rcsreads's reviews
749 reviews

The Beetle was released in the same year as Dracula and outsold it at the time. I think the main reason it hasn't stayed the test of time as well is because it's massively racist. It's very much steeped in Victorian Egyptomania and post-colonial fears; and there's a lot of Orientalism and othering of anyone who's not a posh English person. The main villain is Egyptian and part of a weird cult called The Children of Isis. They like to make human sacrifices and they prefer to use white, English women. This makes zero sense as they're clearly supposed to be following an ancient Egyptian tradition and there weren't a lot of British people kicking about Egypt 3000 years ago!

It's a shame the main premise is so problematic because it was incredibly readable, a real page turner. It lays down a really good mystery at the start and there's enough peril that I needed to know what was going on. Also, the main female character is a badass and does as she pleases and makes the men treat her as an equal. They all wanted to marry her and she could have done better!

The actual Beetle is super creepy and there's a lot of people hearing the faint whirring of wings that's surprisingly scary. Also at one point it crawls onto a man's face and I'm amazed he didn't just die from it being so gross!

It's a weird tale worth reading and looking at in it's wider historical context. Obvious trigger warnings for racism and also for sexual assault.

A brief review of one of the worst books I've ever read!

Firstly, you can't just take a dog to Germany for a week's holiday that thing would be in quarantine for months! Secondly, this book was so fatphobic. The amount of time it spent telling me how skinny and ballet dancer Lilith was compared to her fat, German relatives was horrendous especially as it's YA so the target audience really doesn't need that message. Thirdly, the writing was awful and every character a one-dimenional cliche. Fourthly she fell in love with a boy who she was blood related to with a sum total of about 4 hours interaction! Fifthly she cured him of trauma based mutism just by yelling at him during an equally traumatic event - ableist as fuck! The ADHD rep was also awful, she had hats and used big words - yup definitely the only symptoms of neurodiversity!

The villains of this tale are annoyingly inept. I'd quite like a retelling from Uncle Silas' perspective because he's just off his face on opiates the whole time while all his lackeys are failing to achieve anything but faintly irritating Maud!

As in all classic gothic novels, our heroine, Maud, goes to live in a big, spooky house and people attempt to marry her against her wishes. There's a distinct lack of scenery chat though, which is probably an improvement on the genre. The book is still about twice as long as it needs to be though! We get all the Radcliffe references of Northanger Abbey but without any of the humour. It was readable and had enough little mysteries to keep me interested.

At the end of the book Tabitha asked if the author had more we could buy so that's a pretty good endorsement!

The book opens with quite a long football section, which nearly put us off. I did wind up going "blah blah, he scored a goal" because none of us are into football and Fox was complaining of boredom! If you share our absolute hatred of sports don't let it deter you. It doesn't happen again.
The book then trauma dumps on us for a bit before we get into the fun of children doing irresponsible things. At points it reminds me of Blyton's Adventure series but without all the racism, which is nice.
I really liked how the friendship between the two children developed through the story. I also appreciated that when they talked about feelings it was clear that they felt awkward, and the conversations were believable as being how children might actually speak. The story dealt really well with how trauma can affect people and the importance of checking in with your friends. It never got too heavy though because at the same time they were doing weird challenges to win an island! 

Fox is off school and when asked for review thoughts said: "It was very nice. Good book."