Rosh's Reviews

AUTHOR: Alix E. Harrow NARRATORS: Moira Quirk and Sid Sagar GENRE: Fantasy-Romance. PUBLICATION DATE: October 28, 2025 RATING: 3 stars. In a Nutshell: A standalone adult fantasy with an accurate tagline: ‘A Legend. A Lie. A Love Story’. Exceptional idea. Interesting but somewhat flat characters. An overly complex execution. Repetitive because of the POV choice. I adored the concept but wish the execution had worked better for me. Not my favourite Harrow novel, though I can see it working better for some readers, especially those who want more romance than fantasy. Plot Preview: Owen Mallory, a cowardly ex-soldier and a historian, has always been fascinated by the legend of Sir Una Everlasting, Dominion’s greatest knight whose legend lives on as one of the bravest servers of queen and country. Not much is known about her actual life except for what’s written in the ballads. When Owen finds a book that claims to know Una’s actual story, he doesn’t realise how much of her story is a part ...

AUTHOR: Laura Steven NARRATOR: Sofia Oxenham GENRE: Fantasy-Romance. PUBLICATION DATE: February 27, 2025 RATING: 2.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A YA Fantasy-Romance about a couple stuck in an endless loop of love and murder over thousands of years. Interesting story, but gets a bit tedious after a while. The time periods are nicely varied, but not explored much due to the restrictions of the plotline. The character development is almost non-existent. The reveal is disappointing. Might work better for YA readers as it does offer all the *feels* of young romance. Plot Preview: Evelyn remembers most of her lives, but not the earliest ones as they are hazy. However, one thing she knows for certain: in every life, Arden murders her just before her eighteenth birthday and that he too dies on the same day. Oh, and she also knows that she has strong romantic feelings for him despite his being her killer. ( Please picture middle-aged me rolling my eyes as I wrote this line. ) All these years, she ha...

AUTHOR: Ashley Poston NARRATOR: Brittany Pressley GENRE: Romance, Timeslip. PUBLICATION DATE: June 27, 2023 RATING: 2.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A contemporary romance with a magical timeslip. Decent characters, plot, and writing. Interesting use of the timeslip but no explanations and many loopholes. Insta-love and rushed relationship. Too many attraction-related inner monologues for my liking. Too convenient in plotting. Not a light story, but has light moments. I liked it but wasn’t blown away by it like so many others were. ¯ \_(ツ)_/¯ Plot Preview: After her beloved late aunt Analea passes away, Clementine moves into her NY apartment that Analea willed to her. Though still grieving, she is focussed on her work as a book publicist, and has no time for relationships. However, one day, she bumps into a strange man in the apartment. He claims to have been given permission by Analea to use the house for a while. After a lot of confusion, Clementine realises that this is what her aunt had w...

AUTHOR: Tory Henwood Hoen NARRATOR: Barrie Kreinik GENRE: Contemporary Drama PUBLICATION DATE: December 2, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A contemporary drama partly focussing on memory and memories. Expected to like this much more, but it felt more like a Hallmark depiction of Alzheimer’s. Many of the plot inclusions weren't my cup of tea. This is an outlier opinion. Plot Preview: Though twenty-six-year-old Cricket is doing decently at her job with a modern wellness company, she feels like she is weighed down under the burdens of a past tragedy and of a present worry: her father’s Alzheimer’s has worsened. When her elder sister Nina declares that they need to move their dad Arthur into a hospice-care facility, Cricket decides to use his health as the catalyst she needed to make a change in her life. She quits her job and moves to their home in the Adirondacks to become Arthur’s caregiver, and in the process, hopes to heal the old rift between them, though he doesn’t rememb...

AUTHOR: Oyinkan Braithwaite NARRATORS: Diana Yekinni, Nnei Opia Clark, and Weruche Opia. GENRE: African Contemporary Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: November 4, 2025 RATING: 3.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A multi-timeline multi-perspective family saga. Impressive yet flawed female characters, somewhat flat male characters. Decent plot, good writing, good ending. Character-oriented. Unlike what the blurb says, this is not “wickedly funny”. (In fact, it’s not funny at all.) Don’t expect a clever satire like the author’s first novel; this one is more typical in its storyline. Recommended, though not as strongly as I had hoped to. Plot Preview: 2024. Lagos, Nigeria. Twenty-three-year-old Eniiyi has lived her entire life being told that she resembles Monife, her aunt who killed herself just before Eniiyi was born. She even tried moving out from her hometown, but the shadow of Monife was always there. Now she's back after eleven years, returning to the home where she grew up, and to the women who ...

