Jenni from the book

Look who's already doing pretty well with their goodreads challenge for the year. I've unlocked both monthly reading achievements so far - shall we see if we can keep it up all year? It's been made easier by a couple of really compelling books. And made harder by a couple of duff ones. Want to know which is which? Read on for my thoughts but beware of spoilers.

I don't think I've been so disappointed by a book. Obviously I've found books disappointing in the 'that was a bit meh' sort of way. But never have I had such high hopes, that have been so abruptly brought crashing down. I've always been a Jacqueline Wilson girly. I read pretty much every book she released between the late nineties and the late noughties (36 of them to be precise). So when I heard that she was releasing an adult novel as a fifth installment to her much loved Girls series, I couldn't wait to read. I grew up with Ellie, Magda and Nadine, and I was excited to see what take the author would have on how they turned out. But all this book proved is that Jacqueline Wilson should stick to writing for children.

First of all, the book reads like it has an 80 year old narrator, rather than the 40 years old that Ellie is supposed to be. Which makes complete sense, given that Jacqueline Wilson herself is 80. There were so many cringey and incorrect references to modern life, and paired with the fact that all of the language is incredibly posh and outdated, and the world views on sex and lifestyle are very prudish, it feels like Ellie has stepped directly out of the Victorian age! Phrases like 'we're going to phone for a deliveroo' or that 'the kids at school are a bit lippy'. Never mind the fact that Ellie has a "mobile" which happens to always be dead, and she only checks it upon arriving home (you know, like you used to get home and check the messages on your landline answering machine). If Jacqueline Wilson is unable to write for the modern world, then she really shouldn't have set her book in it. She could've set it when the girls were 25 or 30, and gone back a couple of years to a time she knew more about. Instead, it just felt like it hit all the wrong notes and I was more focused on the clumsy language and references, than I was on the actual story.

The story, when I could focus on it, was actually even worse. Nadine and Magda barely even got a storyline each (Nadine is in to crazy sex parties and ended up with a couple of neck bruises and Magda is a step mum to two horrible little menaces but that's about it), and Ellie's whole storyline picked up where the 4th book left off. She's still doing her murtle mouse comic strip that she won an award for at school, she still lives in a flat that she first moved out to, and she ends up dating Mr Windsor for the whole book - her high school teacher crush! I feel like it's every teenage girls dream to date the "hot" teacher at school (I use hot in quotation marks because most of them are actually only mildly attractive). But then once women develop a frontal lobe and get ourselves a life, it generally becomes the strangest and least enticing scenario you could think of. Certainly if I or any of my friends started dating one of our old teachers, I would think him a total predator. But the worst part about this book is that that suggestion isn't even referenced or hinted at! Despite the fact that Ellie and Mr Windsor (actual name Guy) start dating because he's kept tabs on her all these years, and not even through some chance re-encounter, Ellie and all her friends think she's "so lucky" to be dating him. Nowhere in the whole book, does anyone have the very sane observation that he is, in fact, clearly a predator. He talks about how she was such a good girl at school, how she was always his favourite, how he loved to teach her. Like, hello nonce hotline?!?! Even if you can scramble your brain enough to put that detail aside, he's an absolute knob from the get-go. Controlling and old-fashioned and the biggest mansplainer on the planet. I know he was just an important plot device used to make Ellie ultimately realise she was interested in women, and she was supposedly going on a journey of self discovery. But conjuring up the worlds worst male character to do it feels a little easy and lazy.

The plot devices throughout the book were a problem actually. Ellie was a single mum, but the author decided to have her daughter be 19 and conveniently on a summer away for the whole book. So any interesting exploration of mother daughter relationships (especially from Ellie whose own mum died when she was young) was completely lacking. Despite the fact she'd aged the characters up to 40, it felt like there was no depth that came with that. They all still read as school girls, and actually spent a completely weird amount of time thinking and talking about school. I'm 29 and school is a distant memory that I very occasionally reflect on. I can't imagine that in another 11 years time, it'll suddenly be an all-consuming element of my adult life. Weird. In fact, the whole book just had weird vibes. There was a weird surprise party for Ellie that weirdly had characters such as her school ex-boyfriend Russel, and her school PE teacher turn up. Obviously it was intended to be a fun little nostalgic nod to the original books but it just read as so strange. Like why on EARTH would those people be at her birthday party 25 YEARS later??

