Unapologetic Reviews

What disappointed me about Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley is that it never really tells the story it promises. I read it for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt number 39 “a book with a character who runs a marathon,” and it frames itself as a journey from non runner to runner, but Heminsley never feels like someone who truly was someone who didn’t like to run. She does like her sofa, she just needed the external motivation to leave it. This book was not for me. Running Like a Girl is structured in two halves. The first is biographical, following Heminsley’s journey into long distance running and marathon culture . The second is a practical section, offering advice on training, mindset, practical aspects of running, and charity fundraising . In theory, this split should work. In practice, neither half engaged me. The biographical section is extremely repetitive in its structure. She trains for a marathon. She runs a marathon. She trains for another marathon. Sh...

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon was published in 1993 and is the second novel in the Commissario Brunetti series . I read it as part of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge , for the prompt “A book that makes you want to travel to Italy” though whether any book needs to convince me of that feels almost beside the point. In retrospect, it’s an unusual choice for the prompt. This is not a romantic or sun-drenched novel of Italy, rather a sombre, politically charged, and often quite bleak. Yet Venice is present in every page, not as a postcard backdrop but as a lived-in city of canals, offices, homes, and compromises. That, in its own way, still counts. The novel opens with Brunetti being called to a body pulled from a Venetian canal , later identified as a young American soldier. His investigation leads him beyond Venice to the American base in Vicenza , and from there into a widening web of secrecy, institutional power, and corruption. At first, the story feels slightly unmo...

The Maid by Nita Prose was my first read of the year written in this millennium. I listened to it as an audiobook , and I can recommend it, as Lauren Ambrose does an excellent job, giving Molly a distinct, consistent voice that carries the listener through even the slower sections. The story follows Molly Gray , a hotel maid who is clearly neurodivergent . While autism is never named outright, it is strongly implied. The novel is framed as a mystery, but in practice, it is much more a portrait of Molly’s life than a conventional whodunnit . Roughly eighty percent of the book is spent inside her routines, her memories of being raised by her grandmother, and her often painfully literal way of navigating the world. That “painfully” is doing a lot of work here. As a neurodivergent reader myself, I struggled with how Molly is portrayed. Her naivety goes beyond social awkwardness and drifts into something that feels infantilising. She is in her twenties, yet often written as if she has t...

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl was my second read for the 2026 Popsugar Challenge , for the prompt “ A book with a dad as the primary caregiver .” Although written as a children’s book, it works just as well for adult readers; it is simple on the surface, but pointed in what it chooses to show. The book was published in the UK in 1976, and it very much belongs to its place and time. This is an unmistakably British story. Danny lives with his father in a gypsy caravan , which for non-British readers is essentially a mobile home without electricity, plumbing, or gas. They are poor, they run a small petrol station, and they live on the edges of society in more ways than one. When Danny discovers that his father once poached pheasants from the nearby woods, the story begins to open up. The woods belong to the local landowner, Mr Hazell , a man who is enormously wealthy and deeply unpleasant. On the surface, the novel is about poaching and the small adventures that come w...

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie was the January pick for the Read Christie 2026 challenge , and I listened to it as an audiobook. Written in 1942, right in the middle of the Second World War , it is quietly interesting that both major television adaptations relocate the story to the post-war period. I have seen the Agatha Christie's Marple adaptation and loved the bold change it makes, even though it is unmistakably a change. I will not spoil it here, but it works better than one might expect. This has long been one of my favourite Miss Marple adaptations, and the challenge conveniently nudged me into finally reading it, even though this was not a year I originally planned to commit to another Christie challenge. The novel itself is short and tightly constructed, which means very little was lost in adaptation. In fact, this is one of those rare Christie stories where the screen versions stay remarkably close to the book. Aside from that one substantial alteration in ...

I have always thought of Persuasion as a slightly sad book, even before I started reading it. It is Jane Austen ’s last completed novel, and it carries that quiet finality with it. There is a story I once heard, and I think about it every time. None of her books were published under her name while she was alive. First it was “By a Lady”, then “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility”. Her name never appeared. When Persuasion was finally published, together with Northanger Abbey , there was a foreword explaining that the author had died, written by her brother, Henry. I always imagine a reader at the time, happily buying a new book by their favourite writer, opening it with excitement, and then learning in that moment that she was gone. That was also the moment when they learned her name. That image never quite leaves me. The book itself is one of Austen’s shorter works. The audiobook runs about eight hours in full, which makes it feel almost slight next to something like Emma . Yet des...

Emma by Jane Austen is the fourth novel I have started for my self imposed Year of Austen . A year that was meant to be 2025 and is very clearly bleeding into 2026.  After abandoning Mansfield Park out of sheer boredom, I decided to change tactics. I listened to Emma as a full cast audio drama , complete with background music and sound design, and that decision made all the difference. I wanted to enjoy myself again. At its core, Emma is a social comedy about confidence curdling into arrogance. Emma Woodhouse is twenty one, wealthy, clever, and comfortably installed as the centre of her small community. She is unmarried, not particularly interested in changing that, and sees herself as a benevolent organiser of other people’s lives. She holds court. People defer to her. She assumes she understands everyone better than they understand themselves. It is the perfect setup for mistakes, and Austen wastes no time letting Emma make them. Emma’s self appointed role as matchmaker give...