Category Book Reviews
Review: The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss
There’s really nothing like dipping into a book feeling returning to an old friend. Comfortable, comforting, like it’s an old story you know and love. Reading The Wise Man’s Fear was like continuing on a long journey with people and places I was already very intimate with. It took a very long time (nearly 1000 pages), we got a […]
Review: On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
On a weekend trip to London when I had lent my Kindle to my brother and needed something to read, I picked up On Chesil Beach for sheer superficial reasons: it was thin and would fit into my already over-brimming backpack. Plus, you know, it’s so pretty. I had read it previously during my post-Atonement Ian McEwan phase, but […]
Review: The Maze Runner Trilogy, James Dashner
In which I describe my tumultuous relationship with this series, my love of the YA genre and the problem with the third book.
Review: the Miniaturist, Jessie Burton
On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later […]
Review: Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
I’m starting to become quite the Hardy fan now, having read and loved The Return of the Native and Tess of the D’Urbervilles in the last year or so. I’m going to pretend, however, that my desire to read this particular book wasn’t fuelled by a certain upcoming film adaptation starring Carey Mulligan, and a particular penchant for all […]
Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
I read this book for a number of very random reasons: a) it was free on my Kindle (sickening, I know). b) I kind of felt a little sorry for poor old Anne being continually overshadowed by her older sisters, and c) I simply felt the urge to read a good old old-fashioned classic. I’ve […]
Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?: (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling
I probably shouldn’t have read this on public transport so much; I definitely got a few strange looks at my stifled giggles and silent laughs. I’ve been a fan of Mindy Kaling for a while and have religiously watched The Mindy Project through all of its low parts, because the highs are just so clever […]
Review: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss
“I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others […]
Review: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn
“Who are you? What have we done to each other? These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it […]
Review: The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton
“It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields. On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes. A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and […]
Bethany Wren 