WWW Wednesday | 27 Jan

Hi everyone! I’m back with another WWW Wednesday, hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The three Ws to be answered are:

• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

(All links below are to Goodreads.)

What are you currently reading?

I literally just finished a book last night, so I haven’t picked up a new book yet. However, I do know that my next read will be Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson. I’ve seen amazing things about this one, and it comes out on 4th Feb, so I want to read it and hopefully post a review before then. According to the blurb, it is a ‘A stunning, shattering debut novel about two Black British artists falling in and out of love’. I can’t wait to be shattered by it, haha! (Seriously though, books that shatter you are the best – see A Little Life!)

I’m also still reading Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall. I’m enjoying taking my time with this and absorbing everything. As I’m reading, I find myself writing down quotes/taking pictures of passages that I feel resonate with me. I’m getting so much from this book, and I also feel like it’s informing conversations I have with other people – which is a really good thing.

Here’s a quote I wrote down the other day:

The reality is that white, mainstream feminism has to confront the idea that the power to do harm rests in women too.

Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism

What did you recently finish reading?

I’ve finished two books in the last week, which I’m very happy about.

The first is The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. This is a novel set on a Norwegian island in the 1600s. When a great storm kills all of the men of the island, the women are left to fend for themselves. As word of what the women are doing spreads, a new commissioner is sent to the island to watch over them, with fears that what they are doing is ungodly. I enjoyed the writing and themes in this book a lot, but I did think the pacing was a bit off and the ending felt very rushed to me – my review will be posting soon on this!

The other books I’ve finished is The Magpie Society by Amy McCulloch and Zoe Sugg. I was really interested in the premise of this book – a death at a boarding school, a mysterious podcast that claims the death was murder, two students who team up to solve it – but it really fell flat to me. Now, I know that I’m no longer the target audience of YA novels, but I really felt like this novel was too surface-level for me? The characters weren’t very well developed, the writing was average, the twists were signposted from a mile away and the entire book felt like set up for the next ones. The way the novel ended particularly annoying – we don’t get any answers at all, it just ends in a cliff hanger for the next book in the series. I think that writing books in a series is a balance, as you have to both have a full plot that ties up at the end of the book, while leaving it open for the next – and this didn’t tie anything up. It was just like the book ended too early. Unfortunately, I won’t be picking up the next book in this series.

What do you think you’ll read next?

Probably Insatiable by Daisy Buchanan – I’m really excited for this one and I’ve heard great things. I’ve got a review copy from NetGalley and am hoping to read and post my review before the pub date (11 Feb). According to the blurb on Goodreads, ‘Insatiable is about women and desire – lust, longing and the desire to be loved’. I’m very on board! (As a side note, I also think the cover is really good and it actually reminds me of The Supper Club – another book I have on my tbr, which I’m very interested in reading.)

What are you currently reading? How are you finding it? And what are you planning to read next?