Tag: YA

Quick Review: Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani

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Sunbolt (The Sunbolt Chronicles, #1)Sunbolt by Intisar Khanani

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After seeing so many wonderful reviews of this, and Khanani’s other books, I couldn’t resist buying this introduction to the Sunbolt chronicles and it doesn’t disappoint.

Fast paced and full of action, with a fiery heroine it hooks you from the very first page and doesn’t let go. I loved the authors writing style and the book as a whole reminded me of a lot of my other favourite YA fantasy reads (in the best possible ways).

My one complaint is that it’s just too short. At only around 130 pages it feels rushed and a little lacking in depth and explanations. The author has created an incredible world but doesn’t give us the chance to become fully immersed in it. I just wish it was that little bit longer with a bit more detail.

It is a great start however so I will definitely be reading the next book soon.

Blurb

The winding streets and narrow alleys of Karolene hide many secrets, and Hitomi is one of them. Orphaned at a young age, Hitomi has learned to hide her magical aptitude and who her parents really were. Most of all, she must conceal her role in the Shadow League, an underground movement working to undermine the powerful and corrupt Arch Mage Wilhelm Blackflame.

When the League gets word that Blackflame intends to detain—and execute—a leading political family, Hitomi volunteers to help the family escape. But there are more secrets at play than Hitomi’s, and much worse fates than execution. When Hitomi finds herself captured along with her charges, it will take everything she can summon to escape with her life.

ARC Review: Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

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Traitor to the Throne (Rebel of the Sands #2)Traitor to the Throne by Alwyn Hamilton

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Wow.

I think the second book in Alwyn Hamilton’s Rebel of the Sands series may actually be better than the first. There is some incredible world building, beautiful writing and an exciting and fast paced story that I couldn’t stop reading.

I’d definitely recommend this series but be warned you’ll want the next book now.

Note: as this is a sequel there may be some spoilers for the first book.Read More »

Book Review: A Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

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A Quiet Kind of ThunderA Quiet Kind of Thunder by Sara Barnard

My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

This was my first book from Sara Barnard and it won’t be my last. It’s a very sweet coming of age story and is absolutely packed full of feels. I was worried it would be an angsty and depressing story but it couldn’t be further from this. Yes I did shed a couple of tears but mostly it just made me smile and laugh. I loved it.

The Blurb (from GoodReads)

Steffi doesn’t talk, but she has so much to say.
Rhys can’t hear, but he can listen.
Their love isn’t a lightning strike, it’s the rumbling roll of thunder.

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys, it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk, and as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

From the bestselling author of Beautiful Broken Things comes a love story about the times when a whisper is as good as a shout.

My Review

As Steffi seems to be a lover of lists such as “The 10 stupidest things people say to you when you don’t talk” and “The Top 5 Worst Times to be Mute” I couldn’t resist creating my own list of the 7 Things I Loved about A Quiet Kind of Thunder:

  1. The lists – I’m a lover of lists and Steffi’s lists are used to great effect. They’re often funny (as you can probably tell from the previous examples) but the author makes great use of them to demonstrate a number of different things including Steffi’s previous experiences, the attitudes of others and sometimes whatever she’s thinking about what’s going on right at that moment. Beware there are a couple of lists which made me laugh out loud (thankfully I was at home at the time).
  2. Steffi – I loved Steffi from the very first few pages. She’s been struggling with selective mutism for years but rather than giving up she keeps trying. She wants to get better, to fit in or at least be included and accepted and to be able to do what others her age can like speak to a shop assistant, ask for help and go to Uni. She’s also just a  genuinely nice person, with a tendency to think the worst of herself (something I can definitely relate to).
  3. How it portrays living with anxiety – it’s so realistic at times I found it scary. As someone who has suffered from anxiety since my teens I was impressed with how well the author reflected those feelings. You’re inside Steffi’s head so you get her stream of consciousness as she worries about things, panics over nothing and becomes frozen and unable to move or speak. While I have never been mute (although I am quiet) I can honestly say her thoughts at times were a mirror of my own.
  4. Rhys – OMG Rhys!!! (yep I OMG’d), he’s just sooo cute and sweet and just loveable. He’s deaf so is almost the opposite of Steffi in that she struggles to be heard and he can’t hear but they have a surprising amount in common. He’s also just so lovely and understanding and funny and a bit mischievous. One of the highlights of this story for me were the text conversations between him and Steffi. I loved how he teased her.
  5. The romance – sorry romance haters but there’s a really cute (I seem to be using that word a lot) romance between Steffi and Rhys. It’s not lightning bolt, insta love but a slow building, realistic and healthy relationship. They just seem to instantly click and have some real chemistry. I was rooting for them to get together and make it even though they do have some issues. Even if you don’t like romance I think you will like this one.
  6. There’s no magic cure – I hate to tell you this but meeting a boy doesn’t result in Steffi suddenly becoming happy, confident and outgoing (if only it were that easy). She works at it and she gets professional help and support.
  7. The feels – there are just so many feels in this book and most of them were happy. I did have a little cry at one point (only a couple of tears, I promise) and I got frustrated and angry but mostly I found myself smiling and laughing.

