emilyrainsford's reviews
356 reviews

I actually didn't realise until I was about halfway through this book, that it was written by the same person as The Search Party, a book I'd read earlier this year and really enjoyed. 

I actually think this one was even better!! I was lamenting how heavily read I am because I thought I had picked the whodunit the moment they walked on the page, but the author managed to add a twist I didn't anticipate at all! 

The atmosphere of the folly and the poncy school at the foot of the forest was great. I had a vivid mental image of it all. The map in the front matter definitely helped! 

I enjoyed the complexities of the characters and their relationships, with the mystery woven amongst it. 

I had been having a real reading slump before this, and this book finally had me racing through it and eager to pick it back up. I will definitely have to read more of this author's back list.

The Fiction Writer is a suspenseful story about a failing fiction author who gets offered good money for a mysterious ghostwriting job for a rich and enigmatic man who lives in a fancy house in Malibu. He wants her to write a book about a family secret involving his grandmother and Daphne du Maurier (author of the classic "Rebecca").

But he's weirdly unforthcoming about the details of the project and Olivia soon finds herself caught up in a tangled web of secrets and lies...

I enjoyed this book! I have never read Rebecca so I didn't have any previous expectations or hang ups in that regard. It's definitely not a thriller (I feel like the cover looks a bit thriller-ish?), more of a suspenseful drama, but it was engaging, intriguing and easy to zip through. I perhaps would have liked a little more excitement at the end, but that might have been a case of my expectations being a bit off.

There is a "book excerpt" motif used throughout that I thought was really well done. It reveals one of the twists in a way that I thought was really clever and managed to take me by surprise (no easy feat at this point of my reading journey tbh). 

There's definitely a few points where you don't know who or what to believe, and the weird atmosphere with the rich guy in his big house sets you delightfully on edge. 

I would definitely check out more of this author's books. I thought this was an enjoyable read and would make a great vacation or book club pick. 

Self-centred girl accidentally evokes the Holiday Spirit turned corporeal and takes him to Christmas with her dysfunctional family to pose as her fiance so they don't realise she's a bit of a fuck up.

I actually loved this book. I literally laughed out loud multiple times. It's totally off the wall and the entire premise is ridiculous, but it's silly fun, and it also manages to be actually pretty sweet. It's nice to read a book with actual, significant character growth. I liked how the dysfunctional family all learned to enjoy each other more without becoming less dysfunctional or turning too syrupy sweet. 

The spirit character "Hall" (side note - this is apparently short for "Holiday" which is a bit weird for me because I say those like different vowels) is a super sweet cinnamon roll - think Buddy from the movie Elf but a little hotter - so the romance aspect was pure and adorable, which was part of what I loved about it (YVMV). I'm glad the author didn't try to shoehorn in a 🌶️ scene because that wouldn't have fit the story at all. 

Even though I found the tone of the writing pretty funny from the start, it took me a moment to warm up to the story because the main character seems a bit vapid in the beginning. But I decided to go on the ride for the fun of it, and her character growth is satisfying without completely losing her sass.

It's magical realism that's heavy on the magic, testing the boundaries of genre, and I love that. Very Christmassy, a little bit silly, very cute with a little bit of angst. I found it delightful. 

I've enjoyed reading all of the books in this series. Luca's story was always going to be iffy for me because I thought he would be a hard character to redeem, after his behaviour in the first four books. 

I thought a pretty decent job was done on that front. There is a big focus on trauma and mental health in this book, with on-page therapy. It was good to see a book highlighting working through your issues like this. 

I liked how respectful Luca was of Mackenzie, but we know from the rest of the series that he hasn't always treated women particularly well, so I really would have liked to see him confront the way he treated Brandi and apologise to her directly. She's even mentioned in the book but that situation never quite gets the resolution I'd have liked to see, especially seeing as we, the reader, saw the incident play out ourselves in a previous book. Having mental health problems doesn't absolve us of the harm we can cause and impact we can have on others, and I'd like to have seen him (especially as a man with money and social power) take a little more accountability for that. At times it feels like he plays the victim a little bit too much for my liking. 

I didn't love the third act break up situation and it didn't help my already rocky opinion of Luca.

