Unapologetic Reviews

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas was a book I very much wanted to love. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t even dislike it. But in the end, it left me curiously unsatisfied, not because of what it is, but because of what it almost becomes and never quite commits to. The story follows Yadriel , a trans boy from a Latinx brujo community , who accidentally summons the ghost of Julian instead of the spirit he intended to raise. Julian cannot be released. His body is missing. He does not remember how he died. On paper, this promises a supernatural mystery . In practice, the novel is something else entirely: a character driven, slice of life story that uses a mystery more as a framing device than as a narrative engine. There is a lot to admire here. The world building is rich and lovingly constructed. The brujx traditions , rituals, beliefs, and mythology feel grounded and coherent, giving the book a strong sense of place and cultural specificity. This is a world with weight behind it, not a thin ae...

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy was marketed in a way that makes you expect something almost salacious. A teenage girl. An affair with her teacher. It sounds like the setup for a dark romance, or at least a scandal-driven story. This is not that book. I read it expecting drama, exposure, fallout. What I got instead was a quiet, uncomfortable, and very honest portrait of a girl who is trying to grow up while still desperately wanting to be a daughter. Waldo is seventeen at the beginning and eighteen by the end. She is raising herself. Her mother drifts from job to job, boyfriend to boyfriend, and her father has been absent for years. She waits to be seen. To be chosen. To be loved. And although at first it seems like she has given up on that hope, she really hasn’t. She still lives for it. She goes to school. She works. She manages her own life. But there is a constant emptiness under everything she does, a kind of hopelessness she never quite names. Then she meets her new creative ...

What disappointed me about Running Like a Girl by Alexandra Heminsley is that it never really tells the story it promises. I read it for the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge prompt number 39 “a book with a character who runs a marathon,” and it frames itself as a journey from non runner to runner, but Heminsley never feels like someone who truly was someone who didn’t like to run. She does like her sofa, she just needed the external motivation to leave it. This book was not for me. Running Like a Girl is structured in two halves. The first is biographical, following Heminsley’s journey into long distance running and marathon culture . The second is a practical section, offering advice on training, mindset, practical aspects of running, and charity fundraising . In theory, this split should work. In practice, neither half engaged me. The biographical section is extremely repetitive in its structure. She trains for a marathon. She runs a marathon. She trains for another marathon. Sh...

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon was published in 1993 and is the second novel in the Commissario Brunetti series . I read it as part of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge , for the prompt “A book that makes you want to travel to Italy” though whether any book needs to convince me of that feels almost beside the point. In retrospect, it’s an unusual choice for the prompt. This is not a romantic or sun-drenched novel of Italy, rather a sombre, politically charged, and often quite bleak. Yet Venice is present in every page, not as a postcard backdrop but as a lived-in city of canals, offices, homes, and compromises. That, in its own way, still counts. The novel opens with Brunetti being called to a body pulled from a Venetian canal , later identified as a young American soldier. His investigation leads him beyond Venice to the American base in Vicenza , and from there into a widening web of secrecy, institutional power, and corruption. At first, the story feels slightly unmo...

The Maid by Nita Prose was my first read of the year written in this millennium. I listened to it as an audiobook , and I can recommend it, as Lauren Ambrose does an excellent job, giving Molly a distinct, consistent voice that carries the listener through even the slower sections. The story follows Molly Gray , a hotel maid who is clearly neurodivergent . While autism is never named outright, it is strongly implied. The novel is framed as a mystery, but in practice, it is much more a portrait of Molly’s life than a conventional whodunnit . Roughly eighty percent of the book is spent inside her routines, her memories of being raised by her grandmother, and her often painfully literal way of navigating the world. That “painfully” is doing a lot of work here. As a neurodivergent reader myself, I struggled with how Molly is portrayed. Her naivety goes beyond social awkwardness and drifts into something that feels infantilising. She is in her twenties, yet often written as if she has t...

Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl was my second read for the 2026 Popsugar Challenge , for the prompt “ A book with a dad as the primary caregiver .” Although written as a children’s book, it works just as well for adult readers; it is simple on the surface, but pointed in what it chooses to show. The book was published in the UK in 1976, and it very much belongs to its place and time. This is an unmistakably British story. Danny lives with his father in a gypsy caravan , which for non-British readers is essentially a mobile home without electricity, plumbing, or gas. They are poor, they run a small petrol station, and they live on the edges of society in more ways than one. When Danny discovers that his father once poached pheasants from the nearby woods, the story begins to open up. The woods belong to the local landowner, Mr Hazell , a man who is enormously wealthy and deeply unpleasant. On the surface, the novel is about poaching and the small adventures that come w...

The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie was the January pick for the Read Christie 2026 challenge , and I listened to it as an audiobook. Written in 1942, right in the middle of the Second World War , it is quietly interesting that both major television adaptations relocate the story to the post-war period. I have seen the Agatha Christie's Marple adaptation and loved the bold change it makes, even though it is unmistakably a change. I will not spoil it here, but it works better than one might expect. This has long been one of my favourite Miss Marple adaptations, and the challenge conveniently nudged me into finally reading it, even though this was not a year I originally planned to commit to another Christie challenge. The novel itself is short and tightly constructed, which means very little was lost in adaptation. In fact, this is one of those rare Christie stories where the screen versions stay remarkably close to the book. Aside from that one substantial alteration in ...

I have always thought of Persuasion as a slightly sad book, even before I started reading it. It is Jane Austen ’s last completed novel, and it carries that quiet finality with it. There is a story I once heard, and I think about it every time. None of her books were published under her name while she was alive. First it was “By a Lady”, then “By the Author of Sense and Sensibility”. Her name never appeared. When Persuasion was finally published, together with Northanger Abbey , there was a foreword explaining that the author had died, written by her brother, Henry. I always imagine a reader at the time, happily buying a new book by their favourite writer, opening it with excitement, and then learning in that moment that she was gone. That was also the moment when they learned her name. That image never quite leaves me. The book itself is one of Austen’s shorter works. The audiobook runs about eight hours in full, which makes it feel almost slight next to something like Emma . Yet des...

Emma by Jane Austen is the fourth novel I have started for my self imposed Year of Austen . A year that was meant to be 2025 and is very clearly bleeding into 2026.  After abandoning Mansfield Park out of sheer boredom, I decided to change tactics. I listened to Emma as a full cast audio drama , complete with background music and sound design, and that decision made all the difference. I wanted to enjoy myself again. At its core, Emma is a social comedy about confidence curdling into arrogance. Emma Woodhouse is twenty one, wealthy, clever, and comfortably installed as the centre of her small community. She is unmarried, not particularly interested in changing that, and sees herself as a benevolent organiser of other people’s lives. She holds court. People defer to her. She assumes she understands everyone better than they understand themselves. It is the perfect setup for mistakes, and Austen wastes no time letting Emma make them. Emma’s self appointed role as matchmaker give...

Moonstorm by Yoon Ha Lee is a young adult space adventure that I wanted to love. I really did. I started it back in April, stalled hard, eventually finished it months later, and in the end settled on a reluctant two stars. The premise hooked me immediately. A girl growing up in a marginal colony, outside the reach of a vast empire; an attack that destroys her life; an orphaned survivor who reinvents herself and aims for something dangerous and prestigious. Mecha pilots . Imperial power. Rebellion simmering at the edges. On paper, this is exactly my kind of book. And the early chapters deliver. The opening has momentum, emotional stakes, and a sense of place. I was invested. Then the book shifts. Once the story moves into training and institutional life, the tension drains away. The plot becomes rigid and predictable, and there is one extended section where you can see the outcome from kilometres away. It drags. It really drags. Page after page of waiting for the inevitable, wishing t...

Mistletoe Murder by Leslie Meier is a small-town Christmas mystery . First published in 1991, it comes from a world without mobile phones , and that matters more than you might expect. There are moments where the modern reader instinctively thinks, just call someone, just text, just check, only to remember that none of that exists yet.  I experienced this as an audiobook, and unfortunately that had a noticeable impact on my enjoyment. The narration is by Karen White , and it is not very good. At first I genuinely wondered whether I was listening to a poorly edited AI recording, because the delivery is full of awkward pauses in the middle of sentences. Words are separated strangely, and then I realised the narrator just had to jump to the next line on the page, resulting in readings like blue… sweater. The rhythm never quite settles, and it repeatedly pulls you out of the story. That issue is compounded by a recurring structural choice in the book itself. Each chapter opens with a...

