Rabbits Review

Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.

It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air–4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th–4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?

Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past–and the body count is rising.

And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K–a Rabbit’s obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.

Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake. If I didn’t have such an affinity with wolves, I would absolutely be wanting my spirit animal to be a rabbit right now, and not just any rabbit oh no, no cuddly bugs bunny for me

I want a badass rabbit that wants me to follow it down a rabbit hole into some crazed wonderland that I may never return from.

So why the tangent on rabbits and not talking about the novel? Well buckle up.

This is a dark nerd gamers paradise think DBD meets D and D with masterful twists and turns that makes you feel more than any computer game ever did or could – yeah it is that good. If you love your games on the obsessive, intellectualy and highly playable side then you will love this book.

Imagine playing a game where the it is the world but more than that it takes over everything you have and becomes so much more than just a game.

I refuse to spoil it for people but OMG what a rollercoaster ride and I never wanted to get off, I was adoringly satisfied from opening page to finishing page and I just wanted it to keep going. 5 stars really isn’t enough.

The View Was Exhausting Review

Faking a love story is a whole lot easier than being in love . . .

The world can see that international A-list actress Whitman (“Win”) Tagore and jet-setting playboy Leo Milanowski are made for each other. Their kisses start Twitter trends and their fights break the internet. From red carpet appearances to Met Gala mishaps, their on-again, off-again romance has titillated the public and the press for almost a decade. But it’s all a lie.

As a woman of colour, Win knows the Hollywood deck is stacked against her, so she’s perfected the art of controlling her public persona. Whenever she nears scandal, she calls in Leo, with his endearingly reckless attitude, for a staged date. Each public display of affection shifts the headlines back in Win’s favour, and Leo uses the good press to draw attention away from his dysfunctional family.

Pretending to be in a passionate romance is one thing, but Win knows that a real relationship would lead to nothing but trouble. So instead, they settle for friendship, with a side of sky-rocketing chemistry. Except this time, on the French Riviera, something is off. A shocking secret in Leo’s past sets Win’s personal and professional lives on a catastrophic collision course. Behind the scenes of their yacht-trips and PDA, the world’s favourite couple is at each other’s throats. Now they must finally confront the many truths and lies of their relationship, and Win is forced to consider what is more important: a rising career, or a risky shot at real love?

If you’re looking for a bit of escapism, this could be the book for you. It’s a bright and sassy novel about celebrity and social networking and it will certainly transport you from your day-to-day life, that is, unless you happen to be a rich and famous film star, or one of those celebs who’s just famous for simply being rich and famous – think Paris Hilton.

You’ll have fun trying to work out who Win Whitman Tagore and Leo Milanowski are based on. I was certainly reminded of a few celebrity stories.

Win is a young British Asian film star who has to deal with the casual racism and prejudice that comes her way on a daily basis from people in the film industry in which she works. Her mum is being treated for cancer, her father died before she became famous, and she relies on her assistant and her publicist for support, as well as her best friend Shift, who’s a musician who’s written a top 40 hit.

Leo is a rich and famous young man who has a vast trust fund to fall back on, and who is basically looking for an easy path through life. He gets drawn into a pretend relationship with Win which is purely for the benefit of the media, so that Win can maintain a screen presence that will make people want to see her films and make her studios rich.

So, Win and Leo embark on a seven year long carefully choreographed “relationship” that will keep everyone wanting to see her in films. And it works. She’s nominated for an Oscar.

I suppose you might have guessed that surely the twist will be that one of the two falls genuinely in love with the other. It doesn’t happen the way you expect. Win and Leo spend a lot of time fighting and hating each other. If you want to know if they finally get together, you’ll have to read the book!

There’s a lot of name dropping in here of sites like TMZ, Buzzfeed, the Daily Mail, and so on. It’s right up to date with contemporary references, so it feels very modern and spicy. There are some sex scenes.

There are also some literary references including Jane Austen, Infinite Jest and Middlemarch.

