baechael's reviews
813 reviews

4.0

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

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

4.0

This was a great, atmospheric Moroccan thriller! The characters were interesting to read about, I really felt like I was on the coast of Morocco, and the ending nailed it at being the right mix of shocking and understandable.

6:40 to Montreal by Eva Jurczyk

Go to review page

slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

Thank you to the publisher for the digital galley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was neither thrilling, suspenseful, or mysterious.

We meet Agatha, an author struggling to write her second novel, whose husband bought her tickets on the train from Toronto to Montreal, and who has one of the more normal names in this book. The train takes off, and other than an incompetent trainee, other passengers who have the weirdest names ever that will definitely take you out of the reading experience, and an annoying main character, everything seems like it’s going well.

Of course, this couldn’t be a locked-room mystery on a train without a locked room, so the train gets stuck in a snow storm and everything goes to shit.

Now, I want to say that this could have been a very fun mystery! But the more I think about it, the less I’m convinced that there was actually a mystery at all. There is very little suspense (despite absolutely bonkers shit happening in the car), nobody actually tries to solve anything, and it feels like there are no stakes. It’s all actually quite boring. The ending makes no sense. There’s a cancer plot line thrown in for some reason I can’t figure out. Ugh.

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

And I twisted myself about like the twisted ones.

A good horror story will make you scared, a great horror story will make you laugh and be scared at the same time, and an excellent horror story will do all of that but still leave you uneasy at the very end. Unfortunately, it is the ending that made this a great and not an excellent book.

After a long time of not reading T. Kingfisher because I knew I was going to like her writing (how does that even make sense? What is wrong with me?), I’ve finally read some of her work and I think I can officially say I’m a fan. Her storytelling is fantastic and she writes retellings of some of the most obscure stories! I’ll have to look into THE WHITE PEOPLE, which is the story that inspired this book.

Mouse (a person) and Bongo (a dog) were the perfect pair for this book. They provided the necessary comedic relief, and a situation that made sense for why someone would be stupid enough to stay in a horror story scenario. Sometimes you really would do anything to save your dog.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

Go to review page

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

GIMME MORE SCIENCE FANTASY!!!

The ending could have been stronger, which is why I didn’t give this 5 stars, but the process of getting to the end was so much fun! The author clearly thought out how something like a mermaid could exist and be terrestrial but not human, and I was so fun to learn the “truth” as it was revealed.

If there had been more deep sea diving/exploring im not sure if I could have kept reading because the deep sea scares the tits off of me and it was kind of getting to me. It also made me think of that submarine that exploded 😬. In any case, I think a couple lessons have been learned here, the biggest one being DONT MESS WITH THE SEA.

Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield

Go to review page

reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I’m not sure how a book that’s about grief, loss, body horror, and the deep ocean (which is literally one of my biggest fears) somehow manages to make me feel a whole lot of nothing, but here we are.

On a sentence level, the storytelling is nice. I liked the water metaphors that are strewn throughout. It makes sense with what the story is. I just wish that it had been more clear. To use a water based metaphor, reading this book is like trying to peer through ice. Everything is foggy and distorted and you find yourself a bit confused about what exactly you’re looking at. I don’t think that this story was enough of anything. It didn’t make me feel a particular way towards the characters, I wasn’t especially intrigued by whatever may be in the deep (was it a giant fish? A mer-something? A squid thing? An eldritch god? Literally describe it more than just a god damn eye please for the love of god), the center could have been interesting but Miri lacked the agency to literally do anything other than read Reddit, and the transformation was also weird and vague.

This could have been very interesting, but instead I got only one wife under the sea doing nothing and another wife on land doing shockingly even less.

The Employees by Olga Ravn

Go to review page

mysterious reflective tense medium-paced