Once I had finished episode one of The Sunshine Time by Sonal Panse, I just had to start episode two. There was something about Lea’s personality and the way that Panse created this whole, entertaining world that just made me want to keep reading about these characters
My bookshelf was looking very scarce of Sci-Fi books. I have a lot of dystopian billions of contemporary young adult books but not a lot of science fiction. To be completely honest, I have no idea why because I absolutely love the genre. Plop me down in front of a science fiction tv show or film and I will happily watch it without any fuss, give me a science fiction and I will devour it whole. So why don’t I have a lot of Sci-Fi books? I have no idea, but I changed that very quickly.
One of the first Sci-Fi books that I bought to add to my small collection was Reboot by Amy Tintera.
After Nicola Yoon’s debut novel: Everything Everything took the young adult genre by storm and was loved so much by everyone that it’s becoming a movie, it wouldn’t be long until Yoon’s second book was to come out. That second book is The Sun is Also a Star and in my opinion, it is better than her debut.
If you’re looking for a diverse book to read, then look no further. Lies We Tell Ourselves is the story about a black girl falling in love with a white girl during the Civil Rights movement.
I had to read this book for my local Waterstones book club and I am so glad that this was the book that was picked. It was so eye-opening and it taught me a lot about the Civil Right movement; I already imagined the integration of black people into white schools to be an unpleasant read, but the way that Talley tells it is horrifying: I wanted to cry for the black students.
Being the author of All the Bright Places, Jennifer Niven knows how to reach the young adult audience and how to capture their hearts and attention. She knows how to make characters relateable, three-dimensional and loveable.
Holding up the Universe is better than All the Bright Places. It’s 10x better. The writing is more fluid, the characters have more depth to them and there’s a strong, clear, positive message all the way through the book: you are wanted, you are necessary, you are loved.
Studying English and Media at my university has opened my eyes to a whole different section of literature that I never thought I would enjoy: short stories. Not just any old short story though, short stories that have a deeper meaning and a through close reading, you can take a lot away from it.
More Than This is the first book that I have ever read by Patrick Ness. And it certainly isn’t going to be the last. I was recommended by one of my best friends to read this last year and I finally decided to read it.
I was quite weary of reading this, as the blurb doesn’t give away much about the book, and I like having some inkling about what the book is about before I start reading – all I knew is that a boy dies and wakes up in an unknown place.
It does sound very interesting though, doesn’t it?
An eating disorder can ruin someone’s mentality, it can ruin their body, their life. It destroys everything. But that’s how the outsider’s see it. The person actually going through an eating disorder thinks the exact opposite and that’s what Wintergirls explores.
Wintergirls is the first book I have ever read that is solely focused on an eating disorder and the harsh reality of living with it, of not actually accepting the fact that you do have an eating disorder, of not seeing how beautiful you really are.
Cassie and Lia did everything together, including staying thin. But then Cassie died. Now the voice in Lia’s head is telling her to stay strong. Lose more. Weigh less.
Is she strong enough to fight it?
This is the first book that I have ever read by Laurie Halse Anderson and after having a taste of her writing style, I am in love.
Wintergirls was gritty, it was dark and upsetting. But without it being those three things, the portrayal of anorexia throughout the book wouldn’t have been true. Anderson doesn’t sugar coat it, she doesn’t glorify it, she tells it how it is. We are constantly in the mind of Lia and we are constantly hearing her telling herself that she’s fat, ugly and stupid.
It is deeply upsetting but it is an incredible story. It is a story of fighting life, of fighting those around you, of fighting your mental state and fighting until the end.
The story opens with Lia being told that her best friend, Cassie died. Throughout Wintergirls, Lia is constantly putting on a front about how she isn’t upset that Cassie is dead but secretly, she is seeing Cassie’s ghost everywhere she goes.
We learn about their friendship and we are shown how parents can react in different ways to their child’s mental illness – it shows how to not support your children (Lia’s parents and step-mother were not supportive at all and it made me so so angry!)
I cannot stress enough how wonderful this book is. The writing, the characters, the ending… The ending made me cry, it made me close the book and reflect of what Lia went through, of what her parents went through.
If you know someone who is suffering with an eating disorder but you don’t know how to deal with it, read this book. It is so eye-opening.
Wintergirls made me uncomfortable, very uncomfortable but Anderson wanted it to make you feel like that, she wants us to know the horrible truth of what some boys, girls, men and women go through. It is a brilliant book to read.
Warning: contains triggers for eating disorders, depression, anxiety and self harm
I started this book the second I finished Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I decided that I was in the mood to marathon this series and once I finished this one (I finished it in 5 hours), I started the third one.
