Review: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

I Hope This Finds You Well
Natalie Sue
Harper Collins AUS
2024, 352p
Copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: In this wildly funny and heartwarming office comedy, an admin worker accidentally gains access to her colleagues’ private emails and DMs and decides to use this intel to save her job—a laugh-till-you-cry debut novel you’ll be eager to share with your entire list of contacts, perfect for fans of Anxious People and Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text colour to white so no one can see. That is, until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.

When an IT mix-up grants her access to her entire department’s private emails and DMs, Jolene knows she should report it, but who could resist reading what their coworkers are really saying? And when she discovers layoffs are coming, she realizes this might just be the key to saving her job. The plan is simple: gain her boss’s favour, convince HR she’s Supershops material and beat out the competition.

But as Jolene is drawn further into her coworker’s private worlds and secrets, her carefully constructed walls begin to crumble—especially around Cliff, who she definitely cannot have feelings for. Soon she will need to decide if she’s ready to leave the comfort of her cubicle, even if it means coming clean to her colleagues.

Crackling with laugh-out-loud dialogue and relatable observations, I Hope This Finds You Well is a fresh and surprisingly tender comedy about loneliness and love beyond our computer screens. This sparkling debut novel will open your heart to the everyday eccentricities of work culture and the undeniable human connection that comes with it.

I have to admit that what I got with this book, was not what I was expecting. I think I was thinking it’d be something like Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and it was…..definitely not. It’s less of the rom com and more an exploration of a very depressed and traumatised person negotiating an incredibly toxic workplace where there’s an horrific amount of bullying going on, on a day to day basis.

Jolene copes with her workplace by writing what she truly thinks on emails to her colleagues and then whiting them out so they don’t see them. When she forgets one day, she is hauled in by HR and although she isn’t fired, she’s made attend (and pass) a harassment course with the new HR guy, Cliff. Cliff also fixes Jolene’s computer in a way that is supposed to restrict her emails but instead allows her access to pretty much everyone’s emails and direct messages. She tries to tell Cliff what he’s done but he just thinks she’s talking about the restrictions that were supposed to have been placed on them and she gives up. And with the temptation there, she decides to use the other emails and messages to be better about her job so that she might keep it. Everyone knows the next round of layoffs are coming.

Except what Jolene mostly reads are the colleagues closest to her, being absolutely horrible about her. I’m not going to lie, a lot of this book was really hard to read. Jolene is suffering through not just an awful workplace but there’s not much joy outside of work in her life either. She lives in a shitty apartment in a shitty building and hanging over her is something that happened when she was still in school, that has deeply traumatised her. Her mother is Iranian and interested in setting Jolene up with men to find a good husband and Jolene finds all their interactions exhausting. She knows her father struggles with how long they had to support her after high school, which was why she finally moved out and away. She has no friends and spends most of her time after work drinking alone in her apartment. She clearly drink way too much to forget whatever it is that has marked her so badly, as well as the way her life has turned out.

I did not find a lot of humour in this. It’s not so much cute rom com, like I thought it might be. Jolene’s life is deeply messy and she’s a person who is just going through the motions. She hates her job and is barely getting buy but she clings to it because the alternative of having to move back in with her parents is even worse. All her colleagues are at first look, quite horrible and they say truly awful things about Jolene. As she delves a bit more into their personal correspondence we learn that they all have their own difficult things going on but…..I’m not sure it was enough to be an excuse for the truly awful way these people all treat each other. The whole workplace is rotten and I feel like everyone is pitted against each other and they all become complicit in the games.

That is not to say Jolene is without criticism either. Some of what she does is equally awful, going in and getting colleagues passwords, reading some of their most intimate correspondence. She’s truly unfair to Cliff, the HR guy, who I ended up really liking. Actually, Cliff ended up being the best thing in this book, for me. I felt sorry for Jolene, she’d definitely gone through some things and she was struggling a lot but…. I didn’t feel like that excused some of her actions. I wanted her to get help and face some of the things she was struggling with and take accountability for the things she did using the emails.

I will be honest and say I didn’t enjoy this as a read. It actually made me quite anxious myself in parts and would definitely be upsetting to people with certain issues, particularly around workplace bullying. It wasn’t a fun read. I appreciated some of the representation and exploration but for me, it wasn’t funny and there were not many moments that felt heartwarming. Maybe a couple at the end, but it definitely didn’t feel as warm and fuzzy as it seems to suggest it might be.

If I’d known that I might’ve had a better time with it, but I just found it a struggle to read.

5/10

Book #104 of 2024

Review: Trail Of The Lost by Andrea Lankford

Trail Of The Lost
Andrea Lankford
Hachette
2023, 352p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: From a former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies.
 
As a park ranger with the National Park Service’s law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service’s bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left – three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed’s Wild , and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her.
 
Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever ventured into – missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming.

I can’t remember where I first saw this. Maybe it was when it was nominated in the Goodreads Choice Awards. But I have read Wild by Cheryl Strayed and seen the movie. I’m kind of interesting in people who are long distance hikers even though I could never do that myself. I’m just not a hiking kind of girl. Short hikes? Yes, absolutely. But I need indoor plumbing, thank you. And knowing I’ll be returning to a real bed at the end of the day.

