arc Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / July 5, 2026

Review: How to Fake It in Society

How to Fake It in Society by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

It is 1821 and Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte is making a splash in London Society. The son of Jeanne de Valois de La Motte, infamous for stealing a priceless diamond necklace meant for Marie Antoinette, Nico hopes to restore his wronged mother’s reputation, if only he can raise the funds. But he must operate with great secrecy, because the Bourbon dynasty murdered his mother, and he fears for his life.

At least, that’s what he tells Titus Pilcrow. Titus was a simple shopkeeper, making and selling artists’ paints, when he found himself suddenly married to an immensely wealthy woman who wanted to disinherit her nephew on her deathbed. As word spreads of his fortune, Titus finds himself a target of every scammer and beggar in London…including one Nicolas-Marc, Comte de Valois de La Motte.

Nico is on his last legs, out of money, and on the run from some terrifying gangsters. When Titus offers Nico a space in his household, it’s the perfect chance for him to exploit London’s newest golden purse–until he falls in love with the man he needs to cheat. Still, Nico is sure they can have a happy ending together. If he can just find his way out of his own web of lies…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

An entertaining and engaging read, where romance felt well-integrated with the plot, both working together with what I’d consider proper balance. The story follows Titus, a paint maker whose shop is threatened after he’s had a falling out with his landlord (who was also his lover), and who finds himself able to get out of his conundrum by accepting a sudden and much unexpected marriage offer… An offer that attracts unwanted attention, from more or less savoury characters. Among the more savoury ones, we find Nicolas de la Motte, officially an exiled French nobleman… and officiously a scammer.

Titus, now finding himself a target, doesn’t realise Nico is playing him, and begins to trust him, and more. Nico plays his part well, including roping in his cousin Evie (who happily cross-dresses as Titus’s new valet, and has her own sights on some of the house’s personnel)—but, as you can guess, keeping a proper emotional distance from his mark turns out easier said than done.

As mentioned above, I found this a pretty entertaining story. It sometimes borders on the romp, but while not taking itself so seriously that this would jar, and the plot, in the end, holds together well. Titus and Nico have a strong and fun dynamics, each of them ending up baring themselves (in more ways than one…) more than they’d ever have expected to, at the same time they complement each other well. Titus is grappling with his own past, his family, and how this all shaped him into someone who can’t say no, can’t speak up for himself; not to mention he has no idea how to behave in society, having been propelled from a man struggling financially to one who can now buy what he wants—something Nico is all too happy to advise him about, with a helping for himself along the way. While Nico… Nico realises that with Titus, he could be something else than rogue (though he is, for all intents and purposes, a loveable one), only he has to figure out first what to do about, well, all the lies.

To be fair, I did guess some of the twists fairly quickly, as they were quite predictable. I’d say your mileage may vary on this: there are times when predictable is what we want, is exciting, and overall, this was one of those times for me.

Conclusion: A solid 4* for me. And yes, I did enjoy the (quite wholesome) romance.

Yzabel / July 4, 2026

Review: Mistress of Bones

Mistress of Bones by Maria Z. Medina
My rating: 3.5/5

Synopsis:

It’s been thousands of years since the gods lifted the continents into the air so humanity could thrive, chaining the lands down with their bones and turning them into Anchor.

Azul del Arroyo doesn’t care about gods or Anchor; she cares about being responsible for her sister’s death and getting her bones from the capital so she can bring her back to life. Again. But in her way stands the Emissary of the Lord Death, who will do anything in his power to stop her, because a necromancer like her shouldn’t exist—no matter how alluring.

As Azul and the Emissary’s cat-and-mouse game leads them to the dangerous Court of Cienpuentes, their fate becomes entwined with a count who begrudgingly works for a child king, a faceless witch who transforms Anchor into dreams she can peddle, and a long-lost half-brother with a secret of his own. It’s a time of enlightenment, of rapiers and scientific prowess, in a country where Anchor ceased to be something worth revering a long time ago, and people have forgotten the gods’ sacrifice.

But the gods haven’t. Because the gods want their bones back, and they’re not opposed to becoming players in their own game.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

Another NetGalley review that is long overdue, but better later than never!

