Published By: Corsair
Pages: 336
Released On: 01/05/2025
‘Aksai Black Pied, American Yorkshire, Angeln Saddleback…’
Pigs are Valentina’s safe place. When she’s feeling overwhelmed, she lists the breeds until her mind becomes quiet again.
Vale struggles to live life without order. Every morning, she reads the note that her flatmate Clara has pinned on the fridge telling her what to wear and what to eat, before leaving for her job at a bookshop.
Sometimes Vale’s colleagues invite her to drinks, but she never goes. She knows that Clara wouldn’t be happy if Vale socialised with others. As Clara’s told her plenty of times – who else would put up with her weird pig facts?
But a chance encounter at the bookshop leads to an exciting opportunity. As Vale steps into the world of other people, Clara tightens her grip: she isn’t yet ready to let go of her favourite prey.
*****
Thanks to Corsair for my gifted proof of this title in return for an honest review.
I had my apprehensions about this before I even started as it sounded very odd. Like, how can you make a book involving pigs sound interesting but then I remembered Babe…
I read a lot of books, and if we’re being honest, there’s only so many plots and characters you can write, and so they can get repetitive after a stretch, especially if I read several of the same genre one after the other. So this got a plus point just for being something new.
But if I’m being honest here – that’s the only positive thing I found about it.
This is a toxic friendship at its best – or worst, depending on which way you look at it. Which made it really uncomfortable and disturbing to read. I imagine that was Matilde’s intention, and I don’t mind that to an extent, but this actually impacted my reading of it. No matter how good the story might have been, I really struggled to read it, it wasn’t pleasant and it wasn’t enjoyable.
It is a really slow story with a lot of repetition, which can be okay when handled well, but I don’t think it was handled that well here. I think because I felt so uncomfortable with it, that repetition became really jarring.
It’s an interesting idea, some interesting themes, but some really unpleasant and unlikeable and unreadable characters. A promising debut in some ways – especially to come up with the idea – but overall it didn’t live up to my expectations. And I think that all comes down to how uncomfortable I felt reading it, which ruined it for me because I just couldn’t get comfortable with the characters or the story.
……I wonder how many times I wrote the word “uncomfortable” in this review…
Books By Your Bedside 