★★☆☆☆ As expected, Clay’s Ark is an entirely different beast than the first two Patternist books. There is also no mention of the psionic abilities of the first two books at all except for one tenuous throwaway reference two-thirds of the way in. The setting and set-up reminds me very much of The Host by Stephanie Meyer as well as the Animorphs series weirdly enough, which I read as a kid.

★★☆☆☆ This is like a John Green novel but with less of a thesis and more annoyingly obvious it’s an oblivious man writing how he thinks young women think/feel/act.

★★☆☆☆ I am definitely too old for this book (which skews on the young end of middle grade) and found it pretty boring with no stakes or real character development.

★★☆☆☆ A book recounting a series of crimes and insidious acts committed by a middle-school teacher and her students against one another. Story begins with the apparent drowning of the teacher's four-year-old daughter, and each character gets their own POV section recounting what happened and what happened next in their perspective.

★★☆☆☆ I really loved Dig, the first A.S. King book I ever read, but this one was really very mediocre. I’m not really sure why but it just dragged, I didn’t care about any of the characters, and the contemplative bits on what is art and originality got more and more irritating.

★★☆☆☆ The concluding part of the highly-acclaimed science fiction trilogy that began with Nnedi Okorafor's Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning BINTI.

★★☆☆☆ I get the Lord of the Flies-but-girls pitch from a marketing perspective, but in reality it’s way more like The Maze Runner-but-girl’s. Also there are fully at least 2 adults stranded with the girls - who are teens not children. Lesbian romance was shite, no build up, no build out, not a fan.

★★☆☆☆ TLDR: If you’re into romantic tropes, historical fiction, plot spanning an entire lifetime, and epistolary writing, you might be into this. Do not expect much by way of Iranian history, realism, suspense, dialogue, or character development.

★★☆☆☆ A mesmerising literary novel about a lost man in search of connection - a meditation on love, art and commitment, set against the backdrop of one of the greatest art events in modern history, Marina Abramovic's The Artist is Present.