diana > Recent Status Updates

The Third Person - boring i’m sorry 💔 the ghost wasn’t even scary!!

The Jolly Corner - fascinating take on a ghost story and also featured my favourite romance in the collection (though this wasn’t a high bar to reach)

The Friends of the Friends - absolutely chilling final line. unfortunately after how much I enjoyed the last two stories I think this one was a bit of a letdown

The Turn of the Screw - the main event! I liked the show but the original story knocked it out of the park. read this at night time and it was genuinely freaking me out, and I don’t scare that easily. posing children as the antagonists was perfect

Sir Edmund Orme - funnily enough this story reminded me of an Austen novel and kind of cemented the fact that the classics I enjoy the most always involve personal drama. I found the character/behaviour of Mrs Marden so fascinating

Owen Wingrave - the saddest story by far… Henry James is great at really drawing out the suspense and tension and no matter how inevitable the end feels it always hits

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes - delightfully creepy. I knew exactly how this one would end but was taken aback anyway by the suddenness of it.

The Last of the Valerii - not a ghost story so lowkey a disappointment in that regard, though it was a bit fun brushing up on my Roman mythology knowledge

this was slowly shaping up to be a solid 3 star book (and it still could be!) but i just hit what is hopefully the first plot twist of many and almost jumped out of my chair. i’ve been waiting hundreds of pages for this moment but FINALLY i am so seated

just went ?!?!!!!!? after finishing the Old Man, which is sometimes really all i want to feel after reading a good book.

the ending of Kiss Me Again, Stranger… it doesn’t matter if i can guess how these short stories might go, the way they actually play out somehow always shock me 😭 also liked the brief commentary in this one about WW2

The Little Photographer is my second favourite so far after The Birds - daphne du maurier is so great at writing characters with strong personalities, even if the story itself is only 50 pages long, and building up suspense and keeping the reader at the edge of their seat