The world depicted in this novel is quite interesting: a rotting civilisation on the verge of falling into the void after depleting said world of a precious resource that is actually its very bones—and some of the gods, namely the god of Death, aren’t very happy with that, and their emissaries will try to ensure people stop breaking the world. The concepts linked to this (bones used as magic), as well as the Spanish Renaissance atmosphere, full of intrigue, masks and swashbuckling, bathing the story, definitely grabbed my attention, and once I got how it all worked, I was excited.

A note about necromancy in general: I tremendously enjoys necromancy. It can be very gruesome, sure, and in itself, riding on death, it comes across as a very negative kind of magic… but this is precisely why I enjoy it all the more: because it opens the door to so many opportunities to try and see whether it can be something else than “just death and animating skeletons”! And in this book, I could see this. Azul didn’t start on that way for power, because she worshipped death, because: she started out of love, her love for a much-admired elder sister, little girl far from home that she was at the time. And I will respect that.

There is also a bit of romance, but… maybe I should call it attraction, or perhaps romance-bait more than anything else? There’s something strange and fascinating to this dance between an emissary of Death who, against all expectations, does not dabble in necromancy and even finds it anathema, while the necromancer is actually full of life and willpower, simply wanting to get back the person she loves most in the world. I’m not really sure if I enjoyed it or found it bizarre? It’s not your typical romance, which can be a good change, or not such a good thing, depending on preferences. No spoilers about how it goes.

Where I enjoyed the novel less was in its execution. I have no problems in general with multiple POVs and switching between two timelines, but this still needs to be executed well in order to work, and here, it was just a tad bit… messy? Not impossible to follow, but demanding more effort from me than similar narratives normally do. I had trouble to focus at times, which in itself detracted from the world building.

Conclusion: 3.5*. While this was not a 4* or 5*, overall I still enjoyed it, and would be interested in picking the next instalment as well (I think it’s meant to be a duology)?

Yzabel / June 28, 2026

Review: Trip to the Moon

Trip to the Moon: Understanding the True Power Of Story by John Yorke
My rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency?

John Yorke has revolutionised our understanding of story structure. In this new book he delves deeper – into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative, to seek out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales – and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too.

Revealing the artful symmetry and underlying principles that connect Summer beach reads to Classical Chinese poetry, superhero flicks to Russian arthouse, and classical rhetoric to state propaganda, Yorke makes dazzling connections that show how stories have the power to transfigure the chaos of our existence into a new equilibrium, and make the world anew.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

This is the first book I read by John Yorke—although I do own In the Woods, I haven’t read it yet at the time of writing this review. Trip to the Moon was an informative and interesting read for me, and while I’ve read my share of books about writing and at times they tend to overlap quite a little, I can say that this one definitely sparked a couple of discussions with my fellow aspiring authors.

First of all, the book does provide information about writing and storytelling. It’s not a “how to” guide, but over the years, as I’ve had to grapple with my own troubles with writing (and have at long last accepted that plot is clearly my weak point, and thus the one I need to focus on more intensely), I’ve also come to realise that there’s no 100% true method, and that each of us has to find what works for us individually. As part of this, a book like this one—which is more reflection about storytelling, about how stories come together—is a valuable tool: reflecting upon something tends to work better, in my opinion, than just blindly following what someone else advised to do. Especially with art: not every aspect can be codified. In order to write good stories, I need to understand how stories work first.

The book relies on several examples, not only in writing—Star Wars makes an appearance, too—and not only in fiction either, for that matter: the power of storytelling is just as well leveraged in politics, in crafting speeches for an audience, and so on. Another part also explores other forms of storytelling, different from what is seen, as the “Western structure” (think Hero’s journey, three-act structure, etc.), and asks the question: are they really that different? This sparked one of the discussions I mentioned earlier in my review: when considering Kishōtenketsu, and other forms of narrative that are said to “not contain conflict”, does it mean that they indeed don’t contain any? Or do they still? Or that conflict is not actually needed? What do we understand when we say, “conflict is what drives stories”? And this, this is the kind of thoughts and conversations this book can spark, and that I find extremely valuable.

