Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Jennie Godfrey NARRATORS: Joanne Froggatt, Mark Noble, Asif Khan, Gemma Whelan, & Simon Harvey GENRE: Coming-of-Age Historical Fiction. PUBLICATION DATE: February 15, 2024 RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A coming-of-age historical fiction with elements of mystery. Character-oriented. Child narrator, which is an unusual but interesting choice for this storyline. Interesting characters, slow-ish pacing, great use of time period and location. Too many themes. Mostly bleak, though there are many glimpses of joy and hope. A good debut. Recommended, but don’t read this as a crime mystery. Plot Preview: 1979, Yorkshire. Twelve-year-old Mavis, known to all as ‘Miv’, isn't happy about how things are in her life. Her mom suddenly became sick and stopped talking, her father has been struggling to keep things going so his somewhat-stern sister has moved in to help out with Miv. But now, because of the unidentified serial killer murdering young women in Yorkshire, her father has ...

AUTHOR: Ella King GENRE: Contemporary Literary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: August 23, 2022 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A contemporary literary fiction portraying a highly toxic mother-daughter relationship. Character-oriented. Dark and disturbing. Plenty of triggers. Too much of deliberate secret-keeping and miscommunication, which sullies the overall impact. Might be a decent one-time read, as long as you aren’t looking for characters with redeeming qualities. But to me (and to my present state of mind), this felt like trauma p0rn. Plot Preview: Greenwich, UK. Seventeen-year-old Lily has just graduated from high school and waiting to start college at Oxford. She is constantly on tenterhooks around her volatile Singaporean mother May, As her British father Charlie also can't keep his wife’s temper in check, it is up to Lily to handle May’s devious tantrums as the only other resident of the house, her elder siblings already having moved out. As May’s behaviour grows increasingly ...

AUTHOR & ILLUSTRATOR: Lou Lubie GENRE: Graphic Novel PUBLICATION DATE: May 5, 2026 RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: An adult graphic novel about a girl coming to terms with her hair and her identity. Great plot, steady pacing, wonderful themes, powerful message. Excellent use of ‘hair’ to discuss several societal and feminine issues. The illustrations are perfect for the story. Much recommended. Plot Preview: Rose is a young mixed-race Creole girl growing up on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean. She hates her excessively kinky hair and the torture of maintaining it. As soon as she is allowed to, she begins straightening it. Even after moving to mainland France for higher studies, she remains obsessed with fitting in especially where hair is concerned. But after a point, she begins questioning why only curly hair has to go through so much discrimination. The story comes to us in Rose’s first-person perspective. This graphic novel, originally published in French under the title “Ra...

AUTHOR: Nina Mack GENRE: Nonfiction, Self-Help, Psychology. PUBLICATION DATE: July 1, 2026 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: A “fact”-debunking book of sorts. Takes various generalised statements from popular psychology and informs us of their veracity. Eye-opening in various ways. Not exactly my genre, but the intent drew me in and the content kept me fairly engrossed. Will click even better with fans of motivational nonfiction, though this isn't a motivational book. Definitely recommended. I've never been a fan of the self-help genre. Almost every motivational book I begin ends up a DNF, so much so that I don’t even try the genre anymore. The only book that has worked to some extent for me is ‘Atomic Habits’ by James Clear . But when I saw the tagline of this book, I simply couldn't resist giving it a go: “89 Popular Psychology Ideas Examined and Explained”. Not any small number, but 89, showing the grand extent to which psych theories are popular with general people who m...

AUTHOR: Stacey Lee GENRE: Historical Mystery PUBLICATION DATE: March 17, 2026 RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: A historical murder mystery. Not much of a historical feel, not much of a mystery. Excellent description of the location and the sea creatures. Boring plot. Bland characters. Annoying love triangle. Very disappointed. I didn't realise this was a YA book when I got it, but even as a YA book, I doubt teenagers will actually enjoy such a storyline. Plot Preview: 1918. Orcas Island, Washington. Eighteen-year-old Lucy Nowhere has spent her entire life working on the estate of the rich shipbuilder named Daken Sanders who took her in after she was orphaned as a baby. As she longs for a life beyond the island, she has applied for college in Washington. Her benefactor isn't thrilled with her decision. Just a couple of days before she has to leave, she finds his severed head on the beach. Locals blame a mysterious spirit and the sea wolves for the killing, despite evidence of huma...

