Jessica Grixti Stanley

This Review of Holly Wainwright’s ‘The Couple Upstairs’ Was Not Written on Any Flights of Stairs

Posted on 29 Days Ago by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Mel is an overworked, overstressed recently single mother who lives in an apartment block in a gentrified beachside suburb of Sydney, Australia. She’s only just moving on from her ex-husband when the ghost moves into the upstairs apartment—a ghost from Mel’s past. Mel is soon utterly obsessed with the ghost upstairs and his new English backpacker girlfriend. Set during the 2020 pandemic, the lives of Mel and the couple upstairs become more and more intertwined, more connected, with horrifying consequences. Is there such a thing as going too far?

The Couple Upstairs by Holly Wainwright is a 2022 contemporary novel with psychological thriller, drama, and romance elements. I was recommended this book by my mum a while ago. I’ve been on an insane reading blitz this year, and requested a bunch of books on Borrowbox and Libby assuming they’d be available at different times, but alas, no. Suddenly I had nine books to read in a short period of time, which I’d be forced to read in order of due date rather than what I actually wanted to read first. Luckily, the first one was Headcase by Jack Heath, the latest in the delectably amazing Timothy Blake series. And it was pretty great. Then there was The Couple Upstairs, a decent read but largely forgettable. The last book I read in April was a total shitshow: book eight of the Phryne Fisher series, which was a slog that took me over a month to finally finish, and would have been a DNF had I not been listening to the audiobook.

So what does all this preamble—this preamble you likely didn’t read in your haste to scroll to the bottom of the page and check out my review for The Couple Upstairs—lead to? Well, it means that The Couple Upstairs was a complex book, a decent read, sandwiched in between a great book (Headcase—just shy of four stars) and a mediocre drag (Urn Burial—two stars).

Here’s Why You Should Be Rating Books Less Than Five Stars

Posted on March 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

I rarely rate books five stars.

“What?”

“Oh no! That must mean you hate books!“

“You don’t support the author, you heartless monster!”

“Think about the Almighty Algorithm™“

“Think about the writers!”

Apparently, there’s been (ongoing) discourse on Book Twitter about whether readers should be allowed to rate books less than five stars.

I am going to say this one more time for the writers in the back:

YOU DO NOT GET TO DICTATE REVIEWERS' FEELINGS TOWARDS A BOOK. YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO A RATING OF ANY LEVEL.

Also, 3 is not negative?? On Goodreads it literally says 3 stars = 'I liked it'.

Just, what the heck. pic.twitter.com/zsNQdt2D0t
— Indie Book Spotlight (@BookSpotlight) March 25, 2023

Perhaps I’m surprised there are still people on Twitter after the Musk takeover, but I stumbled across the blog post Reviewing and rating books: A deeply personal act by Krystal Gagen, and forgot just how passionate terminal Twitter users get about their interests. Gagen’s post was great reading. You should check it out.

If You Want to Read a Twenty-First Century ‘Lolita’, ‘Tampa’ by Alissa Nutting May be the Book for You

Posted on February 28 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Twenty-six year old Celeste Price is incredibly beautiful and vain about it, married to the older, richer, toxic masculine, ignorant, aptly-named Ford. But she has a secret—her husband is seventeen years too old for her sexual urges. Celeste is a reverse Humbert Humbert, attracted only to prepubescent boys, fourteen year olds like the quiet boy, Jack Patrick, a student at the middle school in Florida where Celeste teaches. Remorseless, narcissistic, and constantly manipulative, Mrs Price engages in a relationship with fourteen year old Jack, and what happens from there will shock and stun you.

So goes Tampa by Alissa Nutting, a gender-bent Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov released in 2013. Nutting, a creative writing professor, wrote Tampa as a biting social satire, exploring society’s relationship with female beauty and how we view female predators. I read most of this book over the course of a day in a haze, really quite unsure what to think of it. Much like American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, which this book compares itself to alongside Lolita, I was left with way too many thoughts and no idea how and what to rate it, and whether I loved or hated it. It’s a book that makes you feel things, mostly uncomfortable, and sometimes it’s great to read a book that invokes a response other than “Meh! Totally forgettable”.

