wordsofclover's Reviews (2.16k)

 cw: extreme, graphic violence, mass shooting, discussion of rape, homophobia

In the fourth book in the Grant County series, Indelible opens up as two men walk into the police station that Sara and Jeffrey are in, alongside colleagues and children , and open fire - killing several and wounding others. Sara ends up in a terrifying hostage situation, and the story flashes back 12 years previously when Sara and Jeffrey were at the beginning of their relationship and travelled back to Jeffrey's hometown, where naturally they end up in a murder investigation involving Jeffrey's childhood friends.

This was as intense and gripping as you would expect a book that starts with a mass shooting and hostage situation to be, as well as well, any book by Karin Slaughter! This was an interesting book to follow as we really see a different side of Sara and Jeffrey than we previously have done - the people they were at the start of the relationship, before Jeffrey f***ed up, and a Sara who is still recovering from the awful ordeal that happened to her when she was a doctor in the hospital.

The flashbacks give a good reprieve to the scarier and more intense hostage scenes. Not only are Sara and Jeffrey in danger or on the brink of death - but other characters who we have come to know and love over the course of the previous three books are either in danger, injured or dead (I never knew I felt so protective over Brad until this book). I will admit though there were times in the flashbacks when I wanted the story to hurry up, as I was more involved in the outcome of the hostage situation than the 12-year-old murder case.

I was kind of happy to not have as much Lena in this book which I always feel guilty saying. Lena is such a complex character and I have a real love-hate relationship with her. I appreciate the survivor story she is living through, and the type of victim/survivor Karin Slaughter portrays her as, and I guess she's written in a way where you are not necessarily suppose to like her. She does seem to come to a point in this book though where some of the things I disliked about her (her behaviour towards Jeffrey, her refusal to get/accept help, the self abuse) seem to finally be something she is resolving.

The language in this book tends to be a bit dated but even when it was published I'm sure it was uncomfortable to read, as it is now. I really hate how often the word "slut" is used to describe female characters in this series, and not just by the men but the female characters like Sara and Lena as well. There's also some homophobic language in Indelible as well as some homophobic behaviour by characters (which we have seen in the past as well). 

I received an audio version of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Narrator: Chiwetel Ejiofor - 5/5 stars

In a large house with endless halls and a variety of wonders and statues to gaze upon, a man called Piranesi wanders. He meticulously records his experiences in the Big House, and the tide that rises and falls within it, and the presents the house gives to him. Twice a week, he meets The Other and that's the only connection to another person he has. But soon, someone else appears in the house causing Piranesi to question everything, and possibly discover who he really is.

This is one of the most unique books I've ever read, and I loved it so much. It's the type of story that just makes you marvel at the wonder of the human mind that can create such a story and write it down in a manner that males (almost) complete sense.

I can't 100% explain what exactly happened in this story. and where or what the Big House was but I loved reading Piranesi's narration of his life, and the audio narration was superb.

The house itself almost reminded me of generation ships you hear about in sci-fi novels - a massive home almost too big to really comprehend, with different levels to provide what is needed for living - water, food, etc.

The way the story slowly revealed Piranesi's true identity, and what was really happening with the house was amazing and the writing was divine. The subtlety of the magic and wonder in this book, alongside an appreciation for art in all its forms whether it be through weather and nature (fish nibbling at bones) or a variety of minotaur statues (assuming man-made) was just gorgeous.

I definitely don't have the right analytical mind to review this book how it should be reviewed and point out the most likely amazing metaphors and bits in the book that had a greater meaning that I may have missed. But I loved it.

If anyone is on the fence about this one, I say to give it a chance, it may surprise and delight you!

 Open Water follows two young people as they fall in love - from the beginning of the journey to the rocky, potential end of it. Told in second person, we follow from the male perspective as he explains what it's like to find your perfect match, to be Black and British, to be British and Ghanaian, to love the soul of a person while being scared for your own.

"You know to love is to be a whole, partial, a joint, a fracture, a heart, a bone. It is to bleed and heal. It is to be in the world, honest. It is to place someone next to your beating heart, in the absolute darkness of your inner, and trust they will hold you close. To love is to trust, to trust is to have faith. How else are you meant to love?"

This book is utter poetry, and I loved every second of it. It kept stunning me over, and over again with gorgeous descriptions of that perfect, thrilling feeling of falling in love with someone - the heady feeling of becoming obsessed about what makes a person who they are, of wanting to open your mouth and drink every bit of them up so you can understand their soul and they yours.

The love in this book is pure, and powerful, and not completely perfect. Perfect in its imperfections but what I loved the most was this precious glimpse into the mind and life of a young Black man, struggling with his pride in who he was, and where he came from but also the fear for his life every time he walked out the door.

