Unapologetic Reviews

I read Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge. This was for prompt #29, "a book that takes place during harvesting season", and I think this one definitely counts. A large part of the novel takes place during the autumn harvests, including both the olive harvest and grape picking, although the story actually stretches from September all the way to Christmas. Weirdly enough, I also listened to it in September, and the book itself begins in September, so my timing was pretty much perfect. Villa Coco takes place at a slightly crumbling villa in rural Tuscany, where a young American named Geoffrey arrives to take a job working for a ninety two year old Baronessa. He has been hired as an archivist, or technically as an “adjutant,” and his supposed job is to catalogue the contents of the villa before Christmas. There is art, furniture, books, antiques, and all sorts of other things accumulated over a very long and rather eventful life. Geoffrey com...

I read Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt number 42, "A book inspired by a real song, album, band, artist, or musical." Going into it, I expected it to be fine at best. Contemporary fiction is not usually my thing. I tend to gravitate towards fantasy, science fiction, and stories with larger than life stakes. Here, there are no quests, no alien worlds, no one trying to save humanity. There are only people. Messy, talented, selfish, loving, complicated people. And somehow, this became one of the biggest surprises of my reading year. I ended up giving it five stars. The story follows Daisy Jones and the members of The Six, a hugely successful rock band in the 1970s. But what makes the book stand out is its format. Rather than a traditional novel, it is presented as an oral history. The entire story unfolds through interviews, with each character recounting events years later. Because I listened to the audiobook,...

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy was marketed in a way that makes you expect something almost salacious. A teenage girl. An affair with her teacher. It sounds like the setup for a dark romance, or at least a scandal-driven story. This is not that book. I read it expecting drama, exposure, fallout. What I got instead was a quiet, uncomfortable, and very honest portrait of a girl who is trying to grow up while still desperately wanting to be a daughter. Waldo is seventeen at the beginning and eighteen by the end. She is raising herself. Her mother drifts from job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend, and her father has been absent for years. She waits to be seen. To be chosen. To be loved. And although at first it seems like she has given up on that hope, she really hasn’t. She still lives for it. She goes to school. She works. She manages her own life. But there is a constant emptiness under everything she does, a kind of hopelessness she never quite names. Then she meets her new creative ...

The Answer is No is a short story by Fredrik Backman . It was translated by Elizabeth DeNoma from Swedish. So, this guy is a famous author, and I've never read any of his books because I normally don't read contemporary novels . But this just came out in December, and I saw it as a recommendation. I needed one last book to make my book count, which is only 20, mind you. It's 68 pages, and it was the end of December, so I was like, "Okay, let's give this a shot." The description said it's funny. I was actually pleasantly surprised by this short story. It talked about the absurdities of modern life in a very intelligent —and also funny way. I chuckled out loud several times while reading this. I also loved how it just started from one little event, and that led into this whole chain of events that culminated in the main character being in a different, but also very similar, space in the end. That was very interesting. The main character is called Lucas , a...

The Unwedding by Ally Condie was a genuine disappointment for me, which is a shame, because the premise should have been a slam dunk. A luxury resort. A holiday setting. Murders that turn paradise into something claustrophobic and dangerous. I love mysteries that ruin people’s vacations . Hotels, beaches, cruise ships. That is my favourite playground for crime fiction . Unfortunately, the setting is almost the only thing this book gets right. I gave up at around 43%. Out of curiosity and stubbornness, I looked up the solution at the end, hoping it might convince me that the long, meandering middle was worth pushing through. It didn’t. If anything, it confirmed my decision to stop. My biggest problem is Ellery , the main character. We are firmly inside her head in third-person limited , and it is not a pleasant place to be. Ellery is going through a divorce; her ex has already moved on. That could have been handled with anger, bitterness, even sharp self-reflection. Instead, we get pa...