Tag: book reviews

Review – Stay for a Spell

Posted March 17, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 6 Comments

Review – Stay for a Spell

Stay for a Spell

by Amy Coombe

Genres: Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 384
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

A joyful, cosy fantasy romance for anyone who's ever wished they could live in a bookshop.

One curse, seven princes, and a bookshop that you’ll never want to leave…

Princess Tanadelle of the Widdenmar longs to build a life of her own making. During a royal visit to the cosy town of Little Pepperidge, Tandy’s dream comes true when she finds herself cursed to remain in a run-down bookshop until she finds her heart’s desire.

More than a little thrilled, she hires a new assistant, teenage goth Sasha, and settles into life among the stacks. Despite the infuriatingly handsome pirate, Bash, who keeps showing up at the shop with his good looks and his own curse to figure out, Tandy’s new life might just make her happy.

There are just seven, minor, problems. With her royal duties unfulfilled, the frantic King and Queen send the seven princes of the realms to bestow upon Tandy a kiss, each one hoping to break the curse.

After all, what more could a princess want, than a prince?

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 saw other people talking about being interested in Amy Coombe’s Stay for a Spell, and I couldn’t resist: a princess ends up trapped in a rickety old bookshop, cursed to remain until she achieves her heart’s desire? You had me at “bookshop”, even if books set in and around bookshops often forget about the reading part and just treat books as purely magical in and of themselves. Admittedly, there is a bit of that here — Tandy’s love of reading draws her to the bookshop, and leads her to sell particular books, but sometimes the reading part still gets lost amid the selling of books and the handling of books as physical objects.

The premise is very wish fulfillment-y, and I feel like there’s a fair bit of the world that isn’t fully thought out and is a fairly generic fantasy world, but I had a lot of fun all the same. The obvious way to break the curse on a princess would be a kiss from a prince, is what her parents figure, so they send along the various princes of the realms…  But things don’t work in the obvious way here all the time.

For a start, it’s not quite as heteronormative as it might sound: one of the princes who shows up, Calla, is female (and Tandy’s sister is also a prince) — the rank is “prince”, regardless of the gender of the person occupying it. There are two prominent queer kisses in the book, albeit neither of them is romantic: one of the male princes kisses the also-cursed pirate, Bash, while Calla kisses Tandy (and it’s arguably one of the best kisses in the story).

The princes are neither all wonderful people nor all slugs: they all stick around and all offer their help to Tandy, even when their kisses fail to cure her, and even when they’re a bit personally unbearable at times. I really liked that Driz turns out to be a pretty cool guy. Kinda ended up wishing they’d all get together, with Bash too; life would be interesting, to say the least.

The way things play out felt a bit… conventional, I suppose? Compared to the stuff I hadn’t expected, like Bash’s kiss from Driz, and Calla’s kiss with Tandy. It feels very wish fulfillment-y, since Tandy gets to just stop being a working princess and lay aside her duties to stay in the shop with Bash. Still, there are things that still defy expectation (Bash’s curse isn’t broken), and I did ultimately like how Tandy and Bash (inevitably) got together, and thought there was pretty good chemistry there.

You do discover at the end that there’s a bit of an insta-love trope, which I’d sort of suspected and sort of hoped was subverted in some way… but Tandy herself mostly experience instant attraction, along with some annoyance, so it’s not too irritating.

Overall, I’ve said a lot about this compared to normal because it genuinely surprised me at times, and was a delight. I wonder if there’ll be any other romances in this world? Maybe kissing Bash awakened something in Driz…?

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – DPS Only!

Posted March 17, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – DPS Only!

DPS Only!

by Velinxi

Genres: Graphic Novels
Pages: 426
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

Vicky Tan is a meek school girl with social anxiety who always introduces herself as an attachment to her confident, genius brother, Virgil, who has made a name for himself as one of the most popular competitors and streamers for the world famous "Xenith Orion" game.