This is about the uglier side of long distance hiking, the dangerous side of the Pacific Crest Trail, a hiking trail that runs 2600ish miles through three states from the US southern border with Mexico, through California, Oregon and Washington to its northern border with Canada. This is about the people who set out on a hike, be it a thru-hike, where they hike the whole trail, or just a portion of it, and never return. This book specifically focuses on three people, all men, who have never been found. In some cases, there hasn’t even really been a trace of them – no gear, nothing. In the third instance, gear belonging to the missing man was found abandoned. But in all three cases there’s been very little to go on and extensive private searches as well as some professional searches as well, have turned up basically nothing. This book is written by a former park ranger who helped coordinate search and rescue as part of her role, although she left that job and retrained as a nurse. She is still ‘connected’ to hiking though and has herself, hiked the Appalachian trail, the US’ other great trail on the eastern side of the country that stretches through many states. She was struck by some of these cases and offered assistance in search efforts and ground research.

I am at the moment, watching a couple of people documenting their own hiking of the PCT, which has become common in recent years. Youtube is a platform that makes it very easy to create short videos and in one I’m watching a woman who was a “SOBO” (south-bound, starting at Canada and hiking down) hiker post the videos from her 2023 hike. In the other series I’m following a man who is a NOBO (you guess it – northbound) hiker who is basically uploading his videos in as close to real time as it gets, editing and uploading at various points on the trail. He started maybe a month or six weeks or so ago. The SOBO hiker started later, hiking out of Canada in the summer so that by the time she gets to colder weather, she’s hopefully well into southern California where it’s warmer. If you’re NOBO, you want to start in the cooler months because it’s obviously hot down along the Mexican border and be hitting the Canada border in summer. The PCT has become so popular in recent years that you need a permit to hike it in its entirety and the department responsible issues about 55 permits per day, staggering starts. You’re given your start date and I don’t believe it can be altered. The idea is to “take nothing but photos, leave nothing but footprints” but obviously, this is not always the case.

The three cases are all interesting in that there’s so little to go in so many ways. I know this is remote territory and that it’s easy to get lost and the like and there are examples of how people have gone missing and searches have come within like, 50-100m of them and not found them the first time. There are examples here of using drone and aerial photography to search from above, in rough terrain and when there is simply too large a search area to be practical and it’s a technology that does seem under utilised as a method and flying drones in National Parks is illegal in the US as well, which also doesn’t help. Another large problem with reporting people missing is that often, the police are uninterested and tend to regard hikers, be they casual or dedicated thru-hikers, in less than ideal ways, like itinerant people, assuming they are disappearing on purpose and aren’t interested in speaking to their families. And that does happen, but even when presented with evidence to the contrary about people, the pattern in this is that largely they were uninterested until research done by parents/family/dedicated volunteers turned up something or multiple things, police had missed. Jurisdiction is also often an issue, with the trail being so long, going through so many different counties and states etc. It’s very complex, which is why it seems, there is such a dedicated team of volunteers who turn up to help when people do go missing and aren’t found immediately. And so much of it is done by the family – one of the men who went missing, his stepmother has spent years searching, going through social media tips and possible sightings, working tirelessly to try and find him so that they might have closure.

This was so interesting but I won’t lie – it’s also very deflating. Time and time again there are hopes raised by a story that seems credible of a sighting somewhere only for it not to pan out. It’s time and effort and so many tears. It’s uncertainty because without a body, there’s still hope, even when it’s been years and that hope is futile, really. But it’s still there, because you don’t have the definitive to say otherwise. The not knowing must be awful. There are also parts in here where it’s quite obvious that grieving parents are being targeted by either charlatans or trolls – people who want to profit by telling them they can find their loved one via some new and improved sort of way or by people who want to tell them that whatever they’re doing is wrong. If you’re looking for them, you’re “smothering them” and you’re probably the reason they vanished in the first place or if you’re not and trying to wait and see, do you even care about them? As much as social media can be a very valuable tool in something like this, to get word out, organise searches etc, it can also be the opposite.

I found this fascinating. Not sure I’ll say I enjoyed it exactly because it’s quite grim subject matter. It raises a lot of issues not just about hiking but about people disappearing in general and how difficult it can be to get taken seriously by authorities and how when someone is hiking, it can be quite a while before people realise that someone is missing. This is probably less likely now, a lot of hikers wear GPS trackers but there are some that don’t want that sort of exposure. It means that the key window of searching is often missed significantly.

I did feel somewhat flat after finishing though. I can’t imagine how the loved ones must feel.

8/10

Book #103 of 2024

It’s a bit cheeky but I’m going to count this one towards my 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge, hosted by Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out. I’m going to use it for True Crime which….look, it is not strictly a fully true crime novel but it contains a lot of elements of true crime and a lot of investigation. It does showcase some criminal cases, where people on the PCT have been targeted. But I am twisting this a bit, to suit myself. This is book 4 (of 6) of my challenge.

Categories:

History
Memoir/Biography
True Crime
Science
Health
Food
Culture
Transportation
The Future
Pets
Architecture
Published in 2024

Review: Juniper Hill by Devney Perry

Juniper Hill (The Edens)
Devney Perry
Penguin Books AUS
2023, 327p
Copy borrowed from a family member

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Memphis Ward arrives in Quincy, Montana, on the fifth worst day of her life. She needs a shower. She needs a snack. She needs some sanity. Because moving across the country with her newborn baby is by far the craziest thing she’s ever done.

But maybe it takes a little crazy to build a good life. If putting the past behind her requires a thousand miles and a new town, she’ll do it if it means a better future for her son. Even if it requires setting aside the glamour of her former life. Even if it requires working as a housekeeper at The Eloise Inn and living in an apartment above a garage.

