xabbeylongx's reviews
170 reviews

We Are Voulhire: A New Arrival under Great Skies by Matthew Tysz

Did not finish book. Stopped at 32%.

- Pacing is too fast.
- Not given enough time to learn the characters before new ones are made, and it’s confusing
- POVs in the story have no rhythm and they’re a little confusing
- Unsure as to what time it’s set in, seems to be a mixture of future, present and past, so it’s a very big jumble and I couldn’t get into it

The Rebound by Leeanne Slade

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Spoilers Ahead:

This book revived me in ways I didn’t expect it to. There’s no way anyone should go about their lives without having read this book. It’s immediately one of my favourites, and I wish I could go back and red it all over, again and again. I had the audiobook, and the narrator of it made the book so much better!

So we follow Kitty as her boyfriend, Archie, proposes to her. He proposes to her with pizza (?), and because of the nasty divorce between Kitty’s parents, she vowed that she wouldn’t ever get married. They’ve been together for years, and so he knows the qualms she has about marriage, and she has no interest in getting married. She says yes, and it all moves so quickly, and she finds herself having a panic attack at work. Leo, her work arch-nemesis, finds her and he helps her.

She calls the marriage off with Archie when it all gets too much. He’s livid, and Kitty doesn’t want to lose him, so she compromises with him. She says if they can make it through 3 months of no contact, until the end of the summer, to sort out their feelings for each other, then they can see if she can get over her fear of marriage, and they can get back together. So, they take a break, and no contact.

Kitty moves her stuff into her friend Tristan’s house, and then they start sharing together. Kitty doesn’t want to tell anyone she knows about the engagement, but somehow ends up bumping into Leo again. When he offers to take her to collect her things, and she finds a used condom in the bins, she knows that he had sex with another woman, because they never used them. He “didn’t like the feel of them” (eye roll into another dimension) and when she called him, he said that they were on a break. She was heartbroken.

She tries online dating, but it isn’t for her. Tries picking up people in the pub, and that’s even worse. Luckily, as a toxic man tries to guilt her into doing things for him, Leo is there and pulls him off of her. Her and Leo make a deal, which drunk Kitty doesn’t remember until Leo reminds her the next day…

They are going to have a rebound fling. Leo is recently divorced, and still madly in love with his wife, Isabelle, and so he doesn’t want anything, and Kitty wants to get back at Archie and sleep with someone else, and they are both heartily attracted to each other, so they decide to sleep together. Leo has one condition, and that is that they don’t catch feelings, and she only fucks him when she wants to, not because she wants to get back at Archie.

The rest of the summer is spent her working towards her big pitch for her company (which Leo is also working for, although he secretly hopes that her company will win, and prevents his boss from stealing her ideas) and also going on dates with Leo. It’s all to help her get ready for marriage, and she starts to find herself. She starts seeing a therapist, and she helps her to talk about her family life and everything happening with Archie. When her and Leo are having a picnic in the park, she spots Archie, and and she runs after him. He’s holding another girl’s hand, but they hug.

Leo is absolutely livid - he’s infuriated by her need to talk to Archie, even after he treats her like shit and didn’t even wait a day to jump into bed with someone else. They have an argument, where he is essentially just saying every way in which Archie lacks as a boyfriend, and Kitty brings up that he won’t move on from his wife. They have a heated make-out session, even after they say that the deal is off, and then they’re fine.

Unsurprisingly, Kitty starts to catch feelings for him, even after he said that he wouldn’t love anyone but his wife. They do start having sex, as Kitty wants to do it for herself. Her and Leo’s agreement comes to a close (after he’s brought her home to meet his entire family?) and she breaks off her engagement to Archie, after learning that he’s never really cared for her, he only liked holding her lack of money against her. He didn’t listen to her, and only her own needs, so she decided to go and do things for herself for now.

She and her company wins the proposal! It’s a massive thing for them, and they’re all so pleased. Leo comes in to congratulate her, and he tells her he’s leaving for London, to be closer to his ex-wife. She’s pregnant, and they want to try and give it a go. She’s upset, but lets him go.

