Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
Essun is going after her missing daughter Nassun, while the world is slowly ending. Ash and acid are falling from the skies and the wildlife is eating people in unusual ways.
She finds an old friend instead.
Earth is clearly no place for humans in this series and I don’t need the third book to see where it’s all headed. But there’s a tiny bit of hope that this very unstable world can provide home to humans. So I think I’ll continue with it.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5. Also, the copy is beautiful.
What if your child suddenly started saying and doing disturbing things – words and actions no kid should know? As a parent, a primal fear kicks in: someone must have hurt them. But who? What if it’s someone from or close to the family?
That’s the terrifying premise behind Nicci French’s The Unheard.
The book follows Tess, a single mother sharing custody of her daughter with her ex. Life is already difficult, but when her child begins showing troubling signs, Tess spirals into suspicion and paranoia. She goes to the police, desperate for someone to believe her. Instead, she meets resistance, threats, and outright gaslighting from her ex, her friends, the authorities, even from me as a reader.
Tess is almost unbearable. She’s obsessive, frantic, annoying. Nothing she does makes sense. But maybe that’s the point. As readers, we’re pulled into her unstable perspective. We feel her isolation.
The duo behind Nicci French crafts a psychological thriller that pokes at deep-seated fears. It’s not a comfortable read. It’s not about who did it, even though we’ll be presented with a name. The book is about the atmosphere. That part is maybe 5⭐️/5.
3.5⭐️/5, I didn’t like it but will keep reading Nicci French.
The book fair is over. I didn’t get as many books as I wanted because I already have too many. I need to be mindful about how much space they take and have not recently donated to the library to free up the shelves. I think I still got some pretty nice books.
On the photo:
I made it to the book signing with Adrian and got my copy of Children of Ruin signed. Big thanks to the publisher for putting these events together, helps a book blogger gain some good memories, photos, and posts.
The event kicked off with a panel exploring just how alien aliens can be, which was fun and thought-provoking. What would a spider say to a human if the spider communicates by pulling strings? Why haven’t you all read Octavia Butler?After that, we had a short game, a Q&A session, and finally the signing itself.
I’m really glad I got the chance to attend. It was memorable!
August was a fine month for reading. I managed to finish 8 books, mostly thrillers and fantasy.
Veselin.blog 