Overall this is just an easy, enjoyable and fun read that I couldn’t put down. I did have a little niggle about the ending but it’s fairly minor. I’d recommend this book to everyone and I will be hunting down Beautiful Broken Things as I loved this author’s writing and want to read more.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review. All gushing is my own 🙂

ARC Review: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

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The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Based on Russian history and folklore, this is a beautifully written and atmospheric story that I liked a lot. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite wow me as much as I had hoped it would but it’s definitely one I’d recommend as it could be the beginning of a very interesting series.

Synopsis (from GoodReads)

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

Thoughts

When I first finished this book I really couldn’t make up my mind about it and even now a few days later I’m still not sure. As a lover of fairytales, magic and tales of things that go bump in the night and lurk in the woods it should have been the perfect read for me. However, while I liked it a lot I found it to be missing that special something that would take it from good to great.

It is a beautifully written story. The author does a magnificent job of transporting you to a magical and wild land in medieval Russia. The writing is so evocative you almost feel like you are there, huddling around the fire, travelling across the cold and snowy wilderness or visiting the market and palaces of Moscow.

The characters are also very well created and believable and there is a unique and captivating story in there but for me it was missing the emotion I needed to really connect to it. When I was reading on the way home from work after a long day I found my attention wandering and had to re read certain pages more than once before I took it in.

This lack of emotion and connection to any of the characters was due, I believe, to the constantly switching point of view from one character to another. It moves from father to mother to nanny to Grand Prince to priest and on and on. I found this particularly bad in the first half of the book where I actually started to wonder who the main character was, if there was one and where it was all going. I also struggled a little with the different names used for the same character. I understand that this is accurate for the time and place and that the author had tried to make it easy for the English reader but I still found myself getting confused at times with so many different characters and so many names.

As a result of the switching focus and insight into each of the different characters the story felt quite slow in the beginning. It did give a real sense of time and place which was fascinating in some ways but I did feel like a lot of it could have been covered much faster without so many characters. I probably would have cut a whole part where the father visits Moscow as it didn’t really add much and I was close to giving up.

Thankfully however the story does turn around. There is a lot more focus on Vasilisa and the strange events that start to occur in the village where she lives. Vasilisa is a very likeable character. An outcast in the village due to some very unique abilities, she’s brave, a little wild and not cut out for the options available to her at that time (marriage or a convent). I loved almost every chapter she was in, I just wish the author had stuck with her  and the events around her throughout.

The pacing of the story was a little bit off for me, too slow in the beginning and too fast at the end but it is a good story. It is the first in a trilogy so I think there is some real potential. I will definitely be giving the next book in the series a try.

I think whether you love this book or not will come down to why you read. If you’re looking for a beautifully written and vivid world with a slow building story and a mix of Russian history and folklore I think you’ll love this book. Unfortunately for me, while I could appreciate it, I didn’t love it.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC. As always all views are my own.

Review: The One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

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The One Memory of Flora BanksThe One Memory of Flora Banks by Emily Barr

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can’t believe it’s the first day of 2017 and I’m already giving a book 5 stars but The One Memory of Flora Banks definitely deserves it.

I love books that are unique, different and a little bit weird and this story is all of those things and more. The writing is incredible and draws you in to the life and mind of Flora Banks from the very first page and I could quite happily have stayed there.

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Book Review: The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

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The Unexpected EverythingThe Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

This is a slightly better than OK story about a teenage girl, Andie, who find her plans for the summer go out the window when her congressman dad gets pulled into a scandal. She finds herself doing things she never would have dreamed of, spending time with her father, taking a job walking dogs and starting a relationship that could last more than her previous 5 week record.

I have to admit I struggled at the start of this story. There were too many characters, strange names (for me at any rate) and I just couldn’t warm to Andie. Even her friends Toby, Palmer and Bri describe her as a Type A personality. She’s an overachiever with her whole life planned out who needs to be in control of every situation including her relationships. It’s kind of understandable given her father’s job and the fact that she’s always in the spotlight but it does make her a difficult character to like.

I found myself not having much sympathy for her when things started to go wrong. What she viewed as a major crisis didn’t really seem like the end of the world to me but that may have been partly due to me being tired and stressed. I also found myself getting frustrated about how she dealt with things. Rather than just accepting and moving forward she bottled everything up and refused to accept it. The opportunities she got, like being offered a job as a dog walker, she viewed as beneath her. Honestly, I kind of wanted to give her a reality check and say welcome to the real world.

