Review – Tied to You, vol 1

Posted March 9, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Tied to You, vol 1

Tied to You

by WHAT, Chelliace

Genres: Fantasy, Manga, Romance
Pages: 334
Series: Tied to You #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Wooseo Shin was never one to believe in fate...until a ring of red thread appears around his finger, that is! This ring marks a person's meeting of their soulmate, and with it, neither can fall asleep if the other is absent. This development is not a welcome one for Wooseo, who decides to keep it from his close friend and crush Jiseok Kang at all costs. Because as fate would have it, the person with Wooseo's matching set is Jigeon Kang — Jiseok's older brother! When Jigeon proposes that they start sharing a bed, if only to combat their joint insomnia, Wooseo reluctantly accepts... but as the two spend more and more time together, feelings start to get messy. Will Wooseo be able to survive his new life tangled up in between these two brothers?!

The main character of WHAT’s Tied to You (adapted from a story by Chelliace) is Wooseo, who is in love with his best friend Jiseok. In this world, after the age of twenty, if you touch your fated partner, you fall sick for 24 hours, and then a red ring forms — like the red thread of fate — for both you and your partner. After that point, you can’t sleep apart, and when you sleep side by side and touching, you get the best sleep you’ve ever had in your life.

Wooseo’s partner isn’t Jiseok, though… it’s Jiseok’s older brother, Jigeon, who had been close to the pair but pulled back for some reason a while ago. Wooseo’s afraid that Jigeon hates him, but it turns out more complex than that (of course). At first, they treat it as a transaction: I’ll pay you to come and sleep beside me so we can both get some sleep. Then Jigeon pushes for more, getting Wooseo to move in with him — all while the two of them hide the whole thing from Jiseok, who seems to be getting jealous, despite repeatedly saying he’s totally straight and not interested in Wooseo.

It’s all a bit of a tangled mess, and it’s not entirely clear how to take some of Jigeon’s behaviour; is he being creepy? Is it Jiseok being weird? Are the two of them just gonna ride rough-shod over Wooseo and what he needs…?

The art and colours are lovely (though some character designs are very similar, partly on purpose), and I’m curious enough about the plot/relationship to read more — especially since it’s a manhwa, so it doesn’t take that long to read a volume. I’m not quite sure how it’ll land with me, but I guess we’ll find out!

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Fantasy with Friends: Adaptations of Classics

Posted March 9, 2026 by Nicky in General / 0 Comments

Fantasy With Friends: A Disccusion Meme hosted by Pages Unbound

This week’s Fantasy with Friends discussion (hosted by Pages Unbound) is about adaptations:

What are your thoughts on fantasy adaptations of classic literature that originally had no fantasy elements? (Ex. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, A Far Better Thing, Kindred Dragons)

I’m fairly ambivalent, I guess? The only one of those examples I knew about is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which I thought was a funny concept at the time, but there were a few copycats of that stretched the joke too far (basically just trying to cash in). I think in general I’d judge each book on its own merits, rather than the idea of adapting a classic alone… but I probably wouldn’t actively seek out such books.

One example I can think of that I did enjoy is Jo Walton’s Tooth & Claw, which was spawned (according to her story) when she was reading Trollope and Le Guin at the same time. I haven’t read any Trollope, so I read it as a standalone fantasy novel on its own merits, and had a great time. It’s been quite a while since I last read it, but I view it pretty fondly.

So overall, not something that calls to me greatly, but I wouldn’t say no to trying it either in the right circumstances — mostly, I think, when it adds something genuinely transformative, rather than just using a popular novel as a shortcut for getting people truly invested.

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Review – Strange Buildings

Posted March 8, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Strange Buildings

Strange Buildings

by Uketsu

Genres: Horror, Mystery
Pages: 384
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Eleven strange buildings. One terrible secret.

A lonely hut in the woods.
A murder house.
A hidden chamber.
A mysterious shrine.
A home in flames.
A nightmarish prison…

Each of the buildings in this book tells a chilling story. Each one is part of a puzzle.