I didn’t necessarily agree with absolutely everything Yorke brings in here, and I would’ve liked seeing certain parts more developed, going more in depth. That said, the more philosophical approach is, I suspect, something that will end up becoming more valuable to me in the long run, as such essays help me develop my own thinking about writing.

Yzabel / June 27, 2026

Review: A Deadly Education

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
My rating: 4/5

Synopsis:

Enter a school of magic unlike any you have ever encountered.
There are no teachers, no holidays, friendships are purely strategic, and the odds of survival are never equal.
Once you’re inside, there are only two ways out: you graduate or you die.
El Higgins is uniquely prepared for the school’s many dangers. She may be without allies, but she possesses a dark power strong enough to level mountains and wipe out untold millions – never mind easily destroy the countless monsters that prowl the school.
Except, she might accidentally kill all the other students, too. So El is trying her hardest not to use it… that is, unless she has no other choice.

Review:

[I kind of want to kick myself for not reading this book back when I got it an ARC, and only getting to it now. It’s been out for ages now, but because I have a serious backlog of books to review on NetGalley, I’ll post it there as well anyway, while I’m at it.]

This novel, the first instalment in the Scholomance series, is somewhat surprising in its narration, because it’s the kind of narration that could easily “make it or break it”, I think: a sort of stream of consciousness approach, where the POV character (El) tends to often add little nuggets of information as she’s narrating the events unfolding throughout the story. The novel is heavier on introspection, reflection and world-building than on character interactions/dialogues, and it has relatively slow pace; it clearly worked for me, as my attention and interest were both definitely piqued on a regular basis.

I really enjoyed the magical world introduced in this story, especially because while it may not always make sense immediately, it turns out there is actually an explanation to those details that at first made me ask questions. For instance, why is Scholomance such a dangerous school? Is this a competition? Why was it designed in such a way that casualties are pretty much unavoidable? Well, there is a reason, and it’s admirable in its cynicism, in a way. I appreciated the approach to magic, the reason why “normal people” don’t know about it, and why mages keep to themselves, either individually or by living in “enclaves” with other mages only. This is one of the points I’ve been reflecting about a lot more recently when it comes to urban fantasy/contemporary paranormal: “why is the supernatural world hidden from the mundane world?”, which a lot of times feels to me like it’s kind of just the default approach, and there isn’t necessarily much reflection about he why. But the reason in this book, even though quite simple, makes sense in the context.

(Galadri)El, our narrator, isn’t particularly likeable as a person, but she’s likeable as a character because it all makes sense. Yes, she tends to be not very amenable, and probably pricklier than a cactus as soon as she interacts with other people… but she’s also used to being naturally disliked, without any reason—even by people who wanted to meet her with the intention of loving her from the outset—and it makes sense that after over a decade of this, one grows tired of it, and seriously questions why she should make the effort, if she’s doomed to be disliked regardless. And there is definitely something going on, which books 2 and 3 will hopefully address more. El seems to be prophesised to have a very high potential for destruction: some people have had visions about her, the school’s library system automatically gives her the most destructive version possible of the spells she needs–she wants a spell to clean her room? She gets a “cleanse by fire” spell. And so on.

Which, from her point of view, makes goody-two-shoes Orion Lake, who seems to go on saving Yet Another Student’s Life every morning before breakfast, all the more annoying… and it makes sense. It makes total sense considering where she’s coming from.
The novel deals with life in this strange school where everything’s seemingly out to kill you, and at the same time tackles themes such as injustice and class divide (privileged enclave kids vs. the others, for instance), and the struggle of not fitting anywhere (El’s mixed ethnicity but also the way people instantly dislike her because of that something unexplained that may be tied to her fate). It’s not necessarily super deep, but it works, and I enjoyed El’s viewpoint and cynicism on those aspects.

