Laura

This is perhaps one of the most common books around for dividing opinion. It's a bit like marmite you either love it or you hated it. I fell absolutely into the loved it camp.

The story of Henry, a man who has the ability to literally move backwards and forwards throughout his own life is truly wonderful. The intertwined story of his love for Claire is one of the most engaging I have ever read. Yes, I can understand why some people find it far fetched and at times difficult to follow. All that jumping around through time means there is no chronological order to this book. Instead we are given snippets of what is to come and teasers and given as to what will transpire.

I loved the chapters where Henry met Claire as a young girl and chatted with her about how she would meet him in her future and they would fall in love. Building a love which she grew inside until the day his premonition came true and she did meet Henry at an age where they could have a loving adult relationship.

It is such a beautiful story that the whole time travelling actually doesn't need to make sense instead it's a book about an enduring love and the things we leave behind when we leave this world and those we touch along the way.

The A Court of Thorns and Roses series has been everywhere in the book world this month as the release of the third and last book in this trilogy had its release in May and everyone has been going crazy to read it. The author of these books seems to be held in such high regard by book lovers I literally had to give these books a try and see if they lived up to the hype everyone has been giving them.

Categorised as Young Adult books these can often be found in the bookstore with a warning sticker on the front stating that they do contain scenes that may not be suitable for younger teen readers due to scenes of a sexual nature and I would wholeheartedly state that up front, these are not books for the younger end of the Young Adult reader market but instead should be aimed at older teens and beyond.

This story is classed as a fairy tale retelling, loosely based on the Beauty & The Beast story but having read it I'd say that whilst yes you have themes from that fairy tale in there it isn't something that leads this book entirely or consumes the story. The story of Feyre, a young girl who lives in a poor and bleak village trying to keep her father and two sisters fed and cared for any way she can we find her at the start of the book hunting for whatever food she can to get them through the winter. She kills a wolf in the forest and brings his hide home to sell for what money she can. What she doesn't know is that the wolf she killed is actually a faire who has crossed the border between the fairy lands and the human world. We learn that years before the human world had been ruled by the Faire and that their retreat left the human world a desolate place, but now years later more and more incidents of Faire crossing the wall and harming humans are occurring and no one knows why.

Feyre is visited by a faire who tells her that because she killed the wolf she must either die to give a life for his life or she must come with him and live in the Faire world for the rest of her life. With little option, she goes with him back to his home where she finds out that he is the High Fae and ruler of one of the seven fairy courts, his specifically is the Spring Court but there also exist the Summer, Winter, Autumn, Dawn, Day and Night courts. Instead of being unkind to her, Feyre finds that Tamlin is kind and thoughtful and only wishes for her to be happy and content. From there we are swept into a story of their growing love for one another.

The first 70 or so pages of this book were reasonably slow paced, Maas has a huge amount of scene and character setting to do and this takes us some time to achieve so initially the action is limited instead focusing on Feyre and the circumstances of her family and the travelling to the Faire world and her becoming familiar with all the characters of that world. What happens after this initial scene setting though is just magical. Maas paints her Faire world in such vivid clarity that it springs off the pages. Each and every chapter is filled with even more colourful characters and such a wonderfully gentle way in which she develops the relationship between Tamlin and Feyre.

The entire first half of this book is set entirely in Tamlin's Spring Court and focuses closely on this aspect of the story but we are aware all the time of shadows on the edge of this world creeping inward and that all is not well in the Faire world and that a dark shadow hangs over them all. Tamlin himself is cursed never to be able to remove the mask he wears and show his true self and Feyre is aware that something terrible cast this curse but doesn't know what. This leads us into the action-packed second half of this book which explores this curse.

I literally devoured this book in 2 days, I could not put it down. If I wasn't reading it I was thinking about it, it's written so vividly that it really stays with you in your mind. The characters are really engaging and we have a great mixture of the good and evil. It struck me as being a little bit like Game of Thrones meets Beauty & The Beast. There is all the fairytale love in part 1 and then all the vicious, violent politics of the seven courts and their ruler in the second. We even have a villain so evil she'd make Cersei Lannister look like Snow White. It is breathtaking. The second half of the book is all action, there is so much adventure and danger for Feyre that she has to overcome and the introduction of great new characters that expand the world and help us to understand just where this series may be going as we move into Book 2, A Court of Mist & Fury.

