From the first line, I knew Godkiller was going to be enchanting, and it was. A gorgeously intricate 'Her father fell in love with a god of the sea.'
From the first line, I knew Godkiller was going to be enchanting, and it was. A gorgeously intricate world populated by humans and gods, led by engaging characters (a godkiller! a baker-knight! a noble! a god of white lies!) and bound with the compelling underlying theme threaded throughout of what people will give up for the ones they love.
Kat Delacorte really went 'I am going to write a book filled with so many hot people'
Set in the remote Italian hilltop city of Castello, a place soakeKat Delacorte really went 'I am going to write a book filled with so many hot people'
Set in the remote Italian hilltop city of Castello, a place soaked in history and isolated from modern society, With Fire in Their Blood is a decadent Gothic tale about discovering your past to unlock your future . . . and falling in love with many beautiful people.
(I mean, that scene in the bathtub? iykyk but oh my god I am aggressively Team Liza. Sorry Christian and Nico. I love you both too.)
(rep: bisexual heroine; both M/F & F/F relationships)...more
comedic gold, honestly - by far the most amusing of mxtx's current novels, with a lot of satirical snark and tongue-in-cheek commentary.comedic gold, honestly - by far the most amusing of mxtx's current novels, with a lot of satirical snark and tongue-in-cheek commentary....more
I am emotionally WRECKED - Lies enchanted me through and through, and beyond being without a doubt one of my favourite reads of This book. This book!!
I am emotionally WRECKED - Lies enchanted me through and through, and beyond being without a doubt one of my favourite reads of the year, I think it'll stick with me for a long time. The writing style and narrative voice alone has me enthralled, and I thought it an accomplished debut.
It's also left me epically depressed but in a very poignant and bittersweet way so that's fine <33 I will now look at daffodils and cry <333
Taking the narrative thread of Penelope's twelve hanged maids and weaving a new story set generations later (so, not a retelling of The Odyssey), Lies is about balances of power and how a curse borne of grief and anger can echo through centuries, creating cycles of sorrow. There is also romance, and there is love and desire, and there is a beautifully tragic man and two wrathful women!! There is bisexual rep!! I am truly in love with this book, and I will be pushing it everywhere.
↠ 5 stars ✨
"We are more than our actions," said Leto. "We are the way we love others, and the way they love us back."
Darkly comedic and so so funny, Dial A For Aunties was a treat. I'm glad Netflix has already picked up film rights, because this will work SO well on Darkly comedic and so so funny, Dial A For Aunties was a treat. I'm glad Netflix has already picked up film rights, because this will work SO well on screen. The hilarity of the mess Meddy gets into, and how the situation ends up increasingly tangled, really had me cracking up. Plus the strong familial bonds between Meddy and her aunties, and then Meddy and Nathan's sweet relationship . . . not to mention the little sapphic side surprise at the end!
Dial A For Aunties is a perfect laugh-out-loud summer read, and I utterly recommend. ...more
This is such a gloriously atmospheric book, complete with old creaking houses perching on towering cliffs over damp seas, squabbling werewolf familiesThis is such a gloriously atmospheric book, complete with old creaking houses perching on towering cliffs over damp seas, squabbling werewolf families and the looming threat of something stranger and older.
Having just run away from boarding school, heroine Eleanor returns home to her strange family and their grand old house tucked away in thick forests on the coast of Maine. Going into the book, I assumed it was a contemporary fantasy, but I believe it's actually historical? It's hard to place, but there are indications that it is set somewhere in the middle of the 20th century.
Eleanor's family are strange, and not always easily understandable or easy to love on the readers' part. They're werewolves (though the word werewolves is never used in the text, they're referred to just as wolves) and do act sometimes more like a squabbling pack of dogs than people. But part of the charm of this book is the strangeness of it all, and how that strangeness translates into something darkly enchanting. Admittedly there are parts of this book that are very ambiguous, and this will be alienating to some readers. But personally, I loved the journey of this one - from the dark gothic atmosphere to the way Eleanor's relatives all joined together over the course of the novel to become something resembling a rough-edged family. It is, in the way of traditional gothic novels, more focused on the humans at it's core than anything else.
Would definitely recommend to fans of novels that are deeply atmospheric, those who like werewolf books, and those who enjoy novels that offer a different perspective of 'monsters'.
> 4.2 stars
(p.s. it's not a red riding hood retelling, as I've seen a few people say)
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werewolves in maine, huh . . . I'm listening...more
Female-focused retellings and reimagings have come into popularity recently. They were, until recently, mostly based on traditional Greek myths and leFemale-focused retellings and reimagings have come into popularity recently. They were, until recently, mostly based on traditional Greek myths and legends: Circe; A Thousand Ships; The Silence of the Girls; Ariadne. But now that pool is expanding. Genevieve Gornichec's The Witch's Heart looks at Angrboda from Nordic mythology, a witch who gave the god Loki three children: Hel, ruler of the dead; Fenrir, the giant wolf; and Jörmungand, the world serpent.
Gornichec's writes Angrboda's story beautifully, with lush prose and some beautiful turns of phrase that evoke the ancient and mythical time period the story is set in. The story is primarily a love story between Angrboda and Loki, which begins when Loki finds the witch Angrboda and literally returns her heart to her. The dynamic between the two and their dialogue, often banterous, was one of my favourite aspects of the book. It's interesting to look at many female-focused mythological retellings and see how common the 'heroine falls in love with a tricker-esque god who is frequently coming and going' theme is, because it happens in Circe (with Circe and Hermes) and in Ariadne (with Ariadne and Dionysus) and now The Witch's Heart.
Gornichec gives Angrboda agency and power in the epic story of the Norse gods and Ragnarok, when before she was often a sidenote. Gornichec also gives roles to other sidelined female characters, including Hel and Skadi. Skadi, actually, was one of my favourite characters. A huntress who in the latter half of the novel becomes a love interest of Angrboda's, she's tough but caring, and she was my favourite because of it. I really loved how solid her friendship - and later, relationship - with Angrboda was. There was a lot of loyalty and devotion there, which was lovely.
There were also glimpses of a relationship between Angrboda's daughter Hel and the god Baldur, and I would have really liked to seen this explored more - but I also think it would've added a lot extra to the novel! So I'd be interested in seeing a novel written that explores the relationship between Hel and Baldur, as Gornichec makes it a really fascinating one with a lot of potential (and feels like a reversed Hades and Persephone).
Loki is a significant character in the novel too, and I imagine many people will be drawn to the novel due to the mention of him and the fact that he's been popularised in mainstream culture by Tom Hiddleston's portrayal in Marvel's Thor series. Gornichec's portrayal falls closer to the more traditional version of Loki, but fans of the trickster god will find the same wily, cheeky character here. Furthermore, in traditional Norse folklore, Loki is a shapeshifter and Gornichec keeps this fact in her novel. As a result, there are points in the novel where Loki takes the form of different animals, from a falcon to a mare. At one point there's even a discussion about Loki wearing a skirt, and I appreciate how Gornichec engages with the fact that Loki's gender presentation has always been more fluid than his other godly Asgardian peers. The novel is also very queer, with Angrboda, Loki and Skadi all being bisexual (or pansexual? it's never clarified).
Now, one reason I didn't enjoy this book as much as I could have, however, is because I found the pacing on the slower side and the stakes low for a significant part of the story. I didn't find any sense of propulsiveness to the narrative and it just wandered along. But in this sense, it is exactly like Circe - it is a look at the day to day life of a witch, though Gornichec doesn't over-detail and moves it on when nothing is relevant. But the good thing is that in the second part, after Angrboda starts having visions, the pacing speeds up exponentially and the final part is rapid and full of action and emotion.
Fans of mythology will devour this one. It's a book with wide commercial appeal, perfect for fans of Marvel's Loki to Madeline Miller's Circe. I'm very intrigued to see what Genevieve Gornichec turns to writing next.
Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review! ...more
Though the title focuses on one woman, the book itself actually follows two: the eponymous Ariadne, and her younger sister Phaedra.
Ariadne is the newThough the title focuses on one woman, the book itself actually follows two: the eponymous Ariadne, and her younger sister Phaedra.
Ariadne is the newest addition to a stream of novels that focus on retelling the Classical Greek myths from the perspective of the sidelined women, and it will certainly not be the last. These novels always gather a lot of interest, so I'm not surprised at all that this one resulted in an auction at acquisition and then such a massive marketing & publicity push pre-release. Also, the design and cover for the UK hardback is divine, really. I'm sure it'll sell very well.
When it comes to Ariadne, the only thing I know about her is her role within the Minotaur myth. I did not realise there's always been more to her story. And I did not know anything about Phaedra at all. Saint sets out to tell the develop the story of these two, and she does it well. She sticks to the myths, sewing aspects from different variations into one whole story, and doesn't subvert anything - not even the endings. Ariadne and Phaedra, caught up in the tales of men even to their final days.
Though I did enjoy Ariadne, it does lack that same transcendent spark that illuminates other Greek retellings such as Madeline Miller's Circe. It didn't wrench my heart out from underneath my rib cage and leave it bleeding in sand, let's say. But then again, it is especially hard to measure up to Madeline Miller's incandescence and maybe it's unfair to compare them (Madeline Miller has set the bar too high, perhaps). Yet with Circe and Ariadne both being female-focused retellings of Greek myth, it's inevitable.
Admittedly, I wasn't always enthralled by Ariadne's narrative voice. I found some of her sentences were quite long, oddly enough. And though the style is very telling, as you get the sense Ariadne is speaking this story to the readers (reflecting the oral tradition of the Greek myths), I couldn't envision some of it being said out loud due to some of the sentence lengths. There were no commas and if I did a reading, I'm pretty certain I would find myself short on breath.
