booksblabbering's reviews
2026 reviews

This is a bittersweet story tinged with nostalgia, regret, and reflection. A less trauma-heavy A Little Life or a different kind of The Blue Sisters. 

This is from the present in 2014 and reflects back on Jules’s life starting from 1980 following his parent’s car crash orphaning him and his two older siblings. 

This is a quiet book where not a lot happens, except the character introspection that makes this so wholesome and sad. How can this feel cathartic and comforting and heart-wrenching?

<b>Actually, the reason I was always reading was simply to escape, to let myself be comforted by a few sentences or a story. When I was younger I wanted more than anything to be a character in a novel. To be immortal and live forever in a book, then everyone can read me and watch me from the outside.

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The flashbacks keep you engaged, however I definitely did prefer the flashbacks to the present. Perhaps that’s the point. We are so obsessed with our past, we struggle to spend time in the present until it’s too late.

This is a translated and you definitely cannot tell. This was beautiful, moving, touching. 

<b>What sort of a world would it be, anyway, if every prayer were heard and we knew for certain that we’d carry on after death? What use would we have for life anymore? We’d all be in Paradise already.</b>

This was kinda gross, but I was very engrossed.

We follow a lapsed-Jewish bisexual woman with extreme mommy issues, disordered eating, and a very skewered self-perception.

This was in your face. Sexual. Weird. 

This is hard to review because there’s fatphobia, but also there’s not? This doesn’t have incredible prose and yet I would argue Broder is definitely a master of her craft. I would argue this is filled with toxicity and it is, but there’s also small glimpses of love and inclusivity. 

<b>…in their equation of thinness with goodness, my mother and Ana were so like-minded. My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. This absence of rejection felt like an embrace.

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If you have any issues around food, body image, calorie counting; please check your trigger warnings. 

BRB, I have a craving for frozen yoghurt. 

After a coup, his bastard brother sends had sent Damen to enemy territory, the one place where he could expect to be treated worse as a prince than he was treated as a slave.

There he is made one of Prince Laurent’s harem. A personal sex slave (caveat this is normal is this world).

I think this is the type of series I will have to finish all three books before reaching a final judgement. Laurent’s particular blend of spoilt arrogance and petty spite is at full force in this book and we only see splinters of other at the end of the book. 

The entire court is orgiastic and riddled with opportunities and hunger for public humiliation for nobles and slaves alike. 

I wasn’t a fan of how it glamourises abuse and slavery with slaves (pets) slathering for attention and needing a master with training etc, but I accept this is the fantasy world. I say fantasy but there doesn’t seem to be any magic. 

There is no romance between the two main characters to begin with and they are truly enemies, seething with hatred. 

This was a lot more explicit than I was expecting. Yes, I know he was made a harem slave, yet this was violent at times and this didn’t shy away from sexual scenes either. 

This had a short page length for a fantasy book, but I felt satisfied with the plot and character progression. 

Maybe try Kushiel’s Dart if you enjoyed this.

This is both sad and uplifting, dooming and hopeful. Overall, it was bittersweet. 

Through personal anecdotes, indigginous myths and stories passed down, Kimmie explores the concept of the gift economy. A central pillar to many Indigenous philosophies, contrasting greatly with capitalist economic models based on commodity exchange. The gift economy is rooted in principles of reciprocity, gratitude, and abundance. 

This is how we respect the Earth and each other. 

<b>Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

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The tone and voice really enhanced this audiobook. There was real emotion and purpose behind every word and tangent. You feel connected to the string and a personal relevance to concepts that may feel too out of reach or not part of your life.

It is very ambitious and hopeful - a world without greed is laughable. 

However, the sentiment is hard-hitting and really makes you rethink and reflect on most of the world’s current systems. 

<b>If all the world is a commodity, how poor we grow. When all the world is a gift in motion, how wealthy become.</b>

A five stars science fiction recommendation which gives Rocky Horror Show vibes. 

Stasia has been telling everyone since she was three years old that she is an alien disguised as a human being having been abducted a human girl and replaced by a sprouting seed. Now the armada that left her as part of the vanguard on Earth is coming for her.

<b>“The aliens came and took your real baby. They left me. I’m sorry.”</b>

It’s now 2031 and Stasia is 35 years old, violently anti-social, and she lives with two people who tolerate her weirdness - both nerds and outcasts themselves.  

This was such a deep character study whilst also being fast-paced and thrilling. Counting down from 25 days pre-invasion we follow a delightful cast of chaotic characters as they try and work out what is going on and what they want to do. 

<b>“I call you crazy because you think you’re allowed to eat my cinnamon toast,” said Mandy easily. “You’re not crazy. Your people will be here any day, and they’re going to eat us all. I only ask that you let me watch when they chow down on Roxanna.”</b>

Human-devoring plant aliens, human friends and lovers, crazy and paranoid self-proclaimed saboteurs, sketchy government organisations.

What Grant gets down to - it all comes down to drawing sides. This is human nature. But how do we decide what family means? 

<b>Family is where you keep the pieces of yourself that need to be shared with someone else if they’re going to have meaning, the memories that must be seen from three or four different angles at the same time before they find their context.

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Grant manages to pack so much in this standalone book. Identity, neurodivergence, choice, agency, transgender politics, birthright citizenship and rights, propaganda, language, found family and family, acceptance, fear mongering…. 

As you can tell, I cannot sing my praises enough. 

The pacing does get a bit uneven for me towards the end, but this was pulled off great for such an ambitious standalone. 

Arc gifted by Daphne Press. 

This book has definitely made me crave more neurodivergent books and representation. 