There are great moments where the plot unveils itself a little more and gives you a little more information as a reader and those are the points where I was shouting at my book, those Oh My God moments that have you wanting to jump into the pages and get involved. Awful twists and turns that really affect you emotionally and such excitement.

I loved this book so much, it was spectacular. It was by far one of my favorite books I've read this year so far. It was so much more than just a fairy tale retelling it was the setting up of what I know is going to be an amazing series moving forward.

This book was recommended to me by my mum who kept going on about how it was the best book she had ever read so I decided I'd give it a go after reading through the first chapter of The House At Riverton in a book shop and deciding I liked the authors style of writing.

I absolutely loved the way that the book interweaved the different characters throughout the novel and didn't find it too difficult to get to grips with different chapters being set in different time frames, if anything I found the variety nice and it kept the book moving along building the story beautifully to it's conclusion.

Throughout this book I kept trying to second guess what the authors intended plot was going to be, she continually surprised me and moved the goalposts and I thoroughly enjoyed the way she weaved all the characters together.

I think this may be my first two-star review this year, things had been going so well with my reading and then along came The Pool House to throw a spanner in the works and send me careening towards a reading slump. I should have known, I have become a fantasy girl at heart, avoiding contemporary fiction unless it comes with strong reviews but it was 20p in my local library book sale and I was drawn in by the cover.

Initially, it seemed this could be a good read, a story of Jem and her husband who take a share in a beach house in the Hamptons but when they get there they find out about a girl who drowned in the pool of the house a year before and died. Jem begins to investigate Alice's death and it incorporates all the inhabitants of the house. It should have been a fairly good read. So where did it all go wrong?

Firstly, in order to engage with the book, you need to really care about the character who has met their untimely demise. Alice, however, was ultimately really unlikeable. I could respect the fact she had come from a poor and difficult background and had overcome diversity but if you stripped that away she isn't a great person. She's shallow and motivated purely by status, she's a serial cheater moving from affair to affair behind her husbands back, she's prepared to blackmail her ‘friends' in order to get herself out of her own blackmail situation. I just couldn't get on board with her at all. I didn't empathise with her and so I really couldn't care about who killed her or why.

Jem, on the other side, was a much more rounded character to read from the perspective of and I liked how she portrayed the opposite of Alice, not really being on board with the expense of the beach house, having doubts about her own husbands fidelity and wanting to do the right thing by following up on what happened to Alice. It's just a real shame her parts of the book were at times slow and lacking in action. Overall this book felt unwieldy and by 330 pages in I couldn't do it anymore. I was losing the will to care and so I flicked to just before the end for a quick who-done-it reveal, found it didn't surprise me, it was what I guessed and so I gave up and am now moving on.

Disappointed with this one, it had lots of story potential but the characterisations let it down.

In the past few years, I've read only a handful of contemporary romance novels. Instead, I've focused upon Fantasy and Thriller books thinking that I'd lost my vibe with the contemporary romance offering on the bookshelves. When I heard about Beth O'Leary's debut novel, The Flatshare, something just spoke to me about the storyline and I decided I'd give it a try.

The Flatshare is the story of Tiffy and Leon, two twenty-somethings who share a flat. The catch is they've never met. Tiffy has the flat at nights and weekends whilst Leon is at work and Leon uses it during the 9-6 weekday whilst Tiffy is at work. It's an arrangement that suits them both. Slowly but surely though they begin to build a relationship via the little notes they leave each other around the flat and that relationship blossoms into friendship and the hint of something more.

Yes, this book is exactly what you would expect, it's a contemporary romance after all. We know we are all meant to be rooting for Tiffy and Leon to get together and we have all the normal trappings of hiccups along the way and well-meaning friends trying to give them advice and it should be quite a run of the mill story but somehow I fell head over heels in love with the characters in this book and gave it what has become a very rare rating of 5 stars.

Firstly I loved how well rounded our characters of Tiffy and Leon are, I liked how Leon had such a complex job in a palliative care home, helping those with a terminal illness, this lent some lovely side characters and stories that gave some really touching emotional moments in this book. Also loved how O'Leary wound in the story of Leon's brother Richie, incarcerated for a crime he swears he didn't commit.

Also, this book was great at looking at the long-lasting impact and dangers of an emotionally abusive relationship and the behaviours of gaslighting and coercive control. It gives a really thought-provoking side to what could have been a light fluffy throwaway romance. It was great to follow Tiffy through her journey and see her growth as a character.

