Unapologetic Reviews

I read Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite in preparation for the second book in the series, which is being published in March and which I chose as my March pick of the month. This first instalment is very short, a little over one hundred pages, so I read it quickly; essentially in a single sitting. It works almost like an introduction to the setting and the main character, but it still manages to tell a complete little mystery. The story follows Dorothy Gentleman , a detective aboard a massive generation ship carrying around ten thousand people from Earth to a distant new planet. The journey will take centuries, far longer than a human lifespan, so the inhabitants have developed ways to survive the passage. Their consciousness can be stored and transferred into new bodies , allowing people to live through multiple physical lives. The idea itself is not new. Anyone familiar with Altered Carbon will recognise the concept immediately. What I liked here is not the novelty of the technolo...

I read Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie for the Read Christie 2026 Challenge , where it was the book for March. What makes this read slightly unusual for me is that I already knew the story very well before opening the novel. I had seen the television adaptation with David Suchet several times, and that version remains one of my favourite interpretations of the detective. I had also seen the classic 1970s film adaptation and the more recent modern version, which unfortunately stripped Poirot of what makes him unique and made an action movie. Even so, I had somehow never actually read the book itself. The novel opens slightly earlier than most screen adaptations. Poirot is travelling through the Middle East and boards a train from Aleppo before eventually arriving in Istanbul. Those early scenes were a small pleasure for me because they mention real places I know well, such as the Galata Bridge , which I have walked across many times. Christie also references the famo...

I read Nowhere Girl: Life as a Member of ADHD’s Lost Generation by Carla Ciccone for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt number 28, “A book about debt”, as people with ADHD are often in debt. Though ironically, she doesn’t really get into debt, even though she talks about her boyfriend taking her money, but we never hear about how that got resolved. This book is part memoir, part exploration of ADHD research, and part personal reckoning. Diagnosed at thirty nine after having a child, Ciccone revisits her entire life through the lens of ADHD, examining how it shaped her identity, her relationships, her work, and her sense of self. Alongside her story, she engages with scientific literature, especially around how ADHD presents in girls and women . Very early in the book, she lists the labels many girls hear: lazy, careless, head in the clouds, gives up too easily. Those words felt painfully familiar to me. I heard them too. The idea that boys externalise their struggles while g...

Death by Dumpling by Vivien Chien was my pick for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt number 7, “A book about a granny hobby.” I genuinely could not remember why I had chosen it for that category. My guess is that I thought this would involve cooking, but it doesn’t. I wasn’t sure if the book would fit, but then I realised it did have a granny hobby. Gossip. And an entire supporting cast of aunties and granny aged women who treat information as currency and sport. That counts. I think. I am still reserving the right to revisit the prompt at the end of the year. This is the first book in the Noodle Shop Mystery series , set in Asia Village in Cleveland, a small shopping plaza filled with Asian owned businesses. Herbal shops, restaurants, gift stores. It is, without question, the strongest element of the novel. You can see it clearly. Fluorescent lit corridors. Steam rising from bamboo baskets. Aunties standing in doorways, commenting on everything and everyone. The community...

I read It’s Not Her by Mary Kubica as my February 2026 pick of the month. Each month I choose a new release and read it straight away, and this was my February selection. It also ended up being one of those books that made me film not just one video, but two. One spoiler free review, and one full discussion of the ending. That alone says something. The story centres on two families vacationing together at a mountain resort. Pine trees crowd the cabins. There is a still lake nearby that looks peaceful in the sun and threatening after dark. Courtney and Nolan are brother and sister. Nolan’s wife, Emily, was Courtney’s childhood best friend. Their lives are tightly woven together. Then Courtney walks into Nolan and Emily’s cabin and finds them bludgeoned to death. Their eldest daughter, Reese, is missing. From that moment on, the novel becomes a race against time. Courtney wants to find her niece. She also wants to get her own family out of that place as quickly as possible. The quiet r...

I read The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea by Axie Oh for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge , prompt 32, “A book with an underwater civilization .” It is written in first person, and I’m not a fan. On the page it can feel like I am reading a teenager’s diary. In audio format, though, it becomes someone telling me a story about her life. That shift makes it much easier for me to tolerate it. The story follows Mina , who is fifteen or sixteen. Her exact age matters because she is deliberately not yet eighteen. Every year a girl is sacrificed as the Sea God ’s bride in the hope that he will calm the deadly storms ravaging their homeland. When her brother’s beloved is chosen, Mina throws herself into the sea instead. She wakes in a hidden spirit realm and has thirty days to wake the Sea God, uncover the truth behind a curse, and save both the human world and the spirit world. There is a clear ticking clock. You would expect urgency. And yet part of this novel is surprisingly domestic. M...