All Book Reviews

This was a really surreal take on a pandemic that wipes out a good portion of the Earth. One example being that they decided to build rollercoasters that would euthanize sick kids that were strapped in without them realising (?!) The first half was pretty depressing because it was just death, death and more death but the second half felt a bit mor

Yet another comfy read from Becky Chambers. Pity it is only a novella - is it quite short. This was my first time reading solarpunk and I want to read more of it!

I was expecting a continuation from the first Wayfarers book but this can almost be read as a standalone.

Beautiful, drug-addicted singer Daisy and the band The Six come together to write an album in the 70s. The entire book is told in an interview format, which I think works really well, since it lets the different characters give their own (slightly different) perspectives on certain events.

The general premise of this book is that two "best friends" are secretly in love with each other for 10+ years. Maybe that's romantic for some people but I found the way it was written was just frustrating, like surely after a couple of years you'd get your shit together!!

So I knew this book was originally a Kylo Ren / Rey fanfic before I started reading it. Which made things unintentionally funny because you can't help but imagine Kylo Ren doing all this weird romance novel shit (pushing a car shirtless across a carpark? Ok). And when he repeatedly gets described as being "broad" and "massive" (kind of cringey tbh

From the title I thought it was going to be a quirky story about housewives banding together to kill off a vampire (or something like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) but honestly this was straight up a horror book.

Basically the premise is, "imagine that the first Emperor of the Ming dynasty was actually a woman" and go from there. In saying that it skips over a lot of the possible issues that come with a woman pretending to be a man and more focuses on the "attempting to become Emperor" bit.

Shizuka Satomi has sacrificed the souls of six violinists to the devil, and has now found her seventh soul in runaway teen and violin prodigy Katrina. When she visits a local donut shop, owner Lan Tran catches her eye. What she doesn't realise is that the donut shop hides a spaceship, and the Tran family are actually aliens from another planet.

Huge alien beings known as Architects have the power to wipe out planets, and no one knows why they do it. Enter the crew of the Vulture God, a salvage ship that discovers evidence of the Architects returning after 50 years of peace in the galaxy.

Walden is the sort of book you see referenced in popular media all the time. When the male lead in k-drama Hometown Cha-cha-cha was shown reading it (did not expect that!), I figured it was finally time for me to get around to it.

12-year old Edward is the sole survivor of a plane crash that kills his parents and his brother.

A comfy sci-fi read. I really enjoyed the care the author put into building out its cast of alien species. The aliens aren't just humans with different skins, but there's some thought put into their cultural differences and histories as well. And even within the humans, there's a varied mix of cultures too, depending on whether you were rich and m

The Elven Emperor and three of his sons die in a tragic airship accident, leaving the throne to his exiled half-Goblin son.

As a poor cousin sent to live amongst her more privileged relations, Fanny Price is a fairly meek and boring leading character, as far as Jane Austen books go. She's content to be a wallflower, and her poor self-esteem isn't helped by comments from her aunts like "remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and the last". Yikes.

I always go into romance novels with low expectations, so this one turned out to be a pleasant read. It helped that the two main characters both had family issues they were dealing with so it wasn't just a romance novel. The way these issues were resolved didn't feel that satisfying, though. There's also a side plot where they start researching

Linus works as a caseworker for magical children living in orphanages. He's a very boring, by-the-books type of person but this all changes when he spends a month investigating an orphanage with potentially dangerous children who all have highly classified case files.

This is one of those books that starts off very confusingly, as you're thrust into the stories of five seemingly disconnected lives.

The Four Winds follows a broken family as they migrate from drought-ridden Texas to the green "promised land" of California during the Great Depression.

The book starts off quite abstract as New York is "born" into a human body. Once we are introduced to the five boroughs of NY, also in human form, it becomes a lot easier to follow. Basically there's a big bad enemy trying to kill off New York (the city and the person) and the boroughs have to team up to try and stop them.

At the old age of 24, Frederica Merriville has no plans on marriage of her own, and is instead keen to see her younger sister Charis matched with a husband worthy of her beauty. She enlists the help of a distant cousin, Alverstoke, to hold a ball to debut Charis into London society.

Sophy bursts into her cousins' lives, all 5'9" of her, with a pet monkey, a parrot and a dog. Unlike the women in an Austen novel, she can handle horses, her father's finances, and even owns a pistol. Schemes and matchmaking attempts ensue.

The Raven Tower tells the story of a god who lives in a rock. These small gods take the forms of forests, animals and other entities and are sustained by the prayers and offerings from people.

Sci-fi with a side of romance. Jainan's husband Taam dies in an accident, and so he is quickly married off to Taam's cousin Kiem to maintain the treaty between their two planets. Turns out it's not an accident and a murder-mystery ensues.

A Deadly Education follows El (short for Galadriel) who is in her junior year at the magic school Sholomance. The school is a highly hazardous place. There are murderous creatures out to kill El and all her classmates, and even if you make it to graduation, there's an all-out bloodbath waiting for you when you try to leave the school grounds.

An East Asian-inspired fantasy book, where each race has the ability to control an element - in the case of the Kaigenese (based off of the Japanese), it's the ability to wield water and ice.

From the title and cover I actually thought this was some sort of YA-ish romance book (oops, probably getting confused with "The Space Between Us") but it's actually a decent soft sci-fi novel.

I enjoyed Weir's first book about a science dude on Mars, but decided to give his second one a miss after hearing lackluster reviews about his attempt at a female protagonist.

I love a good sci-fi novel! The main character Mahit becomes the new ambassador for her small mining station and gets to fulfill her childhood dream of visiting the Empire. Of course there's one small problem in that her predecessor died under mysterious circumstances and a bunch of politics ensue.

