There are two reasons why I bought Japanese Gothic: 1. The word “Gothic” in the title. 2. It is a dual timeline story supposedly involving a ghost. Japanese Gothic is an unexpected read. I think I like it, but it’s hard to tell with the melancholy I feel every time I think about it.
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My husband and I spent two weeks in the UK recently, and we spent a lot of time on planes and trains, so I had a lot of time for reading.
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Heather Marshall’s Liberty Street is one of those dual timeline historical fiction novels that I love. It also taught me something about my own country’s dark history in its treatment of women. Not really a win, but it is still interesting.
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Tall Oaks is Chris Whitaker’s debut novel. It is interesting to observe his progression as a writer from this novel to We Begin at the End and All the Colors of the Dark, but I don’t find Tall Oaks to be a particularly good novel.
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Iain Reid is the author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which I have not read, but I did watch the movie adaptation by Charlie Kaufman, which was surreal and confusing, even if I was able to parse together what was going on by the end. I let the movie put me off from reading the book, and I almost did not read Foe either, but I am glad I did because I got a kick out of the ending (Foe has also been made into a movie, as you can see by Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal being on the cover of the book, but I haven’t watched it and I am glad I read the book first).
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Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Beautiful Ones was originally published in 2017 and is the second to last of her novels that I need to read before I am all caught up on her bibliography. Unfortunately, The Beautiful Ones fell short of my expectations.
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Kate Quinn has appeared many times on my blog for her mid-twentieth century historical fiction, but The Astral Library is her first fantasy novel. The Astral Library poses the question, “Have you ever wished you could live inside a book?” What kind of a bibliophile would I be if I haven’t ever imagined living inside one of my favourite stories? I found the first couple of chapters of The Astral Library very difficult to get through, but once I did, this novel ended up being a fun read.
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In my review for Mona Awad’s Bunny, I had said that I thought the Bunnies (the clique of rich girls that the main character does not like but wants to be part of) are the more interesting characters. I take that back. I was completely wrong. We Love You, Bunny is a slog to read.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Bunny in case you plan on reading it.
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I have been meaning to read Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End since I read All the Colors of the Dark last year. Better late than never. I’ve had a hankering for another slow burn, character driven mystery ever since reading Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, and this novel was exactly what I needed.
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katherena vermette’s most recent novel, real ones, is about a subject that I find intriguing, people who falsely identify as Indigenous (or who falsely identify as any race really). This novel came out about a year after it was revealed that American musician Buffy Sainte-Marie’s fabricated claims of Indigenous ancestry. Where do white people get the audacity to pass themselves off as another race that has been marginalized by white people? (It’s a rhetorical question). As interesting as I found real ones to be, though, I must admit that I do not love how vermette wrote this story.
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