Unapologetic Reviews

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...

I read The Villa by Rachel Hawkins for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt #38 “A book with any type of fruit on the cover or in the title”. The cover is full of bright lemons and Italian sunshine, but the story underneath is much darker. This is a thriller about murder, complicated female friendships, creative ambition, ownership, and the way a story can become more powerful than the truth behind it. The novel is told across two timelines, both centred on the same villa near Orvieto, Italy. In the present day, Emily is a writer whose life has stalled. Her marriage is ending, she has spent much of the previous year suffering from a mysterious illness, and she is struggling to finish the tenth book in her long running cosy mystery series. Emily is not a huge bestselling author, but she has built a real and dependable career. Her books sell consistently and provide her with a decent living, yet her soon to be ex-husband Matt now believes he deserves a share of that income be...

I read The Rose and the Yew Tree as the July selection for the 2026 Read Christie Challenge. The theme for the month was “Best Kept Secret,” referring to the novels Agatha Christie published under the name Mary Westmacott. Christie used the pseudonym because these books were very different from the detective fiction that had already made her famous, and her identity remained hidden for around fifteen years. That separation allowed the Westmacott novels to be read without everyone immediately comparing them to Poirot, Miss Marple, or the elaborate mysteries readers already associated with her name. The Rose and the Yew Tree is certainly a departure from the Agatha Christie books I normally read. Despite a synopsis that left me unsure about what kind of story I was entering, this is not a mystery. There is no murder to investigate, no collection of suspects, and no final scene in which every clue suddenly falls into place. Instead, it is a psychological character study, a political nove...

I read The Housewife by Natalie Barelli as the final book in my Trad Wife Reading Project, and it turned out to be something of an outlier. Most of the books in this project dealt directly with tradwife influencers. Yesteryear , Trad Wife: A Novel , The Trad Wife , and Everyone Is Lying to You all explored women constructing some version of traditional femininity for an online audience. Their homes, marriages, pregnancies, recipes, and carefully chosen dresses became part of a public performance. The Stepford Wives obviously predates social media, but it examines the darker fantasy beneath the same ideal. The Housewife is different. There are no influencers, no social media empire, and no ideological community built around traditional gender roles. Its protagonist simply enjoys being a housewife. Jodie loves cooking, cleaning, and maintaining an immaculate home. Cleaning genuinely calms her. She is meticulous about everything, from the arrangement of the house to the meals she prep...

As part of my Trad Wife Reading Project, I picked up Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza. This was the fifth book in the project, and it turned out to be quite different from the others. Rather than leaning into psychological horror or domestic suspense, this one is first and foremost a murder mystery set in the world of trad wife influencers. It uses that setting to explore power, control, religion, and the carefully curated lives people present online. The story follows two former college friends whose lives have taken completely different paths. Lizzie is a journalist whose career has been steadily declining, while Bex has become one of the internet's biggest trad wife influencers with six children and millions of followers. After years without speaking, Bex suddenly reaches out to Lizzie and offers her an exclusive interview. They arrange to meet at a convention for mom influencers, but before they ever get the chance, Bex's husband is found murdered. From there the nove...

I read The Trad Wife by Carrie Hughes as part of my Trad Wife Reading Project. This was the fourth book in the project, and it ended up being one of the stranger entries. It blends domestic thriller, cult fiction, and religious manipulation into a story that is less about the idealized trad wife lifestyle itself and more about the systems of control hiding behind it. Melissa is a single mother living in New York with her seven year old daughter, Willow. She works in social media and hosts a podcast, and she has become fascinated by Faith, a wildly successful trad wife influencer whose perfect family life is broadcast from a picturesque ranch. When Faith unexpectedly offers Melissa a job as her social media manager, the opportunity seems impossible to refuse. Housing is included, the pay is good, and it also gives Willow a chance to escape the relentless bullying she has been experiencing at school. The catch is that Faith and the entire community are Mormon. Melissa grew up in the chu...

I read Trad Wife: A Novel by Saratoga Schaefer as the third book in my Trad Wife Reading Project, and this was easily the darkest one so far. The book has been marketed as a modern Rosemary's Baby, and that comparison is very accurate. Instead of focusing on a woman forced into a horrific pregnancy against her will, this story follows a woman who desperately wants a baby, even if she has to make a deal with something she doesn't fully understand to get one.  The main character, Camille Deming, has built her entire identity around becoming the perfect trad wife influencer. She lives in a large country farmhouse with her husband, Graham, spends her days cooking, cleaning, homesteading, and carefully curating her online image. The only thing missing is a baby. In Camille's mind, motherhood isn't just something she wants personally. It's the final step towards becoming the successful influencer she dreams of being. When she discovers an old wishing well on her property...

