Happy Friday bookish people! I thought it would be fun to do a summer book tag today, even though it’s technically not summer yet I don’t think, but it’s close! I found this book tag on parchmentpages.co.uk
Hit The Beach: A Book Set By The Sea
Watch Fireworks: A Book That Had A Fiery Romance
Go For A Road Trip: A Book That Involves A Journey
Camp Under The Stars: A Book That Had You Starstruck
I’m not sure on this one, I literally can’t think of any book that made me feel starstruck
Marathon Some Movies: A Book You Couldn’t Put Down
Go Out For Ice Cream: A Book With A Sweet Romance
Picnic In The Park: A Book That Was A Breath Of Fresh Air
Go For A Hike: A Character Who Conquered An Obstacle
Grill Some BBQ: A Book Featuring Delicious Food
Watch The Sunrise: A Book That Inspired You
That’s it for this book tag, if you see this then consider yourselves tagged!
Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you the book review for A Marvelous Light by Freya Marske.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each of them. I will do my best to not include any spoilers. I hope you enjoy my book review.
A Marvelous Light Plot:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
This book opened with a bang. The first chapter threw me right into the middle of a magical conflict over an unknown item and I then felt that I was learning about the world and the mystery along with the main character, Robin.
I really loved how this book followed the mystery, each time you think you know where the story is going to go next it switched direction and I thought this worked very well for keeping me engaged in the story. I have heard that this book is the first in a series and I could tell by the way it ends that there is plenty more to be explored in this world yet.
A Marvelous Light Characters:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
The two main characters that you get to see a lot of are Robin and Edwin. I absolutely loved both of these characters. Edwin kept referring to Robin as a man who would be the sort of ‘jock’ character at school, a wealthy man who played a lot of sports. I personally didn’t get this feeling from the character, to me he felt shy and reserved despite the story trying to present Edwin as this character.
I wished there had been more scenes to see their relationship be established in the beginning half of the book, I felt that their feelings towards each other changed within an instant at a certain point in the book and for me it happened too quickly.
A Marvelous Light Writing and Dialogue:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I believe this book is a debut by this author and there is some feeling of this in the writing but overall I thought that the writing was easy to read and enjoyable.
A Marvelous Light Overall:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I gave this book four stars overall because I thought it was a fun and mysterious opening book for a series that I definitely want to continue with.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Red White & Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light, featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies.
Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
That’s it for this book review, i hope you all enjoyed it! Have you read this book? Did you enjoy it?
Happy Tuesday bookish people! I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Mad Woman by Louisa Treger from the author and today I am sharing with you my review of it. If you’re interested in getting a copy of this book yourself it’s publication date is the 9th June 2022.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and write a little bit about each one. I will do my best to not include any spoilers. I hope you enjoy my book review.
Mad Woman Plot:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Mad Woman is an historical novel based on the true story of Nellie Bly. Going into this book I will be honest, I had heard of Nellie Bly but I didn’t know anything about her or what she did. The first page of this novel drags you into the mysterious depths of the book by starting in what seems to be a dangerous situation and you as a reader have no idea how or why the character has ended up there. I loved how this book began because I became emotionally invested in the character immediately, then you slowly learn her backstory interspersed with emotive, sensory descriptions of the situation she is in now. It is hard to talk much about the plot because there’s so many secrets that come to light throughout and I don’t want to spoil anything for another reader because I honestly enjoyed every minute of this book. One of my favourite things about this book was it’s bleak truthfulness, it didn’t shy away from the extreme descriptions and it didn’t ignore the very real consequences of what Nellie Bly goes through.
Mad Woman Characters:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
As I said before, Nellie Bly is the main character. She is a woman with determination and big ambitions in a world full of people who want to obstruct her. I really felt for this woman because she wanted to bring a voice to the people who didn’t have one: women, the poor, the ‘insane’. I felt each moment of hardship and because of the power of the story I also felt the anger and the despair that Nellie Bly was feeling.
Mad Woman Writing and Dialogue:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
This book is incredibly well written, I sped through it because the writing kept up with the pace of the story and it was brutal and honest in the way it was told. Even the chapters about the character’s childhood and family were told in the way that look, here is what I went through and this is how it made me. I thought it was very powerful writing.
