Review: Falcon Trilogy, by Gabrielle Mathieu

I don’t often review full trilogies, but this is a small press series that doesn’t get much hype, so I thought it would be more useful to review all three books at once than, for example, book 2 of it alone. I have a full review of the first installment, The Falcon Flies Alone, which you can read here: Review: The Falcon Flies Alone (Falcon Trilogy #1), by Gabrielle Mathieu

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Young Adult, New Adult, Fantasy

Goodreads

 

I have received this book series from the author in exchange for an honest review.

The Falcon Trilogy tells the story of Peppa, who one day wakes up and finds herself alone, naked and on a rooftop. She has hazy memories about turning into a falcon and killing a man, and doesn’t know what to make of it. When she learns that her animal totem has woken up inside her after she was drugged with Compound T, she must uncover her family’s secrets and find out who drugged her.

Women’s Prize for Fiction SQUAD Presents: Book Bloggers Take Over the 2020 Longlist

Hello readers!

As you might have seen already this week, Callum, Emily, Hannah, Marija, Rachel, Sarah, Steph and I got together after ranting more or less forever about the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 Longlist (underwhelming) and came up with a whole new list of what books we think would have made a far more exciting list!

Obviously this is based on our personal tastes, some books we’re really excited for and some we really loved and thought were truly powerful reads. We followed the same rules as the original prize, so that this list is quite comparable to what the WP could have been, if we’d been the judges (hint, hint). This is just for fun and was decided quite spontaneously, so obviously the list isn’t perfect and neither is this all very serious. We all love the Women’s Prize for Fiction and love finding new books every year with it!

The squad has some posts talking about our longlist:

Emily: 2020 Women’s Prize Take 2: Blogger Edition

Callum: What If? | Women’s Prize [Squad] Longlist

Sarah: The 2020 Women’s Prize Squad Longlist

They’re all fantastic and really, you should follow all of us and see what happens! Maybe we’ll have some flops, for sure we won’t love all of them, but AT LEAST there’s no Greek retelling this year and maybe only a limited amount of books about how motherhood sucks! Instead, we got murder, dark academia and even YA, which is really exciting for me.

If you wanna follow us on Twitter while we read and talk about the longlist, you can use #womensprizesquad.

• Bunny by Mona Awad / Goodreads
• The Body Lies by Jo Baker / Goodreads
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo / Goodreads

Review: A Thousand Ships, by Natalie Haynes

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Greek Myth Retelling

Goodreads

A Thousand Ships is a retelling of the Odyssey through the eyes of the women. The narrators are, ostensibly, Muses to whom a poet prays for inspiration. But each character gets their own chance to narrate, and stories that should not have been forgotten, are finally told.

This was so enchanting, beautiful and I devoured it in two sittings. A Thousand Ships is exactly what I hoped The Silence of the Girls would have been, and I am pleased that, despite my initial hesitation towards this book, it surprised me with how good it is!

Weekly Wrap Up 21-27 April 2020 (I am a READING MACHINE)

Hello readers!

Sooo, last week we got the shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction:

And without further ado, we're thrilled to share with you the 2020 #WomensPrize for Fiction shortlist.

Huge congratulations to our six shortlisted authors 🙌Discover the books here: https://t.co/ddQDkB4vms pic.twitter.com/clWiG5mFh5

— Women's Prize (@WomensPrize) April 21, 2020

I got 4/6 right, and I’m not too disappointed. It’s not the best list, but it’s not the worst either – I’m not thrilled about Dominicana being there, and I just know I’ll have to read it after all (if you didn’t know, I was planning on skipping it). Perhaps in audio?

I have reviews on a few of those already:

• Review: Weather, by Jenny Offill
• Review: The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
• eARC Review: Girl, Woman, Other, by Bernardine Evaristo

I will also post a review for A Thousand Ships soon! Still have to read Hamnet, and I’m really excited to pick that one up, since I expect it will be one of my favorites.

I’ve been on vacation now for a week, and have been doing lots of reading! Not as much as I could, of course, but I’ve been relaxing, picking up running again, doing lots of cooking and actually useful stuff ,too. I unfortunately have no self control and added a bunch of books to my TBR, but I have no regrets at all – they all sound fabulous and I’m excited to read more translated fiction.

I got the following books:

The first two are translated fiction and the last is a fantasy I’ve been wanting to read for the longest time!

I’ll have more books coming my way hopefully soon because some wonderful bloggers and I will be reading our way through 16 books we elected as our Squad version of what the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 longlist should have looked like according to us! If you want to read more, we have impeccable tastes (and modesty abound), and both Sarah and Emily wrote about it! I’m so excited about it!!

 

Weekly Wrap Up

Mini-Review: Red at the Bone, by Jacqueline Woodson

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Categories: Contemporary Fiction

Goodreads

Red at the Bone tells the story of Melody and her family, going through different point of views as they revisit their relationships with each other as the years go by.

