abbie_'s reviews
1752 reviews

A Beautiful Lack of Consequence by Monika Radojevic

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of this short story collection! I don’t think I have a single bad thing to say about it, which for some reason always makes it 10 x more difficult for me to write a review. I devoured each and every one of these stories, which range from contemporary topics to wild speculative/magical realism vibes. Radojevic, a Brazilian-Montenegrin author, pulls off every genre like a pro, and most of these stories centre women’s issues.

There’s barely a contemporary issue left unturned with these pages - childcare for working mothers, safety at night, capitalism, femicide, internet harassment, ageing - but nothing feels shoe-horned in and there’s often a playful, mischievous energy about them (talking clitorises anyone?). Radojevic captures the myriad of experiences women live through each day unnervingly well, some of these stories are seriously unsettling.

Some of my favourites were Woman on the Internet, where a mother exacts revenge on the vile men who doxxed her daughter, How To Be Good and Love Yourself, which lays out in excruciating detail how much of women’s lives is spent concerned about our bodies, Hospitality, a genuinely unpleasant reading experience that was so necessary about workplace safety. I could honestly list about a dozen more (there are 30!), just a brilliant collection that I’d highly recommend!

My Favourite by Sarah Jollien-Fardel

challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

2.0

I was liking this book a lot (or I suppose, it was making me feel a lot of emotions, it’s not an enjoyable book, very graphic depictions of childhood abuse), but then towards the end

it sort of pivots towards positing the main character’s sexuality as a result of her childhood abuse?? The idea of people ‘choosing’ to be gay because of abuse is a harmful one, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Colony by Annika Norlin

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I really enjoyed this book, translated from the Swedish and apparently with a TV adaptation on the way - which I think would be very powerful! It centres a group of people struggling to fit into fast-paced modern life, deciding to fend for themselves in a communal house in the countryside. Emelie is suffering burnout, and to recharge heads to the countryside where she stumbles across the colony, unofficially lead by the charismatic Sara.

The feelings Norlin evokes with her writing verge are truly discomfiting. She perfectly and agonisingly captures the stress and never-ending whirlwind of every day life in a world lived mostly online. I loved the way each character’s background was explored at their own pace, little vignettes that really make you feel like you know them, understand them - a bit scary how much I empathised with some of them and could genuinely see why they’d want to live in a commune verging on a cult 👀

Norlin tackles difficult topics with a deft hand - nothing is sugarcoated, but the horror of some the characters’ lives doesn’t feel gratuitous. Considering it’s 400 pages and dealing with heavy subjects, I felt like I flew through this. It’s addictive and readable, very good storytelling and character building.

The South by Tash Aw

emotional reflective slow-paced

3.0

My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC!

I was drawn to this one as it was a queer coming of age set in Malaysia, centring a family going through some serious shifts in their lives. My main gripe with it is that I genuinely felt like my edition was missing 100 pages off the start. We’re thrown in with these characters without a life raft, things are mentioned like we’re supposed to know it, characters do things with seemingly no reasoning, relationships are already formed and built within a few pages. It just felt lacking in development from the get go. By the end it was slightly better, but yeah, a bit weird!

The writing was lovely, Tash Aw paints a countryside scene vividly. I also appreciated the commentary about farmers losing their livelihoods because of demand from rich folks wanting tourist traps in the country.

Liked it, but not a love for me. 

Sorted: Growing Up, Coming Out, and Finding My Place by Jackson Bird

emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

3.5

Sometimes I like to play little games like reading my books in the order I’ve saved them, just to get to titles I’ve saved ages ago but then forget about for one reason or another. So I picked up Jackson Bird’s memoir Sorted via audio and it was quite lovely! Jackson is super charming and reads this book himself, and you feel like pals by the end - probably why he’s had so much success on Youtube (though I personally had never heard of him, I just enjoy any and all memoirs by trans folk). He keeps it fairly impersonal in terms of relationships, again a trait developed from maintaining his privacy on Youtube, and just addresses the facts of his dysphoria growing up, realising he might be trans, and seeking next steps to feel at home in his body. Personally I like a little more juice in my memoirs, but I’m just nosey.

Jackson’s big break on Youtube came from Harry Potter related content, so there is a lot of HP talk but more so about the community that developed around it. This book was published in 2019, so I think slightly before JK became a truly heinous transphobic villain. No one’s trying to pretend HP doesn’t exist, but just in case that does make you uncomfortable and you prefer to be aware!

