Review of 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' by Milan Kundera

This has been sat unread on my shelves for years after a burst of enthusiasm I had for buying the book. I always thought it would be too heavy and philosophical and that I'd have to force my way through the book, but it was actually a lot easier to get to grips with and understand than I imagined. 

Review of 'The Year the Gypsies Came' by Linzi Glass

I'm in a big phase of trying to read books that have sat on my shelves for years because I've lost interest in reading them, and this is one of them. I thought from the title and because it's a teen book that this was going to be a fairly slow paced gentle read about a summer adventure, but it was far from that. The book comes with a big trigger warning for sexual assault and suicide. 

Review of 'Detransition, Baby' by Torrey Peters

I mentioned this a few posts ago, but this year I'm really trying to diversify my reads to include more books with LGBT+ elements. This book has the most in-depth insights on the experience of being trans than I think I've ever read. It was well written, with an interesting plot and I'd recommend it if you want to read more fiction written by a trans person about being trans.
Detransition, Baby is a novel centring around three main characters: Ames who has detransitioned to live as a man, has accidentally gotten his cis girlfriend Katrina pregnant, and calls upon his ex girlfriend Reese to help make a non-conventional family. Reese is a trans woman who longs to be a mother, and when Ames realises that the idea of fatherhood makes him too dysphoric, he asks Reese if she wants to step in to act as a parent. The book looks at Ames' struggles as someone who has detransitioned, the idea of motherhood for a transwoman vs a ciswoman, romance and sex as both a transwoman and ciswoman, and navigates this all very sensitively but with clarity.
I enjoyed this book. It's not like anything I've ever read before, and was very informative about the experience of being trans, detransitioning and dysphoria. I did find that the book was a little lost genre wise: there was almost enough romance for it to fit into that category, but not quite, and it almost felt like literary fiction, but the plot was too dramatic for that, and so it sort of jarred between a few different genres. I also didn't really enjoy that a lot of Ames' story was told by Reese. We heard Reese's theory of why Ames detransitioned, but not Ames' himself, and I really felt like his voice was lacking in the novel. 
I gave this three stars because there of the reasons above and because there were a few parts of the book that dragged a little. I thought the conversations around being trans and being a parent were very interesting, and I really enjoyed the story of Reese's past and present. The book was very touching and I would definitely recommend it.
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Review of 'The King's Deception' by Steve Berry

I love a good historical fiction novel, but this one didn't hit the spot for me. I thought from the blurb it was going to be a book partly sent in the present part, part during the Tudor period, but it was a modern day novel which looked at evidence from the Tudor period as part of the plot. I wish I'd known beforehand that it was more of an attempt at a thriller than historical fiction - I might have enjoyed it a little more.

Review of 'All Fall Down' by Sally Nicholls

I always feel like I completely judge whether or not I'm going to like a book before I've read it. I bought this shortly after reading Ways to Live Forever, which is a great book, but then lost interest in the idea of this and it sat un-read on my shelves for years. However, this really surprised me. I'd say it definitely feels more like a teen book than YA, and the storyline was a little too on-the-nose for our pandemic times, but it was a read I enjoyed.

'The Thursday Murder Club' by Richard Osman review

This book has had SO much hype around it on social media that I was super excited to read it. I love Richard Osman as a TV personality, and the idea of a book where OAPs solve crimes a la Midsomer murders together just sounded so cute and fun. I did end up being quite disappointed in the book in the end, but I'm not sure if I would have been had the reviews I'd read not all been absolutely glowing and intense.

'They Both Die at the End' by Adam Silvera review

Last month I was determined to read some LGBT books for Pride month. I feel like I've diversified my reading quite a lot over the past few years, but I'm still dragging behind on LGBT reads. I kickstarted the month with They Both Die at the End, which I've wanted to read for the longest time.

'The Longest Holiday' by Paige Toon review

This is the second Paige Toon book I've read and ultimately I just think I'm not a fan of her writing. So many people rave about her books so I tried this second time and I still just noped out of there. I'm a big romance fan, but the plot for this was something I just didn't really enjoy.
The Longest Holiday is about a woman called Laura who finds out her husband got another woman pregnant on a one night stand at his bachelor party. Distraught and not sure whether her marriage is salvageable, Laura heads to Florida for a two-week long holiday with her best gal pals to try and get her head back in gear and work out what she wants to do. There she meets Leo, a local who works with his family on tourist dives, and she finds she can't quite get him out of her head. Meanwhile her husband back in the UK is doing all he can to convince her to stay with him.
The book was an interesting one - there were a few strands of plot going on, which made it move a little quicker, but overall I found the whole thing dragged. I struggled to understand why her and Leo got together - she was still married and stringing her husband along, her and Leo knew nothing about each other, and he spent most of their time together sulking and revealing as little as possible about himself. It was an odd setup of her apparently being completely in love with her husband and within weeks of discovering his infidelity, setting up a whole new life to be with another man. I didn't find Leo or her husband attractive in either of their personalities and the whole book felt vindictive and forced. 
I gave this 2 stars because I felt the plotline with the bachelor part screw up was an interesting one, and there were parts of the book I found gripping, despite my overall dislike.
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'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess book review

I'm *trying* to push myself to read more classics this year (it's not going too well so far). I love a good dystopian fiction and have heard this talked about so much that I really wanted to read it. Spoiler alert: I was not a fan at all. I struggled a lot with the language in it, the plot just all a bit too much in your face with the violence, and it felt like it was done just for shock value with no purpose (which I assume was the point, but I just wasn't a fan).