That’s how good these books are, and Hollow City – which is the second book in the Miss Peregrine series – was even better than the first one. There was still the stupid romance between Emma and Jacob but I looked past it and concentrated on the actual storyline.
September 3, 1940. Ten peculiar children flee an army of deadly monsters. And only one person can help them – but she’s trapped in the body of a bird.
The journey continues as Jacob Portman and his newfound friends journey to London, the peculiar capital of the world. There, they hope to find a cure for their beloved headmistress, Miss Peregrine. But in this war-torn city, hideous surprises lurk around every corner. And before Jacob can deliver the peculiar children to safety, he must make an important decision about his love for Emma Bloom.
You know why this book was so much better than the first one? Because there was so much character development, there was much more action and it was mostly set in 1940 London where we got to experience the war alongside the characters. What you’ve got to remember is that the peculiar children have been living in the time loop of 3rd September 1940 and at the time where their day restarts, is moments before their home gets bombed – so the children never get to experience the war first hand, and they think it’s all make-believe. Well now, they have to dodge the dropping bombs and hide from planes flying over their heads. It made it so much more exciting (I know the war isn’t supposed to be exciting, it was horrifying, but in this case being set against the backdrop of World War II added tension and fear).
Again in this book, Riggs included never-seen-before photographs to coincide with his plot and as I said in my review for the first book, the photos aren’t creepy (apart from the odd few) but they add a whole new dimension to the story. The story feels more real, it feels like it isn’t just fiction, you feel like you know the characters just by looking at the photographs that look similar to what Riggs is describing.
Also, just ignore the relationship between Emma and Jacob and everything will be fine…
The ending as well was brilliantly written and when I finished Hollow City at quarter to 12 at night, I didn’t want to wait until the morning to start reading Library of Souls. But I had to… So I waited. And that night, I dreamt I was walking alongside the peculiars and Miss Peregrine. It was such a good book which lead to an amazing dream. I thoroughly recommend everyone to read this series.
I love the dystopian genre. I love all of the “what ifs” that it lays out for the reader to think about: ‘what if our government did this?’, ‘what if our world decided to do that?’ I find it very intriguing, it’s one of the reasons why I enjoyed Divergent (not so much Insurgent or Allegiant).
L.A Weatherly had previously written the Angel trilogy. I had read the first two books and then given up because they were so big. I saw Broken Sky, realised that it was a dystopian and decided to get it. I love a good book about government secrets!
Welcome to a “perfect” world. Where war is illegal, where harmony rules. And where your date of birth marks your destiny.
But nothing is perfect.
And in a world this broken, who can Amity trust?
Amity is a Peacefighter, just like her father was and she lives in the Western Seaboard. The country is divided into two sections: the Western Seaboard and the Central States. The Central States is run by a man called Gunnison who believes that the stars and star signs marks your destiny and decides
whether you’re a threat to his twelve-year-plan or not (if you are labelled a threat, you’re ‘Discordant’ and are thrown into camps)
War is illegal in the world that Amity lives in and any political issues and debates are solved through Peacefights where the two countries concerned put forward a pilot each. That pilot has to fight the other pilot (without any killing) and the pilot who wins, wins the debate.
It sounds confusing when I put it like that, I know, but at least it gives you a tiny bit of background to the story.
The blurb also states that Broken Sky is a distorted echo of 1940s America… Now, when I was reading this book it seemed to be set more in the future – maybe in about 1000 years time – but there were shadows of the 1940s that cropped up. There are a lot of comparisons to World War II, for example the camps, if you were found Discordant, you were made to wear a ‘D’, a country being split into two, dictatorship… The list goes on. I found this very very interesting how Weatherly had used aspects of the war to make the book seem like it was set in 40s, but then also made it feel like it was set in the distant future.
Broken Sky was tremendous. I absolutely loved every second of it. The prologue had me hooked but what I loved the most about this book was the dual perspectives, the point of view of Amity, and then the point of view of Kay. I found Kay to be such an interesting character and I absolutely loved reading from her perspective, it was so tense and exciting.
The writing was fantastic, the build ups were brilliant and the way that secrets were revealed was amazing. Beware of the ending. You will get major major feels. I literally threw the book across my living room and stared at the wall for half an hour before going over to pick the book back up. I also tweeted L.A Weatherly saying that the book had ruined my life. Because it really did…
But it was such an amazing book and I definitely cannot wait til Darkness Follows comes out. As soon as it’s 1st October, I’m going to my nearest Waterstones, buying it and then reading it straight away. I need to find out what happens next because THAT ENDING WAS JUST… AGGGHHHHHH!