It’s hard to describe this book, mostly because there isn’t too much of a plot, except that Melody and her family tell their stories, their dreams and their frustrated ambitions. It’s a book about family versus dreams, about family heritage versus new beginnings. It’s a beautifully written story, which had its moments of brilliancy, but that left me wanting so much more out of it. There was hardly any emotional connection with the characters, the ending felt weird and forced, and there was little development for most of the characters. I loved the story of Melody’s mother, a difficult woman who did not want to be a mother and chose her career instead, but who would like to reconnect with her daughter one day. Who falls in love with a woman but can’t help but lie to her. In the end, I would have loved this book a lot more if it had been through her perspective, a hard-hitting book full of emotion and pain, but as it was, Red at the Bone didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Still, it was a nice afternoon read!

eARC Review: Beach Read, by Emily Henry

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Romance, Contemporary Fiction

Goodreads

I received an advance copy via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

Beach Read tells the story of January, a romance writer who recently moved into her father’s secret house near the beach, where he lived with his lover, which January knew nothing about until That Woman showed up in his funeral with a letter and a key to the house for her. Now January’s life is in shambles, as her long-term boyfriend broke up with her, her father was a cheater and a liar, her mom refuses to talk about it and she can’t write her next book, which she absolutely needs to write. When she meets an old nemesis from University, Augustus Everett, and finds out he’s her new neighbor, it gets initially even worse. Except – he’s not all that terrible. As they cautiously become friends, they place a bet: he will write a romance book, and January will write a sad literary book, the kind that Gus writes.

Review: The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Goodreads

The Mirror and the Light is the third and final installment of the Cromwell series, which has had my whole heart since I started it a few years ago. It tells the story of Thomas Cromwell, his ascension into power and trust of King Henry VIII. In this last installment, we have seen Anne Boleyn fall from the king’s graces and lose her head – and although Cromwell has more power and wealth than ever, his enemies are gathering to plot his fall.

This trilogy takes a long time to read, not only because it’s nearly 900 pages, but also because of the sheer amount of characters, plots, subplots and the amount of attention the reader has to pay to details (absolutely worth it). It’s a series to get immersed into, and I loved spending around two weeks reading this – it’s one of my favorite series of all times, of all genres I read. Mantel turns Cromwell into a character so full of life, complexity, sharp wit, intelligence and ambition it’s truly refreshing to cheer for someone who is clearly not the classical hero in historical fiction stories. I’ve read a few Tudor books, and none have the brilliance of this series.

Weekly Wrap Up 14 – 20 April 2020 + Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist Prediction

Hello readers!

I am blessedly on vacation! It’s a beautiful, sunny week so far and I’m happy to spend time relaxing and reading on the balcony, trying out new recipes and petting the cat. It’s been a productive reading week, with finally finishing The Mirror and the Light (review to come!) and being able to finish Red at the Bone in one day, so now I’ve read 7 of 16 longlisted books for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, DNF-ed 1, won’t read 2, and I’m 1/3 or so into another one. Not so many left to read – it’s pretty exciting to be moving forward!

The shortlisted books for the WP comes out tomorrow! I have failed miserably in reading the books for it on time, but I have no regrets. This year’s longlist was not very exciting to me and I am glad I decided not to read the entire list, but rather focus on the books that actually interested me. I’ve read many reviews, and feel quite confident in predicting which books will make it to the shortlist.

My prediction for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020 Shortlist is:

 

1. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
2. How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee
   
3. The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel
   
4. Actress by Anne Enright 
5. Hamnet by Maggie O’ Farrell
6. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
   

I think it’s not an exciting list, but the entire longlist was at best lackluster, so… *shrug* I don’t feel particularly guilty for guessing at a rather boring list (but a good one! I loved all those books, except for Hamnet, which I haven’t read yet. It’s just that there’s so little variety and NEW things).

Other bloggers’ predictions:

Callum McLaughlin – Reading the Women’s Prize Longlist | Wrap Up, Wish list & Shortlist Predictions

Laura Tisdall – Predictions for the Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist, 2020

Gil Reads Books – Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020: Reflections and Shortlist Predictions

All these posts are amazing, definitely check them out! I’m not-so-surprised to see that a few of the books are making it to every prediction so far. They’re really good: The Mirror and the Light, Girl, Woman, Other and How We Disappeared seem to be pretty solid contenders!

Weekly Wrap Up

TBR for my Honeymoon-Turned-Staycation-Because-Oh-Well

Hello readers!

I was supposed to be getting married today and off to our honeymoon tomorrow – but if you read my Weekly Wrap from a few weeks ago, you know that instead we eloped in March because, well, who knows if we’d even be able to marry in April at all. It was beautiful, and I am still getting used to calling my husband “husband” without giggling (we’re failing there).

So in the end our honeymoon was cancelled – which is okay, we sort of knew that would probably happen anyway, so we’re used to the idea by now and frankly, both of us could use the rest. This pandemic has been so exhausting. We will use the time to play boardgames, read, play with our cat and enjoy the sunlight from the balcony. It will be really nice!

I’ve no idea if I will actually do much reading, somehow on vacation we tend to watch movies or cook together  a lot more than read, but I surely hope so! I’ve fallen tragically behind on my reading challenge (1 book), so I can’t afford to do other things, like, say, chores or spend time with my husband, until this grave error is corrected. Here are the books I’m hoping to get to these next two weeks:

Most of the Series I Follow Finish This Year and I’m-

Hello readers!

So, in a desperate attempt to post something still today and not have another week of terrible scheduling for my blog, I am writing this rather random post! It came to my attention rather belatedly (we’re in mid-April… omg) that MOST of the series I follow are going to be DONE this year and I’m at a loss.

The realization came to me yesterday:

Ok but most of the series I'm reading finish this year and I'm at a loss: The Poppy War, Jade City, Children of Blood and Bone, Cromwell Trilogy, The Diviners, the Locked Tomb

Can I even survive the heartbreak from all the characters who will be killed off 😱

— Naty's Bookshelf 👩‍💻📚 (@natysbookshelf) April 15, 2020

After posting this on Twitter, I realized there were a few more series ending this year! So, we have: