xabbeylongx's reviews
170 reviews

dark mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

So this book was actually not what I was expecting at all. That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing, I was just a little confused by it all.

We follow Georgina Ferrers as she wakes up in an Asylum, wondering how she got there. Turns out she suffered a seizure, and was actually brought in as a voluntary patient. However, she was in clothes that she would never wear, and without her mother’s brooch and her writing case, which she would never leave without. She is suspicious, and wants to leave, but Mr Straker won’t let her because he thinks she is not of sound mind.

Mr Straker tells her that her name isn’t actually Georgina Ferrers. He said that when she came in, she was Lucy Ashton. She has no memories, no recollection of any events, and when a certain Frederick Moordent comes in, they are both infatuated with each other. But, when Georgina acts out, she is no longer seen as a voluntary patient, and is kept under lock and key, with them claiming her officially insane.

She has moments where her memories come back to her, and she tries to remember what actually happened to her. One time she tries to escape, but they bring her back in, and she finds out it is just a ploy. When she turns up at her house, she is shocked to see someone living there, posing as Georgina Ferrers (whom she is supposed to be). Unfortunately, everyone believes the imposter, and it looks like the real Georgina Ferrers is going to be imprisoned for a very long time.

When Georgina discovers her writing case, and her journal, she reads over her memories. It turns out, she put an AD in the newspaper for if anyone knew about Rosina Wentworth, and someone called Lucia came forward. Turns out, after much digging, they were cousins, but they had a little soft spot for each other - or so we thought. Because Georgina’s father was actually one of the Moordent men, she would actually inherit the Asylum, because Frederick owned it, and it should have already been passed down to her. Lucia knew of this, and was just trying to take that and the inheritance that Georgina was owed, so she posed as her. Unfortunately, they looked and sounded alike, so not many people could tell them apart. Double unfortunately, Georgina went to the Asylum to figure out the truth by finding one of the Moordent men, and actually got put in there herself by Dr Straker. When she tries to escape, after Frederick convinces Dr Straker to bring Lucia in (the real Lucia, performing as Georgina Ferrers) Dr Straker finds Lucia and he kills her in his contraption. It was him all along! He kills himself, and then the Asylum is set on fire, and although Lucia survives, Georgina doesn’t forgive her. She doesn’t love either one of them, and she moves on with her life, trying to figure out how she can get her money from her inheritance back.

I can’t lie, I was looking for a book with more of a horror aspect to it, but it was more psychological thriller, I’d say. I was looking forward to being scared. If I thought about it too much, I would probably say that the horror is actually the thought of being trapped in an Asylum with no one to believe that you are the real you, which is quite cool. However, I think the idea of using an inheritance as a way of deceiving someone is so overused, and I recently read a book like it recently, so that put me off a little bit.

I thought the plot and the concept was very cool, and I like the way it was written, although it was sometimes very confusing, and the stories didn’t match up at some points. I can’t lie (again) but there were a lot of things that didn’t make sense to me. The ghostly apparitions and noises that Frederick was seeing, what were they? Because with that, it made me think that I was going to be reading a horror, but, unless there’s some deeper meaning, it really adds nothing to the plot, and it’s just a distraction. If it had contributed to the story, that would have been an excellent addition to the plot, but it was useless if it didn’t connect to the rest of the story.

The sapphic part of the story was quite sweet, except when you think about the fact that it’s fake, and they’re cousins; that sort of ruins the mood a bit.

The characters themselves were just merely meh, I had no sort of attachment to them. I think the realest thing about this book was actually the incestual relationship between Georgina and Lucia, and that wasn’t even real. It’s a shame. Anyway, I would recommend listening to this, especially if you’re into psychological thrillers and the idea of being trapped.

Content Warnings

Pugs of the Frozen North by Philip Reeve

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adventurous lighthearted slow-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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

I had to read this as it was one of my set texts for one of my university modules. We’ve been researching various different children’s books in order to see what makes a good book.

Personally speaking, I thought this book was okay - it didn’t really do anything for me, but I wasn’t the target audience so I can hardly be mad about it. We follow Shen as he is in a shipwrecks and there are 66 pugs dropped from the cargo. Shen goes to collect them all, but the captain drives off, leaving him on his own. Luckily, some of the crew members drop a crate of jumpers for him so that he can stay warm, and he uses some of them to make jumpers for the pugs. However, they’re hungry, so he goes off in search some food.

