This book was recommended to my by my son-in-law, Chris, as a good book to bring with me on my holiday, lounging by the pool in Cyprus. He was not wrong! I was enthralled by the story and kept talking to my (longsuffering) husband about things that it was making me think about.
It is a book that is both thoughtful and thought provoking. It’s very cleverly written without being inaccessible, with beautiful prose and while the story is so relatable to so many lives and so ‘normal’ it still manages to be gripping.
It’s basically the story of a marriage, told from the perspectives of the two partners both as young adults, meeting and getting to know each other, interspersed with their older selves dealing with a relationship after the warm glow of newness has worn off.
It’s a book about perspectives – the wife works in the science of placebo – how what we believe can have a real and profound effect on our health and wellbeing (or ‘wellness’) and the husband is an artist who manipulates photos at the development stage to change and obscure what they show.
It’s about what we chose to portray about ourselves to others and what we chose to believe about the people we love – fooling each other and ourselves, or just creating the necessary narrative?
It’s funny, and tragic, and heart-warming and mind-expanding and I thought it was great!
Dungeon Crawler Carl (AUDIOBOOK) Matt Dinniman, Narrated by: Jeff Hays – 25.02.26
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 2 (AUDIOBOOK) – Matt Dinniman, Narrated by: Jeff Hays – 02.03.26
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 3 (AUDIOBOOK) – Matt Dinniman, Narrated by: Jeff Hays – 10.03.26
The Gate of the Feral Gods, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4 (AUDIOBOOK) – Matt Dinniman, Narrated by: Jeff Hays – 20.03.26
The Butcher’s Masquerade: (AUDIOBOOK) Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 5 – Matt Dinniman, Jeff Hays, et al. – 20.04.25
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride: (AUDIOBOOK) Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 6 – Matt Dinniman, Jeff Hays, et al. – 25.05.26
Wow! I’m over a hundred hours into these audiobooks in the LitRPG genre (currently listening to book 7). My son, Christy recommended them, and since I loved his previous recommendation of the Robin Hobb Farseer books so much, I took a punt. I wasn’t sure what to expect, because other audiobooks in similar genre’s that I’ve tried (Off to be a Wizard for example) have been too annoyingly juvenile with puerile and/or slapstick humour and not much else.
Well, as evidenced by the fact I’m still listening, I actually am really enjoying this series. There is humour, and yes, sometimes it is puerile and/or slapstick, but there is so much more to Matt Dinniman’s world – who knew that the relationship between a ex-coast guard and his ex-girlfriends magically enhanced talking cat could be so rich and full of pathos?
The premise of the series is that Earth has been taken over by an intergalactic agency and turned into the latest setting of a deadly game show. Without warning, every building in the world was instantly flattened, killing everyone inside. Anyone left alive (because they were outside at the time) is given moments to decide whether to stay outside and try and survive the post apocalypse or to enter ‘The Dungeon’ – an underground labyrinth full of monsters and boss fights and guilds and so on (basically a ‘real life’ rpg).
Carl and Princess Doughnut (the cat) enter the dungeon.
The world building is immense and the complexity of the rules and magics/weapons etc ramps up as you go along (as it would in a rpg game) and while it can be fun, I do sometimes get bored with all the strategy and fighting. However, I do love the ‘quiet bits’ – the talking and building relationships – the learning people’s backstories and motivations and the heart wrenching emotion that this brings up – real life and death situations that bring out either the best or the worst in people
I have audiobooks that I pre-ordered so I would get them on release date still waiting in my tbr pile because I’m so invested in this series that I’m just keeping going with it. If you like this kind of thing (and even if you don’t) I absolutely recommend listening to Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Redemption: (Department Q Book 3) – Jussi Adler-Olsen and Martin Aitken – 20.05.26
The second book in the Dept Q series, Disgrace, is a worthy follow up to book one. The characters of Carl and Assad are developing, and they get a third member of the team, Rose, an intelligent young woman with an acerbic wit which is more than a match for Carl’s grumpiness.
The case in this book is quite disturbing – a group of friends from an exclusive boarding school discover a shared love of cruelty and causing pain and over the years have got away with lots of atrocities. But both a former friend/victim and Carl and the team are closing in on them – who will catch whom and will they survive unscathed?
Book three, Redemption – a cry for help delivered in a message in a bottle discovered years after it was written (in human blood!) ends up on Carl and the teams desk and they slowly uncover a tale of missing children, secretive religious sects and double lives. Also, Carl agrees to let his paralysed ex-colleague come and live in his house with Carl’s lodger taking on the role of his carer, and he begins to develop a relationship with his police therapist.
Hubby and I watched the Scottish adaptation of this Nordic noir police procedural novel and loved it. I ragtag bunch of ‘misfits’ are hidden away in a basement of the police department and told to work on cold cases (well, only two misfits in this first book, I was forgetting that Rose doesn’t appear until book two).
