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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie * * * *

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I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie for the 2026 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. June’s theme was “Best to Read in One Sitting”, and this was the official pick for the month. Interestingly, I already knew who the murderer was before I started reading. Not because I remembered every detail, but because this book’s ending is so famous that it has become part of detective fiction history. So instead of trying to solve the mystery, I spent most of the book looking for clues and trying to see how Christie constructed the puzzle. And honestly, there are not that many obvious clues. Reading it felt a little like watching an episode of Columbo when you already know the culprit. You stop focusing on the question of who did it and start paying attention to all the little details, contradictions, and moments that feel slightly off. What surprised me was that while I remembered who the killer was, I did not really remember how everything worked. That part was still fun to unc...
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The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham * * * * *

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I received an ARC of The Secret World of Briar Rose by Cindy Pham in exchange for an honest review. This is a difficult book to review, because I do not think I can say that I enjoyed it in the usual sense. It was not an easy or comforting reading experience. It was painful at times, and it felt messy in places, but it also touched something very real in me. At its heart, this is a book about depression, escape, grief, suicide, and the terrifying work of choosing to exist in the real world when the real world feels unbearable. That is why it affected me so much. Depression is something I have dealt with for much of my life, and the desire to escape is something I understand very deeply. For me, escape has often meant books, travel, and anything that could make ordinary life feel less heavy for a while. That is also one of the central ideas of this book. In the dream world, real life stops. You do not age. You do not move forward. Nothing changes outside the dream. And that image felt ...
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How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi * * * *

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I read How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy’s Guide to Silencing Women by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, prompt number 43, “Two books written by real-life partners or spouses (1).” This book was written by the women behind the Witches of Scotland podcast, and that connection really shapes the whole book. It is not just a history of the Scottish witch trials. It is also part of a wider attempt to make people remember them properly. The book looks mainly at the Scottish witch trials, but it does not treat them as a vague dark chapter from the past. It explains how they happened. It looks at the religious atmosphere, the economic pressures, the legal structures, the books and ideas that fed the panic, and the way fear could be turned into accusation. It also goes into individual stories, which was important because the scale of the trials can make the victims blur together. When the book pauses on one accused woman, one community, one interroga...
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The Astral Library by Kate Quinn * *

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I read The Astral Library by Kate Quinn for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, prompt number 31, “A book that makes you feel FOMO.” Sadly, this was a real disappointment for me. The premise sounded exactly like something I would love. There is a magical library where people can enter books, live inside stories, and move through literature as if the pages were real places. The library is also in danger somehow, which made me expect a fun, imaginative adventure through books, with mystery, magic, and a real sense of wonder. The idea is wonderful. The execution, for me, was not. The first problem was that the book felt very much like it was aimed at BookTok. I know the author has said that she chose books she personally loved, and that the public domain books included were ones she saw as great classics. But while reading, it felt like a roll call of the usual big titles and familiar references. Fourth Wing gets mentioned. George R. R. Martin gets mentioned. Oz, Narnia, and Tolkien co...
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The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O’Neill (Tea Dragon, #3) * * * *

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I read The Tea Dragon Tapestry by K. O’Neill, the third and final book in the Tea Dragon series. After The Tea Dragon Society and The Tea Dragon Festival, this book brings the characters and themes together in a way that feels like a gentle closing chapter. This one takes place after the events of The Tea Dragon Society , and it feels much more like a direct continuation of that first book than the second one did. The Tea Dragon Festival was more of a prequel or companion story, but The Tea Dragon Tapestry returns to Greta, Minette, Hesekiel, Erik, and the tea dragons. It also brings in Rinn and Aedhan from the second book, now visiting the village. Rinn is older, while Aedhan is basically the same, because he is a dragon and therefore lives on a very different timescale. I liked that sense of time passing differently for different characters. It fits a series that is so interested in memory, tradition, and the way people carry the past with them. Greta is still learning blacksmit...
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The Tea Dragon Festival by K. O’Neill (Tea Dragon, #2) * * * *

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I read The Tea Dragon Festival by K. O’Neill after reading The Tea Dragon Society , because I wanted to spend a little more time in this sweet, cosy world of tea dragons, memory, craft, and magical woodland creatures. This book is the second book in the series, but it actually takes place before The Tea Dragon Society . That was not immediately clear to me when I started reading. Maybe there was a foreword or note that I missed, but I only realised it properly later, when Erik and Hesekiel appeared and were clearly younger than they are in the first book. In this story, they are still travelling and adventuring, before they settle into the quieter life we see later. The main character here is Rinn, who lives in a small mountain village and works as a forager. They gather herbs, mushrooms, and other useful things from the woods for people in the village. One day, while out foraging, Rinn discovers a dragon called Aedhan, who has been asleep for a very long time. He was meant to be the ...
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The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’Neill (Tea Dragon, #1) * * * *

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I read The Tea Dragon Society by K. O’Neill for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt number 46, “a sapphic comic.” This is definitely a comic, and it is sapphic in a very sweet, gentle, all ages way, so it fits the prompt nicely.  This is a short, whimsical fantasy story set in a world of magical creatures, blacksmiths, tea shops, dragons, and tiny tea dragons. The main character is Greta, a young blacksmith apprentice who is learning her family’s craft in a world where sword making seems to be fading into something more decorative than practical. I actually found that part interesting, because the story hints at a wider world without fully explaining it. We know swords are no longer needed in the same way, but we do not really know why. Maybe the world has moved on from them. Maybe it has become more peaceful. Maybe there is another explanation entirely. The book does not go very far into that, but it gives the setting a quiet sense of history. The story begins when Gr...
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