I picked up None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell in a charity shop because its title helped fulfil a prompt from a complicated reading challenge I'm doing - and I'm really glad I did!
I struggle with thrillers sometimes - either overwhelmed by an ending that goes way too far or underwhelmed by and ending that doesn't go far enough. But this one was pretty satisfying overall.
It's hard to do a narrative viewpoint well when the character in question is hiding a lot of things from the reader, but this is a good example of that done very effectively.
I also liked that all the characters, including the victims, are flawed - it makes the whole thing a lot more real and a lot more ambiguous. It's all in the title...

Subsequent to watching the recent TV adaptation of Murderbot, I decided to revisit the book series - the first of which I listened to on audio a few years ago.

All Systems Red - as with the last time I tried this, it took a while for me to get into it because Murderbot is very detached and unemotional at the start (which is the point but it makes it hard to connect to the story or the characters) and the other characters are given very little in the way of description, attributes or personality. Having watched the TV show really helped because I could picture them and had previous attachments to them, and I also understood what was going on, which I think I would have struggled with if that hadn't been the case. It does pick up towards the end, with Murderbot's growing investment in its human clients, and the very end is quite affecting and interesting.

Artificial Condition - the second book was new to me, and also didn't have the benefit of a TV adaptation to help me out, so I did struggle a bit with understanding the details of the mission in the second half. However, the characters aside from Murderbot are given a lot more detail and individuality this time around, so it was easier to engage with the inter-relationships. I loved Art, the research transport, and the development of its relationship with Murderbot was my favourite aspect of the book. I also liked the throughline of Murderbot trying to understand things from its past, which was carried over from the first book. I may carry on with the series at some point, but I'm not invested enough to want to jump straight back in.

The Sword Defiant by Gareth Hanrahan is the first in a fantasy trilogy with a difference. Instead of detailing the heroes' great quest, it takes place 20 years after the quest is over and the dark forces have been defeated. So, it charts the difficulties faced by the heroes when they're expected to manage the economics, politics and societal upheaval caused by the power vacuum and the necessity of re-establishing order in a conflict-ravaged world.

This is both amusing and fascinating - at least to begin with. And I enjoyed the book overall - though the humour of the opening sections did give way over time to a rather more depressing and dreary attitude in the main protagonist, which rather affected my reading experience. I liked his sister's narrative more, though I can't say I fully connected with the book emotionally. The ending was quite abrupt, too, and also weirdly skipped over the exciting bits, relating them afterwards in the form of a 'legend' that sprang up and was told in later years, which was a strange choice.

As this book told a complete story, and my interest definitely waned towards the end, I'm not planning to continue with the rest of the series. Though I would recommend this - especially the audiobook version as the narrator is excellent.


The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett is an early 20th century novel I'd never come across before - and turned out to be really good. It tells the story of two sisters, growing up in the Midlands in the second half of the 19th century, and how their lives diverge when one of them elopes to France with a travelling salesman. We then get several hundred pages of the one who is left behind, followed by several hundred pages of the one who goes away, before they come back together again towards the end of their lives.

I almost gave up in the first few pages, which are very dense and difficult to get through - but then it picked up considerably and turned into an involving, sharply observed, entertaining tale, though it was an effort to read in some ways because of the style of the prose and its considerable length. It also dipped a bit in the middle - the end of one sister's section and the beginning of the other's being rather dreary - but it got more interesting again in the second half.

Definitely recommended for fans of Anthony Trollope.