He comes to a village and meets Sika. She will give him some dog food, in return for a few of his dogs. So, they sled down to the pugs, and Sika is so disappointed. She wanted dogs that were going to be able to pull her sled, and these pugs were too tiny to. However, with all 66 of them, the pugs can pull it along.

Sika wants to win the race her grandpa entered all those years ago so she can ask The Snowfather for a special wish - to keep her grandad alive for the next big race. They enter the race, and they battle against a kraken, yetis, and even other sledders. Eventually, they end up having to help all the others out, and so they all arrive at the same time. Like finds out The Snowfather can’t grant her wish, but she asks him instead to visit her grandfather one last time. He does, and then Sika’s grandfather passes, knowing that he got one last adventure, thanks to The Snowfather, who mysteriously takes his leave after that. Shen is then asked to stay with Sika, the pugs and her family, and he realises that he got what he wished for all along: a family.

So, although this book isn’t necessarily aimed at me, I thought some of the concepts were cool, and I think it’s quite likely to be a popular book for children. It’s very innovative, very imaginative, it’s got a lot of childlike humour and also has a lot of good morals being taught - something that we learned in class was that children’s books are there to help shape children with subtle messages that they can learn and apply in their life, and I certainly think that whilst this is a fun book, it has many hidden meanings, such as the importance of helping others, the important of building relationships with others, and also the importance of not always getting what you wished for, but taking it as it comes anyway. In that regard, it’s a very good book, so I would definitely recommend. Only thing I would say is the grandfather’s death is so sudden, and quite tragic - especially for a children’s book! I wasn’t expecting it at all, lol

Content Warnings

Through the Woods by E.M. Carroll

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

Spoilers Ahead:

This book was fantastic. A series of short stories told in comic-style, and it was amazing. The pictures were beautifully illustrated, and they worked so well with the words in the stories. Everything fit together. The stories themselves were all very interesting, all of them filled with dark twists and turns, and I was kept on my toes throughout! A lovely read, a very quick read as well, and I would definitely recommend!

Content Warnings

The Boyfriend by Michelle Frances

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dark slow-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? Yes

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

I was recommended this book by someone on my university courses, and it was explained to me and it sounded so good I immediately had to add it to my TBR. When I found it in a charity shop, I was over the moon. However, I don’t think I’ve been lead on as much with a book in my whole life.

We follow Amy after she’s had an accident. Due to the accident, she has amnesia, which means she can’t remember the last 6 months of her life. So when she goes on holiday with her friends, Jenna and Lisa, and her mum to her aunt’s old ski house, she’s shocked to find out she invited her boyfriend - one that she can’t remember because they only started dating within the last 6 months! He is a doctor, called jack Stewart, and he said he was working, so he couldn’t come on the holiday with her.

She starts to collect her memories back. For some reason, she knows that Jenna is annoyed at her, but can’t remember why. And no one is more shocked than Amy when Jack Stewart shows up. He’s a lovely man, quite attractive and selfless too. However, there’s one big problem…

Amy made him up. She was so sick of being compared to her her friends, who all had loving husbands, and sick of being a disappointment in her mum’s eyes for never finding someone. So, she made him up: his name, his occupation, everything about him. All the dates, the gifts, etc. She even bought another phone to message hers from, as Martha - Amy’s mum - desperately wanted to meet him, but obviously she couldn’t; he wasn’t real.

So she doesn’t know who is the man living with them that is pretending to be her boyfriend.

And when she brings it up, all of her friends and family on’t believe her, and Jack plays up to it. She becomes more suspicious, but he seems to have an answer for everything. She goes to seek solace in the comfort of her aunt, who lives over the way with Gabriel, but she finds out, again, that her aunt is dead. It’s a shock to her, especially when she realises she is being left with a large sum of money. Upon returning back to the house, she realises she was being followed.

She’s paranoid, losing things or having things being moved and blaming them on Jack, who has a reason for everything. It’s only when she finds Gabriel dead, buried beneath the snow, does she know for certain that it’s Jack - and it’s all because he wants her inheritance.

