I haven’t been feeling super inspired for creative-slash-high-effort blog posts, so I like to write these mini-reviews and just talk a bit about the books I’ve been reading lately, especially new releases because who doesn’t like new, shiny books??
Board to Death by CJ Connor
Oh my gosh, this was so sweet. If you love board gaming, I highly recommend this warm hug of a book! It’s a cozy mystery so yes there is a murder but you never feel super tense and anxious, it was such a cute read and I had a fun time!
I used to really enjoy joining readathons when I first started blogging, but lately I’ve been too much of a mood reader to be able to follow any list of what to read. It’s already challenging enough sometimes to keep up with my book club, and we just read a book every two months.
But! I decided to check if I’m anywhere close to finishing the Buzzwordathon, if I do not consider that I should have read those books in particular months. After realizing I was reading a magic book on October (Buzzword: magic), I thought it’d be interesting to see what how close I am to finishing the readathon.
1. “Life” and “Death”
JANUARY BUZZWORD words in the title like life, death, lives, living, death, dead.
I think Death Valley by Melissa Broder fulfills that one very well, although I only read it in October – I looked into January but I only read like two books in January so that didn’t quite work (although I did read Blind Assassin and one COULD argue that assassins… are related to death?). I love Melissa Broder and will read anything she writes but I did think this was just okay. I read a bunch of other “Death” related books (Death of a Bookseller, Board to Death, A Very Easy Death, Dead Water, Death by Dumpling) so this was actually a very easy prompt – I just didn’t get to any of these books in January.
I’m slowly coming back to blogging, I guess – yay! I don’t know exactly what happened this year, I guess it’s just my personal life and work getting in the way of my main objective in life, which is to read as many books as possible and blog about them to my two followers. Oh well!
It’s almost November and I’m itching to get to my TBR as quickly as possible because everything sounds amazing and I just know that the moment the 2024 lists come out my TBR will explode, so I need to get through my current TBR as soon as possible to try and keep things under control. So, these are some books I want to get to in the next couple of months because I like to talk about them in a timely manner and encourage people to read them before everyone is bedazzled by newer releases.
Rouge by Mona Awad
A new horror by Mona Awad, sign me up. This is also focused on the beauty industry and I’m super curious to see what Awad does with this theme – I have the book in my Kindle and want to pick this up asap.
I haven’t updated you in a while, so for today I thought I would share with you some of the newly released books I’ve read lately and, since it’s October, I’ve selected the horror ones to talk a little bit about.
Mister Magic by Kiersten White
Okay so please take my review with a grain of salt because I didn’t actually finish this book. But let me tell you why I did it – I’ve been a Kiersten White fan in a while now, I enjoyed the first book of her YA trilogy The Conqueror’s Sage (but I didn’t finish it because it was just… okay later on?) as at the time a lot what she did in the series was new, felt fresh and interesting. I also really enjoyed Hide, her previous horror, which felt like watching a reality show, and I just had such fun reading it. It was not perfect but it was fun!
But this one? First of all, the “main character doesn’t remember anything” trope is SO hard to pull off. I had just finished In My Dreams I Hold a Knife and there the trope worked very well, but here… I just got so bored. The story was also not super convincing, I couldn’t get a feel for what Mister Magic was supposed to be as a show, the characters felt flat and generic, and it just… didn’t click for me. I am not going to spoil the ending but I did look it up and it convinced me I made the right choice giving this up.
Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!
I wrote about my reading plans for WIT Month a few weeks ago, and set myself the goal to read three (South American) novels. Well, turned out that getting some much-needed vacation in July fired up my reading and I ended up picking up more books than I had planned to. I ended up reading books from Spain, France, Sweden and Brazil (quite a few).
The books I read in Portuguese I reviewed in both Portuguese and also in English, since my readers are mostly English-speakers but I’d like the text to be accessible to potential Portuguese-speaking audiences too.
Boulder by Eva Baltasar, translated from Spanish by Julia Sanches
Eva Baltasar does sad lesbians like nobody else. This was an emotional, wonderfully written story about a Spanish woman who works on a ship in South America and falls in love with a woman from Iceland. This is a story about freedom, relationships, change, motherhood. I enjoyed the beginning of the story more than the second half – Boulder’s adventures in South America were so cool to read about! Ah, this title is very slim, in case you’re looking for something to read quickly for WIT 🙂
Synopsis:
Working as a cook on a merchant ship, a woman comes to know and love Samsa, a woman who gives her the nickname “Boulder.” When Samsa gets a job in Reykjavik and the couple decides to move there together, Samsa decides that she wants to have a child. She is already forty and can’t bear to let the opportunity pass her by. Boulder is less enthused, but doesn’t know how to say no―and so finds herself dragged along on a journey that feels as thankless as it is alien.
With motherhood changing Samsa into a stranger, Boulder must decide where her priorities lie, and whether her yearning for freedom can truly trump her yearning for love.
I can’t believe it’s time for another Women in Translation month! For the past years I’ve enjoyed compiling a list of what I’ve read since the previous WIT month readathon (excluding the books I read for that) so as to see what kind of books might have slipped under the radar that I have not talked about quite enough on my blog.
