My last 4 books

1. The Running Grave, by Robert Galbraith. I've been on a Strike binge for a few weeks. I watched all of the TV show and finished it up by reading the latest novel. I can't get enough of Cormoran and Robin! I love their relationship despite how much their slow burn frustrates me. This book had me on the edge of my seat throughout. I struggled to put it down and really didn't want to go to bed and sleep when the book was demanding to be read. Cormoran does a lot of personal growing in this book and Robin takes a lot of personal risks. I really can't wait for the next one! In this book they're investigating a cult and Robin goes deep undercover within it, while Cormoran and their contractors deal with smaller jobs as well as finding everyone who ever got out of the cult. What starts as a job to get the client's son out of the cult ends as a job with the goal to tear down the cult from its foundation. The character portrayals are so good and their actions always convincing and within the scope of their personalities. She does a great job describing trauma and how different people may choose to deal with their trauma in different ways. Just a really amazing read!

2. Malice, by John Gwynne. It took me a really long while to get into this book. I think it was well over halfway before I even felt invested in the story, yet every time I put it down there was this nagging feeling that I wanted to know what would happen next. So I couldn't DNF it even though it took me months to get through it. The main thing that bugged me is that the character tropes are so obvious. The author tries to make it seem like Nathair is the fated champion of all things good, yet it's obvious he's set up to be the villain. It's obvious Corban is set up to be the hero. The Ben-Elim call Nathair "kin-slayer" in front of Veradis, yet Veradis is too dumb to put two and two together and realise Nathair killed his father. The deaths at the end of this book would have been more shocking if the characters had been more than just marginally utilised until the last few chapters before their untimely deaths. Cywen is my favourite character, unsurprisingly. Will I read the continuation? Yeah, probably. I enjoy the world, and I hope this book was just a build-up and things will get properly interesting in the following three books of the series. 

3. The Last Temptation, by Neil Gaiman. I've been wanting to read this for years, but it's surprisingly hard to come by both in physical shops and online. When I finally found it in an online bookstore I immediately pounced on it. I've been a fan of Alice Cooper since I was sixteen and I'm intimately familiar with the album this visual novel portrays. This comic has all the telltale signs of Gaiman: a little bit dark, a little bit twisted, a little bit dreamy, and it works so perfectly with Alice as the Showman trying to entice and trap the boy Steven. Steven shows up in multiple of Cooper's concept albums portraying twisted innocence, innocence trying to endure even as the encroaching darkness of the real world attempts to crush it. This is a really short read, but I enjoyed it very much. 

4. Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. This book made me sad. I had of course heard of it before but never read it. I ended up loving it. It hits all the points of cosiness, melodrama and mystery that I enjoy. Max's torment both appealed to me and exasperated me, and I could relate to how he both wanted to reach out to somebody while at the same time not wanting to trouble anybody and knowing that telling somebody at all would lead to trouble. His new young wife is perfectly portrayed. Deeply in love with her older husband and way out of her depth stepping into the everyday workings of his life, and unable to step out from under the shadow of his previous late wife. She inherits a mystery alongside the day-to-day of Manderley, a mystery which slowly unravels until it ends in catastrophe. The book starts at the end and then tells the story to explain how we got there, and when I finished the book it was with an overwhelming sense of sadness. Because this book is about grief of many different stripes, with a thin furnish of love placed over it. Gorgeous writing. Instant favourite.