Three years later, both her and Leo are up for the same award. Kitty wins, and he congratulates her. They end up having sex again, and Kitty knows that it will always be him, although he seems like he doesn’t care - he’s using it as a last goodbye. She runs back to her room, but he follows her. He tells her that he won’t ever love anyone like Isabelle, and they leave it there. Next time they see each other is at the airport, where he gets off his flight to tell her that he will never love anyone like he does her, and they decide to make a go of things.

I simply adored this book. It had everything I could ask for in a romance novel. The tone was humorous, and Kitty was genuinely funny, and she wasn’t forced to be either. The whole book had a very natural voice, and it made for a really good read. I loved the characters - especially Kitty, as I find she’s very relatable - and I liked Leo for most of the book also. Towards the end he was a bit of a knob, but I’ll get into that later. I loved the fact that there was a genuine connection between Kitty and Leo; it was believable, and not based solely on sex. This book followed them getting to know each other on an intimate level, which I think is so much more important and poignant than it just being sex-based. It felt like I was genuinely watching their love bloom, an outsider looking in, knowing that they love each other. It was spectacular. Archie was portrayed fantastically - a narcissistic man who you realise is bad over time just as the main character does. I love that technique, and it worked beautifully in this instance. I love the friendships in the book, the personal goals, the character growth of kitty (better than any book I’ve ever read before) and the fact that Kitty doesn’t have to change herself and like marriage to be happy.

It’s little, nit-picky things that are keeping it from 5 stars - for the majority of the book, it was definitely going to be 5 stars, but it got to the end and I couldn’t keep it up there anymore. I loved the characters. As I said, I absolutely adored Kitty, but she kept saying that she “knows that look” and it got a little bit annoying after a while - especially as she was wrong most of the time. Also, Leo, babe, what are you doing? You’ve got this girl who’s head-over-heels for you, and you’re obviously the same for her, and yet you’re going back to your wife who left you because you couldn’t have kids? The whole of the book he’s a smart and kind person, and towards the end, he’s as thick as pig shit. It annoyed me how he would say that he loved Kitty, and act liked he did also, but then tell her that he would only love his wife? It makes no sense!! And it’s so disappointing because I loved his character up until then, and then there was all this rubbish about how the couldn’t be together, and I’d just had enough. I like the fact that it showed her growth after 3 years, showing how she had grown without needing to rely on a partner, but I think the ending was a little longer than it needed to be. It was great book, but then it just got to be too long, and it ruined the rest of it for me.

Undoubtedly, this book is a must-read! I would definitely recommend for the romance fans!!

Update!!
I decided, after several arguments with myself, that I was being too harsh for the grading, and it’s definitely worth the 5 stars!!

There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Spoilers Ahead:

This book was okay. I had high hopes for it, and was expecting it to be a quick read, but I honestly struggled to get through it.

Makani is a student who has travelled from Hawaii to a new school after an incident she has. She lives with Grandma Young, and has two friends to rely on. A few summers ago she had a friends-with-benefits situation with a guy called Ollie, and she finds herself still drawn to him, even after a summer with no contact. They finally rekindle their relationship, slowly, after she finds out that he still likes her also.

A girl from their school is brutally murdered. She’s found sliced up, and everybody is saddened, and shocked. A few other people also get killed, by the same person, and people start to feel very scared. They want to find a pattern, and they start to think it’s because of people who stand out, are the best in their field. People who’ve had awards, or moved here - like Makani.

A lot of people assume it’s Ollie, and Makani seems to be the only one on his side - she doesn’t like people assuming someone’s guilty due to how they look. And anyway, when her Grandma goes away, Ollie stays over, and she finds someone else in the house. He tries to stab her, and Ollie stops him. Luckily, her Grandma comes back in time, although she does get stabbed. But they find out who the murderer is, and Ollie chases him (butt-naked, I may add) but he gets away.

Her Grandma is okay, but she has to go to hospital, and they’re all so scared. A couple of truck drivers see him, unknowing of the fact that he is a serial killer, and helps him to get around town. He attacks all four of them - Makani, Ollie and her two other friends - and all of the other 3 get stabbed. One of them dies, but the rest make it through. She thinks Ollie is dead for a long time, but he actually survives, and they’re officially together.