Mad Woman Overall
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I gave this book four stars overall because I felt it was a powerful and important read and I really enjoyed the experience.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Based on a true story, a spellbinding historical novel about the world’s first female investigative journalist, Nellie Bly.
In 1887, young Nellie Bly sets out for New York and a career in journalism, determined to make her way as a serious reporter, whatever that may take.
But life in the city is tougher than she imagined. Down to her last dime and desperate to prove her worth, she comes up with a dangerous plan: to fake insanity and have herself committed to the asylum on Blackwell’s Island. There, she will work undercover to expose the asylum’s wretched conditions.
But when the asylum door swings shut behind her, she finds herself in a place of horrors, governed by a cruelty she could never have imagined. Cold, isolated and starving, her days of terror reawaken the traumatic events of her childhood. She entered the asylum of her own free will – but will she ever get out?
An extraordinary portrait of a woman ahead of her time, Madwoman is the story of a quest for the truth that changed the world.
That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it!
Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you a book review for A Line To Kill by Anthony Horowitz. I got to read this book in May while I was travelling to Cardiff for a concert.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each of them. I will do my best to not include any spoilers. I hope you enjoy this book review.
A Line To Kill Plot:
Last year I read Moonflower Murders by this same author, it was the first book I had ever read by Anthony Horowitz and I thought it was a brilliant mystery novel, my review for this is already up, and so when I saw A Line To Kill I wanted it immediately. Especially when I read that the novel is set at a literary festival on a secluded island, it sounded perfect. Now, I enjoyed the overall plot, it was a fast paced plot with a wide range of characters all with their own motive which is the type of novels I enjoy the most for the mystery genre. However, I had some issues with it – one of these being (SLIGHT SPOILER) that I got excited because it looked to have some representation for visual impairments, which I rarely see in books, but towards the end this changed as part of one of the plot twists and that just left me feeling very uncomfortable with both the book and the author. One of the other issues is one I will talk about in the character section. I suppose my greatest issue was that this book just wasn’t as good as Moonflower Murders, the twists weren’t as elaborate and I had guessed the ending a long time before it happened.
A Line To Kill Characters:
For the most part this book had some very good characters, all fleshed out with their own independent qualities and the ‘victim’ was created as a very unlikeable character on purpose so that all the other characters had reasons to murder them. However, the detective character for me was also very unlikeable, he almost made me dislike the whole book because he felt incredibly creepy and not to be trusted yet you were meant to trust him. Also, the ‘main character’ was named Anthony Horowitz, the author put himself in the book as a character, I really did not like this at all, it felt jarring and mixed reality with the fiction and honestly this also made me feel uncomfortable about the author because it made it seem as if the thoughts of the characters were in fact the thoughts of the author.
A Line To Kill Writing and dialogue:
The same as with Moonflower Murders the actual writing of the novel was very good, fast paced, intriguing characters and dialogue that knows how to keep some information a mystery from the reader.
A Line To Kill Overall:
Overall, I gave this book three stars because some of the elements made it an uncomfortable reading experience for me and I found the ending predictable.
Blurb/Synopsis:
The New York Times bestselling author of the brilliantly inventive The Word Is Murder and The Sentence Is Death returns with his third literary whodunit featuring intrepid detectives Hawthorne and Horowitz.
When Ex-Detective Inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they don’t expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation—or to be trapped with a cold-blooded killer in a remote place with a murky, haunted past.
Arriving on Alderney, Hawthorne and Horowitz soon meet the festival’s other guests—an eccentric gathering that includes a bestselling children’s author, a French poet, a TV chef turned cookbook author, a blind psychic, and a war historian—along with a group of ornery locals embroiled in an escalating feud over a disruptive power line.
When a local grandee is found dead under mysterious circumstances, Hawthorne and Horowitz become embroiled in the case. The island is locked down, no one is allowed on or off, and it soon becomes horribly clear that a murderer lurks in their midst. But who?
Both a brilliant satire on the world of books and writers and an immensely enjoyable locked-room mystery, A Line to Kill is a triumph—a riddle of a story full of brilliant misdirection, beautifully set-out clues, and diabolically clever denouements.
That’s it for this book review, I hope you all enjoyed it. Have you read this book? If you have what did you think of it?
Happy Thursday bookish people! Today I am bringing you my TBR for June. This month there is a month long readathon created by Maddie at BookBrowsingBlogs on Youtube, the readathon is called whateveryouwantathon and there are four different teams with dome different prompts. I am following the prompts of the Sunset Scholars.