Another thing I liked, is that the characters in general do exhibit traits that are “teenage-like”, yet not in an annoying way. “Annoying” for me would be, let’s say, messy teenage drama– feeling like we’re in just any regular high school in our world, which would be very illogical for me considering how dark and dangerous Scholomance is. Yet at the same time, we can tell these are still young people, most don’t have El’s cynicism yet: for instance, some of the more privileged characters are used to things always going fine for them, and naively believe that it’s the same for everyone… while not realising it’s because everyone else makes things easier for them specifically, and that their parents’ reputation is doing the heavy lifting for them—and this is a trait I can totally believe in someone who hasn’t had a lot of life experience yet. It matches the darker world they have to live in.

Conclusion: Granted, it’s not a 5* book—at times I did find that El’s thoughts/throwing in tidbits about the world came at not-so-appropriate moments (such as scenes with a little more action and less room for introspection). But it’s a solid 4.

Yzabel / January 24, 2026

Review: All of Us Murderers

All of Us Murderers by K.J. Charles
My rating: 4/5

Blurb:

WHO WILL SURVIVE LACKADAY HOUSE?

When Zeb Wyckham is summoned to a wealthy relative’s remote Gothic manor, he is horrified to find all the people he least wants to see in the world: his estranged brother, his sneering cousin, and his bitter ex-lover Gideon Grey. Things couldn’t possibly get worse.

Then the master of the house announces the true purpose of the gathering: he intends to leave the vast family fortune to whoever marries his young ward, setting off a violent scramble for her hand. Zeb wants no part of his greedy family—but when he tries to leave, the way is barred. The walls of Lackaday House are high, and the gates firmly locked. As the Dartmoor mists roll in, there’s no way out. And something unnatural may be watching them from the house’s shadowy depths…

Fear and paranoia ramping ever-higher, Zeb has nowhere to turn but to the man who once held his heart. As the gaslight flickers and terror takes hold, can two warring lovers reunite, uncover the murderous mysteries of Lackaday House—and live to tell the tale?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

This is only my second K.J. Charles novel, I requested and was approved for it shortly after reading her very first novel, and I can tell there’s a world of difference between both, in the right direction, that is. I enjoyed it more and even though I’m not really an audience for romance, it did convince me that in the future, I should pick more books by this author.

All of Us Murderers is a historical fiction novel set in Edwardian England, a gothic mystery in a large dreary house isolated in the middle of nowhere: the perfect setting for a family drama behind closed doors, complete with murders and, obviously, all the questions and tension about who did it, because frankly, absolutely everyone in this story seems to have motivations to off a person, or two, or three. To top it off, the characters all have their little skeletons in the closet, including Zeb, whose point of view we follow throughout the novel, because it turns out one of the people present is his ex-lover Gideon.

This was a thoroughly enjoyable read for me. I usually have trouble with romance subplots because in a lot of cases, they tend to take over and detract from the main story itself, and… here, it wasn’t the case at all. The romance part was good overall (with a few spicy scenes), Zeb and Gideon tentatively try to rebuild the trust between them and work through what had separated them in the first place. It was also so interesting to have the perspective of a neurodivergent main character (ADHD), here too depicted in a believable way, whose neurodivergence does have an impact on his life and relationships, but also isn’t the only thing about him. (And there is a pretty cute and wholesome thing about him, which we learn later on in the story and I shall not spoil it here, I just loved that side of him.)

The atmosphere in general was also enjoyable, spooky without being too terrifying either. We get to see the various members of that dysfunctional family be, well, dysfunctional and not very nice to each other, all the more as dirty secrets are revealed one after the other. The house was well described, and most of the time I found it easy enough to picture the scenes and surroundings.

If anything, I think some of the characters did lack a bit of depth (and I would’ve liked to know a little more about Gideon himself), perhaps because there were several people involved (that is, the family members, all suspects, all with their secrets), so it wasn’t like there were “only two main characters” and then just very secondary ones who don’t need to be explored much. Apart from this, I found the story overall pretty good and enjoyable.

Yzabel / December 6, 2024

Review: Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI

Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 3/5

Blurb:

For the last 100,000 years, we Sapiens have accumulated enormous power. But despite allour discoveries, inventions, and conquests, we now find ourselves in an existential crisis. The world is on the verge of ecological collapse. Misinformation abounds. And we are rushing headlong into the age of AI—a new information network that threatens to annihilate us. For all that we have accomplished, why are we so self-destructive?

