Book review: The Radleys

The Radleys by Matt Haig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up The Radleys as I always like to read about family life and how other families are dysfunctional as mine!

I had a very pleasant surprise when I started reading this book! I really enjoyed how from the outside, the Radleys looked like your average 2.4 children type family, but were actually hiding a dark secret, even from their own children. They are a family of abstaining vampires! This isn’t a spoiler as it says it on the back of the book, but I hadn’t read the blurb so had quite a shock when I realised what their secret was! I think this says more about me than the book!

The book is very much focussed around the revelation to the two teenage Radleys of the reason why they are so different to their peers and are so lethargic and have an aversion to garlic. An event in the story means that their parents can no longer keep it a secret from them that they are vampires and we follow them as they come to terms with their true background and meet with their uncle who is an outcast from the family.

I really liked that this book was so grounded in reality and as a reader I didn’t have to learn about a whole new world as vampirism just seemed normal. The story was well paced and a different take on the traditional dysfunctional family story. I also liked that this didn’t feel like a clichéd vampire story, but was very fresh and modern. I would describe it as reality with a hint of vampire. I also liked that there wasn’t too much emphasis on the supernatural and just allowed the reader to enjoy a very humorous view on family life.


View all my reviews

Book review: A Discovery of Witches

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was quite excited about reading this book as I had heard good things about it. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book and thought it was extremely well written and had the feel of a slow burning literary novel. I was excited to keep picking it up and loved the old fashioned romance that was blossoming between the two main characters.

However, it didn’t carry on. After a poorly executed and gratuitous sex scene just after the half way mark it went downhill. I really didn’t like it after this point as it felt forced and as if it was trying too hard. I also thought that some of the choices that were made by the author were a little senseless. Some authors can carry off a quickly moving plot with lots of location changes, but I really thought it didn’t fit here. It seemed that the author was putting as many threads to the story as possible for the sake of trying to get everything in, but I didn’t feel that they were as well developed or thought through as I would have liked.

This book was 2.5 stars for me as I really liked the first half and I think it could have been extremely well done if edited appropriately and kept the feel of the first half of the book. As a fan of more subtle fantasy, this may have been a tad too much for me, but I won’t be reading any more from this trilogy.


View all my reviews