unlikelyplaces's reviews
265 reviews

Bandit Queens - Parini Shroff

⭐️ - 4

🎧

Bandit Queens is a dark, literary comedy set in a small village in India. It follows Geeta, who is quite happy to let the rest of the town believe the rumours that she murdered her husband because she just wants to be left alone. But things get more complicated when another woman in the village asks her for help with murdering her own husband.

Although a “comedy”, this novel has so much depth to it. It deals a lot with themes of domestic abuse, the trauma that women suffer at the hands of men, and the importance of sisterhood.

My main criticism of this was that it took a while for me to get into, it was quite a slow start and I didn’t really feel invested until about half way through, but once it picked up I was hooked.

But other than that I loved this. It would be a great one for a book club or a buddy read, I feel like there’s so much to discuss about this story and I would recommend to pretty much everyone (please look at the trigger warnings though).

❗️Content Warnings (SPOILERS): on page s3xual assault, domestic abuse (this is a major theme), vomit, animal cruelty, alcoholism, infertility

 The Silverblood Promise - James Logan (ARC) 

⭐️ -3.5

📱

This story follows Lukan as he travels to the city of Saphrona to investigate his father’s murder and soon finds himself very much in over his head.

I feel a bit mixed about this…

To start with the positive, this was a really fun time. It was really fast paced and familiar (in a good way) fantasy mystery and the ending left me definitely interested in picking up the next one. I really liked our little gang and the beginnings of a found family dynamic between them.

I think that the comparison to Scott Lynch is accurate, I can definitely see parallels between Lukan and Locke, both idiots who are too charming and lucky for their own good.

My main issue with this was the writing unfortunately. There was a lot of info dumping and a lot of telling, not showing which just made it feel a bit clunky to me.

A lot of the humour in this reminded me a bit of Sanderson’s humour which, unfortunately, is my least favourite part of Sanderson’s writing but if it works for you then the humour in this likely would as well.

I think that if you’re more of a plot reader and if you like fast paced books then this will work for you better than it did for me. I kept wishing we had a bit more time to sit with the characters and get to know them and their feelings more but that’s just my preference, I like slow books a lot more!

So yes, I’m definitely interested in picking up the next one and I think there are a lot of people who will like this more than I did as my issues are mostly just preference (I mean I guess any review is but you know what I mean lol).

‼️ Warnings: a bit of mild body horror elements, vomiting (there’s weirdly a lot of vomiting in this book)

The perfect follow up to the first one!

This will be a short review from me because you can pretty much take everything I said about the first one and apply it to this sequel. I love this series so much!

I will say, this had a lot of similarities to the first one plot-wise but it was just as fun and charming and I loved the way the story developed and I really can’t wait for the next one!

Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë

⭐️ - 3

📖

I finally finished it!

I was really expecting to love this but it was such a slog. If you split this book into quarters, I really enjoyed the 2nd quarter but I really didn’t enjoy the other 3 at all. I’m sorry but I just didn’t understand what the point of this was.

I’m giving this 3 stars because the writing is stunning, the tension in that 2nd quarter is done brilliantly, and I did love Jane as a character. I loved her bluntness and her desire for independence. At the half way point I thought this was going to be a high 4⭐️ read for me.

However, I hated pretty much the whole 2nd half of the book… we spent so long just not doing anything. The relationships in this are all so abusive and controlling but the narrative doesn’t make me believe that that was the intention.

I can totally see the influence of this, particularly in the thriller genre but it just so didn’t work for me. People who love this book, please explain to me why? I genuinely would like to understand, because I just didn’t get it.

The Wager - David Grann

🎧

⭐ - n/a (I don’t tend to rate non fiction)

I really need to read more non-fiction. I was obsessed with this the whole time I was listening to it.

So this is a non-fiction telling the story of the ship “The Wager” and its crew who were castaway on an island and then follows all the events and scandal surrounding it. Although this isn’t my usual period, I am a general history nerd plus, I’m well up for any historical scandal and drama so when I heard about this I knew I had to pick it up.

This is written in a really accessible, narrative way so if you don’t read a lot of non-fiction (like me) but are interested in history or people’s behaviour when faced with desperate situations, I’d definitely say that this is a good one to pick up.

You can tell that the author has taken all the different accounts of events into consideration to piece together a narrative, while not shying away from addressing the issues present at the time like colonialism and lack of scientific knowledge. It goes into enough detail to explain the context around the events without getting too bogged down in every tiny little piece of information and keeps it to a really streamlined narrative. I will say, it did take longer to get to the island than I thought and the beginning did feel a little slow but I can recognise that it was necessary to set the context.

So yes I really enjoyed this, it’s one of those stories that you hear about and just can’t believe that it actually happened. I absolutely flew through this because I just wanted to be listening to it all the time. I would love for someone to make this into a tv series! Highly recommend this one!

Content warnings: Gore, graphic illness descriptions, animal death, real world violence

Unfortunately just found the writing in this to be a bit cheesy and wasn’t feeling very invested so just decided not to continue