Review | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi is a cross-genre novel by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

What a strange and wonderful book.

How do I even review Piranesi? This is 100% a book that is best to go into blind. I'm so glad I chose to avoid reviews for this one so I'm going to keep my review vague and avoid talking about the details of Piranesi.

I do want to mention if you decide to try Piranesi, don't put it down. I would actually recommend reading it in as few sittings as possible, but I mean don't DNF it. For most of Piranesi I had no idea what was going on and I assumed I wouldn't care about the characters that I was struggling to get to know, but I was wrong. I wound up loving the characters and loving Piranesi. This strange little book has turned out to be one of my favorite books of the year.

I wondered throughout reading Piranesi who I would even recommend it to if I wound up loving it, but now that I've finished reading it, I would recommend it to anyone willing to take a chance on a unique story. If you love finding a reading experience unlike anything you've read before, you should definitely consider picking up Piranesi.

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Review | The Family Game by Catherine Steadman

The Family Game is a mystery/thriller by Catherine Steadman.

A rich, eccentric family. A time-honored tradition. Or a lethal game of survival? One woman finds out what it really takes to join the 1% in this riveting psychological thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Something in the Water, Mr. Nobody, and The Disappearing Act.

Harry is a novelist on the brink of stardom; Edward, her husband-to-be, is seemingly perfect. In love and freshly engaged, their bliss is interrupted by the reemergence of the Holbecks, Edward's eminent family and the embodiment of American old money. For years, they've dominated headlines and pulled society's strings, and Edward left them all behind to forge his own path. But there are eyes and ears everywhere. It was only a matter of time before they were pulled back in . . .

After all, even though he's long severed ties with his family, Edward is set to inherit it all. Harriet is drawn to the glamour and sophistication of the Holbecks, who seem to welcome her with open arms, but everything changes when she meets Robert, the inescapably magnetic head of the family. At their first meeting, Robert slips Harry a cassette tape, revealing a shocking confession which sets the inevitable game in motion.

What is it about Harry that made him give her that tape? A thing that has the power to destroy everything? As she ramps up her quest for the truth, she must endure the Holbecks' savage Christmas traditions all the while knowing that losing this game could be deadly.

The Family Game is a holiday themed thriller that I read with the Horror Spotlight discord group. I want to say straightaway that I liked this book because I'm probably gonna spend this review doing a whole lot of complaining.

First off, for those of you who hate prologues because it usually means the book is boring for a while, I hate to inform you that there is a prologue and the book is, in fact, boring for a while. The Family Game starts out with a man and a woman enjoying the holidays in New York. It feels very much like a super messed up holiday romcom. It's romantic and it's over the top and it's in the big city, but you know from the prologue the female main character is going to wind up bloody and scared for her life on the floor of his family's holiday home.

There is a lot to not believe in this novel, but there's also a lot to keep you reading and guessing and griping out loud.

My biggest fear when I started reading the holiday game was that I would not care whether this woman survived by the end of the book because she's not very likable. But somehow even though I didn't like a soul in this novel, I still wanted to know what was really happening. I'm not usually the type of reader who tries to guess who did it, what the twist is, who's lying, but I was guessing and wondering in The Family Game.

There is so much to unpack now that I have finished reading this novel, but I don't have it in me to do the unpacking that's necessary to make it all makes sense. This book is being billed as a psychological thriller, but it's not what it had hoped to be.

So while I could sit around the kitchen table and gripe about the characters and the plot all day long, I still would not tell you not to read it. If you have The Family Game on your TBR, you should definitely read it. There is something to be said about a book that can make you gripe this much. Read it and then let me know what you think. We can scratch our heads about it together.

3/5 Stars
⭐⭐⭐★★

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Review | Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

Daisy Darker is a mystery/thriller by Alice Feeney.

The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists returns…with a family reunion that leads to murder.

After years of avoiding each other, Daisy Darker’s entire family is assembling for Nana’s 80th birthday party in Nana’s crumbling gothic house on a tiny tidal island. Finally back together one last time, when the tide comes in, they will be cut off from the rest of the world for eight hours.

