Mini Book Reviews: I Who Have Never Known Men, This is How You Lose the Time War and more

Everything You Do Is Wrong by Amanda Coe

This book has one of (if not the) lowest ratings among books I’ve read, and I truly believe that it doesn’t deserve these low ratings. It’s not the most incredible or mindblowing book, but it’s not bad, not bad at all.

Everything You Do Is Wrong felt to me like it was written like a meandering TV show, moving between the characters and their own small predicaments. After seeing that the author wrote for Shameless, I think I understand this more. While I’ve never actually sat down and watched Shameless, I know the vibes of it, and I can draw the similarities here.

The storyline wasn’t enthralling, but it kept me reading. I liked the way it moved between characters with a little deeper insight into each one every time.

While the book is about a girl who is found almost dead on a beach, it’s not really about that – if that makes sense. It’s about the characters and the wider world they live in.

That world, by the way, was very interesting to me as it’s the area I live and grew up in – in fact, I was a bit shocked at one point to find the actual small town I live in mentioned in passing, I’ve never just stumbled across it in a book before! It’s set in North Yorkshire, but in a dead-end coastal town near Whitby. It’s a view of North Yorkshire that many don’t often see.

The characters are all a little odd – Harmony, a teenage girl from an unconventional home-schooled background; her aunt, Mel, who’s trying to do everything for everyone and finds the girl on the beach; the police officer who’s following the case; and a few more minor characters who crop up with their own storylines here and there.

As others have said in reviews before, the ending is kind of unsatisfying. While the mystery of the girl is wrapped up, it’s a bit anticlimactic, and the rest is just a bit meh. But then again, I didn’t see this as an issue because it felt like the rest of the book – real. The whole book felt like an accurate portrayal of real life through the eyes of a variety of characters, and lives aren’t just wrapped up with a nice bow at the end of it.

As I said, this book isn’t going to blow you away, but I enjoyed reading it nonetheless.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Wow, I read this in one sitting and was totally and completely enthralled by it.

It’s partly a manifesto on the world we live in, partly about love, partly about being alone even while among others.

This could fall into my favourite category of desolate and isolated landscape books, but it also somehow stands apart from these. There’s the usual survival at whatever costs and the fight that never leaves, but there’s also this underlying sense of hopelessness but weirdly also hope. The main character, once escaped, is always on the move or wanting to be, but with no real sense of purpose or direction towards anything in particular. Having known no other life, she doesn’t necessarily want to find people or civilisation, but in spite of this, she keeps moving forward.

I love a dystopian novel, and this took it to new places for me. It’s so harrowing, as many dystopian worlds are, so bleak, so sparse. But yet, there are relationships that thrive. Women carry on as women have always done.

Maybe a bit of a spoiler, but it’s made quite clear from the beginning: we never actually find out more about the world. Where the women are, why they were caged in groups of 40, why they were being guarded, where everyone else is. I’m already looking up theories based on the tiny pieces of evidence we see in the book.

But to be honest, that’s not what the story is about. To have had the women find civilisation or answers would have turned it into something entirely different. Leaving it open to possibilities makes it so brilliant and helps you to understand better a world that we can never know.

Highly recommend this for anyone. It’s a short but hugely impactul read.

The ADHD Women’s Wellbeing Toolkit by Kate Moryoussef

This was an engaging comprehensive overview of a range of techniques and tools to combat ADHD, or at least, the issues it can cause, in everyday life.

For a bit of background, I’m not diagnosed with ADHD. I fall into that category of women who suspect it, but have long squashed the signs. I was a bit worried about picking up the book, feeling like an imposter reading something I shouldn’t. But then I read that imposter syndrome is part of ADHD! And now I feel somewhat validated!

Nevertheless, the book talks about women going undiagnosed for a long time. And it’s also quite clear to me that the techniques and tools introduced in the book aren’t solely for women with ADHD – they’re tools that anyone and everyone can use, they just might be that little bit more useful to those with ADHD. I genuinely believe that we should be taught all this at school!

