Matti grows up in a tiny town in the remote north of Sweden in the 1960s and 70s. The chapters in this book are more like little short stories about different aspects of his childhood and adolescence, chronicled with humour and the occasional forays into strange, magical realism-inspired fantasy sequences. The inhabitants of his town and the surrounding areas seem to be either deeply puritanically religious or Communists, not caring for the trappings of religion at all. The gruff and peculiar inhabitants are set in […]
All my fears were unfounded – of course I loved this book
Six days into the first manned mission on Mars, there is a huge dust storm, forcing most of the crew to evacuate, earlier than anticipated. Mark Watney, the crew’s botanist and mechanical engineer is impaled on an antenna and believed to have died. He wakes up alone, stranded on Mars with no way of signalling Earth that he is still alive. The next manned mission to Mars is scheduled in four years’ time, and even if he were able to send a signal to announce […]
Persevere beyond the first third of the book, it gets better
In this clearly Gothic novel-inspired contemporary romance, unemployed and down on her luck Annie Hewitt has to spend the next sixty days in a small cottage on a remote island on the coast of Maine, because of complicated arrangement in her recently deceased mother’s will. Her closest neighbour just so happens to be Theo Harp, famous horror writer and her stepbrother for a time when they were teens. As a teenager, Annie had a big crush on Theo, but he was unpredictable and at turns […]
If Drew is Capt. America, then Grey is Thor
The first thing you need to know is that I enjoyed reading The Friend Zone every bit as much as I enjoyed The Hook Up and I am grateful to Malin for bringing both into my life. I feel like I need to start with this because I pick this ones nits more than I did The Hook Up’s. Mostly this is because I’ve waited longer to review The Friend Zone, so you are getting my week plus later assessment, instead of immediate after glow. […]