The family arrives, each of them harboring secrets. Then at the stroke of midnight, as a storm rages, Nana is found dead. And an hour later, the next family member follows…

Trapped on an island where someone is killing them one by one, the Darkers must reckon with their present mystery as well as their past secrets, before the tide comes in and all is revealed.

With a wicked wink to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, Daisy Darker’s unforgettable twists will leave readers reeling.

Daisy Darker is a messed up book.

Daisy Darker is a story like And Then There Were None and Clue where the characters get picked off one by one. This is all in the synopsis so I guess it's okay to also say this in my review. I absolutely loved And Then There Were None, and I enjoyed Daisy Darker, too. In Daisy Darker, the Darker family is reuniting at their family home Seaglass. They are on an island where when the tide comes in there's no way to leave the island for eight hours until the tide goes back out. It's the perfect setting for one of these trapped thriller novels.

I saw someone on Booktube the other day say when a reviewer says they can't really talk about a book because it would be spoilers that means the reviewer didn't actually read the book (lol). That's a weird hot take, and you are just going to have to believe that I read Daisy Darker because this is one of those books that you can't really talk about without spoiling something. Maybe that Booktuber needs to read more thrillers?

If you enjoy messed up family secrets that slowly get revealed over the course of a book, I recommend you give Daisy Darker a try.

I read my first Alice Feeney last year when I read Rock Paper Scissors. I was anxious to read more books by Feeney and was really excited that Daisy Darker was a Book-of-the-Month selection this year and that it was getting such great reviews from readers that I trust. I love Feeney's characters and her twists and her suspense. I find her books impossible to believe, but I have a great time reading them and I don't want to put them down.

Daisy Darker is a thriller, but it's also horror–adjacent. I recommend it to readers like me who love horror and love thrillers and love reading those books that straddle the line as horror-adjacent.

4/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐★

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Review | The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

The Golden Couple is a mystery/thriller from Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen.

The next electrifying novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo behind The Wife Between Us.

Wealthy Washington suburbanites Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all—until Marissa is unfaithful. Beneath their veneer of perfection is a relationship riven by work and a lack of intimacy. She wants to repair things for the sake of their eight-year-old son and because she loves her husband. Enter Avery Chambers.

Avery is a therapist who lost her professional license. Still, it doesn’t stop her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate.

When they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.

Most of my friends have given The Golden Couple four or five stars. I'm not sure why The Golden Couple didn't wow me as much as it seems to have wowed other readers. It may just be when I chose to give it a read.

I've only read one other book by the writing duo of Hendricks and Pekkanen, but I enjoyed it. I was looking forward to reading The Golden Couple. While I wasn't disappointed and I did enjoy The Golden Couple, it was mostly just okay for me..

The characters were all unlikable for me which I really enjoyed in the beginning, but the book seemed to lose its focus and honestly so did I. This is a hard review to write because I did enjoy it, but I don't have much to say about it. The Golden Couple did keep me guessing, but for some reason I just wasn't very invested. It could simply be the fact that I was in a book hangover from the five-star read that I read just before this one that had me guessing but was not predictable whatsoever. The Golden Couple may have just fallen prey to having to follow a very unexpected book that worked for me on a level that The Golden Couple just didn't meet.

If you've read and enjoyed other books by Hendricks and Pekkanen, I would definitely recommend you check this one out as well. I have another book on my shelf by Hendricks and Pekkanen that I would still like to go back and read. This one just didn't wow me outside of being a well-written thriller with unlikable characters.

I listened to the audio, and I thought the narrators did a great job. The Golden Couple won't make it onto my list of favorite thrillers for the year, but I enjoyed the time that I spent with it.

 

3/5 stars

⭐⭐⭐★ ★

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Book Review | The Ghost of Midnight Lake by Lucy Strange

The Ghost of Midnight Lake is a middle grade horror-adjacent mystery novel by Lucy Strange.

From award winning author Lucy Strange comes a thrilling ghost story about a strong willed heroine who will follow even the most restless spirit in order to untangles the dark mystery of her own past.

It's 1899. The Earl of Gosswater has died, and twelve-year-old Agatha has been cast out of her ancestral home - the only home she has ever known - by her cruel cousin, Clarence. In a tiny tumbledown cottage, she struggles to adjust to her new life and the stranger who claims to be her real father. While adjusting to her new fate, she learns that the shores of Gosswater lake are haunted, and soon comes face to face with the spirit of another young girl who's soul will not rest. Could the ghost of Gosswater hold the key to Aggie's true identity?

