Review: Queenie, by Candice Carty-Williams

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Contemporary Fiction

Goodreads

When Tom says he needs a break and Queenie needs to move out, she tries to tell herself it’s not as bad as all that, she’ll live for a few months in a shared apartment and then go back to he relationship, even better than before. But as her break becomes messier and messier, Queenie’s mental health deteriorates and she makes increasingly worse choices.

Whew, this book knocked me out of the park and left me a mess. It starts off rather runny, I was snorting on my lunch break, but as Queenie starts to make terrible choices and act detached from her own life, my heart started to break. I think this book hit me hard because I went through a breakdown too, some years ago, and jeopardized a lot of things in the process, including not doing my job and ignoring my friends and family, detaching myself from my life – so as Queenie becomes more unlikable and makes worse choices that a person doing okay never could understand, I couldn’t help but sympathize. We did not go through the same things at all (I’m not a black woman, for starters, and had the support of my family and boyfriend), and my heart aches so much for all the horrors she had to go through.

Review: How We Disappeared, by Jing-Jing Lee

Rating: ★★★★☆

Categories: Historical Fiction, Contemporary Fiction

Goodreads

How We Disappeared tells the story of Wang Di, an old woman from Singapore who’s just lost her husband before she told him her story of the war and listened to his own. Trying to find out the truth is much harder now that the war is long over and so many people are dead or missing. Her own story hurts too much and she tries to not think about it if she can – she’s never told her husband she was a “comfort woman”. On the other side of the town, Kevin finds out his grandmother found his father when he was a baby and never gave him back to the biological father she later found out still lived.

Review: Transcription, by Kate Atkinson

Rating: ★★★★☆

Genres: Historical Fiction, WWII, Mystery

Goodreads / Amazon

In Transcription, Juliet Armstrong is recruited to join MI5. The year is 1940 and the war has just begun – she believes she can make a difference with her work, and finds the reality of her job alternatively boring and terrifyingly exciting. In 1950, Juliet is a different woman – she works at BBC and has a rather dull life. One day, she sees someone from her past. Little by little, all the people she used to know from her obscure work during the war seem to reappear, and something dark she thought she left behind is coming back to haunt her and make her pay.

I loved this book so much. Juliet is such a witty, funny character who constantly gets underestimated. She’s a talented liar and finds herself a quite accomplished spy as well, whether she wants to or not. Reading about her time as a typist and a spy during World War II was so interesting! The pacing of this novel is fast and it reads almost in a light-hearted way. For people who would like a historical fiction without the sobbing (especially rare for a WWII book), this is it.

Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows

Rating: ★★★★★

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance, World War II

Goodreads / Amazon

First of all, I’d like to address the title and the cover of this book. As of the title: it sounds whimsical, but the story isn’t whimsical, although it’s quite witty! And as for the cover: there is romance, but the story is mostly not about the romance.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is one of the most charming books I’ve ever read. I was absolutely enchanted by it already in the first chapters: this tells the story of Juliet Ashton, a writer from London. She has written a lighthearted column during World War II to keep the spirits of her readers up during that horrific time, but now she wishes to leave that behind her and start writing serious stories. When she finds out that one of her books is in the hands of a man who’s part of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Juliet is intrigued by the funny name of the society and also by its creation during the war as an alibi for breaking curfew.

Review: The Nightingale, by Kristin Hannah

Rating: ★★★★★

Recommend: Yes

Genres: Historical Fiction

Add it to your TBR: Goodreads, Skoob

The Nightingale came out in 2015, and since then there has been such buzz about it, I just had to read it. At first I was put off by the WWII theme, as I have recently read quite some of those, but when I saw the story was about two sisters, I was curious and convinced. As I have a sister myself, I always relate and am instantly drawn to books about sisterhood.

Review: All the light we cannot see, by Anthony Doerr

Rating: ★★★★☆

Recommend: Yes

Genres: Historical fiction

Add to your TBR: Goodreads, Skoob

I may have gotten this book mainly because I was seduced by its glowing reviews on Goodreads and Buzzfeed. I normally shy away from books about World War II, for the fact that I am not into tear-jerkers and it is such a heavy topic to read about, but I am glad I got this one.