The techniques in this book weren’t new ones to me, but that’s probably because I’ve done a lot of work on wellbeing in the past couple of years so I’m a lot more informed than I was previously. It was nice to see that the tools I do already have are the right ones, and that I just need to remember to use them more! Even though I know them, part of the problem is remembering to pull them out, so the book served as an excellent reminder for that.

I think it’s a very comprehensive overview of a set of tools for ADHD, particularly in women, and is formatted well. The chapters are short and engaging, the techniques and tools are explained well without being too simple. I really enjoyed the personal nature of the book – the author often interjects with her own personal experiences and anecdotes. There are also quotes from other professionals as well as women with their own personal experiences too. You feel part of a community while reading this book.

If you have been recently diagnosed with ADHD or you just suspect it, this is a great book to read. It’s not too sciencey, but it gives you enough science to help you understand what you need to. There are plenty of areas that you can delve into further after reading, or you can stop at this book as I think it gave a great comprehensive look at it.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.

Foretold by L. H. Cosway

This was a brilliant dark academia romantasy read – a bit of a hidden gem, I’d say!

Darya is a vampire from a somewhat illustrious family who attends St. Bastian’s, an institute for the paranormal and magic. She has a crush on Peter, but it’s immediately made clear it’s a star-crossed situation type of thing – his family is the arch-enemy of hers, family members who have murdered one another, banished each other to hell realms and all that jazz. But when a spell goes wrong while Darya is trying to scrub her name clear from a murder at the school, Peter and Darya end up in each other’s heads – literally! Even worse, Darya finds out that she has been “marked” by a demon who is hunting her and her friends down.

I haven’t seen this book talked about online before, and it only has just over 600 ratings on Goodreads, which surprises me as it was a great story and very much in keeping with other popular books at the moment. If you like On Wings of Blood, Zodiac Academy, and Harry Potter, this will be up your street! I picked it up on a Stuff Your Kindle Day a couple of years ago, and I wish I’d picked it up sooner!

The world building was very good. I enjoyed that this world sits alongside ours quietly. The school setting was fun too – it’s got all the fun of a normal high school, but with magic entwined in it including mean girls who break the rules and secret trysts in the library.

Darya and Peter’s relationship was well-built and I loved their characters. The side characters were also brilliant – there are some really fun friendships and characters with deeper sides that I expect we’re going to see a lot more of in the coming books.

Speaking of which, this is my only problem – I’ve started yet ANOTHER series! I should have finished a couple before launching into this one, but it just seemed the right season. Nevermind, at least the next two are on Kindle Unlimited!

I went into this book thinking it was going to be a YA fantasy, but there were definitely more spicy scenes than I anticipated! It wasn’t hugely in depth spice, but I wouldn’t be comfortable giving that to anyone under the age of 16, to be honest – this isn’t a criticism at all, just a warning that if you see the young adult tag on it, you might want to be wary!

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

This was a book unlike any I’ve read before. It’s written from the perspective of a Japanese woman in her 40s in a group home who lives with a lifelong disability, the same condition that the author also has. This means that you can feel the truth behind it very strongly – the yearning, the small difficulties, and the resentment. It was fascinating to read about both a culture and a lifestyle that I know very little about.

This is, at its heart, a book about disability and sexuality and identity. Shaka writes erotic fiction designed for men, experiences that she can never have, and also shares her strong opinions anonymously on Twitter. This is how she explores a life outside, but she wants more.

I’ve read fiction where the protagonist lives in a disabled body before, but not one where it is so forefront and central. It really hammers home the small things that we take for granted everyday – the ability to sit how we want

The final chapter does twist things a little, leaving the reader wondering what perspective they’re seeing this from exactly. It’s interesting, I’m not sure if it was wholly necessary to the book but gives another (dark) view of a world most of us know very little about from sex worker.

