Every year, I set my Goodreads reading goal to 100 books. I’ve never once completed this, but considering I’m going on almost ten years of this tradition – well, I’ve got to try!
If you don’t want to read the full mini-reviews I’m going to share here, I have summed up my thoughts in a little TikTok!
This month, I managed to read five pieces of literature – two poetry chapbooks, one graphic novel, and two novels. I’ll be reviewing each of them below! I will endeavour to write about them in the order that they appear in my TikTok above. Some reviews will undoubtedly be longer than others!
Jurassic Park: The Lost World by Michael Crichton
First of all, and I said this with my review of the first Jurassic Park novel, this novel is so much better than the film.
Now, if you’ve read my previous review, you’ll see that I was quite certain Malcolm had died… only for him to be a very central character once again in this novel. Now a fun piece of trivia – there was never supposed to be a second novel! It was only at the request of Spielberg that Crichton put pen to paper and wrote The Lost World, in 1996, from which the sequel film was adapted in 1997. So I am personally of the belief that Malcolm was indeed supposed to succumb to his wounds from the T-Rex and not, miraculously, recover with almost full mobility.
I definitely think this lived up to its predecessor; the new cast of characters was refreshing, and the plot and motives of each thoroughly unique.
doglike: A collection of poems by Rory Aaron
As someone who studied in Derby, and subsequently worked there for a further year, it was nice to understand some of the references in these poems.
This was a short collection full of interesting narratives and characters.
The Tanglewood Teashop by Lilac Mills
I adored this novel. What’s more, is it was a charity shop find for me – and I am so glad I picked it up! As I put in my tiktok, this read was cheesy, heartwarming, and delightful. I love novels that focus on modern, intelligent, and creative women – another similar read to this is Crazy in Love at the Lonely Hearts Bookshop, which is definitely a contender for my all-time favourite read.
At first, I thought the references and character descriptions in this book were a little dated, but as I got more and more into the story and the characters fleshed themselves out, the references made perfect sense – they reflected very real personas that you have probably already encountered in your own family.
I loved the storyline for this, and felt the romances within neatly interweaved with the characters.
Next week, I’ll be sharing an interview/Q&A that I had with the author, Lilac Mills.
(un)informed: A collection of poems by Becky Deans
These poems had a lot more rhyme and structure to them than those by Rory, which was very refreshing to me. Often, modern poetry is more contemporary (think Rupi Kaur or Amanda Lovelace), so to read ones that could be deemed more classic in nature was a nice change of pace.
Drifter, Vol. 1: Out of the Night by Ivan Brandon and Nic Klein
I feel like this is a great example of how not to world build, or introduce readers to a story setting. From the get-go, I had no idea what was happening. And whilst this can be a great narrative tool, I felt it was poorly executed in this graphic novel.
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