Category: Book Reviews

Book Reviews

Book Review: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I am bringing you a book review today for one of the oldest books on my TBR. Honestly, it has been on my shelf for years and I finally read it. The book is An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Every enchantment has a price.

With a flick of her paintbrush, Isobel creates stunning portraits for a dangerous set of clients: the fair folk. These immortal creatures cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and they trade valuable enchantments for Isobel’s paintings. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—Isobel makes a deadly mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes, a weakness that could cost him his throne, and even his life.

Furious, Rook spirits Isobel away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously amiss in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending upon each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, perhaps even love . . . a forbidden emotion that would violate the fair folks’ ruthless laws, rendering both their lives forfeit. What force could Isobel’s paintings conjure that is powerful enough to defy the ancient malice of the fairy courts?

Isobel and Rook journey along a knife-edge in a lush world where beauty masks corruption and the cost of survival might be more frightening than death itself.

My Review:

Rating: 4 out of 5.

An Enchantment of Ravens is a beautiful story following our main female character Isobel, a painter of the fair folk, who accidentally paints an emotion on the face of the Autumn Prince, Rook.

I enjoyed the way the world formed within this book, with seperate courts for spring, summer, autumn winter. I also particularly liked the character of Isobel. In the beginning she does not trust the fair folk and this does continue throughout the book which I liked, she had strong principles which was good to see. I have to see this is a short book and I felt like there were parts that could have been developed better, like Isobel’s sisters and her backstory is never gone into even though it is a standalone book and those things are what her character was created by. I also thought it was a bit insta love for my taste, I enjoyed it overall I just thought it could have been built up to better.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review – A Lively Midwinter Murder by Katy Watson

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. Today I am bringing you my review for the christmas novel in the Three Dahlias mystery series by Katy Watson.

I was so happy I managed to get a copy of this book at the beginning of December, just in time to read it as part of my Christmas TBR. It is the fourth book in the series I believe, just to say you do need to read these books in order to fully understand the story.

Blurb/Synopsis:

FIRST COMES LOVE . . . THEN COMES MURDER

A high society Christmas Eve wedding at a remote Scottish castle sounds like the perfect winter getaway for the three Dahlias and their partners – until a snowstorm hits, cutting them off from the mainland, and civilisation. Which, of course, is when the dead body of one of the other guests turns up in the snow outside the family chapel. A dead body wearing a wedding dress and a stolen diamond necklace…

The Dahlias were ready for mulled wine, roaring fires, and romance this Christmas. Now, they’re on the hunt for another murderer. And if their suspicions are right, it looks like the wedding may be off …

My Review:

I love this series of books, three brilliant female lead sleuths of all different ages. it is quite refreshing to see them working together. I have to say that one thing I was undecided in this novel if I liked it or not is that the partners of the three main characters had bigger roles in this one, which was nice to see to a certain extent because they have been largely ignored so far, however, I felt it took away from the story and there was more of an emphasis on the couples and it took away from the main mystery. It was like being pulled out of the story when these scenes happened, they felt out of place most of the time.

Saying that, this was still a solid book in the series. It was nice to see more of Libby’s character though I wanted to see her have a bit more spine and take direction of her own life more which I didn’t see but I can forgive that. I thought the mystery aspect was good, it had plenty of twists to keep you guessing but I did find the ending a little predictable, I am still going to continue the series though.

Have you read this book? What did you think of this book?

Book Reviews

Book Review – Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all doing good today. It is time for my first book review of 2025, okay, I read this book in December but still.

Today I am giving you my book review for Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan, I first heard of this book from it being in an Illumicrate Afterlight box I believe, I didn’t get the box, I actually bought the book second hand on Vinted for not that much at all, which it turns out was a good decision.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Sparks fly when an occult expert and a disgraced archeologist become enemies-with-benefits in this steamy romance.

Riley Rhodes finally has the chance to turn her family’s knack for the supernatural into a legitimate business when she’s hired to break the curse on an infamous Scottish castle. Used to working alone in her alienating occupation, she’s pleasantly surprised to meet a handsome stranger upon arrival—until he tries to get her fired.