Someone’s Cousin Reviews ‘My Cousin Rachel’ by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on January 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Young, rich and unworldly Philip Ashley was raised by his uncle Ambrose after his parents died. For years, it was only the two of them. Philip and Ambrose. One year, in an effort to cure what ails him, Ambrose sets out for Florence, Italy, and falls for his mysterious cousin Rachel. Not really a cousin—more like a distantly related family member. Ambrose falls for cousin Rachel and marries her. Then he dies suddenly. Philip, thrown off by increasingly suspicious and mentally unsound letters from Ambrose, sets out for Florence, and is only left with more questions than answers. When cousin Rachel announces she is to visit Philip in Cornwall, he prepare to meet his cousin Rachel with hatred in his heart.

My Cousin Rachel is a gothic novel by Daphne du Maurier published in 1951. After becoming obsessed with Rebecca after reading it in April 2017 and watching the movie adaptation with Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier not along after, I was interested in reading more du Maurier. In early 2018 I splurged and bought the Virago Modern Classics hardcovers of Rebecca alongside My Cousin Rachel and The Birds: Short Stories after seeing the gorgeous covers in a BookTube video. I tried reading MCR in 2019 or 2020, but because of everything that year entailed, stopped reading halfway through, started again, stopped. Late last year, in a reading frenzy, I finally decided to start again, and read the physical copy alongside the Borrowbox audiobook narrated by Jonathan Pryce. And I can say I finally finished it earlier this month! Was it as good as Rebecca?

2022 Is Over. It’s Time for Another Morbin’ Year

Posted on December 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Wow. So it’s the end of another year in this constant rollercoaster that is the roaring ’20s. Some people thought, perhaps naively, that the last two years were perhaps a mirage before our dazed subconscious, mocking our very existence, and we would wake up clearly and calmly to the first of January, 2030. Last night—December 31—it was 2019. The governments of the world deigned to make the 2020s invisible to the history books, much like that old joke about how “only 90s kids remember” the 1990s (implying that if you’re born earlier in the twentieth century, I’m sorry but that century ended for you in 1989).

2022 was definitely a year. A year with three twos. A year where we started to forget about COVID—which caused me to get it for the first time after avoiding the damn thing for the better part of three years. A year where Russia and Ukraine existed, and many Americans discovered Europe is not merely a singular country and actually full of many different, varied countries who can and will go to war with each other. Some celebrities died. The Queen also died. Brits and the British Commonwealth will have to replace their coins with Charles’ mug. Prior to this, Brits spent the first half of the year uniting in their shared love for a beloved fish and chip shop. Australia finally voted out Scott Morrison and now has a competent leader for the first time in almost a decade.

16.05.14: Flash Fiction

Posted on November 30 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Friday
16.05.14

Shithole: a very unpleasant place, especially one that is very dirty or poor (Cambridge Dictionary)

Dear Dumb Diary,

Sometimes there are feelings of being trapped and sometimes I just don’t know what the fuck to do, this emptiness, this longing, this exceptional anger, this inexcusable rage, the tumult of emotions and also the lack thereof, that threatens to bubble over, to take over, to take me to some other plane of existence.

This mind-numbing emptiness; constant tiredness, forcing me out of thinking and into a world where one can only think about non-thinking, about a place where this raging emptiness can just drive around freely until it runs out of steam, sets itself down a path of no return, just escapes, escapes so clearly until there is nothing left, and while there is still the emptiness, it is shortened somehow, circuited so that it can hide away in a hidey-hole and spend time with all its friends and leaving time to actually think instead of the fake-think mind numbing responses to everything; but it feels rational.

As a Creative, You Should Be Very Much Against the Subscription Model of the Modern Internet

Posted on October 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

After a decade writing this blog, and three domain name changes, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with decent blog post ideas that don’t bore the socks off readers and prospective readers.

So why not talk today about how shit of a company Adobe is, and why you should be trying your best to get away from companies and businesses that are doing more harm than good to your physical and mental wellbeing?

First: Why Adobe?

They’re definitely not the worst of the bunch, but they definitely draw the ire of anyone who cares about being more than just an ATM for those desperate late-stage capitalists hell-bent on sucking you dry of everything you hold most dear.

