Ada

These books were great.


• Behind Frenemy Lines by Zen Cho (audiobook): This is a companion novel to The Friend Zone Experiment – the main characters here are not related to those from The Friend Zone Experiment, but there are spoiler-ish references to its events and minor characters, so it makes most sense to read this book second.

When Kriya Rajasekar gets a job at a new law firm, she isn’t expecting to have to share an office with Charles Goh. ( I absolutely adored this book and listened to the whole audiobook in a few days! I know I often go on about how I prefer single POV romances, but I enjoyed how Cho utilises the dual POV here. )

Loretta didn't want to hear about Oldham: “There must be something going on in your life other than work, Charles.” Couldn't think of anything, so told her about the girl on the steps. Didn’t say anything about girl’s looks, but Loretta immediately said: “You fancied her, didn’t you? That’s why you did the awkward turtle thing. Being rude to girls you like doesn’t work in real life, you know. You’re not Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
Made the mistake of saying: “What are you talking about?” She forced me to watch highlights video of BBC Pride and Prejudice. I begged off. Fourteen hours per day of staring at a computer at work more than enough screentime for me.
Loretta: “This is why you’re going to die alone. You’re Darcy without the pool scene.”

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• Mate by Ali Hazelwood: The sequel/companion to Bride is about Misery’s best friend/foster sister, Serena. She has spent months alone in the woods but after she is targeted by vampires, she ends up staying with the Northwest pack – and the pack’s Alpha, who has made it clear he has absolutely no interest in pursuing a relationship with Serena, despite having claimed that she’s his mate.

I particularly enjoyed the banter between Serena and Koen – I found it amusing, and also thought it effectively established how well matched they are, enjoying each other’s company and managing to follow each other’s trains of thought.

( I also liked how this has various threads of mystery and the importance of Serena’s relationship with Misery. )

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• The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud: Following on from The Creeping Shadow, the final Lockwood & Co book is humorous, tense and compelling. And I thought it wrapped up the series perfectly.

I’d started wondering, as the pieces were beginning to come together, if it would be satisfying to have this series end. On one hand, I was eagerly anticipating the revelations and the solutions that seemed to be imminent! But I also wondered if the resolution would be too tidy, or if it might come at too great a personal cost for Lucy and her friends.

Although there’s clearly a lot wrong with their world and with the way teenagers have been expected to take oon dangerous work to deal with the ghost Problem, Lockwood & Co still have positive things in their lives. They’re good at what they do, and they work well together. They are colleagues, housemates and friends – and they have fought to retain their independence.

But The Empty Grave has the perfect amount of resolution for this. 10/10, no notes.
( “Let’s have the baddish [news] first,” George said. “I prefer my misery to come at me in stages, so I can acclimatise on the way.” )

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• The Sphere of the Winds by Rachel Neumeier: This is is the sequel to The Floating Islands and it’s kind of perfect.

I didn’t know what to expect in terms of the actual plot, especially as it’s over eight years since I read The Floating Islands. But the rest was exactly what I expected from Neumeier: lovely prose; vivid sense of place; main characters who are lively, resourceful, courageous and thoroughly decent; tense plot developments; and satisfying resolutions.(  ‘She found herself longing for her old, ordinary life where you never stumbled across stringless harps that changed into dragons or strange spheres that looked like glass but weren’t. But her old life was gone, locked unreachably in the past.’ )

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• Just Do This One Thing For Me by Laura Zimmermann: This one is not in the slightest bit sequel-ish but it has more in common with these books than the ones I reviewed yesterday or the ones I have still to review.

When I finally got this book from the library, I couldn’t remember how I had first heard about it. It wasn’t until I had read it all and saw the author’s bio at the back that I was reminded that Zimmermann wrote My Eyes Are Up Here.

Seventeen-year-old Drew is accustomed to being asked by her mother to “just do this one thing for me” and often feels like she has to take on the role of the responsible adult in the house. So when her mother disappears, Drew and her fifteen-year-old sister Carna try to carry on without her, worried that if the authorities find out, they will be separated from their eight-year-old brother Lock.

I was hooked and read this book in an afternoon. ( I like the really nuanced focus on sibling relationships. )

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Books read but not yet reviewed: 3
Books started but not yet finished: still 4
Books purchased in 2025 but not yet read: 2 paperback and 9 ebooks