Book Reviews – Imogen’s Typewriter.

Blog Tour Book Review: The KC Warlock Weekly: Accused by M. N. Jolley

March 31, 2022by imogenstypewriter1 Comment

Last year, I took part in the Book Bloggers Novel of the Year Award where I read a lot of wonderful writing from various indie authors. My favourite across the board was Accused by M. N. Jolley* so when the opportunity came up to be on the blog tour, I’m there! This book needs to be on the shelves of many many more people. It’s hard to write reviews of books that you adore but here I go…

My name is Levi. I’m a journalist, I’m autistic, I’m bad at magic, and I swear I didn’t kill her.
Research for the paper usually falls into a few basic patterns. Someone in the city says there’s a troll under Buck O’Neil Bridge, or they’ll call just so a friendly ear will listen to them complain about a pixie infestation.
That sort of content carries me through slow news weeks. It’s rare that I uncover a murder.
Being framed for murder, though? That’s a first.
With the Wizard’s Council hunting me for a crime I didn’t commit, I’ve got no choice but to solve the murder and clear my name. If I don’t unravel this case, nobody will, and I’ll go down for it so hard I might never see the light of day again.

I haven’t connected with an Urban Fantasy book in a while. I was feeling a little tired of books where the main character is a supernatural badass, or has been holding a stake since they could grip things. Give me a regular guy like Levi, who gets embroiled in things that are way above his pay grade but still wants to do the right thing even if it means things are going to get difficult for him. Much more difficult!

Every character was my favourite character at some point. From Ben, Levi’s date who has no idea about the magic world and learns about it along with the reader, to Maggie, the fae auto-mechanic/ magic item dealer who has her own serialised story. The side-characters are fully fleshed out and I’d read more about all of them! I also really love seeing Autistic and queer rep in any book, but especially in this genre where it’s been lacking.

The writing is a dream. Jolley uses Levi in an interrogation to tell the story of his extraordinary couple of days and there are a couple times where the story might not always be quite what it seems. It never felt too complicated to follow, and gave me a couple moments of ‘oh dang!’ while reading. The plotting is a masterpiece and when I was forced to put the book down, it was easy to pick back up and dive in.

Okay, I’ve finished raving. Please check out M.N. Jolley’s website and read the book, there’s even an audiobook read by Nikola Hamilton who sounds delightfully like Jon Hamm to me. I can finally go and read the sequel that I’ve been holding off until I finished this review and I’m so excited.

*I received this book to read and review as part of the 2021 BBNYA competition and the BBNYA tours organised by the TWR Tour team. All opinions are my own, unbiased and honest.

Blog Tour, Book Reviews, Books

Blog Tour Book Review: The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake!

March 15, 2022March 15, 2022by imogenstypewriter1 Comment

My forays into dark academia have either been immense successes (A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik singlehandedly dragged me out of a reading slump) or triumphs over my will to finish (The Secret History by Donna Tart is on my shelf waiting for me to get past that half-way mark). So when I kept hearing about The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake*, I needed to see where it would land on the scale .

When the world’s best magicians are offered an extraordinary opportunity, saying yes is easy. Each could join the secretive Alexandrian Society, whose custodians guard lost knowledge from ancient civilizations. Their members enjoy a lifetime of power and prestige. Yet each decade, only six practitioners are invited – to fill five places.

Contenders Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona are inseparable enemies, cosmologists who can control matter with their minds. Parisa Kamali is a telepath, who sees the mind’s deepest secrets. Reina Mori is a naturalist who can perceive and understand the flow of life itself. And Callum Nova is an empath, who can manipulate the desires of others. Finally there’s Tristan Caine, whose powers mystify even himself.

Following recruitment by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they travel to the Society’s London headquarters. Here, each must study and innovate within esoteric subject areas. And if they can prove themselves, over the course of a year, they’ll survive. Most of them.

