ferrous's reviews
138 reviews

Heartstopper Volume 3 by Alice Oseman

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

Just extremely sweet. I got into the TV series first, which turns out to be very faithful to the books.

Lovely. Wish I could have grown up with these, honestly.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Eating disorder

Finding My Voice by Aoife Dooley

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted fast-paced

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

5.0

I read this in a single sitting.

It's extremely sweet. Would recommend both books to any young readers (target age 9-11 apparently), but especially autistic ones. Also to anyone who's not really bothered about what age range books are targeted at.

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

dark reflective fast-paced

5.0

Fangs by Sarah Andersen

lighthearted fast-paced

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

5.0

The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

5.0

Amphigorey by Edward Gorey

5.0

A fantastic collection of Edward Gorey's dark, hilarious and sometimes discombobulating illustrated writings.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

5.0

A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

5.0

Seth's epic portrait of mid-twentieth-century India is a tremendously easy read, despite the richness of detail he packs in, and I found that its 1300-odd pages passed by amazingly quickly, leaving me wanting more. The whole story takes place over the course of one eventful year - a striking contrast with Gabriel Garcia Marquez's much shorter 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', which I read immediately before it. Both books include a family tree near the beginning, emphasising how central the idea of family is to their narratives, and helping to make sense of the interweaving lives of their characters. They are also similarly epic in scope, despite the very different timescales they focus on, and seem to be almost as much about their settings as their characters. But where Marquez's generations fly by, each character painted in broad, colourful strokes, in 'A Suitable Boy' we get to know the characters intimately, closely following the events of their interacting lives, and they are overwhelmingly likeable. The whole story is, in the end, about one girl and her quest to find a suitable boy - for all its subplots and digressions, there is a coherence and integrity to the whole thing.

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

5.0

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth

4.0