Fresh off a professional scandal, Clark Edgeware can’t allow a self-proclaimed “curse breaker” to threaten his last chance for redemption. After he fails to get Riley kicked off his survey site, he vows to avoid her. Unfortunately for him, she vows to get even.

Riley expects the curse to do her dirty work by driving Clark away, but instead, they keep finding themselves in close proximity. Too close. Turns out, the only thing they do better than fight is fool around. If they’re not careful, by the end of all this, more than the castle will end up in ruins.

My Review:

Scottish, isolated castle – check. Enemies to lovers – check. Tales and occurrences of ghosts – check. This is the list that attracted me to this book. I thought the idea of a woman turning up at a castle to help break a curse being thwarted at every turn by a grumpy academic man sounded like a great premise. The execution was not what I was hoping for. I will try to say as much as I can without spoiling anything but we will start with, there is a lot of miscommunication in this book from pretty early on and I know for my own reading tastes this is not something I enjoy. It kind of set the book on a bad road from the beginning for me.

Was this book a quick read, absolutely. Lovely pacing, lovely writing, the banter between the characters was nice. I felt that the way things with the curse were progressing and wrapping up was not what I wanted, it was too easy in my opinion and the characters took too long to get there. There was background conflicts that I enjoyed, from the characters own personal lives, particularly the male main character’s family/personal life is explored with great depth and emotion but I was disappointed that the main female character was not explored in the same way, there was definitely more emphasis on the man which although interesting felt too one sided to work for me.

I think overall I am happy I gave this book a go but it wasn’t one I plan on reading again.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review: Queen B by Juno Dawson

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Happy Monday bookish people! How are you all doing today? I hope you are all doing good.

Today I am bringing you my book review for Queen B by Juno Dawson, a novella prequel from the Her Majesty’s Royal Coven and The Shadow Cabinet world.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Blurb/Synopsis:

The next enchanting instalment of the sensational #1 SUNDAY TIMES bestselling HER MAJESTY’S ROYAL COVEN fantasy series takes us back to the reign of Henry VIII and the origins of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven under the beautiful, the bewitching, Anne Boleyn.

BOW DOWN WITCHES

It’s 1536 and the Queen has been beheaded.

Lady Grace Fairfax, witch, knows that something foul is at play – that someone had betrayed Anne Boleyn and her coven.

Wild with the loss of their leader – and her lover, a secret that if spilled could spell Grace’s own end – she will do anything in her power to track down the traitor.

But there’s more at stake than revenge: it was one of their own, a witch, that betrayed them, and Grace isn’t the only one looking for her. King Henry VIII has sent witchfinders after them, and they’re organized like they’ve never been before under his new advisor, the impassioned Sir Ambrose Fulke, a cold man blinded by his faith. His cruel reign could mean the end of witchkind itself.

If Grace wants to find her revenge and live, she will have to do more than disappear.

She will have to be reborn.

In this gripping, propulsive, sultry novella, Juno Dawson takes us back to the bloody beginnings of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven to show us the strength, steel and sacrifice it takes to make a sisterhood.

My Review:

I will be honest, I picked this book up for the simple fact that it had Anne Boleyn in it. I basically will read anything for Anne Boleyn.
I can’t say I didn’t like this book, because I did but because it was only a novella I didn’t feel like I got to know the characters well enough to care about them. I thought the story was well thought out to try and include historical fact and mix it with the fantasy elements but for me there wasn’t enough of the book for me to get into it and really enjoy it.

Book Reviews

Book Review: Powerless by Lauren Roberts

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today. I am bringing you a book review today of Powerless by Lauren Roberts. If you have read this book, what did you think of it?

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Blurb/Synopsis:

She is the very thing he’s spent his whole life hunting.
He is the very thing she’s spent her whole life pretending to be.

