My Big Fat Desi Wedding ed. Prerna Pickett

Pages: 282 

Publisher: Hodder Children's Books 

Released: 18th of January 2024 

Romance. Drama. And plenty of spice. You are invited to . . . MY BIG, FAT DESI WEDDING.

A prophecy of disaster.

A world where your soulmate's thoughts appear on your skin.

A boy forbidden from attending his brother's wedding.

A supernatural love that spans centuries.

And one particular auntie who loves to meddle.

So, send in your RSVP, put on your best outfit, and take a front row seat as enemies become friends, friends become lovers, sceptics are convinced by the power of romance, and guests fall head over heels - even if they're not the ones saying 'I do'.

Lose yourself in eight swoon-worthy and dreamy stories guaranteed to bring out the hopeless romantic in every reader. With a never-ending buffet of mouth-watering food, extravagant outfit changes and lots of drama!

What I Have to Say 

This was such a lovely read. It was a short story collection where I enjoyed pretty much every story. It was very relaxing and romantic and it was honestly just such a joy to read. I don't know why but desi teen romance is one of my favourite genres to relax to, with most of the stories in this book revolving around teenagers or people in early adulthood. 

Two of my particular favourite stories were Fate's Favourites, which played very much with the idea of soul mates and the idea that the thoughts of your soul mate would end up manifesting on your body and A Very Bloody Halyanam, which brought vampires into the mix. 

I really liked exploring the mix of cultures and the differences and similarities between the different marriage ceremonies. 

In all, it was a good, fun, relaxing read. 

4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hodder Children's Books for providing me a gifted copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. 

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

Pages: 347 

Publisher: Tor 

Released: 17th August 2023 

Taking us from the mundane to the magical, this award-winning collection will entertain and delight.

Drawing inspiration from Asian myth and folklore, Zen Cho guides the reader through enchanted realms inhabited by dragons, vampires and incorrigible grandmothers. These nineteen sparkling stories are full of joy, humour and tenderness.

We’ll meet an elderly ex-member of parliament, who recalls her youthful romance with an orang bunian. This was forbidden. Not because her lover was an invisible jungle spirit, but because she was Muslim and he was not. Then a teenage vampire struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love . . . and eating people. A mischievous matriarch returns from the dead to disrupt her own funeral rites, pitting granddaughter against granddaughter. An earth spirit becomes entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord. And Chang E, the Chinese moon goddess, spins off into outer space – the ultimate metaphor for diaspora.

Enjoy this journey into magical new worlds of the imagination.

What I Have to Say 

This was a really strong selection of short stories. Comparing it to A Spoonful of Malaysian Magic which I reviewed earlier in the year, I think they're both really strong, really interesting anthologies of Malaysian fantasy. I feel like Spoonful was easier to relax into and just read. Spirits Abroad, I found I had to look up more though. It was nice because I learnt more Malay and Hokkien words, so I think it really depends what you're in the mood for. 

I enjoyed many stories from this book, but some of my particular favourites were Rising Lion - The Lion Bows, Prudence and the Dragon, The Perserverance of Angela's Past Life, Monkey King, Faerie Queen, Liyana and Four Generations of Chang E. 

I really liked the ones that had British culture as well as Malaysian because I think it highlights the dual nationality of the author really well and gives a nice mix to the two cultures. It gave me a familiar touchstone and let me see my own culture entwined with that of Malaysia. 

4 stars 

My thanks goes to Netgalley and Tor for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

Mermaids Never Drown ed. Zoriad Córdova and Natalie C. Parker

Pages: 320

Publisher: Titan Books 

Released: 26th of September 2023 

14 Young Adult short stories from bestselling and award-winning authors make a splash in Mermaids Never Drown - the second collection in the Untold Legends series edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker - exploring mermaids like we've never seen them before!

A Vietnamese mermaid caught between two worlds. A siren who falls for Poseidon's son. A boy secretly pining for the merboy who saved him years ago. A storm that brings humans and mermaids together. Generations of family secrets and pain.

Find all these stories and more in this gripping new collection that will reel you in from the very first page! Welcome to an ocean of hurt, fear, confusion, rage, hope, humor, discovery, and love in its many forms.

Edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, Mermaids Never Drown features beloved authors like Darcie Little Badger, Kalynn Bayron, Preeti Chhibber, Rebecca Coffindaffer, Julie C. Dao, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Adriana Herrera, June Hur, Katherine Locke, Kerri Maniscalco, Julie Murphy, Gretchen Schreiber, and Julian Winters.

What I Have to Say 

This was a really strong short story anthology. It had many different types of stories and many different styles of writing, all featuring mermaids, sirens or the cultural equivalent! I had a great time reading it and really enjoyed some of the stories. There weren't any stories I absolutely hated in this one, which is always a good sign! 