So, these are all the books I read since the last WIT, and a short review saying if I like them or not. I would usually highlight only the ones I truly enjoy, but in the end everyone has such different tastes that I think it’s a good opportunity to
The Resting Place by Camilla Sten, translated from Swedish by Alexandra Fleming
This was my first Camilla Sten book. After hearing pretty mixed reviews about it, I tried to go into this with an open mind, and then it was quite a good, entertaining read! I’m finding out that books about face blindness are not my type, they seem to always end up disappointing me a little. If a book tries to deal with a real life condition, it makes me question more closely the plot holes.
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
Synopsis:
The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.
When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.
Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.
Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.
A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.
The best reading month of the year starts today! I’m very excited to announce my list this year. It is short and entirely Latin American – as I’ve been reading lots of translated fic this year from all kinds of countries (so many French books!), I’ve decided to dedicate this month to some LatAm books I’ve been neglecting. Two are in Brazilian Portuguese, so I’ll be reading them in original language, and one is an eARC I got from Netgalley, and it’s originally written in Spanish, so I will be reading its English translation. I love LatAm literature so I’m quite happy to pick these up!
Suíte Tóquio by Giovana Madalosso (Brazil, original Portuguese)
First published in 2020
This is the story of several characters, weaved into one novel – from two girls who run away to a woman dealing with the end of her marriage, I’ve heard nothing but good thinkgs about this book, which seems to be the kind of dark comedy I enjoy reading!
Synopsis (PT):
É uma manhã qualquer quando Maju atravessa a praça ao lado de Cora. Puxando a garota pelo braço, ela passa sorrateiramente pelo exército branco, sobe a avenida, pega um ônibus e desaparece. Exército branco foi o nome que Fernanda, mãe de Cora, deu às babás que todos os dias lotam a praça daquele bairro de classe alta com as crianças de seus patrões. Nos últimos tempos, no entanto, a babá e a filha parecem tão anônimas para Fernanda quanto as outras. Afundada numa crise pessoal, ela demora a perceber que Maju e Cora sumiram sem dar notícias. Ao longo do dia, tudo vai desabando. De um lado, Fernanda lida com o fracasso de seu casamento. Apaixonada por uma diretora com quem trabalhou num projeto cinematográfico, ela deixa a relação com o marido definhar. Quer distância de Cacá, mas conforme os primeiros telefonemas aflitos para a babá vão se transformando em desespero, se vê de novo afundando naquele universo. Enquanto isso, Maju vai até a rodoviária e desaparece num ônibus com Cora. Em meio a motéis imundos e paradas insólitas, põe em ação seu plano, que imediatamente sai do controle. Neste romance pé na estrada, Giovana Madalosso coloca para girar, com força e fluidez, a vida dessas personagens que parecem eternamente em busca ― de ternura, redenção, sexo, qualquer coisa que possa movê-las de onde estão. O sequestro de Cora abala as engrenagens do passado e do presente, do desejo e do ressentimento, e a procura desesperada que se segue é também um doloroso acerto de contas com a vida e as expectativas que construímos. Suíte Tóquio é um romance vertiginoso e tragicômico que fala daquele lugar tênue entre o que as pessoas querem ser e o que de fato são.
August is the month of reading Women in Translation – seriously my favorite readathon of the year. I am happy to see that in the past years people are reading a lot more books by WIT and I’m always excited to share a few new recommendations and get people to maybe consider books they haven’t heard of before or don’t know which book to even start with.
I quite enjoyed We Had to Remove This Post by Hanna Bervoets, translated by Emma Rault has a similar theme to No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, covering the darker sides of a life which revolves around being extremely online. Lockwood’s book focuses on being famous online and Bervoets’ focuses on working with content moderation, both aspects of being online that I actually enjoyed reading about in a novel (although Lockwood’s book didn’t work much for me, it was still interesting).
Okay, hear me out. I am not saying that Strangers I Know by Claudia Durastanti (edition in English translated by Elizabeth Harris) is the same as reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and maybe it’s a bit of a reach to compare them, but I’m adding them both to this list because they both are partially fictionalized autobiographies and are gorgeously written, with a hint of sadness underneath. I found that both spoke to me in a deep level, and I’m fairly sure a lot of people might relate to them, too.
OKAY HEAR ME OUT AGAIN, I swear I am not being random. I think if you enjoyed the aspect of My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh where the main character challenges the way she’s supposed to live life a certain way and people around her could not understand it, then I think you’ll enjoy the main character’s journey in Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. While both characters react to these expectations in different ways, I think the audience that loved Moshfegh’s book will also enjoy Murata’s. There is an exploration on work culture, societal expectations and how women feel pressured to conform on both books, and I loved them both.