I don’t know why it took me so long to read. Honestly, there were some moments that were genuinely thrilling, and I got chills. Perkins managed to do a fantastic job of creating really chilly scenes, and that was really good. However, I think the excitement went downhill as soon as we were told - halfway through the book, I might add - who the killer is. I was hoping there would be a plot twist - I had my money set on Chris, Ollie’s police officer brother - but I was left bitterly disappointed. I spent most of the book waiting for excitement that never came to be. Apart from the slight chills when the killer was watching them, there wasn’t much to work with. And the ending was rushed, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s rushed endings. You mean that Alex died and we didn’t get to see how their lives were impacted? Ollie was ‘killed’ and now he’s magically alive? And Chris acts less like a police officer than I do.

The characters are a little annoying, to be honest. Most of them are very distasteful, and I just can’t seem to like them. Some of them just seem really rude for no reason. Middle school bullies is the vibe I was getting from most of them.

A lot of the plot doesn’t seem to go together either. Like the whole blaming Ollie thing, did it really affect the plot that much? And Makani’s backstory, it seems a little much, knowing she had to leave because she cut off someone’s ponytail, after being practically TW assaulted? It doesn’t really make any sense. It was an okay read, but nothing special.

Content Warnings

Death on Dartmoor by Bernie Steadman

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Spoilers Ahead:

Another fantastic book by Bernie Steadman. The second book in a series of three - so far! - I was very impressed with this book. Steadman has managed to keep the same exciting pace in the first book throughout the second as well, with a plot that’s totally different but still just as enticing!

We follow Dan Helier - again - and his team as they dig up two dead bodies on Dartmoor - hence the name. They are just bodies, as their hands and feet have been cut off, making identification nigh-on impossible. At the same time, a student is killed after taking some drugs at a party. There’s him and another boy, and he has complete liver failure, whilst one of them goes into a coma and never wakes up again. The parents and the siblings are all livid at the fact this has happened to their children, but Dan advises them to not do anything that could mess up the investigation.

They find out that the recipe for the drugs has been tainted, although they don’t know why, whether it’s an accident or a calculate plan. What with the dead boy and the bodies, Dan has a lot of work ahead of him, and he somehow thinks the two cases are related; again!

When the boy with liver failure wakes up, they get a name from him as the supplier. It belongs to a Moss Garrett, who works at the animal sanctuary with his mum and his brother, whom Claire (Dan’s girlfriend, and a key character in book 1 - huzzah!) recognises from her school. They work in an animal sanctuary, and both Sally and Dan go there, undercover, to stake Moss out - they had enough evidence to arrest him, but not enough to figure out who makes the drugs, so they can stop any more children from dying.

They search for leads, and it’s a bit hit-and-miss at times. There seems to be no new leads about the ‘Bog bodies’, as they are labelled, and they actually find out they’re originally from New Zealand. As for the Garrett’s, they follow the entire family, but mostly Moss. They stake out the animal sanctuary, and are certain that drugs are being hidden there.

They find deeds to the house which shows that the animal sanctuary, a charity, doesn’t actually belong to Moss’s mother. In the house at the animal sanctuary, there is a bed which belongs to someone, but it’s ransacked, as if they were packing quickly. It belongs to a girl they used to work with. It turns out, Moss’s mother took over from the girl after she ran away and got the recipe wrong, resulting in the deaths. They arrest the Garrett’s, thinking that the brother might not be as clean as they want him to be. In addition to the drug charges, Moss is getting done for TW sexual assault on one of the boys who helped them to find him, and Garrett’s mother ends up flinging acid in his face. Also, one of their own - Adam Foster - is stabbed after trying to be the hero, and it’s touch and go as to whether he will live or not.

Additionally, the bodies are related to the Garrett case! Moss’s mother apparently ‘bought’ the land from the deceased Australian couple - but she didn’t. They were just killed, and she took the land without anyone knowing. And this took Moss’s brother by surprise, as he never got the love and support he needed from his parents, so he looked at them as parents when they took him in.

And, as they expected, Moss’s brother was actually the one behind the body in the animal sanctuary - it was Mr Garrett, his father. After years of abusing his mother, he hit him around the head, and took him into town, but he was already dead. He hid him at the sanctuary, in the car, which is where his body was found.

