tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79399554144103549112023-11-16T07:17:38.384+00:00Under The MountainVee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.comBlogger556125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-31306206648917423732020-01-26T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-26T13:00:00.275+00:00Review of The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>Imagine if you could see inside the minds of everyone around you – your best friend, your boyfriend, your enemies…?
Imagine how valuable you'd be…
Imagine how much danger you'd be in…
Imagine being an Outlier.
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<i>Wylie hasn't heard from her best friend, Cassie, since their fight. That doesn't matter when she gets a text from her, asking for help. But as Cassie's messages become increasingly strange, Wylie has a growing sense that something is REALLY wrong. What isn't Cassie telling her? And could finding her be just the beginning?</i></div>
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I was absolutely convinced that by the mid way point of this book, I would have thrown it in a corner, never to be read again. The amount of infodumping we have to go through for 150 pages with the plot moving at a snail's pace inbetween, was enough to make me want to scream. However, we suddenly hit a turning point of this book which made it go from a infodumping, poorly written slog to a heart pounding sci-fi novel novel that constantly kept me guessing. And it all started with this line:</div>
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<b><i>"Boom, boom, boom, goes my heart as I push my hand one last time, deep into the center of the car seat. And inside, I do not find the warm body of a baby. But i do not find a cold baby either. Inside, I find nothing at all."
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I really enjoyed the depiction of mental health. I lost my mother when I was Wylie's age, the same as Wylie and I know that it completely shifts the world around you and makes you do some pretty crazy things. I went with holing myself up in my room for months, not washing and binge watching Buffy over and over and over. Wylie did pretty much the same, only with a drastic hair cut.
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This story is a little... fantastical but I'm always willing to give fiction a little more leeway in favour of a good story, especially one like this that kept me guessing. I can't even make a single guess about what will happen in the future books but I can't wait to read them - this one ended on cliffhanger.</div>
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Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-79631665239001702142020-01-25T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-25T13:00:01.445+00:00The Whoops I Went To The Library Even Though My TBR Pile Is Drowning Me Edition<div style="text-align: center;">
Someone buy me a straight jacket, I have no self control. On my Discord group, a few people were discussing trips to the library and my obsessed brain immediately went, 'ooh I could do that, I have a library'. I also have a TBR pile of over 100 books, so naturally I did the sensible thing and went to the library.</div>
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Well the library proved to be a treasure trove of YA books, with the YA books section being ALL. OF. THIS. I swear at once point I started picking up books and humming happily to myself.
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I mean look at all that. And most of them are fairly recently releases from the last couple of years! I spent a good hour browsing and picking books and left with a very reasonable five books.</div>
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Not pictured: The Wind In The Wall. So this is a perfectly reasonable stack of books. </div>
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And I've already read all of them except A Curse So Dark And Lonely.</div>
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Not A Problem At All.</div>
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So anyway I went back a week later and got these too.</div>
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(And yes I did make a blog post about how great I am now at managing stress let's just pretend that didn't happen)</div>
Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-35191774332136501392020-01-24T13:51:00.000+00:002020-01-24T13:51:00.193+00:00Review of Night Owls by Jenn Bennett<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><b>Feeling alive is always worth the risk.</b></i></div>
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<b>Meeting Jack on the Owl—San Francisco's night bus—turns Beatrix's world upside down. Jack is charming, wildly attractive...and possibly one of San Francisco's most notorious graffiti artists.</b></div>
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<b>But Jack is hiding a piece of himself. On midnight rides and city rooftops, Beatrix begins to see who this enigmatic boy really is.</b></div>
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(In the US Night Owls is called The Anatomical Shape of a Heart)
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I really liked the concept of Night Owls, enough for it to remain quite high on my wishlist or quite some time. However the execution was pretty poor. The blurb gives the impression of two people that meet on a midnight ride and perhaps fall in love over time, I had an idea in my head that most of the book would be on a bus, or they would meet night after night. However, Beatrix meets Jack on a five minute bus journey and they become pretty infatuated with each other very quickly, to the point where it almost felt like insta-love, a trope more often seen in fantasy YA.
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The good parts about this was ALL THE ART. While Jack spends his time graffiti-ing Big Gold Words (view spoiler) on public property, Beatrix is an art prodigy with a focus on anatomy. She's going through her dark phase and has ditched all her coloured pencils in favour of structured, anatomical drawings with a goal of getting into a good medical school and making books or something.
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However, I never understood Jack. He basically ditched her fairly early on without even a text, leaving her to then track him down and no matter what he says Bea just... simpers. When he straight up lied about a major event she practically shrugged and I still don't understand why he lied. Also they both have spectacularly shit parents and I couldn't understand why Bea's mother treated her 18 year old daughter, who had a job and her own bills, like she was a bratty 13 year old.
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What killed this book for me was the gushing, cringing, crawling, in your face, up your arse, in your closet, romance. She thought about him constantly. She wanted to fuck him constantly, she thought about his stupid unwashed belt far too much and the whole thing made me want to vomit violently and excessively. I nearly DNFd the book with 50 pages to go.</div>
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Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-63041089964011081912020-01-22T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-22T13:00:39.699+00:00Review of The Nowhere Emporium by Ross MacKenzie<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1HrgcU6Y1wdeK7TbJhezVrMsyy9uzTBkHSjb8f9CXTUyhXgSzkcJpEB4fS9E5bkdyAnxRVWerhyphenhyphenxwUnHNbVDv2d92Jo0UyWa8Cx8MX5XP4uau-WExgCxWYm8CHNndWVBQJCmvN2ayqk/s1600/Nowhere+Emporium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH1HrgcU6Y1wdeK7TbJhezVrMsyy9uzTBkHSjb8f9CXTUyhXgSzkcJpEB4fS9E5bkdyAnxRVWerhyphenhyphenxwUnHNbVDv2d92Jo0UyWa8Cx8MX5XP4uau-WExgCxWYm8CHNndWVBQJCmvN2ayqk/s320/Nowhere+Emporium.jpg" width="213" /></a><b>When the mysterious Nowhere Emporium arrives in Glasgow, orphan Daniel Holmes stumbles upon it quite by accident. Before long, the 'shop from nowhere' -- and its owner, Mr Silver -- draw Daniel into a breathtaking world of magic and enchantment. Recruited as Mr Silver's apprentice, Daniel learns the secrets of the Emporium's vast labyrinth of passageways and rooms -- rooms that contain wonders beyond anything Daniel has ever imagined. But when Mr Silver disappears, and a shadow from the past threatens everything, the Emporium and all its wonders begin to crumble. Can Daniel save his home, and his new friends, before the Nowhere Emporium is destroyed forever?</b><br />
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I may be twenty (mumble) years old but I am still as enchanted by magical books like The Nowhere Emporium, as I would have been at 7 years old. If I could go back in time to my younger self, I would arrive with the biggest stack of books and this would be among them, as I know this tale of a magical shop with doors to different worlds would be read until it fell apart.
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This story has a good mix of magic, mortal peril, fun and more serious subjects that kids may relate to, using orphan Daniel Holmes as our storyteller. Family dynamics are quite cleverly explored here and it's only when I start thinking back that I realise just how much they come up, and I love the idea of choosing your own family. Dealing with the death of a parent in cruel circumstances, Thomas was a hero that I really enjoyed reading about.
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Magic shows, a mysterious shop, a cruel villain, family secrets, mysterious and wonderful rooms with infinite possibilities, it's all explored here. It reminds me of a popular book from last year, Starless Sea, except aimed at a much younger audience of course. The sequel, which isn't currently attached to this one on Goodreads yet, is The Elsewhere Emporium, I'm intrigued to find out what Thomas gets up to next!<br />
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<br />Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-21463625223886715622020-01-21T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-21T13:00:01.941+00:00Review of Picnic At Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhijpMr4JFCpuH4BlMPRLZxwID_O2IYPztTEtnwXzmVscyzT9kepvtjfHrpGEhfPcd5eOu-G8DLuoxp0t6JJGhUErKgXlwPmC_wpT-fGO1yW1MWV_IBZ3Zj0ErLm4XlLy1JGKlVWNTGUg/s1600/Picnic+Rock.webp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="332" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhijpMr4JFCpuH4BlMPRLZxwID_O2IYPztTEtnwXzmVscyzT9kepvtjfHrpGEhfPcd5eOu-G8DLuoxp0t6JJGhUErKgXlwPmC_wpT-fGO1yW1MWV_IBZ3Zj0ErLm4XlLy1JGKlVWNTGUg/s320/Picnic+Rock.webp" width="212" /></a><b>It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred.</b><br />
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<b>Everyone at Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock. After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun, pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last they disappeared.</b><br />
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<b>They never returned.
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Picnic At Hanging Rock is a mystery classic, a surreal novel that takes place at a boarding school in Australia. When 4 people vanish, the town is ablaze with gossip about the fates of these three girls and their teacher. The book tells the stories of many of the people connected to the story and the aftermath of this devastating event.
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The prose in this is quite lovely, it has a dreamlike quality that is perfect. However I did often get confused about whose viewpoint we'd just switched to and who was doing what, due to the book very rapidly switching people from paragraph to paragraph.
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I loved the friendship between Albert and Mike. Polar opposites in that Mike is a wealthy toff and Albert grew up in an orphanage, his tattoos making him look 'rough', their two personalities compliment one another and I always felt at ease when in their presence.
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I did find it strange that this entire story centers around a boarding school but after the girls and the teacher disappears, we hardly ever see the world from the girl's viewpoints, more often the teachers. It did make me realise that a book released last year, Wilder Girls, is shockingly similar to the point where I wonder if it was a retelling.<br />
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<br />Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-70803588199798872372020-01-20T17:31:00.002+00:002020-01-20T17:31:54.821+00:00Many Covers Monday - The Jewel<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Jewel means wealth. The Jewel means beauty. The Jewel means royalty. But for girls like Violet, the Jewel means servitude. Not just any kind of servitude. Violet, born and raised in the Marsh, has been trained as a surrogate for the royalty—because in the Jewel the only thing more important than opulence is offspring.</b></div>
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<b>Purchased at the surrogacy auction by the Duchess of the Lake and greeted with a slap to the face, Violet (now known only as #197) quickly learns of the brutal truths that lie beneath the Jewel’s glittering facade: the cruelty, backstabbing, and hidden violence that have become the royal way of life.
