Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕
If you follow BookTok or Bookstagram you can’t avoid this book, it’s everywhere. We follow tradwife social media influencer, Natalie, who tells her story in a way only she can. She’s brutal in her opinions, fake, selfish and quite frankly an awful human being.
The premise of the story is that somehow Natalie finds herself back in the 1800’s having to live the real version of the fake life she portrays online. This sounds great on paper but I feel the book is being mis-sold as the twist reveals it’s not quite what you think.
I didn’t love or hate this book. You can watch the author, Caro Claire Burke, being interviewed on her thoughts of tradwives before the release of this book and she doesn’t hide her opinions. Hence why this is a marmite topic for some. Some Christian women feel she’s mocking their values, this is something I’ve read in reviews. This book reminded me of Ruby Franke and nobody wants to be compared to her!
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕
If you are looking for a gothic fairy tale that adds a touch of Hansel & Gretel with a dash of Carrie, and a spoon of We’ve Always Lived in The Castle, you, like me, will adore this book!
I devoured Lucy Rose’s debut novel in more ways than one. Her writing style is beautiful. The way that she manages to tell a story set in modern times feel centuries old is masterful.
‘When you were small, you were easy to love. You’d do anything for me. Every word I spoke was gospel and you looked at me like I was the most beautiful woman in the world. But something has changed, Little One,’ Mama whispered, careful and quiet. ‘And I’m wondering if it’s quite possible I don’t love you the same anymore.’
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕½
I’ve decided to try new genres in 2026. This is my first Splatterpunk experience and I must say (sheepishly)I absolutely loved it! The world that Elias created is so detailed in my head, I feel like I really visited there (God forbid)! Thank God I escaped. As for Nick and Jess, you’ll have to find out for yourselves.
The Black Farm is a feast for the eyes (quite literally). The world is so well created. This is masterful imagery creation through words. I was most terrified about the black ocean, imagine how scary the ocean looks at night and the sea always being this colour? This, for me, was the most chilling of images conjured up in my head. When you read the rest of this book, you’ll wonder about my head if this was the most terrifying concept!
Read this book if you’re looking for a visual treat that will wake and test all the senses, but bear in mind the character development is almost non existent.
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕
Soren, a 40 something practicing Mormon, has followed his faith religiously. Therefore, he always believed he would be rewarded an afterlife with lost loved ones. Sadly, cancer takes his life far sooner than expected and he finds himself in front of a Satan-like form that sends him to a version of hell Soren would never have dreamed of.
At first, this hell doesn’t seem so bad. A comfortable bed to sleep in, friends to be made, and any meal that your heart desires will appear before you if you simply ask. This hell is not eternal either. All you have to do is find the one book that tells your complete life story word for word, and you get to leave. What Soren soon begins to realise though, is that the library is endless. Floor upon floor, row upon row. Every book for every possible scenario is written, most in gibberish. Just finding a book where a string of words makes any sense can take literally years. Is Soren ever going to find his book?
This book succeeded in giving me existential dread like no other book I’ve read. Imagine if finding the one mere thing to escape your endless nightmare, your purgatory, would take you billion upon billion years, how would you feel?
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕
I read The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman three times in a row. It astounded me. Each time I peel off more layers, like the wallpaper itself, to reveal it’s messages. What a thought-provoking piece of writing.
As someone that experiences anxiety and bouts of depression, I found this account very gaslighting. We are looking at a woman in the 19th century living through a time of high anxiety, exhaustion, known then as hysteria. She has recently given birth so maybe some postnatal depression too. She knows she is unwell and even knows the things she needs to do to improve her mental wellbeing, however the males around her know better. Those males being her physician husband and brother. “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage.”
To cure our narrator of her “hysteria” she is moved into a large house that she deems creepy and is largely confined to a bedroom with barred windows, a bed bolted to the floor and hideous torn wallpaper that will soon begin to haunt her every thought. She asks to spend time with people that might stimulate her mind, she recognises that with nothing to do, all she will do is think about her mental struggles and they will grow. She is not listened to, only mocked and treated like a child. Her husband tends to call her “little goose” and how this annoyed me! “Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she will be as sick as she pleases!”