As usual, Bernie Steadman did an incredible job writing this book. There was so much going on, so much to work with, so much excitement and mystery and thrill. Steadman is very quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. The characters are so well-developed and lovely to read about, the plot is always exceptional, and their is a humorous tone throughout that I have grown to adore with Steadman’s books. Also, may I just say, thank you for getting Claire and Dan together! I was rooting for them in the first book, and I felt the relief in my body when I realised they were still together. There’s nothing much else I can say, other than I would recommend her books until the day I die.

Content Warnings

Death In The Woods by Bernie Steadman

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

Spoilers Ahead:

So, I can’t lie to you, I didn’t have high hopes for this book. I don’t know why, because I wanted the surprise and so I didn’t even read the blurb, but all I know is that when it turned out to be amazing, it was a very big shock to me!

We follow Dan Hellier as he’s investigating the TW murder of a girl, Carly Braithwaite, left in the woods by a school. There are a lot of suspects at first; Mr Braithwaite, her father, who had already been done for abuse; Jenna Braithwaite , her sister, who had an argument with her right before she died; one of her teachers, Mr Westlake, who actually was TW ‘in love’ with Carly (a child, yes, how disgusting); Jed Abrams, a dodgy music man; and Jamie May, the person who was ‘in love’ (infatuated with, actually) the victim.

It’s Dan’s first case, and he wants to prove himself. He has Ian Gould with him, who’s retiring after his last case - this one! Dan and Ian don’t really get along, but they decide to go on a mission, as they have a sneaking suspicion that Jed Abrams is somehow entangled in this mess.

Claire Quick goes to see Mr Westlake, as she is his friend, and she finds Jamie there, smoking weed with him. That’s when he admits to being heartbroken over Carly’s death, and Jamie hits Claire over the head until she’s concussed, before tying her up.

All this time, Jed Abrams has been selling TW child pornography, and has been under the guidance of a Latvian gang, one of the members in which kills Ian Gould on this mission. Dan has been double-crossed by Chaz, Jed’s secretary, in return for a couple grand. They manage to keep one of the Latvian guys in hospital, and his partner - whom he is madly in love with - comes to save him. He offers to tell them everything about the gang, about the operation of child pornography, and how they were going to film that night before moving on.

So, even though Ian Gould died, their hunches had been correct. And they set up a mission to try and catch the gang and the peadophiles. What they didn’t expect was for Jamie May to do a runner, Mr Westlake to attempt TW suicide, and for Claire Quick to escape and tell the police about Jamie.

Then it all happens all at once!

They bring Jamie in, as they find Carly’s missing ballet slipper in his bag, and he tells them that it was Jenna who killed her! He walked in on her strangling Carly, and they called Jed to move her with his van. They let Jamie go and interview Jenna, who has definitely been being used and even using other children in these porn shoots for money, and is also very high in this interview. She says that Jamie is actually the killer, and they find holes in his story, and they realise he is, in actuality fact, the killer.

They catch the paedophiles and even the Latvian gang members as they’re trying to escape, with Dan and Sally sustaining minor injuries. Jed Abrams gets arrested, Mr Westlake, if he didn’t end up TW killing himself was definitely put in prison, and Jenna and Mr Braithwaite had to mend their relationship, but it was a case closed for the murder.

Jamie had killed her because he was in love with her, and had gifted her a ring - which she had laughed at - and then they found out about her relationship with Westlake, and he saw red. When he walked into their house the next day and saw Carly and Jenna having a row, when Carly picked up the phone to call Westlake, he strangled her, wanting her to pay for making him feel embarrassed, but he pushed too hard. And when Jenna returned, she saw him over her dead sister, and had to help him hide the body.

Honestly, this book could have been 5 stars - very easily could have been 5 stars. I loved the dialogue in it, the variety of characters, the plot - oh my god, the plot was so goddamn exciting! I love it when stories have multiple plot twists, ones that actually made sense, and these certainly did. I was entertained the whole way throughout, I don’t think there was every a moment where I was bored. However, there were a few sexist and racist remarks, and it kind of put me off a bit. I was shocked when I found out that it was written by a woman, as you’d normally find some of the phrases in ‘women written by men’… you know the ones. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I will definitely be reading the second one!

