Ila Perey's Blog

My ebook, The Spaces between us, is FREE for a limited time on amazon starting:

Sunday, February 15, 2026, 12:00 am GMT-08:00

To

Thursday, February 19, 2026, 11:59 pm GMT-08:00

If you’ve been meaning to read it, this is the perfect time to download your copy. Please do leave a review thereafter so that I may keep writing. It Is easy-reading for the most parts, but peppered with dream symbolism open to interpretations. I hope the story finds you when you need it the most.

Love, Ila

I’m sorry I haven’t been writing except literary notes which I’ve been churning quite a bit lately; horrors and thrillers for now to mark the season. Please follow me if you haven’t already.

Hello, lovers of spook and danger

Here’s next on my reading list for this season

If you’d like my literary notes, please follow my reviews

1. A sunny place for shady people by Mariana Enriquez

2. Witchcraft for wayward girls by Grady Hendrix

3. Senlin Ascends by Josiah Bancroft

4. Walkers by Graham Masterton

🕯️ In keeping with the run up to spooky season , I call upon 3 thrillers to dim the lights

🌙 🌒 🌑

I might read them all depending on how much of a scaredy-🐈‍⬛ I turn into after the 🌲 one

I’ll share my reflective notes if I have any. So watch this space or follow me if that sounds like your kind of spice on a latte

First up, Our share of night by Mariana Enriquez

What’s haunting you this season apart from your Ex ->👻 and past mistakes?

What the dead can do by Peter Rosch
The night lagoon by Jo Morey

I recently refreshed my Goodreads profile to better reflect how I read and write about books. I’m drawn to literary notes rather than conventional reviews—less about plot critique, more about exploring ideas, themes, and structures.

To me, books are invitations to question and wander through the world the author creates. My notes aim to follow that curiosity, and into what a book makes us consider rather than summarising or judging it.

There are already plenty of traditional reviews out there, written by exceptionally talented reviewers. I’m not one of them—I can’t write like that; but here, I hope to carve out a small space for literary exploration, reflecting on what books have taught me. I’d be delighted if you followed along, shared your thoughts, and maybe even read my book while you’re here.

Thank you for visiting my space.

Your presence rings a gentle note in my otherwise silent space.

Ila

After months of reading for pleasure, it’s time to dive into the more serious stuff. I plan to write book 0, ‘a little over a year’ as a prelude to book 1, the ‘spaces between us’, bridging a gap between losing and finding love. If you have read book 1, you might find the love interest a little too saccharine. I wrote it as such on purpose as you will see why. It is the sweetness counteracting bitterness in medicine so it can be swallowed and sustain life.

Book 0 will be about a person finding a way, not only to live but reasons to keep living. A person barely existing feels translucent and phantom-like, floating from dream to scene, existing in a different world and only hesitatingly touching reality where pain also resides. It mirrors my actual experiences of being betrayed then abandoned by a lover of more than half a decade, who spent that time delaying the inevitable, keeping me tethered by empty promises of a life together until he found someone else whom he married in less than 1 year.

I remember that feeling of utter devastation from lost dreams. The anger from learning that I’ve been back-benched and dehumanised. The confusion as I searched the past for signs and effectively living there while at the same time, having to re-calibrate my flight plan. “I don’t know what to do now”. “What should I do now?”. “ I don’t feel like doing anything anymore.” OCD imprisons me in a perpetual loop of self-torture.

The shock of reality falling like bricks on me, did not crush me by a stroke of a pen; I resided mostly in my head through the world of books and anecdotes. My world—the sorrowful place—is replaced, bit by bit with contemporary art—a world of surrealism, imagination and perspectives. It’s like finding your position switched to that of an outsider looking in or a bird high up in the mountains with stellar aerial perspective. It’s a form of necessary disassociation so I can study the source of my pain without feeling it that much. That’s why you find me often in museums and why the character, Isla, seeks refuge in symbolism.

The book will feel more than just finding one’s place in the world; no, maybe much smaller—in one’s community. It’s ultimately a climb just to feel worthy and human again, the void so long empty, you can still hear the emptiness ringing in your head. So if ever you feel like you are alone in your grief, so massive you feel you couldn’t possibly survive this on your own, just know that you are not alone.

I hope through my writing, we will survive this together and that the pages of my book(s) will find you well.

All my love,

Ila

I apologise for reviews that look a little sparse. Though I try not to give too much away, I try to write enough to transmit my takeaways and what I like about the book. I’ve been through my Libby app as an aide mémoire to build a shelf here at goodreads. Some books I remember as if I just read them yesterday so I could write lengthier reviews about them. However, there are too many books I don’t remember reading at all. The blurb/description helps me recall a bit but not enough to trigger an avalanche of memories from which I could form a personal opinion. Googling helps to a certain extent except I can’t help feeling like a fraudster—as though any review would be based on someone else’s memories—I can’t post a review I could call mine in good conscience so I don’t write them.

The best explanation for this occurrence is that either I don’t like the book enough to remember it or there is nothing substantial or relevant to which I could tether on a personal level. It could be both but either way, everything gets lost in the ether. It’s not to say the books aren’t good at all. If I remember how I feel about them, then at least I could leave a rating which I do—4 stars if I remember vaguely liking them. On some extremely rare occasions, I’ve left 3 stars for books that annoy me. More likely than not, any book below 4 stars just do not get read past a few chapters. There is too much to read and not enough time. I hope that makes sense.

I apologise for the officious sounding title. The rating that I give a book is based on a simple principle: if I like it, 4 stars. If I love it, 5 stars. It’s a matter of my personal taste which I acknowledge to be different from others. Anything less than 4 will not make it to the shelf simply because if I don’t like a book enough, I can’t read it past a few chapters. I don’t have that kind of mental endurance. As such, I think I’ll spend time on here writing about what I like or love about a book, interacting with others and finding inspiration for the next read. That already takes up a lot of my time for which I’m not complaining because I love it. I hope you will find as much joy as I do reading the books. Happy travels in the land of dreams!

I wished I found this space sooner. I enjoyed reading the reviews and talking about the books I read in the hopes that others will find joy in them like I did. There’s always something precious to find that changes a piece of me. Added to my growing list are books that will accompany me this summer, many of which I’ve never heard of and would have missed without the contributions of the readers here. May we always find our reading nooks free from distractions and our shelves full of books we treasure and love.

The talking cat was inspired by Haruki Murakami’s book, Kafka on the shore. I was mesmerised by that scene which required creative imagination into how a cat would think given its nature and how it would perceive the world. Perception is discussed at various points in my novel such as when the character, Isla visits a contemporary art exhibition and later when she is visited in her dreams. People (and cats) perceive the world differently depending on what matters to them. More importantly, I used to tell my cat everything and imagined her responses as stemming from a very wise cat. She was my world. Adding a character inspired by her was my way of immortalising her. That and featuring her on the book cover.