I’ve been reading a lot of audiobooks with Borrowbox this year—15 audiobooks, to be precise. More books than I usually read in any format in a whole year. So I discovered a new-release on my TBR was on Borrowbox, but it was only in ebook format. No problem, I thought. I’ll convert it over to my Kindle and read it that way. Now here’s where Adobe comes in. To convert an ebook from Borrowbox over to my Kindle, you need an app/software known as Adobe Digital Editions. And that’s where I went…Fuck it. The negative reviews on the App Store, their closed-source software, their domination over the creative industry. I noped out of it and decided I’m gonna have to read Fiona Barton in dark mode and risk even more deterioration to my already average eyesight.

A Darkly Positive Review of ‘Daisy Darker’ by Alice Feeney

Posted on September 30 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Halloween, 2004. It’s Nana’s eightieth birthday, and she’s arranged to celebrate in style, inviting the whole Darker family for a night of fun and shenanigans on her remote isolated home on the Cornish coast. Most of the family haven’t spoken in years, and they’re only really here for Nana’s reading of her Will. When Nana—who’s been fated by a palm reader to die when she turns eighty—is found dead when the clock strikes midnight, things start to take a darker turn. And when someone else turns up dead an hour later, the Darkers come to realise someone is killing them off one by one by one.

Daisy Darker by Alice Feeney is a novel reminiscent of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, released at the end of August, exactly a month ago. Set concurrently in the past and the present, and narrated by youngest Darker daughter, Daisy, Daisy Darker is a fast-paced, twisty thriller that was beautifully narrated in audiobook form by Stephanie Racine. While this was the third thriller/mystery I read this month, it definitely took the cake, because while Renee Knight’s The Secretary was decent, that one kinda felt like it tread a similar path to most unreliable-narrator-thrillers that I’ve read and reviewed over the past half-decade on this blog. I most definitely thought Daisy Darker was going to join their ranks, until the plot twist near the end. Holy fuck, the plot twist! I haven’t felt this way reading my current fave of character-based stories since the ending of The Heights by Louise Candlish that I reviewed this time last year. Maybe something is in the September air? Could be my ten year anniversary with WordPress, that passed me by two weeks ago completely unnoticed?

You’ve Reached My Review of ‘You’ve Reached Sam’ by Dustin Thao

Posted on August 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Julie Clarke is in her final year of school and has her future sorted. Move out of Ellensburg, move in with her boyfriend Sam Obayashi, attend her dream college Reed, write while he plays guitar, and spend a summer in Japan. Then Sam dies. Julie skips the funeral and struggles to work out how to pick up the pieces. She’s ready to chuck out all of Sam’s things and pretend he never existed. Then Julie decides to call Sam one last time. And Sam picks up the phone.

You’ve Reached Sam is a 2021 contemporary romance by Dustin Thao. I was lured by this novel because, despite almost never reading contemporary romances, it sounded very similar to a short story that haunted me as a kid—Shake by Paul Jennings. Who knew a short story collection I got in a cake mix would have such an effect? I’m glad I read You’ve Reached Sam—it’s not a genre I would typically read, but sometimes it’s nice to branch out of our comfort zone.

Cannibalising My Review of the Timothy Blake Series by Jack Heath

Posted on July 31 by Jessica Grixti Stanley

Timothy Blake isn’t your typical FBI civilian consultant. He’s a cannibal who solves crimes for the FBI purely so he can be given death row inmates to consume. Behind closed doors, he’s constantly starving and poor as dirt, solving riddles online—originally as a method of stealing credit card numbers—but soon it’s part of his personality. He’s also a genius who catches the eye of Houston FBI Director Peter Luzhin. When a 14 year old boy vanishes on his way home from school, the FBI employs Blake to help them out. But has Blake finally met his match?

Hangman by Australian author Jack Heath is the start of a trilogy I devoured in just over a month, alongside its sequels Hunter and Hideout. I came across Hangman because I was lured by the prospect of a book that’s basically the midpoint between Hannibal Lecter and Dexter Morgan. Having already read two of the Hannibal books this year, I thought, “Why not read more cannibal books this year?” Is there such a thing as reading too much cannibal fiction in one year? How did I accidentally get my reading mojo back with such a specific subgenre of crime novels? Without answering these questions, I can only say I raced through the Christopher Ragland-narrated Timothy Blake trilogy. Ragland’s Texan accent makes listening to the trilogy a complete delight. I got myself absolutely immersed into this series. “But, surely,” you start, wide-eyed and confused. “The series can’t possibly remain good over three books…can it? The Dexter series devolved into hot garbage far too quickly. Does this?”