stormlightreader's reviews
850 reviews

Things that worked for me:

Everything else didn't really work for me. I finished the book as opposed to DNFing purely because of the pacing and short chapters, but I just didn't feel any intrigue whatsoever. I figured out the murderer VERY early on and the writing was quite dry, almost like you would see in a scientific paper. 

I struggled with Detta/Odetta and when she became Susannah, I preferred her. Detta is back in this book and I can't with her. SK has name-dropped himself. Strange. After four books, there is still no character that I am at all invested in and that's not good for a 7-book fantasy series. I put this down for a few days and felt absolutely no pull to pick it back up, so it's now a book and series DNF.

Two plot threads:

one missing kid and one dead kid

. I'm not interested in either. Such a shame because book 1 was great but there doesn't seem to be a book 3 anyway.

This collection of short stories centre around love, desire and horror, with the Mexican folklore influence that makes V. Castro's stories so good.

This collection starts off with some shorter short stories and then we get to main The Pink Agave Motel. Of all of the short stories, Carnival of Gore, Dirty Deck and The Pink Agave Motel were my favourites. The pacing was great for the first (almost) half, and as entertaining as The Pink Agave Motel was, I think the pacing did slow down a bit, as we jump back and forth between timelines.

Overall, an enjoyable short story collection and another fun outing with V. Castro. 

The Last Narco focuses on the Sinaloa Cartel boss, Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera, known as "El Chapo". I’ll start off by saying that I found this very informative and it appears to be well-researched. I really liked the writing style, and while it gets a little repetitive in some places, mostly it has great pacing. 

The focus of the book was anchored to El Chapo, but Beith includes in other individuals that give the reader a broader understanding of the narco network. Beith discusses other narcos, junior narcos, narco wives and girlfriend's, and the reasons why locals might prefer live under the narco rule than pick up the phone to report a body in the street. Beith also brings in how the Sinaloa Cartel overlapped with La Familia, the Tijuana, Juarez and Gulf cartels, as well as Los Zetas (a mercenary group). 

One thing that I think really grounds this book is the discussion on the affluence of different areas of Mexico. Those areas that have always been deprived and/or under control of the cartels and those that have come to be controlled by the cartels. When I’m reading about these cartels it’s easy to wonder if these things actually happen, because

smuggling cocaine inside of shark carcasses

can sound a little farfetched. But, reading about locals who may have never received any formal education because of where in Mexico they were born, reminds you of the struggles some of the locals feel and grounds the book in reality. 

The Last Narco was written in 2010, 4 years before El Chapo was captured again (and then recaptured again in 2016, honestly, this guy!) and there is an updated version of the book, but I'm not prepared to pay £16 for the extra 50 or so pages. However, I would like to read the updates though, and by this author too. 

Overall, this is a good look at the Mexican cartels but written in an accessible way, with a look at how far-reaching the narco networks are and the effects on the different groups of people living in Mexico. 

This book contains thirteen short stories that were of varying interest to me. 

Ampuero comes out swinging with Auction, which had a bit of a Hostel feel to it. For a short story it ended up being a hard read because I find

r*pe

scenes too hard to read, especially scenes done in such a brutal fashion. Auction would've been a disgusting but good story even without that paragraph, and while it was only a paragraph, Ampuero wrote it so vividly that it genuinely stopped me in my tracks. 

The short stories that followed (

Monster, Griselda, Nam, Pups, Blinds, Christ and Passion

) were mostly just ok and didn’t leave much of an impact. 

The next hard-hitter for me was Mourning. This had one specific similarity to Auction but I didn’t feel like it was written as vividly, and the rest story was a sad one. The treatment of poor Maria was horrifying but the ending was good and left you wondering if it was real or not. This didn’t need to be more than a short story and left enough of an impact as it was. 

A next short story (

Ali

) was a miss for me, but Coro was good and it had a ‘Desperate Housewives’ kind of feel to it.

