stormlightreader's reviews
872 reviews

This is a dense book with a lot of information delivered in each chapter. The author covers what I assume is most, if not all, of the possible impacts of perimenopause. Hill explored hormonal fluctuations (which there's a lot of), mental health changes and recommendations for lifestyle changes and supplements. I'm sure there are other books out there on perimenopause, but this book was an interesting insight into dealing with perimenopause. There were some good takeaways and I would refer back to this book when I come this point in my reproductive journey. 

I had a mixed experience with this book. I can definitely see why this book is liked but for me, I don't feel like there was much development with the plot and kind of felt like the story finished prematurely. The pacing also felt quite slow. Every part of the story felt believable in the current climate, but overall this story fell a bit flat for me. I did listen to the audio along with the physical book and I think that's what engaged me most. 

Random sidenote: during the last half of the book, I could see some similarities between Parable and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. 

Things that worked for me:

Everything else didn't really work for me. I finished the book as opposed to DNFing purely because of the pacing and short chapters, but I just didn't feel any intrigue whatsoever. I figured out the murderer VERY early on and the writing was quite dry, almost like you would see in a scientific paper. 

I struggled with Detta/Odetta and when she became Susannah, I preferred her. Detta is back in this book and I can't with her. SK has name-dropped himself. Strange. After four books, there is still no character that I am at all invested in and that's not good for a 7-book fantasy series. I put this down for a few days and felt absolutely no pull to pick it back up, so it's now a book and series DNF.

Two plot threads:

one missing kid and one dead kid

. I'm not interested in either. Such a shame because book 1 was great but there doesn't seem to be a book 3 anyway.

This collection of short stories centre around love, desire and horror, with the Mexican folklore influence that makes V. Castro's stories so good.

This collection starts off with some shorter short stories and then we get to main The Pink Agave Motel. Of all of the short stories, Carnival of Gore, Dirty Deck and The Pink Agave Motel were my favourites. The pacing was great for the first (almost) half, and as entertaining as The Pink Agave Motel was, I think the pacing did slow down a bit, as we jump back and forth between timelines.

Overall, an enjoyable short story collection and another fun outing with V. Castro. 

The Last Narco focuses on the Sinaloa Cartel boss, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, known as "El Chapo". I’ll start off by saying that I found this very informative and it appears to be well-researched. I really liked the writing style, and while it gets a little repetitive in some places, mostly it has great pacing. 

The focus of the book was anchored to El Chapo, but Beith includes in other individuals that give the reader a broader understanding of the narco network. Beith discusses other narcos, junior narcos, narco wives and girlfriend's, and the reasons why locals might prefer live under the narco rule than pick up the phone to report a body in the street. Beith also brings in how the Sinaloa Cartel overlapped with La Familia, the Tijuana, Juarez and Gulf cartels, as well as Los Zetas (a mercenary group). 

One thing that I think really grounds this book is the discussion on the affluence of different areas of Mexico. Those areas that have always been deprived and/or under control of the cartels and those that have come to be controlled by the cartels. When I’m reading about these cartels it’s easy to wonder if these things actually happen, because

smuggling cocaine inside of shark carcasses

can sound a little farfetched. But, reading about locals who may have never received any formal education because of where in Mexico they were born, reminds you of the struggles some of the locals feel and grounds the book in reality. 

The Last Narco was written in 2010, 4 years before El Chapo was captured again (and then recaptured again in 2016, honestly, this guy!) and there is an updated version of the book, but I'm not prepared to pay £16 for the extra 50 or so pages. However, I would like to read the updates though, and by this author too. 

Overall, this is a good look at the Mexican cartels but written in an accessible way, with a look at how far-reaching the narco networks are and the effects on the different groups of people living in Mexico. 

This book contains thirteen short stories that were of varying interest to me. 

Ampuero comes out swinging with Auction, which had a bit of a Hostel feel to it. For a short story it ended up being a hard read because I find

r*pe

scenes too hard to read, especially scenes done in such a brutal fashion. Auction would've been a disgusting but good story even without that paragraph, and while it was only a paragraph, Ampuero wrote it so vividly that it genuinely stopped me in my tracks. 

The short stories that followed (

Monster, Griselda, Nam, Pups, Blinds, Christ and Passion

) were mostly just ok and didn’t leave much of an impact. 

The next hard-hitter for me was Mourning. This had one specific similarity to Auction but I didn’t feel like it was written as vividly, and the rest story was a sad one. The treatment of poor Maria was horrifying but the ending was good and left you wondering if it was real or not. This didn’t need to be more than a short story and left enough of an impact as it was. 

A next short story (

Ali

) was a miss for me, but Coro was good and it had a ‘Desperate Housewives’ kind of feel to it.

Bleach

was another miss for me but the final short story Other was an interesting one to me, personally. 

That cover!

I am torn. I kind of feel the same way about Graveyard Shift as I do about season of 8 Game of Thrones: where is the rest of the story? Yes, it's a novella, but I wanted just a little bit more from this. Please give me all the fungi-horror. This book feels like a combination of What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (that's the fungus one, right?), with the true crime investigation vibes of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, and the signature dark academia vibes that M.L. Rio does well. 

I originally DNFed Rio's If We Were Villains and then picked it up again and loved it, so I have been awaiting Rio’s next release, and I guess I did enjoy this but I think it has fallen a bit short for me, purely because of the novella format. That said, I have seen a lot of negative reviews and went in with low expectations, and ultimately I was left wanting to read a full length novella about this. 

Rio is great at creating characters and the dynamics between these characters made me miss If We Were Villains, even if this group did give me Scooby Gang vibes at times. While I didn't feel the typical Rio atmosphere right from the start, it did kick in and I live in hope that an expansion of this story appears in the future. 

I keep picking up fungus horror and hoping that's the one that hits, and to be honest, this one came the closest. 

I think I’m in the minority with this one… 

The Diary of a Bookseller gives a raw and fairly cynical glimpse into the life of a second-hand bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland. I like the format and writing style for this particular book, which made the pacing one of the book’s strengths (along with Captain the cat). Captain’s sporadic presence added some lightness to an otherwise bleak account of used book-selling, along with the author including their own periodic reading updates. 

Bythell does not shy away from sharing his dislike for Amazon and the challenges posed by them (directly and indirectly), but I was confused by the ‘trophy Kindle’. The effect of Amazon on the book industry is a prominent discussion in the Bookstagram sphere, so it wasn’t a shock to see this appear in this book. However, I didn’t enjoy reading a book about books/booklovers that almost shames those that use e-readers. 

Overall, there is some humour in here but the whole way through this book, I kept thinking about how I would be described by this person if I walked into this shop. The book does become repetitive and while it is a quick read, it can start to feel a bit samey chapter after chapter.