Whilst she’s been accusing him, he’s been conversing with her bank and getting the money transferred into his account. Fortunately, he needs to have Amy’s verbal confirmation of the transfer. Unfortunately, this means that Jack has been chasing them, holding Martha under knifepoint - he didn’t want to hurt them, he just wanted the money. All his life, he’d been treated as less because he had less money, and he could never afford the fancy things in life, despite working hard and accepting shit from his boss. One day, when Amy saw him kick a cat and end its life, she videoed it, and he knew that he would go to prison - he’s out on parole, but anything like the would make sure he was locked up for good. He stopped her, then went to rob her flat, but saw the money, and then worked out she had a fake boyfriend, and posed as him.

Unfortunately, although they try to escape, Amy agrees to the bank details because she doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. He then takes off, and she skis after him, up the slope that her father died upon. She falls over, trapped by the snow, but Jack - real name Harry - helps her up. He does end up getting away, but she tried her best. She receives a postcard of him a few months later, and then she vows to get her money back.

There’s so many questions left unanswered in this book… What happened to Lisa’s husband? I thought he was boarding a flight, were all the flights just cancelled? Did he not bother coming in the end? Also, what relevance is Jenna’s husband to this? All along I thought her and Jack knew of each other, or there would be some big sister twist, but honestly it adds nothing to the story. It doesn’t explain anything, it’s just another unnecessary miscommunication, and it wasn’t done that cleverly.

Another thing that bugs me is that although most of the pieces fit the puzzle, it feels like some of them have been jammed in to make them fit. Like how could Jack have jumped to that conclusion hat she had a fake boyfriend in that scenario? How could he have done it if she hadn’t have lost her memory? I know he said he would just take it, but he needed her for the bank details, so either way, he would have needed her? I don’t know, and everything about Martha not knowing about the aunt’s death, the dad’s death, all of it felt a little unnecessary and forced in there. Some of it felt really eerie, and it could have worked so well with it had it been linked, but it was just used to fluff out the novel.

Even the characters weren’t that good… you’re telling me that not even her own mother, her own best friends, would believe her over this guy they literally just met? I get she’s just had an accident, but at least give her the benefit of the doubt. Amy was very annoying, but I just feel sad that she had to create a massive lie, then lost all that money, and for what? She has literally gained nothing.

I’m disappointed by this book, I can’t lie. The plot was there, it could have been a very clever book, but it just didn’t do it for me, unfortunately. Some of the parts were quite mysterious and tense, but other than that, it wasn’t my cup of tea.

Content Warnings

Told You So by Leeanne Slade

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emotional hopeful inspiring lighthearted relaxing tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Spoilers Ahead:

Miss Slade, once again you wow me, and leave me sobbing on my bedroom floor. After reading ‘The Rebound’, which very quickly became one of my ultimate favourites, I decided to read Slade’s second and most recent book, and it’s safe to say I’ve found my new favourite author.

We follow Lucie as she’s on her way to her best friend’s wedding. She’s the maid of honour, and so has been there to fix most of the things that have been happening, and now they’re flying out to Spain to see them get married.

There’s just one problem… she can’t stand the best man.

Charlie has been an enormous pain in her ass since the first time she saw him, and she overheard him slating her job. She runs a column where people send in their problems, and she helps them answer it. After her parents died in a car accident, she was left grief-stricken, and she liked helping people. When her column was taken over, they were more concerned about the amount of clicks it had, and so the spark for her column was lost a little bit.

On the flight over to Spain, which has already been delayed multiple times, she is sat next to a woman who quickly receives a lot of attention. This woman’s name is Miranda Bloom, and she is an alleged psychic, a famous one. She tries to help Lucie, apparently sensing her grief, and tells her that her fate is she will meet someone at the end of her trip in Spain, and return home with the love of her life. This will be someone unexpected, someone who she’s crossed paths with before.