Only the extraordinary belong in the kingdom of Ilya—the exceptional, the empowered, the Elites.

The powers these Elites have possessed for decades were graciously gifted to them by the Plague, though not all were fortunate enough to both survive the sickness and reap the reward. Those born Ordinary are just that—ordinary. And when the king decreed that all Ordinaries be banished in order to preserve his Elite society, lacking an ability suddenly became a crime—making Paedyn Gray a felon by fate and a thief by necessity.

Surviving in the slums as an Ordinary is no simple task, and Paedyn knows this better than most. Having been trained by her father to be overly observant since she was a child, Paedyn poses as a Psychic in the crowded city, blending in with the Elites as best she can in order to stay alive and out of trouble. Easier said than done.

When Paeydn unsuspectingly saves one of Ilyas princes, she finds herself thrown into the Purging Trials. The brutal competition exists to showcase the Elites’ powers—the very thing Paedyn lacks. If the Trials and the opponents within them don’t kill her, the prince she’s fighting feelings for certainly will if he discovers what she is—completely Ordinary.

My Review:

Let’s just start by saying I think this book was fantastic. I loved the premise of the kingdom turning against those who are ordinary and wanting everyone to have powers. Usually it is the other way around in the books I have read so this was quite refreshing. The main thing that I think I loved was the character dynamics, Paedyn was a great female lead character and the two princes with their own motivations and limitations and how they all interacted I found fascinating, I never quite knew where this book would go next. I will say, for the people who have read it, I did not like the character if Adana, when I was reading her I was reading her as a young child character but I later found out she was older and that did not work for me, I also think that she could have been utilized better as a character. I finished this a few days ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it, I want to pick up the next one immediately.

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day!

Today, I am bringing you my book review for The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman, the fourth book in the Thursday Murder Club.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Shocking news reaches the Thursday Murder Club.

An old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing.

As the gang springs into action they encounter art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers, as well as heartache close to home.

With the body count rising, the package still missing and trouble firmly on their tail, has their luck finally run out? And who will be the last devil to die?

My Review:

Okay, so, this book is the fourth in a series and I have read them all. Quickly, I will say my opinions on the rest of the series: Book 1 I thought was okay, it wasn’t anything special but it was an okay read, the second book I did enjoy – I liked it a lot more, book 3 I did not enjoy because it felt unnecessarily complex and didn’t seem to understand where it was going itself and now we get to book four. I really disliked this book.

I will say there were two parts I liked, first that Joyce had a larger role as a leader rather than a follower I did like seeing that character progression and secondly, there is a character who struggles with dementia and that was explored a lot in this book – I would say it was explored too much, too much time was devoted to that part of the story and it brought the mood of the whole series down but it is always good to see real life themes appear in books.

I read someone else’s review to see if other people were feeling the same way as me, and they described this book as feeling like the author was bored with writing it and I definitely agree with that. It did feel bored and it felt like it didn’t understand what it was trying it say, the plot easily could have been condensed by about 200 pages, most of it felt like filler put in just for the sake of it. I did not enjoy it at all.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review: The Examiner by Janice Hallett

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today!

Today I am bringing you my book review for The Examiner by Janice Hallett. I don’t usually include spoilers in my reviews but there is one tiny twist from this book that I want to talk about, I don’t think it will ruin a big part of the book for you if you read this review then read the book but if you want to go in with no spoilers at all, maybe wait and read my review after.

Okay, on with the review!

Blurb/Synopsis:

Six Students. One Murder. Your Time Starts Now.

The students of Royal Hastings University’s new Multimedia Art course have been trouble from day one. Acclaimed artist Alyson wants the department to revolve around her. Ludya struggles to balance her family and the workload. Jonathan has management experience but zero talent for art. Lovely Patrick can barely operate his mobile phone, let alone professional design software. Meanwhile blustering Cameron tries to juggle the course with his job in the City and does neither very well. Then there’s Jem. A gifted young sculptor, she’s a promising student… but cross her at your peril.

