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Showing posts from March, 2018

Review of Even If The Sky Falls by Mia Garcia



Genres: Contemporary, Romance
Pages: 304
Publisher: Katherine Tegen Books
Release Date: 10/05/2016
Find The Author: (Search everywhere, cannot find)
Find The Book: Book Depository/AbeBooks UK/US

All she needs is one night to be anyone she wants.

Julie is desperate for a change. So she heads to New Orleans with her youth group to rebuild houses and pretend her life isn’t a total mess. But between her super-clingy team leader and her way-too-chipper companions, Julie feels more trapped than ever.

In a moment of daring, she ditches her work clothes for DIY fairy wings and heads straight into the heart of Mid-Summer Mardi Gras, where she locks eyes with Miles, an utterly irresistible guy with a complicated story of his own. And for once, Julie isn’t looking back. She jumps at the chance to see the real New Orleans, and in one surreal night, they dance under the stars, share their most shameful secrets, and fall in love.

But their adventure takes an unexpected turn when an oncoming hurricane changes course. As the storm gains power and Julie is pulled back into chaos she finds pretending everything is fine is no longer an option.


I've been in a reading slump lately, reading bad book after bad book so when I picked this up, I was really hoping that it wouldn't let me down - and somehow the book gods heard me and granted my wish. This is a really cute contemporary romance story, showing 24 hours of Jules life - a bit like The Statistical Probability Of Love At First Sight. I wasn't expecting the whirlwind of emotion that hit me but I loved every moment.

The story is simple, Jules is volunteering with a group of other teenagers, helping to build houses in New Orleans, while she tries to escape her home life. Then she has to escape her overbearing, extremely creepy group leader and finds herself in the middle of Mardi Gras. Connecting with a beautiful stranger, they spend the night exploring the city, not realising that a terrible storm is on the way.

I only know of New Orleans, as I don't typically read books about it, watch it on TV and I'm certainly not lucky enough to visit. Still, I had a vague concept of Mardi Gras when I started reading. Somehow I was still completely transported into that world thanks to Mia's incredible writing and much like Jules, I just let myself be dragged along for the ride.

I really liked the romance between Miles and Jules. It wasn't quite insta love, more realistic. Like when you see a cute person at a club and decide they're cute so spend the night with them (I've literally never done I don't even venture out for necessities what am I talking about). Also (SPOILERY CONTENT WARNING) there is a bit of the old shimmy shimmy later in the book so this may be one for older YA readers.

The ending was one of those "would rip the pages if my kindle had any" moments and quickly switched for a summery romance to a horrifying action packed drama. It worked though, I realised just how much I loved these characters and had to stop myself skim reading to see if any of them were hurt or worse. I was pretty sad to leave the book but I'm looking forward to seeing what Mia releases next.


Review of People Like Us by Dana Mele



Genres: Contemporary, Mystery
Pages: 384
Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
Release Date: 27/02/2018
Find The Author: Website / Twitter
Find The Book: Book Depository/AbeBooks UK/US

Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple. 

The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make...not something that happened.


Our main character Kat is spending her final school year at Bates Academy, a boarding school for the upper class. She seems to fit in pretty well with the other students, considering she got in on an athletics scholarship, mostly by stealing everyone else's clothes which is certainly a trait to be admired. It's pretty clear from the start of the book that she has a dark past that she's trying hard to put behind her.

 The other characters in this are sort of interesting, particularly Brie, Kat's friend who she's clearly in love with and Nola (all of the characters in this book have weird names idk why), the weird goth girl who writes on her walls and dances instead of walking. The rest of the characters though, did blend together quite a bit for me and I had difficulty even telling Greg and Kat's ex boyfriend apart (I forgot his name, sue me).

"When all is quiet, she begins to hum under her breath, and now I have to shush her once or twice, because if I don't, her voice will gradually rise until she is singing out loud, and eventually we'll be caught traipsing through the woods with a sack full of cat bones, merrily belting out show tunes."

Being hella gay or bisexual is completely normal in this book and it's glorious. Gay characters in books can quickly turn into a plot device but I never felt that that happened, Kat goes through a few relationships throughout the book but none of them felt like they were there to move the story along. Having casually gay characters is a new thing for YA and it is absolutely glorious to see it so normalised.