 Some of my particular favourites were The First and Last Kiss by Julie Murphy, The Merrow by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker and Jinju's Pearls by June Hur, but there were many other good ones that really stood out for me! 

I liked sirens a lot, so it made me really happy to see Sirens feature so much in this book. I was glad that they really went into the dark sides of myths as well as having some lighter stories. 

If there's a mermaid obsessed reader in your life, this would be the perfect book for them! 

4 stars 

My thanks goes to Netgalley and Titan Books for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

A Spoonful of Malaysian Magic ed. Anna Tan

Pages: 306 

Publisher: Teaspoon Publishing 

Released: 23rd of November 2023 

A burong descends from Tansang Kenyalang in the midst of a dire catastrophe. A shapeshifter frees Kedah from the dreaded Raja Bersiong only to uncover a darker secret. A woman learns to channel her family’s food magic. A young huntress of supernatural creatures charts her own path of love.

This anthology of short stories offers fresh takes on Malaysian folklore and fairy tales, adds enchantment to the ordinary, and bursts with new, wonderful flavours. Stir a little spoonful of magic into your tea, whether you’re from these shores or from far away.

What I Have to Say 

I really enjoyed this short story collection. I think there were only two stories that I disliked in the whole collection! Unfortunately one of them was the very first story in the book, so it was a little hard to get into at first, but once I was past that one, it was great. 

I loved the diversity in the stories. Malaysia is such an interesting country in that it has people from so many different cultures who make their home there. It gave such a variety to the stories that you don't see in cultures that aren't so diverse. 

My favourite story in the book was probably Remembering How to Cook by Sharmilla Ganesan, but I also loved Rosetta and the Fairy-in-Training a lot and Rivers and Lakes and Visitor in the Night # as well. Like I said though, this was a really strong set of stories so many were noteworthy! 

This is truly a great way to explore Malaysian culture. 

4 stars 

My thanks goes to Netgalley and Teaspoon Publishing for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

The Goodbye Cat by Hiro Arikawa

Pages: 256

Publisher: Doubleday 

Released: 12th of October 2023 

Against changing seasons in Japan, seven cats weave their way through their owners' lives ...

We meet Spin, a kitten rescued from the recycling bin, whose simple needs teach an anxious father how to parent his own human baby; a colony of wild cats on a holiday island shows a young boy not to stand in nature's way; a family is perplexed by their cat's devotion to their charismatic but uncaring father; a woman curses how her cat constantly visits her at night; and an elderly cat, Kota, hatches a plan to pass into the next world as a spirit so that he and his owner may be together for ever.

Bursting with empathy and love, The Goodbye Cat explores the unstoppable cycle of life as we see how the steadiness and devotion of a well-loved cat never lets us down. A huge bestseller in Japan, every page is a joyous celebration of cats and how we cannot resist sharing our lives with them.

What I Have to Say 

This was such a cute book. Though it got very sad in places (as you can probably tell from the title of the Goodbye Cat), I enjoyed reading it immensely. I really enjoyed the different personalities of each of the cats and the differences and similarities in the stories. 

As with all short story collections, there were some stories that I loved and some that I didn't like so much. In this book, I really liked the Cat Island story and the one about Hachi. I also enjoyed the last story in the book and I loved the connection between that one and Hachi, being stories about two cats owned at different times by the same owner. 

As with any translated book, it was very different from the style I'm used to in Western works. I feel like Japanese stuff in more thoughtful and is often more told than shown. I think a lot also gets lost in translation. So I wouldn't say the writing was amazing, but I do think a lot of that is down to the type of book and translating it from a Japanese style. 

Overall, if you like cats, this is a good book to choose! 

4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Doubleday for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

The Snow Ghost and Other Tales

Pages: 176 

Publisher: Vintage Classics 

Released: 17th of August 2023 

Enter the haunted world of Ancient Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries.

From Goblin infested caves and haunted Tombs, to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, Ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived with between realms: the world of everyday and the world of supernatural.

It was a time and place where men could be brought down by karmic forces or lured into deadly danger by ghostly apparitions, and where the land held sorrowful secrets or stories that long-awaited an opportunity to reveal them and seek reparation.

The Snow Ghost and Other Tales brings together some of the best and scariest tales that endured across centuries of folk lore in one new beautiful hardback collection. Finally commited to writing during the turn of the twenieth cenutry by a unique set of folklorists, the ghost stories presented in this new anthology will transport readers to a time of magic and mystery, and let them relish in the spine-tingling traditions of Japanese culture largely lost now to modernity.

What I Have to Say 

This was a really good, comprehensive collection of Japanese Ghost Stories. It gave a good look into the culture of ghost stories in Ancient Japan. It was really fun seeing what kind of trends there were across all the different stories and getting a real look into the culture. 

