Keeping Up With The Penguins

Your Driver Is Waiting – Priya Guns

October 13, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Your Driver Is Waiting is a “blackly comic and deeply political novel about anger, love, and privilege” as per the log line. That’s such an apt summation, I couldn’t come up with anything better myself.

Damani is a RideShare driver, and she is angry about nearly everything. She has “no kids, no pets, just one job and a whole load of responsibilities” (including, but not limited to, her mother who is incapacitated by grief after the unexpected loss of her husband, Damani’s father). Damani has an anthropology degree that she’s not using at all, and she won’t tell the reader what city she’s in. “As long as I’m alive,” she muses, “does it really matter where I am?”.

She’s spot on: as I read Your Driver Is Waiting, I kept trying to imagine the story taking place in different locations, and it really could be set in any major city in any colonised country.

Around her, Damani sees protests and political activism everywhere – she’d love to participate herself, but she’s just too damn tired. At this point, simply continuing to exist feels like a revolutionary act. Well-meaning liberals take to the streets, and sign petitions, and hold fundraisers, but none of it seems to be making a tangible difference in her life as a queer Tamil woman, an exploited gig worker constantly on the brink of eviction.

After a minor traffic incident, Damani falls into an intoxicating love affair with a (relatively) wealthy white woman named Jolene. Jolene is woke, don’t worry; she’s a social worker, she’s read the books, and she’s a vocal ally. She seems to be keenly aware of the structural inequities that define their lives… but does she really “get it”? When Damani brings Joelene to Doo Wop, a makeshift community centre slash bar slash organising space slash soup kitchen, they quickly realise that the gulf between their lived experiences might be too wide to bridge, even with all the hot sex. Then, Jolene does something unforgivable, and it throws Damani’s world off its axis.

Your Driver Is Waiting reads like a new friend telling you about her life. It seems like she’s mostly telling it straight, but I kept sensing little hints throughout that Damani might not be as reliable a narrator of her life as she might have you believe. She keeps weapons in the car that doubles as her workplace – an ostensibly smart idea, given how often she encounters the threat of violence on her job, but gradually her psychological reliance on the proximity of those weapons becomes unsettling.

In (very short) chapters, this staccato narrative might come off as satirical if you haven’t spent any time at all in ostentatiously leftist spaces. Your Driver Is Waiting works because it is technicolour realism – everyone who’s been to a #BLM protest or an anti-racist book club will recognise the characters in it. Guns has a keen eye for the performative nature of so much “activism” in the 2020s, and is scathing in her critique. It’s a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Kiley Reid’s Such A Fun Age, and doesn’t mind their narrators slightly unhinged.

P.S. There is a very sad (but peripheral) dog death about a third of the way through, so a heads up if you’re sensitive to that.

Read Your Driver Is Waiting on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Your Driver Is Waiting:

“YOUR DRIVER IS WAITING is TAXI DRIVER for the gig economy” – Jennifer Jordan
“I don’t mind a leisurely traipse through a character’s brain as long as that brain is interesting” – V. Foster
“The ending was disappointing but I was relieved to get there.” W.A. Burt

Once, Again, Always – Amanda Gayle

October 11, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Imagine waking up, completely confused, in a bed, in a room, in a body you don’t recognise. In fact, the only thing you do recognise is the half-naked man in bed beside you. That’s the situation in which Molly finds herself at the beginning of Once, Again, Always. I read an advance copy of the audiobook via Libro.fm.

It turns out, during the night, Molly had a series of small strokes that caused a significant chunk of her memories to simply vanish. She woke up believing she’s still 21 and single, when in fact she’s 27 and married – to Aster Bishop, no less, her nemesis/academic rival from boarding school.

It’s a 13 Going On 30 kind of conceit, as Molly must learn to navigate her new life without the memories that made it, with people she never thought she’d become close to. Occasionally, the reader gets access to flashbacks of “before”, that give some context to Molly’s confusion.

In addition to the romance aspect – will Molly fall in love with the high school bully who is now her husband, all over again? – Once, Again, Always also has a strong undercurrent of mystery. Molly’s friends and family are determined not to overwhelm her with information from the past she can’t remember, so she – and the reader – are constantly waiting for the next Big Reveal.