The main character, Carl, is reeling from a shooting that happened in a previous case where he escaped serious injury but one partner was killed and another survived but was paralysed. He is dealing with survivor guilt and traumatic flashbacks which is an ongoing side story.
He gets a new colleague, Assad, who is a mysterious middle eastern refugee with dark secrets in his past and a tireless work ethic who manages to put up with Carl’s dark humour and lassitude with endless patience.
Their first major case is about a woman who has been missing for years presumed dead, but actually being held prisoner. Can they discover that she is still alive and rescue her before she runs out of time?
This was my book group read for April/May 2026. We all read it and we all thought it was a really well written book and gave it a unanimous 8 out of 10. (I was going to say we all enjoyed it, but then the subject matter was really quite disturbing, so perhaps ‘enjoyed’ would not have been the right word.)
Cora (the ‘core’ character of the story) is married to Gordon, an abusive, controlling and really not very nice at all man who seems to come from a line of similar men, all (by family tradition) also called Gordon. When Cora’s second child is a boy, Gordon sends her off to register his birth with the name (or course) Gordon. By chance their daughter, Maia’s school is closed that day, so she accompanies her mother and, on the way, they discuss names. Maia said is she could choose she would name the baby Bear, because bears are strong and courageous but also soft and kind. Cora said she would name him Julian which means sky father so she could break the tradition of Gordon’s without angering her husband too much.
At this point the book splits into three possible lifetimes of the new son, depending on which name Cora actually registers.
The blurb for the book says what a difference a name can make on a life’s outcome, but I would argue that it is not so much the actual names but the degree to which Cora dares to defy her coercive husband that determines the path of the three potential lives.
Yes, the book has dark themes, but also a lot of joy and optimism and I thought it was a really fascinating look at how our inherent personality is altered to a degree by choices and events that happen but will ultimately show through.
I have very much enjoyed reading this whole urban fantasy series and I’m quite sad that this was the last book (for now at least) but on the other hand I’m happy for Lydia that she had a turning point in her life that better suited who she is as a person, and that the series didn’t just drag on without a clear resolution. I also liked the crossover with the Unholy Island books and I look forward to reading more of those.
Fool’s Quest: Fitz and the Fool Book 2 – Robin Hobb – 20.03.26
Assassin’s Fate: (Fitz and the Fool Book 3) – Robin Hobb – 28.03.26
Oh my goodness, I don’t think Robin Hobb could have squeezed any more emotion out of me with a giant magical emotion squeezing machine. I loved this culmination of the story of Fitz and the Fool. The new character, Bee, introduced in these books in one of my favourite fictional characters ever – I loved everything about her story (and by loved, I mean, felt all the feels!).
This series had all the complexity, agonising tension and wonderful characterisation that embodies Robin Hobb’s whole body of work and was a very fitting conclusion to this story. ( I have heard rumours about a new book/series following the further adventures of Bee, which I would so totally read!)
This book was chosen for our next book group read weeks before we met not knowing that the USA and Israel would begin a new war with Iran, where the book is set, just days before we got together to discuss, making the subject matter very apposite to the times. (The word ‘apposite was used by one of our members to make this point which made us all very impressed with her!) The book follows two female friends from their first meeting as seven year olds in Tehran in 1950 and throughout their lives to the present day. Although the book did give some interesting insights into Iranian life and culture, and addressed many historical events that we in the book group remembered from news stories and discussed, we weren’t totally enamoured by the writing style which many of us found to be overly simplistic and also a little too ‘American’. The author, who is of Iranian descent was born and raised in America and never lived in Iran, so that is maybe why. I personally forgot to read the book until the day before book group, so read it in just two sittings and I did get quite caught up in the story to the point of getting a little teary at the ending, so perhaps I’m judging it too harshly.
I’m writing this review after having finished all the books in the Farseer world, knowing that for many reviewers, this (four book!) trilogy is their least favourite.
I have to say that, while these books didn’t stir my heart and soul as much as the ones about Fitz and the Fool, I still really liked them.
With themes of girl power, gay rights, embracing difference and of course dragons, portrayed as much as animals as they are magical and powerful beings – with personality quirks and often bad behaviour, I was fully committed to the characters journeys as well as the grand scale, prophecy fulfilling, world changing course of events that the books portray.
This is a nice urban fantasy novel set in Australia. The main character, Verity Fassbinder, is half human and half ‘weyrd’ (or magical) which is both a blessing and a curse in her role as a private detective and bounty hunter as she has some level of trust from both camps, but also obvious distrust too. This is the first book in a series, and in it Verity is trying to unravel the secrets from her own family’s past as well as solve the cases she is working on. It has a nice nostalgic detective noir style which I enjoyed, and I will probably look out for and read more books from the series.
Sarah Wray Writer 