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<b>Violet must accept the ugly realities of her existence... and try to stay alive. But then a forbidden romance erupts between Violet and a handsome gentleman hired as a companion to the Duchess’s petulant niece. Though his presence makes life in the Jewel a bit brighter, the consequences of their illicit relationship will cost them both more than they bargained for. </b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUz8tSZTNpjsoDNxetFLgDbgtH_ZHLHZ-7i31QSqzxg4fDjSN0SGP3dfwYi38Jaejsh2jDBYQhEEUp-SdoI83YFuTp97OGxPzJ_V6eCWJ8cxmIg_VlOpq_-6SNCAYRRGe2s-TXC_31Obg/s1600/US.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUz8tSZTNpjsoDNxetFLgDbgtH_ZHLHZ-7i31QSqzxg4fDjSN0SGP3dfwYi38Jaejsh2jDBYQhEEUp-SdoI83YFuTp97OGxPzJ_V6eCWJ8cxmIg_VlOpq_-6SNCAYRRGe2s-TXC_31Obg/s320/US.jpg" width="212" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntObHwoDc-tHzqkclf4SeAp3uFCKhxMpvwHOES7ehqmqVJaxoKnpv5hRjYeL2GH1QBGTozI0hbz96VuXLL_Q8T-Fko8p34TuTrv_RW9rrm_bOzrTEKuRC0NWjeK6dQBQwhfhdLhf20sc/s1600/German.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1181" data-original-width="767" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhntObHwoDc-tHzqkclf4SeAp3uFCKhxMpvwHOES7ehqmqVJaxoKnpv5hRjYeL2GH1QBGTozI0hbz96VuXLL_Q8T-Fko8p34TuTrv_RW9rrm_bOzrTEKuRC0NWjeK6dQBQwhfhdLhf20sc/s320/German.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
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I usually kick off with the US and UK covers, but today I'm starting with the US and German covers because they're identical but the German for me is so much nicer. The main character's name is Violet and that colour is made a big thing of through the book, so aside from being nicer to look at, the German cover just makes more sense to me.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwJbaD1SnuZ_FeM626_QDGmEvEAdkzo7RgTOvORBjFfZXJ55uxFK4LLF2hyphenhyphenpLIvKGj686Bm1kaJXg-LdNS9E2Z9ObVEUTZ6TRiM2WSzhyphenhyphenIuw_AK0Zz3v-afdm9MTytRTaaJWp6FbLEfQ/s1600/UK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="309" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifwJbaD1SnuZ_FeM626_QDGmEvEAdkzo7RgTOvORBjFfZXJ55uxFK4LLF2hyphenhyphenpLIvKGj686Bm1kaJXg-LdNS9E2Z9ObVEUTZ6TRiM2WSzhyphenhyphenIuw_AK0Zz3v-afdm9MTytRTaaJWp6FbLEfQ/s320/UK.jpg" width="208" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-Dh-w7RVXHbgSnbmut7Ahcqhsf3Fw__amW5R36yEdgrooGwPBGd0odphAjm-yLK2Lv3pjZXXPEYgvaIfhMPvWI3UHGx8KoGmi_D_UVCxL4kIq2XwEy94rmIJJ9Q8kCIN_g7nuHRNAOQ/s1600/Romanian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM-Dh-w7RVXHbgSnbmut7Ahcqhsf3Fw__amW5R36yEdgrooGwPBGd0odphAjm-yLK2Lv3pjZXXPEYgvaIfhMPvWI3UHGx8KoGmi_D_UVCxL4kIq2XwEy94rmIJJ9Q8kCIN_g7nuHRNAOQ/s320/Romanian.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>
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The UK cover is so eye catching but I do have to pick holes in the dress - it was stated in the book that the dress was quite simple and a lighter violet cover, so the Romanan cover on the right gets much closer to the description. It's just a shame that the cover is so dark.</div>
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I really don't enjoy the Persian or Russian covers. The Persian giant woman is utterly bizarre and brings back memories of Attack On Titan, plus she looks more like the description of Violet's friend, Raven. The Russian cover is just a badly photoshopped mess that I don't fully understand and the ballroom scene makes little sense to the book.</div>
Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-53710017789104671962020-01-19T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-19T13:00:03.805+00:00Review of The Wind In The Wall by Sally Gardner<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IS2VRIj-BvFyz2_GO3T9gUKPxxdGUO6zb7NdmfxZL9MZiuMAF1XHCFrHDjMa1Aw2xtYDzPzLvNgXa5mIcA5UsQha1O2HtfENOyd79C2VwM0tLxnipwpm5BFI4hyBeuY80owyjiWkTCo/s1600/Wind+In+The+Wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1347" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8IS2VRIj-BvFyz2_GO3T9gUKPxxdGUO6zb7NdmfxZL9MZiuMAF1XHCFrHDjMa1Aw2xtYDzPzLvNgXa5mIcA5UsQha1O2HtfENOyd79C2VwM0tLxnipwpm5BFI4hyBeuY80owyjiWkTCo/s320/Wind+In+The+Wall.jpg" width="269" /></a><b>'I have no idea how long I have been incarcerated in these ancient walls . . . Let me explain how I find myself in this predicament . . .'</b><br />
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<b>Set in the hot houses of a stately home in eighteenth century England, a gardener falls from grace when the Duke sets him the impossible task of growing prize pineapples fit to show off in high society.The gardener's star falls further when he is replaced by Mr Amicus, a pineapple 'specialist', whom he believes to be a charlatan and a trickster - but nevertheless miraculously produces fruit to delight the Duke. </b><br />
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<b>Determined to uncover Mr Amicus's tricks, the gardener sneaks into the pineapple house to uncover the mysterious shrouded birdcage Mr Amicus carries with him. And what he finds changes his life for ever...</b><br />
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<b>A cautionary tale with echoes of myth and fairy tale, this bewitching fable will make you careful what you wish for. </b><br />
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I found this one at the library and seeing how short it was, decided to plonk myself down on a bean bag and read the whole thing. Growing up on Grimm and Andersen, I'm a sucker for stories like these, the creepier and more melancholic the better. The Wind In The Wall has that old feel of those stories, while creating something entirely new.
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The story lends itself to surrealism with it's slightly bizarre tale of pineapple growing, a mysterious birdcage and an unhappy marriage. What I did take from this story was that men are stupid, and should not be left to their own devices because they can and will do stupid things.
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I did rate this down a little due to major unanswered questions about pineapples, something which has never happened to me before. When our gardener cannot produce decent pineapples, someone finds someone else that does it better and the gardener can't understand how. Sneaking into the... pineapple keeping place... he discovers a big secret that doesn't help us understand the pineapple dilemma at all.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMJzQ0w9CtqmbLss1-79N_ViXiJR-gHzopeSf8glaPMLhazxlvigbkjAWCDbMwAywqbNRxi8OGCtPJZMCzWV1bf9BpvILYNDj8O3AR9xuwKa9LSSsWXt4jDJ2S5oF8Isq4Y0xVoZrxyg/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="354" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMJzQ0w9CtqmbLss1-79N_ViXiJR-gHzopeSf8glaPMLhazxlvigbkjAWCDbMwAywqbNRxi8OGCtPJZMCzWV1bf9BpvILYNDj8O3AR9xuwKa9LSSsWXt4jDJ2S5oF8Isq4Y0xVoZrxyg/s200/4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-64198694055260888812020-01-13T13:00:00.000+00:002020-01-13T13:00:01.626+00:00Many Covers Monday - The Forest Of Hands And Teeth<div style="text-align: center;">
It has been SO LONG since I last did a Many Covers Monday so I'll explain how it works - typically every Monday I'll pick a book and showcase all the different International covers of it. I love seeing different countries interpretations of each book. Today we're going for a zombie novel about a girl who lives in a village in a huge forest, so expect many covers of girls looking staring longingly, surrounded by trees.<br />
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<i>In Mary's world there are simple truths. The Sisterhood always knows best. The Guardians will protect and serve. The Unconsecrated will never relent. And you must always mind the fence that surrounds the village; the fence that protects the village from the Forest of Hands and Teeth. But, slowly, Mary’s truths are failing her. She’s learning things she never wanted to know about the Sisterhood and its secrets, and the Guardians and their power, and about the Unconsecrated and their relentlessness. When the fence is breached and her world is thrown into chaos, she must choose between her village and her future—between the one she loves and the one who loves her. And she must face the truth about the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Could there be life outside a world surrounded by so much death?
