Time for another round of Yvonne’s Shorties! This time around a classic that I ended up having mixed thoughts about and a sci-fi physical copy I ended up DNFing quite early on.

Title: Rebecca
Author: Daphne Du Maurier
Genre: Classics, Gothic, Thriller
First published: August 1st 1938
Publisher: Virago
Finished reading: September 29th 2023 
Pages: 447

“I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.”


REVIEW

WARNING: unpopular opinion ahead!!

I’ve been meaning to read Rebecca for years now, and after I saw one of my favorite books of 2023 The Hacienda being compared to this classic I decided to not wait any longer and finally pick it up. I had high hopes for this story, as I do love a good gothic thriller… But in the end I guess it wasn’t ment to be. I know that the fact that I’ve been struggling with a reading slump might have been part of the problem, but I can’t look past the fact that it took me eleven! days to finish reading a book that would usually only take me a day or two. I was warned of the slow start, and I definitely agree with that warning. I’m not sure if I would have continued reading if it hadn’t known about the slow start, because the beginning is rather dull and tedious. Things do improve when the couple arrives at Manderley, and there are some clever twists and developments along the way. Sadly, I found the second Mrs. de Winter to be such a frustrating character to deal with though; having to spend so much time inside her head only made it more difficult to fight that slump and pick up my copy of Rebecca. The fact that she is basically a human doormat and lets everybody walk all over her became SO annoying, and she never fully redeemed herself for me. I did appreciate the descriptions of Manderley and the general gothic feel of the plot, but it wasn’t enough to properly enjoy this story. I still might try a reread at some point to see just how big of a role the reading slump played when it comes to my reaction to this classic…

Title: Light
(Kefahuchi Tract #1)
Author: M. John Harrison
Genre: Science Fiction, Space Opera
First published: October 31st 2002
Publisher: Gollancz
Finished reading: September 25th 2023
Pages: 384
DNF at 10% (40 pages)


REVIEW

I’ve had a copy of Light on my shelves for years now, and I decided to finally pick it up as it fitted one of the prompts for the POPSUGAR challenge. It’s true that I don’t tend to read a lot of sci-fi, but I’ve had a few winners so far this year so I was hopeful to add another sci-fi title to that list. Sadly, Light didn’t come even close. In fact, I only suffered through 10% of the story before I couldn’t take it anymore, and I only made it that far because it was a physical copy… What an absolute trainwreck of a book. I honestly had no clue what exactly I was trying to read; I don’t mind a little weird in my books, but there is things taking too far and I felt like the book and me were on completely different planets. To make things worse, I absolutely hated the writing style, and the constant focus on sex and masturbating was the final nail to its coffin. I’m not sure if the author was extremely horny while writing this book or if he really thought it added something substantial to the plot, but I’m not going to spend one more second of my time torturing myself with this mess. And after reading some of the reviews, I suspect things only get worse later on, so I guess I dodged a bullet there.

You can also find me at Goodreads. StoryGraph. Twitter. Instagram. Bloglovin’.