Unserious Book Reviews

Jason Dessen is a perfectly ordinary physics professor living a perfectly ordinary life in Chicago, which in thriller terms means he is about three pages away from everything going catastrophically wrong. One night, Jason is kidnapped by a man wearing a creepy mask. Jason wakes up to discover that reality has hit shuffle. He’s no longer a mild-mannered professor; instead, he’s a world-famous physi...

In case you’ve ever wondered what would happen if a bunch of extremely rich people made consistently terrible decisions while dressed impeccably, The Great Gatsby has you covered: a story about love, wealth, illusions, and the dangers of throwing parties for people who won’t even stay to help clean up. ===================================== Find more of our Unserious Book Reviews on our website htt...

Ferriss opens his bestseller with a seductive premise: escape the 9 to 5 grind, join the “New Rich,” and redesign your life so you work less and live more. Naturally, this is extremely appealing to anyone who has ever stared at a spreadsheet and wondered if pigeons have a better work-life balance. His tone is confident—borderline smug—but in a way that makes you think, “Annoying… but what if he’s...

June Hayward is a struggling writer whose career has the structural integrity of a damp tissue. Rather fortunately, she happens to be with Athena Liu — literary darling, national treasure, and human embodiment of “effortlessly excellent” — on the night Athena dies in a freak accident involving pancakes. June mourns appropriately for approximately three seconds before noticing Athena’s freshly comp...

Lord of the Flies is what happens when you give a group of schoolboys freedom, no supervision, and zero Wi-Fi. When a plane crashes on a deserted island, stranding a bunch of British boys who were presumably on their way somewhere with proper adult oversight and tea. Miraculously, no grown-ups survive. Tragically, the boys do. They build shelters (badly), maintain a signal fire (inconsistently), a...

Oliver Twist is the story of what happens when a very small boy makes the catastrophic error of politely asking for more food. Sweet, polite, and apparently terrifying to the adults in charge of the workhouse, they react to his request as though he’s asked for the moon, the stars, and a side of pudding. So starts his unplanned adventure which sees him stroll to London, get arrested, rescued, kidna...

Eat, Pray, Love is the story of what happens when you have a perfectly respectable life on paper and decide instead to have an existential crisis with a passport. Freshly divorced and spiritually singed, Elizabeth does what many of us consider daily but rarely commit to: she sells her belongings and embarks on a year-long journey to Italy, India, and Indonesia. Some people buy new bedding after a...

The Secret History is what happens when a normal college student accidentally enrolls in Advanced Pretentious Chaos with a minor in Murder. At first, everything seems idyllic for our small clique of students: they read ancient texts, drink expensive liquor, and behave like philosophy majors who’ve never heard the word “consequence.” Then they take their classical studies a little too seriously. In...

Jack Torrance, a writer with anger issues, brings his family to his winter caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, a place with more ominous vibes than a clown convention held at midnight. Fortunately, the hotel chef notices Jack’s son Danny has psychic ability – “the shining” – and casually warns him that the Overlook is full of bad leftover energy, but that he should just… avoid the scary bits. Unf...

Our 4-minute Unserious Book Review of Gone Girl, where Nick and Amy Dunne’s marriage is the literary equivalent of a beautifully wrapped present that turns out to contain a live scorpion wearing a party hat. At first glance, they’re the perfect couple: witty, attractive, and smug in that way only fictional New Yorkers can truly master. But once they move to Missouri – where dreams go to take a lon...

The Talented Mr Ripley is the uplifting tale of what can happen if you combine ambition, envy, and a truly flexible sense of identity. It moves from the United State to Italy, and Italy, naturally, is dazzling. There is sun. There is wine. There are linen shirts fluttering meaningfully in coastal breezes. Dickie Greenleaf lives in a picturesque seaside town, painting mediocre art and doing absolut...

Our 4-minute unserious book review about Charlotte Bronte's classic, Jane Eyre. The story of a woman who absolutely refuses to calm down about injustice, no matter how inconvenient itmakes things for everyone involved. A principle we could do with remembering today. It’s a tale of a fierce governess, a reformed brooder, one extremely flammable attic, and the enduring moral that if you simply refus...

A 4-minute unserious review of Richard Osman's cozy mystery, The Thursday Mystery Club. Subtitle: Why knit scarves when you can unravel homicides? Find out if we think you should view with joy that the author’s retirees face the end of life with wit, friendship, and a total disregard for rules. Or whether the writing could be seen as being stereotypical condascending crock-lit which doesn’t do jus...

“A road trip that makes Race Around the World look like a stroll through Costco” Never laugh at dragons - but you can laugh at our 4-minute unserious book review of JRR Tolkien's epic story, The Hobbit. A mini adventure but with all your favourite characters - and you won't be interrupted by Precious. Find all of our Unserious Book Reviews on our website: http://unseriousbookreviews.com/

“With puzzles that would make a Sudoku champion roll their eyes” Welcome to our 4-minute unserious book review of The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown’s bestselling guide to running frantically through European tourist attractions while learning questionable art history. Enter Robert Langdon, Harvard “symbologist,” a job that doesn’t really exist; Sophie Neveu, a French cryptographer whose main role is to...

"If you thought your last family holiday was full of drama, you clearly haven’t met the residents of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is less a love story and more a multi-generational soap opera set in the English moors, featuring a cast of people who all desperately need therapy and maybe a long weekend at a spa." A four-minute humorous book re...

A four-minute humorous book review of Suzanne Collins' first book in The Hunger Games series - but shorter and a lot funnier than the novel. Oh, and if you haven't read it, it does contain spoilers of a sort - sorry.