Look closely… and you’ll see that everything is connected.

All leading to a revelation so horrifying you won’t want to believe it.

Millions of readers have become addicted to solving Uketsu’s dark mysteries.

Strange Buildings is the strangest, and darkest, of them all.

Uketsu’s Strange Buildings is a follow-up to Strange Houses: I don’t think you need to start with the former, but there are several references to it, and since the mysteries are similar in principle, it can help put together the whys and wherefores of the cases presented in this one. I liked Strange Houses quite a bit; I think Strange Buildings is a bit looser, with a higher page count used to detail eleven cases and then extensively unpack how they relate to each other.

While the mystery in Strange Houses wasn’t exactly sunshine and daisies (houses built in order to facilitate murder and child abuse), it’s worth noting that things are a bit darker again in this one, with themes like child prostitution, children being coerced into murdering family members, cults and brainwashing, infidelity, and other child abuse into the bargain.

So… a light romp this isn’t, though it’s a little disconnected from the horrors by the narration, which is a bit journalistic in angle. It follows the same format as Strange Houses, mostly, presenting floorplans for you to figure out what’s strange… though I found them a bit less obscure, maybe? I kind of figured out how things were lining up and the links between the mysteries, so that helped — after a few, it becomes obvious what the key factors to consider are.

It’s not really about characterisation or anything, so beware of that going into the story: there are two characters which recur from the previous book, but they’re mostly an excuse to gather the stories and a way to dissect them for the reader and finally reveal the truths behind the weird floorplans.

It was still a pretty quick read, though probably about double the length of time I took to read Strange Houses. I’m still enjoying the format very much, and looking forward to what’s next — Strange Maps, apparently!

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – wake

Posted March 7, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – wake

wake

by Gillian Allnutt

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 64
Rating: one-star
Synopsis:

When Gillian Allnutt was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, Carol Ann Duffy wrote that her work ‘has always been in conversation with the natural world and the spiritual life’. Her ninth collection, wake, shows the two beginning to meld into one: to speak for, even as, one another. As her title signals, these are poems about looking back, keeping watch over the dying and death of an old world and the ways of being human in that world; but also forward, waiting for the new world and being ready to awaken to it when it comes.

There are, as always in her work, many displaced people. No one here is fully at home in the world. These are turbulent times – individually and collectively – and the poems here reflect that. And yet the poems are more ‘among’ than ‘about’ people: speaking out of the horde, and the hoard, of humanity as a whole.

Unfortunately, Gillian Allnutt’s wake was absolutely not for me. I had difficulty finding any poem I actually liked in it — maybe a line here and there, but… I just didn’t “get” it. Some of them were too short to feel like anything (though I often have that problem with very short poems), and it felt like they were lacking all the connective tissue to make them flow and make sense of them for myself.

This may have been made worse by the fact that the notes at the end of the collection weren’t obviously linked in the ebook, so I only read them after reading all of the poems already. Some of the notes do explain things a bit better, but since I had no idea they existed (I only saw the small translation notes on the same page as each poem, no sign of more info) they didn’t really have an impact on my reading experience.

Since a favourite poet of mine (Carol Ann Duffy) praised Allnutt, I was/am willing to believe it’s a deficiency in me here — though I did check back what she said exactly and it was more of a description than outright praise, so I suppose it could’ve been one of those misleading snippets where actually in the full version it’s clear that the writer wasn’t overwhelmed with it. I haven’t looked for more context… I’m just resigned to the fact that I didn’t ‘get’ or like this one.

Rating: 1/5 (“didn’t like it”)

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Stacking the Shelves & The Sunday Post

Posted March 7, 2026 by Nicky in General / 18 Comments

Aaand it’s the weekend again!

Books acquired this week

It’s been a quiet week, but my wife did acquire me the new Uketsu novel:

Cover of Strange Buildings by Uketsu

I’ve been wanting to read it basically since I finished Strange Houses, so I was pretty excited and dove in right away.