I read Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt number 25, “A book that explores influencer culture”. This book is marketed all wrong. Interestingly, this is not the first book I have encountered recently that was sold almost entirely through trendy buzzwords. A romantasy that is not really a romantasy. A humorous fantasy that is barely funny. Now a novel advertised as being about a trad wife and time travel that is actually about something much more interesting. On the surface, Natalie seems to be exactly what social media celebrates. She is a successful trad wife influencer living on a ranch with her growing family, baking bread, raising children, and presenting the image of the perfect conservative Christian wife. When strange events suddenly disrupt her life, the story splits into two timelines. One follows her present, while the other gradually reveals the path that brought her to this point. The book spends far more time exploring Natali...

I read The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin as the first book in a small reading side quest I'm calling my "Trad Wives" project. I wanted to start with the book that shaped so much of the conversation around this topic, and there really isn't a better place to begin. Even though it was published in 1972, it feels surprisingly modern, and in some ways even more relevant today than it probably did when it first came out. The story follows Joanna Eberhart, a photographer from New York, who moves with her husband and children to the quiet suburban town of Stepford in search of a better life. Joanna is very much a modern woman for the early 1970s. She has a career, creative ambitions, and little interest in defining herself solely through marriage and housework. When she meets the local women, however, something immediately feels wrong. They seem almost entirely consumed by cleaning, cooking, and pleasing their husbands. Their personalities appear strangely flat, as though eve...

I picked up Kill All Wizards by Jedediah Berry purely for fun, without trying to fit it into any reading challenge, and it ended up being quite different from what I expected. According to Goodreads, it's supposed to be humorous, but I honestly didn't find it particularly funny. Instead, I found it to be an imaginative, fast paced fantasy adventure with a surprisingly serious tone. The story follows a barbarian who, as the title suggests, begins killing wizards. The novel gradually reveals both how he manages to do something that should seem impossible and why he has chosen this path. What kept me listening was the world itself. It blends several fantasy traditions together. There are barbarians, powerful wizards, gods, ordinary people without magic, and even airships, giving the setting a light steampunk flavour without fully becoming steampunk. The magic system was easily my favourite part of the book. It's unlike the spell based systems that appear in so many fantasy no...

I read A Siege of Bitterns by Steve Burrows for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt number 45, "A book that features birding". And there was certainly plenty of birding in this book. No one could accuse it of not delivering on the prompt. The story follows Detective Chief Inspector Domenic Jejeune, a French-Canadian detective who moved to England after a scandal in Canada interrupted his career. He has a reputation as an exceptional investigator, but he is also an avid birder. He lives in Norfolk, surrounded by marshes, wetlands, and bird reserves, and when several deaths occur, the investigation becomes intertwined with birdwatchers, conservation efforts, and environmental issues. Unfortunately, this was a very disappointing mystery for me. I gave the book two stars. My biggest problem was that the balance felt completely wrong. I went into the story expecting a murder mystery with some birdwatching elements in the background. Instead, it felt like I got a birdw...

I read The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for prompt #8, "A book about a sexless marriage." There is certainly no sex here, so the prompt fit perfectly. Set in Amsterdam in 1686, the novel follows eighteen-year-old Petronella "Nella" Oortman. After the death of her father left the family nearly penniless, her mother arranged a marriage with Johannes Brandt, a wealthy merchant over twice her age. Nella arrives at his grand house expecting the ordinary life of a wife. Instead, she finds herself in a household full of secrets and silences. As a wedding gift, Johannes gives her an elaborate cabinet house, a miniature version of their own home. Wanting to furnish it, Nella contacts a mysterious miniaturist. What she receives is unsettling. Not only do the requested pieces arrive, but so do strange additional objects, tiny creations that seem to reveal secrets before they happen. As the mysterious miniatures keep appearing, Nella gr...

I received an ARC copy of Ivan and the Firebird by Alexandra Pugachevsky in exchange for an honest review. I always find reviews like this a little difficult to write because I genuinely like the author as a person and appreciate the opportunity to read the book. Unfortunately, this one simply wasn't for me. The story follows Ivan, a young man from the fairytale land of Zorya. After finding a feather from the legendary Firebird, he falls into the clutches of Baba Yaga, who offers him an impossible bargain. To gain his freedom, he must find the Firebird itself. His journey eventually takes him into our modern world, where he encounters magical creatures inspired by Slavic folklore and meets Lisa, a young woman with whom he falls in love. I love fairytale retellings and stories inspired by folklore, so this sounded like something I should have enjoyed. Sadly, I struggled almost from the beginning. My biggest issue was Ivan himself. For a significant part of the book, I assumed he wa...