I can see why this book has people by the throat. If vibes could be measured per page, it would be off the charts. The characters are living in a massive country house, messing with magic, space and time, and have the Library of Alexandria at their fingertips. At least, what the Library will allow them to see. The plots role in The Atlas Six is to be the skeleton for the body of the whole story, you really only see the teeth. If that sounds strange, it’s because I’ve been deep in this book for days and every thought in my head is tinged with the writing style.

Speaking of, the writing matches the vibes. It’s like wading through treacle. Rich, but sticky. Blake is dealing with a lot of concepts in her magic system that I found a struggle to follow, but it didn’t always feel like I had to follow either. Similar to when The Secret History was talking about Greek, some readers could possibly read this in a way that meant that they understand and followed the science and theory, but for a casual reader it could be a bit much. It felt best to let it wash over you.

Going in, I had expected all the characters to be unlikeable but I actually could pick out maybe half of the core group that I was rooting for to survive. Libby really wormed her way into my heart. You bounce around the points of view of all of them but unlike other books with multiple POVs, I had no preference which meant their were none that I had to slog through to get to a favourite.

This book is for those dedicated to dark academia, those that like to swim in a sentence and those that use candles as a main form of lighting.

“Men in particular are draining, they bleed us dry. They demand we carry their burdens, fix their ills. A man is constantly in search of a good woman, but what do they offer us in return?”

*I was sent a copy of this book for review purposes. It has not changed my opinion.

Blog Tour, Book Reviews, Books

Book Review: A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske!

December 11, 2021by imogenstypewriter1 Comment

I feel like A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske* has been on my radar for months and months. A few bloggers that I have similar reading tastes to got early copies and the rave reviews had me impatiently waiting for this to drop through my letterbox. And it was worth the wait. Reader, I’m in love.

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.

Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.

Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.

This book does it all. It has magic, intrigue, murder, romance, libraries, and a personal favourite; a house party in a country manor. So I’ll start with the magic. The idea of building magic with delicate hand movements, like those old cat’s cradles games that I remember being truly awful at as a child, is delightful to me. It’s a fresh magic system while also being just relatable enough that I could fall into this fantasy world without trouble. One of the points-of-view being from a non-magic user discovering this world for the first time, definitely helped.

From the start, I was hooked by the story. When someone is being interrogated for information on the first page, I want to know what is going on! The pacing of the whole book made me want to pick it back up the minute I put it down. 370 pages felt both long and short as I wanted to know where the story would end up but wasn’t willing to miss a minute of how Robin and Edwin got there.

As someone who doesn’t have the strongest visual when reading, I did find that some of the descriptions were a little slow for me. It’s not overly-descriptive, but this is the kind of book that will fill people’s minds with beautiful rooms and beautiful characters if that’s the kind of reader they are. Despite not being that kind of reader, I was so tied up in the plot and the romance that I didn’t mind.

And the romance? A slow-burn with a sweet jock and a stern intellectual is such a great combination. I’ve only started really reading Romance this year but this definitely had some of the steamiest scenes I’ve ever read, as well as some of the sweetest.

That being said, Robin and Edwin are great but my favourite character? Miss Adelaide Harita Morrissey, the secretary extraordinaire. I hope there’s a lot more of her in the following books. I’d like to see all of the side characters again, even the ones I despise as people. Marske didn’t waste a single word creating filler characters while managing to never leave rooms of her world empty.

As for the sequel, A Marvellous Light ended with me itching for the next book, without a cliffhanger in sight for fellow cliffhanger-haters, and I’m already wishing away my life thinking about how it’ll be at least two years before this trilogy is complete.

I’d recommend this for people who liked P. G. Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle but thought both would be better if it was gay and had magic. A Marvellous Light is out now at Hive, Amazon, Waterstones, and anywhere good books are sold!

*I was sent this book to review as part of the blog tour, this has not changed my opinion. Hive and Amazon links are affiliate links.

Book Reviews, Books

Book Review: The Plot is Murder by V. M. Burns!

September 12, 2021by imogenstypewriterLeave a Comment

Cozy Mysteries are a genre that I am convinced I will love but honestly haven’t read a lot of beyond Charlaine Harris. I’ve somehow managed to collect quite a pile of them but the one that I wanted to start with, so much that I put is on my list of 27 books to read this year, was The Plot is Murder by V. M. Burns. It was a good decision!

