Unapologetic Reviews

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Towards Zero (1944) as part of the 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge , and I listened to it as an audiobook narrated by Hugh Fraser. Going in, I remembered this story as a Miss Marple mystery, which turned out to be misleading. That version comes from the television adaptation. In its original form, Towards Zero does not feature Miss Marple at all. Instead, this is a Superintendent Battle novel, one of Christie’s lesser-known recurring detectives. Knowing that helped recalibrate my expectations, but it also highlighted how much my memory of the story was shaped by the adaptation. Certain beats were familiar, others felt different, and at times I wasn’t sure whether I was remembering the book or the television version. The setup itself is solid. A group of people gathers in a coastal setting, old relationships resurface, tensions simmer, and everything builds towards an inevitable act of violence. Christie’s idea here is that murder does not begin at the moment of the cri...

At Bertram’s Hotel ( 1965 ) is a Miss Marple novel that I read as part of the 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge , and in several ways it felt quite unique compared to the other books I read this year. This is very firmly a Miss Marple story. She is present from the beginning to the end, and that alone made it feel refreshing after so many novels where the detective appears late or feels almost incidental. This is also one of Christie’s later novels, and you can feel that immediately. The book is steeped in a quiet sense of unease about modernity. It looks back at an older London , an older way of life, and contrasts it with a world that is changing fast and not always for the better. That sense of nostalgia, mixed with suspicion, runs through the entire story and gives it a very distinct atmosphere. I knew this story quite well going in, because it is one of my favourite episodes from the Miss Marple television series . That actually helped, because the novel itself is very diff...

I read One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940) as part of the 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge , and this time it really was a Poirot novel in the fullest sense. Poirot is present for most of the story, which genuinely surprised me. After reading so many books where he appears only at the very end, it was refreshing to have him involved from early on. This is also one of the novels that features Inspector Japp as a proper character. In the television series, Japp replaces a rotating cast of inspectors from the books. Here, though, he is exactly where he belongs, working alongside Poirot in a way that feels natural and familiar. This is the story I always think of as “the dentist one”. The murder of a dentist is the central event, and interestingly, the Hungarian title reflects that directly. The English nursery rhyme does not translate well, so the Hungarian edition went with The Dentist’s Chair , which honestly makes a lot of sense. I realised while reading that I had encountered this...

I read Cards on the Table (1936) as part of my 2025 Agatha Christie Reading Challenge. The premise is wonderfully bold. Four detectives and four suspected murderers are invited to a dinner party by the eccentric Mr Shaitana . By the end of the night, the host is dead, and the real game begins. Christie herself once said this was one of her favourites, and it is easy to see why. The setup is unusual, even daring, because the mystery relies far less on physical clues and far more on psychology. Poirot is here, but he is not working alone. He is joined by Superintendent Battle , Colonel Race , and the sharp-witted Ariadne Oliver . Each approaches the suspects differently, and Christie uses those differences to explore four distinct ways of thinking about guilt. The suspects themselves are a study in possibility. Each has a dark shadow in their past, and each is capable of murder. At times, it truly feels as though it could have been anyone. That may be why I never remember the solution....

I'm Glad My Mom Died is a memoir by Jennette McCurdy , written in her own voice and from her own experience. As a child, Jennette wanted to be a writer, not an actor. The book’s provocative title sets the tone, and while it may sound shocking at first, by the end I understood her, and was also glad her mother died. Many describe this as a book about the dark side of childhood stardom , but they are only partially right. This is more a story about abuse and enmeshment —about a mother so entangled with her child’s identity that there is no space left for that child to grow, express herself, or even exist as a separate person. It should be required reading in psychology courses as a modern case study of dysfunctional family dynamics . While the book covers disturbing aspects of the entertainment industry, Jennette herself recognises that being a child actor doesn’t have to be inherently damaging. During the filming of Sam & Cat, she briefly becomes friends with Ariana Grande , an...

The Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie is a Poirot novel that was first published in 1934. Christie plays with a theatrical structure in Three Act Tragedy, dividing the mystery like a stage play.  The story begins with a party at Sir Charles Cartwright ’s house. We are introduced to the cast of characters and you immediately start to wonder who is going to die. It’s really best to go into the rest of the story blind, as it has surprising twists and turns from the beginning. The story itself is rather slow-paced and feels meandering at some points, more focused on the characters than the mystery, but in the end it all comes together. Although this is a Poirot story, he appears very little in it. He’s there when the first murder takes place, briefly mentioned in the second act, but only returns for the third act to solve the mystery and dazzle everyone with his little gray cells . The majority of the sleuthing is done by Mr Satterthwaite and Hermione “Egg” Lytton Gore . Mr Satt...