My June TBR:
A book featuring dragons: I chose Uprooted by Naomi Novik, I don’t think I have any books with actual dragons in – except for Lord of the Rings – but from what I remember of the synopsis this book has a character called the dragon.
Red on the cover: I chose Mad Woman by Louisa Treger
Host Fave: I chose The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Less Read genre: I chose Hot Dog Girl by Jennifer Dugan
Shiny Cover – I chose Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Previous TBR: Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
The/An/Of/A/And: Lockwood and Co by Jonathan Stroud
Under 300 pages: I chose the first graphic novel for A Darker Shade of Magic
Continue a series: Finlay Donovan Knocks ’em Dead by Elle Cosimano
Academia: A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
2021 release: I chose The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
A different format: I chose the second A Darker Shade of Magic graphic novel
Book about Books: I chose Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Recently Hauled: I chose Beggars Abbey by V L Valentine
Favourite Genre (Fantasy!): I chose The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi
One word title: I chose Lore by Alexandra Bracken
S’s on cover: I chose Stay Sweet by Siobhan Vivian
There are also a few prompts that are things like cozy reading time and complete a personal reading goal which I didn’t put in the list because they can be completed with any of the books.
That’s it for my June TBR, I hope you all enjoyed it! What are you reading in June?
Happy Thursday bookish people! I hope you’re all having a good day today. I know this is a couple of days late but I haven’t been very well. But finally I can put up my May wrap up! I had a much better reading month, part of this was because I took part in the 48 hour readathon hosted by Becca and the Books on YouTube for which I ended up reading seven books over a weekend.
So, let’s see what I managed to read this month from my TBR:
The Crooked Sixpence by Jennifer Bell – I did read this! It was one of the seven books I read for the readathon, a review will be coming soon
The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling – another book I read as part of the readathon, review coming soon
Graceling by Kristen Cashore – I did not read this
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare – I did not read this
Last Chance Books by Kelsey Rodkey – I did not read this
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao – I did not read this
A Three Dog Problem by S J Bennett – I did not read this
The Crowns Game by Evelyn Skye – I did not read this
A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross – I did not read this
The Final Girls Support Group by Grady Hendrix – I did read this for the spooky book prompt of the readathon
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske – I read this while on the drive up to Cardiff for a concert this month
The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown – I did not read this
Dangerous Women by Hope Adams – I started this book in May and I am currently finishing it now
A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz – I did read this
Cecily by Annie Garthwaite – I also read this
Queenslayer by Sebastien de Castell – and I read this
Outside of my TBR I also read Turtles All The Way Down by John Green, Newts Emerald by Garth Nix and Love Him To Death by Tanya Landman
I think I read 11 books this month which is really great and a lot better than the past few months.
That’s it for my May Wrap up, I hope you all had a good reading month. My reviews of the books that I read will be going up soon!
Happy Monday bookish people! Today I am bringing you a book review for Lily by Rose Tremain. This is a mystery/historical fiction book with a beautiful cover that sounded so good to me, I read the blurb and I was desperate to read it and I have to say I was disappointed.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little about each of them. Now, usually I say here I will try not to include spoilers but that’s not easy for this book so I will be giving spoilers to this book in this book review. If you don’t want to be spoiled I would recommend reading the book before you read this review.
*SPOILERS*
Lily Plot:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
The blurb of this book sold it to me as a story of a young woman who gets into a romance with a policeman, after having murdered someone in her troubled past. I thought it would be an exciting cat and mouse style chase while she tries to not be discovered. Instead what I got was 150 pages before I even found out what the murder was and where it happened and soon after the reader learns that although the policeman believes it was murder, he wasn’t even investigating it. It took all the (already very limited) suspense out of the novel. For me there was too much description in this book, it details almost every aspect of Lily’s life, all throughout her childhood at the children’s orphanage and the treatment she suffered there and then her employment at the wig emporium. As a reader I didn’t need most of this, some of the chapters about Bridget her friend and her fate, and the abuse she suffered were relevant especially because it shows the reader why the murder happened. But the rest was too much unnecessary information. There was also a plot point about her trying to find out who her mother was and why she was left in the park in the snow, this is never completed. It seems to just get forgotten about in the book.