Bleach

was another miss for me but the final short story Other was an interesting one to me, personally. 

That cover!

I am torn. I kind of feel the same way about Graveyard Shift as I do about season of 8 Game of Thrones: where is the rest of the story? Yes, it's a novella, but I wanted just a little bit more from this. Please give me all the fungi-horror. This book feels like a combination of What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (that's the fungus one, right?), with the true crime investigation vibes of Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, and the signature dark academia vibes that M.L. Rio does well. 

I originally DNFed Rio's If We Were Villains and then picked it up again and loved it, so I have been awaiting Rio’s next release, and I guess I did enjoy this but I think it has fallen a bit short for me, purely because of the novella format. That said, I have seen a lot of negative reviews and went in with low expectations, and ultimately I was left wanting to read a full length novella about this. 

Rio is great at creating characters and the dynamics between these characters made me miss If We Were Villains, even if this group did give me Scooby Gang vibes at times. While I didn't feel the typical Rio atmosphere right from the start, it did kick in and I live in hope that an expansion of this story appears in the future. 

I keep picking up fungus horror and hoping that's the one that hits, and to be honest, this one came the closest. 

I think I’m in the minority with this one… 

The Diary of a Bookseller gives a raw and fairly cynical glimpse into the life of a second-hand bookseller in Wigtown, Scotland. I like the format and writing style for this particular book, which made the pacing one of the book’s strengths (along with Captain the cat). Captain’s sporadic presence added some lightness to an otherwise bleak account of used book-selling, along with the author including their own periodic reading updates. 

Bythell does not shy away from sharing his dislike for Amazon and the challenges posed by them (directly and indirectly), but I was confused by the ‘trophy Kindle’. The effect of Amazon on the book industry is a prominent discussion in the Bookstagram sphere, so it wasn’t a shock to see this appear in this book. However, I didn’t enjoy reading a book about books/booklovers that almost shames those that use e-readers. 

Overall, there is some humour in here but the whole way through this book, I kept thinking about how I would be described by this person if I walked into this shop. The book does become repetitive and while it is a quick read, it can start to feel a bit samey chapter after chapter. 

The opening chapters were...aggravating. The plot around Ava's backstory was interesting, but the kidnapping plot took away from pacing and the resolution was quite underwhelming. That said, Bill looking after Alex is beautiful and this is a series I am becoming more invested in, although not yet on the level of DCI Ryan.

Sidenote: I read the previous Alex Gregory book (Panic), then read the newest DCI Ryan book (Poison Garden), then I read this book (all by the same author). When I got to the end of this book, I was confused as to why a certain plot thread hadn't been picked up. Then I realised that plot thread is in the DCI Ryan series 😂 The perils of reading two series by one author back-to-back  😂 

Still Born was a book I wasn't expecting to be so gripped by, but I am happy that my first Guadalupe Nettel book was a hit. It is a book that explores female friendships of varying degrees: a childfree woman, her friend who becomes a mother to a disabled child, a woman who is still suffering after losing her husband and being left with a very angry son. The writing style was a winner for me. Still Born is told straightforwardly but you can still feel the emotions of the women without the book being unnecessarily long. Nettel explores the feelings of ambivalence towards motherhood, the emotions of motherhood, and the importance of the wider support system that mothers need.

My only complaint (and the only reason this isn't a 5 star read) is because I feel the childfree aspect could have been explored further.

I thought at one point, that our childfree character, Laura, was going to succumb and get pregnant, but I'm incredibly happy that Nettel didn't give in and take this easy option. However, the fact that Laura, still became so invested in a child for a large chunk of the story felt like a bit of a disservice to her childfree choice. I would have liked more exploration around being childfree and that being childfree doesn't mean you need to invest so heavily in another person's child to feel well-rounded, because this is not the reality for all childfree people. However, this is the first book I have read where I have encountered intentional exploration of a childfree character that hasn't just gone on to get pregnant.