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If I'm correct these are the three US covers, in order of release. Which starts off the theme of this post, MARY'S HAIR IS BLOODY BLACK. It's stated in the book.<br />
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Anyway, I love the third cover.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8N_eCdmaCuTBPojfDBq01ynEz7TtphjUdQoz50BEClkrXWb6cqPgITIe9c6B6GMdEX6NivlDFvsoGwm-WyfsmzWj0UM3GriPfOmwILuBWhsZ7D6ZketXTJ0Ayb6norh6qZQETsaO3VCQ/s1600/UK.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="652" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8N_eCdmaCuTBPojfDBq01ynEz7TtphjUdQoz50BEClkrXWb6cqPgITIe9c6B6GMdEX6NivlDFvsoGwm-WyfsmzWj0UM3GriPfOmwILuBWhsZ7D6ZketXTJ0Ayb6norh6qZQETsaO3VCQ/s200/UK.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJokG23B5BeoVrWmuILDhiK3DbFvFnqznFXEg5wQNI-mqOYff2GFT-I45RB-DiwDn23NEqHHhEu8k5V6OiOI3HEwKke7oo-saQ_kfTd2meUM1_-SmqrDyQw8P3vQQxuHpYuDlUkjXb3zs/s1600/Czech.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="316" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJokG23B5BeoVrWmuILDhiK3DbFvFnqznFXEg5wQNI-mqOYff2GFT-I45RB-DiwDn23NEqHHhEu8k5V6OiOI3HEwKke7oo-saQ_kfTd2meUM1_-SmqrDyQw8P3vQQxuHpYuDlUkjXb3zs/s200/Czech.jpg" width="132" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPbMEKz3P_YXk3xpCn6hk1O5XBEeM5oWxEuYrL_hZwK5V8Dr_aEDNZTp5yZbT-F6JvtX9P2VKDbvlyxWnjECUN4nOFO3jFIhOWmbZ2lFrkLqm7q1IXhvwcuQdQYGS92c0vNB4ZQktGH6A/s1600/Dutch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="829" data-original-width="550" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPbMEKz3P_YXk3xpCn6hk1O5XBEeM5oWxEuYrL_hZwK5V8Dr_aEDNZTp5yZbT-F6JvtX9P2VKDbvlyxWnjECUN4nOFO3jFIhOWmbZ2lFrkLqm7q1IXhvwcuQdQYGS92c0vNB4ZQktGH6A/s200/Dutch.jpg" width="132" /></a></div>
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<b> UK/Czech/Dutch</b><br />
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*stares at the flaming red hair* Yeah ok. The UK cover is unusual which I do like but I don't get what the red thing is actually supposed to be. Dutch.... ehhh. Women running around in impractical dresses is a tad overdone.<br />
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Bonus: de klauwen van het woud google translates to "the claws of the forest"<br />
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<b>French/German/Greek</b><br />
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The first cover is pretty good - it has the fence and the staring girl is creepy. The second... MARY'S HAIR IS BLACK. Again with the big dress. The font is nice though! The Greek cover freaks me out because there looks like there's no noise and the mouth placement looks weird... it's an awful cover.<br />
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Bonus: la forêt des damnés google translates to "the forest of the damned" and wald der tausend augen to "forest of a thousand eyes"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Op4SJQET_GAn5-0CdsE-qAyYz4HPTj0_bAxAca0g2j21BppkG3GMyejT105nr6U7fQGYS5-NCtwbTCcMMxnb1xF6oPcsAp02uuMaeWhrWNTdaQsj9lICvF4Hu4YeGW9Awnq-C47uPuo/s1600/Hungarian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Op4SJQET_GAn5-0CdsE-qAyYz4HPTj0_bAxAca0g2j21BppkG3GMyejT105nr6U7fQGYS5-NCtwbTCcMMxnb1xF6oPcsAp02uuMaeWhrWNTdaQsj9lICvF4Hu4YeGW9Awnq-C47uPuo/s200/Hungarian.jpg" width="126" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUAvBYXGuklEOctHaqYvqNU4tSLWatBp0hCsDRVuKXIX7DkLhnQih0QpV1zFSSItZKJSCKchmyef-f5e96KKTwKPezpSjLk-LovYZq2qyGYnH56A3crjk2SoPjs4JWN1g7HLuP7_hSNsE/s1600/italian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUAvBYXGuklEOctHaqYvqNU4tSLWatBp0hCsDRVuKXIX7DkLhnQih0QpV1zFSSItZKJSCKchmyef-f5e96KKTwKPezpSjLk-LovYZq2qyGYnH56A3crjk2SoPjs4JWN1g7HLuP7_hSNsE/s200/italian.jpg" width="133" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvbei7YcIj0W-TqTpx04JL2CqqpoSQfiHfeq4kfNyNL8j-PjDCM6pR1N1mXsDOOMIsAvd4RcUqHYaO3ENiPc2YTJys2LBXVqvKFcxNj1tO7lz1wqxWnPluxdYoJNWO1cGjDQh3nNe7rM/s1600/Polish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="456" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFvbei7YcIj0W-TqTpx04JL2CqqpoSQfiHfeq4kfNyNL8j-PjDCM6pR1N1mXsDOOMIsAvd4RcUqHYaO3ENiPc2YTJys2LBXVqvKFcxNj1tO7lz1wqxWnPluxdYoJNWO1cGjDQh3nNe7rM/s200/Polish.jpg" width="139" /></a></div>
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<b>Hungarian/Italian/Polish</b><br />
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HAIR. My biggest issue with the second cover (aside from the hair) is how much it doesn't look like a scary, post apocalyptic zombie novel. I like the contrast with the forest on one side and ocean on the other, with the third.<br />
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Bonus: La foresta degli amori perduti Google translates to "the forest of lost loves", which makes the cover even more confusing.<br />
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<b>Russian/Spanish x2 </b><br />
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The Russian cover straight up looks like she's holding a baby. The first Spanish cover looks like she was wearing something else and someone used Microsoft paint to cover that up. It's weird. Despite not being fully black hair, I think the last Spanish cover killed it, it's really good.<br />
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Bonus: Buscaré el Océano Google translates to "I will search the ocean". I don't know what she's searching the ocean for. Searching FOR the ocean, yes.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUYLiX-jTKusmLsckNT8qqCh62XlC3hj2cYmU35JysXJTp3u8SO9WVdJTHaLKh583zLJdfbLadEX5zhhyphenhyphenRMZyRkOI9d8CJPo5xp9Fne7flDVZMGfi-s52o1F5MQ1a-N3S9jIeC9J6t0c/s1600/Swedish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="472" data-original-width="318" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcUYLiX-jTKusmLsckNT8qqCh62XlC3hj2cYmU35JysXJTp3u8SO9WVdJTHaLKh583zLJdfbLadEX5zhhyphenhyphenRMZyRkOI9d8CJPo5xp9Fne7flDVZMGfi-s52o1F5MQ1a-N3S9jIeC9J6t0c/s200/Swedish.jpg" width="134" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF0gAL4NjZxXkcU6PnuxFbjGUrEFOeazty42KwntjM1XnMEd7scWbDEjcIAdMeYv0oeIi5FE1R73wYoaYMphZEzqLKKAuTYlFqtDWU_9bFWyyFIFKNQjqHMFqgErGLFSdtnWy8zYVIOpc/s1600/Vietnamese+Tooth+Hand+Forest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="308" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF0gAL4NjZxXkcU6PnuxFbjGUrEFOeazty42KwntjM1XnMEd7scWbDEjcIAdMeYv0oeIi5FE1R73wYoaYMphZEzqLKKAuTYlFqtDWU_9bFWyyFIFKNQjqHMFqgErGLFSdtnWy8zYVIOpc/s200/Vietnamese+Tooth+Hand+Forest.jpg" width="129" /></a></div>
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<b>Swedish/Vietnamese</b><br />
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A tree and someone praying. I love the cover scheme but I think the second cover makes the story look a lot more religious than it is.<br />
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Bonus: De vassa tändernas skog Google translates to "the sharp teeth forest" and Rừng Răng - Tay to "tooth - hand forest"<br />
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<b>Do you have a favourite cover? Let me know in the comments!</b></div>
Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-36033614730292359732020-01-07T16:11:00.000+00:002020-01-07T16:11:50.923+00:00Review of The Dark And Hollow Places by Carrie Ryan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgT3rnod9UUlD8HayDeUvLrmmCg7bQxXfu1xgCu1DF7MeFQ4yDJEnpsfBZYYhsz89fC6-rcS2oS1EO6oNBlCbdl4XPjQlyhKOrwJBOrRPgLroXPKuxc7pmE5DAlxDWFp1f1y7q8SfU0GQ/s1600/Dark+And+Hollow+Places.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1309" data-original-width="812" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgT3rnod9UUlD8HayDeUvLrmmCg7bQxXfu1xgCu1DF7MeFQ4yDJEnpsfBZYYhsz89fC6-rcS2oS1EO6oNBlCbdl4XPjQlyhKOrwJBOrRPgLroXPKuxc7pmE5DAlxDWFp1f1y7q8SfU0GQ/s320/Dark+And+Hollow+Places.jpg" width="198" /></a><b><i>There are many things that Annah would like to forget: the look on her sister's face before Annah left her behind in the Forest of Hands and Teeth, her first glimpse of the Horde as they swarmed the Dark City, the sear of the barbed wire that would scar her for life. But most of all, Annah would like to forget the morning Elias left her for the Recruiters.
Annah's world stopped that day, and she's been waiting for Elias to come home ever since. Somehow, without him, her life doesn't feel much different than the dead that roam the wasted city around her. Until she meets Catcher, and everything feels alive again.</i></b><br />
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<b><i>But Catcher has his own secrets. Dark, terrifying truths that link him to a past Annah has longed to forget, and to a future too deadly to consider. And now it's up to Annah: can she continue to live in a world covered in the blood of the living? Or is death the only escape from the Return's destruction?</i></b><br />
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Honestly, this book made slogging through the first two worth it. While Mary and Annah's twin sister Gabry spend most of their time whining and letting everyone else fix things for them, Annah seemed much more independent after being left in the Dark City by Elias three years ago. She's by far my favourite character of the three girls and really made the read worthwhile, particularly towards the final pages.
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Elias and Gabry did not come across as well however. There was one particularly memorable scene where Annah asks Gabry how she's okay with Elias essentially handing over people to be tortured to death and she's like... Yeah but the dick is really good *shrug* Plus Elias decided that fucking off and leaving a teenage girl in a city with no law enforcement and a fuck ton of zombies was actually an okay idea.
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We spend most of our time on an island of soldiers trying not to get raped, which was just lovely. It did give some good bonding moments between Gabry and Annah, and Catcher and Annah which I did really enjoy. The first and last parts of the book were quite fast paced and binge worthy, but the middle did slog.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMJzQ0w9CtqmbLss1-79N_ViXiJR-gHzopeSf8glaPMLhazxlvigbkjAWCDbMwAywqbNRxi8OGCtPJZMCzWV1bf9BpvILYNDj8O3AR9xuwKa9LSSsWXt4jDJ2S5oF8Isq4Y0xVoZrxyg/s1600/4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="159" data-original-width="354" height="89" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMJzQ0w9CtqmbLss1-79N_ViXiJR-gHzopeSf8glaPMLhazxlvigbkjAWCDbMwAywqbNRxi8OGCtPJZMCzWV1bf9BpvILYNDj8O3AR9xuwKa9LSSsWXt4jDJ2S5oF8Isq4Y0xVoZrxyg/s200/4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-82562435690278215342020-01-05T12:33:00.000+00:002020-01-05T12:33:36.194+00:00Review of The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5qujJBGMyoOvcYLhTm2MTXY0Q_QyX8rR0go8D88BJ48SwR0VzAIp0OfRNed4ceb7x-b_5r_hgcmIdPkVdca4piWpQnoNgRJiqIz72MEbIBn9qmaDb180pcWbJ9CuiNoSReIoOPxu0PEs/s1600/Dead+Tossed+Waves.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1181" data-original-width="738" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5qujJBGMyoOvcYLhTm2MTXY0Q_QyX8rR0go8D88BJ48SwR0VzAIp0OfRNed4ceb7x-b_5r_hgcmIdPkVdca4piWpQnoNgRJiqIz72MEbIBn9qmaDb180pcWbJ9CuiNoSReIoOPxu0PEs/s320/Dead+Tossed+Waves.jpg" width="199" /></a><i><b>Gabry lives a quiet life, secure in her town next to the sea and behind the Barrier. She's happy to let her friends dream of the Dark City up the coast. Home is all she's ever known, all she needs for happiness. But life after the Return is never safe and there are threats even the Barrier can't hold back.</b></i><br />
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It's the sequel to The Forest Of Hands And Teeth! Now with even more angst! Sigh. I was expecting this to be a continuation of Mary's story, so you can imagine my surprise when I read the blurb and saw the name "Gabry". My first guess was the Gabrielle we met in the first book but then I realised that this sequel is set a good 30 years after we met Mary, focusing instead on her daughter.<br />
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This should be quite an interesting book - it's set from the perspective of an outsider to The Forest, a girl who grew up in a village protected by the Protectorate, some sort of military types. Gabry lives in a lighthouse and every morning we go zombie bashing because they wash ashore. Bizarre but fun right? Somehow, no. This book dragged so, so much.