I'm pretty sure I read The Ghost of Midnight Lake just because of that cover! Thankfully The Ghost of Midnight Lake was so much deeper than my reason for picking it up in the first place.⁠

Despite having such a lovely print copy, I decided to listen to this one on audio. It's narrated by the author, and I think this added an additional layer to an already wonderful book.

The Ghost of Midnight Lake opens up with Agatha finding out her parents who have passed away are not her biological parents, and she must uproot and go live with her "real father".

The Ghost of Midnight Lake is full of mystery, friendship, family, and villians.

This is the first book by Lucy Strange that I've read. I realized after finishing this that she's the same author who just released Sisters of the Lost Marsh as well. I look forward to reading more by Strange in the future.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

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Book Review | A History of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

Source: personal purchase. This is a review of my reading experience.

A History of Wild Places is a horror-adjacent mystery novel by Shea Ernshaw.

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.

Called "Pastoral," this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it… he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.

Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.

I've never read any of Shea Ernshaw's YA books, but I was really excited to check out her adult debut. It sounded very twisty and unique, and I was ready to take what I thought would be a pretty trippy ride.

In the end, I did wind up liking A History of Wild Places, but it was a struggle to get there. The book is broken up into four parts. The first part follows Travis - a private investigator of sorts - starting out on his journey to find a missing woman. These 50 pages are all told through Travis' first person perspective. It took me a while to get use to a literary first person adult narrative, but by the end of those 50 pages I was hooked and ready.

This is where my first big issue came in. Part two switches everything. Suddenly the reader is following three different characters (all still in first person narrative) who are living with this strange cult in the woods. I had to reorient myself all over again. I spent most of A History of Wild Places trying to decide whether to DNF or not.

This book obviously worked a lot better for other reviewers than it did for me. Even though I struggled pretty hard with it, the concept is unique enough that I recommend you try it out for yourself if you've been interested in reading it.

⭐⭐💫★★
2.5/5 stars

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Book Review | We Begin at the End by Chris Whitaker

Source: Preordered purchase. This is a review of my personal reading experience.

We Begin at the End is a mystery novel by Chris Whitaker.

There are two kinds of families: the ones we are born into and the ones we create.

Walk has never left the coastal California town where he grew up. He may have become the chief of police, but he’s still trying to heal the old wound of having given the testimony that sent his best friend, Vincent King, to prison decades before. Now, thirty years later, Vincent is being released.

Duchess is a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw. Her mother, Star, grew up with Walk and Vincent. Walk is in overdrive trying to protect them, but Vincent and Star seem bent on sliding deeper into self-destruction. Star always burned bright, but recently that light has dimmed, leaving Duchess to parent not only her mother but her five-year-old brother. At school the other kids make fun of Duchess―her clothes are torn, her hair a mess. But let them throw their sticks, because she’ll throw stones. Rules are for other people. She’s just trying to survive and keep her family together.

A fortysomething-year-old sheriff and a thirteen-year-old girl may not seem to have a lot in common. But they both have come to expect that people will disappoint you, loved ones will leave you, and if you open your heart it will be broken. So when trouble arrives with Vincent King, Walk and Duchess find they will be unable to do anything but usher it in, arms wide closed.

Chris Whitaker has written an extraordinary novel about people who deserve so much more than life serves them. At times devastating, with flashes of humor and hope throughout, it is ultimately an inspiring tale of how the human spirit prevails and how, in the end, love―in all its different guises―wins

This was my first time to read Chris Whitaker. I look forward to reading more from him.

We Begin at the End was beautifully written. The characters were so well developed, flawed, and unforgettable. As much as I loved the characters, I also loved that there was a balance between plot and character. It was so well done.

I listened to the audio for much of this, and the prose and the narrator were a great fit.

It did take time for me to get sucked in, but it was such a well developed novel I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

If you love mysteries and crime novels, I highly recommend We Begin at the End, but I also recommend it for those wanting to explore other genres. 

5/5 stars
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Book Review | The Mulberry Tree by Allison Rushby

The Mulberry Tree is a horror-adjacent middle grade mystery by Allison Rushby.