I did like the idea that Kat and her friends find a body, then Kat is emailed with a website that reveals ugly secrets about her friends is pretty interesting if you enjoy 90s slasher flicks like Scream as much as I do. However every clue was in verse or poem and I have zero clue what they meant, as I wasn't meant to - it was then explained by Kat what it meant. This did really take the fun out of it for me. 

"Todd took Megan away. My Megan. The trivia champ of John Butler Junior High, a cookie connoisseur, and a champion snuggler. We had, between us, seven secret identities, and we could communicate in Sindarin, one of J. R. R. Tolkein's elven languages. And Todd destroyed her. And I still loved him."

The big problem I had with People Like Us is that I was strongly reminded of a book series - Nightmare Hall from the Point Horror collection. If it was shrunk down to half of the amount of pages it would fit in with the series perfectly, it was just TOO much like those books. Except, I did think that those books packed a better punch when the killer was revealed.

 The killer is, unfortunately, blindingly obvious. I did really enjoy the cat and mouse chase of it but I certainly didn't gasp in horror once the killer was revealed. What I did take away from this book though was that this story was more about the relationships you have with different people and how sometimes, you don't know them at all. With that angle this does read more like a contemporary than a thriller.


Review of Lost Boy, Found Boy by Jenn Polish



Genres: Retelling, Sci-Fi
Pages: 80
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 19/03/2018
Find The Author: Website / Twitter
Buy The Book: Publisher's Website
(Received free from NetGalley for review)

In a futuristic world, Neverland is a holomatrix, Hook is a cyborg, and Tinker Bell is an automated computer interface.

 Peter is desperate to save his lover from a military draft that, unbeknownst to him, Mir volunteered for because they are desperate to be able to fly. So, naturally, Peter programs an entire island—Neverland—as a refuge where Mir can fly without having to fight in a war.

 But he doesn’t locate Mir right away; instead, he fights for control of the island with automated interface Tinker Bell, and in his attempts to find Mir, others arrive on the island. But Peter’s single-minded focus on Mir generates repercussions for everyone.


Lost Boy Found Boy is a sci-fi retelling of Peter Pan, where Neverland is nothing but a computer program designed by Tink, a computer interface. When Peter discovers that their friend has signed up for (war? I think?), they'll do anything to get them to stay.

This was a really short book. Too short for the huge concepts that Jenn introduced. There was no introduction to the idea that Peter was transgender and I only kinda guessed it, as descriptions were lacking. Mir is non-binary like myself and that was the only obvious one (although Peter called them he later on which was confusing?). I had no clue that Tink was supposed to be an asexual lesbian or that Hook was bisexual.

 I did feel that these preferences and genders were just thrown in willy nilly and I really hate that. I'm asexual and non-binary and I want a story that represents me well. A lot of readers will read that Tink is asexual and have absolutely no idea what that means. I guess that Jenn was trying to help the community in some way but they really failed on that front.

 I won't deny that this was a really good concept though. It just needed more writing and a better editing team. It was a bit like watching a pilot episode, it was great, introduced characters I was interested in and showed us a world I really wanted to explore. The world building was the biggest loss, it was barely mentioned.


Many Covers Monday: One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus



On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app. 

 Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose? Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.



UK/US
I really love the US cover. It keeps the air of mystery by covering the faces of the main characters, while at the same time leaving what they actually look like open to our own interpretation. The UK cover is a very stereotypical one and I don't like the choice of the black text in between the red.




Dutch/German
The Dutch cover is pretty bad. One of my biggest pet peeves is covers made with very little effort and this shows why. The people are clearly stock images, taken by different photographers and the different angles really don't work. A 2x2 grid of four different people staring face on like the bottom left, half in shadow would have been an incredible effect. I love the German cover though, you can clearly see which character is which if you read the book and the text is placed perfectly.




Indonesian/Italian
The Indonesian cover is giving me a contemporary romance feel which is really confusing. The line drawn faces in the background are wonderfully creepy, though I would have chosen red, the pink just adds to the romance feel. Italian is nicely done, I can clearly see that that's meant to be Simon, the character that died.




