Emma Goto

So the setup immediately had my YA alarm bells ringing (17 year old lead who is really smart, strong and is fighting against an unjust and wrong society) but this was honestly really good! The plot and characters are complicated enough that it's not clearly split into good guys and bad guys, so I'm keen to see where this goes next.

The plot revolves around a mother who left her partner for dead on the side of a road, who consequently loses custody of her child and then gets with the dead partner's best friend. Like she redeems herself in the end but I found her really hard to like as a character, and also how easily the best friend is won over by her because she's hot I guess??

A woman living in 1950s America who wants to be a scientist and not a housewife, and also ends up starring in a TV cooking show. On one hand there's misogyny and sexual assault but also some positive, uplifting female empowerment. I can't quite put my finger on why but the female empowerment bit doesn't feel very realistic.. like we are supposed to read this as a book set in the 1950s but something feels off, as though the way it's written is a bit too fantastical and too good to be true. Which also makes the tonal shifts with the sexual assault parts a bit weird as well.

I still found it entertaining though!

Sort of like an alternative history British empire where they gain their power through magic that's powered by translation (hence the name Babel).

It felt a bit weird though, like the book was shitting on the British empire (and rightly so) but via the alternate magic history version of the British empire.. like why though. Just shit on it directly or not at all thanks

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 more hopeful.

Giving it a 3.5 since it was written well but felt uncomfortable to read at times, and took me a couple of weeks to come back and finish.

The book is set across three different eras - the first I found the most interesting, with it being an alternate history late 1800s America where gay marriage is legal (and people even do arranged marriages for it). We then jump 100 years forward to a Hawaiian living in America. It gets a bit confusing here because the main character's names are reused (which made me think this was going to be like Cloud Atlas?) but they're not actually connected in some tangible way, although storywise they are sort of similar. Then we jump forward another 100 years for a dystopian, pandemic-ridden America where gay marriage is now banned in an attempt to increase the population. Honestly you could have just turned one of these eras into it's own book and I probably would have preferred it more!

A common theme across all 3 stories is the uselessness of at least one of the characters in each due to their passivity. Which I visit makes for some frustrating reading. And then I finished the book and it's like, well what was the point? But maybe that's what you get with Yanagihara books. A bunch of people suffering.

Basically the plot of the story is that there's an alternate reality earth with huge kaiju (think Godzilla) and it's the Kaiju Preservation Society's job to look after them.

The main character is a fan of sci-fi novels, so as a fellow sci-fi fan it was fun picking up on the references (is this what it's like to read and actually enjoy Ready Player One??).

However I did feel like the climax/resolution was a bit of a letdown, a bit too much of an invincible, main characters can do no wrong, vibe. But otherwise fun if you don't take it too seriously. Hence why I couldn't give it a 5 star!

After their father dies, two brothers set out on a journey across America to find their mother who walked out on their family 10 years prior. The elder brother, Emmett, spent some time in a juvenile prison so we are introduced to some of his dodgy acquaintances along the way. The book jumps between all these perspectives and eventually comes to a finish that left me a bit shook.

While the book was interesting to read I wouldn't say that I loved it, hence the 4 star rating!

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

In the 15th century, a boy and a girl living on opposite sides of the walls that protect Constantinople. In modern-day America, a Korean War veteran and a teenager living in a small town. And in the distant future, a girl leaving behind a barren Earth in hopes of reaching a new planet to colonise.

As it turns out, the one thing they have in common is an ancient Greek tale called “Cloud Cuckoo Land”. And the links between their lives all come together for a really satisfying finish.

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) all I could think of was that Ben swolo meme which made me laugh too.



The author made 0 effort to change the physical appearances of the characters - she literally named the guy Adam. Because she's just straight up describing Adam Driver in the book it's almost creepy. I feel like there's a difference between gushing over the physical appearance of a fictional person versus a real-life person?

Gotta give it a 4/5 though because the Reylo stan in me just wants a happy Reylo ending for once.

3.5 rounded down to a 3.

The writing style is quite clunky, but you get used to it. One of the characters is a millionaire writer, and at times she talks about what it's like to be famous, which felt a bit too much like the author complaining via the character.

I finished it and felt left with a sense of “well what was the point in that?” hence the low rating.

Our main character wakes up and realises she is missing the last 18 months of her life - because she is a clone and the last date her consciousness was downloaded from the “real” her was 18 months prior. As she attempts to piece together what her original body was doing in the last 18 months, the book also explores the ethical dilemmas that come with cloning.

A really fun (and different) read!

This one's been on my list for a good couple of years now, and I finally got around to reading it. Basically it tries to dispel some of the myths around the Columbine school shooting. The shooters weren't loners - they had friends, went to prom, and they weren't the trench coat-wearing, loner goths that the media initially painted them to be.

I'm a fan of true crime and I'm not sure if this technically falls into this category, but this one felt really heavy to read. Maybe because it spends a lot more time with the survivors and victims of the shooting? Or maybe because it's a more recent event that I was already aware of, the book felt a little bit less interesting to read.

A book about an American Indian returning to India to report on rural India's flawed justice system. Quite a depressing read as it covers the conflicts between Muslims and Hindus in India and violence against women. It does end on a happier note which almost feels a bit out of place with the rest of the book.

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.

In amongst the quirky plot, the book touches on a lot of serious topics. The main one being the transphobia that Katrina experiences throughout the book. Her parents are unsupportive and abusive, she has to do sex work to make a living, and there's mentions of sexual assault. When she performs as a violinist on stage, she's misgendered and made fun of for wearing a dress. Most of the characters are Asian, so we also see some casual racism directed their way, as well as some bigotry towards two other LGBT characters. There's also the side plot of a violin-maker with super low self-esteem, because her father told her that the secrets of violin-making can only be passed down to his sons.

Unfortunately it didn't quite come together for me. The book tries to straddle too many things. I'll admit I went into expecting a comfy sci-fi read (the book is described as “Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet”) so I finished it feeling really confused and disappointed.

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.

I loved Tchaikovsky's Children of Time so I was really excited to read this one. However I found the first third to first half to be very dense on information and quite hard to keep up with. Luckily if you stick through with it, it does get better.

The author is really good at writing about people and their relationships with others in a believable way. The ending was also very cathartic.


The part where it fell down a bit was that the entire book is leading up to a house party and wildfire in Malibu and foreshadowing something "bad" happening but it turned out to be a fairly positive ending.