The small town of North Harbor on the shores of Lake Michigan is about to have a new mystery bookstore. But before the first customer can browse its shelves, the store’s owner is suspected of her own murder plot…

The thing that made The Plot is Murder stand out to me was that there’s a book being written in the book. Its two mysteries for the price of one. I’ve never experienced this before, it’s been one of those things that just hasn’t crossed my orbit. But, our main character Samantha is writing a historical romance mystery while dealing with the body in her back garden and I found it fascinating. I found myself waiting for the next chapter of Samantha’s book while also wanting to know the whodunit in Samanthas life. Burns balances both really well and, at least in my opinion, manages to make the historical mystery feel like it was written by Samantha rather than by her.

And I really liked Samantha as a writer! She takes parts of her life and puts them in her fiction, big things and little things, like a character who knits a lot while she thinks much like her grandma’s friend. And at one point another character starts reading her book and she gets nervous and doesn’t want to know what they think, but does. I think a lot of readers who also write will see themselves in her.

Now, this book is only 250 pages and contains two mysteries. You don’t get a lot of time with our historical characters but I’m plot-driven as a reader generally and I liked that the time spent with Samantha was more based on her, her life and her murder, and the time spend in 1938 England was mostly about who killed a guy at a party with a dash of romance. In the next book, Samantha is writing a sequel with the same characters, as well as dealing with another murder, so there’s plenty of time to get to know the residents of Wickfield Lodge if you wanted.

Then there’s the old ladies in Samanthas life. I’m a sucker for a book that doesn’t act like life ends at 30 and everyone older than that is relegated to the role of mother or old man with wisdom to impart. Samantha’s Nana and her friends from the retirement home are a blast, think Golden Girls but if they were gossiping about who would kill a man.

The only thing that made me pause was the brief mention of suicide and some negative opinions about it. But apart from that The Plot is Murder sticks to cozy mystery conventions with no graphic images of violence or sex.

Am I going to keep reading this series? Probably! These books are hard to find in the UK and it’s my first real foray into cosy mysteries of this type so I’m going to prod around a little more and see what I can find, but I’m keeping an eye out for Samantha and V.M. Burns. You can find The Plot is Murder on Hive and Amazon*.

Strange how acute your hearing became when you were waiting to be murdered.

*This post contains affiliate links.

Book Reviews, Books, Reading, Series Review

Re-Read Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins!

December 24, 2020August 5, 2021by imogenstypewriterLeave a Comment

When the news of the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, came out I knew I wanted to re-read the original Hunger Games trilogy. It’s been six years since I first read the trilogy and they were really important in my journey of becoming a reader again and book blogging! My original reviews were.. sparse, and very much about my emotional response which is perfectly valid, I just wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into what makes these books so dang good in my opinion. So!

Contexts of Reading

I remember reading this series for the first time really vividly. Not so much the actual story, because I definitely forgot most of the plot points in the past six years. But my life surrounding reading this. I even remember the song I was listening to on repeat at the time. And I think that it’s really interesting that in however many years until I read this again, I might remember things like being in lockdown, playing a lot of Animal Crossing and working really hard at my last university essay. I think only a special kind of book can effect me in this way. I’ve re-read books before and mostly it’s just remembering bits of the story.

The Writing Style

I’ve mentioned a couple times this year that I’ve been struggling to read lately because I’m so focused on the act of reading. However, Collins writing style is so unique and crafted to be bare-bones that it’s incredibly easy to read. There’s no info-dumping or huge chunks of thinking, you’re just in Katniss’s head and immediately in the action. The story is left open just enough that your own thoughts and feelings can fill the gap. I thought that the pacing on the second and third books was a little weird, but by Mockingjay, I was locked in and finished it incredibly quickly.