It’s there, on the fifth worst day of her life, that she meets the handsomest man she’s ever laid eyes on. Knox Eden is a beautiful, sinful dream, a chef and her temporary landlord. With his sharp, stubbled jaw and tattooed arms, he’s raw and rugged and everything she’s never had—and never will. Because after the first worst day of her life, Memphis learned a good life requires giving up on her dreams too. And a man like Knox Eden will only ever be a dream.

Recently, my family member that works in a bookstore that I swap books back and forth with a lot, got into this series. I thought I’d finished the first one on KU, but I don’t think I ever fully did, so I went back and re-read it in order to read the next two that she’d loaned me. To be honest, it’s not entirely necessary, you can read these stand alone (it’s not a secret who anyone ends up with). This takes place pretty much directly after the finish of the first book – the end of that first book is the set up of this one, which also happens in this book as well.

Memphis Ward has recently been hired at the Eloise Inn, in Quincy Montana. There’s a reason she picked this tiny town and Eloise, her new boss, helped her find accommodation that she can afford. She comes with her two month old son Drake and has found a daycare spot for him while she works in town. Memphis is definitely having a hard time – she’s sleep deprived, struggling for money, working a physical job for the first time in her life and it’s clear that she’s alone. Very alone. Her new landlord Knox Eden is suspicious about her story. He’s pretty sure Memphis is hiding something and he’d like her to sort her life out so that she can exit the apartment above his garage. Her baby cries at night, keeping him awake and Knox finds that even though it’s not something he should get involved him, he can’t help but offer help. And the more he helps Memphis, the more he wants her to stay. Maybe move even closer.

I really enjoyed this second one. I really liked Memphis, who has divided her life into Old Memphis, who lived a certain way and did certain things and this Memphis, or New Memphis, who has a completely different life and different priorities. She is definitely on her own but is swept up in the small community with a boss who values her input. There’s definitely a certain something simmering between Knox and Memphis as well. Knox runs a restaurant at the Inn and is Griffin’s brother, one of the famous Edens (Eloise is one also). When it looks like the past Memphis has left behind her is about to find her, Knox finds himself standing with her, alongside of her, wanting to shelter her and protect her and let her know that she isn’t alone facing this. That she doesn’t have to be alone. He’s so good with Drake as well, Knox has a bit of a complex past regarding children which is revealed throughout the course of the book and that past shapes a lot of his interactions with Drake.

Look, is this book a bit dramatic towards the end? Yes. I cannot lie. Did I also eat it up, fully invested in how it was going to play out? Also, yes. It’s possible we didn’t need two such dramatic things but I was having too much fun to really care that much. I liked the development of Knox and Memphis, it’s obviously very physical but there’s a lot of emotional development as well, especially when they finally begin to share pieces to themselves with each other properly, with no attempts at skirting details. I liked Knox a bit more than Griffin I think, he was a bit quieter. And I still really enjoy the large, noisy extended family and their get togethers. The way they embrace Memphis is sweet, even if they probably would be a little overbearing in real life. The way they infantilise Eloise in this is a bit weird, I’m tipping that will be expanded upon in her book – which is not the next one though. This did set up the next one but….. I’ve heard that book 3 is rough. I’m trying to go into it with an open mind but I already have questions.

This one though? Really liked.

8/10

Book #102 of 2024

Review: A Letter To The Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall

A Letter To The Luminous Deep (The Sunken Archive #1)
Sylvie Cathrall
Orbit
2024, 400p
Copy borrowed from a family member

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: A beautiful discovery outside the window of her underwater home prompts the reclusive E. to begin a correspondence with renowned scholar Henerey Clel. The letters they share are filled with passion, at first for their mutual interests, and then, inevitably, for each other.

Together, they uncover a mystery from the unknown depths, destined to transform the underwater world they both equally fear and love. But by no mere coincidence, a seaquake destroys E.’s home, and she and Henerey vanish.

A year later, E.’s sister Sophy, and Henerey’s brother Vyerin, are left to solve the mystery, piecing together the letters, sketches and field notes left behind—and learn what their siblings’ disappearance might mean for life as they know it.

Inspired, immersive, and full of heart, this charming epistolary tale is an adventure into the depths of a magical sea and the limits of the imagination from a marvelous debut voice.

I first saw this book almost a year ago and added it to my 2024 Wishlist based on the strength of the beautiful cover and the description. I love an epistolary novel! At the time I didn’t know it was being recommended to fans of Emily Wilde and I love those two books as well. I felt for sure this was going to be a new favourite.

Unfortunately it was not. I liked it. But there were a couple things that prevented me from loving it.

Firstly, I’m not sure the letters worked well as the only form of narrative for the story. It’s all being done after a terrible incident – a young woman named E, who suffers from what is referred to in this as a Malady of the Brain (a mental illness that I feel is similar to maybe anxiety and OCD) who lives in a house that is far under the sea, sees something unusual outside her window. She writes to a known scholar and he writes back. Charmed by each other, they continue their correspondence. One day, both of them vanish during a terrible seaquake that completely destroys E’s family home. Struggling to make sense of it, E’s sister Sophy writes to the scholar Henerey’s brother and the two begin their own correspondence. Sophy has E’s effects and Henerey’s brother Vyerin has Henerey’s and they share those too, in order, piecing together the path of their friendship/courtship and how it led to them meeting in person and ultimately being together during the event that took them both.

