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Reading Retreat Reviews
Apr. 1st, 2025 03:31 pmWe went on a glorious reading retreat in Somerset this past weekend, so I have a few reviews to catch up on!
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal:
This is the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, which is one of my favourites - and this book was highly anticipated, because it's been five years since the last one came out. I listened to the first three again earlier in the year, to remind myself of the characters and what had happened - and that was a great experience.
The book follows Dr Elma York, her husband Nathaniel, and various other repeat or new characters as they work to build a permanent habitat on Mars (there's a whole thing about various people not wanting it to be called a colony, which is interesting).
Overall, it's fun and entertaining, with some heavier themes and darker moments, as I've come to expect from this series. But it also felt a bit slight. The main mystery is about why the people who went down to the surface of Mars on the first peopled expedition are apparently lying to Elma about certain things that happened back then. Which is intriguing - but it's dragged out quite a bit and quickly gets repetitive. When we eventually get the big reveal, it is shocking, but its impact is somewhat diminished by it being delivered over a conference call, with most of the relevant characters being in different locations.
There are lots of great things about this book, though - revisiting familiar characters in new situations, meeting new cast members, continuing to explore the politics of the space program - and especially the fact that Elma is exactly the same age I was when reading this for the first time, and that having an impact on her experiences and activities.
There's a bit of trans rep, though it's only very minor - nice to see, though.
So, I enjoyed it and it provided an entertaining and satisfying end to the series as a whole - but it perhaps wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be.
Beach Read by Emily Henry:
I've head a lot about this author and this book in particular, over the last year of watching videos on BookTube, so I decided to finally give it a go, despite contemporary romance not really being my thing.
And I largely really enjoyed it!
The writing is really good, I liked the characters, and a lot of the story was very entertaining.
But I would say it feels like about four different books mashed together, and not particularly successfully in places.
The cover, the colour palette, all the text on the outside of the book, and the first couple of chapters - all point towards a quirky, comic romance full of painful awkwardness and embarrassing encounters. But then there are also the deeply emotional bits that relate to the main characters' backgrounds, the melodramatic angst during the sections when they are misunderstanding each other and failing to communicate, and then there's the intense sexual tension leading to perhaps a little bit more spice than I would prefer.
It did make me laugh out loud quite a few times, and I especially enjoyed all the aspects that are about writing (very amusing and true to life) - plus I liked all the peripheral characters, though I would have liked a lot more of some of them.
It ramps up quite a lot towards the end - and the ultimate conclusion involved one of the most romantic things ever, but also felt a bit dissatisfying in some ways.
So - I liked it more than I thought I would but not as much as I hoped I might.
The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett:
If I'd flipped through this book when I picked it up at a charity shop recently, and discovered that it's mixed media, mostly made up of text messages, email exchanges and transcripts of interviews, I probably wouldn't have bought it.
So I'm glad I didn't, because I rather enjoyed it overall.
It's about a journalist researching the events surrounding deaths of cult members nearly 20 years after the fact. It's a fast read and very pacy, and definitely ramps up in the stakes and tension towards the end - though it also lost me a bit through being overcomplicated (that could have been exacerbated by me trying to read it too quickly).
I liked that there was some ambiguity for a while as to whether there might be supernatural things going on, and I also liked that not all the loose threads were neatly tied up at the end.
There are lots and lots of moving parts and it's all connected together very cleverly - though there was quite a bit of extended info-dumping to explain everything at the end.
Interesting, well put together, entertaining - but a bit much by the end.
Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander:
I thought this was going to be a light, uplifting, heartwarming, highly predictable read - and it was not...
It's about a woman who hasn't left her house in 1200 days, gradually revealing why that is and following her as she starts on the journey to getting back out in the world.
There are found family aspects that I loved, peripheral characters that I loved, small moments of poignancy and joy that I loved, and an ultimate conclusion that I loved.
But there was also a lot more darkness and trauma than I was expecting - and I felt that a lot of that was revealed to early, so its impact was diminished by not yet being connected enough to the characters to really feel their pain. It was also a bit weird that two pairs of characters shared almost exactly the same trauma, which also felt a bit reductive.
So, it was a tougher read than I was expecting - but that's not necessarily a bad thing - and I enjoyed it overall.
This Family by Kate Sawyer:
I met this author on my last reading retreat in December, so snapped this book up as soon as I spotted it in a local charity shop.
It charts the events of a weekend, where the matriarch of a family is getting married and has invited her three daughters to attend, even though they haven't all been in the same place for many years.
It's well written, but it took me fully half the book to really get into it, because the complicated inter-relationships between the characters were deliberately obscured for a couple of hundred pages, which made the whole thing very confusing, which annoyed me.
All the characters are layered and complex and flawed and very real, which I always appreciate in books - and the way the events played out (gradually informed by multiple flashbacks to earlier periods) was well put together.
But the 'secrets' mentioned in the blurb on the back are only secret from the reader - all the characters already know everything that's happened, so it felt as if the narrative was being unnecessarily contorted to keep things from the reader that the characters were already aware of.