The racism strand of the story is what I found most engaging. Win’s struggles to be seen as an actor who can be successful as well as British Asian feels very accurate, and very timely. I found it so frustrating that Win had to put up with seemingly innocent remarks – for example the use of the adjective “exotic” to describe her. She doesn’t tell Leo about this, because she’s trying to find her own way through, and in spite of the fact she is a bit spoilt and selfish, she’s also a strong character who I wanted to succeed. Leo’s character felt less rounded to me, but I liked the characters of his mums, and of Win’s mum too. They felt real.

I completely loved this. So much tension, angst, humour, and atmosphere, and stellar writing. So, all in all, this struck me as a great read for when you’ve had a busy day and you want to escape to the bright lights of Saint Tropez and Hollywood.

The Hollow Gods Review

Black Hollow is a town with a dark secret.

For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.

When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.

Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?

And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested.

A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?

This debut novel is filled to the brim with folklore and analysis of the characters is masterfully subtle yet effective in that the reader believes they are reading a story about a crazed and demonic woman that is terrorizing a town but in actuality it is an examination of anxiety, grief, loss, identity crisis and everything else you go through in fantasy realms.

The writing is beautiful and the author develops a beautiful visual scene in an extraordinary way. She has developed scenes that are so real it is almost overwhelming and can almost play with your emotions and mind.

The narrative is the point of view of three different characters and each one had a different tone/voice which really gave the impression of different characters talking and was an aspect that I love but is often rare in fantasy books.

As well as the characterisation and the narrative I also like the romance aspect. It was only a small aspect of the novel but an important part because it allowed the reader a moment of desire and a break from the darkness.

Overall, I loved the book and would give it a solid 4 stars due to the pace at the beginning being a bit slow for me.

The Five Wounds Review

It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to.

The Five Wounds – which refer to the five wounds of Christ – takes place during Holy Week in New Mexico, where a religious brotherhood called the Hermanos Penitentes recreate the crucifixion. Amadeo Padilla is a most unlikely Jesus, who has experienced the five wounds of the soul, including rejection, betrayal, and humiliation. His young and immensely pregnant teenage daughter, Angel, whom he deserted as a child, arrives at his door as he prepares feverishly for the role.

The story is beautifully powerful and the author has really filled out her story with wonderful narrative and introduced us to characters so raw and real that they stayed with me long after I finished the book.

The theme is love both as a wonderful thing and an intense challenge and this is evident in the presentation on Angel’s baby who is both a happy baby who brings joy but also presents with a fair share of challenges in more ways than one.  

I adored this book, I adored the writing, I adored the characters and their gritty authenticity tried to slow down but I just could not stop reading. 5 stars

The Ophelia Girls Review

In the summer of 1973, Ruth and her four friends were obsessed with pre-Raphaelite paintings—and a little bit obsessed with each other. Drawn to the cold depths of the river by Ruth’s house, the girls pretend to be the drowning Ophelia, with increasingly elaborate tableaus. But by the end of that fateful summer, real tragedy finds them along the banks.

Twenty-four years later, Ruth returns to the suffocating, once grand house she grew up in, the mother of young twins and seventeen-year-old Maeve. Joining the family in the country is Stuart, Ruth’s childhood friend, who is quietly insinuating himself into their lives and gives Maeve the attention she longs for. She is recently in remission, unsure of her place in the world now that she is cancer-free. Her parents just want her to be an ordinary teenage girl. But what teenage girl is ordinary?

Alternating between the two fateful summers, The Ophelia Girls is a suspense-filled exploration of mothers and daughters, illicit desire, and the perils and power of being a young woman.

The novel is both atmospheric and moody and the beautiful imagery and dreamy prose left me blown away. Jane Healey’s writing absorbs you in both timelines, you can almost feel the heat of the sun and smell the flowers being wilted by it.

