What I Read in November 2023

In November, I had plenty more time to read because I consciously made fewer plans. In fact, this is something I’m taking forwards into 2024 in a bid to spend less money and also to focus on my health and wellness goals. I feel like, for a few months there, I was always out! Thankfully, that’s translated into plenty of reading time for me. And, I’m actually on top of my Christmas shopping this year.

I’m also fully on track with my NetGalley ARCs! This month I read Money Talks, which publishes in January, and I’m looking forward to reviewing plenty more titles on my list for you, far ahead of their publication dates. Most of these will be live on my bookstagram before they make it to my bumper blog posts, if you’re interested in those!

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah

Rating: ★★★.5/5

This translated Korean fiction novella is a weird little one. Ayami has just finished her job at an auditorium for blind people, and must now think about her future again – something she’d long stopped doing since giving up her actor dreams. Ayami spends an evening in the company of her boss, first searching for a friend who has disappeared and then looking after a mysterious poet character. As a vibrant sunset blankets Seoul, Ayami ruminates all sorts of topics in conversation with each man.

There’s an uncanny, dreamlike quality to Untold Night and Day and I really appreciated the translator’s note about this in the back. Repetition slowly unfurls as the story progresses, which sparks the reader – or it did me – into a state of consciousness. What is going here? Is something happening to time or space? Suah also spills characters into one another, and they crop up in unexpected places and ways. It feels hallucinatory, and I couldn’t work out if we’re supposed to be hallucinating or if Ayami is. A strange little one, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

The Only One Left by Riley Sager

Rating: ★★★.5/5

In 1929, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coast. It was assumed that 17-year-old Lenora Hope, the youngest daughter of the family, was the culprit: she was the only one left. But the police were never able to prove it and, 50 years later, she is housebound, paralysed and unable to speak. When her newest caregiver, Kit McDeere, arrives at the infamous property to care for Lenora, she discovers Lenora is trying to communicate via an old typewriter and decides to do a little digging of her own. Who really was Lenora? And what happened in 1929?

This mystery fiction grabbed me from the start. Set in 1983, there’s an old-timey, gothic feel that permeates the story, the characters, the setting and chilling atmosphere. Sager manages to accomplish a realistic murder case that sets the eerie tone right from the start. Through a dual-narrative that absolutely works here, we slowly unravel the mysteries of what happened to the Hope family. I enjoyed the slow burn of the first half of The Only One Left: every character feels immensely real and, of course, you immediately start a ‘who dunnit?’ Chart in your mind.

Hope’s End, the mansion setting of the book, is gloriously brought to life and I’d LOVE to see this adapted for TV. Every time I opened the book (or, I suppose, my Kindle), I was immediately transported back to this gothic manor. And, I love how much of each character we get to see and sort of understand.

The final third of this book is sadly where it fell apart a bit for me. It was still a total page-turner, but Sager suddenly crams in so many ‘shocking’ twists, just as things are coming together. While some of them objectively worked, others felt like they’d been shoehorned in. I like tracing breadcrumbs to reach a conclusion in a mystery, but it didn’t feel like that at all. The ending was frustrating for me, because I feel like it could’ve ended sooner and better! Having said that, this was an undoubtedly brilliant and gripping read.

Money Talks by Ellie Austin-Williams

Thank you to Watkins Publishing and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Rating: ★★★/5

I’m not actually familiar with the author of Money Talks – she’s a finance influencer – but the book sounded fascinating and I was happy to be approved for a NetGalley copy. 2023 has been my year of getting financially savvy and I’d love to continue this journey.

Money Talks is a really accessible book that talks about money – duh – and finance without any barriers. I loved that it openly discusses the intersection between money and personal wellbeing – so many of us experience financial anxiety at least a few times in our lives, and it just isn’t talked about. Austin-Williams even details how comparison culture, rife in our age, affects finances, bringing societal pressures unlike in other generations. I firmly believe that openly and regularly talking about finance helps to break down taboos around money, and it empowers us too.

Austin-Williams intersperses real-life examples and case studies, plus well-positioned questions throughout, making it a real handbook of sorts. I think it’s an essential read for women of all ages, even those in their first-ever jobs as teenagers. There are endless facts and nuggets of information that I know would’ve made a big impression on me 12 years ago when I stepped into the murky world of full-time work. There are practical, albeit not super in-depth, chapters that handle things like managing your student finance, career change, salary negotiation, money in dating, relationships and marriage, and lending money to friends. For a book all about money and finance, it is genuinely enjoyable and interesting to read, too.

