Time travel and reincarnation? Yes, please. This is the first book that I have ever read by Lauren James and I have to say… I’m quite impressed. Even though parts of the book felt very familiar, the overall style of writing and character development captured my attention and I ended up finishing this book in a couple of days.
If someone told me that I wouldn’t enjoy a book about diving then I would have just laughed in their face and told them they didn’t know what they were on about. I love swimming, I love the water. My parents always joked that I was a fish. Water is my affinity.
The Art of Not Breathing is about free-diving: an extreme sport where you dive underwater for as long as possible, and to do this, you have to learn how to hold your breath for a long time. The main character is this book manages four minutes.
I can see where all of these points begin to make sense but for me, what happens in this story is to be taken at face value.
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.
I really did want to give this book five stars. I really really did, because I read it in a matter of hours. Something in Between has been one of 2016’s most anticipated releases and as soon as it came out, I went down to my local Waterstones and bought it. I couldn’t wait a day longer.
I feel like the biggest reason why this book was so highly anticipated was due to the whole plotline of the book being about immigration. This is such an important topic and it was so good to see an author taking such a big topic in today’s society and turn it into a YA novel.
Yes, I have just read this book. I know, I know… I’m very very late to The Raven Boys party. But I’m here now, I’ve read it and I can finally have an opinion on it.
I’ve read the Shiver trilogy by Maggie Steifvater and even though it wasn’t my favourite series, it was still good. I’ve been meaning to read the Raven Cycle for a very long time – and I do actually own them all… It’s just that I haven’t had time to read them because my TBR list is towering and threatens to fall and crush me.
IT’S THE LAST BOOK IN THE MISS PEREGRINE SERIES! I loved the first and second book and I was so eager to finish the series so that I could find out what happens (but at the same time, I didn’t want to series to end because I love this world so so much!)
But… alas, I had to start the third book and find out what happens to my dearly beloved, peculiar characters…
As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discoers a new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companiions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.
They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all.
I would have loved to have given this book five stars like I did with Hollow City, but the most important thing about a series let this one down: it’s ending. It just didn’t feel right at all. It felt wrong to have that happen and I just felt a bit deflated once I had closed the book.
As much as I hate finishing a book on a cliffhanger or an ending that is filled with feels, it makes me feel something, it makes me sit there and think about the entirety of the book. With Library of Souls, everything was wrapped up nicely in sparkly wrapping paper with a big bow on top of it. It’s so hard moaning about the ending without giving away spoilers but let me just say this: Riggs could have ended the series a little bit better. That’s not to say that ending was awful and the worst thing I’ve ever read: it wasn’t. It was still slightly satisfying and wrapped everything up nicely but I just feel like it could have been done slightly better.
Apart from the ending however, the rest of the book was absolutely brilliant. We got a lot of character development, there was still that stupid, weird romance between Emma and Jacob (I just ignore it), there was loads of exciting action, plot twists which left me shocked, heartbroken and nearly crying.
This was a roller coaster of a read and I’m gutted that the series has ended. It’s one of the best series – if not the best – that I have ever read and I’m so sad to leave the peculiar world behind. I fell in love with all of the characters and just arrggghhhhh noooooo… Please don’t make me leave this world. I love it too much. Can it just be real…? I need the Tales of the Peculiar in my life. In fact, I’m going to go into my local bookstore right now and buy it because it’s the only thing I have left of the world of the peculiars. RANSOM RIGGS, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!
I don’t even know what else to say about this book. If my fangirling and crying hasn’t proven how good this whole series is, then I don’t know how else to get you to GO AND BUY THE SERIES! RIGHT NOW… This is definitely a series that I will be re-reading over and over and over and over and over and over…
… and over and over and over…
You get the idea. So go and buy all three books, marathon them and then join me in my hysterical crying.
Dystopian novels are pretty much formulaic. It’s set way in the future (or past) with a slight twist: the government regime has been changed. A definition of a dystopian novel is that the setting is a society that has an illusion of a perfect utopian world. Most dystopian works present a world in which oppressive societal control and the illusion of a perfect society are maintained.
I find dystopian novels intriguing. It’s interesting to see how the author sees what the world will be like in that period of time and it’s interesting to see how that perception differs from author to author.