Hungary in the fall, weird books & the first snow | November wrap-up

Wat is het toch bijzonder om een boek te mogen lezen dat geschreven is door iemand die je kent! Manon Borgen, ook op Instagram actief als booksbymanon, ken ik al jaren als bookstagrammer. Ze heeft al eerder een serie feel-good romans geschreven, en heeft met dit boek een echte hit te pakken met onder andere veel succes op Storytel!

Omdat dit geschreven is door iemand die ik privé ken, laat ik verder geen review of rating achter.

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Lucy Foley has an incredible talent of leading you on, while making you feel like you are figuring it out. There’s the obvious red herring, the plot you think is the solution but is another red herring, and the actual solution. There’s usually a lot going on, with a big ensemble cast, but it never feels confusing or hard to follow. (Unless, of course, the purpose is to confuse you.)

The Paris Apartment follows Jess, who arrives to her brother’s apartment in Paris, much in need of a break from her life. But when she arrives at her brother’s place, Ben is nowhere to be found. The keys still in his pocket, his phone still on the counter, the neighbors that will barely look at her, make her suspect that something might be very, very wrong in the apartment.

It’s a brilliantly creepy read in a very immersive atmosphere. I can’t tell the amount of nights I laid awake much later than planned, because I just had to read one more chapter. The only flaw I could find in it is that it jumps around a lot in between perspectives and timelines, which made it a bit tough to follow.

This is my second Lucy Foley book of the year, and I have to say I am quickly becoming a fan of her thrillers. I read Foley’s The Midnight Feast over the summer and I was completely riveted. Although I enjoyed The Paris Apartment a bit less, it’s still a solid four star read for me.

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I have been in the book community long enough to know that Sally Rooney is one of those authors you either love or hate. She has such a unique writing style, with no quotation marks or noticeable dialogue between characters. Everything just reads very stream of consciousness. It either works for you, or it doesn’t. I, unfortunately, seem to fall into the category of people who it doesn’t work for.

I’m normally a person who enjoys reading strange writing styles, so I didn’t expect to dislike it as much as I did. Her stream of consciousness writing made it very hard for me to actually get into the story. I would’ve dnf’ed it a couple pages in if I hadn’t been reading this for a book club. I switched to the audio-book, which ended up being a godsend & allowed me to actually finish the story.

Intermezzo follows the story of Peter and Ivan, two brothers struggling to reconnect after their father passes away. It affects their relationships with the people they love, as well as the relationship they have between them. Grief and shame are two big themes in the book, which Rooney does write about quite well. Maybe her books were just overhyped for me, but I felt like it wasn’t a very profound story.

This just didn’t really blow my mind or tug on my heartstrings like I had anticipated. I landed on 3,5 stars total, after discussing the themes with the book club. I’m not sure I’d recommend this to anyone, but I can see why some might enjoy it. It just really didn’t work for me.

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This book feels almost impossible to review or rate. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, in the same way that you can sometimes enjoy watching a very gory horror movie. Girls Against God is a compilation of the most strange, witchy, god-hating insanity that I have ever laid my eyes upon.

I have a hard time even explaining what this book is precisely about, but here is a quote from the Goodreads summary that doe a much better job of describing it than I ever could: “At once a time-travelling horror story and a fugue-like feminist manifesto, this is a singular, genre-warping new novel from the author of the acclaimed Paradise Rot. […] It’s is a radical fusion of feminist theory and experimental horror, and a unique treatise on magic, gender and art.“

I would never tell anyone to read it, unless maybe they were also an insufferable teenage girl on Tumblr in 2014 who’s first response to women going insane in horror movies is ‘You go, girl’. I spent most of my time reading it thinking ‘What the fuck?’ and the rest of my time saying ‘What the fuck?’ out loud. It delivers what it promises, which is absolute insanity. 4,5 stars out of five.

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