I loved the medium pace of the book, it flowed really nicely and kept me engrossed. There were no big twists, you know where the story is heading from the beginning but that didn’t take anything away from the story. The character interactions were so well written, the intensity between them was palpable and I would have liked there to have been a little more focus on the character of Camille and found out more of her back story.

This is an incredible story with so many layers which slowly unfold keeping the full details of Ruth’s secrets safe from being revealed right up until the end. It is also rather unsettling as it raises lots of questions over the relationship between Maeve and Stuart. This book is a rollercoaster of emotions as it battles, embraces and tests boundaries of an array of subject matter and once I was committed, it was difficult to put down. I wish I could give it more than 5 stars.

Going Greek Review

 After a work party gone disastrously wrong, Samantha suddenly finds herself jobless and jilted. So when her sister invites Sam to stay at her little whitewashed farmhouse on a Greek island, Sam leaps at the chance to escape. Before long, she’s trundling up the cobbled driveway, almost colliding with sexy neighbour Spyros.

It isn’t all sunshine and smiles though. For every afternoon spent lounging by the pool, cocktail in hand, there is a morning spent adjusting to life with boisterous six-year-old nieces. When Spyros invites Sam to explore the island with him, she’s tempted, but with his carefree, live-for-the-moment attitude, he couldn’t be more different to Sam with her five-year plans and high-maintenance hair. One drink, as friends, couldn’t hurt though? Over glasses of fruity Greek wine and honey-sweet baklava, can he – and the other charming locals – help city girl Sam to appreciate the simple pleasures the Greek life has to offer?

Just as Sam is considering ditching her designer gear for good though, she runs in to an old flame from home, and suddenly her London life comes hurtling back. Can her smooth-talking ex convince Sam to return to the concrete jungle, or will the lessons she’s learned from her Greek escape persuade her to stay?

I was firstly attracted by the stunning front cover on this book and the story didn’t disappoint either. After this past year with the pandemic, I wanted a read that I would usually read in a hot sunny country and this totally whisked me away and made me feel like I was sitting in Greece.

The writing is wonderfully descriptive and as someone who hasn’t visited Rhodes, I was able to see the scene perfectly and after googling it I wasn’t far off all from her descriptions of the setting. I was totally enamoured by the charm and slow pace of Greek life.

The characters are well written and very relatable, I found myself instantly and easily warming to them and found myself wanting to spend time with them off the pages as well as in them and the plot was well paced and I couldn’t put it down I finished it in 2 days.

A great light hearted holiday read that is well deserving of 5 stars.

Don’t You Want Me Review

London,1981. As race riots erupt, Prince Charles and Lady Diana prepare to marry & New Romantics dance, an identity-shifting serial killer is operating in plain sight. But no-one has realised except Detective Inspector Anna Leeding, who has secrets of her own…

Amid the cultural and social upheaval of 1981, D.I. Leeding suspects apparent accidents and suicides could be subtle acts of revenge, and strange blue charcoal messages may be the key to something bigger and deadlier. But in this cat-and-mouse story of vengeance, no-one is quite what they seem, and in 1981, when the New Romantics played with image, first appearances can be deceptive.

1981 was not so removed from today, with a highly divisive celebrity President, and race protests filling the streets. A time when gender and sexual identity were openly questioned, and the far right clashed with the far left. There was an existential threat; today, climate change and Covid-19, in 1981, we hoarded food and prepared for when either the U.S or Russian leader pushed the nuclear button.

So, to everyone who was there and those for whom this is their first time, “Don’t You Want Me?’ welcomes you to 1981. It was a hell of a year.

This story was a delight to read, it was steeped in 80s cultural references to films and music which I am old enough to remember. It portrays a different London to today’s London. It wasn’t fast paced but it was nevertheless a compelling read and I was glued to the virtual pages. Flashbacks to earlier years give an insight to the development of the killer’s psychopathy but it wasn’t gory at all. It was a kind of revenge theme taken to extremes.

My brain was doing somersaults trying to figure out the twist at the end and it was deliciously unpredictable. The characters were well written especially the two female police officers and I loved the slow reveal of their secrets. It is not a short book but I powered through it I couldn’t put it down. 4 stars.

