I’m sharing another instalment of my Mini Review Mondays, the most recent of which was last week. In case you haven’t seen any of my previous posts, I do ‘mini’ reviews of books that I’ve previously read and am now ready to share my full thoughts about.
First up, I’d like to talk about Leave The Girls Behind by Jacqueline Bublitz. Thank you to Sphere for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Nineteen years ago, Ruth-Anne Baker’s childhood friend was murdered by convicted killer, Ethan Oswald. With Oswald dead and the case closed, everybody tells Ruth it’s time to move on – but she believes there is more to the story.
When another young girl goes missing from their small town, Ruth becomes convinced that Oswald had an accomplice, someone the police overlooked.
So begins a journey that will draw Ruth across continents and perilously close to three women, each connected to Oswald in a different way. The deeper she delves, the more she suspects one of them knows the truth. About her childhood friend. About the missing girl. And, perhaps most dangerously of all, about Ruth herself…
Publication Date: 29th October
CW: death, murder, grief, sexual assault, rape, child death, harassment, stalking, grooming, manipulation, emotional abuse, physical abuse
My Thoughts:
Leave The Girls Behind is a gnarly and knotty psychological thriller that pulls you into its murky waters.
I really liked the exploration of grief and trauma and how it permeates every aspect of Ruth’s life. She is trapped in this vicious moment, haunted by her past. This has led to an obsessive fascination with true crime, particularly violence against young girls. There is a bit of toying with the central mystery and if there is any truth to Ruth’s theories. She adopts a guise of true crime, being pulled into these communities and finding these connections. Bublitz explores this with nuance, showing both the validating sense of community and the exploitation that can occur. All of this is brought into sharp focus by the latest disappearance. It throws everything into disrepair and intensifies the horror. Without giving anything away, Bublitz also adds another element to Ruth’s character that highlights this pathos and Ruth’s emotional connection to the mystery.
The actual mystery is well-constructed, with lots of great twists and turns. Bublitz adds these haunting excerpts between chapters from a scared little girl trapped somewhere unfamiliar. They just get under your skin and add a real sense of stakes. The danger becomes more palpable, increasing the tension tenfold. It reminds you of the real life cases that are similar to the one fictionalised here. As Ruth teases out these connections and goes to new lengths, it feels like a spiral that is going to be difficult to break. The character development over the course of the book is wonderful and really ties into the mystery too. There is also a nasty little surprise in store at the very end of the book, which gives a new perspective on previous events.
Leave The Girls Behind is a complex and character-focused psychological thriller that may be difficult to get out of your head.
Next up, I’d like to talk about Feast While You Can by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta. Thank you to Simon and Schuster UK for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
There is a monster inside of Angelina Sicco. All she wants is to walk her mongrel dog, hold court with her brother in their local dive bar, and bait hot queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown, Cadenze. The problem is, so does the monster. It wants what Angelina has done, it wants what she’s going to do. It wants to eat her whole life, and every version of every future she might have with it.
Until it possessed her, the famous monster of Cadenze lived deep in a pit inside the mountain. But on the night when Angelina runs into her brother’s ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, the creature rises hungry and ready to eat. Its claws comb through her private thoughts, her most intimate and traumatic memories. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it, but the monster feasts on all the mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And just how much will it cost her?
Publication Date: 24th October
CW: death, murder, racism, body horror, animal cruelty, manipulation, emotional abuse
My Thoughts:
Feast While You Can is a twisted nightmare of a book.
It thrives on its dark and isolated atmosphere with such a creepy setting, perfectly capturing that sense of push and pull associated with a small hometown. Angelina and Jagvi occupy such different positions around their ideas of Cadenze, influenced by familial relationships and the way they grew up. There is a way the setting almost imprints onto you, particularly in your identity and ideas of the world. It is stifling and achingly real. That sense of desire is tangible
I was drawn to this book based on the central concept: that idea of having your future stolen from you is one that is horrific and yet so human at the same time. We will never know all of the dreams we could have pursued, all the lives we could have lived. Here it is embodied in this monstrous form, but it speaks to a fear that most of us can relate to. The level of horror is great, building from a creeping dread into full-blown grotesque body horror. For me, the pacing was spot on, pulling you into this tangled web and letting you begin it unravel it a little. Eventually we reach the explosive conclusion and even have a great stinger in the epilogue. It is bloody and awful. There is so much manipulation at play and you can never fully trust what is being presented to you. The deeper themes here are rich and presented in such a fascinating way.
Feast While You Can unspools that thread of desire hidden in the depths of your heart and weaves it into a sinister, yet strangely entrancing, story.
Finally, I’d like to delve into Hotel Lucky Seven by Kōtarō Isaka. Thank you to Harvill Secker for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
A luxury hotel full of assassins – what could go wrong?
Nanao ‘the unluckiest assassin in the world’ has been hired to deliver a birthday present to a guest at a luxury Tokyo Hotel. It seems like a simple assignment but by the time he leaves the guest’s room one man is dead and more will soon follow. As events spiral out of control as it becomes clear several different killers, with varying missions, are all taking a stay in the hotel at the same time. And they’re all particularly interested in a young woman with a photographic memory, hiding out on one of the twenty floors.
Will Nanao find the truth about what’s going on? And will he check out alive?
Publication Date: 7th November
CW: murder, death, violence, gore, injury, blood, torture
My Thoughts:
Hotel Lucky Seven is an enigma wrapped in a mystery. It is sleek, stylish and sensational.
I came into this as a standalone, having not read the previous books but I have seen the film adaptation of Bullet Train. That world of espionage and assassins is incredibly rich ground for fiction so I was excited to see this take on it. It really reminded me of the Inside No. 9 episode A Quiet Night In with that balance of darkness and comedy. The locked room style setting of the hotel also adds an extra element, seeing how characters interpret this familiar space in an entirely new way. Of course there are plenty of surprises and different layers to unfurl. I really enjoyed the central mystery and the plotting was stellar. The tension ramped up with every page and the writing was just so slick and precise.
However, my standout was the characterisation. You have these various zany figures caught up in this criminal world, all with their own quirks and personalities. It was an interesting twist on the typical presentation of an assassin, allowing for some humour to enter proceedings. For me, it was a brilliant cast of characters, though some definitely were easier to connect with than others. There is such a normalisation of death with them all that is at once both saddening and scary.
I loved seeing how all these seemingly disparate threads come together and gradually reveal the bigger picture behind it all. This is a world that turns on lies and duplicity, meaning that plot twists often come thick and fast. They can be unexpected connections or other narrative sleights of hand that just alter your perception a little. It is a really fun read where the pages seem to fly by.
Hotel Lucky Seven was a fantastic slice of action and character work that I thoroughly recommend.
A Short Book Lover 
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