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I may have sneaked a glance at the blurb for book three, so when something major went down at the funfair with Catcher, it was easy to guess where they were going with this. (view spoiler) Gabry runs away after the zombie attack at the fairground, leaving everyone to it and when they are caught and Catcher is missing, she goes to look for him. Of course, one missing boyfriend isn't quite enough angst, so cue Elias!
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Elias is fecking annoying. Okay, so he does save her quite a few times but he sure as hell seems to fall in love with her quickly, despite it being plainly obvious that Catcher is her boyfriend or near as. And then when she doesn't reciprocate he gets irritated with her? What? Is this the behavior we really want to be displaying as normal in teen books? Of course he has a Tragic Backstory, all tied up with the Forest and Gabry because we need EVEN MORE ANGST.
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One thing that could have saved this book but kind of fell apart was Catcher's sister, Gabry's best friend. With her sentence after the events at the fairground and believing her brother to be dead, it pushes her into depression to the point where she didn't want to live any more. However it devolved into a kinda sometimes she wanted to live sometimes she didn't situation and it didn't have the impact that it should have done.
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This one does a little better at a plot twist but I didn't have that 'Woah' moment. It was just like... oh okay so that's a thing. I know our next character is Annah in the Dark City, a place that was frequently mentioned in this book. After going from village to other village, I'm really hoping the Dark City is just that - a city. It may just be interesting enough to make the series a complete disappointment.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSlXAIPJOupymybp5gKPDeaENmK0icjrTfDGR3VqinSZh1p11nfYRaNVQyTji2I7Usa-PkpfTfm2-VTRAumIzM7zwoOOdvxaT3B1J666FVmmIDDEvlW7NlGDNiv4IAcE-SiIIq_P0t1c0/s1600/3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="158" data-original-width="365" height="86" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSlXAIPJOupymybp5gKPDeaENmK0icjrTfDGR3VqinSZh1p11nfYRaNVQyTji2I7Usa-PkpfTfm2-VTRAumIzM7zwoOOdvxaT3B1J666FVmmIDDEvlW7NlGDNiv4IAcE-SiIIq_P0t1c0/s200/3.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-59400042318098532712019-12-09T13:59:00.001+00:002019-12-09T13:59:09.364+00:00How I Reduced Stress As A Book Blogger<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I started reviewing way, way back in 2012 (I think). I was immediately plunged into a whole new world of book bloggers, book blogs, review copies and marketing yourself. I freaking love attention so I set about trying to get as much attention to my blog as possible, obsessing over every single detail until I burnt myself out and stopped reading for a few years.</div>
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On top of that, I also tried to maintain a bookstagram, having the extra stress of photographing books to my already teaming work pile of stuff I needed to do for my blog.</div>
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I tried again last year and fell into the same trap, trying to keep up with review copies and my blog and quickly ended up dropping off, again. I've just started reading again in October 2019 and this time I actually sat down and thought about what worked for me - and what didn't.</div>
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<b><u>Blog Aesthetics</u></b></div>
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Do you know what I really don't care about these days? An aesthetically pleasing blog with 6000 pieces of information on the sidebar, widgets, links and all that other bullshit. So this is what you get. I went to the effort of finding a nice picture and making sure the colours matched at least.</div>
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<b><u>Blog Updates</u></b></div>
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Weirdly the one thing that doesn't work for me is constantly updating this blog. I need it because Goodreads eats my reviews, so I'll stop by when I'm not busy, add a bunch of reviews all at once and drop off again. I'm mostly able to do this because:</div>
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<b><u>Blog Marketing</u></b></div>
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To get review copies, you need followers, active engagement, comments. I used to do all the different blog hops, Stacking The Shelves, Waiting On Wednesday. I don't bother any more. I don't even expect people to see this post. I feel free quite frankly.</div>
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<b><u>Review Copies</u></b></div>
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Who needs them? I know they can feel like a carrot at the end of a very long stick when you see bloggers with thousands of followers posting them, but honestly I can wait a couple of months. Review copies are also hard as fuck to shift because you can't sell them. Quitting NetGalley and no longer accepting requests from Independent authors is a huge sigh of relief, I have no commitments and I can read whatever I want.</div>
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<b><u>Bookstagram</u></b></div>
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Aha, this is the one where all my effort goes now and I love it. I refuse to spend ages messing about with props, instead I just photograph my book where I am, or I'll take a few books out on a field trip for nice photos. I'm having a ton of fun with it and I really enjoy growing a following. It's completely mine, with my own ideas and I'm not trying to copy anyone else. I love posting the books I'm reading on it and talking with other readers. I'm @vee_bookish on there!</div>
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<b><u>Latest Releases</u></b></div>
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This one is a new one for me! I started trying to keep up with pre-orders when I got back into books and late November I caught myself stressing about keeping up, so I've quit that. Checking yourself is something I really struggle with, so although it's a small, silly thing, I'm proud of myself for realising. I do love new releases, so when I have money I look on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/genres/young-adult">this Goodreads page</a> of the latest popular releases and choose from there now.</div>
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<b><i>My advice to other readers that may be struggling with this is to actually sit down and work out what is and isn't working for you. Maybe write it down and colour everything that causes high stress in red and work out how to reduce that stress, if you need to quit that or do something different. Also contact me any time on Instagram, @vee_bookish !</i></b></div>
Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-54654497962532299462019-12-01T17:00:00.000+00:002019-12-01T17:00:08.571+00:00Monthly Update (01/12/2019)<div style="text-align: center;">
How is it the last month of the year already? I started reading again in October and November has flown by, despite me being stuck indoors, ill with a chest infection for most of it.</div>
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I had a fairly bad reading month this month, I got stuck reading the entirety of the Maze Runner series for pretty much the entire period I was ill and I didn't enjoy it very much. After that nearly every book I read seemed to be disappointing, although I ended on a high note with The Lie Tree and Goblet Of Fire.</div>
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Read This Month<br />
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Whew. 14 books in total and here's the ratings and short review summary:<br />
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<b>Ten Thousand Doors Of January</b> - My favourite book of the month and likely the year too. Somehow managed to remind me of every book I loved as a child. 5/5<br />
<b>The Knife Of Never Letting Go</b> - I found this to be overhyped and too focused on extreme violence. The plot was basic and too much of the story was just walking from one place to another. 2/5<br />
<b>The Starless Sea</b> - quite a lot like January with all the doors, I thought this one was trippy as hell but I loved it. And I totally shipped Zachary and Dorian. 5/5<br />
<b>The Maze Runner</b> - the idea was better than the execution, characters were lacking but this an old favourite all the same. 4/5<br />
<b>The Scorch Trials</b> - suffered from very little character development and new characters should have been intriduced. Theresa was intensely annoying. 3/5<br />
<b>The Death Cure</b> - A very poor ending, suffered from the same problems as Scorch Trials. It felt like the author was emotionally detached from the series. 2/5<br />
<b>The Kill Order </b>- Just absolutely pointless and added nothing to the series. 1/5<br />
<b>The Fever Code</b> - Finally added something to the series, all I wanted was to spend some time with the original Gladers, which I got, so I was happy. 4/5<br />
<b>Alice In Wonderland</b> - my Bookishly edition of the month and a great way to kick off my subscription, I love Alice so much. 5/5<br />
<b>Winterwood</b> - one of my pre-orders, so an anticipated book, this suffered from too much purple prose, plot holes and a very weak ending. 2/5<br />
<b>Crown Of Oblivion</b> - another of my pre-orders, this felt like a first draft with so much thrown at it and nothing stuck. 2/5<br />
<b>Wayfarer</b> - sequel to Passenger, this really, really plodded along and I was only able to finish due to a mammoth 3 hour binge reading session. The ending was good though! 3/5<br />
<b>The Lie Tree</b> - my mood really picked up reading this one, and Chris Riddell's illustrations helped. I loved this late 1800s tale of science, feminism and religion.<br />
<b>Goblet Of Fire</b> - The illustrated edition is out now and as it's my favourite book of the series I thought why not? Most of the illustrations are freaking gorgeous but emo Krum had me and an Instagram friend in stitches. 5/5<br />
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Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-38195162126793974092019-11-24T11:13:00.000+00:002019-11-30T11:14:08.989+00:00Review of Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozvcGsCM7DW-j7hOsCObTk85cV2-Kiob0GpsxfgNl43baw_9lS9gSWgLR4vmye-rhff5DtC8ExEM1gRBLrIQTQ5OYpFEd4yR39Ot2wZN16lvsVMa83gr8Kx8HxINnUhBT_LSY9v0OHhs/s1600/Wayfarer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhozvcGsCM7DW-j7hOsCObTk85cV2-Kiob0GpsxfgNl43baw_9lS9gSWgLR4vmye-rhff5DtC8ExEM1gRBLrIQTQ5OYpFEd4yR39Ot2wZN16lvsVMa83gr8Kx8HxINnUhBT_LSY9v0OHhs/s320/Wayfarer.jpg" width="211" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">All Etta Spencer wanted was to make her violin debut when she was thrust into a treacherous world where the struggle for power could alter history. After losing the one thing that would have allowed her to protect the Timeline, and the one person worth fighting for, Etta awakens alone in an unknown place and time, exposed to the threat of the two groups who would rather see her dead than succeed. When help arrives, it comes from the last person Etta ever expected—Julian Ironwood, the Grand Master’s heir who has long been presumed dead, and whose dangerous alliance with a man from Etta’s past could put them both at risk.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Meanwhile, Nicholas and Sophia are racing through time in order to locate Etta and the missing astrolabe with Ironwood travelers hot on their trail. They cross paths with a mercenary-for-hire, a cheeky girl named Li Min who quickly develops a flirtation with Sophia. But as the three of them attempt to evade their pursuers, Nicholas soon realizes that one of his companions may have ulterior motives.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">As Etta and Nicholas fight to make their way back to one another, from Imperial Russia to the Vatican catacombs, time is rapidly shifting and changing into something unrecognizable… and might just run out on both of them.