Beautiful Star by Yukio Mishima

Rating: ★★★★/5

Beautiful Star is widely thought to be Yukio Mishima’s masterpiece novel, a black comedy science fiction that was at last translated into English for the first time in 2023. I’ve already read one of Mishima’s works, but had no idea of his notoriety or of his beliefs and thoughts.

The Osugi’s are a relatively ‘normal’ family from the city of Hanno in Japan with one point of difference – they believe they are aliens, each member hailing from a different planet. Juichiro, the father, is from Mars, the mother Iyoko from Jupiter, son Kazuo of Mercury descent and Akiko from Venus. Immediately, this tints the story with a clear Weird overtone. Using this as the main plot device, Mishima explores the concepts that humans are void of something – emotion? Empathy? – and are filled with an inherent need to collect material objects, experiences, religious followings, romantic and platonic relationships… All in order to survive on planet Earth: our beautiful star. Aliens, on the hand, supposedly exist on a higher plane, looking down – literally and figuratively – on these silly humans. And they set out to correct this.

The writing in this is just stunning. Mishima’s descriptions of the moon and of the natural settings is breathtaking and I spent a lot of time noting down my favourite quotes. But there’s definitely a weird, omnipresent fear and distrust that fuels the writing that I, and other readers, believe comes from the Cold War. It is quite untrusting and unforgiving, but there are some brilliant themes and a wonderfully weird feel.

The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez

Thank you to Watkins Publishing and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Rating: ★★★/5

Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today, says a character in Sigrid Nunez’s ninth novel. The Vulnerables offers a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive at this complex moment in history and considers how our present reality affects the way a person looks back on her past. Humor, to be sure, is a priceless refuge. Equally vital is connection with others, who here include an adrift member of Gen Z and a spirited parrot named Eureka. The Vulnerables reveals what happens when strangers are willing to open their hearts to each other and how far even small acts of caring can go to ease another’s distress. A search for understanding about some of the most critical matters of our time, Nunez’s new novel is also an inquiry into the nature and purpose of writing itself.

The Vulnerables is an elegiac comedy, set during the pandemic and offering ‘a meditation on our contemporary era, as a solitary female narrator asks what it means to be alive’.

Like I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t read many books set in or post-pandemic and this is largely by choice. Really, I’m not sure if I’ve fully processed that time period yet and so I approached this eARC with caution. However, I was pleasantly surprised and The Vulnerables grew on me as a quixotic rumination of what it means to be alive, all whilst exploring society’s standards of the average person, of hierarchy and the curious interactions between strangers.

Our narrator brings a compelling and modern voice to the book, never propelling the story hugely forwards, but rather ruminating on everything that is going on [in the pandemic and lockdowns] and all that may be still to come. She’s accompanied by a spirited bird, Eureka, which did lose me a little. What can I say? I adore animals, but don’t quite connect to them as fully fledged characters in a novel. This book reads like a cosy but querying meditation on humanity and our lives as the pandemic threw our daily routines and what we knew to be true out of whack. I think I finished it feeling just mildly unsettled. (Likely because I read it alongside Beautiful Star by Yukio Mishima, which ruminated whether humanity should exist!)

The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers

Thank you to Hodderscape and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Rating: ★★★/5

Later in the month I dipped my toe back into fantasy at long last with a read of the eagerly anticipated The City of Stardust by Georgia Summers. I’ve been after a new standalone fantasy novel to obsess over, and this sounded right up my street. Power-hungry scholars, ancient gods and underworld monsters? Sign. Me. Up.

Beautiful cover aside, The City of Stardust didn’t disappoint in terms of high fantasy with a big magic presence. For centuries, generations of Everlys have seen a member of their family disappear, taken as ‘punishment’ for a centuries-old crime that nobody seems to remember. Ten years ago, Violet Everly’s mother left their world, determined to break this terrible curse. And, now, Violet follows in her footsteps to find her mother… or be taken in her place. Thus begins Violet’s descent into a magical underworld, switching between worlds that teem with scholars, monsters, gods and curses. There’s Penelope, the tormentor, and her assistant, Aleksander, who Violet instantly feels drawn too.

I felt this was a surprisingly strong debut from Summers. The world-building is rich and evocative, the story dark, and there’s a winning amount of magic and lore – I feel like, recently, the fantasies I’ve picked up lack the magic?! And, it’s an ode to book lovers, with some really stunning passages at the start, since Violet is a bookworm and fiction-adventurer herself. However, while I found the concept and overall plot fascinating, the novel loses focus at the midway point for me. The reveals are for us, not the characters, which is a bit stressful, and the pacing is really off for me. I kept thinking I was at the grand finale at the 70% mark, then 75%, then 80%, which meant the ending felt anti-climatic and surely drawn-out. I wish Violet had more character development and that any development she did get were maintained throughout the story.