The Epilogue

I’m not a big fan of epilogues in general. As a reader and an attempting writer, I prefer it when the ending happens and what goes next is left to the imagination. If you want the main character to live happily ever after, you decide what that looks like. But I do like the epilogue in this case, because I think that considering how much she mentions not wanting kids because they’d have to play in the games, it was important to see Katniss no longer have that fear. Plus, Collins got to talk a little about how best to teach younger generations about bad things.

The Messages

The Hunger Games trilogy are political books. Oppressed people hating other oppressed people instead of their oppressor, revolutions galore, people being used as pawns in a game they don’t understand. I mean- very applicable to almost every age of humanity.

Marking my books

I like to keep my books pretty neat and unmarked in general. I use sticky notes to mark them up for reviews and bits of writing I like. But this time I decided to underline, in pen! Mainly because I know these books are going to stick around on my shelves. I don’t have any immediate plans to re-read them, maybe I’ll wait another six years, or more, but when I do- I’ll get a little snapshot into this read and what stood out to me, and I think that’s pretty neat.

Do you re-read a lot? What is your favourite book to re-read?

Book Reviews, Books, Non-Fiction

Book Review: The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler!

November 22, 2020August 5, 2021by imogenstypewriterLeave a Comment

Books about books are my favourite thing. My favourite cosy mystery protagonist is a librarian. My favourite romance is set in a novel-writing class. I read book blogs daily. Plus, I’m an English Literature student so I spend a lot of time reading critical journals. The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler* is right up my street because it’s a book chock full of passion about books.

Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. It makes people think you’re dead. So begins Christopher Fowler’s foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from shelves.

These 99 journeys are punctuated by 12 short essays about faded once-favorites, including the now-vanished novels Walt Disney brought to the screen, the contemporary rivals of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie who did not stand the test of time, and the women who introduced psychological suspense many decades before it conquered the world. This is a book about books and their authors. It is for book lovers and is written by one who could not be a more enthusiastic, enlightening, and entertaining guide.

I’ve been reading this book for a long time (I started in 2017!). It’s a book where you could dip in and out of with ease. But sitting down for a good long session didn’t quite keep up the charm. So, ironically, I put it to one side and kind of forgot about it until I was doing a declutter. I finished it that day.

You can tell that a lot of work went into the original articles that this book is based off and it pays off. Each author has a neat little biography and the essays were easy and interesting reads. While I raised an eyebrow at some being considered forgotten, I’m sure V.C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic haunts many a millennial, it would be impossible not to get excited about the books and the history and reading in general!

Obviously people have different tastes so a book of 99 authors is sure to include some, or many, that I don’t find interesting or recommendable. I wouldn’t personally have chosen to include the overtly racist authors or the prosecuted sex-offender. It felt like Fowler wanted to mention these because he did the research when really these authors could just stay forgotten. Plus, I understand that publishing is, like almost everything, a male-dominated field. But I needed for there to be more diverse choices. It stands at about a quarter female, and very very white.

Overall though, I found myself with a list of authors books to add to my TBR. Some of my picks are From the City, From the Plough by Alexander Baron, a novelisation of his experience in the run up to D-day. The Wooden Overcoat by Pamela Branch, purely from the description as a mix of P.G. Wodehouse and Ladykillers. Whatever I can find by Lucille Fletcher, a noir suspense writer who seems irritatingly out-of-print. The Dr. Thorndyke detective stories by R. Austin Freeman sound like a more to-my-taste detective stories from the time of Sherlock Holmes. And Eleanor Hibberts vast historical fiction repertoire under the pen name Jean Plaidy.

If you’re like me and you feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of current releases, or publishing trends mean that your preferred style is out at the moment, I think this is a really interesting way to refresh your TBR. You’re sure to get caught up in passion for books if you pick this up.

Waterstones | Amazon | Hive

Do you have a favourite forgotten author? Or someone who deserved to be a classic?

Audiobooks, Books, Reading

Books I Read during my Scribd Free Trial!