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">It took 2 days and a mammoth 3 hour reading session tonight but I am FINISHED. I'd read a few reviews that discussed how slow going this book is, and that it literally took them months to finish it, so I was pretty determined not to get into that slump, especially with the amount of Bad Books I've read this month.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Wayfarer isn't as good as Passenger but it's not terrible. It's just okay, I wouldn't re-read it. While Passenger seemed to run through passages at breakneck speed, travelling to centuries and countries at the blink of an eye, Wayfarer seemed to content to sit down and have dinner for a while. Literally, in one case. Actually if I stretch the definition, a few cases.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This book introduces new characters which is a Very Good Thing because it's the best way to keep a book feeling fresh, in my humble opinion. However I do not like when a character is introduced only to disappear a few chapters later. Julian was my favourite new addition, he's about as useless as I would be and I could picture us together, casually leaving the rest of the family squabbling in favour of a nice bookstore and plenty of cake.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">There's a few tropes thrown in that I did not like - the big one is character separation for plot purposes. If you have to separate them, do not make me wait a good 400 pages for them to be reunited again. Especially after I just deal with The Exact Same Trope during multiple Maze Runner books. The whole Nicholas being a martyr thing got real old fast too.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">An extra star for A Good Ending, without wrapping up everything in a perfect pretty bow. I appreciated that.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-87090561239485705372019-11-22T11:10:00.000+00:002019-11-30T11:11:07.563+00:00Review of Crown Of Oblivion by Julie Eshbaugh<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEv4Kt9QNp79VhJ8SM3ITu5Op9Rg-TpFR036K6VaxVgj6gW-ZVPXCC3iuU_nHa3MN1E7NSFGyVXZMkmQq_CEYylDkKVf6bf42ZrYDkwj7zwcjKWV0LXvQnLwE6OozVPZPzkBGoY8-ggJY/s1600/Crown+Of+Oblivion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEv4Kt9QNp79VhJ8SM3ITu5Op9Rg-TpFR036K6VaxVgj6gW-ZVPXCC3iuU_nHa3MN1E7NSFGyVXZMkmQq_CEYylDkKVf6bf42ZrYDkwj7zwcjKWV0LXvQnLwE6OozVPZPzkBGoY8-ggJY/s320/Crown+Of+Oblivion.jpg" width="211" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Astrid is the surrogate for Princess Renya, which means she bears the physical punishment if Renya steps out of line. Astrid has no choice—she and her family are Outsiders, the lower class of people without magic and without citizenship.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">But there is a way out of this life—competing in the deadly Race of Oblivion. To enter the race, an Outsider is administered the drug Oblivion, which wipes their memory clear of their past as they enter a new world with nothing to help them but a slip of paper bearing their name and the first clue. It’s not as simple as solving a puzzle, however—for a majority of the contestants, the race ends in death. But winning would mean not only freedom for Astrid, but citizenship and health care for her entire family. With a dying father to think of, Astrid is desperate to prevail.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">From the beginning, the race is filled with twists and turns. One of them is Darius, a fellow racer Astrid meets but isn’t sure she can trust. Though they team up in the race, as Astrid’s memories begin to resurface, she remembers just who he was to her—a scorned foe who may want revenge. Astrid also starts to notice she has powers no Outsider should—which could help her win the race, but also make her a target if anyone finds out. With stakes that couldn’t be higher, Astrid must decide what is more important: risking her life to remember the mysteries of the past, or playing a cutthroat game in order to win her—and her family’s—freedom.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">There's so many great reviews of this book but quite frankly what I read was a whole mess. This would be great as a first draft but there was so much thrown in that it just didn't work and ended up almost feeling middle grade in places. Characters were basically just Speshul Proganist, Rebel, Bad Prince, Good Princess, Love Interest That Does Dark Things But It's Okay Because He Has Reasons.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I know this book really wanted to be the next Hunger Games, literally lifting some of it to use in this book but the great things about The Hunger Games this book didn't have. The extra contestants, apart from Darius, all faded into one and had very little personality besides stabby. They also disappeared very quickly. One particular contestant that did stand out at the beginning completely disappeared for the rest of the book and I only just remembered her now.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Right so what do we have? *Deep breath* Fantasy land, royal kingdom, indentured servants, people with magic, people without magic, three different types of magic that is not fullt explained, drugs, a race which makes little sense, the IRA... no... OLA, the Third Reich... whoops, Third Way, journalists, one scene which legit felt like Wacky Races, weird family secrets, weird love interest secrets, weird Princess secrets, stabby people, clues you'll never solve because they didn't think to provide us with a map, memories that make your brain hurty, wild boars, boxing matches, underground communities (thanks scorch trials and hunger games).</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">One thing that was never really explained is how much help Astrid got for no apparent reason. Everyone she seemed to meet was more than willing to help her Because Reasons. Despite living with the Princess for most of her life, Astrid also seemed to be completely unaware of the race or how it worked until the moment she decided to sign up on a whim.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What really killed the story for me was the constant use of "And Then This Happens", throwing in another completely bizarre, random plot device or plot twist to move the story along. It ended up just being a contest to see what shit would stick. The story didn't break new ground, nothing felt new or interesting but it was readable.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-22195782738664859772019-11-20T11:07:00.000+00:002019-11-30T11:08:12.665+00:00Review of Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRh02dXlr-dD35Tm-S4t1nhlvqGNAKkJG9i9hFw0Yby_mMTZAGAr2lhgan0FEbIJux9rLMpCwg2wF1EyhQbsPPMbTPE0EatRZTJvT3h5LDCNx0pXIs4itJ-xF33CQRxMYnoAmhYcebxoE/s1600/Winterwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1059" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRh02dXlr-dD35Tm-S4t1nhlvqGNAKkJG9i9hFw0Yby_mMTZAGAr2lhgan0FEbIJux9rLMpCwg2wF1EyhQbsPPMbTPE0EatRZTJvT3h5LDCNx0pXIs4itJ-xF33CQRxMYnoAmhYcebxoE/s320/Winterwood.jpg" width="211" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Be careful of the dark, dark wood…</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Winterwood really captures the feeling of late 2000s YA, where insta-love was everywhere and every protagonist seemed to spend a whole book whining about how hard their life was. Thw Walker women are incredible witches, gothic and mysterious with unusual abilities, able to charm bees, cry lakes and whisper to spiders. Unfortunately we get saddled with Nora, who is bloody annoying.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The story is vaguely (very vaguely) similar to Beware The Wild, a 5 star read where people go missing in a small town with a creepy swamp, it has the same gothic vibes and mystery but this book didn't really seem to go anyway. I guessed the big reveal a hundred pages in so had to sit around waiting to confirmed right for another 200 pages.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Nora and Oliver are... well I can't call them a good couple when they fall into the insta-love category. Again with the late 2000s tropes it very much feels like Nora Might Just Die Of A Broken Heart if she loses the boy she found having a nap in the woods a couple of hours ago. Get your shit together girl.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What was going on with Nora's mother during this book? She never made an appearance. Nora talked about her constantly and yeah she was on holiday or something but it was so weird that a character that was spoken about throughout the whole book never once made an appearance in the final chapters.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The ending was a complete cop out, come on. It was like the author had written it a different way, told that was too depressing and had to scramble to edit a nicer ending in later. I didn't like the ending at all, it was far too neatly packaged.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-78703315256482850452019-11-15T11:01:00.000+00:002019-11-30T11:01:20.700+00:00Review of The Kill Order by James Dashner<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhmUDePHko4lvn0qSnyyHBUgMBU32Y74FNiLPsr7zxC_iZGaMibxFd96V-2n4J2tvg-uHZlUaxrjfH1SP6EPVuMa_TxGlNNTjOypos_8PFkQLsZVCsYoM2Pn4gGBUWsRyXt-IXfqutyE/s1600/Kill+Order.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1065" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhmUDePHko4lvn0qSnyyHBUgMBU32Y74FNiLPsr7zxC_iZGaMibxFd96V-2n4J2tvg-uHZlUaxrjfH1SP6EPVuMa_TxGlNNTjOypos_8PFkQLsZVCsYoM2Pn4gGBUWsRyXt-IXfqutyE/s320/Kill+Order.jpg" width="212" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">They Thought The End Came In A Flash</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Before WICKED was formed, before the Glade was built, before Thomas entered the Maze, sun flares hit the earth, killing most of the population.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The Worst Is Yet to Come</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Mark and Trina were there when it happened. They survived. But now a virus is spreading. A virus that fills humans with murderous rage.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">There is no cure. No escape.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">They’re convinced that there’s a way to save those who are left—if they can stay alive. Because in this new, devastated world, every life has a price. And to some you’re worth more dead than alive.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The End Is Only The Beginning.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Literally the only reason I read this book is because I'm binge reading the whole Maze Runner series just to have done with it, plus I'm genuinely curious about The Fever Code. Here's a jumble of annoyed thoughts!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This one is just massive filler, with the main characters being no-one we know. The whole story is to add some background to the Flare and its origins and somehow manages to make the whole thing even more of a mess than it already was, so well done for that.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Dashner seems to struggle with human emotion. I don't say this flippantly, I'm over a thousand pages into his writing and can confidently say that he really struggles. When it comes to romance he doesn't know how to build it up properly, or what to do when the two characters are together, so he separates them quickly. See Thomas and Teresa in all 3 of the previous books, especially The Scorch Trials. Mark and Trina are almost exactly the same. They're an established couple at the start but Dashner quickly separated them. His death scenes lack any real emotion too.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Another issue I has was repeated ideas, sentences and plot devices. Alec and Mark being separated from DeeDee, Trina and I don't know, Llama? and ending up on a Berg felt very much like book 3. Mark/Thomas might as well be the same person and they get hit on the head A LOT. Also most of the female cranks like to show off their very white teeth.