Romanian/Russian
The Romanian cover is pretty cool and definitely eye catching, I just question the use of Orange. I guess Russia wasn't allowed to use the original US cover so simply remade it, and this doesn't work as well. The paper doesn't fit over their faces as well and the girl bottom right has more of her showing that the others, which is pretty distracting.




Serbian/Swedish
The Serbian cover is great, I love the yellow on red effect with the lined paper. The Swedish cover is just horrible, I hate obvious photoshop and this looks like a bad soap opera about football, probably due to the use of that font. 

Review of One Of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus



Genres: Mystery, Contemporary
Pages: 361
Publisher: Delacorte Press
Release Date: 30/05/2017
Find The Author: Website/Twitter
Find The Book: Book Depository/AbeBooks UK/US

On Monday afternoon, five students at Bayview High walk into detention. Bronwyn, the brain, is Yale-bound and never breaks a rule. Addy, the beauty, is the picture-perfect homecoming princess. Nate, the criminal, is already on probation for dealing. Cooper, the athlete, is the all-star baseball pitcher. And Simon, the outcast, is the creator of Bayview High's notorious gossip app.

Only, Simon never makes it out of that classroom. Before the end of detention, Simon's dead. And according to investigators, his death wasn't an accident. On Monday, he died. But on Tuesday, he'd planned to post juicy reveals about all four of his high-profile classmates, which makes all four of them suspects in his murder. Or are they the perfect patsies for a killer who's still on the loose?

Everyone has secrets, right? What really matters is how far you would go to protect them.


I promised myself that I wouldn't get hit by the hype train ever again and unfortunately, after seeing this book mentioned so much when I was reading the reviews of People Like Us, I strapped myself to the train tracks and got smashed with a 185.6 ton British Rail Class 220. It wasn't that this was a bad book, it just wasn't that fantastic either.

The thing that drew me to the story initially was that this is literally The Breakfast Club, with a couple of gender swaps. You have the athlete, the brain, the outcast, the princess and the criminal. The brain is swapped to female, Bronwyn and the outcast is swapped to Male, Simon. We know from the blurb that Simon dies by end of detention, so the question is simply - who did it?

“She's a princess and you're a jock," he says. He thrusts his chin toward Bronwyn, then at Nate. "And you're a brain. And you're a criminal. You're all walking teen-movie stereotypes.”

A big problem I had with this was the pacing, I did find myself frequently checking what my percentage was on my Kindle. The detention scene was over so fast that I never got a moment to connect with Simon, or care about his death. If that had been dragged out two or three chapters to set up the characters that would have really helped.

I liked the exploration of the character stereotypes and how they revealed their secrets. Cooper's surprised me the most, while Bronwyn and Addy's were a little obvious. The character development was lacking somewhat, but I loved how Addy went from being a very weak, passive character to a fully developed character.

"Instead of looking though, I kick it. Which is pretty satisfying, so I do it another five or ten times, harder and harder until the cheap wood splinters and cracks. I'm panting, breathing in lungfuls of puke infested air, and I'm so fucking sick of it all, I could kill somebody. Some people are too toxic to live. They just are."

Nate was easily the strongest character, with the best developed back story. The other 3 came from privileged backgrounds and not much was mentioned about them, whereas we know that Nate lives in a broken down home with his drunken father, selling drugs just to put food on the table. He was obviously written to be John from The Breakfast Club, but with a softer side to him.

I didn't guess what had happened / who did it until the very end. My initial guess was that it was Bronwyn, then Addy, briefly Cooper, the teacher and then I started questioning everyone around them as well. It was a great idea but poorly executed - it was revealed too fast without any sort of big HOORAH, which was what I was expecting.


Weekly Update (17/03/2018)



This week I've been ill all week and it's not getting much better, I'm nearly completely deaf. I've been given ear spray by the nurse but all that's done it make it much worse, I nearly didn't get out of bed this morning, I was in too much pain.

I'm in a bit of a reading slump at the moment due to a lot of bad books but I still read a lot:





Have you read any of these? What did you think?


