ARCs Update: Reviews (Daisy Darker, The Sentence)+ Received

Hello readers!

Some interesting titles this week, as I try to read a few ARCs to compensate for the stuff I just received, and now I’m back to 80% rating! Success.

Reviews

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Pub Date 18 Aug 2022

Okay so I reviewed Nine Lives by Peter Swanson not that long ago, and proceeded to swear off retellings, especially of And Then There Were None (I’ll refer to it as ATTWN). Nothing so far has been able to evoke quite the same atmosphere of ATTWN, and I tend to appreciate better those which are only very loosely inspired by it. But then I saw Alice Feeney had a book out this year and it was a rather close retelling of ATTWN and I immediately requested it – all lessons from the last ARC promptly forgotten.

Daisy Darker tells the story of a family who gathers to celebrate grandma’s 80th birthday on Halloween, in a private island where they’ll be cut off from the rest of the world for several hours. At midnight, grandma is found dead. One hour later, another member of the family dies…

I had such fun reading Rock, Paper, Scissors that I had faith Alice Feeney would at least tell a very entertaining and twisty story. Boy, did she! This kept me turning pages like there was no tomorrow. It’s not a perfect book by any means, there were some pacing issues because of all the flashbacks especially on the first half of the book, but I was so intrigued to find out everyone’s secrets that I just flew threw this. Plus the family’s interactions were so awkward and full of juicy drama. And! Lots of twists, as it’s truly Alice Feeney’s specialty. If you love a good Agatha Christie vibe – including rich-eccentric-person-leaves-a-controversial-will (one of my favorite tropes) – plus you enjoy Gothic, creepy stories, definitely pick this one up!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Sapphic Books Recommendations Part 4

Hello readers!

it’s been a while since my last list, and once I started drafting this part 4 I realized that I’ve read way too many Sapphic stories and immediately started drafting a part 5. Which should come soon, I think!

You can see the other parts of this here:

Sapphic Books Recommendations Part 1
Sapphic Books Recommendations Part 2
Sapphic Books Recommendations Part 3

If You Liked This Book, Try This 2022 Release

Hello readers!

I love writing this kind of post, recommending books based on a particular book’s vibes, plot line or so – and I think most of us are often looking for a book that will match what we enjoyed in past favorites. So I really like posting these recommendations – and here are my recs for 2022 releases based on recent releases (of the past 5 years or so) I’ve really enjoyed.

A lot of the fun of reading Lock Every Door by Riley Sager for me was the atmosphere: a building with fancy, enormous, grand apartments where the super rich live, full of secret passages and old relics of the (glamorous) past of the building and the families that have lived there for so long. There is also something extremely satisfying about reading about rich people being unhappy and murderous. The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley (came out on February 22nd 2022) also takes place in a beautiful, impossibly expensive building and gives us a glimpse on that

ARCs Update: Reviews (Vladimir, Our Wives Under the Sea)+ Received

Hello readers!

Some interesting titles this week, as I try to read a few ARCs to compensate for the stuff I just received, and now I’m back to 80% rating! Success.

Reviews

Vladimir by Julia May Jonas

Pub Date 1 Feb 2022

This is a dark, provocative debut, and I LOVED it. Vladimir is the story of a woman in her 50s whose husband is being investigated for his relationship with students in the past, and she becomes obsessed with a new professor in her University (the eponymous Vladimir). This novel has such an incredible, addictive voice and it’s just such fun to read. I could hardly believe this is a debut, the writing was just so electrifying and bold.

One of my my favorite things was how the main character is this complex, unlikable, self-absorbed woman and how her relationship with Vladimir is about her objectifying him and projecting her own desires on him, which is an interesting shift from so many novels where it’s the male protagonist obsessing over a younger, beautiful woman. She is stuck in her thoughts and learned behaviors when it comes to sex, politics and power, from a time when women were trying to become sexually liberated, and this often comes in conflict with the views on sexuality and power dynamics from younger generations (like her daughter and her students). It’s just such a perceptive look into generational differences and gave this novel a depth I was not quite expecting. Vladimir really got me thinking and adjusting my perspective and getting into the headspace of the main character – which is always the sign to me of a brilliant novel. There was no way I was going to give this less than 5 stars. It was just such an enthralling read that had me talking about it nonstop for days. I just recently got a physical copy of it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 5 out of 5.