I enjoyed the conceit and I loved the cast of side characters, all of whom were thoroughly delightful. The only let-down of Once, Again, Always was the cheesiness of the romantic dialogue. Alongside the fast quips and undeniable chemistry of the platonic relationships, it stuck out like a sore thumb (or a sore head, as it were). Honestly, if Gayle wrote another book purely about the friendships without the romance angle, I’d gobble it up greedily.

Read Once, Again, Always on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)

15 Thriller Books With Unhinged Main Characters

October 9, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

A good thriller book should always draw you in, with a combination of tension and suspense and (ideally) a jaw-dropping twist or two. These fifteen thriller books will have you on the edge of your seat because you, as the reader, can never be quite sure that you can trust what the unhinged main characters are telling you.

How To Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie

How To Kill Your Family - Bella Mackie - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “When Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father has rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, she vows revenge and coldly sets out to get her retribution―by killing them all, one by one. But then, Grace is imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit… Outrageously funny, compulsively readable, and subversive, How To Kill Your Family is a wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder.” Read my full review of How To Kill Your Family here.

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

Best Offer Wins - Marisa Kashino - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Eighteen months and 11 lost bidding wars into house-hunting in the overheated Washington, DC suburbs, 37-year-old publicist Margo Miyake gets a tip about the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, slated to come up for sale in one month. Margo becomes obsessed with buying the house before it’s publicly listed and the masses descend (with unbeatable, all-cash offers in hand). A little stalking? Harmless. A bit of trespassing? Necessary. As Margo infiltrates the homeowners’ lives, her tactics grow increasingly unhinged―but just when she thinks she’s won them over, she hits a snag in her plan. Best Offer Wins is a propulsive debut and a razor-sharp exploration of class, ambition, and the modern housing crisis.”

My Sister, The Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

My Sister The Serial Killer - Oyinkan Braithwaite - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “In My Sister, The Serial Killer, Korede’s sister Ayoola is many things: the favorite child, the beautiful one, possibly sociopathic. And now Ayoola’s third boyfriend in a row is dead, stabbed through the heart with Ayoola’s knife. Korede has long been in love with a kind, handsome doctor at the hospital where she works. She dreams of the day when he will realize that she’s exactly what he needs. But when he asks Korede for Ayoola’s phone number, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.” Read my full review of My Sister, The Serial Killer here.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn - Book Laid Face Up On Wooden Table - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “When Gone Girl begins, on a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn’t doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife’s head, but passages from Amy’s diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media—as well as Amy’s fiercely doting parents—the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he’s definitely bitter—but is he really a killer?” Read my full review of Gone Girl here.

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

Animal - Lisa Taddeo - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Joan has spent a lifetime enduring the cruelties of men. But when one of them commits a shocking act of violence in front of her, she flees New York City in search of Alice, the only person alive who can help her make sense of her past. In the sweltering hills above Los Angeles, Joan unravels the horrific event she witnessed as a child—that has haunted her every waking moment—while forging the power to finally strike back. Animal is a depiction of female rage at its rawest, and a visceral exploration of trauma, revenge, and the fallout from a male-dominated society.”

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz

The Plot - Jean Hanff Korelitz - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Jacob Finch Bonner was once a promising young novelist with a respectably published first book. Today, he’s teaching in a third-rate MFA program and struggling to maintain what’s left of his self-respect; he hasn’t written―let alone published―anything decent in years. When Evan Parker, his most arrogant student, announces he doesn’t need Jake’s help because the plot of his book in progress is a sure thing, Jake is prepared to dismiss the boast as typical amateur narcissism. But then… he hears The Plot. Jake returns to the downward trajectory of his own career and braces himself for the supernova publication of Evan Parker’s first novel: but it never comes. When he discovers that his former student has died, presumably without ever completing his book, Jake does what any self-respecting writer would do with a story like that―a story that absolutely needs to be told.” Read my full review of The Plot here.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear - Caro Claire Burke - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.” Read my full review of Yesteryear here.