For a debut novel, I thought this was really well written, hugely emotional and really gripping. I couldn't stop reading. It's full of short-snappy chapters flicking between Tiffy and Leon's perspectives and makes it really easy to lose a few hours to this novel without realising it and if you aren't careful you could find yourself reading it all in one sitting. A great summer read and a fantastic first novel from O'Leary.

Liane Moriarty's star has been in ascendance over the past few years with her hugely popular book Big Little Lies being turned into an HBO TV show with a powerful female cast of Hollywood big hitters and readers lauding her books both old and new. When I spotted a beautiful hardback copy of her newest release Nine Perfect Strangers in a local charity shop I knew I couldn't resist a chance to delve into her writing once again.

Nine Perfect Strangers started out really well, we follow a group of, as the title says, nine strangers who all check into a health retreat that promises to change their lives forever. We have author and recent catfish victim Frances as our main protagonist as she checks into Tranquillum House in order to deal with her own self-doubt over her writing abilities, her recent heartbreak, and a bad back. The book is told mostly through the eyes of Frances as she meets the other guests and staff of Tranquillum House, most notably it's the strange and enigmatic owner who seems to have all the answers to her guest's troubles even if her approach seems somewhat questionable.

As we delve into Frances' life and troubles and learn about her and her fellow guests I was really enjoying this book. It had a delicious people watching vibe to it. I felt I was getting a glimpse into different worlds of the guests and wondering just how it was all going to be connected because as readers of Moriarty's novels will know there is often a twist. I liked the people I was reading about, as we learned more about them they were all redeemable and in the main likable and I wanted the book to continue uncovering the layers of their stories until they began to either heal or in a twisty way, merge.

Then around just over halfway through that thing happened where the twist came. Yes, Moriarty was doing it again and giving us something we hadn't expected. The only problem this time was it was just bizarre. It went from being quite a credible book to one that left me really quite amused that I was meant to take this seriously. It felt like a disjoint in the book and I'd suddenly slipped into a different book altogether where an almost Dr. Evil type character ala Austin Powers had crept in where everything was ‘groovy baby'.

The only thing that really kept this book on track after this point was the great job Moriarty had done prior to the twist in establishing her characters stories and their personalities and the fact we knew they were all redeemable people. This meant we could put aside what had happened and still root for them. Right through until the end when we follow them past Tranquillum House we want them to achieve the happiness they all sought at the start of the book and this keeps you reading and does provide a somewhat satisfying end to the story.

I know this book has received some very mixed reviews and so I was perhaps not totally shocked by the odd twist this one provided but when held up alongside Moriarty's other work this one did fall a little short if only because the shock factor was just a step too far to be believed.

I have a mixed relationship with Cassandra Clare and her writing, there are books I love like The Infernal Devices and the first two of the Dark Artifices series and then there are those I have struggled with such as Queen of Air & Darkness. Throughout all the books, however, there is one constant that keeps me reading and that is the engaging, quirky and incredible character that is Magnus Bane. He's like a thread that pulls all the books together and is the sun around which our Shadowhunter world rotates so when I heard there was going to be a series focused upon Magnus and his love Alec's adventures together I was in wholeheartedly.

The first thing that struck me about The Red Scrolls of Magic is that it's not a hugely long book, often with Cassandra Clare we've become used to epic 800 plus paged novels. The Red Scrolls of Magic comes in at under 400 pages so it means you can fly through it reasonably quickly. The second thing I needed to get sorted out was the timing of this book as it takes us back retrospectively to the point in The Mortal Instruments where we are in City of Fallen Angels and Magnus and Alec take a vacation. This really helped me once I figured this out as there were some contextual things that I was confused about where I was thinking this book was set after The Mortal Instruments and so couldn't understand why things mentioned didn't make sense. I think if you have this straight before you go into it and maybe refresh what happened around that book then it will help.

Now, Magnus and Alec are really just the cutest couple ever and the start of this book finds them vacationing in Paris with them trying to get to know each other and build their relationship. Then Tessa Grey shows up and informs Magnus that a cult he founded is causing all sorts of trouble and Magnus needs to sort it out, only problem is Magnus cannot remember ever setting up the cult nor why he would have done so. This means that we have lots of great Magnus moments as he goes back through his history reminding himself of how it might have come about.