My favourite story was The Tongue Cut Sparrow, which though it had a moment of animal abuse, was a really sweet story about a man and his pet sparrow, with themes of greed and cruelty. I also liked the titular story, the Snow Ghost and the other story of the Yuki Onna as well. 

The only thing that I would have liked and maybe the finished copy will have it, is a more detailed bibliography. I wanted more details of where these stories came from so I could maybe look up the originals in the future when my Japanese is a bit better. There were intials at the end which supposedly say where the stories come from, but I couldn't work it out from that. I'm really hoping that the finished copy has a bibliography or something. 

 4 stars 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Vintage Classics for providing me with this gifted copy for review. 

White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Pages: 272 

Publisher: Head of Zeus 

Released: 28th of March 2023 

Seven ingeniously reinvented fairy tales that play out with astonishing consequences in the modern world, from one of today's finest short story writers - MacArthur 'Genius Grant' Fellow Kelly Link, bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Get in Trouble.

Finding seeds of inspiration in the Brothers Grimm, seventeenth-century French lore, and Scottish ballads, Kelly Link spins classic fairy tales into utterly original stories of seekers - characters on the hunt for love, connection, revenge, or their own sense of purpose.

In 'The White Cat's Divorce', an aging billionaire sends his three sons on a series of absurd goose chases to decide which will become his heir. In 'The Girl Who Did Not Know Fear', a professor with a delicate health condition becomes stranded for days in an airport hotel after a conference, desperate to get home to her wife and young daughter, and in acute danger of being late for an appointment that cannot be missed. In 'Skinder's Veil', a young man agrees to take over a remote house-sitting gig for a friend. But what should be a chance to focus on his long-avoided dissertation instead becomes a wildly unexpected journey, as the house seems to be a portal for otherworldly travelers - or perhaps a door into his own mysterious psyche.

Twisting and winding in astonishing ways, expertly blending realism and the speculative, witty, empathetic, and never predictable - these stories remind us once again of why Kelly Link is incomparable in the art of short fiction.

What I Have to Say 

This is it. This is the weird and slightly disturbing short story collection that's going to haunt me until the end of my days. So this was a mixed bag. The writing wasn't great. There was a lot of stuff that wasn't needed in the stories and honestly some of the stories bored me completely, probably because they were trying to say something that I didn't get. But I enjoyed some of them and the last story Skinder's Veil, I am obsessed with. 

Skinder's Veil is about a PHD student who goes to housesit for someone to get away from his annoying roommate. I didn't need to know all the stuff about how the roommate had so much sex and that his girlfriend was haunted by a ghost. That all bogged down the story. It could have easily been summed up in a couple of lines. But the actual bits in the house and the descriptions of the visitors and the magic of it all completely captivated me. I've been thinking about it since I read it and I definitely want to read it again some time. 

The rest of the book, I will not revisit. I enjoyed some of the stories well enough, but not enough to read again. but the weirdness of it all and that last story is gonna be something that I think I'm gonna remember for a long time. 

3 stars 

My thanks goes to Netgalley and Head of Zeus for providing me with this copy for review. 

 

Roar by Cecelia Ahern

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 352

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Released: 1st of November 2018 

I am woman. Hear me roar.

Have you ever imagined a different life?

Have you ever stood at a crossroads, undecided?

Have you ever had a moment when you wanted to roar?

The women in these startlingly original stories are all of us: the women who befriend us, the women who encourage us, the women who make us brave. From The Woman Who Slowly Disappeared to The Woman Who Was Kept on the Shelf and The Woman Who Returned and Exchanged her Husband, discover thirty touching, often hilarious, stories and meet thirty very different women. Each discovers her strength; each realizes she holds the power to make a change.

What I Have to Say 

This is a book of thirty stories but I could have read a hundred. I loved the titles and how witty it all was. I loved the characters and how every story was a twist on reality. It embraces the absurd, bringing it together with emotions grounded in reality to make a beautiful story that's powerful and feminist and so fun to read. 

The Woman Who Wore Pink was my favourite. It was such a hilarious look on the gender construct and a look at how society would be if these concepts of gender policing were taken to an extreme, with gender police (dressed in pink and blue, obviously) were there to patrol to make sure each gender is staying in their respective lanes: writing in the right colour pen, drinking from the correct colour cup and using the bathroom assigned to them based on the shape of their private parts. It serves to highlight some of the problems surrounding gender expectations in our society by showing it in such an over-exaggerated extreme. 

The other stories ranged between humour and heartbreaking, but all of them had an underlying message of female power and strength. A feminist must read. 

My thanks go to Harper Collins and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review. 

