I've reviewed one of last week's library finds: Golden Hill by Francis Spufford.

A mysterious young stranger arrives in New York in 1746 and embarks on a picaresque adventure through society.

Is he a French spy? A criminal? Could he even be a Saracen?

Recreating the narrative voice of 18th-century novels, this fascinating romp through colonial New York is completely absorbing

#books #bookstodon #fiction #historicalfiction #bookblogging #bookreviews #historicalfiction
https://quitebookish.com/2026/04/04/golden-hill-by-francis-spufford/

I found Sir Walter Scott's Waverley, a novel and author I'd previously avoided, really interesting.

A milestone in the development of the historical novel, Scott applies Enlightenment values to his depiction of characters, takes liberties with history, inserts his own voice into the text, and creates a romantic vision of his country's recent past.

He also tells a good yarn.

https://quitebookish.com/2026/04/01/waverley-by-sir-walter-scott/

#classicliterature #19thcenturynovels #books #history #reading #bookstodon #bookblogging

Ever dreamed of running a second-hand bookshop?

A read of Shaun Bythell's trio of bookshop diaries is the perfect antidote.

I really enjoyed this hilarious insight into the second hand book trade, and recognised the eccentricities of small town rural life.

https://quitebookish.com/2026/04/01/lost-and-found-in-wigtown-the-bookselling-diaries-of-shaun-bythell/

#books #bookstodon #bookblogging #bookreviews #Wigtown #Scotland #bookselling #bookshops

We don’t like to think about death, but the way we die says a lot about how we live.

My latest review explores No Ordinary Deaths: A People's History of Mortality by Molly Conisbee, a book about how even the most ordinary deaths are shaped by culture, community, and time.

https://quitebookish.com/2026/04/01/no-ordinary-deaths-a-peoples-history-of-mortality-by-molly-conisbee/

#books #bookstadon #history #socialhistory #reading #bookblogging #grief #death #bereavement #belief #nonfiction

Back in the early 2000s, when I started blogging for the first time, one of the bloggers I regularly read was the crime writer, John Baker.

Like me at the time, John lived in York. He wrote a series of detective novels set in the city featuring his accidental private detective, Sam Turner.

I revisited the series last year, prompting a bit of nostalgia for times, people, and places past.

#books #bookstodon #bookblogging #writing #crimefiction

https://quitebookish.com/2026/03/28/poet-in-the-gutter-remembering-john-baker-and-1990s-york/

My new bookblog - it's called 'Quite Bookish', which in time is going to become the name of my book editing business.

I took another look at S*b*a*k as a potential place to host it, but recoiled. It's such an odd platform.

In the end, I've gone for tried and trusted WordPress with my own domain.

Very pleased (and surprised) to discover quitebookish.com was available.

My introductory post tells you what it's all about.

#books #bookstodon #bookblogging #writing

https://quitebookish.com/2026/03/28/reading-mostly/

When the Wolf Comes Home by Nat Cassidy

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into horror writer Nat Cassidy’s creepy and hard-to-put-down book, When the Wolf Comes Home. While not the first of his reads I have picked up, I really enjoyed this one and found it to be unique, scary, and riveting. It made me really look forward to checking out more of his books in the future.

Main Characters

Jess: Our main girl and, honestly, one of my favourite parts of this book, she’s messy, flawed, and emotional. Her empathy drives a lot of her decisions, sometimes for the better, sometimes not. When Jess meets the boy, she is brought into a horror scene she never expected. In an attempt to save him, she is pushed to intense limits and is forced to put herself in danger to try and help save the day.

The boy: Running away from a monster, the boy crosses paths with Jess, and is forced to face his fears in no way a child ever should, but he also has much more control than we may suspect.

Cookie: Jess’s mother, who, while maybe not always the best mom, pulls through for her daughter when it’s needed the most.

The man:  The boy’s father, who follows Jess and him in an attempt to get him back, however, follows at a distance due to the danger that follows his son.

