I was highly intrigued to read a collection of works from one of Japan's earliest successful female writers. She inspired some of my own favorite authors and wrote all of her works in classical Japanese, so I was excited to see how the translator would approach this collection.

My biggest struggle with the collection was definitely that the traditional structure of the works is vastly different from what I'm used to. This was to be expected but the lack of any kind of structure to differentiate between who is speaking and what's going on was quite disorienting at times.

My favorite thing about the writing was that it draws such a loving picture of the underprivileged people of the Meji era, it gives a voice to the people who usually aren't depicted in literature from this time period and it captures the social landscapes quite brilliantly. The writing style itself is reserved and gentle yet realistic, there's poetic descriptions that spoke to me a lot. This is a precious piece of literature since it gave me the chance to read from such an important writer and enrich my understanding of the Meji era so I can recommend it for those reasons!

Vile Lady Villains was one of my most anticipated releases of my year, so I want to thank NetGalley, Union Square & Co. as well as Danai Christopoulou for the advanced reader's copy! This book didn't only catch my attention because it's sapphic, but because of how inventive and refreshing the premise of this book is. Using two well known figures, Klytemnestra and Lady Macbeth, and giving them their own story that's filled with fantastical elements sounds brilliant to me.

This book felt very accesible to me, so while Klytemnestra's part felt much more familiar to me than that of Lady Macbeth, the characters get their own names, Claret and Anassa, and are introduced and characterised at the beginning. I also found the writing style to be accessible, it's one of my favorite aspects of the book as it's quite lyrical and descriptive in nature but it never felt overwhelming or purple, it kept a clear tone at all times. I especially liked Anassa's voice. Lastly, I do love fantasy, horror and historical stories and so I found this story to be refreshing and unique in all three aspects. While it uses aspects that have certainly been used in fantasy before, it tries to use them in novel ways and plays with the narrative which I liked. I really loved the way the author played with the perception of time and how meta it was at times.

Now to some points that I didn't enjoy. I love this idea of taking two already existing characters and retelling their story in a way that hasn't been done a lot before. It's not your typical feminist retelling of a greek myth, I have to say that. Though I feel like more could have been done with the premise. Klytemnestra is from Ancient Greece, while Lady Macbeth originated from the early 17th century. That's a huge difference in time and I feel like that could have been highlighted more. Their narrative voices were way too similar, and while there's a magical explanation given, I think it would have been cool if both characters would have been stylised more to sound more different from each other in the way they speak and think. For my taste, the characters were way too normal about going back and forth in time as much as they did.

Another major problem was the pacing. I really struggled multiple times throughout reading this and I think it didn't help that the chapters were so short and it always changed between the two POVs. I felt like I could never be deeply immersed in the story since I was just thrown around between the two.

The side characters also did absolutely nothing for me. There was a lot of potential there and while I knew them from their respective original stories, I don't feel like they had a lot of room to breathe and evolve on the page. While the main characters certainly developed on page, I also struggled with how their relationship was developed at times. It fell victim to telling instead of showing, even when they acted in a way that should show how much they love each other, it could feel stiff at times.

this is a highly detailed nonfiction book tracing back the roots of jazz as a musical genre. it's very dense and highly informative, starting out with slavery in the united states, the underground railway road, it goes into the great migration and labor struggles, industrialization, protests and puts a big focus on the most important musical families and legends connected to jazz.

i've been interested about this exact topic for years and even wrote papers about it so i was very excited to get an advanced reader's copy thanks to edelweiss. even though i've been reading books about this for years, i could still appreciate just how well researched and thorough the accounts in this book were. there's musical texts and lyrics, interviews and background information on all important people and historical events and it's put into neat categories, often organized by geographical location. i really liked how much context and information was given on the historical and social context of the time and i was happy to see pictures included of most if not all musicians.

i can highly recommend this to anyone who's interested in jazz and how it can be connected and traced back to the hard work of african americans and eventually the transatlantic slave trade. it doesn't leave out a single detail so you get the full picture on all important figures and everything!