Throughout this story, we see a range of power plays – between health, people in positions of care, men against women. Shaka seeks to control her own narrative and her own world in her limited capacity, and in this short story, she does so, but at what cost? It’s unsettling, it’s a dark view of the world in many ways, and also eye-opening. An important book, but you can’t say it has all that much of a story, if that’s what you’re going into this looking for.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Blue and Red are operatives in a war that spans space and time. They travel “upthread” and “downthread” while they manipulate the braid of time while living out lives in infinite strands. Red and Blue are from enemy sides, but manage to communicate through letters – the first of which is labelled “burn before reading”. Through these letters, at first gloating, then turning to more into real communication, they discover more about each other and themselves.

This is definitely a novella that delves into the sci-fi realm, a genre that I haven’t read for a little while in favour of fantasy recently. It was interesting to come back to as it took a while for me to get my head around the outlandish and futuristic settings, but once I did, I was absolutely enthralled.

In the first couple of chapters, I wasn’t really all that bothered about the book. I was thinking, “yep, I can see how people like this, but it’s not for me”. Some parts were going over my head – maybe it was the fact that we were immediately launched into a war. But after a couple more chapters, as the relationship began to develop, I was enthralled by it.

The possibilities of time and space in this short novella are infinite, and so becomes the love between the two characters. They truly are star-crossed lovers, exchanging words across a void that somehow reach each other.

The way that the letters are hidden is so creative – I loved finding out how words were hidden in the lava flowing down a volcano or in a berry that has to be bitten to reveal the contents. Each chapter had a different way of revealing their communication.

As always, the paradox of time travel absolutely boggled my mind. I have to go into time travel stories knowing that it’s going to fry my brain! But the way time travel was used so cleverly here was somewhat easier to grasp.

This was a beautiful read that will stay with me for a very long time. I highly recommend it, but you’d need to be in the right frame of mind to be ready to absorb a story that transcends what we know.

First-Time Caller by B. K. Borison

This was a very cute read. It was a lovely story, the characters had good chemistry and it was fun to have a different setting.

Aiden Valentine is the host of a local radio show helping callers solve problems in their love lives, but he’s fallen out of love with love. Things get interesting though when Lucie, a hard working mum, gets involved with his show after her preteen daughter calls in on her mum’s behalf. Together the pair work through messages from the public and get Lucie set up on a series of dates. But it’s not long before Baltimore residents start to notice the sparks flying between the host and the guest.

It’s definitely a predictable story where you know who’s going to end up with who and that there will be a happy ending, plus a bit of spice along the way. And don’t we just all enjoy a story like that sometimes?! I definitely do! That Hallmark movie kind of feel at any time of year.

As I said, this one had that fun twist of a radio show setting, plus a unique family structure that made it more fun. Lucie is a single mum, but her daughter’s dad lives next door with his husband, and her best friend is just across the street, serving as another parent in her daughter’s life – sort of a found family vibe that Aiden has to fit into.

There’s a bit of a grumpy sunshine thing going on between the leading characters, and a lot of rom com vibes with the disastrous series of dates and cheesy moments (he keeps a list of things he loves about her in his glovebox!).

I now have a review for the sequel to this book, And Now, Back To You on the blog – I think I loved that one even more!

Hot for Slayer by Ali Hazelwood

This was a cute, short read – I really enjoyed it!

This is part of a collection of novellas called Scared Sexy released around Halloween. It’s less than 100 pages, designed to be read in one sitting.

I already know I like Ali Hazelwood’s writing, so I was looking forward to this one. I’ve only ever read her contemporary romances before, I haven’t got to her fantasy romances yet (although I have them on my Kindle waiting!). This one was contemporary, but I’d call it a paranormal romance.

A female vampire has been fleeing the vampire slayer who has been hot on her trail for centuries. When fate, and a nasty bump on the head, bring them together, she suddenly sees him in a new light.