We travel across Europe as Alec and Magnus try desperately to put an end to this cult before Magnus is reported to the Clave and punished for causing mayhem. We go from Paris to Venice to Rome with them and meet some familiar faces along the way that we've fallen in love with throughout the Shadowhunters series such as Helen Blackthorn, Ragnor Fell and Raphael Santiago. It therefore assumes that you will have read the Cassandra Clare books pretty much in publication order so that you will understand the connections and all the insider jokes that exist. I would probably recommend that to get the most from this book you pretty much have read at least The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices.

I really liked this story overall, it never really got too in-depth though and it was a much lighter read than her latest series The Dark Artifices has been. It felt more humorous and whilst we introduced the story that will form the arc of this trilogy it was much more about setting it all up than getting into the bones of the story. Not until the very last pages do we begin to understand that there is going to be much more to come and that we have a cliffhanger to tide us over until book 2.

I didn't love this as much as I though I would, it was a joy to spend so much time in the company of Magnus Bane and there were moments where Magnus goes back in his history to his childhood and broke my heart explaining his relationship with his stepfather and I was absolutely engaged 100% but then we'd drift back to the more fast-paced lighthearted stuff and I'd still be crying out for more of Magnus' origin story and lots of the emotional stuff so we could really really get inside the head of Magnus. At times it gave me glimpses of brilliance but they didn't appear as often as I'd have liked.

For me then a 4 star read and yes I will be picking up book 2 in the series because of that cliffhanger and I will always take any excuse to spend time with my very favourite Warlock but next time I am hoping for more old school Magnus.

This Pulitzer prize winning novel by Anthony Doerr has been hugely popular over the past few years and has been on my TBR for some time now. From what I knew about this book I had high hopes that this story of a blind girl in Nazi-occupied France during World War II would be something that would be deeply moving and highly enjoyable.

There are some really great things about this book. Firstly our two main characters are both hugely likeable and tell us very different stories about life on different sides of the war. Firstly we follow Marie-Laure who has been blind from an early age, with her father the head of security at the Natural History Museum in Paris they find themselves fleeing Paris when it is occupied by the German's. On the other side, we follow Werner, a German orphan with an aptitude for radios who finds himself saught by Hitler Youth because of his skills and thrown into a world he finds difficult to reconcile himself with. Whilst the main story is told from their point of view Doerrr gives us some really wonderful and well fleshed out side characters such as Marie-Laure's Uncle Etienne and Werner's friend from school Frederik. They are characters you sympathise with and want to succeed. Being a World War II story the risk for everyone is always high and this means emotionally you are engaged and fearful for them throughout. Mainly we alternate back and forth between chapters from Marie-Laure's and Werner's perspectives throughout the timeline of the war. The chapters are very short, generally, only a few pages and this means you tend to fly through the narrative quite quickly and find yourself engaged very early on in the story.

For me though, there was something just not quite there with this book. I think it was the fact that for 85% of this book our two main characters sit in complete isolation to one another. Their stories are independent and don't really intertwine. We are hopeful that they will intercept at some point but we are not sure about when they will and whether the meeting will be a positive one for all involved. I felt a little bit unmoved when they did meet, it was all over a little too quickly and didn't provide that gut-wrenching emotion I wanted to have after investing so much in the rest of the book. I wanted it to be epic, this is a Pulitzer prize winner after all, it must be amazing. Right? It just wasn't. It was only just okay. It was like waiting throughout the whole book for a pay off you just knew must be coming and then finding yourself shortchanged.

This book had huge promise, it had a brilliant historical landscape with which to work and at times Doerr makes magnificent use of this to tell very moving stories about life during the war for both those who were occupied and the German boys who found themselves thrust into war. I just needed his characters to meet a little sooner and for their meeting to have the same emotional pull as the rest of the book. For that reason, I'm only giving this one 3 out of 5 stars. It was a good book but I thought I'd rave about it after and to be honest, it was only okay for me.

I knew this book had been highly applauded since its release, I had picked it up in a charity shop haul and promptly put it on my bookcase and there it has lingered for some months now but after finishing an epic fantasy I felt the need for a little slice of real life and decided to delve into a book that I hoped very much lived up to the praise I'd heard.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the social inadequacies of our heroine, Eleanor Oliphant, a thirty-year-old single girl living in Glasgow who spends Monday to Friday at her mundane office job and then goes home at the weekend with two bottles of vodka and a Margherita pizza and speaks to and sees no one all weekend. This is described on the book jacket but inside the covers, we discover she finds making conversation with other people difficult, she spends her evenings reading books and listening to the radio. The one event that really highlighted for me how awkward was when she goes to a pub for a drink with a colleague and offers to buy the drinks then before he leaves asks him for the £3.50 for his pint of Guinness back.