Thank you so much to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

First off, I have to be transparent and say that I requested this because the plot sounded really intriguing but I somehow managed to overread the fact that this is the FIFTH book in a whole series and not just a standalone novel. Since I still desperately wanted to read this, I asked my friend who read the first four novels and she caught me right up with everything. That was totally my mistake but I do have to say I still enjoyed this novel wholeheartedly and I will run to completely read the first four novels myself now!

My favorite aspect of this book was the setting being 190s India and the immersive and decadent atmosphere of Bollywood, i loved the introduction we got into the film industry and how that was weaved together with the mystery aspects, where Perveen Mistry and her father are hired as laywers by a film company, where they need to investige a death that occurred at the after party. I am not the biggest mystery fanatic but I do think the mystery plot was engaging and kept me want to read on and on.

I immediately came to like Perveen and Alice, the dynamics between the characters and the rich backstory and attention to detail really elevated the story for me. This might be more of a minor detail but I love the formatting and font choices for the book and the writing style was lovely, now I can't wait to read the rest of the series!

i went into this book knowing nothing more than that it's sapphic and this was so much fun!! essentially this book is about two best friends, yumi and noelle who are obsessed with a reality tv show called the adventureverse. they apply for the next season, only there's one caveat; it's a couples-only season and yumi and noelle aren't only not dating, they aren't on good terms at the moment. desperate for the two million prize money they make the only logical decision, they decide to fake their relationship and win that prize!

i don't watch reality tv at all but this book was so entertaining nonetheless and there were quite some angsty moments which made for an amazing balance between more fun and faster paced scenes and angsty scenes with conflict and drama. i could see myself quite strongly in noelle, we share multiple personality traits and life circumstances so i'd say that immediately made me feel connected to her and enjoy reading from her pov. we don't get to read from yumi's pov but we do get to see how in love noelle is with her which was really sweet.

i personally really enjoyed the writing style, it's gen-z, humourous with lots of sarcasm but it didn't read like younger YA, quirky FMCs often do. the side characters such as the other competitors in the reality show, the hosts and parents of the MC were whatever, they weren't really remarkable to me but also not overtly annoying or anything, the focus really lies on noelle and her relationship with yumi as well as questions surrounding having a chronically ill family member and having to deal with that (mostly) on your own. the ending was probably the weakest of the book overall, it read as en epilogue and was open enough for me to assume there could potentially a second part, though it could be seen as just the ending, since there's no cliff-hangers or anything.

such a mesmerizing memoir!! this captured my soul from the very first page and just got better and better. jan kerouac is such an electrifying writer, i love her poetic writing style so so much & the way she paints the most vivid of pictures and imbues even the most minor of characters with so much with life is insane. she couldn't be more different from me as a person but maybe that's exactly why i was so taken in by this book, pretty much all scenes were beyond chaotic and disorienting but it made for the best reading experience ever. i can highly recommend if you're interested in memoirs by women with dysfunctional backgrounds and tumultous adolescent years.

i really enjoyed the lyrical writing style and the structure of the novel. it blurs the lines between who our main character really is, since we experience the story through our unnamed narrator, who goes on to meet a new villager named mustafa sa'eed. the novel has dream-like qualities at times and it changes between time periods and perspectives quite subtly. while reading, i became hyper aware that i am reading a piece of work written by a sudanese man from the 1960s and that naturally completely changed the way i looked at the text. it was quite intriguing to read from this wholly different perspective and i felt like i got quite a vivid insight into what life could have been like then. the novel mainly deals with the brutality of colonialism and how that affects the identity and society of sudanese people. what positively surpised me is how openly salih critiqued misogyny and patriarchy through the abhorrently violent way all women were treated in the book. the book lost me at times because of its pace but the ending left me satisfied.

the title really says it all.. i haven't read a story this brutal yet realistic in some time and it really left me thinking. the characters felt hyperrealistic, intricate and complex. i realized that i quite enjoy books written from the second person and this one was no exception, it changes between first and second person in such a nice way. the transitions from the letters to the present to memories was also done so seemlessly. the prose was beautiful to me and the way the author talked about topics like cameroon, about religion, sexuality, culture and womanhood in such a poignant way.