Despite having aspirations of her own to compete and stream, Vic fears that she will open herself to the hate, doubt, harassment significant women gamers receive every day. She instead opts to stay in the background, acting as her brother’s assistant and manager. However, when opportunity arises in the form of a local competition, Vicky knows she can't stay away. Donning a disguise, she enters the esports scene under the moniker, "Aegis."

I grabbed DPS Only! on Comics Plus when I realised that it was written/drawn by Velinxi (Xiao Tong Kong), the artist who illustrated the English-language version of The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System. No surprises then that I liked the art and character designs a lot. The colours were great, too.

The story’s a bit of a coming-of-age thing, essentially: Vicky’s brother Virgil is a pro-gamer, competing in esports leagues, and he’s used the money to formally adopt her and get her away from their parents. She loves him, but he’s overprotective and sometimes infantalising, and he doesn’t really seem to see her. He has no idea, for instance, that she plays too…

It’s inevitable that the story ends with the two of them going toe-to-toe, but it takes a while to get there, exploring Vicky’s growing confidence, her growing interest in revealing herself after an initial reluctance to compete. I enjoyed that her team includes an older guy — games can bring such different age groups together, and some very disparate people, and I love how supportive Eric is with his slightly different perspective.

There was an obvious ending to this story, and I’m glad it didn’t fully go there, on reflection. Vicky’s still got a long way to go. But she’s on her way, and now Virgil has her back, properly. It’s lovely.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Repast: The Story of Food

Posted March 14, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Repast: The Story of Food

Repast: The Story of Food

by Jenny Linford

Genres: Food, History, Non-fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: two-stars
Synopsis:

Our insatiable appetite for creativity in the kitchen--or around the open fire--is reflected in the fascinating objects explored in this book. Written by food writer Jenny Linford in collaboration with the British Museum, Repast focuses on artifacts in the museum's collection--from ancient clay cooking vessels to exquisite gold cups--spanning multiple continents and dating from prehistory to the modern day.

Taking a broadly chronological approach to the subject, the book is arranged into thirteen thematic chapters, starting with explorations of hunting and gathering and ending with the history of eating out; along the way, agriculture, alcohol, and cooking--among other subjects--are also investigated. Interspersed among the many remarkable objects examined in each chapter is a series of in-depth essays on such topics as tea (the world's most consumed drink after water), pork (one of the world's most consumed meats), and wheat (the source of 20 percent of the world's human calorie consumption), revealing the many social, cultural, and religious aspects of food.

Through a feast of words and images, Repast presents the irresistible, international story of food, drink, and the culinary arts.

Jenny Linford’s Repast: The Story of Food tries to tell the story of (human) foods through exhibits from the British Museum. It mostly highlights major food groups (like rice, maize, bread), methods of gathering food (like fishing and hunting) or techniques for preparing for food (like fermentation, baking, etc), and… overall it comes across as fairly run of the mill. The book doesn’t even begin to engage with why certain foodstuffs spread, for instance, or with the provenance of the items held by the British Museum, and comes across as pretty milquetoast — especially having recently read The Hungry Empire (which itself wasn’t THAT fiery).

There are some interesting pieces included from an array of cultures, but without somewhat more robust commentary, it’s sadly a bit disappointing. You might say that this stuff is out of scope for the story, but I don’t think so: food history, like fashion history, can tell you a lot about a time and place, and there’s so much to be told in terms of trade and fashion in food if you choose the right exhibits, and add a bit of discussion.

A pretty book, but disappointing.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)

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Review – Altar

Posted March 13, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – Altar

Altar

by Desree

Genres: Poetry
Pages: 72
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

The debut poetry collection from award-winning writer and spoken word artist, Desree, Altar explores multifaceted dimensions of sacrifice, challenging its heroism and examining its ties to servility. The poems in Altar urge their protagonists to play neither lion nor lamb, but to live and flourish on their own terms. Each page glimmers with vivid, often devastating vignettes: we witness the resilience of youth, the strength of the Black female body, the complexity of chosen and unchosen family, the sweeping effects of gentrification.Through reflections on Black British identity, queer joy, place and belonging, faith and consent, Desree invites the reader on a journey of reclamation, while her wry wit and disarming tenderness hold us through the necessary storms that mark the way.

