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 The Woman in Me by Britney Spears as part of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge. This was for prompt #37, "a book about a pop star", and I had actually been wanting to read this memoir ever since it came out. I listened to the audiobook, which came with a special treat because Britney herself reads the introduction before Michelle Williams takes over the narration for the rest of the book. Britney explains that recording the entire memoir would simply have been too emotionally difficult considering everything she had to revisit while writing it. Hearing her actual voice at the beginning therefore felt particularly meaningful, especially before handing the story over to somebody else. This was also a strangely emotional book for me for reasons that have very little to do with the actual quality of the memoir. Between Britney Spears and I there are only about seven months in age, which means that when Britney became one of the most famous teenagers in the world, I was ...

I read The Knave and the Moon by Rachel Gillig as my September 2026 Pick of the Month. I chose it because it is the second and final book in the Stonewater Kingdom duology, following The Knight and the Moth , which I read last year. I gave that first book three stars. It was fine, but I found Sybil frustrating, particularly because so much of the story revolved around a quest whose eventual destination seemed obvious to me long before it became obvious to her. She kept insisting on things that I was already fairly certain were wrong, and after a while, watching her slowly catch up became more irritating than suspenseful. So I went into The Knave and the Moon with some trepidation. I wanted to know how the story ended, but I was not particularly confident that I was going to enjoy getting there. Surprisingly, I liked this one considerably more. I gave it four stars. It is not quite in my five star, I am going to think about this forever and recommend it to everybody category, but it d...

This is a comparison of Agatha Christie’s Endless Night , the 1972 film adaptation, and the Agatha Christie’s Marple adaptation. And obviously, this is going to contain major spoilers for all three versions , because there is really no way to compare these adaptations properly without talking about what Michael actually does and how each version handles the ending. Interestingly, I think the best adaptation is the Marple version, even though it is by far the least faithful to the book. The 1972 film follows Christie’s story much more closely, but unfortunately it also manages to be almost as slow and boring as some of the weaker parts of the novel. Christie herself apparently did not like the film, and having watched it, I can see why. The 1972 adaptation keeps the basic structure of Endless Night largely intact. Michael is still the young man drifting through life who meets the wealthy Ellie, marries her, and builds his dream house on Gipsy’s Acre. The house is still supposed to be st...

I read Endless Night by Agatha Christie as part of the Read Christie 2026 challenge. The overall theme of this year's challenge is “Biggest, Best and Beloved,” and September's theme was “Best According to Agatha.” Endless Night was the official choice because Christie herself named it as her own favourite at the time when she was asked about her favourite books. She also wrote it incredibly quickly, finishing the novel in only six weeks rather than the three or four months she usually spent writing a book. I gave it four stars. This is a very interesting Christie novel because it does not initially feel much like a mystery at all. In fact, it reminded me quite a bit of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, which I also read for this challenge earlier this year. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd comes from much earlier in Christie's career, while Endless Night was published in 1967, but both play with perspective and with what we assume about a story simply because of the person telli...

I read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman as part of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge. This was for prompt #20, "a book with a character who does Pilates or Lagree". One of the main characters does Pilates. We never actually see him doing it, but he mentions it a couple of times, so I’m counting it. The Thursday Murder Club is the first book in the Thursday Murder Club series, and it was also Osman’s debut novel. Before turning to fiction, he was primarily known for his work in television. I really wanted to love this book. It is incredibly popular, the premise sounded exactly like the sort of thing I should enjoy, and I generally like mysteries with unusual amateur detectives. Sadly, I ended up giving it three stars. There is nothing particularly wrong with it, and I wouldn’t call it a bad book at all. It was perfectly serviceable. I just didn’t find it particularly compelling, and for a murder mystery, I found it far too slow. The story takes place at Cooper’s C...