Unapologetic Reviews

I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt #22, "A book about a book club", and I absolutely adored it. Five stars. I also cried an unreasonable amount, which is exactly why I usually avoid books about war. There were points when I was genuinely grateful that I was listening to the audiobook because at least I did not have to see the page through my tears. The novel takes place in 1946, shortly after the end of the Second World War, and follows writer Juliet Ashton. During the war, Juliet wrote a humorous newspaper column under the name Izzy Bickerstaff, which has since been collected into a successful book. Now that the war is over, however, she has no idea what she wants to write next. London is still visibly scarred by the Blitz. Her old flat overlooking the Thames was destroyed, along with almost everything she owned, and even though her book has been successful, money...

I read This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone for prompt #47 of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, "A book told entirely through letters". And I really, really hated this book. Mercifully, it was short. The premise sounds considerably more interesting than I found the actual book. Red and Blue are two agents fighting on opposite sides of a war that stretches across time, with both sides manipulating different timelines in an attempt to create their preferred version of the future. One works for the Garden, an organic, natural society, while the other works for the Agency, a technological collective that reminded me vaguely of something like the Borg. Which one was Red and which one was Blue? I genuinely could not remember for most of the book, and even now I would have to look it up. The two agents begin as enemies. One of them discovers a letter left by the other on a battlefield, and from there they begin exchanging increasingly elaborate m...

I read The Devil She Knows by Alexandria Bellefleur for prompt #40 of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, “A book outside your comfort zone”. Romance is very much outside my usual reading preferences, so this was a good opportunity to try something different. The premise immediately caught my attention. It is essentially a queer twist on Bedazzled . Chef Samantha "Sam" Cooper meets the demon Daphne after the two become trapped in an elevator together. Daphne offers Sam six wishes, which she plans to use to win back her ex-girlfriend. It is a fun setup, and I was looking forward to seeing how the wishes would spiral out of control. Unfortunately, my biggest issue with the novel was the pacing. The story takes almost the first fifth of the book just to get to the actual deal. Sam and Daphne spend a long time chatting in the elevator, Sam slowly discovers that Daphne is a demon, refuses to believe it, asks questions, and only then do they finally reach the part the premise pro...

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow was my pick for prompt #23 of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, “A book you were hoping would fit into a prompt but doesn't”. It turned out to be one of my favourite reads of the year, and I ended up giving it five stars. On the surface, this could be described as a love story, but that barely scratches the surface of what the novel is actually doing. At its heart, The Everlasting is a story about national identity, history, myth making, and the stories countries tell about themselves. It asks how those stories shape not only the way we see the past, but also the future we create. It is a surprisingly ambitious novel, one that explores ideas much bigger than its central romance. The story begins with Owen Mallory, a historian who has spent years studying the legendary knight Una Everlasting, one of the founding heroes of the nation of Dominion. When his research draws him far closer to the legend than he ever expected, the novel gradually unfol...

Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley Winstead was my Pick of the Month for July 2026, so I went into it with fairly high expectations. I listened to the audiobook, which may have influenced my experience, because this is a thriller that asks the reader to keep track of multiple timelines, several POV characters, and shifting points of view. While I ultimately enjoyed what the book was trying to do, I found the execution much messier than I had hoped. The story follows a group of women whose lives are connected by a traumatic event in both the past and the present. The novel moves back and forth between these timelines while using third person limited narration, with each chapter focusing on a different character. On paper, this is an interesting structure, but in practice I often found it difficult to remember who was who. Isabel was easy to keep straight, but many of the other characters blurred together, partly because they did not feel distinct enough from one another. Listening rather t...

I read Cursed Ever After by Andy C. Naranjo as a palate cleanser between two thrillers. It was one of my June 2026 recommendation picks, and it ended up being exactly the kind of light, adventurous fantasy I needed. While it's marketed as a fantasy romance, I actually wouldn't call it a romantasy. The romance is there, but it never overwhelms the story. As someone who isn't usually drawn to romance, I appreciated that the focus stayed firmly on the adventure, the characters, and the world itself. The story follows Risa Porto, a young woman who has spent her entire life believing she's cursed with bad luck simply because she was born on an unlucky day. When she finds herself escorting Prince Javi, the seventh son of the royal family, to his wedding in a neighbouring kingdom, what should have been a straightforward journey quickly turns into something far more complicated. Their quest becomes a road trip through a colourful magical world filled with witches, curses, stra...