Nexus looks through the long lens of human history to consider how the flow of information has shaped us, and our world. Taking us from the Stone Age, through the canonization of the Bible, early modern witch-hunts, Stalinism, Nazism, and the resurgence of populism today, Yuval Noah Harari asks us to consider the complex relationship between information and truth, bureaucracy and mythology, wisdom and power. He explores how different societies and political systems throughout history have wielded information to achieve their goals, for good and ill. And he addresses the urgent choices we face as non-human intelligence threatens our very existence.

Information is not the raw material of truth; neither is it a mere weapon. Nexus explores the hopeful middle ground between these extremes, and in doing so, rediscovers our shared humanity.

Review:

I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Alright, I received a cipy through NetGalley quite a while ago, and just didn’t get to post an actual review until now. Which I should’ve done at the time for sure. Oh well. I still remember enough of the book, in any case, to be able to do so now.

This isn’t the first book by Harari that I read. Regardless of what one may think of the research itself, there is no denying that this author has a knoack for storytelling and for grabbing a reader’s attention (in a good way), all things that are a strong point when it comes to non fiction just as well as for fiction. Especially on the theme if information networks and their latest child (so to speak), the artificial intelligence, a pretty current topic.

Overall, it was quite an interesting read, and one that I would recommend, even though it wasn’t my favourite one by Harari—the latter being caused, perhaps, by the amount of information in the book, which means that each piece couldn’t be prodded in much depth. It does give food for thought, though, and a foundation for a reader to go and do more research on this or that aspect of it—sometimes, all we need is the idea of “check this out” for us to realise that, well, said topic is A Thing. That said, if you’re looking for something with, well, more depth and deeper analysis, this is not the book.

Yzabel / September 6, 2024

Review: Inside Job

Inside Job: Treating Murderers and Sex Offenders. The Life of a Prison Psychologist. by Rebecca Myers
My rating: 4/5

Blurb:

And here I am. Totally alone in a cell with a convicted sex offender who is free to do what he wants. There is no officer. No handcuffs. No radio. Only the man across the desk and me. He looks more petrified than I do.

HMP Graymoor. One of the UK’s most notorious prisons. Home to nearly 800 murderers, rapists and child molesters.

Reporting for her first shift inside is Rebecca: twenty-two, newly graduated – and about to sit down with some of the country’s most dangerous criminals.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

I actually received an ARC of this book a couple of years ago, but didn’t get to read it until, well, much more recently. That said, I didn’t notice any particular “artefacts” that would pointed to a review-copy-full-of-typos of anything of that kind, the book read just like what I expect the published version to be.

This was a fairly interesting account of the beginnings of a psychologist’s career in a prison, more specifically within a program geared towards sex offenders. Interesting, but also on the difficult side, precisely because of the type of work and the people it described. I’ve always found sex offenders specifically to be a very tricky subject: cases of rape are already hard enough, but when the whole thing is perpetrated on children on top of it, it reaches into even deeper recesses. In this way, the work of psychologists/medical personnel to try and understand and figure out if yes or not “something can be done” for the offenders is also tricky. Are these people truly evil? Are they sick, and if they can, can they be cured? If someone has offended once but then never offends again once in prison and then out of it, should they be stigmatised forever (which could be justified… or just as well lead to self-fulfilling prophecies where leaving them alone may have kept them on the straight path)? Or should they be given a second chance—but then, if they’re on the way to offending again, it’s akin to letting the fox inside the henhouse… All very, very tricky, and a very touchy subject indeed.

All the more because, here, it seems that the program didn’t help much in the end. And yet the author still wanted to share her experience, her findings, what happened, because the experience itself is worth recounting nonetheless.

Also, I’m usually not super keen when memoirs and true crime books include too much of the author’s personal life, because the latter can easily veer into being distracting. However, in this specific case, the parts about her own life were just as interesting. Notwithstanding the pressure and the impact dealing with sexual offenders can have on one’s psyche (especially as a young woman on her first job, with all the usual “surely she’s incompetent” that pop up in pretty much every job and sounded even worse in those circumstances), there were also some personal elements that could’ve… gone very wrong for her, as a sort of dark mirror of the people her job was concerned with. Both parts tied with each other, and I won’t lie, but there were a few moments when I was afraid something really bad would happen to her.