Lily Character:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
Lily is the main character, and I didn’t feel anything for her. I understood that you were meant to have an emotional connection to her because of her backstory but I didn’t get that from the story. I wanted to see more of the policeman, Sam Trench, he barely featured and definitely not in the ways the synopsis suggested he would be.
Lily Writing and Dialogue:
⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 3 out of 5.
This book did manage to get the feel of a Victorian novel, dark and sensory and this was put across in the writing, which was good but the dialogue wasn’t as good as I expected.
Lily Overall:
⭐⭐
Rating: 2 out of 5.
I gave this book two stars because, as I am sure my review shows, this book wasn’t what I thought it would be and I was very disappointed.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Nobody knows yet that she is a murderer…
Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter’s night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret…
Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness – but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?
Happy Monday bookish people! As you can see by the title of this post – I finally read Throne of Glass! It’s taken me years, it has been on multiple TBRs but I never actually picked it up and read it. I actually read A Court of thorns and roses (only the first one) and House of Earth and Blood (the first Crescent City book) before I got around to reading this one. I took it to london with me and started reading it on the train journey up there. I finished it in the hotel room the next night.
In this book review I will give star ratings to four categories and I will write a little bit about each one. I will try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. I hope you all enjoy my book review.
Throne of Glass Plot:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
This plot had me hooked from the very beginning, what would a Prince want with an assassin? and it just kept getting better from there. I really love competitions in books – I have a lot of fantasy books with this trope – and this one was good, it took a backseat to the building of relationships and the other mysteries that were going on but it still made the book enjoyable for me. What I especially liked about this plot was that there was one, a lot of first books in series sort of forget about having a well thought-out and complete plot, but this one didn’t. There was a good balance between plot strands that were sorted out in this book and the ones that are going to be underlying mysteries throughout the series.
Throne of Glass Characters:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Caelena is a great lead character. She’s a fighter and it is obvious in every action, and she has been through a lot which means she finds it hard to trust other people. I liked the inner turmoil the character was struggling with throughout and I hope that will be there in different ways throughout the series. Also in the book is Prince Dorian, who I did like but I thought there was room to expand his character, which might happen in the coming books, because he seemed charming and a good friend but there was also some jealousy.
Throne of Glass Writing and Dialogue:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I already knew going into this book that I like Sarah J Maas’ writing style and especially her dialogue. If you’ve been reading my reviews a while you will know that dialogue is one of my favourite parts of a book and I enjoyed that aspect a lot in this book.
Throne of Glass Overall:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
I gave this book four stars overall because I enjoyed the book, as I knew I would, and I am excited to see where the rest of the series goes.
Blurb/Synopsis:
Meet Celaena Sardothien.
Beautiful. Deadly. Destined for greatness.
In a land without magic, where the king rules with an iron hand, Celaena, an assassin, is summoned to the castle. She comes not to kill the king, but to win her freedom. If she defeats twenty-three killers, thieves, and warriors in a competition, she is released from prison to serve as the king’s champion.
The Crown Prince will provoke her. The Captain of the Guard will protect her. But something evil dwells in the castle of glass—and it’s there to kill. When her competitors start dying one by one, Celaena’s fight for freedom becomes a fight for survival, and a desperate quest to root out the evil before it destroys her world.
That’s it for this review, I hope you all enjoyed it! If you have read this book let me know what you thought of it in the comments.
Happy Friday bookish people! I am back with another book tag and today it is the what’s on my bookshelf tag. It was created by Naty’s Bookshelf but I found it on zeezeewithbooks.wordpress.com
Rules: link back to me so I can see your answers, name one book for each category try not to repeat books, tag some people!
A Library Book: Veronica Speedwell series (I have the first three all library copies)
A book I got as a gift: Daughter of the Moon Goddess
A Childhood Book: A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
A magical book: The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
A romantic book: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
A steamy book: Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin
An old book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
A book that makes me happy/laugh: Spellslinger by Sebastien de Castell
A book that made me emotional: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
A book with an ending I disliked: The man who died twice by richard osman
A book I wish had illustrations: Crescent city by Sarah J Maas
A book or genre I love to read when it is raining: any!
I love to be sat inside with a cup of tea and a book when it is raining, terrible lighting but a cosy atmosphere.
That is the end of this book tag, I hope you all enjoyed it!
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