The year-long course is blighted by accusations of theft, students setting fire to one another’s artwork, a rumoured extra-marital affair and a disastrous road trip. But finally they are given their last assignment: to build an interactive art installation for a local manufacturer. With six students who have nothing in common except their clashing personal agendas, what could possibly go wrong?

The answer is: murder. When the external examiner arrives to assess the students’ essays and coursework, he becomes convinced that a student was killed on the course and that the others covered it up. But is he right? And if so, who is dead, why were they killed, and who is the murderer? Only a close examination of the evidence will reveal the truth. Your time starts now.

My Review:

I have read all of Janice Hallet’s books so far, I absolutely love them. I love the unique way that she writes entirely in different forms of mixed media. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to do it that way, with its limitations on plot and form and it not really having an active voice as everything has already happened when it is talked about but I love the way she does it. I can’t day much about this book because it will be spoilers but I can say that I found I had strong feelings about each character individually and that is what drove me to keep reading, I wanted to know what happened to them and which one of them had supposedly been ‘murdered’ or not.

Now, as I warned at the beginning, there is one thing I want to talk about that can be considered a spoiler. So, stop reading here if you missed my earlier warning.

One of the characters in this story is revealed to be visually impaired. Personally, I had figured this out a long time before it was revealed but that is because I was reading the character and relating to how they described people by smells not aesthetics and the other things they were doing, it is the same way I recognise people being visually impaired myself, and that is why I wanted to talk about this. There are so few books that include blind characters and the ones that do, that I have read, don’t do it very well or they use the character as a gimmick, or worse than all of that – they put in a blind character and then the twist is that they were faking it the whole time. I just wanted to make a comment about how nice it is to have a visually impaired character written well.

Have you read The Examiner? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review: Nine Lives by Peter Swanson

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today.

Today I am bringing you my book review for Nine Lives by Peter Swanson, I read this during September and honestly I had been putting off reading the book because of the things I had heard about it. So, I am glad that I have finally read it and if you want to hear my thoughts, read on! Just so you know there might be light spoilers in this post.

Blurb/Synopsis:

Nine strangers receive a list with their names on it in the mail. Nothing else, just a list of names on a single sheet of paper. None of the nine people know or have ever met the others on the list. They dismiss it as junk mail, a fluke – until very, very bad things begin happening to people on the list. First, a well-liked old man is drowned on a beach in the small town of Kennewick, Maine. Then, a father is shot in the back while running through his quiet neighborhood in suburban Massachusetts. A frightening pattern is emerging, but what do these nine people have in common? Their professions range from oncology nurse to aspiring actor.

FBI agent Jessica Winslow, who is on the list herself, is determined to find out. Could there be some dark secret that binds them all together? Or is this the work of a murderous madman? As the mysterious sender stalks these nine strangers, they find themselves constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who will be crossed off next….

My Review:

I have read one of Peter Swanson’s books before and I found it to be quite enjoyable, it was easy to guess the ending but good none the less. So, when Nine Lives came out a few years ago it sounded interesting and I bought a copy but then I started seeing other people not enjoy the book and it put me off reading it but I was looking for a short, quick read and I decided to pick it up and.. it was exactly like everyone said it was.

Okay, in terms of the novel itself it was well written and overall plotted quite nicely. The problem is that it very clearly was inspired by Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, I think had I read Nine Lives without ever seeing, hearing about or reading And Then There Were None I would have enjoyed Nine Lives more as a quick easy read but as it was I found it a bit dragging because I sort of knew what was coming. I also couldn’t get a connection with any of the characters because they weren’t on the page for very long and I also didn’t understand the overall motivations of the killer, it didn’t make much sense to me.

Overall I gave this book a three star rating because as a book I would describe it as ‘fine’ but as a novel with the intentions it had it wasn’t to my taste.

Have you read this book? What did you think of it?

Book Reviews

Book Review: Covent Garden Ladies by Hallie Rubenhold

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Happy Monday bookish people! I hope you are all having a good day today.