As I said, it’s a very quick read – nothing that will blow you away, but it was fun, light and easy to fun. It rounded off with a nice ending. I’m looking forward to reading more of the Scared Sexy collection now – it should be a good introduction to a few authors I’ve been meaning to read but haven’t got to yet!

Falling by Christina Lauren

A super short heartwarming paranormal contemporary romance, I loved it!

I read Hot for Slayer from the Scared Sexy collection first and was anticipating that being my favourite one as I know I already enjoy Ali Hazelwood’s writing, but I think this one just surpassed it for me – which is weird because it’s the opposite of what the ratings say!

A mysterious man at a house party locks eyes with a girl who doesn’t really want to be there. He used to compelling everyone to do what he wants, but this time, for some reason, it doesn’t work. His curse fails on her, but she comes to him anyway, and they quickly fall.

I just thought the ending was honestly lovely! I really enjoyed that heartwarming moment. It’s very short at just under 60 pages, which means there’s not really much of an opportunity for characters and stories to be built, but I think the authors did a brilliant job of making me feel so much in so little time.

I have a few more of this collection still to read on my Kindle – they’re fun, cute reads!

Broken Fae by Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti

Well, this book upped the ante a notch across all fronts!

As I always say with series, especially when you’re more than a couple of books into them, it’s hard to review (or at least given a proper summary and review) without giving away spoilers.

I wasn’t sure as I was reading this one that I was starting to lose my impetus with the series. The Zodiac universe is big, you guys, and this series has the Gareth mystery that is into its FOURTH book now with no actual resolution yet – that’s a loooong time. About 50% of the way through, I was enjoying it but thinking it had reached that stale point.

Then it flipped on me. The boys’ relationships with one another changed and grew; the characters developed into something quite different; and wow, the last 20% or so had me speeding through to find out what was going to happen. I know it’s always been a pretty high stakes plot, but somehow it feels less “threatening” than other epic romantasies so I consider it an easier read with lower stakes. But nope, this last bit flipped that on its head.

I’ve always been on the fence about Gabriel’s character – he just seemed a bit moany and mopey and I didn’t see the appeal, but I’m starting to get him in this book. His relationship with Ryder was brilliant, I loved that.

Oh and the spice was spicing in this book, seriously.

The Housemaid’s Wedding by Freida McFadden

This was a fun little “filler” book for when I wanted a quick read because I wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet. It was good but nothing amazing.

I’ve read the first two books in The Housemaid series. I loved the first one and read it in one fell swoop in a single night. The second was also good, but didn’t have the same shock factor and brilliance.

This is a short story and is not intended to be anything brilliant – the author says how it was designed as something to fill the long gap between the second and third books, giving a bit of extra info on the characters. It does that job, and it’s engaging enough. It works for a quick read, especially if you want more of Millie’s world, but just know that you won’t be blown away by it.

Less: Stop Buying So Much Rubbish by Patrick Grant

This is a non-fiction book written by Patrick Grant, who I know from the Great British Sewing Bee, about overconsumption and the state of the world thanks to it.

I read a stat from this book somewhere online about there being enough clothing on earth to last the planet another six generations, and it was that citation alone that made me decide to buy it. It was enough of a shocking stat that I knew I needed to read more.

I like to read a non-fiction self-improvement type of book every so often, as they tend to spur me into action, even if just for a little while – then I can pick up another that sets it off again once I feel that start to diminish! Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth over my interest in fashion – it’s something I blogged about for a long time.

I’ve always tried to act consciously in my purchases: I have browsed charity shops and eBay (now Vinted) over the years, tried to shop secondhand and vintage where I can, very often bought kids’ toys secondhand or gone for wooden over plastic if buying new if I can. It was something I was on a big kick for just before reading this book (and the above stat was one reason), but now, even more so.

I’m in this strange conflicting mindset at the moment of wanting to buy “better” but already having too much stuff – as I’m sure many of us do! It seems silly to buy more just to get better quality, so I intend to use what I have (not just clothes, home goods, kids’ toys etc. too), and if anything needs replacing, do so with better quality items.