Because of this, I never honestly felt invested in the romance that is slowly developing between E and Henerey. Because there’s no internal monologue from either character, it’s all letters and communications, the author attempts to circumvent this by Sophy including her letters with E. Sophy is also a scholar and on a research trip during this time and she and E communicate extensively and E is able to be open with her perhaps in a similar way to how she might think on her own but it’s not quite the same. You’re also reading everything having been told in advance something terrible has happened so that also makes it a bit difficult – you almost don’t want to get too invested because you’re aware from the beginning that there’s been this incident, even though there’s always a bit of a question as well, in mind about where this is all going.

This is also written in what I would call a kind of dry, formal tone, similar to Victorian-era language in style in a way. To be honest, the first 80 pages or so, I had read letters from about five different people and if it didn’t specifically say Letter from X to Y at the beginning of each one, I would’ve found several of the voices almost completely indistinguishable from the other. Only when each of the people began to get more familiar with the other did I feel like anyone showed personality, which ok, stands to reason I guess that you get more relaxed with someone but it just made reading it in the beginning a bit bland as everyone sounded the same.

The further I got into this, the more I did get intrigued by a few things, the book took a direction I didn’t expect. However, I didn’t realise this was just book 1 in a series until I was over halfway through it, for some reason I thought it was a stand alone. So immediately after that I was like, well I’m not going to get much in the way of answers, and then there’s going to be the wait for book two. The person who loaned me this one asked if I would go on and read book two and honestly, I’m not sure. I don’t really ever feel like I was very invested in this, I didn’t fall in love with the story, the world or the characters the way I generally need to in a fantasy series. It was… okay? Some of the more interesting moments were between Sophy and Vyerin as they try to both negotiate their individual grief and come to terms with the loss but also realise that their siblings had connected with each other in a truly deep way, that none of them had been able to before. Both E and Henerey are a little unusual, prone to deep thinking and anxieties, and because of this, they understand the other. That was nice to see, that they had connected when mostly I think they’d felt quite isolated their whole lives. But I didn’t ever feel like ‘oh, I ship them!’. To be honest, I thought Sophy and Vyerin had more chemistry than E and Henerey and they are decidedly not a romantic pairing.

I enjoyed this without ever really getting too deeply involved in it. I did consider in the first 80p, setting it aside because the pacing was excruciatingly slow but I have struggled to read so much recently that because I had started it I figured I might as well finish it and it did get a lot better for me, the further I got into it. But honestly, I’m not sure I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about this one.

6/10

Book #101 of 2024

Review: Indigo Ridge by Devney Perry

Indigo Ridge (The Edens #1)
Devney Perry
Self published
2021, 340p
Read via Kindle Unlimited

Blurb {from Goodreads.com}: Winslow Covington believes in life, liberty and the letter of the law. As Quincy, Montana’s new chief of police, she’s determined to prove herself to the community and show them she didn’t earn her position because her grandfather is the mayor.

According to her pops, all she has to do is earn favor with the Edens. But winning over the town’s founding family might have been easier if not for her one-night stand with their oldest son. In her defense, it was her first night in town and she didn’t realize that the rugged and charming man who wooed her into bed was Quincy royalty.

Sleeping with Griffin Eden was a huge mistake, one she’s trying to forget. He’s insufferable, arrogant and keeps reminding everyone that she’s an outsider. Winslow does her best to avoid Griffin, but when a woman is found dead on Eden property, the two of them have no choice but to cross paths.

As clues to the murderer lead to one of Quincy’s own, Griffin realizes Winslow is more than he gave her credit for. Beautiful and intelligent, she proves hard to resist. For him. And the killer.

The Edens is a series that was originally self-published and gained a lot of popularity on Kindle Unlimited. I actually downloaded this one, the first one, from KU a really long time ago and since then they’ve been removed from KU for traditional publishing, based on the strength of the success they found. Because I’d downloaded this one prior to its removal, it stayed on my device (and will do so until I return it). Recently a family member loaned me the 2nd and 3rd books in this series so I decided to finally go ahead and finish this one. I’d read a portion of it when I downloaded it but had abandoned it for other books.

Winslow Covington is the new chief of police in the small town of Quincy, Montana. The town is dominated by the Eden family, who own a lot of the local businesses and have been longstanding citizens of importance in the area. As you might’ve guessed from the title of this series, all of the books are going to be about the six current generation of Edens and in this one, Winslow meets Griffin Eden and they have a one night encounter that is supposed to be exactly that until Griffin realises that Winslow is the new chief of police and Winslow realises she’s going to be seeing Griffin all the time. Recently out of a long term relationship that went wrong, Winslow (Winn) isn’t looking for anything permanent and it seems, neither is Griffin. But both of them didn’t count on the other, although there are complications here, namely a spate of local suicides by young women that Winn is looking at with fresh eyes as potentially not being suicides at all. This does put her at odds with Griffin, especially with one person in particular, that Winn needs to question.

I ended up enjoying this. The Edens are a big, bold, fun family and although I didn’t love Griffin at first introduction, I’d warmed to him by mid way through the book. I did like Winn and her grandfather, who is Quincy’s mayor. Technically he hired her, but with an objective eye, although not everyone in the town feels like Winn should’ve gotten the job. Winn is good at her job though, she immediately sees through these suicides, wondering if there might be more to them. I liked meeting all the siblings and I loved Winn’s relationship with her grandfather, which is very sweet. I too had a very close relationship with my grandfather before his death in 2013, and I have to admit, I have a soft spot for that sort of relationship portrayed well.

If I had one criticism, it would be that for me, the relationship between Griffin and Winn didn’t really convince me that it got so deep so quick. I believe that they were attracted to each other and had chemistry but most of their interactions occurred late at night in one bed or another, except when Griff was following Winn around as she did her job. I think I could’ve done with a few more scenes that showed them being vulnerable with each other in deeper ways. There are a couple but they feel sudden, although, going by the epilogue, everything about Griff and Winn ends up being sudden.

