2019/123: The Wayward Girls -- Amanda Mason

2019/123: The Wayward Girls -- Amanda Mason

A couple of nights in a haunted house. A bit of a laugh, really. Only now he can’t sleep and the vague, queasy feeling that he’d had when he’d first arrived in the house hasn’t let up. He has the sense of being … infected with something. [loc. 1777]

( minor spoilers )

2019/124: A Perfect Spy -- John Le Carré

2019/124: A Perfect Spy -- John Le Carré

Never able to resist an opportunity to portray himself on a fresh page, Pym went to work. And though, as was his wont, he took care to improve upon the reality, rearranging the facts to fit his prevailing image of himself, an instinctive caution nevertheless counselled him restraint. [p. 289]

I've given this book a low rating because of my emotional reaction to it -- it's splendidly written, but the sheer, empty inevitability of the ending left me feeling hollow myself.
( no spoilers )

2019/125: Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence -- Michael Marshall Smith

2019/125: Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence -- Michael Marshall Smith

One of the perilous things about being an adult is there comes a point where the doors of your mind open far wider than required by your own concerns. There’s no ceremony when this occurs, and no warning. It simply happens one day and suddenly you find there are seventy things going on at once and you’re flinching amidst a maelstrom of love and lost opportunities and hard choices and the tenacious grasping hands of the past, not to mention tidying the garage. Adults are not distracted for the sake of it, so cut them a little slack. [p. 276]

A cheerful, uplifting and delightful book about things that are not intrinsically cheerful: parents separating, the nature of evil, and people behaving badly.
( minor spoilers )

2019/126: The Namesake -- Jhumpa Lahiri

2019/126: The Namesake -- Jhumpa Lahiri

At times he feels as if he’s cast himself in a play, acting the part of twins, indistinguishable to the naked eye yet fundamentally different. At times he still feels his old name, painfully and without warning, the way his front tooth had unbearably throbbed in recent weeks after a filling ... [p. 105]

( no spoilers )

2019/127: Carry On -- Rainbow Rowell [reread]

2019/127: Carry On -- Rainbow Rowell [reread]

(Just when you think you’re having a scene without Simon, he drops in to remind you that everyone else is a supporting character in his catastrophe.) [p. 196]

Reread in preparation for Wayward Son (review coming up!): my original review from 2016 is here. I think I enjoyed it more this time around, not least because I was very much in the mood for something witty and frivolous and romantic -- and it is all those things, as well as being a sharp interrogation of the Harry Potter canon, and an interesting riff on some of J K Rowling's ideas and themes.