It's all just such a shame because I wanted to enjoy this. But between the weird (and at times creepy) storylines, the weird Victorian-esque viewpoint, the weird and stilted dialogue, and the almost caricaturish characters, I felt like I suffered through this. Jacqueline Wilson's normal charm is about writing serious topics but from a child's perspective. So it's fine if it seems underbaked, over simplified or not that intelligent. But using the same style for a 40 year old woman in the modern age? Sadly a fail.

Thankfully, the next book I read was amazing! Emiline is stuck in a rut. Her writing career is still struggling to take off, as she finds herself unable to find her muse. Meanwhile, her long term relationship is more filled with arguments and bristling than it is love and intimacy. What she really needs is some escapism, which she attempts when her roommate lends her the latest bestselling book that everyone is going crazy for. But as Emiline dives into the pages, what she gets is not escapism at all, but her own life story. As she reads about childhood friends, Emerson and Jackson, and their sweet bond that blossomed among poverty and hardship in rural Ohio, she realises Emerson is her. Which means that the author is Jackson (or Jase in real life) and he's clearly had the gall to tell their life story (and interwoven love story) but from her perspective. Emiline can't believe it, especially when she sees that he's changed some very important details. Hopped up on fury but also desperate to keep reading, she decides to track the author down, after having not seen him for over a decade. Will their reunion be a fiery confrontation, or a second chance at a happy ending?

I'm a little torn on the whole book-within-a-book thing. Sometimes it can be confusing and a little contrived. But this was done so beautifully. Instead of the book within being a simple plot device to fill in some blanks, it was written as thoughtfully and beautifully as it would've been had the author been seeking to publish it as a standalone. I fell in love with Emiline immediately, and I was crying within the first 10 pages over the details of her tough childhood under the roof of her abusive and alcoholic dad. The whole story felt like it really transported me to the long dirt road of their impoverished town, and I was rooting for both her and Jase (together and separately) from the very beginning. They were both such lovely characters, who felt genuine and well developed at all the different ages we saw them. I loved the bond between the two of them, and obviously knew they'd end up together at the end of the book.

Spoiler alert, but happily they did. I actually didn't love the way they got together. I didn't find myself loving all of the present day, real world stuff as much as I did the book within a book. I was so hooked on the tale of their dark shared past, that I actually didn't care too much for the normal stuff in the present like bookstore visits, takeaways with roommates, or disagreements with the long term boyfriend who was clearly mere pages away from getting binned off at all times. The only bit I really loved of the present day perspective, was the healing journey that Emiline went on. After reading Jase's book and finally allowing herself to unpack her past, she travels back to Ohio to find her dad (who's been in prison) and her mum (who abandoned them ages before). It was really interesting diving into the idea that things aren't always as we remember them, and that the perspective from our childhood is likely completely different to that of the adults around us. Mainly I loved that you could see that Emiline got closure, and there was a sense of hope for what her future would then become.

Yes this was a second chance romance story. But it was so much more than that. It was a second chance at life. It showed that we can let go of our trauma, that forgiveness is often the start of a new beginning, and that we always have the option to rewrite our own story. Maybe even someone else's too.

I'd seen loads about this book and it came highly recommended by my mum. I wouldn't say it's my typical genre though so it took me a while to actually pick it up. But once I did I found it to be a highly addictive read! How to kill your family is all about Grace and her plot for ultimate vengeance. She grew up with a poor single mum who died when Grace was very young, and she never knew her dad or his side of the family. Not that she minds not knowing him; Simon and the rest of the Artemis clan are a bunch of self-serving, exploitative, new-money cretins who the world would probably be better off without. So she decides to do the world that ultimate favour. One by one, she will pick off the members of that family until they're all gone, leaving a space for her to claim the Artemis fortune (which is arguably, rightfully partly hers anyway).

As a reader, you're unsure if her plan has come to fruition. Since you first meet Grace while she's serving a sentence in prison. As she details her gruesome crimes, it's revealed that so far she's gotten away with each and every one. Ironically, she's currently in jail for a murder she didn't commit. Will she be freed, caught, or something worse?

First of all, I loved Grace. The author created an amazingly hateful anti-hero in the form of this young woman, and there were so many funny, witty remarks and cutting examples of dark humour. Plenty of observations on society (and the worst of people in it) and specifically about money, and class, and different peoples place in the world. I didn't love some of the observations that felt misogynistic or a little too anti-women, but I'll chalk it down to the author attempting to create a villain, rather than reflecting views of her own.

Grace commits each murder by making them look like accidental deaths, and I really enjoyed the journey we went on for each kill. Picking up new hobbies, deep-diving into different worlds, and getting super creative in the process. The world building was really good and I like that we got taken to different countries along the way too. I also really enjoyed the suspense created by the storytelling style, with Grace in prison and reflecting back on the past few years with hindsight, rather than telling the events as they're happening. It did a good job at revealing things quite subtly, and gradually peppering in details rather than waiting to do a big build-up and one giant reveal at the end.

