Unapologetic Reviews

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...

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...