Beautifully written. Twin sisters run away from their home in the South. Both are black, but one goes on to pass as a white woman while the other eventually returns to her hometown.

A memoir/book about the author's experiences of helping to produce a film about his life. Miller is really good at painting himself as a very ordinary guy (slightly veering into pathetic/loser territory). Apparently he's also written a bestselling book. It's almost confusing - because I couldn't see why he's famous (from the way he writes about hi

As a fantasy-romance book with under 3000 reviews, I was definitely hesitant to give this one a go (you can't trust Goodreads ratings!!). However I was pleasantly surprised and found it to be quite well-written.

The book tries to explore the morality of self-driving cars (and who should die in case of an accident) but it felt fairly shallow. The main character gives fairly obvious arguments against the "evil" people who want autonomous cars to take over the road. I think at times the dialogue wasn't that great. The cringiest moment for me was when a socia

It reminds me a lot of "The Way of Kings" in that the main character is an underdog from a lower "class", who strives to become as strong as the warrior nobles (a feat considered impossible).

Jo, a woman doing birds nest research in rural America, meets a girl who claims to be an alien sent down to witness 5 "miracles" before she returns home to her planet. She ends up co-parenting this child with neighbour Gabe, as they debate whether they should hand over the child to police.

A good Austen novel, but the real question is, is it better than Pride and Prejudice? I'm probably very biased having watched at least two movie adaptations of P&P, but I'd probably say no.

Krakauer's probably best known for his book "Into the Wild". I'd also recently read his book about Mormonism, "Under the Banner of Heaven". However I had no idea he had first-hand experience climbing Mt Everest, in which multiple people on his expedition team died.

Having also read Michelle Obama's recent memoir, I'm going to have to say I enjoyed her's more. She spoke from the heart and was a bit more personal. Barack's was a bit more of a play-by-play of his interactions with leaders across the world, and the work that goes into his policies (war in the middle east, affordable care act). Of course that was

A solid fantasy book. The story follows the queen and her handmaiden (secretly a trained killer) in the west where dragons are hated, and a girl aspiring to become a dragon rider in the east, where dragons are revered.

This book serves as a long list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to writing. As a native English speaker some of the advice I understood instinctively, while some was a lot harder to understand and/or hard to try and explain in a quick review like this one.

Plot tl;dr - the main character, Genly, is on a planet where everyone is is neither male or female. It reminds me of the Ancillary Justice series where everyone is referred to as a "she" (although this book came 40 years earlier!)

Wells had his own affair and this book was apparently partially based off that - I'm not sure if we're supposed to feel sympathetic as the main character and his mistress have a whole Romeo/Juliet "I can't bear to be parted from you and I might kill myself" moment because the guy is cheating on his wife! No sympathy for you sir!

Two college students realise that they can gain super powers if they try and kill themselves, and manage to not die in the process.

As the author rightly points out, most productivity books are written by men. It's good to see this book tackle things from a slightly different perspective - a woman who's trying to balance both her career ambitions as well as raising a family and running a household.

A very gripping memoir. I found the audiobook reader's voice grating at first, but her impressions of other people's voices were really good and I came to enjoy it.

3.5 stars - I wouldn't recommend you go out and read it, but it's not complete trash either.

A meandering look at the Mormon religion - its history, right from its founder Joseph Smith and his secret proclivities for polygamy, the founding of Utah, through to present-day Mormonism and its many offshoots (notably the fundamentalist Mormons who still practice polygamy). Krakaeur also makes a connection between some of the violence committed

As someone who has only read one of King's books (the one on JFK's assassination) and is currently not aspiring to be a fiction author, I don't think I was the target reader for this book.

Half of the Galvin family's 12 children (incl 10 boys!) have schizophrenia. A riveting read into the Galvin family, the toll schizophrenia takes, and the advances made in the research of schizophrenia over the last 50+ years.

The author has had a very, very impressive career helping to champion the art of hostage negotiation within the FBI.

I found this didn't grip me as much as Bad Blood did (the book about Theranos, another dodgy startup with a charismatic founder). Probably because the stakes were lower and they actually did have a real product (albeit one that's not really profitable).

A detailed look into the history of Scientology. Honestly scary how much they can get away with without the US government being able to do anything. E.g. all the stalking they do to try and get people who leave to come back, or how they abuse their followers (technically willingly, but cmon they're basically brainwashed).

Pretty intense book, composed entirely of people's accounts of living in the USSR during its collapse. It took me a while to get into it, and I felt it got better / more interesting / easier to read about a third or a half of the way in.

The author acknowledges that Atomic Habits builds upon some of the content laid out in The Power of Habit, and so if you had to pick one of the two to read, this one is not it!

The main character has a year of rest and relaxation - by bingeing on pills that let her sleep for days at a time, only waking up to eat and watch TV.

Letters between two time-traveling agents on opposite sides of a war. It started out really slow and I didn't really see the point of it but everything came together towards the end. I preferred the parts of the book that weren't letters and were proper descriptions of what was happening.

In a way you can't not like this book because it's a memoir about someone's final years on earth, but it is well-written. Especially considering that the author passed away before he finished it, the editors did a good job of turning into a "finished" product.

Short story anthology. I really loved Ted's other book of short stories so I decided to give this one a read. These contain his earlier works (from the 90s) as well as the short story that inspired the acclaimed sci-fi movie Arrival.

Decided to pick this one up because it's considered an Australian classic - buts it's more a classic in the sense that it was really popular when it was published, not really because it's groundbreaking in any way. Giving it somewhere between a 3 and a 4, but bumping it down to a 3 because while I did enjoy it, I wouldn't recommend anyone go out o