I don’t know about anyone else, but I absolutely love occasionally watching a reading vlog. The vibes, the cosiness – it all makes me want nothing more than to have a cosy night in reading myself. So last Friday, that is exactly what I did! Not only could I get some stubborn books finished, I thought it would also be fun to replicate what reading vlogs are like by recording my progress and thoughts – in words! (Since I don’t like filming myself and I do like writing… that is, after all, why I run a blog and not a YouTube channel hehe.)

Side note: I did recently start a Bookstagram account and whilst my main thing is still this blog, I’d love if you could give it some love!

Anyway! I have since edited my thoughts for the usual grammar culprits and I thought I would try uploading it to the blog and seeing if people like it! I will also include a review of (spoiler alert) the book that I finished during the evening – Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson – at the end!

(If you do just want to skip to the review – click here.)

Without further ado, please enjoy.

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Softly glowing lamps turn on to reveal a bedroom crowded with books, tea and postcards from various trips. On the bed is a woman propped up by pillows and enveloped in blankets. She is surrounded by stacks of books on one side, a laptop on the other, a plate of snacks and a pile of water bottles in the corner. She obviously wants to stay here for a while.

Friday 27th February 2026, 19:15

I’ve yanked out all the books that I’ve read part of this month but not finished and to try and set out a plan of action for the night. The main goal is to try and finish as many books as possible and also do a little bit of uni dissertation reading before my brain got too tired.

My rough plan looks something like this:

• Finish Poyums by Len Pennie – I’ll probably scatter my reading of these poems in between books or whenever I feel like I need a break from whatever I’m reading at the moment.
• Finish Show Me Where It Hurts by Claire Gleeson – This is the only novel I have on the go at the moment and it’s not super long, so I should be able to finish it tonight.
• Finish the “Ancient Beginnings” chapter of Women in Imperial China by Bret Hinsch and write a couple brief notes about my key takeaways.
• If I have time/energy I can move on to reading a bit of Two Women Living Together or study Act 2 of the Save the Cat! Writes A Novel Beat Sheet.
• Go to sleep by 11pm! (I usually try to turn out the lights between 10-11pm and I’m already in my pyjamas so all I need to do before bed is brush my teeth!)

19:26

It is now four minutes until 19:30 and I love starting things at nice round numbers, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give a quick pre-read check in as to where I am with each of the main goals of today.

Right, now it’s 19:30, so let’s get reading! I’m going to start with Women in Imperial China to hopefully tick that one off right away.

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Friday 27th February, 19:31

Of course, I realise right away that I don’t have pens and highlighters near me, so I have to get up and grab some.

19:54

Okay, “Ancient Beginnings” chapter is complete! Managed to make some interesting notes on potential factors influencing a change in women’s roles and social status that I could try and identify in later periods, as well as some of the starting points for ideologies that remain influential into the late imperial period. I made a couple of notes and tabs in the book and I’ll probably let it sit and germinate for a bit before writing some notes either later this evening (unlikely) or tomorrow (more likely). 

Snack plate update: satsuma mostly gone, chocolate-seeds-nuts bowl half gone. No water drank – very thirsty. I’m off to glug some water and then start on Show Me Where It Hurts, although I might sneak in a few poems first and then start SMWH at 8pm (now in 3 minutes). 

20:02

20:28

I am at page 111 of SMWH – why is there suddenly adultery? If you want to hook up with a man for a sense of danger, why pick a married man?! Plenty of single men in the world. (And also, double bad on the man in this equation.)

I do hate the widespread inclusion of adultery in literary fiction books – is this just something we’re supposed to accept as part of life? To the extent that she’s mostly only concerned about the fact that he has kids and not the fact that he’s married? Alas, this is (hopefully) not a major plot point that’s going to continue throughout the rest of the story, so I shall attempt to move past it. Apart from that, I am enjoying. 

I also had to take a quick break from reading to call my sister because we (my mum and I) are trying to organise to go and see her for her birthday in March but she wasn’t responding to my messages and we need to book stuff quickly because it’s in two weeks! I called her and she didn’t pick up but Whatsapp says she’s online so I might read some poetry until she hopefully calls me back.

Update: she called me back just as I picked up the book. Back to regularly scheduled programming – fingers crossed that the adultery part of this book is over quickly!

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Friday 27th February, 21:19

My evening ended up being hijacked by complicated booking stuff! Still not resolved but I can’t figure it out any further tonight so I will now return to the relative peace of reading land. Still got another hour and a half or so to finish 130ish pages of this book + Poyums… fingers crossed! Also, all my snacks are gone (well, there’s more in the cupboard, but I think they’re probably better saved for another day).

(Future Keira here: the complicated booking stuff was expensive but is now resolved at least – next time I do one of these evenings I might need to turn off notifications hehe.)

Back to reading!