Our narrator tells us that she has an amazing imagination and that she loves to write, but even that has been taken away from her. As a child she could find patterns and personalities in inanimate objects. In this room she manages to find one thing in her solitude to stimulate her mind, the wallpaper. She is able to detract suicide and broken necks in the paper as she descends further into madness. When everything has been taken away from her, she has found one thing they “the men” can’t take away.
As our narrator descends further and further into madness, she is desperate to find out the hidden message from the wallpaper, what does it mean? She begins to see a woman creeping in the wallpaper, trying to get out. Is this symbolic of our narrator’s entrapment?
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕
The Catcher In The Rye is a coming of age story that has sold over 65 million copies word wide. It was included on Times 2005 list of the 100 best English language novels written since 1923 and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th century.
We follow 16 year old Holden Caulfield’s 3 day journey through 1940’s post war New York. He has been expelled from yet another prestigious prep school and doesn’t want to return home just yet to face his disappointed parents. He rambles to us his every thought as he wanders as lonely as a ghost around the busy, chaotic, but ultimately lonely city, some thoughts very amusing, some very sad. This is the story of teenage loneliness, unprocessed trauma, societal expectations and the desire of wanting to hold on to childhood and innocence.
I’ve since ready many reviews siting Holden as a whiny, petulant teen, and yes at times he is. There is so much more to him though. Remember we are seeing him through his own depressed, reflective state. Holden has much unprocessed trauma. When he was 13, he tells us that he slept in the garage the night his younger brother died of cancer. He broke all the windows in the garage with his fist “Just for the hell of it”. Except it wasn’t for the “hell of it”. He was calling out for help and didn’t know how to express his pain.
I loved Holden’s question about where the ducks go in the winter when the lake is frozen solid. They always return so they must be ok, but where do they go? Holden’s life at this point is full of unwanted change, this seems to be an analogy of sorts. Will he be ok as he crosses into adulthood? Will he survive the harsh elements and make it unscathed?
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕
This is a story told from two perspectives, from Grady one year after his wife has disappeared and from Abby before her disappearance. The main setting is an island cut off from the mainland for weeks at a time. The island is disorientating, strange and the inhabitants even stranger. The sense of unease begins on page one and doesn’t stop until the end.
I loved this! Despite the bleakness, I found this so fun to read. I loved meeting all the island characters one by one and trying to decide if they were “good or bad guys”. I adore island and cut off settings and quirky inhabitants. The unreliable narration, each chapter ending on a twist, honestly this book was fantastic! Yes, it’s unrealistic, but it’s fun and the ending will blow you away!
Muddled Reader Rating: ☕☕☕☕☕
This is the second Kristin Hannah book I’ve read, the first being The Great Alone. I thought that was a masterpiece and surely couldn’t be topped. Well, I was wrong. Winter Garden is stunning. Kristin’s writing is stunning. How she describes each setting is so vivid, it feels like I’m there in the moment. Some of the moments in this book, harrowing and beyond traumatising, you would wish to be anywhere else.
We are introduced to Meredith and Nina Whitson, very different sisters. Nina a famous war photographer and Meredith running the family business whilst looking after her family. Both sisters worship their dad but have never been able to form a relationship with their Russian mother. She is a stranger to them, and they gave up trying to understand her when very young. The only time they ever felt close to her is when she would tell her Russian fairytale, at night in pitch darkness. On their dad’s deathbed, the sisters were asked by him to promise to insist their mother finishes the fairy tale.
The truth of Anya’s horrific experiences in Leningrad in the 1940’s is what slowly unfolds.
I have never been that interested in history, perhaps how it was taught to me at school put me off. Our history teacher was terrifying! He used to punch the lockers and dent them should someone dare as cough! This story has made me want to learn all about Leningrad and I will be 100% doing that next. I learnt all about Alaska after reading The Great Alone. Fiction is a marvellous way of teaching, that is why we must make reading enjoyable for children. It’s so important. Amazing book!