Review of Flamingo Boy by Michael Morpurgo



Genres: Historical, WWII
Pages: 352
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release Date: 06/03/2018
Find The Author: Website
Find The Book: Book Depository/AbeBooks UK/US
(Received free from NetGalley for review)

This is a landmark new novel from the nation's favourite storyteller, set in the unique landscape of the Camargue in the South of France during WW2. There, a young autistic boy lives on his parents' farm among the salt flats, and the flamingos that live there. There are lots of things he doesn't understand: but he does know how to heal animals. He loves routine, and music too: and every week he goes to market with his mother, to ride his special horse on the town carousel. 

But then the Germans come, with their guns, and take the town. A soldier shoots a flamingo from the sky, and it falls to earth terribly injured. And even worse is to come: the carousel is damaged, the horses broken. For this vulnerable boy, everything is falling apart. 

 Only there's a kind sergeant among the Germans – a man with a young boy of his own at home, a man who trained as a carpenter. Between them, perhaps boy and man can mend what has been broken – and maybe even the whole town…


Michael Morpurgo truly is an incredible writer, he can find stories in places in history that have been done a thousand times and make them feel completely new and different. When I saw that he had a book releasing this year I hit request immediately, sure that a story about a young autistic boy who lives on a farm during occupied France would be incredible.

It takes a lot for me to be mad at a book but yeah, I'm pretty mad at this book. Whoever wrote the blurb likely didn't read the book. The story is told by Vincent, when he is older. He tells of when he was young and travelled to France after nearly being smacked on the skull by a painting, where he met Kazia and Lorenzo. Then, Kazia tells him of when she was young and the story we hear in the blurb, about the flamingos and the carousel and what happened when the Germans came to town.

"Lorenzo loved everything to be the same, even goodbyes. Goodbyes, hellos, sausages and songs, he loved what he knew, never wanted anything to be different. The trouble is that things do change, whether we like it or not. And for Lorenzo any change was always difficult. It still is sometimes."

To tell a story with so many layers like that is a truly bizarre choice and honestly, I'd have cut Vincent out entirely. It should have just been told from Kazia's point of view, especially as by having the older versions of her and Lorenzo meant that there was no suspense or fear for them when the Germans came to their town. I spent the majority of the book worried about a carousel at most.

 The idea of the story is fantastic, we need more diverse characters and choosing a gypsy girl and an autistic boy as our central characters was such a great idea, especially as they're in an environment we don't often see in books, with views we almost never read about. Unfortunately this felt like he had an idea but couldn't really be bothered to spend the time to perfect it, so just sent out the first draft.


Many Covers Monday: A Darker Shade Of Magic



Kell is one of the last Antari - magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel
Londons; Red, Grey, White, and, once upon a time, Black. 

 Kell was raised in Arnes - Red London - and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see. 

 Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand. 

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure. 

 Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.



(I'm pretty ill right now so no winner this week or captions, just a gorgeous collection of covers. Let me know your favourites below!)


UK/US

Literally all I can see when I look at the UK cover:





Audiobook/Bulgarian




French/German




Persian/Russian

Weekly Update (10/03/2018)

Books Read This Week




5 books this week. I binge read The Selection series just before I got pretty ill with some sort of chest infection, which is clearing up now. I still love the series as a fluff read but I can't deny that it has it's problems. Thanks to NetGalley I got the opportunity to read two popular books - Sam & Ilsa's Last Hurrah and To Kill A Kingdom. S&I was honestly for me, terrible. Just a bunch of rich kids throwing a party. To Kill A Kingdom was basically, this:



Basically if you mashed up Little Mermaid with Pirates Of The Caribbean it would be this, BUT IT'S EVEN BETTER. It's a story of sirens and Prince's and it's all kinds of wonderful.


A Vague Sort Of  Cross Stitch Update



If you squint over to the left you can see cat butt, as I'm still stitching Frederick The Literate. I've very nearly finished this section though, so I'm hoping next week I'll have stitched some more books.

Look, A Song


I freaking love John Joseph Brill so I hope this video is available in your country. Also check him out on Spotify as most of his songs are on there.