Conclusion: a bit of an unusual read for me in terms of what I’ll still loosely consider as “true crime”, and one that was quite hard at times—but also quite interesting.

Yzabel / June 8, 2024

Review: This Is Why You Dream

This Is Why You Dream: What your sleeping brain reveals about your waking life by Rahul Jandial
My rating: 4/5

Blurb:

A fascinating dive into the purpose and potential of dreams

Dreaming is one of the most deeply misunderstood functions of the human brain. Yet recent science reveals that our very survival as a species has depended on it. This Is Why You Dream explores the landscape of our subconscious, showing why humans have retained the ability to dream across millennia and how we can now harness its wondrous powers in both our sleeping and waking lives.

Dreaming fortifies our ability to regulate emotions. It processes and stores memories, amplifies creativity, and promotes learning. Dreams can even forecast future mental and physical ailments.

Dreams can also be put to use. Tracing recent cutting-edge dream research and brain science, dual-trained neuroscientist and neurosurgeon Dr. Rahul Jandial shows how to use lucid dreaming to practice real-life skills, how to rewrite nightmares, what our dreams reveal about our deepest desires, and how to monitor dreams for signs of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

In the tradition of James Nestor’s Breath and Matthew Walker’s Why We Sleep, This Is Why You Dream opens the door to one of our oldest and most vital functions, and unlocks its potential to impact and radically improve our lives.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Dreams in general fascinate me. Not so much the typical “meaning of dreams” approach, where if you dream about X then supposedly it means Y, but the whole subject: we all dream, dreams are as old as humanity, and yet, like with sleep in general, they’re something so trivial but at the same time so elusive, not fully understood yet. (My own dreams are also pretty much of the WTF kind most of the time, and it is fascinating in its own way.)

The author explores some theories about why we dream here, also from an approach as a neurosurgeon. I enjoyed especially the part about nightmares, how it seems that very young children don’t have them, but they actually start when children really get deep into building their own sense of self: nightmares as “the Other/the Threat vs. the Self”, in a way for our brains to establish who we are? I can sense so many possibilities for stories here, too.

Another part I enjoyed was the different roles of the Executive Network and the Imagination Network. Most of my past, older traditional reading about dreams tended to put them in the “information processing” category, with their being some jumble of whatever we experienced during the day, and in a way I think this is also part of it anyway (at least, I do regularly find elements of my current work or personal life projects in my dreams!); but this other approach was more novel to me, and made a lot more sense when explained.

I think I may have liked seeing a few more case studies, but overall I really enjoyed this.

Yzabel / June 8, 2024

Review: Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You

Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud by Becky Holmes
My rating: 4/5

Blurb:

Online romance fraud is a problem across the globe. It causes financial and emotional devastation, yet many people refuse to take it seriously. This is the story of one middle-aged woman in a cardigan determined to understand this growing phenomenon.

No other woman has had so many online romances – from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William – and Becky Holmes is a favourite among peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers. By winding up scammers and investigating the truth behind their profiles, Becky shines a revealing, revolting and hilarious light on a very shady corner of the internet.

Featuring first-hand accounts of victims, examples of scripts used by fraudsters, a look into the psychology of fraud and of course plenty of Becky’s hysterical interactions with scammers, this is a must-read for anyone who needs a reminder that Keanu Reeves is NOT in love with them.

Review:

[I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

This book was pretty interesting, with just the right dose of humour for me: with a dash of fun, but without detracting from the topic itself which, all in all, is quite serious. It’s nothing academic, stemming instead from the author’s personal dabbling with Twitter and other online endeavours, and deciding at some point to make fun of the scammers (why not get a laugh out of them, after all) and, from there, to see if she could engage some of them into revealing more about their motives and their methods.