Still, an impressive feat of engineering in terms of structure, and an interesting set of characters with lots of drama.
The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal:
This is the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series, which is one of my favourites - and this book was highly anticipated, because it's been five years since the last one came out. I listened to the first three again earlier in the year, to remind myself of the characters and what had happened - and that was a great experience.
The book follows Dr Elma York, her husband Nathaniel, and various other repeat or new characters as they work to build a permanent habitat on Mars (there's a whole thing about various people not wanting it to be called a colony, which is interesting).
Overall, it's fun and entertaining, with some heavier themes and darker moments, as I've come to expect from this series. But it also felt a bit slight. The main mystery is about why the people who went down to the surface of Mars on the first peopled expedition are apparently lying to Elma about certain things that happened back then. Which is intriguing - but it's dragged out quite a bit and quickly gets repetitive. When we eventually get the big reveal, it is shocking, but its impact is somewhat diminished by it being delivered over a conference call, with most of the relevant characters being in different locations.
There are lots of great things about this book, though - revisiting familiar characters in new situations, meeting new cast members, continuing to explore the politics of the space program - and especially the fact that Elma is exactly the same age I was when reading this for the first time, and that having an impact on her experiences and activities.
There's a bit of trans rep, though it's only very minor - nice to see, though.
So, I enjoyed it and it provided an entertaining and satisfying end to the series as a whole - but it perhaps wasn't as good as I was hoping it would be.
Beach Read by Emily Henry:
I've head a lot about this author and this book in particular, over the last year of watching videos on BookTube, so I decided to finally give it a go, despite contemporary romance not really being my thing.
And I largely really enjoyed it!
The writing is really good, I liked the characters, and a lot of the story was very entertaining.
But I would say it feels like about four different books mashed together, and not particularly successfully in places.
The cover, the colour palette, all the text on the outside of the book, and the first couple of chapters - all point towards a quirky, comic romance full of painful awkwardness and embarrassing encounters. But then there are also the deeply emotional bits that relate to the main characters' backgrounds, the melodramatic angst during the sections when they are misunderstanding each other and failing to communicate, and then there's the intense sexual tension leading to perhaps a little bit more spice than I would prefer.
It did make me laugh out loud quite a few times, and I especially enjoyed all the aspects that are about writing (very amusing and true to life) - plus I liked all the peripheral characters, though I would have liked a lot more of some of them.
It ramps up quite a lot towards the end - and the ultimate conclusion involved one of the most romantic things ever, but also felt a bit dissatisfying in some ways.
So - I liked it more than I thought I would but not as much as I hoped I might.
The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett:
If I'd flipped through this book when I picked it up at a charity shop recently, and discovered that it's mixed media, mostly made up of text messages, email exchanges and transcripts of interviews, I probably wouldn't have bought it.
So I'm glad I didn't, because I rather enjoyed it overall.
It's about a journalist researching the events surrounding deaths of cult members nearly 20 years after the fact. It's a fast read and very pacy, and definitely ramps up in the stakes and tension towards the end - though it also lost me a bit through being overcomplicated (that could have been exacerbated by me trying to read it too quickly).
I liked that there was some ambiguity for a while as to whether there might be supernatural things going on, and I also liked that not all the loose threads were neatly tied up at the end.
There are lots and lots of moving parts and it's all connected together very cleverly - though there was quite a bit of extended info-dumping to explain everything at the end.
Interesting, well put together, entertaining - but a bit much by the end.
Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander:
I thought this was going to be a light, uplifting, heartwarming, highly predictable read - and it was not...
It's about a woman who hasn't left her house in 1200 days, gradually revealing why that is and following her as she starts on the journey to getting back out in the world.
There are found family aspects that I loved, peripheral characters that I loved, small moments of poignancy and joy that I loved, and an ultimate conclusion that I loved.
But there was also a lot more darkness and trauma than I was expecting - and I felt that a lot of that was revealed to early, so its impact was diminished by not yet being connected enough to the characters to really feel their pain. It was also a bit weird that two pairs of characters shared almost exactly the same trauma, which also felt a bit reductive.
So, it was a tougher read than I was expecting - but that's not necessarily a bad thing - and I enjoyed it overall.
This Family by Kate Sawyer:
I met this author on my last reading retreat in December, so snapped this book up as soon as I spotted it in a local charity shop.
It charts the events of a weekend, where the matriarch of a family is getting married and has invited her three daughters to attend, even though they haven't all been in the same place for many years.
It's well written, but it took me fully half the book to really get into it, because the complicated inter-relationships between the characters were deliberately obscured for a couple of hundred pages, which made the whole thing very confusing, which annoyed me.
All the characters are layered and complex and flawed and very real, which I always appreciate in books - and the way the events played out (gradually informed by multiple flashbacks to earlier periods) was well put together.
But the 'secrets' mentioned in the blurb on the back are only secret from the reader - all the characters already know everything that's happened, so it felt as if the narrative was being unnecessarily contorted to keep things from the reader that the characters were already aware of.
Still, an impressive feat of engineering in terms of structure, and an interesting set of characters with lots of drama.