Today I am sharing my book review for The Covent Garden Ladies by Halle Rubenhold, I got hold of a copy of this book while I was at the Capital Crime Festival in London earlier this year, I hadn’t heard of it before but I am glad that I gave this non-fiction book a chance.

Blurb/Synopsis:

The Covent Garden Ladies tells the story of Samuel Derrick, Jack Harris, and Charlotte Hayes, whose complicated and colorful lives were brought together by the publication of Harris’ List, an infamous guidebook of prostitutes which detailed addresses, physical characteristics and “specialties.” The true history of the book is a tragicomedy motivated by poverty, passionate love, aspiration, and shame. Its telling plunges the reader down the dark alleys of 18th-century London’s underworld, a realm populated by tavern owners, pimps, punters, card sharps, and of course, a colorful range of prostitutes and brothel-keepers.

My Review:

I would first like to say that nonfiction is not my usual genre, I don’t read a lot of it because I sometimes find the information a bit dense to read but this novel is descriptive in the way that a fiction book would be even though the stories it tells are the truth.

This book follows three key people in the world that inspired the TV show Harlots, I found it really interesting to read about people I had never heard of before and how each of them struggled through life, they each had different struggles they had to fight through but somehow all of their stories intersected with one another. I read this book very quickly, every time I put it down I was excited to get back to reading it. If you are interested in reading about people, often people who are misunderstood in society, and the actions that changed the directions of their lives.

Have any of you read this book? Let me know what you thought of it in the comments!

Book Reviews

Book Review: Helle and Death by Oskar Jenson

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Happy Friday bookish people! I hope you are all doing well today. The most recent book I have read is Helle and Death by Oskar Jenson and today I am bringing you my review for it. This review will probably include spoilers so if you haven’t read Helle and Death and still want to, I’d suggest reading my review after not before.

With all that said, on with the review!

Blurb/Synopsis:

A snowstorm. A country house. Old friends reunited. It’s going to be murder…

Torben Helle – art historian, Danish expat and owner of several excellent Scandinavian jumpers – has been dragged to a remote snowbound Northumbrian mansion for a ten-year reunion with old university friends. Things start to go sideways when their host, a reclusive and irritating tech entrepreneur, makes some shocking revelations at the dinner table. And when these are followed by an apparent suicide, the group faces a test of their wits… and their trust.

Snowed in and cut off, surrounded by enigmatic housekeepers and off-duty police inspectors, not to mention a peculiar last will and testament, suspicion and sarcasm quickly turn to panic. As the temperature drops and the tension mounts, Torben decides to draw upon all the tricks of Golden Age detectives past in order to solve the how much money would it take to turn one of his old friends into a murderer? But he’d better be quick, or someone else might end up dead…

This witty murder mystery puts a modern spin on the classic country house whodunnit. A must-read for fans of Agatha Christie, Richard Osman and Janice Hallett.

My Review:

Helle and Death is a book that, on paper, has all the ingredients to make a great murder mystery novel. However, in my opinion, I don’t think all of these things worked. A snowstorm keeping all the suspects locked inside, great. A group of old friends with buried secrets, amazing. An old manor house where a murder takes place, perfect. Execution – missed the mark.

In terms of the characters, I thought for the most part they were well-developed and intricate. Their secrets well hidden as well. However, the main character you spend time with is Torben Helle and I did not click with him at all. Whether this was because of the third person, distant way it was written in his perspective or not I mainly saw him as just another suspect and it irked me how the main role of his personality was to state that he was Danish over and over. By the end of the novel that was really the only thing I knew about him.

Now, even with that I would have found the book okay and probably have given it three stars if not for the ending. Again I say if you haven’t read the book this is going to be a huge spoiler. I HATE when a book is listed as a murder mystery but it turns out to not include murder at all. Honestly, there were so many twists that could have been used to give this book a good ending but instead the author chose that ending. It was a big disappointment.

Star Rating:

Rating: 2 out of 5.

If you have read this book, what did you think of it?