Posts from this week

As ever, we’ll start with the reviews:

And some other posts…

What I’m reading

First, let’s do the roundup of books I finished this week! I read a lot at the weekend and then a lot less during the week, especially as it wasn’t a great week… but that still added up to a lot of books overall.

Cover of Platform Decay by Martha Wells Cover of Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett Cover of The Library of Ancient Wisdom by Selena Wisnom Cover of Solo Leveling (light novel) vol 8, by Chugong

Cover of How to Fake it In Society by KJ Charles Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint manhwa vol 7, by Umi Cover of Night Shade & Oak, by Molly O'Neill Cover of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint manhwa vol 8, by Umi

Cover of Guardian (light novel) vol 2 by Priest Cover of Southernmost: Sonnets by Leo Boix Cover of Part of a Story that Started Before Me ed. George the Poet Cover of Strange Buildings by Uketsu

I won’t be doing quite such a reading marathon as last weekend (I finished nine books on the Saturday) but I am looking forward to some reading time… I need to free up some shelf space for the spree I will undoubtedly have while down in London for my graduation. Not sure yet what I’ll focus on, but I hope to finish Carol Carnac’s The Double Turn, and maybe some more of the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua. I hope my copy of volume 13 ships soon, since it came out earlier this week.

Linking up with Reading Reality’s Stacking the Shelves, Caffeinated Reviewer’s The Sunday Post, the Sunday Salon over at Readerbuzz, and It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? at The Book Date.

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Review – Vanished Wales

Posted March 6, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 4 Comments

Review – Vanished Wales

Vanished Wales: Places Lost In Living Memory

by Carwyn Jones

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 180
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Vanished Wales: Places Lost in Living Memory is the book to accompany one of ITV Wales’ most popular shows. It explores the fascinating stories of lost landmarks: places in Wales that have disappeared from towns, cities and villages within living memory. As in the series, the book shines a spotlight on this missing heritage, featuring stories from local people who still have a deep personal connection with the remarkable sights that were once on their doorstep.

Lost communities, hives of industry, popular public buildings, cultural and sporting venues, wartime placements, Victorian superstructures and even entire villages: these are once prominent places that have been wiped off the map. Including before and after images from the show, Vanished Wales sings their epitaph.

Carwyn Jones’ Vanished Wales is based on an ITV series I haven’t seen, but I don’t think you need to have seen the series to get something out of it. It focuses not on ancient history, but on Welsh touchstones and homes that have vanished in the last seventy years or so. Some of them are still floating in awareness even for me, despite being destroyed before I was born — and my parents certainly remember them. Others are a bit more obscure.

Given the brief, I was surprised at the exclusion of the obvious target: Capel Celyn, the village drowned to create a reservoir in order to send water to, I kid you fucking not, Liverpool. Yes, you read that right: Liverpool. For industry, to be clear. Perhaps that was still a tad too raw and political for the series? It touches a little bit on local politics, and on people who don’t live in the villages and so on deciding the fate of them, but maybe Capel Celyn still provokes too much anger for ITV. Who knows?

It’s full of photographs (some necessarily old/poor quality, since there’s nothing there to photograph now) and little testimonials/anecdotes/memories from people who lived in/near the vanished places. An interesting read, even if it felt somewhat milquetoast given the impact English industrial aspirations had on Welsh places.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – How to Fake It In Society

Posted March 5, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – How to Fake It In Society

How to Fake it In Society

by KJ Charles

Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
Pages: 320
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

It is 1821 and Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte is making a splash in London Society. The son of Jeanne de Valois de La Motte, infamous for stealing a priceless diamond necklace meant for Marie Antoinette, Nico hopes to restore his wronged mother's reputation, if only he can raise the funds. But he must operate with great secrecy, because the Bourbon dynasty murdered his mother, and he fears for his life.

At least, that's what he tells Titus Pilcrow. Titus was a simple shopkeeper, making and selling artists' paints, when he found himself suddenly married to an immensely wealthy woman who wanted to disinherit her nephew on her deathbed. As word spreads of his fortune, Titus finds himself a target of every scammer and beggar in London…including one Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte.

