I’ve actually done a crazy thing here and skipped out 6 whole books in my mini reviews – but for a good reason, I swear! I normally do these mini reviews in order of reading, albeit a few months or more behind at the moment – I’m catching up, sort of! In between these books and the last though, I read the entire series of ACOTAR. And I have to be honest, in one of those cliche sort of ways, ACOTAR changed my life (or at least, my reading life) – for the better, but it has made a huge impact on the way I read again. It was one of those TikTok books that everyone was raving about, so much so that I avoided reading it. Until I gave in and decided that I just had to give it a go.
So yep, there’s an entire blog post coming up on that one – it’s currently half written! But for now, let’s dive into these mini book reviews.
City of Stardust by Georgia Summers
It feels kind of insane and awesome to write that heading, just as it was to read this book, as it was written by one of my sister’s friends from school. Without sounding too cliche (that’s twice already in this post!), I remember reading Georgia’s writing when she was 14 or 15 and thinking that one day she would be published, and here it is! As with any books that are written by people I know, I do have to state that I can’t be 100% unbiased, which is why I don’t give a star rating on the blog, but fortunately for me, the premise of this book had already told me all I needed to know – that this is exactly my kind of thing! As I said, Georgia’s writing as a teenager had me enthralled, and this was no different.
This poetic romantasy of lost worlds and family curses is just as gorgeous as its cover. Violet Everly is a girl who loves stories – someone almost every reader will identify with. Abandoned by her mother due to the curse that haunts her family but that no one seems to know the origin of, Violet has no choice but to figure it out herself. There are monsters, both literal and literary, and some incredible world building. For someone just getting back into fantasy, this was a fantastic read. I, of course, highly recommend it!
An Immense World by Ed Yong – 8.5/10
I can’t quite remember where I saw the recommendation for this book, but it was one I needed to have immediately, and fortunately my local library had it in stock. This is a little outside my usual reading realm being a non-fiction, but I like to try and break out of it sometimes and had heard this was a beautiful look at the world around us.
The book is a breakdown of how animals sense the world in an entirely different way to us, many ways that we can only just manage to comprehend, and other ways that we are still just barely discovering. This is one of those books that you’ll come away from teeming with random but unbelievable facts, although it’s hard to articulate quite how a dog sees the world through its nose (and other far more complicated “Umwelten”), so you just end up recommending the book to everyone instead! It really does force you to see the world in a different way, opening your eyes to the fact that our scope of the world is pretty narrow. While the book is factual, it is also beautifully written, perfect as a palate cleanser between deeper fiction books.
Circe by Madeline Miller – 9/10
I don’t know what happened between me and this book. I bought it years ago thinking that it would be my perfect read, being about a character from the ancient world (my degree is in Classics), specifically one of my favourite stories, the Odyssey – I always preferred that over the Iliad! I read the first 3 or 4 pages, put it down, and didn’t pick it up again. I’m not sure why, maybe the subject matter felt too much like my academic studies to be enjoyable! I ended up selling it a few years later without reading it. I spotted it in a charity shop a couple of years ago, and bought it again, but still didn’t read it. I finally decided to give it a go this year, struggled through the first 2 or 3 chapters over the course of a week or so, then suddenly, it stuck, and I devoured this book in one final sitting.
This is the classic tale of Circe, but reimagined and told from a whole new perspective. Rather than the monster, this version is all about Circe’s identity, her revenge and her redemption. While that sounds very preachy, it’s really not at all. You feel all the feels for Circe. It’s a very different writing style at first, one that reminds me of how an original in ancient Greek might have been written including the myriad of characters and the unfamiliar world, but one that quickly becomes beautiful once you’re used to it. Now I just need to get hold of Achilles by Madeline Miller!
Rewild Yourself by Simon Barnes – 8/10
This was another gorgeous non-fiction that I wouldn’t normally pick up! We had a little break at a lodge in Lincolnshire towards the end of summer and this book was on the shelf, so I picked it up and read it in less than 48 hours as we were only there for the weekend.
The premise is that in our modern day world, we have forgotten how to really see the nature that’s all around us – the big and the small things. This book breaks down 23 ways to notice nature again, and it really works! The lodge we stayed in was a gorgeous little modern building surrounded by a wildflower meadow – I’ll add a picture to this post – and with this tips in mind, I wandered to the pond in the meadow early one morning, and you can’t even imagine how many tiny details I noticed that I never would have before. “Spellbinding”, as the subtitle proclaims, is really the only way to describe what this book does. For a magical way back into the nature that’s all around us, no matter where you are, I’d highly recommend this.
