Review: Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy

Goodreads

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer … and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person, and the damage that their dreams can do. But those are nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed…

Mini-Review: The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

Rating: ★★★★★

Categories: Thriller, Mystery

Goodreads

In The Hunting Party, a group of old friends gets together in an isolated hunting lodge in Scotland to celebrate the New Year, as they do every year. Although they seem to be excited and happy to see each other, old and new grudges escalate the tensions between them, and on January 2nd, a body is found.

This is one of the best mysteries I’ve ever read! I fell in love with the writing from the first chapter, so atmospheric and engrossing. This book came highly recommended from my sister, who is the best source of thriller recommendations, honestly. Each of the characters has secrets, the guests who claim to be friends but seem sometimes to actually hate each other, and also the people working in the lodge. Every story line, every secret, every character was so interesting, I could not stop reading this! It was also super intriguing to not really know who died until quite far into the book, keeping the reader guessing who killed whom and why, suspiciously analyzing the actions of everyone. It was so fun to read and reminded me a lot of the way I devoured Agatha Christie books when I was younger. This was absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to read Lucy Foley’s The Guest List!

eARC Review: You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Mystery, Thriller

Goodreads

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

In You Are Not Alone, Shay Miller is a 30-something year old whose life isn’t going how she wished. She’s living with her roommate, who’s she’s secretly been in love with but is dating someone else; her job is getting her nowhere; she feels just so alone. One day, when she witnesses the suicide of a woman who looks eerily like herself, she cannot help but get obsessed: who was she? Why did she do this? Who are her friends, what was her life like? When she crashes the memorial of the woman and meets her friends… she just wants to be a part of them. Those women are so glamorous, so beautiful, so successful. And they seem to like her.

Weekly Wrap-Up 19 – 25 May 2020: My TBR Decreases Ever So Slightly

Hello readers!

Last week I posted about some books I wanted to get through in the past week and… I’ve read 1/5. I am such a mood reader, it’s quite awful in terms of following through with reading plans. My husband always plans his next books for the next month perfectly, and best I can do is say “Well I need to finish this in 3 weeks so maybe I’ll pick it up one day in the next two years??? Who knows”.

ALSO I realized I accidentally subscribed for a month on Scribd (I got a month or two free and then forgot to cancel), so I decided to use my already-paid-for month and pick up a couple audiobooks. The timing is actually quite good, as I’ve recently cancelled my Audible subscription. I think after this, though, I won’t listen to books a whole lot anymore.

Despite getting new books and adding a few to my TBR, it actually got a bit shorter. I ended up finishing 3 books and starting another 2, plus I deleted some books from my wishlist and now I have hopes it will once again be below 200 soon!

I got a few books:

Review: The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

Goodreads

The Bass Rock tells the story of three women, all living at some point in a house in Scotland, near the Bass Rock: Sarah, in the 1700, accused of witchcraft and fleeing for her life; Ruth, in the years after the war, trying to adapt to a new village and her new husband; and Viviane, sixty years later who’s dealing with the death of her father and emptying the house Ruth used to live in.

The Bass Rock is an exploration of toxic masculinity and its effect on women; it took me a few pages to really get into the story, but after that it was a deeply interesting story and I could not put it down. The lives of these three women are connected by the place near the Bass Rock in Scotland, and by the similarities in what they experience with the violence of men, who seek to control their lives, in some way or another. It was very interesting especially to see the connections between Ruth and Viviane, both having been institutionalized and living with the ghost of, presumably, Sarah.

Upcoming F/F Books On My Radar

Hello readers!

I noticed that I haven’t posted anything F/F for a while, and it’s always nice to have more content like that and use my platform to hype them up. F/F doesn’t get nearly as much hype as M/F and M/M, so I like to highlight some amazing books from time to time! There are lots more coming out than the ones I’m listing here, but these are the ones on my radar that I’ve been seriously considering reading or are already on my TBR. I don’t read much YA nowadays, but if you do, definitely check out some lists by other amazing bloggers, like Rainbow Reads, Charlotte, Anne, Emily Kate, YA Bookers. There are surely a bunch of posts I’ve forgotten, so please link yours below if you have a recommendation post!

Burning Roses by S.L. Huang / Goodreads

Review: My Name is Monster by Katie Hale

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Fiction, Dystopia, Retelling

Goodreads

In My Name is Monster, the world as we know it is over: War and Sickness took over the countries and killed almost all humans – almost. Monster is still alive, and she emerges from the Seed Vault in the Arctic to find food and shelter, surviving.

This beautiful novel is incredibly bold and nuanced – it’s a post-apocalyptic story about society, motherhood, survival, civilization. Its loose inspiration in Frankenstein makes it all the more interesting, too. It took me a few pages to start really getting into the story, but after that it sucked me in. Monster is such an interesting character, so intelligent and cold, sometimes cruel, I could not get enough of her.

Weekly Wrap-Up 12 – 18 May 2020: My TBR Increased Mysteriously

Hello readers!

It’s been a mixed week in terms of reading, lots of amazing books, one flop and many different genres. Also, I discovered a few new books I want to read, and so my TBR goes down and then right back up. A true mystery how it never really seems to decrease permanently. This week I actually got a few days off, so maybe I can get my TBR a bit down again? Or maybe I’ll use the extra time to find new books I’m interested in. *sigh*

Books I’ve added to my TBR these past two weeks:

• Bestiary by K-Ming Chang
• Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashadoust
• Throwaway Girls by Andrea Contos
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
• Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys
• The Fountains of Silence by Ruta Sepetys
• The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
• Kept Animals by Kate Milliken
• A Good Marriage by Kimberly McCreight
• The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd
• Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
• With my Dog Eyes by Hilda Hilst
• If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha
• Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica
• Long Bright River by Liz Moore

Review: Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Fantasy

Goodreads

In Gods of Jade and Shadow, Casiopeia one days open a mysterious wooden box belonging to her grandfather and accidentally frees the Mayan god of death, linking her life force to him. He wants to re-conquer his throne, stolen decades ago by his twin brother, and Casiopeia needs to help him if she wants to stay alive, but more than that, the adventure calls to her.

In many ways, this book was a breath of fresh air – the main character is a Mexican girl, the Mayan myths which are so underrated in fantasy, the Persephone-and-Hades feel of the story never really gets old for me… and so on.

Review: The Body Lies by Jo Baker

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Literary Thriller

Goodreads

In The Body Lies, our unnamed narrator takes up a job at a University to teach Creative Writing, she is excited about moving to the countryside and being far away from London, where she suffered a violent assault years earlier and could not feel safe again. But when one of her students disappears from class and starts sending her his work, she realizes he’s writing about her, that he’s been watching her in her own home, all alone with her three-year-old.

The Body Lies is a perfect mixture of Literary Fiction and Thriller, the pacing too slow and too character-focused to be called purely a thriller, and still, it kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time. Sharp, intense and an eerie commentary on the violence against women in real life and as depicted in books, it’s completely incomprehensible to me how this has a 3.5 star rating in Goodreads as of now – this is brilliant!