Nico is on his last legs, out of money, and on the run from some terrifying gangsters. When Titus offers Nico a space in his household, it's the perfect chance for him to exploit London's newest golden purse—until he falls in love with the man he needs to cheat. Still, Nico is sure they can have a happy ending together. If he can just find his way out of his own web of lies…

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

My only problem with KJ Charles’ How to Fake It In Society was that I spent the entire thing bracing for the third-act breakup. I knew it was coming, Nico knew it was coming, Eve knew it was coming, everyone knew it was coming — and why — except for Titus, and it was excruciating. It’s like watching a car crash when it’s reached the point of inevitability and it’s going in slow-mo: you can’t do anything to stop it, so you can only watch it with horror.

Nico and Titus are a lovely match, with Nico putting his effrontery and ability to manage people at Titus’ disposal, and steering him toward a path where he can be happy. Nico’s good points are also his flaws, in a way that’s delightful to watch happen to someone else — it just all makes so much sense, and even his awareness of the likelihood of the third-act breakup is part of why things spin out of control for him.

Titus is a sweetheart; I feel that in some ways, his personality has been kicked out of him by his abusive childhood and abusive adult relationship, but we see glimmers of it all the same in his steadfast sticking to what’s right over what’s easy.

The ending involves some ridiculous dramatics, which I mean in the best way possible.

Overall, a lot of fun, I just wish that romance in general didn’t rely so heavily on the breakup and dramatic get-together, because knowing that’s coming — even though I know it’ll be made good — really saps my fun. I get that it’s part of how you add the conflict in, and Charles usually does so in a way that makes sense for the characters and scenario, something that feels natural rather than contrived… but I’m still not a fan of the structure.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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WWW Wednesday

Posted March 4, 2026 by Nicky in General / 2 Comments

Cover of Part of a Story that Started Before Me ed. George the PoetWhat have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was George the Poet’s Part of a Story That Started Before Me, a reflection on Black British history through poetry. It has introductions to most sections explaining what we know about Black people in a given period, some of which I didn’t know about already, so it was a worthwhile read for that alone. I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the selections, admittedly, though some of the poems have a heck of a rhythm to them — you can practically hear them spoken, you can’t help it — which was fun.

Cover of Craft Land: A Journey through Britain's Lost Arts and Vanishing Trades, by James FoxWhat are you currently reading?

I finished a lot of the books I had on the go, so I’m onto pastures new! I just started reading James Fox’s Craftland, though so far I’ve only read through (most of) a chapter about dry stone walls and the work that goes into repairing those. I’m curious what other almost-lost crafts he’ll discuss.

I’m also reading the February British Library Crime Classic, Carol Carnac’s The Double Turn. It feels very much an E.C.R. Lorac novel so far, though since it’s under her other name, I think the detectives are likely to hit quite different to her usual MacDonald. I prefer him, somehow; he’s a very humane, ideal detective.

Cover of Strange Buildings by UketsuWhat will you read next?

Probably Uketsu’s Strange Buildings, which is just out. I’ve been anticipating it for a while, and it arrived today, so it’d be nice to dig in right away.

Other than that, I don’t know, though I have my new Book Spin Bingo card ready… so maybe something from that, so I don’t end up reading nine books in one day again as I did on Saturday, stubbornly finishing February’s card.

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Review – Platform Decay

Posted March 4, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – Platform Decay

Platform Decay

by Martha Wells

Genres: Science Fiction
Pages: 256
Series: Murderbot Diaries #8
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

Everyone's favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells' bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Having someone else support your bad decision feels kind of good.

Having volunteered to run a rescue mission, Murderbot realises that it will have to spend significant time with a bunch of humans it doesn't know.

Including human children. Ugh.

This may well call for... eye contact!