Content Warnings

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:
I thought this book was short and sweet, and it was a really interesting read! It’s only 21 pages long, and if you’re interested in fast-paced psychological horror, this is definitely the book for you.

We follow an unnamed narrator as she is TW imprisoned by her husband. She’s just given birth to a baby boy, and it is likely that she suffers from postpartum depression. As she starts to become stir-crazy from being inside the room for so long and suffering the TW abuse that she did, she starts thinking that there are women on the other side of the wallpaper, trying to get in to see her husband. At the beginning, she believes her husband, John (who is a physician and somehow makes all her decisions for her - whilst telling her that she has complete freedom) is doing it all because he loves her. Then she starts to be scared of him. She writes a diary, but he doesn’t like it when she does, so she has to hide it from him. Eventually, she tries to tear the wallpaper, because she’s convinced John knows about her obsession with it, and so tries to tear it off to free the woman behind it. When John finds out, he faints.

A lot of the way through this book I had no clue what was going on - and, to be honest, I had to look up what actually happened. Now that I have read about it, I think it’s a very cool book. It’s essentially about patriarchal standards, and how women are made to feel like they’re going mad, and belittled, even when they show their love to men (just like our narrator was). I like how everything was described, and I like the imagery, and I liked how it ended - though I still can’t work out if she is still alive or not, because it seems to me that she isn’t, but I could be wrong. As I said, short read although sort of hard to follow along with - but I think that really adds to the plot!

Content Warnings

Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

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funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Spoilers Ahead:

This book very much gives off Emily Henry vibes, and honestly? I’m here for it. First book of Ali Hazelwood’s that I’ve read, after hearing her name being raved about for ages on TikTok, and I can safely say that I’m glad I did. I was a bit hesitant to read it at first, but I’m glad I put my qualms aside.

We follow Mallory Greenleaf as she tries to hold the fort at her house. Her father has sadly passed, her mother has rheumatoid arthritis that makes working difficult, and Mallory has two very demanding sisters, and lots of bills to pay. She gave up school and started working with her uncle as a mechanic in a garage, working hard to pay the bills.

One day, her best friend Easton invites her to a chess tournament. She hasn’t played chess for four years due to an estrangement with her father, who wanted for her to play chess so badly. But Easton is down one player, and is moving off to college soon, so Mallory uses it to spend time with her, unaware that she’ll be so good. She wins every match, and has to go against the No. 1 chess player in the world, Nolan Sawyer, who is not only the best and apparently a sore loser, but he’s also incredibly attractive. Somehow, Mallory beats him, but runs off before anything else can happen.

A woman called Defne travels to her house and invites her to do a chess program with her. For one year, she’d be paid to study chess. She saw how Mallory beat Nolan, and wanted her talent. Mallory, wanting to help her family and not wanting to play chess ever again, declines. However, when her uncle left the garage and left a man called bob in charge, she didn’t realise that he would fire her, leaving her jobless and with no money. Easton leaves for college, and Mallory takes the job.

It’s a long commute, but the money is good. She has an annoying office-mate who is extremely controlling, and doesn’t like noise, but she gets on with it. She’s earning enough money to pay the mortgage on their house, and she’s being paid to study chess - living the life! And when she’s put into a few competitions, despite having a low ranking, she quickly becomes popular, and everyone knows how talented she is. The only problem is one of her younger sisters, Darcy, knows that she is doing chess (she’s lied to her family about where she works, so no one knows she works playing chess).

Mallory gets put on a team with Emil, Tenu and the dreaded Nolan, and sparks start to fly. To be honest, it’s pretty obvious that he is head over heels for her, and she finds him really attractive, but is scared of getting into relationships because she has her family to look after. She loses a match to a known sexist chess player (Koch) but then when they find footage of him cheating she is pulled back into the running. Nolan asked Mallory to be his second, but when she replaced Koch, as he was disqualified, they had to stop training each other.

As he releases videos, being his usual asshole-self, Mallory finds out that Nolan paid Defne to hire her. Mallory feels deceived, and calls him unlovable, and they don’t talk for a while.