Honestly, I think this is fine – the suspense story is done relatively well, the characters were enjoyable if a bit only ever feeling surface level to me. I like the town, I feel like this book also gave a good introduction to the rest of the siblings, who feature in all of the future books. The end of this book set up the next one in a way that made me look forward to reading it. Which I can do, whenever I feel like now as it’s sitting on my TBR shelf.

7/10

Book #100 of 2024

Review: Unruly (Audiobook) by David Mitchell

Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens
David Mitchell
Penguin Audio
2023, 11hrs 39min
Purchased personal copy

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Discover who we are and how we got here by listening to comedian and student of history David Mitchell’s UNRULY: A History of England’s Kings and Queens – a thoughtful, funny exploration of the founding fathers and mothers of England, and subsequently Britain.

Think you know your kings and queens? Think again.

In UNRULY, David Mitchell explores how England’s monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects’ destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear today in their portraits.

Taking us right back to King Arthur (spoiler: he didn’t exist), David tells the founding story of post-Roman England right up to the reign of Elizabeth I (spoiler: she dies). It’s a tale of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars, and at least one total Cnut, as the population evolved from having their crops nicked by the thug with the largest armed gang to bowing and paying taxes to a divinely anointed king.

How this happened, who it happened to and why it matters in modern Britain are all questions David answers with brilliance, wit and the full erudition of a man who once studied history – and won’t let it off the hook for the mess it’s made.

A funny book about a serious subject, UNRULY is for anyone who has ever wondered how we got here – and who is to blame.

Most of what I’ve learned about history, I’ve learned through fiction. Which is an interesting technique, when you think about it. But I’ve read a lot of historical fiction and if something interested me, I used that as a springboard to research about that particular person or place in time. I haven’t done a lot of historical studies, something I’ve been trying to rectify in recent times and I thought this sounded like a bit of an interesting way to go through a bit of British history. Do I know much about the monarchy? Not really. I can get back to Queen Victoria and I can name a handful of monarchs prior to her. Everyone knows ones like Henry VIII and Richard III etc. But there’s a whole bunch of others in there as well that I knew nothing about, including pretty much everything that happened prior to the arrival of William the Conqueror in 1066.

David Mitchell is also someone I’m relatively familiar with. My parents are big fans of Would I Lie To You? a panel comedy show in the UK which is also popular here. Mitchell is one of the permanent “team” members where with two other people, it’s his job to trick the other team into guessing a story being told is either true or false. You want the other team to be wrong so you get points for your trickery. The other team’s permanent member is Lee Mack, who I remember from a comedy sketch show my brother used to watch a long time ago. I’ve seen a lot of this show when visiting my parents and I figured if nothing else, Mitchell would probably make this entertaining to listen to.

And it was. I really enjoyed the listen, which definitely brought in large elements of Mitchell’s personality. He weaves his own experience of being “British” (as one parent is Welsh, the other from a Scottish heritage) rather than English and begins with a King that didn’t actually exist and goes in basically chronological order all the way up to Elizabeth I. There was a lot in this I didn’t know (everything that happens prior to 1066 and a bunch of stuff early on and in the middle). I have to say that keeping everyone straight is difficult. All the Edwards and Henrys start to blur together after a while and if you asked me defining features of like, Henry II’s rein vs Edward V, I couldn’t tell you. That can be the downside of listening sometimes, you can’t flip back and check something. You just have to go with it. I also listened to this over a period of 14 days (about 45 minutes a day, at night time before falling asleep usually) so yes, I did forget things sometimes. The Kings I did know something about, the more well known ones, it was good to have a lot of that fleshed out as to how they came to be there and the ways in which claims to the throne were ‘fluid’ and changed depending on who was attempting to make a claim. This idea of the King being this anointed by God figure, was really tested when randoms started to turn up and declare that in fact they were the legitimate heir to the throne or the best person for the job. Or they had the biggest army…

Because there was a lot of bloodshed. Wow did it seem like this country did nothing but go to war for about a thousand plus years. If it wasn’t civil war between different would-be rulers or deposed rulers and the new ruler or a distant relative who thought their claim was more just, it was going to war against other countries, France being the most popular one. Also a lot of people just died. Hygiene wasn’t the best, food wasn’t the best, the lifestyle definitely wasn’t the best (you can only imagine how difficult it was for poor people) and so many Kings died at a young age. Also a lot of people were very bad about being King. The role is pretty much entirely ceremonial now, so it doesn’t particularly matter if they’re bad at it or not but when it was them deciding upon rules and the like, many of them were very bad. And then there was the whole tug of war over reformation and whether or not England was going to be Catholic and tied to the Pope or Protestant and very much not. What a confusing time that must’ve been, for religions and their practices to be outlawed and then reinstated and then outlawed again.

I think this is a good way for a relatively brief overview of history in this time in England if you’re like me and have only vague general knowledge. It gives a brief account of each ruler – how they came to power, if anything of note happened during their reign, what happened to them etc. It goes into depth with some more than others, depending on what happened. None of the reigns appear to have been uneventful but there are definitely some who warrant much more time spent on them than others. All in all I’d definitely recommend this book as an introduction to an overview of British monarchical history and if one or another interests you, pursuing that particular one further.

And it’s funny.

8/10

Book #99 of 2024

This title counts towards my participation in the 2024 Nonfiction Reader Challenge, hosted by Shelleyrae @ Book’d Out. It’s the third book read towards the challenge out of my level of 6 books and I’m using it to tick off the category of history.

