I’ve had this book on my shelf for quite a long time, but since I’m so close to the end of the year and not quite at my reading target for the year, it was time to finally read it – at only 55 pages I thought it would be perfect for catching up. Unfortunately, even though it was Jane Austen who is by far my favourite author, I didn’t really find it that brilliant, I’m sorry to say. It’s a set of short...
Category - Fiction
This book has been sitting on my shelf for 2 years, never quite making it to the top of my to-read list. But since I found myself with 6 days to read 6 books if I want to achieve my reading target of 60 books for this year, I picked this one up as it looked like a fairly easy and comparatively short read. Unfortunately, I kind of feel like I wasted a whole day of reading on this book. While it kept me turning the pages and wanting to read...
My love for Milly Johnson grows with every book I read. After queuing up for over an hour and a half in a Tesco in South Yorkshire to meet her and get this book signed, I made myself wait until closer to Christmas to read it, so I could feel properly festive! The Yorkshire Pudding Club was the first book of Milly’s that I read (10 years ago now!), and this book is very closely related. In fact, the book’s working title was The...
I first read this book when I was 14 and I had a little crush on the local librarian, and when he recommended it I binged it in one weekend. But I was only 14 and completely clueless about politics and such, so although I thought it was a great book, I don’t think I completely got it. So when one of my colleagues told me he was reading it, I had to pick it up and read it again so we could talk about it after. And...
I really had no idea what this book was about when I picked it up, my friend bought me a Blind Date with a Book voucher for my birthday and this was one of the choices I was sent. The clues were: Heartfelt Profound Fantasy Courage Healing Truth Young Adult I woke up early yesterday because of the clocks going back, and I had two hours sat reading quietly by myself before anyone else woke up, and it turns out that was just long enough to devour...
I have really mixed feelings about this book which I am finding quite hard to process. Now that I’ve got to the end, if you asked me what I thought, I’d tell you that I absolutely loved it, that it was fast paced and exciting and had so many twists that I just couldn’t guess what was going to happen next. But if you’d asked me a few days ago while I was still less than half way through the book, I’d tell you that I...
I think at this point, you’re probably fed up of me giving glowing reviews to Brandon Sanderson books, and I’m not sorry to say that this will be another. Quite a departure from the last Sanderson book I read, this one was only 130 pages long, and far from being a fantasy epic, was a mini sci-fi detective story. It makes me sad that Sanderson can seemingly turn his hand to any genre he likes and write an amazing book, when I...
I consumed this book in one sitting as I found the characters so well described and relatable that I had to know what was going to happen. I actually was on a train that was delayed for over half an hour, but I didn’t mind as I just wanted to finish the book before I had to get off! The book starts with Esther and her family moving to a place called Truth or Consequences in New Mexico. It’s hinted quite heavily that Esther is the...
I thought the premise of this book was so promising. A future America where the world’s resources have been abused to such a point that each family is only allowed one child to try and safeguard the future of the planet (or what’s left of it). Humankind is everything’s and everyone’s most dangerous predator. Blindly killing its own planet, slowly wounding it over the centuries. Forcing my generation to mop up the blood. So there...
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...
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...