Mallory runs away - as she does a lot in this book - and then quits. Oz, her office-mate and, coincidentally, Defne’s partner, goes to her house to shout at her, telling her that she’s selfish for quitting without notice. Mallory then has a breakdown when she hears her mum and her sisters, Sabrina and Darcy, talking about her. She swears at them, and then sobs. They all apologise to each other, and it turns out Darcy had already told her mum about Mallory, so she knew all along. They all apologised, and they made Mallory go back for the World Championships.

In an interview, Nolan backed her up but completely ignored her otherwise. She woke up in the hotel a few days before the Championship, and she walked outside, and that’s where she saw him. She apologised to Nolan, and said she wanted him, and then he said that he wanted her, and the rest is history! They go on playing chess - which is what Mallory wants to do with her life - and they have a happy life together, in their private relationship.

First thing I love about this book is the romance. God, it is so hard to please me with romance these days; all relationships are either toxic, all about sex, or too fast, or too forced, and they’re just not right! But Mallory and Nolan are my exception - I love them. I wasn’t expecting them to have such a good romance, tbh. I think that, too, there was a lack of intimate detail on their sex, and I actually thought it made their relationship stronger. Because you can tell they really care for each other, and it’s not just about sex for them, and I love that. When he delivered her the chicken soup and snickers? Too cute. Too goddamn cute! The only thing I would say is that it isn’t really enemies-to-lovers, but honestly, I thought they had a relatively healthy relationship, and that was a much better read for me.

I love how Mallory stood up for herself. I got chills, I really did. Because all of them that were taking her for granted were starting to really piss me off. Sabrina was hating on her for literally putting a roof over her head, Darcy was being mean for literally no reason - she’s a child, she should not be acting that way - and I know her mum has an illness, but she didn’t give a lot of gratitude to her, in my opinion, considering that without Mal, they would literally have nowhere to go and nothing to own. Her mistreatment pissed me off so much. And when she apologised for calling them bitches, I was raging, because I was so angry on her behalf. I think she’s a character that I love, and I actually found her rotten really realistic and she had good qualities and great flaws, and I’m her biggest defender. Sometimes she said stuff that was a bit childish, but overall, I thought she was a really level-headed person, and I really like her. I think her character growth in this book is immense.

I also like Nolan as well. He doesn’t seem to be narcissistic, like most ‘BookTok boyfriends’ are, and he genuinely seems lovely. I absolutely adore the trope ‘I only see her’, and he has that written all over him. I also love the fact that he is a virgin, and his first time is described as awkward, as it should be! I hate books when they say their first time and they ‘were so good’, it’s like just not realistic. I love the awkwardness, I love the honesty, and I love him.

I hate Sabrina. I don’t like using the word hate, but she was such a rotten character. She was giving off mean girl vibes, and I didn’t even like her after her half-assed apology. I wasn’t that fond of her mum either, but I need to cut her some slack, I guess.

You notice how Easton is only mentioned once? It’s because she never messaged Mallory back, and she somehow got Mallory to apologise for giving up on their friendship!! Mallory is a better person than me because I would not bother talking to that witch again.

I love the way it was written, also, and the tone it was written in. It was so comedic, my sense of humour down to a T. The only thing I found hard to follow along with was all the chess jargon, but you get the gist most of the time. I really enjoyed it, and it made it an even better read, along with the likeable characters. I’m looking forward to reading more of Hazelwood’s books in the future!

A Book of Short Stories by Tabitha Potts

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:
This book is made up of a series of six short stories by Tabitha Potts. I thought, disappointingly, that the stories themselves were really good; they were full of mystery, had some horror tropes that I’m really fond of, and I thought they were quite interesting. However, I couldn’t get over the sexist vibe that was being given off. More often than not, there would be male characters moaning about female characters, or husbands that don’t listen to their wives and obviously can’t stand them, and it got a bit tedious after a while. It took away from the enjoyment a little bit. However, other than that, there are some really good short stories in this book. It’s a quick and easy read, and it’s with Kindle Unlimited, so I’d recommend checking it out.

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Spoilers Ahead:

Honestly, I was not expecting this book to be that good. In the beginning, there were a few comments that made me wonder whether I was going to like the book, but it turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable read.