Categories:

History
Memoir/Biography
True Crime
Science
Health
Food
Culture
Transportation
The Future
Pets
Architecture
Published in 2024

Review: Blueback by Tim Winton

Blueback
Tim Winton
Puffin Books Australia
2009 (originally 1997), 167p
Purchased personal copy

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: Abel Jackson has lived by the sea at Longboat Bay ever since he could remember. he helps his mother each day and loves to dive. One day he meets Blueback, the biggest and most beautiful fish he’s ever seen.

When Abel’s mother is approached by developers she decides she must do something to protect their fragile piece of coastline. But can Abel and his mother save Blueback and Longboat Bay in time?

I bought this book on a whim at a second hand book sale I went to a couple of months ago. Fun fact: I haven’t ever really finished a Tim Winton book. I know, it’s almost un-Australian to admit such a thing. I’ve started a couple but I definitely picked a bad time (after I’d just had my first child). Tim Winton is one of Australia’s best known authors, probably Western Australia’s best known author, which ended up being why I picked up this book. Well, one of two reasons. My #TBRJar picks for May included ‘read a book from an author from Western Australia’. I had a couple of options on my shelf, but going to be honest. Reading has been hard to fit in this month, I have a lot of academic reading to do and 2x 2500 word essays due in less than three weeks. I picked this one because it was short – just 150p and it’s essentially an upper MG/lower YA book with a larger-style typeface. I knew I was going to finish this really quickly and I just wanted to feel like I’d accomplished something.

Honestly, it turned out to be a good choice. I really enjoyed this. It starts when our main character Abel is about ten. He lives with his mother (a widow) in an off-grid home on a secluded bay that I assume is somewhere in Western Australia. Abel’s whole life revolves around the sea. He and his mother fish for abalone and other sea creatures, they are mostly a subsistence people although his mother sells abalone shells and other things, presumably to make up the deficit and buy things like clothes and fuel for the generator. Abel’s father was a fisherman too, before he died and even at his young age, Abel understands things like his mother’s grief over his father’s death. He doesn’t understand it in the same way an adult would, but he gets the general idea and sees the ways in which his mother continues to mourn and honour his father. One day, on one of his many diving trips, Abel sees a large blue groper that he names Blueback. Abel returns to visit Blueback often, the large fish becoming so used to them that it will steal their catch from their hands and allow them to touch it. Blueback becomes a symbol to Abel, of wildlife preservation. The bay where they live is under threat from numerous directions: overzealous and irresponsible fishermen and would-be developers, to name just a few.

The book continues through Abel’s years away at both boarding school and university but he always returns in his breaks, to the small house on the bay to reconnect with his mother and the environment around him. This is told in really simplistic terms, it’s aimed at a relatively youngish audience I’d say, but not so much that as an adult, I couldn’t appreciate both the prose and storytelling. Tim Winton does a lot with very little. The language is appropriate for being viewed through Abel’s young eyes at first and even though he ages, the style of the writing does not, keeping younger audiences engaged in ways they can understand. As an adult though, it’s still such an enjoyable story and one that you can build on yourself, in terms of thinking about wildlife preservation, our connections with nature. Even something like connecting with Abel’s mother, thinking about the job she did raising him on her own, living that sort of isolated life. There are many layers to this story, more than appears at first glance.

I really enjoyed this – all the facets of the story. I loved Abel’s youthful enthusiasm and righteousness, when he wants to take on a grown adult over the protection of the bay, the ways in which he is close to his mother, his care and love of Blueback. And I liked seeing him grow up, that this book took us all the way into him being almost middle aged, the way he learned about things and ultimately, how he came to realise what was truly important.

This was very sweet and very clever. It’s definitely time to read some more Tim Winton.

8/10

Book #98 of 2024

Review: The Pumpkin Spice Cafe by Laurie Gimore

The Pumpkin Spice Cafe (Dream Harbor #1)
Laurie Gilmore
One More Chapter (Harper Collins UK)
2023, 357p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: When Jeanie’s aunt gifts her the beloved Pumpkin Spice Café in the small town of Dream Harbor, Jeanie jumps at the chance for a fresh start away from her very dull desk job.

Logan is a local farmer who avoids Dream Harbor’s gossip at all costs. But Jeanie’s arrival disrupts Logan’s routine and he wants nothing to do with the irritatingly upbeat new girl, except that he finds himself inexplicably drawn to her.

Will Jeanie’s happy-go-lucky attitude win over the grumpy-but-gorgeous Logan, or has this city girl found the one person in town who won’t fall for her charm, or her pumpkin spice lattes…

I have seen this one around a lot lately and all the stuff I was hearing was really positive, about how fun and cute (and spicy) it was. It’s set in a small town that gives a lot of Gilmore Girls vibes. Everyone knows everyone else’s business, the townspeople are warm and welcoming but also quite protective of their own. Jeanie has visited there as a child, her aunt has run the local cafe for years. Then quite unexpectedly she gifts it to Jeanie so that she can retire and travel. Jeanie has had quite an upheaval in her professional life so moving to Dream Harbor and taking over the cafe sounds exactly what she needs.

This was….fine. I think for me, the biggest problem it has, is pacing. Despite the fact that it’s 357p, everything feels like it happens really swiftly. Jeanie hears someone in the alley behind the cafe (she’s actually heard noises multiple times) and this time, she confronts the noise, assuming it’s an intruder but it’s just Logan, local farmer, delivering produce. And after that, everything with Jeanie and Logan goes from 0-100 really quickly. She tells him about the noises and next minute, he’s staying over to do a stakeout with her. They fall for each other immediately – the whole book takes place over just a month and it just felt like things were never really given time to simmer and develop.