AUTHOR: Peter S. Beagle ADAPTOR: Peter B. Gillis ILLUSTRATORS: Renae De Liz & Ray Dillon SERIES: The Last Unicorn Comics 1-6. GENRE: Graphic Novel PUBLICATION DATE: January 25, 2011 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A graphic novel adaptation of the classic fantasy story. Fabulous illustrations, but the story execution was too uneven to comprehend well. Perhaps I'd have liked this better had I read the actual novel instead of this illustrated version. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: A beautiful unicorn has been living around in a forest for as long as she can remember. But when she overhears some wandering humans talking, she finds out that they believe there are no other unicorns in the world. To know the truth of whether she is indeed the last unicorn, she sets out on a journey. But it turns out to be a far more dangerous and revelatory quest than she had anticipated. The fifty-year-old children's classic novel was adapted in a comic series of six volumes. This gra...

AUTHOR: Tochi Eze GENRE: Domestic Drama PUBLICATION DATE: August 5, 2025 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A dual-timeline domestic drama exploring the effects of contradictory beliefs on a marriage. Character-driven. Interesting exploration of the central theme and some other tough topics. Flawed but well-sketched characters. Thin plot with too many themes. Good use of the Nigerian setting. Slow-paced. Not everything settled at the end. Somehow a bit distanced in execution. Quite ambitious for a debut. A good one-time read. Plot Preview: Then in 1960s Lagos. Independent-yet-traditional Margaret didn’t expect to form a relationship with British-born half-Nigerian Benjamin. But their rapport is strong, and despite indications from both their families that they should separate and despite learning that their pasts are more connected than they knew, they get married in secret. But the burden of marriage and parenthood on a young couple without familial support is always high. Margaret’s wor...

AUTHOR: Jo Ellen Bogart ILLUSTRATOR: Maja Kastelic GENRE: Children's Picture Book PUBLICATION DATE: October 5, 2021 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A wordless picture book about a little boy and a gargoyle. Cute story, but leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Amazing illustrations. Recommended, but mainly for adult-child buddy reading. Plot Preview : Anthony lives with his parents in a house full of photos. One day, a “rock” in Anthony’s room cracks open, to reveal a strange but friendly creature inside. When Anthony asks his mother about the rock, she shows him the photo album of their trip of Paris. Anthony realises that his new friend resembles the gargoyles at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. He shows the photos to the little gargoyle as well. And when they get a chance to go to Paris to visit his ailing grandma, Anthony makes sure that they find the gargoyle who resembles the baby gargoyle the most. I am not usually fond of wordless picture books, but the presence of the word ‘ga...

AUTHOR: Frode Grytten TRANSLATOR: Alison McCullough NARRATOR: Colin Mace GENRE: Literary Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: November 18, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A literary fantasy-fiction set on a fjord in Norway. Introspective, not morbid. Too many characters, too meandering and monotonous for my liking. Some unnecessary triggering and crass content. Better for those who are more about prose than plot. Recommended, but not to all. Plot Preview: One morning, Nils Vik, a ferryman, wakes up and knows that it will be the day he dies. He still wants to follow his routine, so after his morning routine, he looks around his empty house for one last time, walks out, and boards his beloved boat that he has been ferrying on the fjord for many years. As he sets off, his dead dog joins him, and one by one, several other souls also make their way to Nils Vik one by one across each of the ferry stops. Each, including the dog, discusses several things from the past, sometimes offering the ferryma...

