User Profile

Temi's degree in neuroscience feeds into this book so much as it explores the implications, good and bad, of a chip in our brains. How it can be used for helping mental health, connecting people, but also the chance for exploitation, the risks of using prediction algorithms on our private thoughts. What happens when someone decides your guilty before you've even thought about committing a crime? The space taken up by this means the plot can be a little slow but overall I enjoyed this thoughtful story.

After seeing glimpses of Clytemnestra in other authors' books I was excited to hear her whole story. However I found this a bit bland. It's fine if you just want a straight telling of the story but the characters lacked personality. The audiobook narrator didn't do it many favours either as the character dialogue was all very samey, a slight variation between male and female but that was it. I often lost track of who was speaking.

This feels like every publishing twitter drama distilled into a single novel.

I read Emily Henry's later books before this, so I can understand why some people were disappointed with them after Beach Read. They definitely have a different tone.

Up-lit with an octopus. I liked the chapters from Marcellus and the interactions between him and Tova, but the rest of the story just wasn't my thing. Very sentimental, but I can see why others like it so much.

CW: sexual assault

A new case forces Sara to face her past trauma. While the crimes are still horrific, the main characters seem to have gotten softer and kinder than in the earlier books, which is no bad thing. Kinda teared up at Amanda's response to the wedding prep.

Not as good as Joya's previous books. Nikki never really seemed all that concerned about being made homeless, the story just assumed she had safety nets that aren't really very realistic, eg. either rich boyfriend's parents will look after her or she'll ace an audition that will somehow magically allow her to live in LA. Money isn't really talked about other than one flashback to her mother not being able to afford toys for them. If I was 18 with nothing to my name, I would sure feel more worried about it.

A macabre fairytale, gruesome but beautifully written.

Weirdly likeable unlikeable characters. A story of obsession, true crime, stalking and bookselling. I liked that it was set in a chain (clearly based on Waterstones) rather than a romanticised version of bookselling. Audio production was excellent.