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Category: young adult

Something in Between by Melissa De La Cruz

Something in Between by Melissa De La Cruz

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.

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Fractured by Teri Terry

Fractured by Teri Terry

Was Fractured as good as the first book in the Slated series? I don’t know. Both of them have got four stars but for different reasons. Slated got four stars because the build up of characters was brilliant and the story-telling was amazing.

Fractured received four stars because of the last half of the book. It was fast, action-packed and jaw-dropping.

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More Than This by Patrick Ness

More Than This by Patrick Ness

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?

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The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

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.

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Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson



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. 



“I believe that you’ve created a metaphorical universe in which you can express your darkest fears. In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves, and sometimes we do such a good job, we lose track of reality.”
– Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls
 
 


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



Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs

Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs

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.

 “It had become one of the defining truths about my life that, no matter how I tried to keep them flattened, two-dimensional, jailed in paper and ink, there would always be stories that refused to stay bound since books. It was never just a story.”
– Ransom Riggs, Library of Souls
 
 

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.


Slated by Teri Terry

Slated by Teri Terry

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.

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Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

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).

 “Through a bombed cemetery, long-forgotten Londoners unearthed and flung into trees, grinning in rotted formal wear. A curlicued swing set in a cratered playground. The horrors piled up, incomprehensible, the bombers now and then dropping flares to light it all with the pure, shining white of a thousand camera flashed. As if to say: Look. Look what we made.”
– Ransom Riggs, Hollow City
 
 
 

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.

 

Broken Sky by L.A Weatherly

Broken Sky by L.A Weatherly

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.

“No one can judge your actions unless they’ve been there.”
– L.A Weatherly, Broken Sky
 
 

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!

I THOROUGHLY RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ THIS BOOK. RIGHT NOW. GO. GO AND GET IT. ANYWHERE. I’LL JUST WAIT HERE…