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I did think that my inability to remember the characters that were getting killed off was my own fault for not being invested in the book until I read the other reviews - looks like everyone had the same problem.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The big reveal? Wow! I'm so surprised! I totally didn't get that the moment they were introduced!</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Come on do I look like a big dumb doodoo head. Seriously.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-49165883783828963182019-11-13T10:55:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:58:49.093+00:00Review of The Death Cure by James Dashner <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5tsbxB8yaJwbFCP4pqYslHZuJwHJIoTuzrv6KF-L1DpxR-GFdJq6ake6GSCOoKp4BOxABJ9FTxaW1mEkBid-yqMUhRIc23slAhinGAX_5ogkuIr6GoJE125V89z5bRIq0RcatNXRuvw8/s1600/Death+Cure.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1064" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5tsbxB8yaJwbFCP4pqYslHZuJwHJIoTuzrv6KF-L1DpxR-GFdJq6ake6GSCOoKp4BOxABJ9FTxaW1mEkBid-yqMUhRIc23slAhinGAX_5ogkuIr6GoJE125V89z5bRIq0RcatNXRuvw8/s320/Death+Cure.jpg" width="212" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">It’s the end of the line.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">WICKED has taken everything from Thomas: his life, his memories, and now his only friends—the Gladers. But it’s finally over. The trials are complete, after one final test.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Will anyone survive?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What WICKED doesn’t know is that Thomas remembers far more than they think. And it’s enough to prove that he can’t believe a word of what they say.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The truth will be terrifying.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Thomas beat the Maze. He survived the Scorch. He’ll risk anything to save his friends. But the truth might be what ends it all.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The time for lies is over.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Let's have a ranty spoilery angry collection of text about this stupid book and I'll throw it under a spoiler warning so no-one has a temper tantrum. Also if you're of a sensitive disposition and don't like people dissing authors or swearing, not scrolling is self care.</span><br />
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<b>HERE THERE BE SPOILERS</b><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span class="spoilerContainer" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This series is so shit it makes Wither (aka The Chemical Garden) series look like high quality writing. What a load of crap that was - by the way if you've ever seen Lauren Destefano go OFF about someone who called one of her book covers "that green thing", that was me. I don't care. It looked <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15945844-sever" rel="nofollow" style="color: #00635d;">crap</a>. I only asked because I was trying to work out if the green was a green screen and they were adding the real background later. I need to make a shelf of authors that should be banned from writing equipment.<br /><br />I have PMS and a fever and I am in a mood. This series was supposed to be my escape from the swollen throat, bloody mucus and constant nose blowing I'm experiencing. Much like Wither, the first book held Huge Promise for the rest of the series and then after that the author was like, oh wait I have to write sequels after the first book? Whoops I forgot how to write.<br /><br />My biggest issue with The Scorch Trials was that it suffered heavily from Second Book Syndrome but had Very Easily Fixable problems. For example, Dashner decided to just basically wipe out pretty much all of the Gladers save like... idk 5 with names and a good 6 others. So it would be obvious to basically everyone to bring these characters, and the characters from Group B, to the forefront and flesh them out to increase tension in the story? But nah. They were literally only mentioned as "other Gladers" and didn't even had cardboard substance they were just... there. In comparison Hunger Games did this very well, introducing new characters each book that were well fleshed out and memorable.<br /><br />Group B in this book don't really exist. While a few of them got names and no personality in the last book, this book they disappear fairly quickly with Teresa, again, mimicking the plot of the second book because Dasher wants his characters to run away from having personalities. But honestly I find Teresa Annoying As Hell so I can't complain too much.<br /><br />The biggest issue I had was a huge moment at the beginning where the Gladers were told they would get their memories back. Thomas and I presume Minho get theirs later but this is never mentioned. They got the chip out and nothing. I wanted that moment of them sharing stories of their childhood and we never got that. We didn't even get to find out their real names, even though it was mentioned earlier on that they're all named after important historical figures by WICKED. Hopefully that's fixed later but fixing it in a prequel is a "whoops I forgot" moment for sure.<br /><br />I felt absolutely nothing when major characters died that I originally cared about in TMR. Literally, nothing. It was more of a "there goes another one" and move on. The story lacked all compassion or great moment for them, unlike Chuck. Again, the first book.</span><br />
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<span class="spoilerContainer" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><b>MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW WOAH</b><br /><br />Also that ending? Well humanity is fucked lol but we put all these immune people on a nice field - which is never really explained because isn't the world supposed to be suffering from extreme weather patterns? But WICKED just saved this nice patch of grass with a river just in case? Lol wut? Also we never really saw any real reaction from Thomas when Teresa died Cersei style cos he'd already replaced her with Brenda...?, because for some reason Thomas needed a woman to stroke his ego for three books. Honestly that whole scene was saccharine.<br /><br />It gets 2 stars because going back to the Maze was actually A Good Idea.</span><br />
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<span class="spoilerContainer" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-75716803840098505162019-11-12T10:52:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:53:19.922+00:00Review of The Scorch Trials by James Dashner<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLsLlcb4fnnMK0uz-4n_psozBuSE0D0IaawQirY_Uz2KcrTSXu8D7b4EFJkko5RPb17IbuYzTVrmsia6MjXGURJKh84P6yR861-8W9EtkbGgCQpAzr6ErYW9pHpcX2xN4VU9Yjho5Dv5g/s1600/Scorch+Trials.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1070" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLsLlcb4fnnMK0uz-4n_psozBuSE0D0IaawQirY_Uz2KcrTSXu8D7b4EFJkko5RPb17IbuYzTVrmsia6MjXGURJKh84P6yR861-8W9EtkbGgCQpAzr6ErYW9pHpcX2xN4VU9Yjho5Dv5g/s320/Scorch+Trials.jpg" width="214" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Solving the Maze was supposed to be the end.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Thomas was sure that escape from the Maze would mean freedom for him and the Gladers. But WICKED isn’t done yet. Phase Two has just begun. The Scorch.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">There are no rules. There is no help. You either make it or you die.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The Gladers have two weeks to cross through the Scorch—the most burned-out section of the world. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Friendships will be tested. Loyalties will be broken. All bets are off.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">There are others now. Their survival depends on the Gladers’ destruction—and they’re determined to survive.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">*Vee gets slammed with Second Book Syndrome*</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Can you believe I originally rated this book a full five stars? I must have been less cynical as a reviewer or just completely ignored just how bad this book was because y'all, it was Bad.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I'm currently day 3 of a fever and sore throat so this won't be a full review as much as rambling sentences but I'm going to give it a good shucking go anyway because reasons.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Okay, so, the original book was so strong for me because I am a whole sucker for the gang+treasure hunt/end goal trope, see Hunger Games, Goonies, heck Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. So I loved the first book as it had defined characters with defined roles.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Which were promptly chucked out of the window between the end of the last book and the start of this one, as we kill off pretty much all of them leaving behind two major gladers, Frypan who is now only good for cooking and not saying anything, Teresa, Thomas and New Guy Aris. There is also a few more gladers that make up the bulk of the New Team and this book would be a great time to introduce them. But strangely, they're only there as a strange, ghostly presence, never named, never speaking. You only know they're there because Thomas mentions them as other Gladers. Honestly, it's bizarre.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The End Goal of this book is to walk across a desert for 100 miles, trying not to get murderised by Cranks who went mad from sun flares (just call it rabies already) and the whole book actually feels like you just plodded along for 100 miles. Honestly I gave it 3 stars only because there's something about The Maze Runner series I have a soft spot for.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Also, Teresa is annoying As Hell.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-81580946255051994622019-11-09T10:48:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:49:01.067+00:00Review of The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga5EPG2Y2uK3SbETFlwaXcyy2pFwyEM2_TzWZo4mgZP0UiGp30I4TEV275Bym2-1G1PaEpvivhDa3oLrLxpb-F62ggQcWA-seGEjjend72kFhR6Se1Wo4MXns7641qJ4S-fH0RhwBNN3w/s1600/Starless+Sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1082" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga5EPG2Y2uK3SbETFlwaXcyy2pFwyEM2_TzWZo4mgZP0UiGp30I4TEV275Bym2-1G1PaEpvivhDa3oLrLxpb-F62ggQcWA-seGEjjend72kFhR6Se1Wo4MXns7641qJ4S-fH0RhwBNN3w/s320/Starless+Sea.jpg" width="216" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues -- a bee, a key, and a sword -- that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library, hidden far below the surface of the earth.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians -- it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also those who are intent on its destruction.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose--in both the mysterious book and in his own life.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">2019 has authors knocking it out of the god-damned PARK, what we're knocking out of the park I don't know but basically they're all killing it with the writing this year. I read The Ten Thousand Doors Of January earlier this month which is eerily similar with it's wonderful writing and many, many doors. This one is much more surreal, with secret societies, masked balls and many, many cats. Also, bees.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">If I had to squeeze this into a category I'd choose "magical surrealism", it's like Alice In Wonderland but bigger and with more drugs - probably. Zachary checks out a book from the library with no author and attempts to trace where it came from, leading him to Dorian (my heart, I stan), Mirabel, the greatest kitchen ever and people that might cut his hands off. It's complicated.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I refuse to talk to much about this book because you really need to go in blind, it's more fun that way, I promise. If you're into the trippy Alice In Wonderland style where you're never quite sure where you'll end up next, just trust this book to take you on a whole journey. It's incredible.