'The Last Letter from Your Lover' by Jojo Moyes book review

With my blog becoming more and more books focused, I figured it was about time to move my book reviews over from my secondary blog to this one, and merge the two. I love writing about the books I've read, and then sharing the reviews on my Goodreads. It just feels right to have this change now - I'll still be talking about other bits and pieces, but you'll have all my reviews squashed in too.

Kibou Sushi restaurant review

I am SO excited for restaurants to open back up next week. Going out on date night meals and evenings out for food with friends is such an important part of 'normal' life for me, and I just hate sitting outside in the British weather. 

Pre-lockdown charity shop book haul roundup!

Yes I've been meaning to write this post for literally months, but I'm so excited to start heading out to charity shops now to hunt down bookish treasure that I couldn't not do this little roundup. I bought these all on my very last pre-lockdown trip to the shops and I was SO excited to find all of these great books second hand!

April Reading Wrap Up

April was a great reading month for me. I'm really trying to get through some books that have been on my shelves for years, and I felt like I started to make a little dent in this. It's forced me out of my comfort zone to try and read books that I thought I'd enjoy a few years ago and my reading tastes have changed a fair bit since then, but I actually ended up not hating anything I read this month.

New in Liz Earle skincare

Liz Earle's Cleanse and Polish has been my number one holy grail cleanser product for the past few years (along with half the rest of the UK I'm sure). It's something that I always come crawling back to in a flare up of spots, and something that I know will always take off more makeup as a second cleanser even when I feel like the first one's done a great job.

March reading wrap up

March had me feeling optimistic, with Spring in the air and loosening of Covid restrictions to look forward to. I really made a conscious effort last month to *try* and spend less time mindlessly scrolling on my phone and more time reading. It sort of worked? I read 6 books last month: some great, and some really not great at all (and some in between).

New Lockdown Book Haul!

Pretty much all I've done over the last year is read and go for walks in all types of weather. My shelves are heaving with all the new reads I've picked up after being swayed by the internet, and I'm just truly deeply in love with reading again. Admittedly these are my lockdown 1 book buys that I've been meaning to talk about for MONTHS but somewhere between the reading, walking and doing literally nothing, I've dropped the ball on this. They're all books I'm really excited about, and I can't wait to read them all (I've made my way through a couple so far!).

Testing out my LUSH Sale Picks

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now after picking up these bits in the yearly post-Christmas LUSH sale, but I thought I'd give myself time to actually try out all of these products. Considering the endless lockdown meaning that I basically never leave my house, it's taken a while to have enough zoom calls to test out the makeup bits!

Book of the month: Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

I read a few books I truly loved last month, but this was the one that made me think the most and that really has stuck with me the most. It's been on my mental TBR since last year, and I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it and wish I'd done so sooner. 

February reading wrap up

I've been totally absent for all of March on here so far because I've been all up in my feelings. It seems surreal that we're basically a year on from the start of Lockdown 1 and are still confined to our homes, hoping that things will change in a few weeks. I've been reading a lot over the last year as pure escapism: I've said goodbye to dystopian fiction, and delved a lot more into fantasy that pulls me away from the horrors of our world. 

2021 reading goals

This is the first year I've set myself proper reading goals and it's something I'm so excited about. I've really rediscovered my complete love for books over the last year or two and there's so much I'd like to read and push myself to try this year.
I've made a few reading bucket lists of things to get through from my TBR mountain over the last few years, which I'll share for 2021 at the end, but here are my big reading goals for the year:

2020 Goodreads Roundup

I'm desperately trying to go with the flow and not stress out about the fact that February's almost over and I'm just posting this, but I love the Goodreads year in books roundup and really wanted to write about this. I read more books last year than I have since I was at uni (hello being shut in my house for most of the year), which resulted in reading 22, 861 pages of books!

My 5 worst reads of 2020

I read a lot of books that I loved last year - I found new series' to get completely hooked on, revisited old authors I love, and re-read some books that I keep coming back to. But, there were a few that disappointed. I know it's February and way overdue, but I love reading these kinds of posts, so here are my five least favourite reads of 2020 with 5 as absolute least favourite:

January Reading Wrap Up

It's taken me about ten minutes to even consider how to start this post (and I'm totally not a fan of this beginning), but lockdown 3 feels like it's totally drained my creativity and energy. January was filled with lots of walks to force myself out of the house, and lots of reading in the bath to thaw off. There wasn't a single book last month that I totally LOVED, but I think that might have been more because I was feeling miserable than because all the books I read were rubbish.

2021 goals (and a look back over the failure of 2020's)

I had a look back over last year's goals post because lord knows my goals flew out of the window, never to be seen again, roughly three months into the year and I could hardly remember what they were. I'd actually mentioned the virus I'd heard of in the post, but I also said I thought 2020 would be a great year, so there's that.

2020 Life Roundup

Every year I write a 'highlight reel' post on here, but with 2020 being what it was, that didn't quite feel right. I'm going to kickstart by saying that obviously 2020 was a shit, weird year, but here are my good bits that made things a little happy at points, and bearable at others.

Top 10 books of 2020!

Unsurprisingly, last year I read more books than I have in any recent year. I blame nine months of rarely leaving the house, long baths, coming across great book series/new authors I'm OBSESSED with and not leaving the house again. I read some truly great books in 2020, and spent a whole lot of time recommending things over and over again to my friends and family. Obviously not all of my ten are in the pic above, mostly because a whole bunch are kindle books! Without further ado, here are my top 10 favourite books of 2020 in order with number 1 being my absolute top tier fave: