The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

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I really should make more of an effort to read Lyndsay Faye’s novels because I usually end up enjoying them. The first novel of hers that I read was The Gods of Gotham, which is set in mid-19th century New York and is about a police officer who investigates a serial killer. It is a fascinating story about the Five Points district, but I will admit I was not a fan of the ending. I have also read Jane Steele, which reimagines Jane Eyre as a serial killer. Sounds like something that would make Charlotte Brontë roll over in her grave, but I thought it was really good. Now I have read The Paragon Hotel, which is set in one of my favourite time periods, the 1920s Prohibition Era, and is about the Italian mafia in New York and Black people living in Portland, Oregon as the Ku Klux Klan begins to make its presence known.

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Last Winter by Carrie Mac

Last Winter by Carrie Mac

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Apparently, I completely misconstrued what Last Winter is about. I thought it was about an avalanche that engulfs a group of schoolkids, killing all of them but two, with one of the survivors being an eight-year-old girl whose father was the guide. Her father is still missing after the bodies of her schoolmates are recovered, so she decides to go off on her own in the wilderness to find him. I imagined a suspenseful adventure story with a precocious protagonist with mad survival skills. Instead, Last Winter is an uncomfortable story about the demise of a relationship between a mentally ill woman and a man who cannot deal with his wife’s mental health issues anymore. I would not have read this novel if I had known what I was actually getting myself into.

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Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

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I came across Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano in Indigo’s list of the Top 100 Books of the Year (it is number one on the list). Hello Beautiful is a homage to Little Women (ugh, I just love Little Women), so of course I had to read it. Do I think Hello Beautiful is the number one book of 2023? As affecting a story that it is about familial relationships, I am not impressed enough by Hello Beautiful to think it deserves top honour.

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Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue

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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.

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Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter

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I know I have said that I am not into true crime podcasts or docuseries about serial killers, but novels written in either format do not count. As a voracious reader, I like to switch things up and read different types of novels, such as epistolary novels, novels written as diary entries or recordings, or mixed media novels such as Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter. Murder in the Family is a mystery novel that invites the reader to solve a (fictional) murder. It is a fun read, but unfortunately, I found it way too easy to figure out who was responsible for the murder at the heart of the story.

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Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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Silver Nitrate is the newest book from Silvia Moreno-Garcia. This is my favourite of her more recent works (Mexican Gothic, Velvet Was the Night and The Daughter of Doctor Moreau). Silver Nitrate pays homage to the golden age of cinema, back when movies were filmed on highly volatile silver nitrate, but it also tackles a part of Nazism that does not get as much attention: the occult.

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The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland

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The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart was recommended to me by my husband’s auntie, and she gave me a copy to read. She raved about how the novel’s chapter headings each describe an Australian plant, and how the novel includes illustrations of each plant, but she did not say anything about the plot. I also noticed that the novel has recently been adapted into a TV miniseries on Prime starring Sigourney Weaver. If a novel has been adapted into a movie or TV series, it has to be good, right? Unfortunately, I do not care much for The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart.

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