My ultimate disappointment and criticism of the book is the ending. Quelle surprise. It seems it's getting harder these days to write a good ending. I will have to pre-warn that this is quite the spoiler (but I still won't give every single thing away). It basically pulled a Pretty Little Liars ending. While you spend the whole book guessing what the twist will be, it basically goes 'oh here's this character you havent met before and could never have predicted their existence or involvement, and it's going to be all on them'. This character literally only appeared in the last 40 or so pages, and it was all via a letter, which made it even more annoying. I won't spell out what this character does or what happens to Grace and her crimes as a result, but I felt very unsatisfied by the whole thing. 

My prediction for the ending was that the twist would be that the Artemis family weren't actually related to Grace at all and that her mum had told a white lie about who her dad was, making all of her crimes and murders ultimately meaningless and forcing her to reinspect her motive, eventually spiralling in a vortex of guilt and self loathing. I think my ending would've been better.

I just knew this would be a delightful little read. I've read Helen Hoang's The Kiss Quotient and absolutely loved it, so I had every faith in her for the second book set in the same universe. That is to say that there's a mild crossover of characters but it's not a sequel; this book is a fresh story. With the same focus on neurodiversity and Asian culture, The Bride Test introduces us to Khai who is convinced he's broken. From the moment his childhood best friend died when they were teenagers, and he noticed he didn't cry or grieve like everyone else did, he knew he had a heart made of stone. Unlovable and incapable of loving. So he's locked himself off from complicated matters of the heart, and instead he lives a life of comfortable routine. Safe. The same simple meals, the same workout routine, and the same attitude towards helping his family whenever they command it. But absolutely no falling in love.

Obviously his Vietnamese mother, Cô Nga, isn't quite as content as Khai is with the life he's living. Convinced that he needs a woman in his life to look after him, his mum flies back to Vietnam to find him a bride. She's unimpressed with the character of most of the women interviewing for the position though; she wants to find someone good, with a pure heart and a kind nature. She knows that Khai needs a bit of extra patience and understanding than most! Who she ends up finding is Esma Tran (Vietnamese name, Mý).

Esme may not have any money. She may live in a single room apartment in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City with her mother and grandmother and young daughter. But she knows that she's worth more than the world would have her believe. At first, she hates even the very idea of trying to seduce Khai and locking him into a marriage. But then her mum points out that Cô Nga's proposal may give Esme the chance to create a better life for her daughter. It may also give her the chance to search for the American father she's never met. What could be so bad about a summer in the United States? If after the summer, her and Khai don't want to get married then she simply returns home. No harm, no foul.

So Esme boards a plane for the first time in her life. And for the first time in his life, Khai has his comfortable routine absolutely turned upside down. As the two of them spend the summer living together and attending family weddings together, Khai finds himself enjoying Esme's presence in his life. He enjoys seeing her attacking his jungle of a garden, and he enjoys the way she cuddles into him, and he even starts to enjoy the way she insists on pronouncing his name with the Vietnamese inflection that noone else uses. But will he enjoy her presence enough to ensure that he never has to experience her absence? Or will his stone heart get the better of him once again?

For only 310 pages, this book manages to pack in a real punch of a story. Especially since a fair amount of those pages is taken up with smut. Which I always love, don't get me wrong. But the real reason I loved this book SO much is that the characters and the journey they went on was truly beautiful. Khai was complex and different and I loved seeing the little inner workings of his mind. Some of his comments and one liners were absolutely laugh out loud. I burst out laughing when Khai's mother first told him that Esme was moving in with him for the summer, and upon seeing the exotic fruit she'd bought for her, wrongly assumed that Esme might be a pet monkey that he needed to look after. I feel like I laughed and cried in equal measures with Khai. He was a beautifully complex character who you just wanted to hug. Seeing the trauma of losing his childhood friend and how it had affected him was really heartbreaking, and I wanted nothing more for him than a happy ending.

If it's possible to love a character in this book more than Khai, then it's Esme. She was so well written. I loved the authors note at the end of the book which detailed that originally, the story in her head was going to be a love triangle, with Esme being the aggravator and the ultimate love interest being someone else. But no matter how many different ways she tried to write it, Esme shone through as the leading lady she deserved to be. So she changed the story. And how lucky we are as readers that she did. Esme's journey of motherhood, of strength, of believing in yourself, and of fighting for the life you want was incredible. I really enjoyed the contrast in Khai and Esme's experiences as Vietnamese, and Vietnamese-American, and I loved the cultural references and education. I love all things Vietnamese so it's unsurprising that I loved this really. But even if you don't know anything about Vietnam, this is such an immersive and world-building triumph that I know you'll enjoy it regardless.