Things are ‘complicated’ by the fact that Logan is a massive introvert who once fell for someone who was visiting this small town and then left and went back to her busy life in Boston. Look, Logan also has some childhood trauma revolving around people leaving him, his father disappeared and his mother died when he was five. All very horrible events that would shape a small child’s thought processes. But he was also raised by loving grandparents who are still alive and whom he is still very close to, he has friends he’s made at school and is still friends with. Logan isn’t some weird loner who only ever connected with that one person in his life and then she left. He also made a very weird decision for someone who is shy and a loner, by choosing to do what he did in front of the entire town and now he’s all paranoid that everyone pities him. He carries this baggage into his attraction to/relationship with Jeanie, because she’s not from this town and he just assumes she’ll leave again. Logan’s fear of Jeanie leaving pretty much comprises all of the conflict in this book and instead of having a grown up conversation with her about what her intentions are, he just freaks out multiple times. I actually found Jeanie to be rather tolerant of Logan’s weird behaviour.

There’s a mystery in this of someone attempting to drive Jeanie away, which is ridiculously easy to guess. The thing I was most interested in, was the animosity between Annie, one of Logan’s friends who runs the bakery, and Mac, who runs the local pub. There are future books in this series, but so far, neither of them are about Annie and Mac, the one book I would probably read. I have to admit, I’m not interested in the book that this one set up, between Logan’s other friends, Hazel (who runs the bookstore) and Noah (who runs fishing charters).

All in all, this was just okay. I didn’t mind the town but I honestly felt like the book didn’t do much to really flesh out the character of Logan or build an attraction. Everything just felt very instant to me and that’s not my favourite.

5/10

Book #97 of 2024

Review: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

The Familiar
Leigh Bardugo
Penguin Random House AUS
2024, 385p
Read via my local library

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position. 

What begins as simple amusement for the bored nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor. 

Determined to seize this one chance to better her fortunes, Luzia plunges into a world of seers and alchemists, holy men and hucksters, where the line between magic, science, and fraud is never certain. But as her notoriety grows, so does the danger that her Jewish blood will doom her to the Inquisition’s wrath. She will have to use every bit of her wit and will to survive—even if that means enlisting the help of Guillén Santangel, an embittered immortal familiar whose own secrets could prove deadly for them both.

I was very excited for this. I’m not a Leigh Bardugo super fan, I haven’t even read all her books and what I have read, I have mixed results with. Did not particularly care for the end of the Shadow and Bone trilogy but I adore the Six Of Crows duology with everything I have. I haven’t finished the King of Scars duology but after the first book I was….so-so on it. It was fine. I’ll finish it at some stage but it’s not a huge priority. And I haven’t read the Hell Bent series. But I thought this sounded really interesting and so it was a highly anticipated title for me.

I’m just going to say it. This book was a huge letdown for me. The first 100 pages were so slow and achingly boring. I almost DNF’d this but at the mark I’d set for myself where I was going to make the decision, something did happen and I wanted to know how it played out.

My biggest problem was no one in here felt like they had a personality. Our main character Luzia is impoverished (and Jewish, which is something she must hide) and she’s a scullery maid in a not-very-well-to-do household. She has this form of magic that I don’t really understand and doesn’t feel like it’s ever explained. One day the mistress of the house catches her out in using her magic to fix a loaf of burned bread. Her mistress decides to use this as a way to further her own fortunes by basically having Luzia perform parlour tricks at dinner parties and word spreads, drawing the attention of some dangerous people. Luzia ends up in some sort of competition to be King Phillip II’s….something? Secret weapon? Magician? I honestly don’t really know. There is to be several rounds of competition and Luzia will be ‘trained’ in her magic by a ‘man’ who is really an immortal familiar tied to a specific family, Guillen Santangel.

Luzia has had an honestly, horrible life and I don’t know if that just generated such a lack of caring about anything in her, but to be honest, she felt like a cardboard cutout. Santangel is even worse. He’s hundreds of years old but of course he falls in love with this girl that he barely knows. Honestly the romance in this was straight up awful, there’s no build up at all and it’s all of a sudden like they’re these soul mates. I don’t think romance is Bardugo’s strong point but she’s done subtle strong feelings well before (Kaz & Inej) but this is just so lacklustre. I have no idea why either of them had any feelings for the other, except that they were there. Santangel is disillusioned with everything and has been for years, he’s trapped in this hideous arrangement to a hideous family who use and abuse him. It’s possible Luzia is a form of escape from that, but yeah, I never really felt like anything was building between them in a tangible way.

I was excited about the setting of this book but…..I didn’t really feel grounded in that either. Apart from mentioning King Phillip II in the vaguest of terms during the tournament (he’s depressed because of the defeat of the Armada), I feel like this could’ve been anywhere in terms of the 1500s. Or even a century or so either side. I don’t know enough about the persecution of Jewish people in the 16th century in Spain but it’s a recurring theme throughout history. Interestingly enough I’m listening to an audiobook at the moment about the history of the English monarchy and it’s just touched on a particular period in time where the Jewish were being driven out of a particular area in England, which wouldn’t have happened in the century before or after. I found that part of the story interesting and it also touches on the plight of women, particularly poor women who are forced to make average marriages or find wealthy patrons for protection. Luzia has no options other than to do physical work in a low paying household and her existence is well, just that. She’s existing. Doing the magic gets her attention I guess, it gets her interest and it leads to curiosity at her gifts, it leads to adventure and excitement (and the knowledge that if it all goes wrong, she’ll probably be burned as a witch).