April 4, 2020September 30, 2022by imogenstypewriterLeave a Comment

Scribd is a digital library subscription service, a little like Netflix for books. It claims unlimited and what that actually means that if you read/listen to a lot, your access to certain options is limited until your next month. It also means unlimited within the collection they have, which is quite a bit, but not everything. You also get Mubi, the curated movie subscription service and FarFaria, a kids book service included. And it does a free 30 day trial. So I gave it a go and thought it’d be fun to go over what I read while trying out the service.

Books I Read on my Scribd Free Trial!

A Boy Worth Knowing by Jennifer Cosgrove
This has been on my wish list since I read Autoboyography a year ago and desperately searched for something similar. M/M romance? In high school? With GHOSTS? All a thumbs up from me so I was really excited to see this on Scribd in eBook form.

As for the book? The internal monologue could’ve done with some editing, I read it very fast so I picked up on a lot of little repetitive phrases, but the realism of a teenager telling themselves off inside their head was on point. I loved boys showing emotions, the importance of explicit consent, and as someone who spent a lot of my school time worrying about my attendance, I really loved the aunt encouraging taking a mental health day.

It was a sweet, fluffy, slightly paranormal romance and I would’ve loved it if it wasn’t for: “-I wouldn’t risk that. Not on the word of a junkie ghost.” That was just incredibly disappointing to read, I really hate that term for one, and for another this was a complete throwaway line and the drug abuse of the character was more a plot point to get to his death.

You by Caroline Kepnes

This was one of those rare occasions when the adaptation was as good/ better. I’ve never felt the need to read this after marathoning the show in one day last Boxing Day while completely ignoring my family, but I saw the audiobook and decided to listen to it. The narrator is incredibly good, similar in tone to Penn Badgley who plays Joe in the show, and creepy. I haven’t been so spooked by an audiobook since I listened to It.
I like a unreliable narrator but it can wear after a while because Joe felt frantic for the entire book. I found myself feeling physically stressed so I probably won’t read the sequel but I loved season 2 of You. I think maybe reading this physically might calm the pace.

Books I Read on my Scribd Free Trial! Charlaine Harris

Small Kingdoms & Other Stories by Charlaine Harris
I was really excited going into this as it was a short story collection of an interesting new character (at least for me) from Charlaine Harris. A high school principal with a shady past? Totally different from what I’ve read from Harris before and I loved it. The stories were short enough that I could get through one while I was winding down for bed and long enough that I really got a feel for the world and a satisfying story-arc.

Plus, Harris’s writing just works for me. Physical or audio, novel or short story (my least favourite format), I love her style and this was no exception.

After Dead by Charlaine Harris
This is the exception, however. I get that she did this ‘for the fans’ who wanted to know what came next but I am so glad I never bought this. The audiobook for this is 47 minutes. For comparison, the first Sookie Stackhouse book is nine and a half hours. And I know it’s not a novel but that is shockingly short.

This should’ve been published online for free, like Charlaine Harris has mentioned that she wanted to, not have the RRP of £8.99. Or it would’ve been a great blog tour! Think about fifty-ish blogs all posting one characters future and keen readers popping around, finding blogs they love that have the same taste as them! Although I’d feel sorry for whoever got the character who ‘contracted ghonnorea’ and that’s it!? This is both a missed opportunity and a disappointing cash grab.

The Sookie Stackhouse Companion by Charlaine Harris

This is tough to really review because I enjoyed the novella and some of the interviews, skipped the timeline for the books because I’m currently re-reading them, and found the fan club section a little weird. I don’t think this is by any means necessary reading, but I could see that it had, at least, more content than After Dead.

A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris

And finally a full novel. I dived back into Harris with my heart open and this paid off. This is her second novel and a standalone so I was blown away by how many things changed and how many stayed the same when it came to her characters and her story structure, still the same old Southern charm I loved but a bit less detective-y than I expected. I prefer it when the main character has a big impact on how the case is resolved, but this would’ve ended up the same way without her input.
I will say though, for something written 36 years ago in 1984? This was surprisingly progressive about rape culture! So overall, it was okay but not something I’m clamouring to read again.

If you want two free months, here’s a link! If you use it, I get a free month too!
Have you read any of these? Are you a Scribd subscriber?