We follow a group of people as they are lured onto an island - Soldier Island, to be exact. I won’t go into each character in detail, as it will probably take all day, and, if I’m honest, I can’t remember half of their names. All of them don’t know each other, and have been sent letters by a man called Owen, inviting them using their own needs to get them down there. One of them was offered a job as a secretary, others the promise of seeing an old friend, etc etc.

They get to the island and go to the house, and each pick out a room. At this point, there is no sign of Owen, and he has sent a letter saying he is ‘caught up’. In each room is a poem about 10 little soldiers, a dear old nursery rhyme, describing how each soldier died until there was none left. They all think about how weird it is.

They go down for dinner. Unfortunately, a grammar phone plays a particularly scary message, accusing all of them of killing people. No one knows this yet, but these are all true, accident or not. They accuse everyone of setting it off, not trusting anyone.

One of them dies. They rule it a TW suicide, but others exclaim that the man didn’t seem like he would do that. They find that out of the 10 little soldier statues on the table, only 9 remain. Shaken, they all go to bed. And, when they wake up the next morning, another one of them dies, this time a woman.

They start pointing fingers at each other. One by one, they are picked off, and killed. In accordance to the rhyme on their walls, they go in that order and suffer that fate, and then the little china soldiers are slowly hidden.

They keep going, blaming each other, until one of them shoots the other, and she’s left alone, with 9 dead bodies around her. TW ‘One Little Soldier Boy left all alone; He went and hanged himself, and then there were none’. It wasn’t the grief of killing someone that made her hang herself, for the noose was already set up, but she felt the presence of the man she loved, and wanted to do what she knows he wanted her to do.

Ten people dead on an island, no one else there, and the police are baffled. But who done it?

The killer writes a letter in a bottle, and puts it out to sea. He says that out of all of the 10 people, only 1 of them was innocent (the one that sentenced someone to prison, who eventually got hanged for his crimes - crimes he definitely committed, so his conscience is clear). It was him that was the killer, one of the 10. ‘A red herring swallowed one and then there were three’. He faked his own death, and made it look like it was other people doing the killing, and then he killed himself afterwards, to corroborate his story. He said that he had the urge to kill, but not any innocent people, because he liked justice. So, he killed people that were guilty of murder, and then he felt he was doing a service for the world.

I love this book. I loved the fact that all the characters were so just distasteful, I think it worked really well with the plot. As I said, there were a few comments, particularly about ‘queer’ people (I’m assuming they meant weird, but I’m not 100% sure) and some misogynistic comments, but they seemed to be few and far between, and it got a lot better towards the end. It might just be me being sensitive, to be fair, but I just remember feeling a bit uneasy whilst reading those parts.

Honestly, I don’t have much to say about this book, only that I would definitely recommend reading it. It’s a nice mystery book, quite an easy read, and definitely intriguing. I love the fact that everything is tied up and makes sense, and I love the fact that there is a poem to go along with the plot. It’s very clever, and I love it!

Content Warnings

The Pram by Joe Hill

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dark mysterious sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.0

Spoilers Ahead:

I had no idea this was a short story until after I started reading it. To be honest, not my thing. I like short stories, but they have to be a certain way for me to like them, and this just wasn’t to my taste.

We follow Willy as he and his wife try for a baby. Unfortunately, they aren’t successful, and they have a TW miscarriage. His wife, Marianne, is, of course, very distraught, and turns into a shell of herself. His loss, however, is overlooked. He if gifted a pram from one of his friends, and he starts seeing things inside the pram. A baby. He adopts the child as his own, even though the baby isn’t real, and is just a part of his imagination, and he starts seeing horrible apparitions, and it eventually starts to break down his marriage and sends him crazy.

So yeah, there was nothing inherently wrong about this story, it just felt a little rushed. Some points were difficult to understand, because it either happened so fast or it wasn’t described as well as it could have been. ‘Showing, not telling’, is what we’ve been told by our professors, and I think that would be a good thing to know. It could have easily taken me less than a day to finish this, but I just found I couldn’t get into it, unfortunately. I think it’s an excellent plot idea though, and I think it would have been so much better if it had been made into a novel, as there’s so many things you can do with it. The pacing could have been slower, slowly creating up more suspense… it would have been a very good idea, personally speaking.

Content Warnings

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xabbeylongx's reviews 170 reviews

xabbeylongx's reviews
170 reviews