I wasn’t sure what I’d think of Desree’s Altar; I’ve not been very interested in spoken word poetry, historically, and I read that Desree’s a spoken word artist, so I wasn’t sure how well her work lends itself to print. The answer in this volume is ‘just fine’, though the ebook version didn’t do the formatting any favours.

I didn’t entirely click with it all, but there were some poems and images that did grab me, like the recurring theme of the rose in her mouth, and this stanza:

“i knew bodies
built in the image of a fireplace
were only useful if there
was something burning
inside them. i learnt
safety means between flames“

Not entirely for me, this collection, but I did enjoy giving it a shot. And I do wonder still if some of the poems might not after all be better aloud, even if they did work fine in print.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Double Turn

Posted March 12, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 2 Comments

Review – The Double Turn

The Double Turn

by E.C.R. Lorac, Carol Carnac

Genres: Crime, Mystery
Pages: 220
Series: British Library Crime Classics
Rating: three-stars
Synopsis:

At Firenze, the reclusive artist Adrian Delafield’s Florentine enclave in St John’s Wood, the whispers of an impending tragedy are growing louder. The tension between the fanatical zealot of a housekeeper Miss Trimming and Delafield’s sister Virgilia is just shy of fever pitch, when a cold morning at the house finds Trimming and Adrian sprawled at either end of the staircase – upstairs, an injury; downstairs, death.

The windows and doors were all locked from the inside, and yet Inspector Julian Rivers, trained to see the malice behind deadly accident, suspects that a murderer had a hand in the fell deed. But if this is true, Rivers is faced with both the inexplicable puzzle of motive, and the task of untangling an impossible crime in Carnac’s compelling and twisting 1956 mystery exploring the demands of kinship, art-world secrets and religious mania.

Carol Carnac, AKA E.C.R. Lorac, is one of my favourite finds through the British Library Crime Classics series. I reliably enjoy her sense of place and ability to create characters I really root for, though I generally prefer her work under the name E.C.R. Lorac — I think because all of those I’ve read have starred Macdonald, and he’s such a humane sort of detective that it makes everything just a little comfier. I’m less fond of the detectives in The Double Turn, Lancing and Rivers: I’ve no reason to believe they’re meant to be any less decent than Macdonald, but they just don’t get the same fondness from me. I didn’t quite understand their frustration with one of the (innocent) characters, for example.

I still enjoyed The Double Turn as a mystery, though; I’m not sure if it was fair play, as the solution eventually partly hinged on a small detail that I can’t remember being mentioned previously (though there were other clues that could lead you in the right sort of direction, and there was a major one I didn’t pay enough attention to). I did realise that it was likely to end up being a character I didn’t want to be implicated, because Lorac’s so good at that, at creating people with massive flaws who nonetheless also have admirable qualities… but that’s more of a meta-clue.

In the end, it left me feeling a bit sad, to be honest. The way it ends doesn’t feel entirely like justice or everything being set to rights, because you can’t undo the harm done, and the victim wasn’t likeable but was in some ways admirable, and either way obviously didn’t deserve to be murdered in that way — and there was collateral damage too. It’s just… ugh.

All in all, not a favourite of Lorac’s; plenty of worthy aspects, but not my personal cup of tea.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)

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Review – The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, vol 4

Posted March 11, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish, vol 4

The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish

by Xue Shan Fei Hu

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels, Romance
Pages: 443
Series: The Disabled Tyrant's Beloved Pet Fish #4
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

STILL WATERS RUN DEEP

With their union blessed by the emperor and four baby heirs in tow, Prince Jing is well on his way to clinching the position of crown prince. But Li Yu can’t pat himself on the back for a job well done just yet! Prince Jing’s crafty brother still lurks in the shadows plotting against him.