I think I have read books from BIPOC characters or authors mostly focused on the female perspective which I love, but I really felt it special to see the character's joys and fears spilled out on the pages in this one. His utter rage at what he is made to feel like, how he is treated. He is a gentle, creative soul yet because of the colour of his skin, is often made to feel like a criminal because of the authorities. And if it's not the police he's afraid of, he also has to be way of knife crime and gang crime in London, issues which also disproportionately affect young Black men.

The character's struggle to be vulnerable; to not show his fears to the girl who loves him most is so hard to read, and the fight to understand between the two of them as well is tough. The silent battle to have someone know what you are going through without having to say it and lay all your vulnerabilities on the table. To not be the "strong, Black man" society assumes you to be.

"You don't know why you're crying. Sometimes, love aches. You're not sad but bowled over."

The only reason why I didn't give this the full 5 stars as I felt at times the character would wander off with his thoughts, and my own mind would stray a bit - not fully committed to the page. But the beauty of this book struck me again, and again and I can't recommend it enough! 

 Roberta is someone who has always struggled to find her place in everything - her life, so far, has been one of solitude and looking on as others live their life. When Roberta meets Stevie, a wonderful friendship is born and soon Roberta's love of food and cooking transforms into the Supper Club - a night of eating and feasting that brings women together in wildness and debauchery. A chance for them to metaphorically and physically take up space in a world that's made them feel small.

I really like the concept of this book, and there were definitely a few passages here and there in association with the Supper Club and the need to be bigger, to take up this space, to be loud and free and while that I think hit all the right places inside of me. But for the most part, the story passed me by and there was a lot of it I didn't really like or care about which is a shame.

I will say there are definitely some glorious passages about food, and cooking and eating for the sheer pleasure of taste and satiating a hunger that might actually be a physical thing. This book will make you want to dive into a bowl of pasta or a wonderful plate of mashed potatoes just for the sheer joy of living to eat rather than eating to live.

Roberta as a character was probably what made me not enjoy the book as much as I thought. I found her a bit irksome and someone who was just tiring to watch figure out life. It felt like she was a dull automaton a lot of the time, and never seemed to know what she was doing or how to do it unless she was at Supper Club and taking drink and drugs, and acting like a hot mess. I also kept forgetting who the other members of the Supper Club were apart from Stevie!

I can definitely see why others would love this book, and get a lot out of it. It just didn't hit the mark for me. I am going to go eat some pasta now though! 

 In 10th century Ireland, Sorcha is the youngest of seven, and with six older brothers she has always felt loved and protected. But Sorcha's world changes when her father remarries and introduces Oonagh to the household - who is actually a wicked sorceress. Gone are Sorcha's days wandering in the woods and using her gift of healing to help others, and instead she finds herself on a terrible quest to save her brothers whom Oonagh has turned into swans.

God, I just loved this book. It's the exact time of fantasy I love - historically based with a beautiful mixture of originality and folklore, female led with a character who portrays the perfect mix of feminine and masculine qualities - soft but strong, fierce yet delicate at times - and detailed, beautiful writing full of nature and magic.

The writing in this was exquisite. I immediately felt pulled into the magic of Sevenwaters and the surrounding forest. The nature of life there living off the land, and living in tandem with the magical creatures that exist in the forest and may appear at any time. I also loved Sorcha's relationship with her brothers and how the first few chapters really built on the siblings' life in Sevenwaters, how important it was to them, and what they all meant to each other.

The story is slow-paced but I loved it. I felt immersed in Sorcha's world and really felt everything she felt with her cruel, and painful quest. There were a lot of moments in this book that were genuinely quite heartbreaking for me, and I found myself welling up with emotion, thus confirming the connection I felt with the story.

I thought the romance in this book was slow and lovely, and really builds upon itself to become strong and believable. There's nothing fast or rushed in this story. Just like Sorcha has to be as she painfully creates each shirt for her brothers, the reader also has to be patient and watch the story come together like a weaved item of clothing.

There are traumatic moments in this book; the worst being a rape committed on Sorcha that is slightly on the graphic side and quite upsetting to read. Sorcha's trauma and PTSD after this incident is never forgotten and I appreciated how Juliet Marillier continued to remember Sorcha's pain and fear - even at the very end, and how she eventually was able to overcome but not without a lot of time and patience on her and her lover's behalf.

I did think Oonagh and Richard were very black and white characters when it came to their villainy. There wasn't a lot of nuance to them, they were just bad almost for the sake of being bad. I also didn't really appreciate Simon blaming Sorcha for some things near the end that weren't her fault.

The book has a bittersweet ending as it's not a fairytale, and not everything can be happy ever after. I felt for a lot of the characters and what they went through, and in some cases, are still going through near the end.

I loved this so much though, and I can't wait to read more about Sorcha and her family. 