Under The Skin by Michel Faber

Under The Skin - Michel Faber - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Isserley cruises the Scottish Highlands picking up hitchhikers. Scarred and awkward, yet strangely erotic and threatening, she listens to her hitchhikers as they open up to her, revealing clues about who might miss them if they should disappear. Under the Skin takes us on a heart-thumping ride through dangerous territory—our own moral instincts and the boundaries of compassion.” Read my full review of Under The Skin here.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Baby Teeth - Zoje Stage - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Suzette loves her daughter, but after years of expulsions and strained home schooling, her precarious health and sanity are weakening day by day. She’s also becoming increasingly frightened by Hanna’s little games, while her husband Alex remains blind to the failing family dynamics. Soon, Suzette starts to fear that maybe their supposedly innocent baby girl may have a truly sinister agenda. Baby Teeth will get under your skin and keep you trapped in its chilling grip until the shocking conclusion.”

You by Caroline Kepnes

You - Caroline Kepnes - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting. As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. You is a compulsively readable page-turner, a razor-sharp novel for our hyper-connected digital age.” Read my full review of You here.

In A Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

In A Dark Dark Wood - Ruth Ware - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “When reclusive writer Leonora is invited to the English countryside for a weekend away, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. But as the first night falls, revelations unfold among friends old and new, an unnerving memory shatters Leonora’s reserve, and a haunting realization creeps in: the party is not alone in the woods. What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in In A Dark, Dark Wood.”

A Touch Of Jen by Beth Morgan

A Touch Of Jen - Beth Morgan - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former co-worker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia’s entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart. Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons with her wealthy boyfriend and their group. Part millennial social comedy, part psychedelic horror, and all wildly entertaining, A Touch Of Jen is a sly, unflinching examination of the hidden drives that lurk just outside the frame of our carefully curated selves.”

Love Letters To A Serial Killer by Tasha Coryell

Love Letters To A Serial Killer - Tasha Coryell - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Recently ghosted and sick of watching her friends fade into the suburbs, thirty-something Hannah finds community in a true-crime forum that’s on a mission to solve the murders of four women in Atlanta. After William, a handsome lawyer, is arrested for the killings, Hannah begins writing him letters. It’s the perfect outlet for her pent-up frustration and rage. The exercise empowers her, and even feels healthy at first. Until William writes back. Hannah takes the investigation into her own hands in Love Letters To A Serial Killer, a dark and irresistibly compelling thriller.”

Call Me Evie by J.P. Pomare

Call Me Evie - JP Pomare - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Seventeen-year-old Evie and her uncle Jim have just moved to an isolated cabin in a remote beach town–a far cry from their hometown of Melbourne. But Evie isn’t her real name. And Jim isn’t really her uncle. Jim tells Evie she did something terrible back home, that he’s hiding her for her own good. But Evie can’t remember anything about that night–for all she knows, he’s lying. As fragments of her memory return, she starts to wonder if Jim is really her savior…or her jailer. In Call Me Evie, J.P. Pomare explores the fragility of memory and the potential in everyone to hide the truth–even from themselves.” Read my full review of Call Me Evie here.

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides - Keeping Up With The Penguins

Blurb: “Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, The Silent Patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.” Read my full review of The Silent Patient here.

Burial Rites – Hannah Kent

October 6, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

It can be tough to write fiction about real people and events – especially when the events in question occurred centuries ago, the people involved are long dead, and contemporaneous records are relatively limited. Hannah Kent really shot for the stars with her debut novel, Burial Rites, a historical crime drama set in Northern Iceland in 1929, based on the real execution of the convicted murderess Agnes Magnúsdóttir.

In both the book and real life, Agnes was condemned to death as an accessory to the murder of two men. Agnes was a housemaid, and one of the victims was her ‘master’ (the other being his houseguest). While she awaited execution, she was sent to live and work on the family farm of a District Officer – an informal ‘custodial holding’ arrangement for various bureaucratic reasons – and placed in the care of a young reverend.

All of this is firmly established in the historical record, and Kent uses that as the starting point around which she builds Burial Rites. She says in her author’s note that she wanted to portray Agnes more ambiguously than other historical records have done. Agnes is widely depicted as a Lady Macbeth-type figure, with a reputation for (as Kent herself puts it in Burial Rites) “a sharp tongue and loose skirts”, but Kent’s depiction delves more deeply into what could have possibly motivated her crimes – and, as such, engenders more sympathy.