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-59764592010398491792019-11-05T10:45:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:46:42.320+00:00Review of The Knife Of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03_fgCY0b1pj34pbUCwMWQkDPJZeZSV6cs0cv3Jx-v-xuzEvC1vMt7u_809x-gjW6D2s0NZlO7YOVSFhfVrksG8b3x_CXZff39WUO8C2g1xsRCcFdvYuwnRd-2Sg0cnATxaiNQXFFQ8c/s1600/Knife+Of+Never.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="988" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj03_fgCY0b1pj34pbUCwMWQkDPJZeZSV6cs0cv3Jx-v-xuzEvC1vMt7u_809x-gjW6D2s0NZlO7YOVSFhfVrksG8b3x_CXZff39WUO8C2g1xsRCcFdvYuwnRd-2Sg0cnATxaiNQXFFQ8c/s320/Knife+Of+Never.jpg" width="197" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">TODD HEWITT IS THE LAST BOY IN PRENTISSTOWN.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">But Pretisstown isn't like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else's thoughts in a contant, overwhelming, never-ending Noise. There is no privacy. There are no secrets.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Or are there?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd unexpectedly stumbles upon a spot of complete silence.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Which is impossible.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Prentisstown has been lying to him.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">And now he's going to have to run</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">...</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This book has been on my TBR probably as long as I have been a book blogger, which is a seriously long time (a good 8 years is my guess). I love Patrick Ness, I loved the concept but at 479 pages I was seriously daunted. I'm choosing a few books randomly now, to cut down my TBR and this came up, so I finally cracked it open.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The story is your standard dystopia/mystery - Todd lives in Prentisstown where everyone has Big Secrets that they all know except for him. You really have to suspend your belief here because apparently everyone has these Big Secrets while being able to hear everyone's thoughts, and somehow Todd is so stupid that he has never once heard even a snippet of something that sounds wrong about Prentisstown in nearly 13 years, not even from the men that raised him.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The whole book is Todd, his dog Manchee and new found female Viola walking a lot and getting beaten up beyond recognition by an absolute nutter. Along the way they slowly discover the Big Secrets, all of which was completely and utterly unsurprising to the point where I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes at one point. One scene completely broke my heart and left me a sobbing mess and if you've read it you already know which one.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">What an utter slog this book was. It's worth noting that I have read three other books by Patrick Ness, two of which I rated 5 stars and the other got 4 stars. So to not enjoy this story was a surprise to me. The pacing, the story, the characters, none of it redeemed the sheer trek through all 479 pages and I felt absolutely nothing when I closed the final page.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Sorry, CW fans.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-62517187321871862362019-10-30T10:42:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:43:00.436+00:00Review of All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3VI8hHn4TrnYH7bdH2iwx7QkwRVX1SJ95iBqzM_XkpVuswwv3yM7YNlW8HaZopWn4iVWlo3HdPVOuw0ffyIUneoSf-n-ywELDAtxtnthf2iLgDlFjBw1GlnPhYjUOB34SrnqxN448Aqc/s1600/All+Fall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1005" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3VI8hHn4TrnYH7bdH2iwx7QkwRVX1SJ95iBqzM_XkpVuswwv3yM7YNlW8HaZopWn4iVWlo3HdPVOuw0ffyIUneoSf-n-ywELDAtxtnthf2iLgDlFjBw1GlnPhYjUOB34SrnqxN448Aqc/s320/All+Fall.jpg" width="201" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">A deadly contagion races through England...</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Isabel and her family have nowhere to run from a disease that has killed half of Europe. When the world she knows and loves ends forever, her only weapon is courage.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The Black Death of 1349 was the deadliest plague in human history. </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">All Fall Down</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> is a powerful and inspiring story of survival in the face of real life horror.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I am a huge fan of history, as a kid I re-read Terry Deary's Horrible Histories so many times that the pages started falling out. It's always been an obsession of mine. However, when you go through my read shelf, you read don't see that many YA Historical books. Why is that?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Well, this book perfectly illustrates some the problems that historical novels seem to struggle with. While the first half of the book was a bleak picture of life in a village near York, during the Black Death of 1349, the latter half struggled to know where to go with this.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">A big problem was the village being set near York, the author clearly felt that you couldn't have a whole book without actually going to York (which I have been to many times, it's lovely but don't go in August), so she had to find a way to shoehorn that in. Which just didn't work.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The character introduction of Thomas was too late in the book to make much sense and his entire storyline felt more like a strange Dickens story. Then the author realised that you can't just leave the village so had to find a way to go back to it within 50 pages. This left the ending feeling rushed, elements quickly shoved in to try and show off their knowledge of the plague and overall, I left feeling dissatisfied.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-260620455994758542019-10-28T10:40:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:40:35.764+00:00Review of Nightfall by Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvD0KQBJRUm02cTCB4ikEq49BF1XdZk0GyJjeqM5MNukvQncHrup8TmbL-DVfZx_Ptqj224_MhPxxkk3AAz8fcpHWhfEI2uNLhokwxYp5kUpIODTG4G3K6iruaJhi6LYpuFid2FaCwcU/s1600/Nightfall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1043" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvD0KQBJRUm02cTCB4ikEq49BF1XdZk0GyJjeqM5MNukvQncHrup8TmbL-DVfZx_Ptqj224_MhPxxkk3AAz8fcpHWhfEI2uNLhokwxYp5kUpIODTG4G3K6iruaJhi6LYpuFid2FaCwcU/s320/Nightfall.jpg" width="208" /></a><b><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">After fourteen years of Day comes fourteen years of Night. Be sure not to get left in the dark.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">On Marin's island, sunrise doesn't come every twenty-four hours - it comes every twenty-eight years. Now the sun is just a sliver of light on the horizon. The weather is turning cold. The shadows are growing long. The dark is rising. And soon it will be Night.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The eerie Evening sunset is causing the tide to begin its slow roll out hundreds of miles, and so Marin, along with her twin brother Kana and the rest of the islanders, must frantically begin preparations to sail south, where they will wait out the long Night. But first the house must be made ready for their departure. Locks must be taken off doors. Furniture must be arranged just so. Tables must be set as if for dinner. The rituals are bizzare - unnerving, even - but none of the adults will discuss why things must be this way. And then just as the ships are about to sail, the twins' friend Line goes missing. Marin and Kana know where he has gone, and that the only way to rescue him is to do it themselves. And surely the ships will wait?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Because Night is falling. Their island is changing. And something is stirring in the dark.</span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This Halloween I'm all about Creepy Books About Trees, so after Beware The Wild didn't quite creep me out enough, I thought this mysterious island would do it. Every 14 years, the entire entire packs up their belongings, cleans every house and leaves no trace of their existence. Nothing is discussed as to why everything has to be so exact, leaving the younger residents with a lot of questions that the adults refuse to answer.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">"THE HOUSES MUST BE WITHOUT STAIN"</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This has some good world building, even outside of the island itself is well described to Marin and the reader. Once the action starts and Marin, Line and Kana start piecing clues together as to why the islanders leave every 14 years, it just gets scarier. The story is kept fairly simple but what is going on is (kinda roughly) explained, which I appreciated.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><i style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">“Night has fallen. And it will last for a very long time.”</i><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The only thing that prevented me from rating this a full five stars was that it felt a little unfinished. There was a lot of unanswered questions about Marin, Line and Kana's life that warranted a sequel, likely set in 13/14 years from the point of view of their own children. I have no idea if this will ever be made.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">Edit: The sequel is called Edgeland! It's not attached to this book so we can presume it's one of those "set in the same world but we don't call it a sequel" things.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-86077828824445676702019-10-27T14:54:00.000+00:002019-11-30T09:41:27.877+00:00Monthly Update (27/10/2019)<div style="text-align: center;">
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The last time I wrote a weekly update post (over a year ago), I was very clearly drowning and trying to convince myself that I was JUST FINE. Which I why this time I am dropping review requests and NetGalley entirely. Let's see if this works?</div>