Lucie is unconvinced, but also secretly hopeful, having been alone for a long time. When she spots her ex, who had left her a few weeks after the death of her parents to pursue his photography career, she immediately thought he must be the one. She’d been harbouring after Drew for years, never losing those feelings for him, and knows immediately that he is it. But then her childhood best friend, Ethan, starts acting very weird, and she thinks that he might like her too. And then Charlie starts acting really weird, trying to figure out a truce between them, trying to be nice, and although she doesn’t trust him, she bites.

The whole week is spent playing various wedding games (as per the request of Stacey and Rodrigo - the happy couple, Lucie and Charlie’s best friends) and she becomes embroiled between the three. What’s worse, her boss says her column is going to be cut if she doesn’t make a head-turning article, so she decides to do it on the prophecy Ms Bloom told her.

Her very pregnant friend at home, Kimmy, tells her to not just focus on Drew, to maybe think about Ethan and Charlie too. And after Charlie tells her that he’s dating someone - her boss, Sammy - she feels relieved.

One out of three, eliminated!

She bounces back between the two. There’s an undeniable urge for her to pick Drew, but Charlie makes her feel safe, and he gets her to start knowing her worth. She begins to like him, to really like him. She tries to keep him at arm’s length, as she doesn’t want to be hurt by him again. They bond over their grief - his father passed away a few months ago, hence why he’s struggling so much now - and she sees him in a new life.

When a fight breaks out between Drew and Charlie the day of the wedding, Lucie is distraught. She tells Charlie off, and he says that he’s been in love with her since the day he first met her, and he explains that everything he’s done since then has been because he’s had a crush on her, and she starts to see it. He tells her he doesn’t want to be a ‘plot twist’ in her article, and then he leaves.

When she returns, Drew is expecting her to go straight to him. He was shaping her around his career again, saying he wanted to give it a go, but it would mean that she’d have to go with him, and they’d have to make their schedules work. If she stayed at home, Drew wanted to be able to see other women. Apparently, Drew said to Charlie that he ‘dumped’ Lucie because he couldn’t deal with her grief, and left her to do it by herself, and then she can see why Charlie punched him.

She leaves with sadness, hoping to catch Charlie on their plane, but he isn’t there. And when she gets back to England - Kimmy has given birth! - and she goes to see Ms Bloom again, who said she didn’t con her, just gave her some hope, which is something she desperately needed at the time. Bloom tells her that she has to create her own path and put herself first for once, so she apologises to Charlie in her column, after telling everyone she’s shutting it down, and then tries to find something else she wants to do in her life.

Lucie decides to fight for what she wants, for once, and so plans this big surprise to tell Charlie she loves him. However, when she finds him, he’s with a beautiful girl, and it almost sends her away, but she stands her ground. She confesses her love to him, and he says that she can “have all his chances”.

They end by getting a house together, after Lucie finally sells the house that was gifted to her by her parents when they passed, and she finally parted from it. She got a degree in psychology, so she could still help people, and they were going to renovate their new house together. Both of them seeing grief counsellors, they’re both much happier now. And when they come across a box of photos, they realise that they were both in Spain one year on holiday, on the same beach, so their paths had crossed! The prophecy was true, and Bloom was right.

This hit me so hard. I was expecting to really like her and Ethan together, but Charlie did grow on me in the end - despite being a massive prick. His intentions are sort of hard to believe, especially knowing everything that he’s said and done when he “liked” her. They’re not a perfect couple, and I like that. Once again, the relationships in this show are mostly developed by love, and not just sex and lust, which is a massive must for me, and Slade does this so well. She also does character arcs amazingly well, and that’s something that I haven’t witnessed a lot in books, so I was very happy after reading this.

One tiny little thing is that Stacey was annoying as shit for me. I don’t know why, because she’s not supposed to be disliked, but I thought she was needy and quite selfish at times. She definitely wasn’t there for Lucie as much as she should have been - and yes, I do know it was her wedding, but Lucie needed her. Idk, that’s the only bad thing about the book that I can remember really. Another fantastic read, and I can’t wait until the next one is released!

Content Warnings

The Times I Knew I Was Gay by Eleanor Crewes

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective relaxing fast-paced

3.0

Spoilers Ahead:

So in my university course, I’ve picked a few classes that require me to look outside our comfort zones for books we normally read, and try and pick some ones we haven’t explored before. One in particular, is graphic novels and comics… so I had to go straight to the library to pick this book out.