I found Phaedra's narrative a bit more interesting for a while, simply because she gets a new environment to explore and I liked how she involved herself with Athen's city government. Ariadne is on an island for largely three quarters of the novel - much like Circe in Circe, actually. Nevertheless, I didn't find the overall novel lagged, and focusing on both Ariadne and Phaedra meant there was a bit more range in the story than there might have been had Ariadne only been the focus. I did like how Dionysus was a vital character - I didn't even realise he played a role in Ariadne's story until reading Ariadne. Though he seemed rather kind for a god in the beginning and I thought the easy dynamic between him and Ariadne was too easily claimed, things settled into place later on.
If you've enjoyed novels such as Circe, The Silence of the Girls or A Thousand Ships, then certainly you should read Ariadne. It's a good book. It didn't stamp any kind of specific mark on me, and though this makes me sound slightly ambivalent I did enjoy it! Ariadne does exactly what it sets out to do and retells Ariadne's story for the modern reader, and I'm quite interested to see what Jennifer Saint does next - supposedly another Greek retelling, which I'll likely pick up too.
TL;DR: Ariadne will provide enjoyment for fans of Greek myth retellings, and is a good way to whittle a few hours away. It doesn't quite have the same ethereal feel as Circe, but it keeps up with the rest of its peers in the female-focused Greek myth retelling class, such as The Silence of the Girls and A Thousand Ships.
> 4 stars
Thank you to the publishers for providing me with a proof copy in exchange for an honest review! <3...more
Caldonbrae was less of a school, and more of an elite institution containing its own churning practices, a forever fortess turning within itself.
Caldonbrae was less of a school, and more of an elite institution containing its own churning practices, a forever fortess turning within itself.
Madam is such a beautifully atmospheric book, and it's one of my favourite things about it. The oppressive gloom of Caldonbrae Hall perching high on the cliffs above the grey sea, the bleak Scottish coastline flanking the school, the ghostly haar fogs and torrential sheets of near-constant wind and rain . . . it's a perfect setting for this female-focused dark academia-esque novel.
Set at an elite all-girls boarding school, what seems like an excellent opportunity for a young Classics teacher soon becomes a nightmare as she realises the school's true purpose is training girls to be excellent wives rather than aspiring minds. Despite being set in 1993 and featuring references to significant figures such as Princess Diana, the school is largely closed off from outside society and influence to further Caldonbrae's ideology of an 'ideal woman'. Forget feminism and suffragettes; Caldonbrae's version of feminity is more aligned with everything from before the twentieth century. Some people may find it rather unrealistic, but honestly I wouldn't be entirely unsurprised if some bizarre upper-class undercover operation like this did come to light. Either way, I found it a compelling read. The pacing is on the slower side, but I liked the slow unwind.
Women from the Classics are also vital in this story. From Medea to Medusa, their tales weave an undercurrent of defiance and possibility into students whose only prior purpose was to train themselves into perfection for a future husband. This defiance is most clear in the fourth years Rose teaches (especially Freddy, Nessa and Daisy), and they were the characters I was most fond of as a result.
On the whole, it was a book I very much enjoyed bar a few bits. There are a handful of LGBTQ+ characters (only one clearly labelled on-page, the rest only vaguely referred to), but I wasn't really fond of how any of them were handled. There's a lot of potential within the setting of all-female boarding schools to explore the full extent of complex female relationships, but Madam doesn't go into this. I think another interesting angle for this story would've been through two sapphic students with a 'forbidden' relationship (unsurprisingly, Caldonbrae perpetuates the view that LGBTQ+ relationships and individuals are abnormal).
A very small part of Madam tentatively examines the quiet exile of a small cohort of Japanese students in this incredibly white school with incredibly imperialist attitudes. In one scene, geishas are brought in to educate the Japanese students and the heroine conflates being a geisha with being a prostitute - it's a misunderstanding, perhaps, due to Western narratives perpetuating falsehoods about geishas, but it rubbed me the wrong way. However the wider inclusion of the Japanese students and the fact that the inherently white and classist setting of private English schools like Caldonbrae is somewhat examined in Madam is interesting. I wish it had been explored in further depth, but perhaps this would've been spreading the story too thin. But for anyone wanting a critique of academic institutions and how their history is rooted in colonialism, R.F. Kuang's Babel is worth a look.
Overall, I thought it was a strong debut and I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys dark academia with a female focus such as The Furies or Plain Bad Heroines. Phoebe Wynne writes beautifully and crafts such an atmosphere, so depending what their next project is, I'll likely pick it up.
> 4/4.2 stars
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review!
also so random but the author is the aunt of actor roman griffin davies from jojo rabbit
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Did someone say . . .
- female-focused dark academia? - for fans of The Secret History and Rebecca? - set at a boarding school in Scotland?...more
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