AUTHOR: The Amazing Theatre of Physics GENRE: Juvenile Nonfiction, Science. SERIES: Science All Around Us, #2 PUBLICATION DATE: June 24, 2025 RATING: 4 stars. In a Nutshell: An illustrated book about the real-life examples of physics in a city. Practical and informative. A great option for STEM enthusiasts in the middle-grade and teen age groups. This is the second book in the interesting STEM series titled ‘Science All Around Us’. It does an excellent job of enlightening children about the practical aspects of two of the most dreaded science subjects: physics and chemistry. I have already read two books from this series: Book One: The Awesome Physics in Your Home and Book Three: The Amazing Chemistry in Your Home . Book Two maintains the same level of quality, though set in a different environment. As the title indicates, this book leaves the ‘home’ setting and focusses on applications of physics in the city at large. I appreciate how the places chosen are the ones that children actu...

AUTHOR: Jaclyn Desforges GENRE: Speculative Short Story Collection PUBLICATION DATE: RATING: Can't decide. In a Nutshell: A collection of somewhat absurdist short stories. Highly creative, but a bit too random in development. This collection has its merits but it wasn't the right book for me. A good option for those who don’t seek a destination but enjoy a meandering journey. The title and the cover called out to me so strongly that I had to try this collection. The description was also intriguing. Unfortunately for me (and the book), the stories had fewer babies and more weirdness than I would have liked. From the description, I understood this to be a speculative fiction collection. The thirteen stories herein are indeed speculative, but more towards the absurd side of the spectrum than the fantastical side. I don't mind absurd fiction when there's some rhyme or rhythm to the plot, but this set of stories was a combination of stream of consciousness and abstract bizar...

AUTHOR: Meg Shaffer GENRE: Fantasy-Romance PUBLICATION DATE: April 7, 2026 RATING: 1 star. In a Nutshell: A book-about-books fantasy featuring the titular book witch. After the super-interesting start, this absolutely didn’t go the way I expected it to. Too much of insta-love. OTT dialogues, absurd plot twists, and immature characters. I enjoyed this author’s first two novels but simply couldn’t connect with this one. This is an outlier review. Plot Preview: Despite her youth, twenty-five-year-old Rainy March has been a book witch for more than a decade. She follows all the rules of the profession seriously, including the one about ensuring that fictional characters and the real world do not intersect. But when she is sent on assignment into the book series starring the Duke of Chicago, her favourite book character, she forgets all the rules and ends up in a relationship with him. When this is discovered by the head witch, Rainy is forbidden from interacting with the fictional characte...

AUTHOR: Gabrielle Meyer SERIES: Timeless, #7 GENRE: Historical Romance. PUBLICATION DATE: May 5, 2026 RATING: 4.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A historical fiction novel set during two timelines: the Gold Rush and the Golden Age of Hollywood. The latest novel from the incomparable Timeless series, and probably the one with the most number of surprises. Excellent plot, characters, writing, and historical research. Christian without being preachy. A bit slow and repetitive in the final quarter, but the ending is worth it. Much recommended! Works as a standalone but better to read in series order. Plot Preview:  Twenty-four-year-old Ally Adams lives two simultaneous lives. ( If you've read any of the Timeless books, you know how her time-crossing works. )  In 1849, wishing to restore her family’s lost comforts, Ally intends to capitalise on the Gold Rush and travels with her sick father and young half-sister to San Francisco, where she finds herself penniless and at the mercy of an ex-c...

AUTHOR: Annalisa Crawford GENRE: Story Collection, Dark Literary Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: July 24, 2026 RATING: 4.25 stars In a Nutshell: An indie collection comprising one novella and three short stories. Excellent atmosphere and lyrical writing. Dark and haunting. Much recommended. I've been a fan of this author ever since I read her story collection titled "The Clock in My Mother's House and Other Stories."  Since then, I've read three more of her works and enjoyed all of them. Safe to say that I now pick up an Annalisa Crawford work without even reading the blurb. A risky strategy, but with the right author, the reward is almost always assured. This latest book justifies my faith in her writing. The collection comprises one novella and three short stories. The novella takes up about 65% of the book. The mood in all four entries is somewhat similar: melancholic and haunting. The stories circulate around the same core topics of personal loss, grief, mental hea...