I will never get tired of reading Milly Johnson’s books. There’s something about them that feels like being wrapped in a warm hug and being surrounded by your best friends. The main characters are always written so beautifully that you feel like you’ve known them forever, and the ‘bad guys’ are always completely relateable to the b*****ds that you’ve known in real life. I have two favourite things about this...
Category - Fiction
I had such mixed feelings on finishing this book and I think I’m still processing, so while this isn’t a normal book review, here’s a brain dump: I’ve been reading for almost a whole month and I’m really glad I’ve finished it. I can’t believe it’s over, I want to keep reading forever. I can’t believe the fourth book isn’t written yet I can’t believe how much action was packed...
I picked up this book on a trip to one of my favourite places – Barter Books in Alnwick. If you’ve never been there – go. Seriously, it’s the best book shop. I love it for finding old books like this that you would never find anywhere else – this book only has 1 review on Goodreads and it’s not available at Waterstones or other bookshops. But it was a delightful little book – a re-telling of the...
Ahhhhhhhhh! I’ve not been so invested in a book for quite some time, it just seemed like it got more and more thrilling the more pages I turned, it made a 2.5 hour train journey pass in what seemed like no time at all, and left me gutted that I couldn’t stay on for an extra 20 minutes as I was so close to the end! As I predicted in the last review, Shallan’s influence really comes to the fore in the second half of Words of...
I’m not sure I can find words grand enough to describe my feelings for this book, I could gush about it for days. I’d love to know how Brandon Sanderson manages to write books with such complex worlds and characters, that are so fast paced and yet still sooooo long! This particular book, for instance, was so long they had to publish the paperback in two parts. You’d think that there’d be parts where you’d be bored...
Unfortunately, I think my opinion of this book may be clouded by the fact that I paid £8.99 for a book that was ultimately only 45 pages long. I bought it as a physical book rather than an ebook because I wanted to complete my Brandon Sanderson collection, but when I looked online, it said that it was 96 pages long. Turns out that half those pages are the start of the next book in the series. But apart from that obvious disappointment, the...
Imagine if all of a sudden, all the babies being born were boys. If that happened for a single day, you’d think it was a bit weird, but what would happen if that carried on for years? Well it turns out that if there are no girls being born, people start to feel there’s no hope left for humanity, and the world starts being destroyed at an alarming rate. But then a miracle, a girl is born. She’s taken into care by the government...
Having read the Paper Magician series by this author, I was enticed to buy the rest of Holmberg’s books on a train journey home from London when an offer popped up on my Instagram feed saying that they were all 50% off on Amazon until the end of the night. It may have been train-based delirium, but I decided to buy all her books at once. But I think I made a good decision. Having loved the Paper Magician so much, I was a little worried...
I’m torn with my opinion on this book, I really am. For huge parts of the book the plot was fast paced and kept me engrossed, but then there were times when it felt like a huge slog to keep turning the pages, and in the end it took me over a month to finish reading because I just didn’t feel that ‘urge’ to pick the book up and keep reading. I’ve not read much historical fiction like this, so I’m not sure if...
One of my ‘Book Bingo’ challenges this year is to re-read a childhood favourite, and how could it be anything other than Matilda? I read this book so many times as a child that my copy is falling to pieces (as you can probably tell from the picture), and I’ve watched the film more times than I can count. What I had forgotten since last time I read this book was how many beautiful illustrations were in it. As I was reading, my...
It’s been a while since I listened to an audio-book, but since I’ve been spending so long going out walking or on public transport, I thought that getting back into audio-books would be a good way of getting through more books this year. I saw the Stormbreaker film when it was released ages ago, but have never read any of the book series, and since the audio book was less than 6 hours long, it seemed like a good fit to get back into...
Beautifully written, raw, passionate and hard-hitting, and heart-breaking that this book is inspired by real experiences, far too many real experiences. “Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared, Starr. It means you go on even though you’re scared.” I don’t even know how to go about reviewing this book, as I’m so far removed from the realities of this story that I would feel kind of like an interloper. I...
I read a blog post that Milly wrote this week about how so-called ‘chick-lit’ is always overlooked by celebrity book clubs, in favour of ‘proper literature’. And I really don’t know why. I love Milly Johnson for the fact that you can completely lose yourself in the story and it becomes a movie in your mind. Yes, you can pretty much always tell how the story is going to end, but I honestly don’t care, because for me it’s all about...
So first of all, Eden Summer was maybe not the best name to choose for a book – I just searched on Waterstones website to get a link to the book and it turns out Eden Summer is the name of an erotic fiction writer – so if you tell people you’re reading Eden Summer and they give you a funny look, you know why! I picked this book because it was set in Hebden Bridge and I like reading ‘local’ books. I’ve been...
Ah Milly Johnson, I could read you forever. As usual, this book was brilliant from start to end. The kind of book that I start reading and it turns into a lovely film inside my head, and I don’t realise how long I’ve been reading until I’m 200 pages in and my back is hurting from sitting in one place for too long! One of my favourite things about Milly’s books is that they’re set in Yorkshire and all her characters...
Right up to the very end, I was loving this book, but the ending left me feeling a bit cold which really changed my impression of the whole book, dropping my overall rating from a 4 to a 3. The book felt to me like Hyacinth Bouquet and Keeping up Appearances on steroids. I’ve never known someone so desperate to appear like he has more money than his neighbours than Mr Jha. To go to the point that you will openly insult your son and call...
I was really quite excited about this book coming out having read the first three in the series over the new year. But when I started reading the first reviews coming through on Goodreads, I was a little apprehensive and the reviews weren’t great. The reviews did prepare me for the fact that this is a novella between the original trilogy and the planned new trilogy to connect the two plots together, so at least I wasn’t expecting a...
It’s been a while since I read this book, so forgive me for a short/probably slightly rubbish review. I’ve been so busy that since I read this book I just haven’t found much time to sit down and write the review, and I haven’t read another book in almost a month. Not much good for my Goodreads Reading Challenge, which I’m now 7 books behind on! After reading another Katherine Rundell book not too long ago, I thought...
Urgh. I don’t know if I’m just way older than the target demographic for this book, but I just could not get along with it. I’m guessing it was aimed at teenagers who may be able to relate to the main character, Zoe, but I just found her a whiny brat throughout the whole book and it completely spoilt it for me. I think it’s supposed to be played as Zoe the wild child going on this grand adventure and somehow reuniting the...
Imagine if you had one wish, and you knew for sure that it would come true. What would you wish for? Money? Beauty? Success? Love? But what if you had already seen generations of people make their own ‘one wish’ and you could see the toxic affects it had on their lives? Would you still be so eager to make that wish? For Eldon, that’s his reality. He lives in Madison, a place where each citizen can make one wish on their 18th...
Part of my Book Bingo for this year is to read a Costa Book Awards winner. So when I was at Waterstones and this beautiful cover caught my attention, and then I saw the Costa Book Awards Winner sticker on it, I knew that this would be the one. I didn’t realise until I started reading it that it is actually a children’s book, I’ve never really come across a children’s book thats’s 400+ pages long before, and although...