Agnes’s story is revealed very gradually over the course of the novel (so gradually, in fact, that I often lost track of who was what to whom and where they were headed). She was hired along with another (much younger, and dumber) housekeeper to work for Natan Ketilsson, and eventually the two women conspired with Natan’s neighbour Friðrik Sigurðsson to rob and murder him, afterwards setting fire to his house in an ultimately futile effort to conceal their crimes. Of course, Kent encourages us to read between the lines of how and why this set of circumstances played out.

While Burial Rites moves slowly – undoubtedly too slowly for many readers’ tastes – and hopscotches across perspectives, I was impressed by Kent’s careful use of detail in depicting the characters. The example that sticks in my mind is the District Commissioner (the District Officer’s boss). He is described as being ‘repelled’ by the Icelandic peasants’ ‘hovels’, and he insists on his full title being used in conversation – immediately giving the distinct impression that he is a self-important arsehole.

That attention to detail expands beyond the characters, too, to the rhythms and realities of farm life across the seasons in 19th century Iceland. The prioritisation of food and warmth, the rigors of the seasonal workload, and the isolation and insularity of the region are all driving forces in Burial Rites. Kent also uses these tangible details to imply commentary about class and wealth disparity, and the roles of women as both caretakers and scapegoats, without needing to hammer the reader over the head.

(There’s also quite a bit of animal slaughter, and one brief mention of an awful dog death, as well as the eventual reveal of the gruesome human murders – so beware if you’re particularly sensitive to any of that.)

Burial Rites is an intense read, and I’d imagine that its gradual pace and heavy reliance on Icelandic phrases and saga stories will be off-putting to some readers – but if you enjoyed Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace, you’re in for a treat with this one.

Read Burial Rites on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of Burial Rites:

“Perhaps the sources Kent used mentioned the affairs between characters and the hinted-at attraction between the priest and the condemned, but all the sex seemed trite in a world where people might not survive a snowstorm.” – Momof4girls
“frankly, I’d rather have been beheaded than read another page.” – L Bellamy
“Schadenfreudeans rejoice – this one’s for you!” – The archaeologist
“Burial Rites reaks of stink, blood, and death. The pace is that of slow hot piss.” – Desert Studio Art Co.

Exit Party – Emily St John Mandel

October 4, 2026 / Sheree / 0 Comments

Exit Party is undoubtedly one of the buzziest books of 2026 – with good reason! Emily St John Mandel already has a string of best-sellers under her belt, so the world has been awaiting her next novel with breath that is bated. My friends at Macmillan Australia were kind enough to send me a copy for review.

The story is told in three parts, starting in Los Angeles. The year is 2031, and the United States plunged into chaos after a coup d’état, but things are finally starting to stabilise in the new “Republic of California”. As the nighttime curfew is lifted and Californians celebrate, protagonist Ari is adjusting to her new life off the back of an 18 year stretch in a federal prison. A friend of her new roommate is throwing a party, and they cautiously venture out to attend.

That’s about all I want to tell you about Exit Party, as what follows is an incredible story that’s best experienced when you have no idea what to expect. It’s a Something Is Going On book, with doppelgängers and disappearances and gun runners and state surveillance and art heists and more. And yet, as mysterious and chaotic as all that sounds, the exposition is masterfully balanced, connecting just enough of the dots to keep the reader from getting frustrated while remaining cryptic enough to keep you curious.

Ari is the perfect protagonist, in my view. She’s pragmatic, wry, and exactly the kind of person you’d want to have around in a crisis. And not just because she has premonitions! (Not cheesy ones, just certainty in her sense of what’s about to happen.)

Exit Party is a surprisingly allusive novel, too: from the real-world response to COVID-19 lockdowns, to the literary works of George Orwell, to the artwork of the mid-20th century, to the calming effect of classical music. Mandel even works in a few overlaps with her previous novels (The Singer’s Gun and The Glass Hotel), which make for nice little Easter eggs for fans. The one that surprised me most, though, was the reference to a PostSecret note (“Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead”) that also served as inspiration for Jodi Picoult’s new novel released last month.

Exit Party is superbly written, defying expectations at every turn and creating a story that is so immersive it feels impossible to explain – each reader must experience it for themselves.

Read Exit Party on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)