The two romantic interests are extremely understanding of each other. They make them put the other one first in every situation and they listen and check in. Constantly. Because we change. What we feel or think one day, one hour can change. This hit close to home to me, especially as someone who hates confrontation and is a people-pleaser. 

<b>No one should need a diagnosis in order to be compassionate to themself.

All I can do is go forward, and to do that, I must stop chasing perfection. It doesn't exist. I can never please everyone. It's hard enough just pleasing myself. Instead, I must focus on giving what I have, not what people want, because that is all I can give.

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I think this had a potential to be extremely moving, and while it was emotional (check trigger warnings because this touches on a lot), it got bogged down in uneven pacing and waaay too many spicy scenes. 

Finally the caregiver situation kind of made me feel icky. It also meant that the romance took a backseat. Basically, it meant we had less Quan especially and I wouldn’t have loved to have seen his own life more if we got so much of Ana.

I haven’t read the previous two books and I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. 

This is either my second favourite or on par to book one for me! 

I did finish this in a day.

Deals with Shadow Kings, new chaotic cambion twins who can’t decide whether they want to eat Bree or be friends with her, a demonically descending Sel, William trying to hold the world on his shoulders, and Nick having so many cards behind his hands.

Bree has always had people with her. Now she’s alone. Her friends are desperate to find her, she is desperate to get more powerful to protect herself.

<b>“If my opponents are relentless,” I say, “then I will become unstoppable.”

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The start is chaotic with alternating perspectives, but you soon get the pacing and into the groove and then it works so well jumping between characters and arcs. 

This book introduces a troupe I HATE right at the start (I was actually surprised it wasn’t in the blurb), but it is pulled off surprisingly well and just keeps the tension strong even though it feels like everything has backtracked. 

P.S. the yearning in this one is still GREAT. Romance done well in a YA can be better than romance in an adult book. 

<b>When he finally answers, his voice is a desperate rasp. “I’m drowning in you, Bree. I shouldn’t want to. I should fight it. But I can’t.” 

My eyes flutter closed, then open. I inhale a ragged breath. Exhale an answer. “So drown.”</b>

I do wish we got more of Alice in this book and I won’t say anymore because of spoilers, but that storyline left me disappointed. 

I am uncomfortable. 

I am so conflicted because this was such a thought-provoking book. This was going to be a surprising four stars… but then the end happened. I wanted to THROW the book across the floor but not in a good way, not in shock, but in pure gross disgust. 

Now that pregnancy and childbirth occur by scientific means, they are separate from romantic love. Instead, sexuality is developed in a sterile place where people are encouraged to fall in love with fictional characters. 

Sex between a married couple is called incest and the family unit is considered separate to sexuality and romance. 

<b>“Mmm, in my case I feel more like I’m the one being consumed. It feels like before I know what’s happening, I’m being dragged into this pseudo-romance system, instilling pseudoromantic feelings in us to make us consume so that it can ultimately devour us. After all, that’s how the economy works, isn’t it? These are businesses to make you fall in love, and I feel like I’m being targeted. That’s why I sometimes hate the system.”</b>

This basically questions the normalisation of certain processes by society. If everyone does something, the new becomes the mundane and expected. 

This premise allows the author to question conventions such as the purpose of family, marriage, even forging lasting connections. The idea of queer relationships is touched on when the idea of men carrying babies to term in an artificial womb is introduced.

<b>“We’re all animals in the process of evolving. So whether or not our instincts match the world is just a coincidence, and we have no idea what will be considered right in the next instance.”

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This is uncomfortable and bizarre, yet very compulsive and really made me reflect on our current values. 

This wasn’t as weird as Earthlings for me, but like I said at the start, that ending was really icky however the more I let it settle, the more I realise how impactful it was. Despite my deep loathing of it. 

Physical shiny arc gifted by Grove Atlantic. 

Being in the mind of a 30-something-year-old man bemoaning his breakup isn't something I thought I might enjoy, but this was candid, relatable for anyone and funny.

There is definitely British humour and I would also recommend the audiobook for this too. 

<b>Feeling the absence of someone’s company and the absence of their love are two different things.

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We do get Andy’s girlfriend’s perspective at the end of the book which added context and a new way of looking at the situation. It also strikes back against society’s pressure for woman to have a relationship and settled down by 35 years old. An expiration date. 

I am 21 and already feel this. 

I agree with Morris though (lowkey he reminded me of Jim from Friday Night Dinner), Andy wasn’t that funny in his comedy, but he was a funny protagonist to listen to regarding his relatability. A health fitness craze. A craving for carbs and then saying stuff it. Ending up in awkward situations.   

I will be listening to more by her as she’s been on my to-read list for ages!

Our cast is separated between three portals all representing the potential fate of the library - destroy the library, free access to the library, a compromise. 

<b>‘The accumulation of things as small as dust can build worlds, and the gathering of things as insubstantial as letters can build vast libraries . . . the mounting weight of the minuscule can break them too. Your contribution may have been small on the grand scale, tiny, but it was the last of many straws.’</b>

I think what made this book and book two so much weaker than book one was the majority of the time our characters are apart and trying to get back together so it feels like a constant game of catch.

This instalment was a lot more action-have y which meant we lost those slower character moments and philosophical introspection that made you go WOAH. 

Saying that, I liked how Lawrence uses his books to study our own world. To ask difficult questions and use these characters not give a simple answer, not present a black or white. 

<b>Arpix didn’t think he had ever hated before. It felt like sorrow, but with the knives turned in every direction, not merely inwards.

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Overall, I still have The Book That Wouldn’t Burn as a favourite, but sadly the following two didn’t quite keep that tone or high. 

Arc gifted by Harper Voyager.