Into the Jungle by Katherine Rundell

Synopsis (from Goodreads and Netgalley) 

Pages: 240

Publisher: Macmillan Children's Books 

Released: 20th  of September 2018 

This wise and witty companion to Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 classic is likewise a series of connected stories about the man-cub Mowgli and his adventures among the animals in the Indian jungle. It includes all the original favorites like Baloo and Bagheera and gives female characters, like Mother Wolf, a more prominent role in Mowgli’s upbringing. The timely theme of the possibility of understanding and empathy across species, cultures, and genders will resonate with contemporary readers.

What I Have to Say 

This book was the best, not only were there several amazing short stories about the characters in the Jungle and their childhoods, there was also a main overarching plot that tied them all together and brought all the characters into play for the dramatic finale. It was wonderful exploring the world of the Jungle Book through new perspectives and seeing more of the characters that don't get so much attention. 

As always with short story collections, some of the stories stood out more than others. I loved the one about Kaa and the story of Mother Wolf's encounter with Shere Khan, but I also like the bits in between that showed Mowgli's character so beautifully. I loved the restlessness of him and the way he went around asking for stories from the animals around him. 

This wouldn't be a complete review without mentioning the beautiful illustrations by Kristjana S. Williams. The first picture took my breath away as I wasn't expecting such an amazing, detailed, full colour illustration. It became clear very quickly that I'm going to need to buy a finished copy of this absolutely beautiful book, which looks like it's going to be stunning. 

I'm not a massive fan of the Jungle Book. It was there in my childhood but it was never one of my favourites, but Into the Jungle really made me want to watch it again and read the book. I think it would be a great book for fans, but also for any reader who just wants to see Rundell's take on it. 

 

My thanks got to Netgalley and Macmillan for providing me with this copy for review. 

Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

My thanks go to the publisher for providing me with this review copy.

Pages: 448

Publisher: Orion

Released: 2nd of October 2014

The spiral has existed as long as time has existed. 

It's there when a girl walks through the forest, the moist green air clinging to her skin.

There centuries later in a pleasant green dale, hiding the treacherous waters of Golden Beck that take Anna, who they call a witch.

There on the other side of the world, where a mad poet watches the waves and knows the horrors they hide, and far into the future as Keir Bowman realises his destiny.

Each takes their next step in life.

None will ever go back to the same place.

And so their journeys begin...

What I Have To Say 

I chose to read this in the order it was put in the book. It was the most logical order and seemed the most easy since I was reading a paperback and was slipping reading time in whenever I could rather than reading it straight through. If I'd had other circumstances, I might have tried a different reading order, but to be honest, I'm pretty happy with the order I read it in. It made sense chronologically and had a nice sort of come together at the end. But I'd be interested to hear from people who chose to read it in a different order and how they found it. 

This book was a work of art. A lot of books that feel more like art than works of fiction feel like the art concept is overshadowing the actual enjoyment of the book. This one was better though. There was still a feeling that the art and the spiral metaphor of the whole thing was overshadowing the goal of making an entertaining story, but each little story was entertaining. 

The final one was pretty confusing though. It made my head hurt. But then often with that brand of sci fi, the confusion is half the fun. Still, I think it is worth reading, if you like Marcus Sedgwick or are just interested in all the myths and ideas surrounding spirals. It's an interesting read. 

Grim Anthology by Christine Johnson

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 454

Publisher: Harlequin Teen

Released: 25th of February 2014

Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today.

What I Have To Say

I think most people who read these posts know how much I like fairytale retellings, so obviously Grim was a book I’ve been really looking forward to. Anthologies like this are ones I find hard to review. I mean there are so many very different stories. Reviewing each one would take forever. So I’m going to talk about my favourites, the two that really stuck out for me. 

The first one I’m going to talk about is my absolute favourite, Beauty and the Chad  by Sarah Reese Brennan. I wasn’t sure about the concept at first, it felt a little silly. But I really should have taken into account the comedic skills that Sarah Reese Brennan always shows in her writing, because Chad’s portrayal was perfect, a stereotype, but just on the right side of ridiculous. And the way he fit into the medieval society was hilarious.  

The fact that the heroine was disguised as a boy and the very insistent cutlery, the best part in my opinion, made this story a brilliant, light-hearted reworking of Beauty and the Beast. 

The other story I want to talk about is Figment by Jeri Smith-Ready. With references to Puss in Boots, the story is told from the point of view of a creature inhabiting a toy cat, a sort of guide, helping a musician find his potential. 

This story broke my heart. I fell in love very quickly with the figment and his feelings of rejection, being unappreciated and abandonment really touched me. 

There are so many stories from this book that I could write full reviews of and though, naturally, as with any book like this there were others that weren’t so good, most of them were ones I really enjoyed.