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abookishtype's reviews
2493 reviews
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
The Salt family—Dominic, Raf, Fen, and Orly—are the remaining caretakers of Shearwater Island and its seed vault. The research station there had to be abandoned due to rising seawater. The Salt family and a selection of the seeds from the vault are supposed to be evacuated in a few short weeks. All that remains for the family to do is keep the vault from flooding and package up the seeds selected for rescue. A violent storm at the beginning of Charlotte McConaghy’s emotional new novel, Wild Dark Shore, brings them another task: to save the life of a woman who washed up after her ship was sunk. Although this premise suggests a novel about science and the environment, McConaghy delivers a tale that will punch readers right in the heart...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
The people who board the train in Granville, a resort town on France’s Norman coast, have no idea that they will be part of one of the most spectacular train accidents in history. Readers who’ve never heard of the Montparnasse derailment have probably seen photos like the one I included below and will have an idea of where this train is headed. Emma Donoghue’s new novel, The Paris Express, unfolds in the hours between the train’s departure in Granville and its stunning arrival in Paris on October 22, 1895...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
There are a lot of things I didn’t learn about my country’s history until I got to college. One of these things was the decades-long efforts by the US Army to hunt the American bison to extinction, as part of the larger war on Indigenous peoples conducted by the American government. The idea—schemed up by General William Sherman and General Philip Sheridan—was to cut off the primary source of food and supplies for Plains tribes to make them more “amenable” to being forced onto reservations. That I’ve been able to see bison on my visits to Yellowstone National Park is a miracle. American bison are a glorious animal and the fact that we almost lost them, that they were hunted, skinned, and left with their meat poisoned turns my stomach. All of this is to say that, even though I shouldn’t cheer on the efforts of Good Stab in Stephen Graham Jones’s excellent new novel, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, I couldn’t help applauding the extermination of some white buffalo hunters...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death and Violence
Minor: Sexual assault
The Antidote by Karen Russell
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
One of the worst storms of the Dust Bowl swept across an immense part of the United States on April 14, 1935. The storm moved an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil in a matter of hours. Karen Russell’s strange, affecting, new novel, The Antidote opens with the Black Sunday Storm. Storms feature heavily in this book. They scour away the past. They wash the present away, too. The storms leave so little behind that the only way to go on is to rebuild everything from the ground up...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen
challenging
emotional
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann tells a connected story of surviving—or not surviving—World War II and the Nazi occupation of Belgium. Two of the families that live in the apartment building are related but close quarters (and some nosy neighbors) mean that everyone knows at least a little bit of everyone’s business. Perhaps it’s the American in me but I found that I both longed for the closeness of the relationships that spring up in 33 Place Brugmann and relished my current privacy, since I don’t have neighbors who poke their heads out of their doors to see what I’m up to...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Girl Falling by Hayley Scrivenor
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
The first pages of Hayley Scrivenor’s novel, Girl Falling, show us the worst thing that has ever happened to Finn Young. Within a matter of pages, Finn’s girlfriend, Magdu—the woman Finn was hoping to marry—is dead. It will take the rest of the book for us to learn exactly what led to Magdu’s fatal fall. Who tampered with the climbing gear? Was it the man who insisted on joining the climbing trip Finn arranged with her old school friend, Daphne? Was it Daphne? Or was it all just a terrible accident?
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
The Prosecutor: One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice by Jack Fairweather
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.0
When Fritz Bauer came back to Germany from exile at the end of World War II, he soon found that he was still surrounded by Nazis. Denazification was mostly a failure (for a variety of reasons) and law enforcement, the judiciary, and so many businesses were staffed with an alarming number of former Nazis. But unlike a lot of other Germans, Bauer was able to get into a position to do something about it. He parlayed his pre-war degree and experience into a job as director of the district courts in Braunschweig (like a district attorney for the Americans reading this) and later Frankfurt am Main. In The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle of Bring Nazis to Justice, Jack Fairweather recounts Bauer’s decades-long fight not just against Nazis but also the refusal of a lot of Germans to reckon with their recent past...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.
The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Ted Bannerman’s house holds a lot of terrible secrets. In Catriona Ward’s novel, The Last House on Needless House, it’s hard to say if we get to the bottom of everything because each revelation leads to another question. This is the kind of book that I race through—so that I can find out what happens—and then want to go back to the beginning to marvel over the clues the author carefully placed to foreshadow the twists. It also makes me want to go find my bookish friends who like dark psychological fiction and press a copy into their hands so that we can talk about it...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child abuse and Child death