Experimenting With A Different Kind Of Graphic For The April Wrap-up! Finished Up The Goodreads Community

The River Has Roots || Amal El-Mohtar ★★★★★ Started: 22.05.2025 Finished: 01.06.2025 In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family. There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

I Who Have Never Known Men || Jacqueline Harpman ★★★★★ Started: 11.12.2024 Finished: 25.12.2024 Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before. As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. A hauntingly beautiful novel that is seeped in a profound, hopeless sadness, that is undoubtedly worth your time.

January 2025 reads!

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi || S.A. Chakraborty ★★★★☆ Started reading: 01.01.2025 Finished reading: 07.01.2025 This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be! I can't wait to see what the sequel has in store for us!

All the Lovers in the Night || Mieko Kawakami ★★★☆☆ Started: 28.12.2024 Finished: 18.01.2025 Hmmm, given how popular Kawakami is, I expected more from this book… not that it was bad, per se, just that it wasn't particularly remarkable or even memorable. Maybe I should have tried "Breast and Eggs" first

Anxious People || Frederik Backman ★★★★★ Started: 24.01.2025 Finished: 30.01.2025 Buddy read Trust Frederik Backman to make you cry with his heartwarming novels about found family.

The Will of the Many || James Islington ★★★★★ Started: 25.12.2024 Finished: 31.01.2025 Favourite read of January 2025 ♥ Where do I even begin with this incredible book? I loved the worldbuilding, I loved the characters, I loved the writing - it could not have been much better, and I had some pretty high expectations going in. James Islington managed to surpass them all. Safe to say I'm impatiently waiting for "Strength of the Few"!

Emissa and Vis. Still thinking about them

Beautiful World, Where Are You || Sally Rooney ★★☆☆☆ Started: 12.05.2025 Finished: 24.05.2025 This was, unfortunately, not a very pleasant experience overall… I think I might have enjoyed "Beautiful World, Where Are You" if I had already been a fan of Sally Rooney, what with Alice's letters being essentially letters the author could have written in real life, but given that this was the first book of hers I read, the musings just felt like being lectured at by a person you barely know and don't particularly like. The remaining three main characters, whose lives we'd follow in every other chapter, likewise, were hard to root for - I'm no stranger to a flawed character, but maybe 30 chapters of Unpeasant characters being actively Unpleasant to each other and, despite that, ending up in what I'm sure will be ultimately Unpleasant relationships with each other is a tad bit much.

String || Paul Tobin (Author), Sara Colella (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer), Carlos Javier Olivares (illustrator) ★★★★★ Started: 20.02.2025 Finished: 20.02.2025 Thank you to NetGalley and Mad Cave Studios for providing me with an ARC and giving me the opportunity to share my honest review. This vibrantly illustrated graphic novel follows Yoon-Sook Namgung, a 25-year-old Korean-American woman with the unique ability to see two types of “strings” connecting various people: one blue, stretching between intimate partners, the other —dark black— connecting murderers and their victims. She puts her abilities to good use by aiding the police in solving homicide cases, and earns a living by using the blue strings to help people expose their cheating partners. All is good, until one day she discovers a black string connected to herself, and she's set in a race against time to uncover her would be murderer. The story is fast-paced and engaging throughout, and we see Yoon in her element, solving her open cases in an attempt to prevent her murder. I enjoyed seeing her interact with her clients and the suspects in their cases - none of them felt one-dimensional or cartoonish, and it made for a truly compelling story. The easy-going banter between Yoon and Luke, the police officer she were consulting, in particular, was a highlight. Another strength of "String" is the artwork - the entire graphic novel is illustrated in full, vivid color, that only enhances the story - excellent work by Carlos Javier Olivares and Sara Colella! That being said, the graphic novel does include quite a bit of violence and one particular graphic sex panel, so it might not be suitable for a younger audience.

When We Were Orphans || Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ Started: 24.05.2025 Finished: 30.05.2025

Hungerstone || Kat Dunn ★★☆☆☆ Started: 24.02.2025 Finished: 14.03.2025 Thank you to NetGalley and Zando for providing me with an ARC and giving me the opportunity to share my honest review. "Hungerstone" is, ostensibly, a very well-researched and painstakingly crafted novel, that unfortunately amounts to very little. Yes, the clothing and the cuisine described are era-appropriate, but they only make the novel tedious, at times even dull. By contrast, the characters seem to have been afforded less thought - the husband is a painfully one-dimensional caricature of a robber baron, the Carmilla of Dunn is nowhere near as eloquent as Le Fanu's, oftentimes she is simply rude to the point you can't understand how anyone could find her alluring, and the protagonist, Lenore, flounders through the pages, puppeteered, at different times, by her husband and then by Carmilla. She psychoanalyzes herself like a modern woman, unequivocally finding the roots of her problems in her traumatic childhood, and yet does nothing with that insight until Carmilla prods her into action. There is a lot of telling instead of showing, a lot of unambiguous hammering of the author's ideas that makes for a mostly unpleasant reading experience - the reader is not allowed to draw their own conclusions at any point, everything is conveniently spelled out on the page. In short, "Hungerstone", much like "Our Hideous Progeny", is a lukewarm (at best) retelling of a much more competent, enticing, exciting novel, interspersed with poorly planted 21st century feminism, that ends up being a mind-numbingly tedious experience. I can recognize the effort that went into this work, but just because something takes a lot of time and research, doesn't mean it's good.