I loved Khai and Esme's story. But I also loved Khai's, and Esme's stories. Which is actually quite a rare thing to achieve. Well done Helen Hoang.

It's 1942 and Bath is being bombed in the Blitz. Will, a young engineer, is in his radio workshop at the bottom of the garden. Elsa, his wife and a Jewish Austrian refugee, is in the house. Their eyes lock across the garden as the bombs rain down and Will struggles to make out what Elsa is mouthing. 'Go back'. Then blackness. When he wakes up in hospital, he's desperate to understand what happened, and to know that his wife is okay. But when he returns home, Else is nowhere to be seen. Even weirder though, is that all traces that she was ever there have gone. The house is restored to how it was when his mother lived there, and all her belongings are gone. Everyone tells him he was never married. They never saw a young woman living with him. And noone has heard of Elsa Klein.

Fast forward to 2007 and Laura finds herself on the doorstep of Will's crumbling house. She's been assigned as his carer, to assess whether or not he's still fit to remain in his house or if he needs moving to a nursing home considering he's suspected of having dementia. All the locals know he's been raving for years about the wife who vanished into thin air; a wife that everyone still insists he never had. But when Laura arrives at Avon Lodge, she doesn't see a man who's imagined his own life story. She sees her own sadness and struggles reflected back at her. Battling with demons of her own, Laura decides to help Will and to try to piece together proof of the life he's adamant he remembers living.

The two form quite the unlikely friendship and Laura even finds that this journey may be helping her to put herself back together again. But when the mystery of Avon lodge meets nothing but dead ends, Laura starts to waver on what she really believes. There's also the complicating factor that she regularly feels a presence in the house with her. A presence that just so happens to smell of the exact same violet scent Elsa always wore. Is this a case of a dementia-ridden, war trauma victim who's simply remembered things wrong? Is it the case of ghosts and the supernatural? Or could it be that the truth is even more mindblowing than that?

I loved this book. Again, it was super immersive and I loved the split timeline of events that happened in the 1940s and events that happened in the 2000s. The book felt really well researched in terms of the historical references, and having been to Bath, I enjoyed revisiting the places in my mind as I read. The main element that was well informed and nicely peppered throughout the book, was the wireless radios. As a radio engineer in the war, Will tells Elsa/Laura all about his passions and how various things work. We learn about the importance of frequencies. Of how something can be happening on the opposite side of the world and yet with the right frequency, it can be right here with us. Hint: all the frequency stuff is important.

I guessed fairly early on that the theme of the book would be the multiverse theory. A topic I happen to love! If you don't know, the multiverse theory is the theory that with every decision, the universe splits in two and both outcomes play out. So a coin doesn't land on head or tails, it lands on head and tails, and you just happen to be living in the universe of the one you believe it landed on. It's actually a pretty popular and well regarded theory in physics that has a decent amount of evidence for it. Something there isn't evidence for (to my knowledge) is the idea that we could cross from one universe to the other. Which is where this book takes its creative inspiration. Could it be possible for a major event to catapult you into the wrong universe, for example? A major event like... a bomb. And more importantly, could anything be strong enough to get you back home again?

I really loved the twists and turns of this book and the way that Laura attacked this mystery like a journalist, finding small pieces of evidence and following every lead. The storyline was somewhat of a spiders web and it was woven really well. There were different reveals at different stages and it felt like everything was slowly coming together, rather than endless suspense and then one big explanation at the end. It was such a clever and intriguing story with a fairly compelling love story at its epicentre. The only area where it let me down was the ending.

The ending for Will and Elsa was satisfying. They'd spent their whole lives looking for answers and trying to get to one another. The mystery was solved. But for Laura, this journey had helped to heal her. It had given her purpose and made her realise she was capable of more than she previously believed. Having Will as her friend had given her a new perspective on life, and helping him to get the life he deserved made her feel she should maybe do the same for herself too. What the ending actually did, is essentially undo all of that so it never happened. We were supposed to feel as readers that she was freer of pain. But I only felt that she was freer of growth. We grow through what we go through after all. A more satisfying ending for Laura would've been that the journey remained, and she continued in the universe she was in. Who knows, maybe in another universe this book has the ending I wanted.