AUTHOR: Yume Kitasei NARRATOR: Eunice Wong GENRE: Science Fiction. PUBLICATION DATE: September 30, 2025 RATING: 3.5 stars. In a Nutshell: A near-future literary eco-thriller about two sisters who go on an epic sea journey to search for their missing third sister. Character-oriented, decent pacing. Interesting plotline and characters, great worldbuilding. Three sections, with the impact of each going steadily downwards. A good option that sadly misses out on the chance to be great. Plot Preview: In a world ravaged by climate change and food scarcity, twenty-two-year-old Skipper, a skilled sailor, makes a meagre living by reselling plastic debris she finds in the ocean. Though the youngest of three sisters, Skipper lives alone with her grandmother, who isn't that kind to her. Then Skipper learns that her eldest sister Nora is missing. Nora had left home a decade ago to work with an organisation focussing on a solution to the global food crisis. Nora has been Skipper’s idol for a lon...

AUTHOR: Joe Hill GENRE: Fantasy-Horror. PUBLICATION DATE: October 21, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A fantasy-horror about a bargain that goes wrong and the consequences of the same. Epic plotline covering many decades, multiple flawed characters. Decent horror. Political content. Overload of themes. Many vulgarities in the writing; I hate such a writing style. This is an outlier review. (Like… a really, really, outlier review! 😬) Plot Preview: 1980, Maine. Arthur Oakes is a young student at Rackham College, working as a senior student librarian at its exceptional library. His life goes awry when a local drug dealer and her partner force him to steal rare books from the library. When his close friends discover the trap Arthur is caught in, they all step in to help, concocting a wild scheme that involves using the disquieting Crane journal (bound in the skin of its author) to summon a dragon to do their bidding. Unfortunately for them, they end up calling not just any dragon, bu...

AUTHOR: V.E. Schwab GENRE: Fantasy PUBLICATION DATE: June 10, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A multi-timeline vampire fantasy about needs, wants, and desires. Triple POV, but only one was interesting. Good prose, lacklustre plot, repetitive scenes. Mostly boring. Only the finale has a few thrills. This is an outlier opinion. Plot Preview: 1532. Spain. Maria. A beautiful girl married to a viscount who views her only as a vessel to bring forth his future children. She longs for freedom. 1827. England. Charlotte. An idealistic girl who's sent away to her relatives in London to hide a clandestine affair. She longs for love. 2019. USA. Alice. A Scottish girl who joins college in Boston hoping for a fresh start and a clean break from the past. But one mistake imperils her plans. She longs for revenge. How do the lives of these three girls intersect? The story comes to us in their third-person perspectives spread across multiple countries and centuries. In all honesty, had I realise...

AUTHOR: Clare Swatman GENRE: Contemporary Romance-Drama PUBLICATION DATE: December 3, 2025 RATING: 2 stars. In a Nutshell: A romance using timeslip as its main point of drama. Plot divided in three sections, each offering a distinct experience. The book started off well, became slightly repetitive and then turned a bit tedious. The characters are interesting but often take stupid decisions. Good for those who can read without overthinking. Plot Preview: Widowed Emma has no intention of falling in love again. But when she bumps into widower Nick in a somewhat secluded rose garden of her local park, she can sense the embers of hope and attraction flickering back to life. As they keep meeting in the same place, their feelings for each other grow stronger. But one day comes a shocking revelation: they both stay in two different times. Nick’s ‘present’ time is 1999, while Emma is living twenty years later in 2019. Is there any future possible for the couple when their years don’t align and ...

AUTHOR: Jennifer McMahon GENRE: Psychological Horror-Thriller. PUBLICATION DATE: April 26, 2022 RATING: 3.75 stars. In a Nutshell: A psychological horror-thriller loosely inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Slowburn and intense. Good atmospheric writing, complex characters, intriguing plot with some good twists. Leaves many things unsaid. Took me some time to get into it, but it delivered well enough on dark entertainment. Recommended. Go in blind. To be read without overthinking. Plot Preview: This story is way too complicated for a short preview. Just know that it comes over two timelines in multiple first-person and third-person perspectives. You may read the Goodreads blurb for more clarity, but it's too detailed. ( For once, I can't even blame the blurb writers. ) Of all the RFReadsTogether Challenge prompts (the annual reading challenge I run in my Facebook group 'Readers Forever' ), the retelling prompt is always one I am most careful about. While making...

AUTHOR: Fredrik Backman TRANSLATOR: Neil Smith NARRATOR: Marin Ireland GENRE: General Fiction PUBLICATION DATE: May 6, 2025 RATING: 3.25 stars. In a Nutshell: A dual-timeline fiction about a painting and some people connected to it. Includes old friends, new friends, lost friends, and found friends. Layered characters in a character-driven plot with many thought-provoking one-liners. A bit repetitive at times. Not my favourite Backman, but a good read nonetheless. Go in blind. Plot Preview: One of the most famous paintings in the world shows three tiny figures at the end of a pier. Ever since young Louisa, an orphan and an aspiring artist, saw a postcard print of this painting at a foster parent's home, she has been fascinated by it. She doesn't know its history from twenty-five years prior, nor does she know that her life is about to change after an interaction with someone connected to the original masterpiece. The story comes to us from two timelines and in multiple characte...