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<u>Read This Week (and a bit)</u></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OIvq1Q7u_vQGqa_2UleNMZqVlDlcNjhqvhHgD5uJim2nAbNHHyP4wZ3XS6_k65Za767OJS8FFUor2x_TiPVXzrvgL6ly0tW8c-ZZjg2zYAEXyG3HXse3-VFcPu9DxTq6yTu9evmXyrg/s1600/Beware+The+Wild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1059" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4OIvq1Q7u_vQGqa_2UleNMZqVlDlcNjhqvhHgD5uJim2nAbNHHyP4wZ3XS6_k65Za767OJS8FFUor2x_TiPVXzrvgL6ly0tW8c-ZZjg2zYAEXyG3HXse3-VFcPu9DxTq6yTu9evmXyrg/s200/Beware+The+Wild.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuWuxYbmrS3ceWbTAvClVIixxDoKPQ5SgBz0HJHd6erZhNRlakdLREib1hDblk7EonUITJcvmKPQuPtKF_NQahyTj3IH0S5cXoEcBpx20IDgfVWIDUidKPTUoJWIIQS65-J_nT3phok4/s1600/List.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="464" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuWuxYbmrS3ceWbTAvClVIixxDoKPQ5SgBz0HJHd6erZhNRlakdLREib1hDblk7EonUITJcvmKPQuPtKF_NQahyTj3IH0S5cXoEcBpx20IDgfVWIDUidKPTUoJWIIQS65-J_nT3phok4/s200/List.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYOchRGBuNwGoyD34qLCeSAR5LodUSWtNtn-_7vnB6-DqDryTbfHT44DxqD7WfWC_qnD20ixsKX-TmNCcz3re9aPTmLvX68MAMpnQCCMj4bUY_DWVTNxSLEHm4M2gktZ8Q-B06kzEk-M/s1600/Passenger.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1053" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWYOchRGBuNwGoyD34qLCeSAR5LodUSWtNtn-_7vnB6-DqDryTbfHT44DxqD7WfWC_qnD20ixsKX-TmNCcz3re9aPTmLvX68MAMpnQCCMj4bUY_DWVTNxSLEHm4M2gktZ8Q-B06kzEk-M/s200/Passenger.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxqFQtOQqn0s5uV11iHkpYDLloT1StCi3chHEIUpA3f8-04LmDDi6XhgylNJNFHCXc__gsKHAWpmMoFZ465H2o1riEpgtkvTaPvcCui_GZZZGjqzz7nUIZJaC76u_Qc3k6Zq_sdFSWJs/s1600/Rest+Of+Us+Just+Live+Here.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="315" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLxqFQtOQqn0s5uV11iHkpYDLloT1StCi3chHEIUpA3f8-04LmDDi6XhgylNJNFHCXc__gsKHAWpmMoFZ465H2o1riEpgtkvTaPvcCui_GZZZGjqzz7nUIZJaC76u_Qc3k6Zq_sdFSWJs/s200/Rest+Of+Us+Just+Live+Here.jpg" width="130" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9XhXLXpeHTiZq3yTgxJVWfuB4_rD_ldv8D7FNTH588CyZkD4mUHv5MitSEF00kOCSbQyzQ_7LnAqmScWnNdUtGeWeAo5fuXHJTPOWw9IqXAud3_T_9QQ7qXYLzIedKZEG4VAVw_PpvE/s1600/Thanks+For+The+Trouble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1050" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt9XhXLXpeHTiZq3yTgxJVWfuB4_rD_ldv8D7FNTH588CyZkD4mUHv5MitSEF00kOCSbQyzQ_7LnAqmScWnNdUtGeWeAo5fuXHJTPOWw9IqXAud3_T_9QQ7qXYLzIedKZEG4VAVw_PpvE/s200/Thanks+For+The+Trouble.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxZbuUOdvQNtO6nLLd2cNLfJs2Lp7eJhSHCTb1P-5OfHchCWtAnIzWzbdlaYn95az9OjImRsfdGTfbb6wc3oyRfk7sp7r35D2Fl9G3kAPDGHelctPpaME72GGfGv9XIbeT2AutnefXWc/s1600/Wilder+Girls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1057" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoxZbuUOdvQNtO6nLLd2cNLfJs2Lp7eJhSHCTb1P-5OfHchCWtAnIzWzbdlaYn95az9OjImRsfdGTfbb6wc3oyRfk7sp7r35D2Fl9G3kAPDGHelctPpaME72GGfGv9XIbeT2AutnefXWc/s200/Wilder+Girls.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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As usual I dived into reading head first and excitedly read everything I could get my hands on! I've had The List, Thanks and Rest Of Us on my TBR forever so it felt good to finally get them read. reviews of those will be on my blog soon.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiudQXZjEaxiVvd0Y1wg4rm4gaTNn1GWd_YYQ9jKPkWwIVOYAaHbk_hxZealcnIRxcblhlAgOJ03tUTsu9p4me6Pvcub9Pw8EZvSis6ESbwDz8WtNLYbmqbqWsBiwD3sDHZEPlxovx4Plw/s1600/Line+2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8" data-original-width="400" height="7" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiudQXZjEaxiVvd0Y1wg4rm4gaTNn1GWd_YYQ9jKPkWwIVOYAaHbk_hxZealcnIRxcblhlAgOJ03tUTsu9p4me6Pvcub9Pw8EZvSis6ESbwDz8WtNLYbmqbqWsBiwD3sDHZEPlxovx4Plw/s400/Line+2.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<u>Anticipated November Releases</u></div>
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I'm going to skip having an October wrap up post, it's so close to the end of it. So here's the November releases I can't wait to arrive in my postbox:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho-gM-16SjuGnmITcGrbcv-iQVqS3t-QJC2Kt8rPNev4G330Q8MCfYXE5BpTRyclrio-YBg8iIlRI2tHgJ8F7gsukKjWKZ2fSDboZPwsOT03uj4hRAFXr1sFdVn22pKipTCDwih1e6Hyw/s1600/Crown+Of+Oblivion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1511" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho-gM-16SjuGnmITcGrbcv-iQVqS3t-QJC2Kt8rPNev4G330Q8MCfYXE5BpTRyclrio-YBg8iIlRI2tHgJ8F7gsukKjWKZ2fSDboZPwsOT03uj4hRAFXr1sFdVn22pKipTCDwih1e6Hyw/s200/Crown+Of+Oblivion.jpg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVvokzsdqqxAwJ0ZYS6LDIQ77TqDbw5fN06OXl-BVz9w-fTi3ryxZGmqXzfbdAaqaD1vs2B5K5aV4TDakdQ62p6qH-anyCdVMWa0iqqht3OqWU4q8Jp_dggtcqqA2S2Wn84fgD764iGw/s1600/Eight+Will+Fall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1036" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnVvokzsdqqxAwJ0ZYS6LDIQ77TqDbw5fN06OXl-BVz9w-fTi3ryxZGmqXzfbdAaqaD1vs2B5K5aV4TDakdQ62p6qH-anyCdVMWa0iqqht3OqWU4q8Jp_dggtcqqA2S2Wn84fgD764iGw/s200/Eight+Will+Fall.jpg" width="129" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg0WNQhWc1NQyTjuQoJvJlx8V9KUH4nzbWwX-VxeyH2B8yOc9JlSg6yvpOF5RfufuERDtQuEd3SCY0f3IhsBImlhvPaN66_0SosjwahPVDvnU9hcxiUZ2s2ijOKYE8PUuUSQpgK2iTJgw/s1600/Sisters+Of+Shadow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1060" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg0WNQhWc1NQyTjuQoJvJlx8V9KUH4nzbWwX-VxeyH2B8yOc9JlSg6yvpOF5RfufuERDtQuEd3SCY0f3IhsBImlhvPaN66_0SosjwahPVDvnU9hcxiUZ2s2ijOKYE8PUuUSQpgK2iTJgw/s200/Sisters+Of+Shadow.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhORthzbLro45QBL5kZXoR9qLcrE2rEcyW8XtvtXnUz-qij5AOYoiWIS2cqvdzUfKMoMcu_hMc_CvhyUzZVg0aDLMdpxUbMFuGMuHzfVn60ooTxA9tH2h1to42eYYGYxa_keyaJ1FOEXDY/s1600/Starless+Sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1082" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhORthzbLro45QBL5kZXoR9qLcrE2rEcyW8XtvtXnUz-qij5AOYoiWIS2cqvdzUfKMoMcu_hMc_CvhyUzZVg0aDLMdpxUbMFuGMuHzfVn60ooTxA9tH2h1to42eYYGYxa_keyaJ1FOEXDY/s200/Starless+Sea.jpg" width="135" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZQV8aeifVdUazTiPK0wPhBdkNEf7PCP5wOhZOcEVT3VyvXf09EuGrtOijQF_4jQGnhHN9yNXFA3UWz10D9JxxSGbH-q_4OGxlUngdaq-EutNvUY-oHNCZA0O8yc5098hA5L73MdDg2A/s1600/Winterwood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1059" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEZQV8aeifVdUazTiPK0wPhBdkNEf7PCP5wOhZOcEVT3VyvXf09EuGrtOijQF_4jQGnhHN9yNXFA3UWz10D9JxxSGbH-q_4OGxlUngdaq-EutNvUY-oHNCZA0O8yc5098hA5L73MdDg2A/s200/Winterwood.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
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The Starless Sea has a gorgeous US edition which I sincerely wish I had bought. The UK cover is so ugly (it would be better without the shadow man) and it is A TOME. It's already released in the UK in paperback, I really wasn't expecting it to be so freaking big in height. It will be hard to read this without breaking the spine. Expect to see reviews of these books popping over the next month and I'll leave an update about them too.</div>
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Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-82196137217365578332019-10-27T10:33:00.000+00:002019-11-30T10:33:27.794+00:00Review of The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhr7nNeM0EIWYzhN58qj0HLO5umcYZlcYnPB7F2aPM0y5NLIZE_2QQrxj_8KeLbh6iFJCiwO4Cw8dqaSp2j6deKiVVbp5ZZv_fj5bwVVkAusBMFl71UZQ6lKpbmPuWILzq5BDRh6SVPFU/s1600/Thief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="648" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhr7nNeM0EIWYzhN58qj0HLO5umcYZlcYnPB7F2aPM0y5NLIZE_2QQrxj_8KeLbh6iFJCiwO4Cw8dqaSp2j6deKiVVbp5ZZv_fj5bwVVkAusBMFl71UZQ6lKpbmPuWILzq5BDRh6SVPFU/s320/Thief.jpg" width="214" /></a><b><i><span id="freeText1939777947439289000" style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">The king's scholar, the magus, believes he knows the site of an ancient treasure. To attain it for his king, he needs a skillful thief, and he selects Gen from the king's prison. The magus is interested only in the thief's abilities.<br /><br />What Gen is interested in is anyone's guess. Their journey toward the treasure is both dangerous and difficult, lightened only imperceptibly by the tales they tell of the old gods and goddesses.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"> </span></i></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I have never once picked up a book and thought, man I hope this book has a main protagonist that spends 150 pages sitting on a horse, complaining about sitting on a horse. And complaining about being hungry, while sitting on a frickin horse. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I got with this book. Other reviewers have noted that the sequels are much stronger, which made me persevere.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">This book felt like a set up for a bigger story, which proved correct. So you don't get infodumped by the history of this fantasy land, Gen's accompanied by Magus, Sophos, Pol and Ambiades, who are basically there to cook food, stab things and learn from the Magus. It's the latter where the story gently nudges you in the ribs with enough force to leave a bruise, but you come away getting the history.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;">I had this crazy theory all the way through the book that Gen was going to turn out to be a girl, and I was wrong. So that was disappointing. The ending did have an interesting payoff, explaining Gen's actions throughout but I'm not quite sure it made up for just how freaking boring the story was for the most part. It took me a full freaking weekend to finish this less than 300 page book.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #181818; font-family: Merriweather, Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Vee_Bookishhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00652899477091461541noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7939955414410354911.post-92182339157084800702019-10-24T23:58:00.000+01:002019-10-29T23:59:08.750+00:00Thanks For The Trouble - Tommy Wallach<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiay2RrtHUcLhawG4XEwPE2reuTY-MQr2CdAHnNevOu8yt3WwX5GZ3NrLFmoaPbdnE8e1Ci0CCJ20jP45US64cPRKp6MklVK68asqF2jURD5vj9-xNtMDUf9isqVJqn7SCc0JXIuxpdWS8/s1600/Thanks+For+The+Trouble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1050" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiay2RrtHUcLhawG4XEwPE2reuTY-MQr2CdAHnNevOu8yt3WwX5GZ3NrLFmoaPbdnE8e1Ci0CCJ20jP45US64cPRKp6MklVK68asqF2jURD5vj9-xNtMDUf9isqVJqn7SCc0JXIuxpdWS8/s320/Thanks+For+The+Trouble.jpg" width="210" /></a><b>Genre: Contemporary, Romance</b><br />
<b>Pages: 276</b><br />
<b>Publisher: Simon & Schuster</b><br />
<b>Release Date: 25/02/2016</b><br />
<b>Find The Author: <a href="http://www.tommywallach.com/">Website</a></b><br />
<b>Find The Book: <a href="https://www.bookdepository.com/search?searchTerm=tommy+wallach+thanks+for+the+trouble&search=Find+book">Book Depository</a> / AbeBooks <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=tommy+wallach&tn=thanks+for+the+trouble&kn=&isbn=">UK</a> / <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=tommy+wallach&tn=thanks+for+the+trouble&kn=&isbn=">US</a></b><br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28383534-thanks-for-the-trouble"><b>Add To Your Goodreads Shelf</b></a><br />
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<i><b>“Was this story written about me?”</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>I shrugged.</b></i><br />
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<i><b>“Yes or no?”</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>I shrugged again, finally earning a little scowl, which somehow made the girl even more pretty.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>“It’s very rude not to answer simple questions,” she said.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>I gestured for my journal, but she still wouldn’t give it to me. So I took out my pen and wrote on my palm.</b></i><br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>I can’t, I wrote. Then, in tiny letters below it: Now don’t you feel like a jerk?</b></i><br />
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<i>Parker Santé hasn’t spoken a word in five years. While his classmates plan for bright futures, he skips school to hang out in hotels, killing time by watching the guests. But when he meets a silver-haired girl named Zelda Toth, a girl who claims to be quite a bit older than she looks, he’ll discover there just might be a few things left worth living for.</i><br />
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Admittedly, when I when the blurb of this - a boy that never speaks and some snobby girl with a lot of money - I did roll my eyes. But I was intrigued enough to buy it. It was the right decision - despite so many things that should have gone wrong with this book, everything seemed to go right and I ever had that sad moment where I didn't want to close the last page at the end. This book is perfect for John Green fans.<br />
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It absolutely uses the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope but this time our character Zelda felt like a fully realised human being. She's an old soul who knows the history of the city but has never experienced what it is to be a teenager, while Parker has closed himself off from his peers, using his lack of speech as an excuse really, to avoid social situations. Both are dealing with their own unique grief and they help each other move on from that.<br />
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This book gets wonderfully strange fairly early on and adds a concept not often seen in contemporary romance. I'm a fan of strange hipster novels so wandering around Tea Rooms, visiting local museums and musing over Seurat paintings was completely up my alley. I can't wait to read more from this author!<br />
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