Simone de Beauvoir is a controversial read, especially this particular ficiton work, but I am very drawn to her writing and I think there’s a lot of value in reading her books for their philosophical musings and to understand a bit better how flawed a person she was, and understand her contributions to the feminist movement in a more nuanced light. She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir is a nice match for someone who might have enjoyed Cleopatra and Frankenstein by Coco Mellors, because they’re both meditative explorations of complicated romantic relationships between… frankly, terrible people. I did not see any heroes in either book (except maybe Elisabeth in SCtS and Eleanor in CaF), but both had excellent writing and made me pause several times to really give thought to what I had read.
Recently I’ve rediscovered Japanese mysteries and ended up reading two of Seishi Yokomizo’s series of the famous Detective Kindaichi, the charmingly awkward character that solves mysteries in post-war Japan. Despite having read a couple of the books in this series and never fallen in love with any, I keep coming back to them somehow. From what I gathered, your best chance of liking this series is with Death on Gokumon Island – if you’re interested in the series, see if this works for you and then go for there.
Death on Gokumon Island by Seishi Yokomizo, translated by Louise Heal Kawai
Death on Gokumon Island is Detective Kindaichi’s second mystery, set several years after The Honjin Murders right after the end of World War II, Japan is in turmoil as it tries to rebuild itself, and Kindaichi sets out to a small, mysterious island bearing terrible news: the heir to the island’s most powerful family is dead. What he doesn’t say, is that he’s been warned that the death would result in three murders – which he will try to prevent to the best of his ability.
This slim novel was a pleasant read, reminiscent of the Agatha Christie mysteries that I enjoyed in my youth, and it especially brought to mind And Then There Were None (which is it seems to be loosely based on). The strongest points of this mystery to me were the familiar beats of a classic-style mystery, and the very interesting setting in 1940s Japan. This reads easily and pleasantly, and if you’re in the mood for something like that, I can definitely recommend it. It’s a charming read that gives such incredible insight into the life and dynamics in a very insular, particular kind of community, plus I doubt many readers will guess the ending.
However, it was not really a book for me. Although there were parts of it I truly enjoyed and found ingenious, there was just too much going on in terms of red herrings and cleverness, plus the motivations of several characters never felt truly explored or explained. I don’t want to spoil the novel’s ending, so I will not go into detail here, but this left me feeling not too fulfilled by the end. I’m not too happy either with the treatment of the victims, but I’m willing to forgive this a bit due to the audience being so different from me – but still, it was callous, misogynistic and, frankly, cold. Not that you don’t find such treatment in older mysteries, it’s just that here it struck me as so dismissive of girls, with no attempt to humanize them at all. Actually, none of the female characters were humanized at all (I’m not too impressed with the men, either, but those got to be complex characters, sometimes). The novel struck me sometimes as a bit naïve in terms of human behavior and social complexities.
To be honest, I think this might work well for cozy mysteries, where one relies upon familiar tropes and it makes for a comfortable read, so I’m not as upset about that as I made it sound in the paragraph above.
This is a book I will recommend, with a grain of salt – if the kind of things I mentioned might take you out of the story or hinder your enjoyment of the book, skip it. Otherwise, I think it’s worth a try, if only to get immersed in this interesting world!
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 2.5 out of 5.
The Devil’s Flute Murders by Seishi Yokomizo, translated by Jim Rion
I love a good “ruined nobility” story – it feels far away enough from reality that it reads as cozy mystery, even when the events are horrendous (like some in this book). This seems to be a pattern in Seishi Yokomizo’s books, which is why they’re often compared to the Agatha Christie books.
I unfortunately enjoyed this one even less than Death on Gokumon Island – there is something about the novel that just felt a bit too outlandish to properly capture my attention, and too silly for me to feel entirely involved. People are always making the weirdest decisions, and are barely more than flat, stereotypical characters, so I’m never too invested in the story and at the same time, the pieces never seem to fall super neatly together. The resolution involved the kind of suspension of disbelief that I don’t particularly want to have in this kind of cozy mystery – it just never seems to decide if it’s a serious puzzel to be put together or a wild story to be just enjoyed without actually being engaged with too seriously. I enjoy it best when I just go for the ride.
But as the last one: this was entertaining and a bit bonkers, if that’s what you’re after.
So I’ve been dipping my toes back into reading and blogging, and I quite enjoyed writing Mini-Reviews of New Thrillers (2023 Releases) so I decided to do a follow-up. So here’s all the mysteries and thrillers published in 2023 that I’ve read since the last post and what I thought of them! Let me know in the comments if you’ve read any of these and what your thoughts were!
The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz
First published February 21, 2023
I’m sorry, this just didn’t work for me! I was so excited for it, this was on my Most Anticipated Books of 2023 list, so it’s a bit extra disappointing that I ended up not finishing this. The Writing Retreat was checking a bunch of boxes for me: writers as main characters can be so interesting to read about, plus secluded cabins closed mysteries are SO fun, it was giving me Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party. I thought this was going to be a fun story with a critical or satirical look into the publishing process vs writing as an artist, but in the end it was a bit all over the place, the twists were too out there, and the “book within a book” concept didn’t really work for me. I could not care less for the excerpts of the books people were working on, or Roza’s. As I was pretty into the book by the time I gave it up and read the ending, I think I had enough info to give a short review and rate it.
Naty's Bookshelf 