I have to be honest that this wasn't my favourite of the series, but I can appreciate the way it handled some heavy topics.

This was a total page turner for me, I was hooked. I went into it knowing basically nothing about the story and I definitely think that's the best way. 

The basic premise is that a girl down on her luck and desperate takes a live-in housekeeper job with a rich family, but wonders what she's gotten herself into when the woman of the house starts behaving erratically.

This had some good twists and turns, with an ending that was kind of wickedly satisfying. It's definitely a popcorn thriller but I love that shit.

At the end there is an epilogue that teases the next book and I will for sure be reading it.

(Big trigger warning for gaslighting)

I ove this author, I'm a big fan of her Fallow Creek series. I was happy to be asked to read this one before its re-release on 31 October 2024.

This one is different in setting and vibe to the Fallow Creek books, but just as good. The main character is a morally grey female vampire detective in San Francisco, where paranormal creatures walk amongst humans unknown, and she's chasing down a vampire serial killer.

I'm actually surprised this is the author's debut written at a young age, because this story has a ton of maturity with a complex main character. It's definitely a bit brutal at times but it's a vampire story so that's to be expected. Cain is an author who doesn't hold back from making some tough decisions in her stories and I find that refreshing.

This is a smart urban paranormal story with solid worldbuilding. Look forward to reading the next in the series!

16 year old girl gets orphaned, has to go live with the grandma she's never met, finds out she's a witch who might cause the end of the world. 

That's the basic gist of this story and I do think it's funny that in all her visions of "the end of the world", it's just her grandma's little town in the southern US having a fire lol. You'd think a girl who has spent her life travelling all over the world, from NZ to Wales, would know that "the world" extends beyond Savannah, Georgia, but hey ho.

That said, I honestly enjoyed this witchy lil YA story. Was it mad 2010s YA vibes? Definitely, but I love 2010s YA vibes. Was there instalove? Totally, but it seems somehow realistic that a 16 year old would meet a hot forbidden boy and immediately decide that he was the love of her life and she'd sacrifice anything for him. If you don't want your book to have teenagers behaving like teenagers in it, don't read YA.

One thing this book does have is a wonderful sense of place - never in my life have I desired to visit the US South before this, but after reading this and looking up pictures (to help with my mental movie), Savannah honestly seems super pretty and I kinda wanna go there. 

Look, does this book have a lot of classic cliches in it? Totally but that's the fun of it. 

I'm not sure because apparently publishers are *allergic* to putting this information absolutely freaking anywhere, but it reads like the first book in a series to me? There is some resolution but it definitely feels like the story isn't finished. I would totally read the next one. It's a light, easy, fun YA read.

This was a pretty nice and easy reading book about being ADHD.

As an AuDHDer, I can struggle to connect with pure ADHD content, as I don't experience externalised hyperactivity and my autism interacts with my ADHD to create its own unique experience. This one resonated a lot more, having been written by an adult-diagnosed woman, and covering more than just the standard diagnostic traits for ADHD.

Having said that, the very thing that made the book resonate with me is also the thing that irritated me a bit. Because there are a few chapters where it's like "this isn't one of diagnostic criteria but a lot of ADHDers experience this..." and then it goes on to describe... an autistic trait. The book felt like the book I've been wanting to read about AuDHD, but it thinks it's only about ADHD. It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine that people seem to be trying to expand the definition of ADHD to encompass autistic traits. ADHD is a disorder with very specific diagnostic criteria. Sensory issues are not ADHD. Black and white thinking is not ADHD. They're autism. My personal, possibly controversial opinion is that a lot of adult women's ADHD diagnoses are missing the "u".

The chapters are structured the same: based around a certain trait, such as time blindness or rumination, they begin with a personal anecdote from the author, move into discussion of the trait, and end with practical tips. 

I'm not at a point in my journey where I'm interested in tips and I know myself well enough to know that I'm never going to look at them again, let alone implement them. Plus they're all pretty standard, logical things. So I honestly skim read the tips and I don't think I took anything new or practically useful from the book. 

But I did find it a very validating read, and that's really what I read this type of book for. Not to change myself, but just to see myself in the pages, to know it's an experience I'm not alone in. For that, this book definitely served its purpose better than another popular ADHD book I tried.