Something else that sometimes morally conflicts me is working in marketing. Not all of my clients and campaigns are physical products (in fact, very few are!). But the fact that I’m adding to the world of marketing, which is already oversaturated, often gives me pause for thought to consider what I’m doing. This book had the same effect on me when I read about how (fast) fashion is marketed, and it’s something I’m going to spend more time considering.

The book gave me a lot to think about and I know it will spill over into my everyday life to enable me to make better decisions in the future. I just hope more people will read it and make the same sort of decisions. I’ve already recommended it to a few people!

The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown

This was a fast paced science and history backed thriller as we’ve come to expect from Dan Brown, but I’ll be honest, it’s not my favourite.

This time, Robert Langdon is in Prague with his new partner, Katherine, a scientist who is presenting about the findings that she will soon be revealing fully in her new book all about human conscience being far more expansive than we know. But when Katherine’s manuscript doesn’t reach her publisher thanks to a hack, Katherine herself also disappears, and Robert discovers someone murdered, there’s a race against the clock to find the answers.

As I said in my very brief review preview, this is, like Dan Brown’s other Robert Langdon novels, a fast paced thriller with everything we’ve come to expect from him, including some fun scientific tidbits that give you enough to tease, but not quite enough to get your teeth into, and a setting with historic importance and a few more fun facts thrown in there too. I always enjoy these parts alongside the thriller – they take you away from that “race against the bad guys” action with some brainteasing ideas.

Robert Langdon as a character is getting older, and it’s nice to see a thriller from that perspective – it’s realistic and follows a character through life. I enjoyed his relationship with Katherine.

But being totally honest, this one dragged for me. There were parts that just felt like they were going on forever! Maybe because I listened to this as an audiobook, which isn’t my favourite format, or maybe I just didn’t care as much about this story.

It was wrapped up in a neat little conclusion, which was nice, and the twists were good, albeit not all that surprising if you’ve been paying attention throughout the book. It’s fun to pick up the little clues hidden here and there throughout which come together nicely towards the end.

I enjoyed it, but I can’t say it was my favourite.

The Perfect Life by Nuala Ellwood

This was a twisty turny thriller that kept me hooked all the way through; I read it in just two sittings, desperate to find out what was really going on!

Vanessa has always wanted the “perfect life” after her mother died when she was young, but she’s not doing too badly. She has a good job that she enjoys, a good relationship with her flatmate, and when she meets a man who is interested in her and seems friendly, she soon has a good boyfriend too. Everything is going smoothly and she can’t help but dream of their future home together. So she books a viewing at her dream house, even though Connor doesn’t agree. Soon she finds she’s addicted to scrolling through the pages of perfect homes, creating a fake persona and viewing the houses. As her relationship with Connor starts to go a bit south, she falls even further into it. But a man is found dead in one of the houses, a man that Nessa seems to have something of a history with, and suddenly she’s being accused of murder.

The slow turn of the relationship between Nessa and Connor was brilliant and scary – it was done very carefully, so you’re not quite sure when things started to go wrong, but also there’s no way out for her. It’s a creeping sort of fear that Nessa copes with the only way she knows how: escape.

The book is told in a “now” and “then” perspective. The “now” is where she is living with her sister (a lovely, very well-done relationship – though I do feel sorry for the older sister having to shoulder so much!) after the murder and is trying to figure out what has happened; the “then” takes us through her unravelling relationship with Connor and her sense of self. It’s nicely done.

Unfortunately, because I was reading this as an ARC, the trigger warnings were not yet in place in my copy – this is no fault of the book itself, but there were parts that were very difficult reading and I suggest making sure you’re aware of these beforehand. Have a look at the bottom of this review for the trigger warnings.

Trigger warnings: rape, emotional abuse, abortion, gaslighting.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an ARC of this book.