DECEMBER WRAP UP: What I Read This Month

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today, I’m reviewing the books I read in December. I read 6 books this month. Here are my thoughts on all of them:

1. HISTORICAL FICTION AND ROMANCE: The Last Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch

This book is a historical fiction romance with a twinge of mystery that takes place from 1916 to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The story focuses on “an epic love story” that affects the lives of three generations of Russian women, Rosie, Katya, and Tonya, whose narratives are all interconnected by Russian fairy tales. The plot intertwines two timelines: one in the 1990s where Rosie returns to Russia to uncover her family’s past after her mother’s death, and another in the past, beginning in 1916, that tells the story of Tonya, a member of the lower Russian aristocracy, and her forbidden love for Valentin, a Bolshevik and later anti-Stalin revolutionist.

Sincerely, I had hoped to like this book more than I actually did. For starters, the whole book is centered around the ordeals Tonya and Valentin have to go through in order to stay together from the Russian Revolution to the end of WWII. And that is fine. The only problem is, I didn’t like Tonya and Valentin as a couple. Theirs is supposed to be an impossible love, ravaged by the Revolution and later WWII as well as the jealousy of Tonya’s first husband, Dimitri. But I just didn’t feel it. Tonya and Valentin spend so much time losing and then finding each other again and again throughout the book that there just isn’t enough physical space in the pages to let us see the passion and love between them. And no matter how many times they were separated, I just couldn’t find it in me to root for their happy ending. In fact, I was rooting more for Rosie (later Raisa) and Lev than I ever did for Tonya and Valentin.

Also, the mystery of why Raisa’s father and sister were killed is never clarified. We know who the killer is, but not why. It is true that I didn’t see the final twist coming, but this didn’t improve the story. When the twist happened, I admit, I had a WTF? moment. But then the dust settles and the resolution just feels so out of left field. Remember Cook from An Ember in the Ashes? Yeah, I hated when Sabaa Tahir pulled that rabbit out of the hat. And something similar happens here. Not a fan. Also, what is it with all the dolls? I didn’t really see the point of them in the story.

Not going to read this book again.

2. MYSTERY PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Trigger warnings for cheating spouse, mental illness, death, and self-harm.

Alicia Berenson, a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, seems to have it all: the job, the husband, and the big house in one of London’s most coveted neighborhoods. One evening, however, after her husband returns home late from a fashion shoot, Alicia shoots him five times in the face and doesn’t say another word… for six years.

And for six years, Alicia has been locked away in The Grove, a secure forensic psychiatric unit in North London. Then, Theo Faber, a newly hired psychotherapist, arrives at the facility determined to work with Alicia, get her to talk, and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband.

But Theo is not just a criminal psychotherapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. He is also a self-aggrandizing narcissist convinced that he is the only one who can ‘save’ Alicia.

What follows is a narrative that alternates between the past and future; between Theo’s unreliable narration and entries from Alicia’s diary, which gives us a way into her head and state of mind. But does Alicia really need saving? Or does Theo have an ulterior motive?

I asked myself these questions pretty early on in the book. And the more I read, the more convinced I was that, yes, he did have an ulterior motive. I just wasn’t sure what. Theo is obsessed with Alicia, and it isn’t until the plot twist―the plot twist for which this book is known for and included in top thriller book lists for―that we understand why he is obsessed with her. Personally, I did not see it coming. But I hardly ever read thrillers and I wasn’t entirely sure where the author was going until he got there and revealed who the real killer was.

I liked this book for a couple of reasons: One, the unreliable narrator. Theo is not your prototypical good Samaritan character trying to help someone else. He’s got his own baggage; he himself admits this early on in the book and this, by itself, should make us take whatever he says with a grain of salt.  Second, the Greek mythology element to the story. Simply by reading the title of the book, I knew what myth Michaelides had chosen to build his story around: The myth of Alcestis, the paragon of the perfect wife, who chooses to die in her husband’s stead. One of Greek mythology’s least known myths, but one that I like very much. And if you know your Greek mythology, you will also be able to see several easter eggs throughout the story here and there, and I enjoyed that.

What I didn’t like about this book is that the narration is confusing at times. When alternating between the past and the future, we are never told which passage is which; that is, which is from the past and which from the future. I know that this is done deliberately to keep the suspense alive, but when we reach the crisis and climax of the story, things get very confusing. I had to ask Google for some help to understand the narrative structure of this book better. The ending also felt a bit rushed for my liking.

I Liked This Book but I Will Probably Never Read It Again.

3. PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY: The History of Philosophy by A.C. Grayling

I read this book to complement my reading of The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant, a book that I review here. A major difference between these two books is that Grayling clarifies that in Antiquity what we know today as science was once known in Ancient Greece as philosophy and he gives the Presocratic philosophers of Asia Minor the place they deserve in the history of philosophy as the first thinkers who started asking the right questions. Durant doesn’t even mention them, and this is one the issues that I had with this book. A second difference is that Grayling addresses the topic of Medieval philosophy and is very careful to distinguish it from Medieval theology, which dominated all forms of thought in Europe for 10 centuries on pain of death. A third issue that I had with Durant’s book, one that I know I cannot lay at his feet, is that he only talks about men philosophers. Grayling does this too, but he does mention one woman. Hannah Arendt. Arendt, however, did not see herself as a philosopher but I was pleasantly surprised that she was mentioned here and that it is Grayling’s opinion that her books, one of which is on my TBR, are worth picking up.

Primarily focused on the history of Western philosophy, this book nonetheless also gives an introductory overview of Indian, Chinese, Arabic-Persian, and African philosophy. The purpose is to note, the author says, some connections and differences among the great traditions of thought.

I really liked this book and learned quite a bit from it.  I Will Probably Read It Again.

4. YOUNG ADULT AND CONTEMPORARY: Lotería by Mario Alberto Zambrano

Luz María Castillo is an 11-year-old girl who is trying to understand or cope with the aftermath of a family tragedy by shuffling through a deck of Loteria cards. Sitting alone in her room and retreating behind a wall of silence, Luz is now in the custody of the state. But neither her social worker nor her Aunt Tencha, who desperately pleads for her niece’s release, can cajole the young girl to speak. So, she is encouraged to write what she can’t say in a journal. Using the deck of Lotería cards as inspiration, Luz starts to write in her journal when she draws La araña from the top of the deck. And soon, the journal becomes her only confidant. The only place where she can talk to God and share her secrets with him. Each card in the deck “sparks a random memory, which, pieced together, will bring to focus what has happened in the young girl’s short life and the events that brought her to her present situation.”

This, however, is stretching it a bit too far. From the beginning, when Luz starts talking to God in her journal, the memories she relates, sparked by whatever card she happens to draw from the top of the deck, feel random and all over the place. In fact, it took me a while to even start piecing things together. And even when they started to make sense, the memory is only just vaguely associated to the card in question. And sometimes, not even. Also, if you don’t know how to play Lotería and/or have never played, don’t know much about Mexican culture, like who Pedro Infante was or what Siempre en Domingo is, and how playing Lotería is a favorite pastime in family gatherings, know Spanish, or have any idea how immigrant families live in the USA, speaking both English and Spanish, this book will and/or can be very confusing.

Also, even though the book addresses hard topics like domestic violence, alcoholism, trauma and death, in the end, the book solves nothing. It’s not even a critique of machismo and its prevalence in Mexican culture, or how we normalize abuse and alcoholism. Ultimately, Luz is released from custody and taken to Casa de Esperanza where she waits for her dad to get out of prison. This, in my opinion, is a very abrupt ending with no closure.

Don’t think I’ll ever read this book again.

5.  NONFICTION AND MILITARY HISTORY: Legion versus Phalanx by Myke Cole

Legion versus phalanx. Which one is superior? Which one has defeated the other several times in this boxing match for infantry supremacy in the ancient world?

The Roman legion. 

And, in this book, author Myke Cole sets out to explain why this is so by analyzing six different battles of Antiquity in which Hellenistic phalanxes faced the Roman legion and lost. These battles are the battles of Heraclea, Asculum, Beneventum, Cynoscephalae, Magnesia, and Pydna. After Pydna, the author says, the mighty phalanx, which, when done correctly is impenetrable, was beaten. The legion was triumphant and the legacy of Alexander the Great―all the phalanxes the Romans fought were post-Alexander the Great―shattered forever.

If you like to read about Rome and military history, this book is for you. That’s a very niche group of readers, I’ll admit (maybe not?), but I am one of those readers and I liked this book very much. I also read it while I watched YouTube tutorials explaining the background of each one of these battles, (though Myke Cole does a really good job at explaining this too) how they were fought and why. This was very helpful, despite the fact that it took me twice as long to read a chapter than I would otherwise. But I learned so much more this way, and I enjoyed the book all the more.

I Liked this book and Will Probably Read It Again.

6. NONFICTION AND MILITARY HISTORY: Roman Warfare by Adrian Goldsworthy

This book is a generalized overview of Roman warfare spanning from Early Rome and its conquest of Italy to the fall of the Western Empire and the survival of the Roman Empire in the East. Take note: the keyword here is generalized. This is NOT a specialized account of Roman warfare and anyone who picks this book up wanting some focus and expertise will be sorely disappointed. This book is for the general reader, and, in my case, it was the perfect complementary read to Legion versus Phalanx by Myke Cole. It is also, in my opinion, a very good introduction to the topic for anyone interested in picking up more specialized and academic accounts on Roman warfare later on.

That is everything for now. Thank you for stopping by. My next post will a ranking of all the classic books I read in 2025.