It’s sort of like a memoir, in that we follow Eleanor on her journey to figuring out she was guy. She sort of forced herself to like guys, was very uncomfortable when talking about sex, the bullying with homophobic names… she knew that she was gay, but took a while to accept it, and accept herself. At the age of 21, she finally admitted the words to herself, and ended up dating a lovely person called T, whom she really fell in love with for the first time.

Suffice it to say, Crewes really hit the nail on the head. The drawings are cute, and everything that was talked about definitely resonates with a similar journey I’ve made. It was sometimes strangely uncomfortable with some of the stuff she wrote - sinisterly, it was as if she’d taken those exact thoughts out of my brain. Still, it’s nice to know that whilst I was going through that, I really wasn’t alone, as there were, and still are, so many other people struggling with their sexuality.

I’d possibly like to read a bit more about her journey (I’m going to see if she’s written any other books), and it was a short and sweet read (I finished it in a couple of hours, it was very good) that I’d definitely recommend, especially for queer people! It was nice to hear the validating thoughts that I desperately wanted to hear when I was younger. What a brilliant start to comic books!

Content Warnings

Death on the Coast by Bernie Steadman

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dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

The third and final book in the West County series, and I must say, I had such a brilliant time reading the other two books that this one was a minor let-down.

We follow Dan Helier - yay! - as he gets another crime to solve - this man simply can’t catch a break! There is a fire, in which someone has been burned. In the beginning, they wonder whether maybe it was just a drunk party of teens, and it was an accident, however, evidence soon rises that makes them believe that it’s all part of a cult, and the people being burnt are sacrifices.

Another one is burnt, so they decide to look for patterns, and they find someone who may be the third victim. So far, they’ve managed to deduce that there is a group of them, and everything is meticulously planned out. They realise it must be a university student, someone studying cults, and luckily, nearby, there is a university who teaches just that.

They track down the supposed next victim, and then they realise it’s actually someone else, so they run off to find him. They realise the reasoner these murders is vengeance, as the their third victim was part of a team that got someone’s family killed. So, when the third victim (years ago) had a daughter and had to change names after an attack on his own family, the murderer told his daughter - who had been put in a different family than her father, whom she was told to be dead - that the man, who’s actually her dad, killed her family, and that he needed to die also.

There was this big operation, and then MI5 got involved (what the point of that was, I still don’t know, it’s all very confusing to me) and then they find where the third fire is being built. They intercept the murderers, and stopped the murder from happening, and then everything got taken over by MI5, so the rest of the investigation remains unsolved.

The ending was so abrupt - and so confusing! We didn’t find out what had happened to them, they were just palmed off onto another squad and we never saw them again! I get that that sometimes happens in police investigations, and there is not much you can do about it, but come on! A little side-note or something would have been nice! It feels like it was the easiest ending to take out, and, as a reader, I feel a little cheated. Very disappointing compared to Steadman’s other books. There just feels like a lot of loose ends. Like Dan’s sister? What happened to her, did she do well? Did he forgive her? Is their relationship fixed? Did he finally ask Claire to marry him? Did Sally lose the weight she wanted, and did she have Adam out for bringing in the cakes after they were banned? What happened to my darling angel, Lizzie? Did Mary and Michael meet again? I need answers! It doesn’t feel like the end of a series. It would have a higher rating if I knew there were answers to these questions, but I don’t think there’s another book planned - to my knowledge. Very disappointed.

This book felt a little less personal… I don’t know how to describe it, it’s just that when you’re a writer, you know when someone’s work doesn’t have heart and passion, and this felt like one of those cases. Even the characters, that I adored in the fort two books, weren’t written as passionately as they were previously. Don’t even get me started on Claire. It infuriates me when people get involved in things that aren’t their business, so why did she start telling Dan how to be with his family? He’s a better person than me, because I’d have dumped her and never spoken to her again. The fact she was telling him what to do, like she’s Virgin Mary or something, grated on me a lot. Even Sally, expecting everyone to not eat cakes just because she’d put on weight, really did my head in. Unfortunately, I thought this book was a rather drab and confusing way to end a series, and I’m quite disappointed - the first two books are very good however, they set the standards extremely high for this book, so I would definitely still recommend reading it.

