Reviews

Nettleblack by Nat Reeve

Only show reviews with written explanations

obviouslyjudith's review

4.0

From now on I’m going to start every journal entry with ‘my continuing catastrophe’. What a mood

I really wanted to like this book but I just did not get on with the writing style. It felt very laborious for me to read. It feels very Dickensian, so if you like that style, you’ll love it, but it’s not for me

mayas's review

Go to review page

adventurous funny tense

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I went into this book thinking it was a mystery. Which made points of this book confusing or difficult to get through. I’d personally say it’s more a coming of age tale (with a little bit of mystery. And romance of course). I’m finding this difficult to rate, so I probably won’t. A good portion of the book I didn’t want to put down, but other parts took some effort to read. Overall, this was a sweet book, the characters were really interesting, the characters and writing were funny, and it was so nice to read about (fictional) LGBTQ+ people in a historical setting. 😊

Content Warnings

writtenontheflyleaves's review

Go to review page

adventurous challenging lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

Nettleblack by Nat Reeve 🍒
🌟🌟✨ (I know, I hate me too)

🍇 The plot: Henry Nettleblack has to escape. If she doesn't, her overbearing sister will marry her off, and her other, wayward sister can't be bothered to help. But Henry doesn't get far: accosted by thieves and adopted by a group of lady detectives calling themselves the Dallyangle Division, Henry ends up hiding in plain sight. Can she escape detection as a detective, armed only with her quill, a stutter, and the family ferret?

I really wanted to adore this book. I expected to - it's queer historical fiction, something I'm discovering I really enjoy, with romance and a rollicking mystery. And, to be fair, there were things in here I absolutely loved. A crime fighting division founded by a Black family as an alternative to the police? A protagonist realising their queerness amid a plethora of other queer characters?? Septimus's whole vibe???

Unfortunately, I have rarely struggled with a book as hard as I did with Nettleblack - especially the first 80 pages. The writing style is florid from the get-go. Every movement is described within an inch of its life, heaving the plot along at a glacial pace at the beginning, and still somehow leaving out key information.

For example, over and over you hear references to Septimus's past humiliation, without enough info to piece together even an intriguing partial picture of the truth. I get that the intention of this is to create suspense, but after a while these gaps just felt repetitive, like the author was constantly saying "I know something you don't know!" Without understanding the significance of what was happening, it just didn't seem like the story was building in a satisfying way, and lots of reveals were stuffed into a conclusion I found chaotic and confusing.

I love the premise of this and I think there were really brilliant characters here. Unfortunately for me they were buried under too much other stuff that didn't need to be there, and could have breathed more with some good editing. Maybe it's just my prose preferences, but this one was not it for me.

🍎 Read it if you liked Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M Danforth and don't mind a (very) wordy writing style. Also if you can read Welsh!! And if you do pick it up, try to read it in long sittings, at least at first.

🚫 Avoid it if over-description is a deal-breaker for you or if you want a tighter, pacier mystery.

rowanrelph's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

chayote's review

Go to review page

adventurous funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

monasterymonochrome's review

Go to review page

4.0

This was pretty fun. Historical fiction is always kind of hit or miss with me, but once I settled into the setting and the dense writing style, I got very invested in the story. Of course, it also doesn't hurt that this was probably one of the queerest works of historical fiction I've ever read, and I appreciated that it focused mostly on the joys of queer romance and identity rather than being entirely about the torture of keeping one's "clandestine loves" and "forbidden vices" in the shadows, and it was able to achieve this without coming across as anachronistic or unrealistic. This book has a really strong and unique cast of characters, and I adored so many of them - Septimus, Lorrie, Nick, Pip, Rosamund. They all had their own little dramas going on throughout which prevented them from fading into the background, and most of these side stories very cleverly ended up weaving into the main plot, which made for some fun twists and unexpected connections.

I will say that this took about 100 pages to fully grab me, and I think that was mostly because I struggled with Henry as the primary narrator at first. I thought in the beginning her more irritating quirks (using fruits as curse words, an obsession with the word "quite," never being able to finish a complete sentence) were way too overdone. Like, I'm hopelessly socially awkward and perpetually anxious, too, but even I was starting to get fed up with how totally inept she seemed to be. But after she got to the Division, between her slowly evolving sense of self and the presence of additional characters to balance her out, she started growing on me. By the end, I liked her a lot more and was definitely rooting for her happy ending. The book finished in an open-ended enough way that I could easily envision an entire series documenting the Division's various adventures unfolding, and I definitely wouldn't mind spending more time in this world with these characters. That being said, it's also satisfying enough to work perfectly well as a standalone.