The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer

REVIEW: The Appointment by Katharina Volckmer 3/5. Thank you so much, @AvidReaderPress, for the digital review copy. This book is easily one of the strangest I’ve read in 2020, so I’ll let the blurb give you an overview: “Sarah, the German-born, London-based 30-something narrator, opens the book by relating her sexual fantasies of Hitler to…

Review: When No One is Watching

“Rear Window meets Get Out in this gripping thriller from a critically acclaimed and New York Times Notable author, in which the gentrification of a Brooklyn neighborhood takes on a sinister new meaning…” Sounds like a great quote…but is it worth the hype? I would say it, more or less, is! I really felt the…

Review: The Hierarchies

Our guide throughout The Hierarchies, set in the seemingly semi-neat future where robots have become a part of everyday life, is Sylv.ie. Sylv.ie is a sentitent sex robot who works her way through ‘life’ and dealing with the robot/human divide. In a heartwarmingly human way, she soon develops deep curiosity about the small world that…

Review: The New Me by Hallee Butler

*REVIEW* The New Me by Hallee Butler, 5/5. The New Me presents an almost haltingly normal plot – a temp trying to become a full time hire at a job she hates but feels like she *needs* to do, part of a long line of things she *needs* to do but seemingly doesn’t want to….

Review: The Book of Koli

REVIEW: The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey, 4/5. Thank you Netgallery & Orbit for the review copy! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I went into The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey nearly blind, and I suggest all others do the same. In that spirit, I’m going to keep my review as spoiler free as possible. Koli, in…

Review: A Woman is No Man

A Woman is No Man rushes you quietly into the corners of the lives of conservative Arab women in America, specifically New York. We focus on Deya, a young high school girl with her parents mysteriously absent, who is beginning the courting process and wanting to find herself despite the pressures out upon her. On…

Review: Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Review: Melmoth by Sarah Perry, 3/5 stars. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Have you ever really, really wanted to love a book? But…couldn’t? That’s how I feel about Melmoth. Perry’s The Essex Serpents became one of my favorite reads shortly after reading it and I had high hopes for her next novel, Melmoth. Melmoth covers the myth of Melmoth,…

Review: The Poison Thread

Review: The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell, 4/5 stars. In this gothic horror novel with an ending reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw, Purcell tells the story of two very different ladies – 25 year old, wealthy Dorothea Truelove and imprisoned, impoverished, and abused 16 year old, Ruth Butterham. In alternating chapters the lives…

Review: The Memory Police

The Memory Police Review, 3.5/5 “A heart has no shape, no limits. That’s why you can put almost any kind of thing in it, why it can hold so much. It’s much like your memory, in that sense.”― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ The Memory Police whisks the reader away to an unnamed island…

Review: Ghost Wall

Ghost Wall, a slim tome from Sarah Moss, begins in the wilds of the north of England with a scene that is ripe with terror but seems far back into the past – before written language, before the comforts of modernity, and a time deeply mired in superstition. However, in Ghost Wall the past rarely…