Content Warnings

Hooked by Emily McIntire

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dark mysterious tense slow-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? Yes

2.5

Spoilers Ahead:

I was so excited to read this book. I literally thought of nothing else, and when I saw that it was on Kindle Unlimited, I was over the moon! I couldn’t believe my luck. Let’s just say, I heard a lot of things about this book, and yet I still was not expecting what I read.

This novel is based off Peter Pan, in that instead of falling in love with the hero, the protagonist falls in love with a villain.

We follow Wendy throughout her life. Her friend, Angie, wants her to go out with her and Maria. Now, Maria has never really liked Wendy, so she doesn’t want to go, but after a snideful comment from her, she decides she will show her that Maria doesn’t get her down, and goes out with them.

They travel to the Jolly Roger, where they talk about this mysterious guy - named ‘Hook’ who owns the bar… Marie has a crush on him, and often waits for him to arrive.

Maria bumps into someone called James, and he flirts with her, and he won’t take no for an answer. He finds her at her coffee shop, where she works, and then finds her at the Jolly Roger again. From the look on Maria’s face, she knows that James is actually Hook, and he gets them free drinks and she agrees to go on a date with him. He’s an attractive man, and she’s excited, but little does she know that he is uninterested in her, and he is using her to get back at her father.

Peter Michaels is a very well-known business, and one that’s very powerful too. James - Hook - was on one of his flights - NevAirLand - and everyone passed but him. He has no family, and has spent his life seeking revenge. And he decides to use his daughter to get at him.

Little does he know, however, that Wendy is sick of her father putting everyone else before them. She enrols Jon, her brother, into boarding school, taking away one of the people she’s closest to. He’s never given Jon the love he deserves, and since he’s never around, Wendy harbours a little resentment for him.

James takes her on a date, and he ends up taking her virginity. When he finds his business partner and father-figure tied up to a tree, brutally gutted, he thinks it must be Wendy’s fault. He thinks that she is in cahoots with her father, and so he threatens her, and puts her in a cell.

He parades her about after kidnapping her like a dog on a leash and he shows her off to her father, who tries to warn Wendy against him. As he spots the rivalry between the two, James realises that Wendy had nothing to do with it, and whilst he’s falling for her, he’s terrified that she will never forgive him for what he’s done to her. Eventually she does forgive him, and he lets her free, and they both decide to pursue things romantically.

Wendy is called to their house after Jon is back home, her father saying he has something important to tell them. When she gets there, though, she knows it’s a trap. Tina, her father’s assistant and ‘little bitch’, attacks her, and then she gets knocked out. Before too late, James realises that he has been betrayed by one of his own. Moira, whom he used to use for his, ahem, desires, thought he treated everyone like shit, and she was working with someone called Croc. She tells him that Croc has Wendy, and he goes to find her.

He finds her tied to a chair, and he finds out that Smee, his first mate and also the person who he brought in from the streets when he was a child, is the one behind it. They are cousins! His father - James’s Uncle - was abusive, and James killed him. In front of Smee, apparently, and he’s all been seeking revenge. Peter Michaels shoots Smee, although they very quickly find out that he would have sacrificed Wendy to keep himself okay.

Turns out, Jon wasn’t Peter’s, and that’s why he had James’s family killed. James and Jon are half brothers, as they share the same dad. Wendy manages to kill her father and Tina, before moving on to have a family with James.

So this book wasn’t actually the greatest book I’d ever read, unfortunately. It was the sheer amount of sex and, essentially, pornographic visuals that were created. I can’t stand books where the relationships are built solely off of lust, control and extreme stupidity, and it feels like this book defined exactly that. I’m all for a bit of rough and tumble, but this was excessive, and it was pages and pages and pages, and it contributed nothing to the plot. And if James mentioned his boner one more time, I was going to scream; there are other personality traits to have other than being horny! And Wendy, darling, what are you doing? This man held you captive, held a knife to your throat? I can get behind a little rough stuff, but there’s rough stuff and then there’s attempted murder. Come on, babe, you’re better than that. In this regard, I feel like Wendy is no better than every other Disney princess who expects someone to come and save them. Although maybe McIntire was going for that vibe, replicating Wendy just how she was in the movie/book, and if that’s the case, it’s very clever, and I hold my hat up to her (my pirate hat, ooh-argh).