Overall, just love to see someone come into themselves and be able to truly experience life as they were meant to be. Stylistically very chatty and amiable, nothing that blew me away, but just v lovely. 

The Lamb by Lucy Rose

dark medium-paced

3.5

I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. I don’t read a lot of books featuring cannibalism, but when I do it’s usually revealed later as a big twist. The Lamb just comes right out with the cannibalism on the first page, and we spend the rest of the book with Margot and her mam’s, ahem, unusual tastes. But considering it deals with two cannibals luring ‘strays’ into their homestead to cook and eat them, there’s not much tension. It’s a slow build, dwelling on the slimy, sticky bits of life. I liked that it was a horror novel more focused on relationships than gore (though there’s plenty of that too), and it was achingly sad in parts. But I also wanted a bit more feeling from it. 

I will say that the ending knocked it out of the park. I think a lot of authors shy away from taking big risks with their endings, but Lucy Rose has no such issues. 

The Tokyo Suite by Giovana Madalosso

emotional reflective tense medium-paced

3.25

thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for my free digital ARC of The Tokyo Suite. I liked but didn’t love this one. I feel like it went well with one of my other March reads - The Abandoners, which was about mothers who leave their children. Fernanda is a big shot TV exec who regularly leaves her daughter in the care of her husband for her career, a refreshing take. While working and dealing with a strained marriage, she embarks on an affair which consumes her to the point that she doesn’t even notice her daughter’s disappearance.

The other POV is from Maju, the nanny who has kidnapped Cora, Fernanda’s daughter. Her chapters were my favourite, as they were imbued with a strange sense of calm on the surface but sheer panic underneath. The situations she put herself and Cora into had me on edge.

I did notice quite a few grammatical errors and spelling mistakes which hopefully get caught before the final version.

One of those ones where I enjoyed it while reading but when I finished I wasn’t left with a huge impact. 

A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher

mysterious slow-paced

2.5

I kind of enjoyed this book but it was also just a whole lot of people sitting around chit chatting about WHAT to do, and taking their sweet time actually doing it. Agree with other reviewers that the ending is so rushed. Hester is the saving grace of the book, an ageing spinster with knees that give her endless amounts of grief and a flame for an old lover that refuses to go out. She’s probably meant to be written that way, but Cordelia is such a wet wipe that it made her chapters a bit annoying to read. The servants were well written though, funny and biting, exercising as much autonomy as one can in servitude.

Honestly just felt a bit ‘and what?’ by the end.

Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda

dark mysterious medium-paced

4.0

Read this one with my short story buddy reader Nadia, and we both really enjoyed it and found it to be a solid collection! 

I wanted a little more from some stories, such as The Dusk Market, Bird Woman and the Masquerades. But others were perfect little nuggets of short story excellence. The Hollow, where a house takes justice for its inhabitants into its own hands (walls?); Girlie, where a house girl gets more than she bargained for at the market; Contributions, where a money-lending circle has to get serious when one of its members refuses to pay up.

The writing was always engaging, the concept so creative and mysterious, just great vibes which is what I always want from a short story collection! 

Deviants by Santanu Bhattacharya

emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

3.75

I mostly really enjoyed this book, following the lives of three gay men in India from the 1970s up to now, maybe a little bit further in the future. Through the three men, we see the shifting attitudes towards queer men in India, from laws imposed by colonial rulers and leftover and ingrained, through to the initial repeal of Section 377, its reinstatement, renewed repeal, and today, when Vivaan is able to live *somewhat* freely and out, though there’s still plenty of stigma outside of his family. 

I found Vivaan’s sections jarring in tone. He’s 17 and living in current times, maybe a bit ahead, but his voice notes are read like they’re written by someone who’s maybe never heard a 17 year old talk before. This was especially annoying because content wise, I found Vivaan’s chapters to be the most compelling. So it was a struggle between style and content there. 

I preferred the storytelling style of Mambro’s sections (Vivaan’s uncle) and Sukumar’s, although some of his (Vivaan’s great uncle, we love a queer family), weren’t as compelling as Mambro’s (not his real name, Vivaan’s nickname for him). We’re with Mambro when the law deeming homosexuality illegal is repealed for the first time, when gay men feel safe enough to put their faces to their hook-up app profiles for the first time, when you can get an STD test without fear of being arrested. It’s beautifully written, and then the later section when the law is put back into place 4 years later is just as heart achingly written.

Overall it’s a solid book, moving, but just some stylistic choices that didn’t work for me.