one of my favourite men on the planet gets a mention: David Attenborough. I love that man, his work, his passion. 

 

This wee novel is at once a warning, a prophetic narrative, and when we put the book down and look around us at another coming summer and early fires already raging across countries, warmer temps and melting polar caps, and we think of the next generation… well, it’s not so difficult to believe… 

This was so hard to take.

I understand that it was an exploration of the motives of men seeped in misogynistic cultural binds, but they don’t even try to make amends or reparations. They just go with it. I think that’s part of Mahfouz’s genius, though; he doesn’t try to make this something it wasn’t. He tells it like it was, like it is, and he allows each character to explore their own cynicism and address their own conflicts with excessive internal dialogue that makes them face truth and choose what to do with it.

Egypt in this time of the British occupation is a sad backdrop for a sad story. There are glimmers of hope along the way, or we wouldn’t continue reading. They are planted between relationships and in the minds and hearts of a select few progressive people, and there is the promise of perhaps a going against the grain in future installations with this family.

I find Mahfouz’s writing absorbing and beautiful and desperately depressing; a welding of overwhelming emotion and a deliberate dragging downwards. He is adept at this clinging pull, but in this novel, I think he was just getting started.

If this is the ‘before he was awarded’, I definitely need to read one of his prize winners…

It’s all the sentimental sadness we know to expect if we’ve read the first one in this series; more stories from lonely people, their lost loves and darkest regrets, and the healing power available in sharing your story with others along life’s journey. It’s the hope of new life and the promise of second chances. 

I read the 10th Anniversary revised edition of this republished novel, and I think the author’s writing has matured somewhat—glad I waited to get into this series. But now that I’m in—I’m all in. 

The politics are too real, a bit too real for me, and I’m very interested to see where this is going… I can understand how some of her fellow Brits weren’t keen on the story based on the subject matter. But, if you take it as fantasy or alternate-world based politics, it’s far easier to swallow. For both sides. 

 

The settings are familiar, which adds to our ability to relate to the places and characters, and the main characters are vibrant and complex, (though some of the flatter lads need further development to become well-rounded). I am sure that these complexities will only mature over time and the course of the next 6 novels (I think she’s set to write 7 in the series). There is the tease of a romantic relationship, but the story is not overly obsessed with it—a subtle yearning, for those who need it. 

 

The twists along the way were nothing I expected, and after the first 20% of this world-build and character development, I was frantically reading to see what would happen next in this hairpin plot. 

 

I can see how some might have related the setting to other novel series, though beyond fleeting reference to similar settings, I don’t think it does any favours to this unique piece of work by relating it to anything else; this is a dark rain-drenched world of futuristic fantasy I can’t compare to much else I’ve read. And that cover is gorgeous… 

 

Loved it. I know the 5th has only just been published, so I might wait a while before proceeding with this series, letting the cliffhanger ending of this first one sit with me for a bit before gobbling up the rest… 

This is an ambitious storytelling pursuit… and the author certainly attempts to be literary about it, but at times, the pathway seems lost between passages of describing the birds in the trees… and we think we’re heading one direction only to be pulled backwards and sideways in the kind of storytelling my own family is good at: non-linear (for most of the English-speaking world, that translates as ‘confusing’ — and I haven’t read up on the author, but her name is O’Farrell, so I’m making an assumption here, but it seems to me she has a few aunties who start you in the middle of the story and bring you halfway to the end before wait, hold on-ing you a minute and jumping back to away before the start of the start of this particular story and bringing you up to speed on all the relevant gossip of the lives of the ones before yer wee man in this particular story takes stage and that you might have missed preparatory to being let in on the not-so-secret-anymore details, which is all to say; is she Irish?). 

 

Overall, this storytelling was certainly revelling in the art of being literary, and while the story is one we who study the great man of literature are familiar with, O’Farrell brings to life the nuanced details of the tragedies in the people dear to him and all around him, without ever once mentioning his name. 

 

Definitely, an emotional one… 

For what it is, a personal memoir of a young sheltered American having her eyes opened to the world beyond, offering her confessions and apologies and coming to realisations, awakening to love and letting go of religion—it’s a 3.5. 

 

The writing is ‘dear diary’ style, heavily biased on personal experience (which makes sense in her case), and whatever research is presented merely scrapes the surface to prove a point, but doesn’t dig much deeper. Of course, to be fair, this isn’t an academic dissertation, it’s a personal memoir. And for that purpose, the research presented is sufficient, applicable, and reasonable enough. 

 

Many a young person wrapped up in a similar subculture will find this memoir a helpful comfort, even a launching point for engaging in their own faith journey, stepping beyond the legalism, outside of imposed restrictions and predominant suffocating culture of all the rules and lifestyle expectations of what they’d always believed saves— and maybe even find Jesus…