Is the eerie tree beside their bucolic cottage really a threat to ten-year-old Immy? Legend and hearsay give way to a creepy series of events in a captivating mystery.

Do naught wrong by the mulberry tree, or she’ll take your daughters . . . one, two, three.

Ten-year-old Immy and her family have run away from their storm cloud of problems to a tiny village in Cambridgeshire, England, where her depressed physician father can take a sabbatical and get back on his feet. Luckily, they find an adorable thatched cottage to begin a new life in. But their new home comes with one downside: in the backyard, there is an ancient, dark, and fierce-looking mulberry tree that has ceased bearing any fruit. There’s a legend that the towering tree steals away girls who live in the cottage on the eve of their eleventh birthday, and villagers even cross the street when they pass by the house. Of course, Immy thinks this is all ridiculous. But then she starts to hear a strange song in her head. . . . In a page-turner perfect for middle-graders, Allison Rushby folds themes of new-school travails, finding friends, being embarrassed by parents, and learning empathy into a deliciously goose-bumpy supernatural mystery.

I love, love, love creepy trees. As soon as I read the description for The Mulberry Tree, I knew I needed to read it.

For the most part The Mulberry Tree lived up to my expectations. The tree was indeed a character in this book, and it didn't come across as some literary analogy with a deeper meaning to be extracted by the reader. It was a creepy tree with creepy intentions, and I loved that about this book.

Some of The Mulberry Tree was hard hitting. The dad was dealing with depression, and Immy was dealing with a parent who just wasn't around the same way that they used to be. It really pulled on my emotions, and I loved the relationship that Immy had with her dad and with the people around her in the village.

My only complaint was the ending. It wasn't a bad ending at all, but it took something away from my overall experience with The Mulberry Tree. I felt like the book deserved a little bit more of a messy ending instead of one so neatly wrapped up. I still highly recommend it, though. My creepy tree loving self is so happy to have read it. It's one I'm definitely passing on to my kids. I think they'll love it, too.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

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Book Review | The Night Swim by Megan Goldin

The Night Swim is a thriller novel by Megan Goldin.

After the first season of her true crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating―but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insists she was murdered―and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?

Trigger warnings for rape and sexual assault.

Oof. This book is a tough one. A tough one to read, a tough one to rate.

The Night Swim is my first book by Megan Goldin and it's expertly crafted. You are following a true crime podcaster who heads to a small town to cover a rape trial. In her podcasting life, she is careful to hide her identity and her face, but someone in this small town knows who she is and needs her help.

The main plot, the subplots, the narrative - they all deal with rape and sexual assault. At one point it literally broke me.

In the beginning of the book, I honestly thought I would give it 2 stars. It's just not subject matter that I want in my entertainment, but as the book went on I got further hooked into Goldin's writing and the way she pieced together the multiple timelines of the rape trial, what happened in the case, and the cold case she's looking into on the side.

I wound up really liking The Night Swim in the end. I give you strong warnings going into this. The rape victims are teenagers and there's a lot of narrative surrounding women, sexual assault, and our legal system.

⭐⭐⭐⭐★
4/5 stars

Review copy provided by publisher

Book Review | Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing is a coming-of-age novel by Delia Owens.

A novel about a young woman determined to make her way in the wilds of North Carolina, and the two men that will break her isolation open.

For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She's barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark.

But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world--until the unthinkable happens.

I am struggling with writing this review! Five star reads are either super easy to write or really hard. This one is really hard for me to capture and do it justice.

Where the Crawdads Sing caught my eye early in its publication, but I have a hard time fitting regular fiction into my genre lineup. Over the last year, I've seen more and more of my friends falling in love with this book. Thankfully my book club chose Where the Crawdads Sing as one of our monthly reads, and I finally fit it into the mix.

I see why so many people love this book. I'll be honest... the first half of this book I didn't see it. I was enjoying it, yes, but I really feared I was going to be the outlier who just didn't love it. At the halfway mark everything changed for me, and I could see it all by the end. I just needed to give it the room to grow.

Aside from loving the characters and the mystery, there was also science and poetry woven throughout Where the Crawdads Sing. I just loved this beautiful book, and I highly recommend it.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

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