Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I must like stories about astronauts and space travel more than I thought, because I ended up enjoying Atmosphere considering my lackluster feelings towards Taylor Jenkins Reid.
…Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab
V. E. Schwab’s Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil seems to be marketed to readers of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue rather than readers of her YA novels. I am not a fan of Schwab’s YA novels, and I loved The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, so my expectation was that Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil would be a slam dunk for me, but as interesting as I found the novel’s setting, the story ended up falling flat.
…The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden
The Safekeep is Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and recently won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and I can understand why. It is an exquisite study in character, women’s desire and love.
…The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor
Loghan Paylor is a queer and trans Canadian author who has written a pleasant albeit predictable story about queer love set during the World War II era. The Cure for Drowning is a good novel and worth reading, but I can’t say that this novel really excites me.
…Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue
For those of you who have never heard of Anne Lister, she was a woman who lived in the early 19th century and who is known today as a very famous lesbian. She kept diaries written in code, and when the diaries were decrypted after her death, they revealed graphic details of her many lesbian relationships. I first learned of Anne Lister when I watched the BBC series Gentleman Jack, which focused on her relationship with Ann Walker, whom she “married” and was her partner until her death in 1840. Gentleman Jack is a fantastic series, and Anne Lister is a fascinating historical figure in how she openly lived an unconventional life for a woman of her time. She is what drew me to read Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, Learned by Heart, which is a fictional account of one of Anne Lister’s earliest relationships as a teenager with a girl she went to school with named Eliza Raine.
…To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
I love Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, so I was pretty excited when I first heard about her follow up novel, To Paradise, until I started reading the reviews on Goodreads, which criticize the novel’s lack of cohesion and even suggest that it is boring. This put me off reading it until the paperback version came out. To Paradise consists of three very loosely connected stories about love, loss and finding one’s own version of paradise, and a Washington Square townhouse. I found the first two stories to be both interesting and boring at the same time, but the third and final story is what makes To Paradise worth reading.
…Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
When I first heard about Young Mungo, I thought it was going to be Shuggie Bain Version 2.0. Both novels are set in working-class neighbourhoods in Scotland in the late 20th century and both novels are about a queer boy with an alcoholic mother. However, while Shuggie Bain is by no means full of sunshine and rainbows, Young Mungo is a much darker, violent novel.
…She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
I decided to give She is a Haunting a try because it sounded like it might be spooky, and because it has been compared to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which is a novel that I liked (except for the bizarre turn it takes towards the end). But I saw some reviews that also linked it to Wilder Girls by Rory Power, and I did not like Wilder Girls. So, I went against my instinct and read She is a Haunting, and of course I ended up let down.
…Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater
Greywaren is the third and final volume of The Dreamer Trilogy. I love Maggie Stiefvater’s novels, I enjoyed the first two books of The Dreamer Trilogy, but unfortunately, I found Greywaren to be an underwhelming conclusion. SPOILER ALERT: do not read further if you plan on reading The Dreamer Trilogy. Even though Greywaren is the weakest link, I still think the trilogy as a whole is worth reading if you enjoy YA novels.
…The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
My feelings towards The Confessions of Frannie Langton are ambivalent. I do not hate it, but I do not love it either. It was just… okay. If you like historical fiction, you may enjoy The Confessions of Frannie Langton, but I do not think you are missing out if you never read it. The novel is about a Black woman (a former slave) accused of murder, but the slavery aspect of the novel becomes a subplot to the primary narrative of a forbidden relationship between a mistress and her maid. I found The Confessions of Frannie Langton to be a bit boring in the middle, which is too bad because I was interested in reading about a former slave’s life in England during a time when slavery was recently abolished, and slaves were supposed to be considered free people in England.
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