Anyway, it was probably around a third of the way through that this started to turn around for me. When Andie is faced with a real problem, when she starts to relax and form a real connection to someone, that’s when I began to finally engage with the story.

I do think it’s a little on the long side and a bit slower than I would have liked but there were some really good moments and some real emotions. I did find myself in tears on a couple of occasions and some parts made me smile (scavenger hunt and emoji bet). While I did think the romance and the dog walking was cute probably the best part of this story for me was the relationship between Andie and her father. It’s quite unusual to find any parents in YA/NA reads so I liked that this was a big feature of this one.

Overall a good story that I enjoyed but probably a little too long and dragged out to justify more than 3.5 stars.

Blurb

Andie had it all planned out. When you are a politician’s daughter who’s pretty much raised yourself, you learn everything can be planned or spun, or both. Especially your future. Important internship? Check. Amazing friends? Check. Guys? Check (as long as we’re talking no more than three weeks).

But that was before the scandal. Before having to be in the same house with her dad. Before walking an insane number of dogs. That was before Clark and those few months that might change her whole life. Because here’s the thing—if everything’s planned out, you can never find the unexpected. And where’s the fun in that?

Book Review: The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily

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The Twelve Days of Dash and LilyThe Twelve Days of Dash and Lily by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think it’s safe to say that I absolutely loved Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares so I was really, really excited to get my hands on this, the sequel. Dash and Lily made such a cute couple and I loved the funny adventures they had as they raced around New York carrying out a series of tasks and meeting the most eccentric cast of characters along the way.

The Twelve Days of Dash and Lily had a lot to live up to, possibly too much, but while it doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of the first book it’s still a really good read. It takes place a year later and is a very different type of book. Dash and Lily have both grown up a bit and are now in a steady long term relationship. Lily in particular, has had some shocks which have shaken her up and left her without her usual joy and Christmas spirit. It’s up to Dash, with some help from Lily’s brother Langston and their friends, to help Lily find her happy again but is it too late.

Given the depression that Lily seems to have fallen into at the beginning of this story it’s unsurprising that the book is missing a lot of the fun and laughs from Book of Dares. There’s not much in the way of holiday cheer despite the best efforts of Dash and I think that’s why I didn’t love it as much as I hoped. There is the odd moment which made me laugh but a lot of it left me feeling a little bit down. It doesn’t help that Dash and Lily seem to be having problems in their relationship. They’ve lost the spark and a series of misunderstandings and lack of communication is making it look like they may not have a future.

While there is quite a bit of angst in this story there is still the odd funny moment. Dash’s best friend Boomer steals pretty much every scene he’s in and the arguments between Dash and Lily’s brother Langston were a definite highlight.

The writing, as you would expect, remains brilliant and the characters are very real. While most of the story is not that happy, it’s probably more believable than the first book. Bad things do happen, people don’t always cope well and relationships hit rocky patches.

If you’re looking for a book that will fill you with happiness and holiday cheer this may not be for you but if you’re looking for something real I’d definitely recommend.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy. As always all views are my own.

The Blurb (from GoodReads)

Dash and Lily have had a tough year since they first fell in love among the shelves of their favorite bookstore. Lily’s beloved grandfather suffered a heart attack, and his difficult road to recovery has taken a major toll on her typically sunny disposition.

With only twelve days left until Christmas—Lily’s favorite time of the year—Dash, Lily’s brother Langston, and their closest friends must take Manhattan by storm to help Lily recapture the unique holiday magic of a glittering, snow-covered New York City in December.

Book Review: Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares

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Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1)Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn & David Levithan

My rating: 5 big fat santa stars

Where has this book been all my life? Why did no one tell me how good it was? I loved this book sooo much. I think it could be my all time favorite Christmas read

It’s very, very cute and innocent and extremely funny. I don’t think I’ve ever highlighted so many sentences in a story before or had such a difficult time trying not to laugh when reading on the train (scene when Dash goes to visit Santa, that’s all I’m saying). If you’re looking for the perfect book to get you in the festive spirit or even just a book to make you smile I’d definitely recommend Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares.Read More »

ARC Review: Heartless by Marissa Meyer

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HeartlessHeartless by Marissa Meyer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow, just wow.

I read this a couple of weeks ago but my emotions were so all over the place on finishing that I had to leave it for a little while before writing a review. I’m still not entirely sure I’ve recovered so I will apologize in advance if this is a little all over the place.

Having read, and loved, the Lunar Chronicles it’s safe to say I had high hopes for this book but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite that good. I laughed, I cried, I begged and I was jumping up in down in my seat with anxiety. I loved every moment.Read More »