As Li Yu dives deeper into the sixth prince’s schemes, he uncovers a dastardly conspiracy that ripples from Prince Jing’s childhood, forming a tsunami poised to plunge the imperial palace (and its allies) into total chaos! Li Yu will have to use all the fishy tricks at his disposal if he wants to keep his new family safe!

The fourth volume of The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish brings the whole thing to an end and wraps it up neatly with a bow, but dang, there’s a lot that happens in this volume still. After all, Prince Jing isn’t the crown prince yet, Li Yu still wants to have another baby, and there are those mysterious secrets that the fish-scamming system keeps showing him.

In general, I loved it. The babies are adorable, Li Yu and Mu Tianchi’s bond has become really strong (if sometimes in need of a tad more communication), and the political plot all works out and some of the secrets start to make sense.

I did want to address one thing, though: in this volume, the disabled tyrant is cured, in fact. Mu Tianchi’s mutism isn’t genetic, but has been caused by a low-dose poison he was given at birth. Once the poison is discovered and cured, he begins to be able to speak. You could argue that this is plot-necessary because otherwise he couldn’t become the emperor (at least not without becoming a tyrant), and also that Chinese culture isn’t in quite the same place about stuff like disability — but it’s still worth knowing, and worth knowing as well that there’s a brief mention of Li Yu telling the children that Mu Tianchi isn’t “different”, he’s “just sick”, implying it would be bad if he was disabled.

In the series as a whole, Li Yu never looks down on Mu Tianchi for being mute, and Mu Tianchi is always very capable — it’s just that it’s unacceptable for the emperor’s heir to be unable to speak. That said, that scene where Li Yu tries to explain away disability so as not to make the children think their dad is “different” suggests the author might treat permanent disability quite differently. So tread with care: there are some not-great attitudes toward disability swimming around the edges of the story and occasionally casting some shadows.

There are a few things that don’t entirely add up, plot-wise — e.g. the babies’ paternity was already confirmed on birth: Mu Tianchi offered his own blood for it rather than disturb Li Yu for his, I remember that scene clearly. Was that never communicated to the emperor? Not that he ever seems to genuinely doubt the children’s paternity anyway, but that whole bit is never mentioned as a reason why.

…But mostly I just loved it, really. It’s very sweet.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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Review – Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (light novel), vol 1

Posted March 10, 2026 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (light novel), vol 1

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint

by singNsong

Genres: Fantasy, Light Novels
Pages: 250
Series: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint (light novel) #1
Rating: four-stars
Synopsis:

IF YOU ARE READING THIS, YOU WILL SURVIVE.

Kill each other within the time limit or die. It’s just another evening commute on the train, until the passengers are given an order they can’t disobey. Utter chaos ensues, but ordinary office worker Dokja Kim only feels an unsettling calm. He knows exactly how this will play out! The subway car, the passengers’ reactions, even the bizarre creature that suddenly appears to oversee this sadistic scenario...everything is straight out of his favorite story, an online novel so obscure he is its sole reader. And as the only one who knows where the plot is headed, Dokja must use his knowledge to survive the oncoming apocalypse!

I didn’t know very much about singNsong’s Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint before picking it up — I’d seen friends be enthusiastic, been recommended it if I liked Solo Leveling (which I did) and it’s mentioned in Tiny Bookshop (though that might be the manhwa adaptation). I ended up burning right through it and really wanting the next volume — there’s something very compulsive about it.

Dokja Kim has spent his whole life reading this one webnovel, reading hundreds of chapters from when he’s being bullied in school to a temp job in his thirties, and then the novel starts coming true and he’s the only one who knows exactly what’s going on: that’s definitely compelling! He’s not always the most sympathetic character (he’s got his eye on survival rather than kindness), but the net result is that he ends up minimising slaughter and saving people. Reminds me indeed of Solo Leveling and the way Jinwoo decides to only rely on himself, and then ends up taking care of the people around him and saving the world. You expect it to take a darker turn.

There’s some interesting game-like mechanics in the world, and I’m very curious where it goes — and how Dokja and the people he’s saved, people who weren’t meant to survive, will change the story.

Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)

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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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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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