My Review

As mentioned before, I’ve checked out some of Nat Cassidy’s other books and found them to be scary, but extremely enjoyable. When the Wolf Comes Home is an action-filled, thrilling novel, filled with horror and some people’s worst nightmares. The characters are enjoyable (and sometimes aggravating), but the plot itself is unique, and unlike anything I’ve ever dived into before. I gave it an 8/10 rating overall and am looking forward to diving into more of Cassidy’s spooky tales in the future.

The story follows Jess as she gets pulled into a deeply unsettling and increasingly terrifying situation involving a young boy and something not quite right. What starts as concern quickly turns into something much darker, with reality bending in ways that feel both surreal and way too real at the same time. As things escalate, the book leans hard into fear, what it does to us, how it changes us, and the choices we make when we’re pushed to our limits. Jess is forced to fight her greatest fears to protect the boy, but she also questions if she can really protect him from himself, or the realities of his world. The boy must question if he can fight off the monsters that haunt him, or crumble to the fear of his reality and what is chasing him.

As mentioned before, I’ve checked out other books of Cassidy’s, and when When the Wolf Comes Home came across my way, I knew I had to check it out. I saw lots of positive reviews and felt like it lived up to the hype for sure. This book is so unique. Like, genuinely nothing I’ve read before. The plot is wild in a way that somehow still works and makes sense, and I was completely locked in watching it unfold. The creativity here is insane, and the way everything comes together? So satisfying. It’s heartbreaking at different points, intense in others, but also loving and sweet in others. It has its gory parts, and some areas are a bit harder to stomach, but if you read lots of horror like I do, it’s really nothing crazy.

It’s fast-paced, emotional, and straight-up creepy. Not just surface-level scary, either, it gets under your skin. The kind of book where you feel uneasy even when nothing is technically happening because you are just waiting for that other shoe to drop. What really stood out to me is how much it focuses on fear. Not just the classic there’s something scary chasing you theme, but how fear actually changes people. The decisions, the reactions, the spiral, it all felt very intentional and honestly a little too real at times.

Jess carried this book for me. I loved her. She’s not perfect, and that’s exactly why she works so well. Her empathy, even when it complicates things, made everything hit harder emotionally. And yeah, the kid can be annoying, but in a way that makes sense. He’s a child dealing with trauma, and the book doesn’t shy away from that. If anything, it adds to the emotional weight.

This is not a feel-good book. Like, at all. My heart hurt more than once. But it’s a damn good one.

I had such a good time with this, and it definitely solidified that I need to keep reading more from Nat Cassidy.

Has anyone else checked out When the Wolf Comes Home, or any other of Nat Cassidy’s reads? What did you think, and what others would you recommend?

Thank you for checking out this review! I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to subscribe to the page on the bottom of the site to be one of the first to know when I post a new review.

#BookThreads #booksky 💙📚 #bookstodon TCL's #RandomBookishThoughts #6 - Food for Thought... (and #LetsDiscuss2026 #3) This is just a post with some personal, literary musings. This time: I talk about #cookbooks both reading and reviewing them! #bookX #SomethingDifferent #bookbloggers #bookblogging

http://tcl-bookreviews.com/2026/03/01/tcls-randombookishthoughts-6-food-for-thought-and-letsdiscuss2026-3/

Spent most of today looking at articles on what #bookblogging is and what #bookbloggers do. Also about how #writers and #authors should engage with them, and how this forms part of a #writerslife and the broader #writingcommunity

I have reached out to #bookreviewers and bloggers, but now that I've taken a closer look, I think I'm out. The amount of time and effort this would take away from actually #writing is far too big

https://mastodon.social/@screwturn/116031632631978564
https://mastodon.social/@screwturn/116031744211689891
https://mastodon.social/@screwturn/116031269126119580

Good piece on #bookblogging by "Bohemian Bibliophile"

Something worth mentioning is that the idea behind "positive reviews inly" is not about knuckling down to a publisher's wishes for positive press, but rather to say who this particular #book would appeal to. Negative means saying what you personally didn't like about the book, and positive is saying what #readers the book would suit and why

Being A Book Blogger Doesn’t Mean You Have To.... https://share.google/GtIJxXh0dAYLXltvg