The Centre | 
I have a few picks included on this list of the year's best covers by my fellow Rioter Kelly, but I also loved seeing what covers other people thought stood out. Cover design is so fun and fascinating!
bookriot.com/the-best-book-covers-of-2023/
pickAnisa meets Adam & is enthralled by his ability to speak 10 languages. HOW?! She‘s a 35 yo translator for Bollywood who envies his abilities.
So she meets & befriends him.
She gets Adam to share his secret. A secret language school that allows one referral per student. Anisa is skeptical but soon finds out the price that‘s exacted for learning a language in 10 days. Oh it‘s good!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/3
panBilled as mystery, thriller, suspense, & humor, there is not one humorous, mysterious, thrilling, or suspenseful thing about this book. It's all tell & very little show which is incredibly tedious. The MC is utterly self absorbed & spends all 278 pages on endless monologue.The mystery of what is happening at the Centre isn't surprising & is revealed at about the 2/3 point, leaving a lot more time for the MC to ramble endlessly. 👎👎
pickI hadn‘t heard of this at all (although now I see that @Megabooks read it recently) but I was simultaneously attracted to and repelled by the cover on BorrowBox.
Firstly - how can covers for the same book be so different?
Anita is a translator who gets introduced to The Centre by her boyfriend, where one can supposedly learn a language fluently in 2 weeks, but how does it work?
You can kind of see it all coming, but it‘s still a great read. ⬇️
“There can be something quite devastating in feeling a comfort you can barely remember. It can make you grieve, if I‘m honest, for something that you‘d always felt a vague sense of loss over but never known for certain you were missing. At the same time, there is a sense of relief at having finally found it, the warmth.”
pickWhile I knew where this speculative horror book was going all along, that didn‘t make it any less horrifying!
What if you could gain language fluency in a matter to days? Anisa meets a guy who speaks on the phone in a several languages. Yet when she tries to teach him Urdu, he consistently fails…until he returns from a two week trip speaking perfect Urdu. She gets his secret then falls deeper in the web of this mysterious Centre.
pickA translator learns about a highly secretive program where you can attain fluency in any new language in just two weeks. But something is strange about The Centre and as Anisa grows closer to the manager, she discovers its for more sinister than she ever could've imagined. A slow paced thriller that doesn't give up its secrets until the end but kept me invested nonetheless.
Love few things more than reading and simultaneously getting puppy snuggles
Excited to be doing some work writing (and hopefully reading) at my favorite coffee shop today. I started The Centre recently and want to dive back into it as well as Ray Nayler's new book since I just finished The Mountain in the Sea.
pick4/5
Anisa's boyfriend tells her about the Centre, a place where in 10 days you can become fluent in a new language. She goes to learn German and becomes close with the manager. The more she learns about the Centre the more she wants to understand its secrets. It's a suspenseful book that has a lot to say about colonialism and language. The ending left me with more questions than answer, but it was a thought-provoking and slightly horrifying read.
panThis was an interesting premise but sadly didn't deliver for me. I found the story slow and it didn't hook me in like I expected. Of all the characters Naima is probably the most likeable but its a stretch. The ending was a bit of let down for me. I wanted more, that being said it did fit with the flow of the story. The writing is good and descriptive. I'm sure others will enjoy the truth of how the centre works but it just wasn't for me.
so-soThe premise of this novel is definitely one that will hook you. I did figure out the twist pretty early on, which makes me wonder what that says about me. The MC is what ultimately made me dislike this book, she was So incredibly judgmental and yet when her judgement would have been warranted...
well...I don't want to ruin it.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Zando
Projects, Gillian Flynn Books for an ARC in return for my review.
Finished this for LJ review - if will pub in July. A woman with dreams of being a great translator, but currently subtitling Bollywood films, is invited to a super secret language program that promises fluency in any language in 10 days. It sounds too good to be true… but it works. Until she starts digging and discovers how it all REALLY works, and what the cost truly is.