Agatha Christie ’s The Thirteen Problems is a compilation of thirteen short stories. This is the first time she introduces her beloved character, Miss Marple . The stories themselves weren’t made into movies, but elements from them were used. I listened to it as an audiobook. It’s very hard to talk about this book. The main plot device is that a group of people from many walks of life get together and tell each other mystery stories that actually happened. The narrator knows what the solution was, and the others try to guess. Predictably, Miss Marple gets it every time. However, this is only predictable for a modern audience — we know Miss Marple well by now. For the original readers, this came as a surprise. Although The Thirteen Problems was published as a collection in 1932, the short stories it contains were actually written and released earlier, starting in 1927. Christie later expanded Miss Marple into a full-length novel with The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930. The book version...

I listened to Shari Franke 's The House of My Mother as an audiobook, narrated by the author herself. It was a mixed experience. In the early chapters—where she describes her mother, Ruby’s childhood and their family’s early years—her reading felt distant, almost detached. Since Shari wasn’t part of that story, it came across as a recitation rather than storytelling. However, once the focus shifted to her own experiences, her narration became more engaging. Shari is careful not to tell her siblings' stories beyond what directly overlaps with her own, which is intentional and respectful. The only sibling she delves into is her brother Chad, and honestly, I felt bad for him at times. She recounts life before the cameras, the YouTube years, and what happened after their family’s channel declined—suddenly and dramatically, about halfway through the book. At that point, I thought, OK, so what’s the rest of the book going to be about? I couldn’t help but compare it to two other memo...

Agatha Christie 's Five Little Pigs was written in the 1940s, so it's a rather old book—but that's true of pretty much all of Agatha Christie's books. I actually tried to read this book once before. Funny thing: when I was in high school, I had a summer of reading Agatha Christie. I didn't just read Poirot and Miss Marple , but I also read Tommy and Tuppence ’s stories. I highly recommend them; I really love that duo. The best one was N or M?, which is actually more of a spy novel than anything else. That summer, I got most of my books from an antique store because they were very cheap there. The library didn’t really have Agatha Christie because it was considered lowbrow reading—not classic literature. The books I bought were old. My copy of Five Little Pigs was a misprint, missing parts of the story, so I never finished it. Plus, by the end of the summer, I had to switch back to reading the required school books, which were long and numerous. I got behind becau...

The Answer is No is a short story by Fredrik Backman. It was translated by Elizabeth DeNoma from Swedish. So, this guy is a famous author, and I've never read any of his books because I normally don't read contemporary novels. But this just came out in December, and I saw it as a recommendation. I needed one last book to make my book count, which is only 20, mind you. It's 68 pages, and it was the end of December, so I was like, "Okay, let's give this a shot." The description said it's funny. I was actually pleasantly surprised by this short story. It talked about the absurdities of modern life in a very intelligent —and also funny way. I chuckled out loud several times while reading this. I also loved how it just started from one little event, and that led into this whole chain of events that culminated in the main character being in a different, but also very similar, space in the end. That was very interesting. The main character is called Lucas, and h...

I gave this book four stars. Although I’ve never read anything by Veronica Roth, I’ve always known her as the author of the Divergent series—which, frankly, isn’t my thing. I saw the movies and didn’t enjoy them much. But this novella? It’s a different story. One of its biggest strengths is the use of Eastern European mythology, especially Polish folklore. I loved how the mythical creatures seamlessly blended into the modern world. The fast-paced narrative also worked well for a novella, keeping it engaging and compact. That said, there were a few drawbacks. The present-tense narration felt jarring and unnatural, which made it hard to settle into the story. I kept hoping it would switch to past tense, and it sometimes did, but that didn't last. Another issue was the excessive descriptions. For a novella, there were just too many details—room layouts, herb lists, even comb counts. These slowed down the plot and felt like filler rather than substance. Despite these gripes, the core s...

An Air of Water is a prequel novella set in the Amefyre world , focusing on Viantha Waterborne . It’s an intriguing addition to the series, offering valuable backstory and hints that enhance the main storyline. While it stands alone as a self-contained tale, fans of the series will appreciate its connections to the larger narrative. The novella is set in winter, but don’t expect a cosy, festive vibe—this is no heartwarming Christmas story. It leans heavily into romance , which makes it more predictable than the main novels, but it’s still an enjoyable read. Viantha, a somewhat minor character in the main series, is fleshed out here, giving her depth, and explaining a lot of her actions. This development leads me to believe she’ll play a larger role in the next book. Her brother also makes an appearance... While the novella is well-crafted, I feel R.A. Sandpiper ’s writing shines brighter in full-length novels , where the expansive world-building and intricate plots have more room to u...