The ending was a bit too cutsie-pie for me, also. Everything tied up in a neat bow, and I hate it when that happens - it’s just so unrealistic! All of a sudden Maria is nice to Wendy, Angie gives her her job backhand she starts dating James - and all is forgiven! This guy tried to kill you! Why are you so easily accepting of this life and the crime that comes with it? If someone came up to me, admitted to not only Killy people, but torturing them as well, I don’t think the door will even have started to close by the time I ran out. Wendy Michaels just seems really, sincerely stupid, and I wasn’t a fan of any of the characters. The only mildly good character is Jon, and we don’t hear about him at all for the most of it. Maria and Angie are proper bitchy, giving off mean girl vibes, and James is just insane and sexually driven - it’s mad!

I did predict that Smee was somehow involved, but Moira got me, I’ll admit. Especially with the new tattoo bit, I thought that was insanely clever. And with the names as well, like the Jolly Roger and, especially, NevAirLand… I thought that was brilliant. See the thing is I get it was supposed to be a smutty book, but also if the sex scenes had been dialled down, merely hinted at, I think the book would have rated so much higher for me. If you take out the sex scenes, not much of the book remains. You could have added so much more to the plot, which was already incredible. Maybe we could have had more flashbacks, see more into James’s past, see more as to why he was like the way he was, so we could bond with him more as a character. I don’t know. I just think it had so much potential, but it was a little bit ruined by the toxicity of the relationship, unfortunately.

Content Warnings

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

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dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

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

2.0

Spoilers Ahead:

This book has been raved about all over TikTok, and I finally found it in a charity shop and wanted to see if it lived up to its name! Honestly, it was a pretty decent book, but it wasn’t anything special.

We follow Cadence as she makes her way through the summer. Beforehand, she had a lot of good memories of her and her three other friends. They called themselves the Liars, Cadence, Gat, Mirren and Johnny. They would spend every summer together. Cadence had a very big crush on Gat, and it was difficult to see if he felt the same way sometimes, but she loved him. After an incident where she loses her memory, she goes back for the summer.

All of the Liars are pulling away from her, and there seems to be an awful lot of arguing in their family, and lots of tears. Cadence feels so alone, and weird with her memories. She starts giving away stuff, and acting weirdly, as her memories start to return. It’s only then that she finds out that all of her friends died in the incident.

They had decided to start a fire, as every person in the family was fighting over who would get what when their dad died, and they just wanted it to be peaceful again. So, they set fire to the house, thinking it would solve all of their problems…

It didn’t.

Mirren, Johnny and Gat all died, and it took her memories coming back for her to know. Once she finds out, after being told by them (their ghosts were trying to make sure she was okay) she says goodbye to them, as they had hung on for too long anyway. They waded into the sea and Cadence said a final goodbye to them. She stopped giving everything away - she was doing it out of guilt - and she decided to do better for her friends, who didn’t get to do everything that they wanted to do.

I thought the whole concept was very cool. I knew that somewhere towards the ending there would be a plot twist, and I was expecting it to be that she was dead, not that the others were all dead. I think it’s so sad, watching her gain back her memories, only to realise that she caused all the deaths. Especially the dogs, that was gut-wrenching. And finding out she’s been talking to them all this time? Just stab me in the eye, it will hurt less. I wasn’t overly thrilled by the book. I thought the style was very cool, and it’s a very simple book to read, but it’s not all that bad. A little overhyped, I must say, but it’s not a bad book. I think the meaning is very cool, the fact that actions have consequences, some of them life-altering, and sometimes just a simple ‘sorry’ won’t cut it. I also like how Cadence was learning of her memories as we were, I thought that was a very cool technique. I think the book is cleverly written, but just not as thrilling as I thought it would be. Still worth the read, though!

Content Warnings

Castle of Otranto by Tony Jay, Horace Walpole

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 31%.

- Quite confusing, and I don’t have the headspace to focus on it at the moment

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xabbeylongx's reviews 170 reviews

xabbeylongx's reviews
170 reviews