In a way, it was nothing really new to me (I’ve been a follower for years of several YouTube channels, including Sandoz, about various online scams, so most romance-based types of fraud is something I understand well enough now). Still, it provided an entertaining read, and, more important, it could be of real value to someone who has just started to get interested in this, and needs to learn the “basics”, so to speak.

The book also emphasises how it’s not about being “too naive” or “too stupid” (you know, the typical victim blaming our societies like to indulge in–I wonder if the same people who say that would also call themselves stupid for allowing themselves to be mugged in the street). You can be a police officer or with a whole life of romantic relationships and experience behind you, and still have a blind spot. Indeed, it is very easy to think that from our little corner of safety, when we’re not confronted to it ourselves, sure… but no one is ever completely immune to having a bad spell, a tense period in their life when they could do with a friendly and/or romantic shoulder… and scammers of all kinds are very, very talented when it comes to smelling a prey and pounce on it, insinuating themselves into the chinks in the armor. (People saying “this will never happen to ME because I’m too smart”: good for them if their lives are so perfect that they never find themselves in a spot where they could become vulnerable… but, nope, it’s still not about being smart. Also, let’s not become complacent, that’s how we also become easier to manipulate.)

I would’ve liked the book to devote a little more room to scammers’ circumstances as well, though, especially when it comes to South Asia: there is a real dimension of human trafficking going on as well (people getting lured into “scammers’ compounds” on the false pretense of a genuine job, and finding themselves held there against their will, literally enslaved and forced to scam others online for fear of being beaten, or worse). It’s not all black or all white here. But I guess this is a good topic for another book, after all.

Yzabel / April 20, 2024

Review: The Trading Game

The Trading Game: A Confession by Gary Stevenson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Blurb:

“If you were gonna rob a bank, and you saw the vault door there, left open, what would you do? Would you wait around?”
Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. And he was good at numbers.
At the London School of Economics, Gary, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called “The Trading Game.” The a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank. A place where you could make more money than you’d ever imagined. Where your colleagues are dysfunctional geniuses and insecure bullies, yet they start to feel like family. Where against the odds you become the bank’s most profitable trader, closing deals worth nearly a trillion dollars. A day . Soon you are dreaming of numbers in your sleep—and then you stop sleeping at all.
What happens when winning starts to feel like losing? It’s 2008 and now you have a front-row seat to the global financial crisis. A time when the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer—like the very people you grew up with. The economy is slipping off a precipice, and your own sanity starts slipping with it. You want to stop, but you can’t. Because nobody ever leaves .
Would you stick, or quit? Even if it meant risking everything?
This is an outrageous, unvarnished, white-knuckle journey to the dark heart of an intoxicating world—from someone who survived the game and then blew it all wide open.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Quite an interesting memoir in many ways, from an ex-trader whom a lot of people must have seen as an unlikely candidate for such a job (or, at least, I bet a lot of people would expect traders to come from a more specific pool with families closely related to financial matters, for instance).

Gary Stevenson worked at Citi for a few years after university, and managed to find his place there… or did he? For not everything was so peachy, even though he made money and things looked, for all intents and purposes, as if they were going the right way… for him, not necessarily for the rest of the world caught in the 2008 crisis. And reading about that was definitely interesting, because it is no secret that as a lot of people suffered from that very crisis, there were also those who managed to get an upper hand, so to speak, and leave the table rather wealthier. Which is partly the moral dilemma that Gary went through here, finding it more and more difficult to reconcile his success with the realisation that the markets were going crazy, and soon going down in flames.

I had a bit of a harder time, though, with the portrayal of the trading world—entertaining in a way (everybody in there seemed to be a prick of some sort or other), but it’s the kind of portrayal that grows a little… stale after a while? Note: I have no idea how people behave on the trading floor, it may or it may not be that this environment is pretty toxic in general and in nature, and I wouldn’t be surprised if indeed it was. It just grew old after a while. Also I was somewhat annoyed at the last part of the book, because in the end it read more like constant anger cum trying to get as much money as possible from Citi before leaving, but without the deeper introspection I would’ve expected from this?

Conclusion: 3 stars, it is an interesting read, the author just doesn’t come off as very reliable or relatable. (Not sure if he was supposed to be, to be fair.)