Author Archives: vanessaphan

“Posterity, take notice!”  So begins Must I Go, acclaimed author Yiyun Li’s fourth novel. This epistolary work follows Lilia Liska, a cynical 81-year old woman, as she reminisces on life. Flipping between the past and the present, the book tackles themes of mortality, grief, and family, as Lilia obsesses over the published diary of a […]

This book was a technically great, insightful read that unfortunately, I didn’t connect with emotionally. Bad Blood tells the true story of the collapse of a multi-billion dollar healthcare startup, Theranos, which promised to revolutionise the medical industry through the invention of a machine that could carry out blood tests with but a prick of […]

As far as final instalments in a series goes, this one was pretty decent. I first picked up Truly Devious in 2018, during my final year at University, and fell in love with the series. The Hand on the Wall is the third and final book in the Truly Devious trilogy, a YA murder mystery […]

In one word: meh. Even before the upsurge in the Black Lives Matters movement earlier this year (2020), Between the World… was a book that I had been planning to read for a long time. I was excited to pick this book up for several reasons: it had a gorgeous title, a beautifully plain book cover (yes, […]

I don’t know what it is about Sally Rooney, but she just gets it. Rooney’s debut novel, Conversations with Friends (CwF), is set in Ireland and follows Frances, a 21-year-old college student, as she embarks on an affair with Nick, an actor in his 30s. Similar to Rooney’s Normal People (her better known novel about two teenagers’ mutual […]

It pains me to say that for me personally, this book really missed the mark. Going into reading, I had high expectations. The book seemed promising: it had a beautiful title, and was an own-voices Asian-American novel that had been nominated for the National Book Award in 2019. Quickly, I found that this book was […]

Warning: this book hits hard. Just as I had named Mark Mansen’s self-help book my favourite non-fiction read of 2020, Miller’s Know My Name dethrones it to take the top spot. Given how brilliant this book is, I am both unapologetic about my sudden change of heart and the fact that this book review is longer than usual. […]

If there were ever a year where the world was in need of a good self-help book, 2020 would be it. The Subtle Art… by prominent blogger Mark Mansen is a refreshing, tongue-in-cheek read that provides a common-sense approach to finding happiness. Broadly, Mansen argues that true happiness comes from: embracing failure and discomfort as part of a […]

Longlisted for the National Book Award for 2019, Fleishman Is In Trouble is Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel that follows fictional Toby Fleishman’s journey as he deals with the disappearance of his ex-wife. Through the story of one upper-middle class man’s divorce, Brodesser-Akner explores complex themes of marriage, gender and success, and her evocative prose and comedic style […]

Beautiful prose, bewitching memoir. Educated chronicles one woman’s true, yet fantastical, story of growing up as the sheltered daughter of survivalist religious zealots. Exploring themes of familial conflict, abuse and the role of education, in this memoir, Westover documents the path she took from being a home-schooled child without any formal education, to studying at […]

Short, pithy and forgettable are all perfect adjectives to encapsulate Love Poems for Married People. In this collection of poetry, Kenney delves into the mundanity of married life, presenting from a medley of perspectives the arguments and tedium that are never brought to light in books or media. While perfectly pleasant and relatable, nothing about […]

Never has there been a more apt time to read about the trials and tribulations of being a doctor than in 2020, when billions around the world are on lockdown as a result of the Covid-19 global pandemic. This Is Going To Hurt tells the true story of Adam Kay, a prior NHS doctor in […]