(Emotion check: Oh, for f—)

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Platform Decay is the latest of Martha Wells’ Murderbot books, and it has the usual ingredients: a Murderbot who’s very done with humans (but not so done it’s actually going to murder them, at least not unless you provoke it), stupid corporates being broadly horrifying, and a bunch of humans who need protecting from the latter by the former. In addition, this one includes a torus station, which Murderbot didn’t know it’d hate so much until it was trying to traverse it.

I have to admit, I’m starting to think if Murderbot needs a break, or the feeling of a tighter narrative arc, or something: this book felt like essentially more of the same. It’s fun because Murderbot’s narrative voice is fun (mostly; caveat below), and because we care about Murderbot, but there’s much that feels like the status quo. Maybe there’s more coming due to Three’s actions in this book? There are some developments (Murderbot’s got a therapy module! and it felt like it was trying way harder to avoid lethal violence than before; Three’s getting itself involved)… but it’s hard to be sure whether we’re going somewhere specific or whether we’re just riding shotgun on Murderbot’s mission of the week, and this felt a bit more like the latter.

In addition, the narrative voice in the first chapter was too Murderbot. There were three or four parenthetical thoughts per paragraph, and it really stuttered the action and made it almost unintelligible to read at times. That’s partly because of how the book starts, and the fact that Wells seems to have wanted to make a certain aspect of the situation unclear until Murderbot’s “oh, by the way” (which failed for me, it was completely obvious).

I did enjoy the story once I got into it, but it has lost some of the freshness, and it feels like maybe it needs a heavier edit or something to rein in some of the inclination toward wordiness: yes, that’s the way Murderbot is, but it still needs to be readable. Or maybe I just need a longer break from Murderbot — that’s possible too.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

Posted March 3, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 8 Comments

Review – Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter

Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter

by Heather Fawcett

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 368
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Agnes Aubert is very fond of making lists. These lists kept her afloat when she lost her husband two years ago. And now, as the founder of a cat rescue charity, her meticulous organization skills feel like the only thing standing between her beloved cats - His Majesty, Banshee and sweet elderly Thoreau, to name a few - and utter disaster.

But when Agnes is forced to move the charity, she soon discovers that her new shop is being used as a front; right under her feet is the lair of the decidedly disorganised - not to mention self-absorbed and infuriatingly handsome - Havelock Renard.

Havelock is everything Agnes doesn't want in her life: chaos, mischief, and a little too much adventure. But as she gets to know him, she discovers he's more than the dark magician of legend, and that she may be ready for a little intrigue, perhaps even romance. After all, second chances aren't just for rescue cats. . .

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I was keen to get hold of Heather Fawcett’s Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter more or less from the word go, based on the title and the fact that I really enjoyed the Emily Wilde books. And indeed, I had a lot of fun: Agnes is an older female character who lost her husband and now focuses just about constantly on the fortunes of her cat shelter, an endeavour which isn’t meeting with a lot of success in her city. She’s struggling to find a new landlord after the destruction of the last shelter, but gets drawn to a particular shop that other businesses seem to avoid.

Naturally that’s the start of the real trouble, since it turns out to be a front for an illicit magic business. Magic is particularly looked down on since a dreadful wizard recently tried to end the world — or at least, that’s what everyone assumed happened. You won’t be surprised to hear that we learn otherwise in the course of the story, though I won’t spoil the details.

There’s also a little touch of romance, and it’s partly that which made me feel like this was veeery reminiscent of Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle (a mixture of the book and the Studio Ghibli film, actually). I don’t mean plagiarism, just that it has certain vibes in common, to be clear. It’s not as humorous, and it’s a bit more clearly aimed at an adult audience (the romance is very light, but the characters aren’t teenagers and don’t have teenage concerns)… but something about the way the characters interact, and the story behind the magic, gives off those vibes.

I didn’t like it as much as the Emily Wilde books, I think, but I feel fondly about it and had a good time reading. And for those who read one of my other reviews lately where I pointed out that the cats got treated as objects for human convenience, I can reassure you that these cats were definitely their own creatures entirely. I felt a little sad about His Majesty here, but at the same time, he’s very much a cat… And that’s all I’ll say about that.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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