I wish though the book had centred on the teenage characters of Part One and lingered there, where the emotional connection ruin was far stronger

A terrific premise (spec fiction where a bucolic small town set in a valley is mirrored, east & west, by identical small towns 20 years in the past & future, repeating outwards, and a “counseil” coldly controls people’s ability to travel across the patrolled borders to manage interference)

I was luke-warm, luke-warm, luke-warm in this one (too mannerly, too contained) and then fell deep at the turning point

Honestly, I only come here to post these (and that’s mostly to be able to use the images easily at the end of the year) 😂 I’m reading fast this year & not judging myself for what I read. Over summer I want to slow down, re-read a few things and really *think* about why they worked.

This however — fantastic.

This was fine

This year I am increasingly finding myself drawn to gentle books like this - Millet’s set up has drama aplenty but instead she focuses on tentative and slowly deepening relationships and the restoration of loving connection

Great cover, great setting, but thinly drawn characters: stylistically the gently eliding tone made sense but I wanted to grapple with more

Loved this. Working my way backwards from “Matrix” I’m coming to see how Groff’s enduring theme is the intricacies of communal life seen through the perspective of individual psyches

Quite a gruelling tale (exceptionally well written) about wealth, intergenerational trauma and PTSD