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Friday 27th February, 21:41

Trips to Italy really seem to be the healing secret (panacea)! Reminds me of The Enchanted April. On another note, love this quote:

She wonders if this is how animals experience life, as a series of sensations that are simply good or bad, without need for analysis or investigation. It would not, she thinks, be a terrible way to live. (Show Me Where It Hurts, p. 134)

21:45

Another new favourite quote from this book!

Before, this sort of enormity used to scare her – the endlessness of time and space, the realisation of the size of the universe and her own insignificance within it. Now, though – now she finds there is something almost comforting in the knowledge that the world was here, doing much the same things as always, long before she arrived on it, and will continue to turn on its axis aeons after she has gone. (SMWH, p.135)

Also, we are officially over halfway through! (We were before too, but I didn’t notice until just now.)

22:23

We’re at 72%! Doubt I’ll get Poyums finished as well tonight (can blame the whole booking hotel drama for that) but might be able to get SMWH done! And then go straight to bed 💤 (First, I need to quickly order my dad’s birthday present!)

22:31

Back to reading!

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Friday 27th February, 23:10

Finished! A little bit after bedtime, but worth it to get those last few chapters read. I’ll have to write a review (or a mini review) in the morning and add it to the end of this post, but for now, it’s off to brush my teeth and go to sleep!

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Goal Check In

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[Review] Show Me Where It Hurts

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First, a warning: do not go into this book blind unless you are 100% confident in your mental health. I’m not saying it’s A Little Life or anything on that level – it’s definitely not all negative and it’s definitely not torture porn. That being said, our main character is dealing with some significant trauma and I would never want anyone to go into the book and end up spiralling because of the content. The actual incidents that cause Rachel’s pain are actually never recalled in any graphic detail but the whole book is about the events that culminated in the incident and Rachel’s recovery afterwards. So please, just look up some content warnings before diving into this book – The Storygraph handily provides these on the book page.

This story follows two timelines simultaneously: BEFORE the incident and AFTER, alternating between the two throughout the story to slowly reveal more about the incident even as we are seeing Rachel’s recovery. There are also time jumps within each timeline, allowing Gleeson to cover a significant amount of time within a fairly brief book. The time closest to the incident is more compressed, whereas when we get further away we may be jumping several years between chapters. Although this could end up feeling disjointed or distracting (and, for example, I’m not a massive fan of multiple timeline or flashbacks a lot of the time), but this actually worked really well in this novel and didn’t take me out of the story at all – which must mean it was masterfully done, as it’s not typically my preference.

Apart from this, the writing style is gorgeous. It’s not particularly flowery, but it’s masterfully crafted and delivers a really good sense of atmosphere and emotion (and varied atmospheres and emotions depending on the section). I shared a couple of my favourite quotes above, but those were mostly picked for what they were saying. I thought I would also share one of my favourite quotes here that I picked out for the atmospheric quality it conveys:

As the waiter pours her wine she gazes out to sea. Far, far in the distance there is a flash of light, and then seconds later a low rumble of thunder that seems muffled by the sultry air. All through her dinner she watches the storm roll out at sea, while on the terrace the night remains dry, and fragrant, and still.

Isn’t that gorgeous? You can almost feel and taste the air in the words on the page.

Gleeson’s writing style really carries this book because it is through it that she is able to reveal and explore the complex emotions that Rachel is going through. Surprisingly, I didn’t cry many times in this book (only once or twice), and I think that’s because Rachel doesn’t either. Rachel’s approach is very much quiet and slow but moving forward and I think that solemn and withdrawn feeling permeates the book until you feel that way whilst reading it as well. The only time that I was pulled out of this was the adultery scene, which I get, but didn’t enjoy since I really dislike the prevalence of adultery as something that is normalised in literary fiction and wish we could have either had a greater level of criticism implied in the action or found another way to achieve the same plot goal. (This is only a minor thing, though, since the plot point was over fairly quickly.)

Overall, this book was masterfully crafted in terms of writing and atmosphere, but it lacked something extra to push it to five stars for me – perhaps a lack of deeper connection to the characters, or just something I can’t put a finger on. The fact that I feel the need to justify not giving five stars at the end of this review, rather than being able to work in an explanation in the body of the review, though, tells you just how high a four stars this book was. If you’re interested in the topic (and feeling in an okay space), I definitely recommend giving this book a go.

The Storygraph | Bookshop.org UK (Affiliate link) | Blackwell’s (International shipping)

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And that is it for today’s post! I’m not participating in this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, so this will be the only post for today – I will hopefully see some of you tomorrow as well, though, since I need to finally finish up my Ancillary Mercy read-a-long posts. (And then I can finally post my February wrap up!)

Please let me know what you think of this post as it’s a bit of an experiment! And definitely check out my new bookstagram here.

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Keira x