Everything about this was lacklustre. The characters, the setting, the politics and especially the romance. Santangel is honestly such a boring character, apart from how much Bardugo kept referencing his eyes as glowing coins or whatever, he was basically a bland man in a suit with the ennui of centuries of suffering behind him except it never actually felt like that. Apart from falling madly in love with Luzia for…. reasons… it felt like Santangel was so unable to feel anything anymore. And how can you get invested in a character like that? I couldn’t. But then again, Luzia didn’t have centuries of that behind her and I couldn’t get invested in her either.

This was very much not my kind of story. I needed more from pretty much every aspect.

4/10

Book #96 of 2024

I am counting this towards my Historical Fiction Reading Challenge for 2024, hosted by Marg @ The Intrepid Reader and Baker. It’s the 11th book read so far.

Review: Studio Girls by Lisa Ireland

Studio Girls
Lisa Ireland
Penguin Random House AUS
2024, 336p
Copy courtesy of the publisher

Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: It’s 1955, and four talented young women become best friends while living at the Hollywood Studio Club, the famous boarding house for movie hopefuls.

Julia Newman is a rising star. As Goldstar Studios‘ ‘new Grace Kelly’, she has been sent to the club to keep her out of trouble, though Julia is just thrilled to finally make friends.

For Peggy Carmichael, Julia’s roommate, life is not so easy. She takes classes, auditions constantly, and grabs whatever bit-part is offered. Still, her ‘big break’ remains stubbornly out of reach.

Meanwhile, Vivienne Lockhart, the most talented actress of them all, is constantly reduced to ‘sexpot’ roles. She’ll do whatever it takes to succeed. But is she driven by ambition, or by a heartbreaking need to be loved?

Finally, there’s aspiring scriptwriter Sadie Shore, who has little interest in the trappings of fame. Particularly when she becomes the PA of a big studio boss and her eyes are opened to the perils of her friends’ dreams…

This was a hugely anticipated title for me for this year. I have really loved Lisa Ireland’s previous books and was looking forward to this one, a take on a golden age of Hollywood where actors were signed to specific studios and had strict clauses for their employees, particularly their female actresses.

This centres around the Hollywood Studio Club a (real) “chaperoned dormitory” for young women who were involved in the movie business from around 1916-1975. It definitely housed some famous names including women like Marilyn Monroe, Barbara Eden from I Dream of Jeannie fame and Sharon Tate. Studios often required their actresses to reside there because there were some strict rules imposed, such as curfews, dating rules and the like. For the women there, it could be a helpful club as there was plenty of space to practice for auditions, other women to help you do make up or hair or run lines with you, etc. But above all, it helped maintain an image of propriety and provide safety for women in an industry that was already rife with scandal.

Our four main characters, Peggy, Sadie, Vivienne and Julia are all residents in the 1950s. The first three are already there when Julia Newman, newest up and coming star arrives, with a clause in her contract from her studio that she must reside there. Whilst the girls form a tight knit friendship, it’s not one that doesn’t have its problems. Living together provides both a way to form the bonds but also little escape from each other, especially when there are uneven trajectories in the careers of the women. There are romances as well, some of which definitely cause some feelings between the women.

This is set in two timelines – as well as the time they all lived at Hollywood Studio Club in the 50s, there’s also time leading up to New Years Eve 1999, where the women are all much older. Three of them still meet for lunch regularly and you have to read through to find out why it’s only three of them and what happened to their friendship with the fourth. The way it unfolds is so well done. There is some serious resentment towards the woman they have fallen out with in 1999, although one of them is definitely softer towards her. When they are forced to confront the truth of what happened forty years ago, it provides a chance for healing.

I love a dual timeline and I found this so enjoyable. Just a really easy book to sink into and I haven’t been able to read a lot lately (very stressed with uni deadlines, lots of academic reading, etc). But this book? I flew through it. I have read books set in and around the movie production industry before but I wouldn’t say it’s something I’m particularly knowledgeable about or overly familiar with so I found that aspect of it interesting as well, the control the studios had over their talent, etc. Julia is about to be a big name, she’s easily able to afford her own place but her studio decides that they would prefer her to be living in this dormitory style accomodation and so it’s written into her contract. There are other aspects of control they have too, over her movements, what she can do really even in her downtime, who she can date, etc. Julia is by far the most successful so far of the girls, with Peggy and Vivienne still mostly looking for their big break. Sadie wants to be a writer, rather than an actress but lands a job working as an assistant to a big studio head, so she begins to learn a lot of the ins and outs of the business that way.

Through the women, you get a front row seat at the control in this industry, the often double standards, the judgement for certain actions. It’s very much a showcase of its time (not that some attitudes have probably changed that much, in some ways) but it gives you a sense of the lack of agency these grown women often had, over their own lives. It’s hard not to get infuriated at some of the issues the women face and sometimes the decisions they make. In the more recent timeline, there’s a rather sad portrayal of something (done very well) that forces the other three women to confront the truth of events from so many decades ago and the fallout was very emotional. I ended up feeling for everyone in the scenario, even the ones who had perhaps not covered themselves in glory with their actions.

Loved this one!

9/10

Book #95 of 2024

Counting this one towards my 2024 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, hosted by Marg @ The Intrepid Reader & Baker! It’s the 10th book so far, so 2/3 of the way through my goal for the year.