 Alice is heavily pregnant when she lets her boyfriend Pete convince her to move out to the Australian bush, and away from the ever stressful city. A rare condition called cutis has sprung up, which literally means someone's skin begins to seal over any orifice in the body - in the worst cases, people have died suffocated by their own skin. Alice has become obsessed with the illness, and inherently scared of anything that could cause harm to her body - be it the fear of the disease or chemicals from the plastic wrapped around food.

As the story progresses, Alice narrates her life in the Australian bush and the ever present feeling that something is wrong. However, as readers we can't tell if someone is actually wrong or is it Alice's obsessive fears making everything scarier than it really is. Are the evacuation orders really because of wildfires, or is it because of the dangerous skin-sealing disease?

Nothing really happens in this book, and for people really hoping for something short and snappy, the pacing of this book might not be 100% what you're looking for - despite the book itself being rather short. The book is slightly meandering as Alice flashes back and forth from her present to her childhood, and her relationships with both her mother and Pete. It once would have been hard to sympathise with Alice over her obsessive fear about cutis as she shares stories online, and freaks out about the smallest things yet we have been living in a pandemic for a year now so it's easy to see how such fear-mongering can happen - and how people can become crazy conspiracy theorists (5g anyone?).

The relationship between Alice and her unborn child is an odd one - as there's very little connection there or it seems at times that Alice is very distant from the child she's about to birth. Sometimes it's like she forgets there's even a life inside of her that's soon going to be out and depending on her.

There's some mild body horror in this, but I didn't find anything too bad until I was making lunch and Alice recalled the smell of an infected ear piercing - that was nice. So I wouldn't recommend this for meal times.

The birth scene in this book was as horrific and terrifying as you could imagine it might be, and all of Alice's fears are heightened to a point where it's hard to know what exactly is going. I've seen some reviews calling Alice silly and/or stupid for not recognising some elements of her pregnancy/birth but I took some of the lengths her mind takes her in her fear (which is due to a series of events that day) to be that - her fear playing mind tricks. So despite the horror of the scene, I enjoyed the intensity of the book.

The whole short novel delivered a great atmosphere and a heightening tension. There was always that uneasy feeling of things being wrong but not knowing what and the feeling that something was out there, just waiting. 

 CW: Disorder eating (binge eating), bullying, domestic abuse, attempted sexual assault

Sugar is a 16-year-old girl who, her whole life, has suffered from disordered eating - resulting in her being extremely overweight. Sugar's problems are exacerbated by the extreme bullying she receives in school but also in the home at the hands of her brother and her mother. She also acts as carer for her mother - who is so overweight, she can no longer move out of the bed, and who also has breathing and other health difficulties. When Sugar meets Even, he finally gives her the chance at a happier life and a respite from her terrible home environment. With his help, Sugar begins to believe she is worth more than she ever thought.

This was an emotional, heavy-hitting book that I found so hard to read at times due to a number of factors - the bullying Sugar goes through, both in school and at home, is just so horrible that it's hard to believe people can be so cruel. Particularly with her brother Skunk, his behaviour with Sugar is just so extreme, it's almost hard to believe though I'm aware many people do have to live in toxic and dangerous home situations all the time. For someone fairly young, Skunk's behaviour and tendency to violence was frightening. It's also very hard to read how Sugar treats her own body, and just how much she will consume in a moment/day and the reasons why she is doing that.

I did like how throughout the book, you really feel like Sugar starts to dissect her eating issues, and get to the bottom of her feeling of unworthiness and unhappiness. And identifying the triggers that cause binge eating behaviour. You really want to root for her, as she is a lovely, caring character to follow - a good egg.

I was surprised at the turn the book took, and I was also surprised at just how upset and emotional I was about it.

The romance in this book is very sweet, and borderline cheesy at times, I will admit. But Sugar did deserve to have an Even in her life, even if to force her to see the good person she is and the type of behaviour from others she should never have to put up with.

It's also important to point out the weight loss that Sugar achieves in this book is nothing to do with fad or dangerous diets or over exercise - just simple lifestyle changes like walking to school and cutting out soda and it making a big difference to her. I love the Sugar we get near the end of the book - someone who still has curves and is proud to be a bigger girl but also someone who loves herself and won't cry anymore because of others as they're not worth it. She becomes a bit of a badass with a Harley. 

 I received this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Elissa is in a bit of a mess. She's an unpaid social media manager for a dating app that swiftly seems to be going down the drain, her boyfriend wants to travel the world - and not with her - and she can't afford the rent on her measly apartment share. Eldercare ends up to the rescue with Elissa moving in with Annie rent-free, and sharing her youth and companionship to the older home owner. But Annie might have more to teach Elissa than she first realises.