21 Truths About Love Review

Bookshop owner Dan is in financial trouble, regrets leaving teaching & is trying not to get wife Jill pregnant.  

I love a list and, apparently after finishing this book, I also quite enjoy reading about lists! This book is entirely told in lists, which sounds weird, but also quite ingenious and oddly satisfying. Dan writes a kind of diary, all in list format, where he details his life, problems and regrets that he has. He lists books of the month, days since he did stuff and income/expenditure, basically all the usual stuff people make lists about. Sounds a bit mundane and repetitive but it wasn’t. Mainly because it was all delivered with some great humour and emotion. It catalogues the big and little things as well as the funny and the tragic. His relationship with his wife, his bookshop, and his new and ongoing bingo obsession.

What I find so brilliant about this book is that even though it’s all lists, the author still managed to tell a beautiful story about Dan’s life as he builds up to becoming a father for the first time and dealing with his own father leaving him as a child.

This was a brilliant 4 star read.

Waiting for the Miracle Review

I was provided Waiting for the Miracle by Anna McPartlin as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own and thanks is extended to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.

2010

Caroline has hit rock bottom. After years of trying, it’s clear she can’t have children, and the pain has driven her and her husband apart. She isn’t pregnant, her husband is gone and her beloved dog is dead. The other women at her infertility support group have their own problems, too. Natalie’s girlfriend is much less excited about having children than her. Janet’s husband might be having an affair. And then there’s Ronnie, intriguing, mysterious Ronnie, who won’t tell anyone her story.

1976

Catherine is sixteen and pregnant. Her boyfriend wants nothing to do with her, and her parents are ashamed. When she’s sent away to a convent for pregnant girls, she is desperate not to be separated from her child. But she knows she might risk losing the baby forever.

This book was simply perfection. It was warm, humorous, made me hope, made me cry and had characters that were completely relatable. The author deals with an incredibly emotive and tricky topic, namely infertility, loss and why it is some women cant get pregnant.  I also loved the interweaving of Irelands dark past in terms of unwed mothers and this was balanced perfectly with humour, friendship and warmth.

This is one of the best books I have read this year I devoured it in one sitting and I cannot wait to read it again. If I could give it more than 5 stars I would.

The Women of Troy Review

I was provided The Women of Troy by Pat Barker as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own and thanks is extended to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.

Troy has fallen. The Greeks have won their bitter war. They can return home victors, loaded with their spoils: their stolen gold, stolen weapons, stolen women. All they need is a good wind to lift their sails.

But the wind does not come. The gods have been offended – the body of Priam lies desecrated, unburied – and so the victors remain in limbo, camped in the shadow of the city they destroyed, pacing at the edge of an unobliging sea. And, in these empty, restless days, the hierarchies that held them together begin to fray, old feuds resurface and new suspicions fester.

Largely unnoticed by her squabbling captors, Briseis remains in the Greek encampment. She forges alliances where she can – with young, dangerously naïve Amina, with defiant, aged Hecuba, with Calchus, the disgraced priest – and begins to see the path to a kind of revenge. Briseis has survived the Trojan War, but peacetime may turn out to be even more dangerous…

I thought The Women of Troy was good. It’s perhaps not quite as brilliant as its predecessor, The Silence of The Girls, but Pat Barker has produced another well told, humane and completely real story here as she continues the retelling of the fall of Troy and its aftermath through the eyes of Briseis, once Achilles’ Prize of Honour and who is now married to Achilles’ friend.

The events here are documented in many texts such as the Aeneid, the Iliad and so forth however Barker has an ability to convey the experienced that her characters are feeling, going through and so on in a special way as well as building up atmosphere and allowing the reader to feel like they are there in the thick of the setting and the storyline which could still be relevant in today’s society.

Maybe because the story is so well known I didn’t find it impacted me as much as some of her other novels and so it is a 3 star read for me.