Doctor Who: 10 Days of Christmas is a festive anthology of short Doctor Who stories, all set around Christmas in one way or another. I listened to this as an audiobook , which comes in at around six hours, making it an easy, compact listen. The kind of thing you can dip into over a few evenings in December without any commitment stress. The structure is straightforward. Ten short stories, quick to establish their premise and quick to resolve it. That pacing works well in audio form. None of the stories overstay their welcome, and there is a nice variety of settings. Alien planets , spaceships , strange workplaces, including one story centred around a Christmas factory . On paper, that variety sounds ideal, and in terms of pure Doctor Who flavour, it largely works. The problem is the Christmas element itself. While every story technically includes Christmas, the level of integration varies wildly. In some cases, Christmas is central to the mood and the events. In others, it barely exi...

Murder, She Wrote: A Killer Christmas is one of those books I picked up with a very clear purpose. I wanted something seasonal, something Christmassy, and definitely not a romance. I tend to gravitate towards Christmas mysteries in December, and this seemed like a safe bet. After all, it stars Jessica Fletcher , the beloved amateur sleuth from the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote, and it promises murder in Cabot Cove at Christmas. On paper, this should have been perfect. The story is set in Cabot Cove during the holiday season, but here is the first odd choice. It does not begin at Christmas. It begins at Thanksgiving . From there, the book spends an extraordinary amount of time on preparations for a large, multi-day Christmas festival . Committees are formed. Meetings are held. People sign up for tasks. Schedules are discussed. Decorations are planned. You are there for all of it. Every step. Every organisational detail. At first, this is actually quite pleasant. There is s...

The Sittaford Mystery ( 1931 ) was my final December pick for the 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge . This one was chosen by vote, and I did vote for it, even though at the time I had slightly the wrong idea about what kind of book it was. For some reason, I was convinced it was a Poirot mystery . When I realised it wasn’t, I briefly wondered whether it had at least been adapted as a Poirot story, but as far as I can tell, it has been adapted as a Miss Marple episode instead. Or perhaps I was mixing it up with something else entirely. Either way, it wasn’t what I expected, but that didn’t end up being the main issue. What makes this novel stand out in Christie’s body of work is its protagonist. The character we mainly follow is Emily Trefusis , a woman determined to prove the innocence of her fiancé, who has been arrested for murder. Rather than waiting passively for events to unfold, Emily actively investigates, travelling, questioning people, and pushing the case forward. I a...

I read Her Last Christmas by Claire McGowan because I was in the mood for something seasonal but not romantic. A Christmas murder mystery felt like a safe bet, and this one delivers exactly that: snow , isolation, wealth, discomfort, and a body in the hot tub before the mulled wine has time to cool. The story follows Emma, a barrister from a working class background, who joins her boyfriend Michael and his circle of extremely wealthy friends for Christmas in an Alpine chalet . They have been dating for six months, which matters more than it first appears. Emma expected a quiet holiday for two; instead, she finds herself stranded on a mountain with people who have known each other forever, who ski effortlessly, who move through luxury as if it were air. She cannot ski. She does not belong. She knows it, and they know it too. When one of the group is murdered, suspicion falls neatly and conveniently on the outsider. The plot unfolds through a compact series of twists, none of them wi...

Cat Among the Pigeons (1959) is officially a Poirot novel, but only just. This is one of those books where Poirot exists more in name than in presence. For most of the story, he is completely absent, and when he finally appears, it feels as if he has simply dropped in to tidy everything up. I’ve heard people say that quite a few Poirot novels work like this, and this one is a perfect example. The opening of the book doesn’t even feel like a murder mystery. It starts with international politics, revolution, and stolen jewels, edging into spy novel territory. That part dragged for me, partly because it felt disconnected from what the book eventually becomes. Only later does the story settle into its main setting, a girls’ boarding school , which is where most of the novel actually takes place. Once we arrive at the school, the cast expands rapidly. There are teachers, students, staff, and police officers, and I struggled to identify clear main characters. Two schoolgirls stand out mor...