This was just fun and definitely made me snort with laughter at a lot of points during the story. There's no other words to describe Elissa other than a hot mess, and there was times I was surprised she had clean laundry yet alone affording a cheese sandwich in the corner shop for lunch. As someone who works in social media and a tech company, I enjoyed the office vibes and Elissa's experience in a start-up company.

I also think anyone who has ever had to deal with the adulting that is figuring out how to pay rent, food, commute let alone afford a social life all on a cheap salary will find this book relatable. This book touches on the unattainable rafters that is affordable living in London for millennials, as well as the not so obvious issue of loneliness amongst the young and the old - despite a world that's now built to be forever connected.

I love the scheme of people struggling with rent moving in with older people who need a bit of companionship and a link to the modern world, and I know it exists in various forms in the real world. I will say this book made me ache for my gran who I haven't seen enough because of the pandemic.

Annie was a great character, and her dynamic with Elissa was lovely. There were some storylines that were briefer than I would have liked - I would have liked to have dug deeper into Annie's background, and her issues with her husband and son, and her romance with H. I also would have loved more time to get to know the other neighbours in Evergreen, as we only really see them at the end. If Elissa had moved in with Annie at the beginning of the book, more so than in the middle, I think it would have given a lot more time to expand on some areas of the novel that felt too brief for me.

This book was fun and a quick read and gave me a laugh, which was exactly what I needed! 

 Number One Chinese Restaurant follows the lives of the family and long-time employees of the Beijing Duck House - a popular Chinese restaurant in Maryland. Jimmy, the youngest son, is eager to break from his father's shadow and open his own restaurant while employees Nan and Ah-Jack finally pass through an invisible barrier of their relationship they've been yearning for for years. A disaster tears all the characters apart and brings them together simultaneously, and they have to really figure out what they want out.

This book just didn't do it for me at all. I didn't gel with any of the characters - none of them are likeable at all, and not even in a 'love to hate' way. I was intrigued to try and find out the family dynamic in this book and honestly, it didn't do much for me. I would have loved to find out more of Jimmy and Johnny's mother who seemed like a really interesting woman with a hint of a lot of deeper layers to her, and a hidden cunning and not so hidden cruelty but we didn't get enough of this at all. Johnny and Jimmy hated each other for seemingly no reason.

The only nice character in this was Nan - and she's basically treated like dirt by every single person in this book, especially her son Pat who is just horrible. And Nan's ending was just so...unsatisfactory.

Nothing actually really happened in this book, and I'm not sure what the author was really trying to say or do with the story. I think some of the makings of a good story were there but nothing was done with it.

For a story that revolves around a restaurant, there was very little food descriptions which made me sad. I was hoping for some tasty food descriptions to make me hungry.

Side note: There's a scene in this book where Nan clips Ah-Jack's toenails and it's suppose to be this tender, loving scene between them but it really grossed me out. Yuck and no thank you. 

 
I'm so glad I made this my first read of 2021. I had a good feeling about it, I could tell I was going to love it - and I was right!

Hamnet tells the story of a boy and his twin, and the morning his twin sister, the other half of him, falls sick. He looks for his mother, his sister, his grandparents, and the readers are thrown back into the past to his father's youth and how his parents met. Hamnet had a brief life, but through grief for his son, came one of the world's most well-known and remarkable plays about a father-son relationship, and grief for a loved one- Hamlet.

The writing in this is just stunning. There were so many lovely descriptions, and turns of phrases and nothing too complicated or convoluted. Simple descriptions made beautiful - the telling of a woman slightly more in tune with nature and people than others, and who can gain a sense of what's going to happen without the power to stop the turn of events. I loved Agnes, who was the main character in the story for me - a woman misunderstood but a woman gentle, and clever, and full of love to give her family and those in need. Someone in tune with nature and the healing power of nature.

I love that the husband and father is never named yet we obviously know who he is. Just a really nice touch to the story. The careful balance between looking after family through presence, while also trying to fulfil dreams elsewhere and how sometimes this can have disastrous affects on a family. Agnes's tough decisions in letting him go, and sacrificing some of her own happiness (which is always a woman's lot, isn't it?).

There was a chapter in this book as well about a boy, a monkey and a flea - and how a glass maker in Venice combined everything to bring this story together. And it was magnificent. Slightly scary, considering the global climate/pandemic as well but brilliant.

The last few pages of this were stunning. And in a way parts of this book are such an exploration how grief is met and understood by different people - particularly genders - often women meet it head on, can scream and wail and keen, and go to bed for days, yet men - even in today's society - are often expected to get on with it, be a man , chin up. The inner turmoil of grief decaying the husband from the inside out, spilled out onto the page and creating a play where he could bring his son to life, mourn him, and not only remember him but have him be remembered by others.

Beautiful.