I am an avid reader, and always have been. I love all kinds of literature, and although I was late to the game, joining TikTok in 2022, I was swiftly recommended \u2018BookTok\u2019<\/a>, i.e. a subsection of the social media platform where people share their current reads and recommendations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The \u2018BookTok\u2019 that TikTok<\/a> decided was best for me was not the fairy porn packaged as romance and redistributed on the strict algorithmic doublespeak as \u2018spicy books\u2019. Instead, I got sucked into the possibly more embarrassing \u2018weird girl\u2019 fiction rabbit hole, where goths and emos compete with each other to find the most surreal, shocking or unearthly fiction to recommend. Although I have got some great recommendations from this niche of culture, there have been more let downs than benefits.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n These are three of the books I read on the recommendation of BookTok that have cemented my decision to stop taking recommendations from the internet.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n READ MORE:<\/strong> I have a degree in English lit \u2013 these are the five best books I read this year <\/a><\/p>\n READ MORE:<\/strong> I’m a documentary lover – these are the three best streaming on Netflix <\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n My Year of Rest and Relaxation<\/a> flew to cult status a few years ago as the pinnacle of \u2018weird girl\u2019 fiction. The main character, an anonymous, miserable and waifish 20-something woman living in New York circa 2000 is apathetic and cruel. She decides to self medicate herself into as close to a coma as she can manage to deal with her all-encompassing depressive episode.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s a really interesting concept for a book, but sadly it just falls flat. I understand the dread that comes from spiralling so deeply into depression that everything is meaningless, the sly horror that sits alongside living in a world where consumerism is king and nihilism is religion, but I already understood those concepts before I picked this novel up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The following 306 pages did little to elucidate on those themes. I finished this book with the main takeaway that it was well written \u2014 but unbelievably boring. I hated the experience of reading it so much that I thought it was the fault of the author, however, I have since read two of her other novels (Lapvona<\/a> and Homesick for Another World)<\/a> and I loved them both. I don\u2019t know why this book was so utterly forgettable but I\u2019m happy to leave it that way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh (Image: Penguin)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Another fabulous concept for a novel that unfortunately just fell flat. Our Wives Under the Sea<\/a> is a sapphic love story between Leah and Miri. Leah, a deep sea researcher, has recently returned home from a disastrous mission where the submarine she was in lost communications and sank to the ocean floor. Now back home with her wife Miri, it’s clear that something is very, very wrong. The story is a dual narrative, switching between Leah\u2019s horrific subaqueous imprisonment, and Mira\u2019s quiet struggle to try and bring Leah back to the woman she remembers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I really, really wanted to love this book but unfortunately it just felt like it was reaching for something it never quite achieved. The idea of being trapped under the sea, cut off from the world and alone in the darkness is intense and terrifying but Armfield only ever writes it as mundanity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The same goes for Mira\u2019s point of view. As her wife begins to morph into an Eldritch horror confined to the bathtub, Mira calls up her work and keeps the taps running. I do like the idea of questioning what happens when the person you fell in love with is no longer the same \u2014 mentally and physically \u2014 but I feel like so much more could have been done with the characters. Their voices are very similar, which may have been a stylistic choice, but for me, it just made it hard to get through the book.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n A small selection of my books (Image: Vita Molyneux)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n Marketed as an extreme horror fiction, Maeve Fly<\/a> follows the titular character through her life living in LA, working at a certain theme park as a character actress portraying a certain icy princess. On the side, she\u2019s into \u2018murders and executions\u2019 \u2014 a ham-fisted nod towards Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s American Psycho<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Maeve\u2019s constant monologues about Halloween music are another way Leede tries to pay homage to American Psycho, but simply emulating a classic is not impressive. Maeve Fly does nothing to move the genre forward and reads like a teenager’s fanfiction. It may be the worst book I have ever read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The concept of a serial killer \u2014 but shock horror, she\u2019s a woman \u2014 is neither feminist nor revolutionary but C.J Leede seems to think she has done something truly transgressive in writing a female lead character who is horrible. The characters are so, so flat and the motivations are entirely absent. Long, florid descriptions of violent murder and sexual assaults do nothing to hide the fact that this novel will never do what it thinks it can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nMy Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\nOur Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield<\/h3>\n
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<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/p>\nMaeve Fly by C.J Leede<\/h3>\n