There are points in the early pages of the book where Eleanor makes you cringe, so inept is she in the ways of social niceties. She's strange and a little aloof and unfalteringly honest about the things she sees around her, even when sharing her views may be unwelcome. As the pages go on however we begin to identify more familiar emotions, she's lonely, desperately lonely. She's been raised in the care system and with no understanding of affection or parental love. She's had nobody show her any interest and thus has been happy to blend into the background. Her only contact with her family is her weekly phone calls from her ‘mummy' who we learn is a complex and at times vile creature.

The beautiful story in Gail Honeyman's novel is a joy to read, Eleanor slowly forms a friendship with her co-worker Raymond when they see an old man collapse in the street and find themselves visiting him in the hospital together. The care and patience with which Raymond pulls Eleanor our of her shell and helps her to explore the world around her is beautiful and is one of the most heartwarming stories I've ever read. The way in which Eleanor begins to realise that her lonely existence may not be all the world has to offer her and that perhaps she can find people who could care about her is an absolute joy to read. It is heartbreaking when we delve beneath the veneer of Eleanor's world to her childhood and her experiences that led her to shut herself away from the world. We want to take her in our arms and shelter her and to make things okay for her.

This book was the Costa Award winner of 2017 for a debut novel and it is absolutely worthy of every plaudit and great review it has received. Touching, emotional and truly unforgettable Eleanor Oliphant is a heroine of our age, the Bridget Jones of the millennium she is funny and honest and strong and yet fragile and vulnerable. Gail Honeyman is an author whose debut has promised a bright future and I'm sure like many anxious readers I'm not alone in eagerly awaiting whatever she may release next.

Very occasionally a book comes along that makes you drop everything and just immerse yourself in it wholeheartedly in its story, taking you into a cocoon of the world in which it is set. It's been a little while since I had a book that captured me so completely that I literally lost a whole day to it, never moving from my reading chair until I'd absorbed every last bit of it. The Shadow Of What Was Lost is the only book that in 2019 has so far grabbed my attention so singly.

This is an amazing debut novel by James Islington, an epic fantasy that forms the first in the Licanius Trilogy. Initially it doesn't give you much information, you put yourself wholly in the hands of the author as he spins the tale of Davian and his best friend Wirr who are told that because of Davian's special powers as an Augur he should flee his school and make a perilous journey to find those who can help him understand his powers. As he and Wirr head out on their strange quest their friend Asha wakes up at the school to find everyone has been murdered and that her own magical powers are to be removed from her by the very person who sent Davian and Wirr on their quest.

This is a hugely complex novel, there's a whole magic system of Gifted people who can use magic called Essence but are restricted in how they can use it by tenants that mean they are unable to use it to harm any non-gifted people even in self-defence. Alongside this we learn about Agur's who in the past were able to see visions of the future but their visions stopped being reliable and they were all slaughtered and they are now seen as the enemy. We also learn of a boundary behind which the evil of the world is being held but in which cracks are now being found forewarning that the great evil trapped their thousands of years before could be about to escape.

Much of this information is relayed through multiple viewpoints including Wirr, Davian, Asha and a stranger Davian and Wirr meet whose memories have been lost called Caeden. There's also a little bit of time jumping going on in this book which means we have information that is coming back to us from the past and potentially the future meaning we are drip fed lots and lots of information about what could be about to happen of has happened which make us question everyone and everything around our characters.

This means it's a greatly complex fantasy novel but there are so many twists and turns and information about the world that mean you are literally hanging on the edge of every single word. There is great political maneuvering going on as the city from which Wirr and Davian are from fight to defeat a mysterious army known as the Blind, where the King seems unwilling to use the gifts available to him through magic to help him defeat the oncoming threat.

I fell in love with this story wholeheartedly, the characters are ones you really fall in love with, you are behind them 100% and even although there are some questions around their potential future actions you want them to be good guys. There is some real cliff-hangers at the end that ensure you are fully invested in Book 2 of the series and it is one I will absolutely be picking up in the very near future, maybe not too soon though as Book 3 hasn't been released yet and is due to be in December of this year so I don't want to read Book 2 too quickly and then spend the rest of this year just anticipating the release of the end of the series.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough to those who love high fantasy and are fans of the Nevernight series of Brandon Sandersons' Cosmere. I have started Mistborn this year and whilst I've loved it I have to say that The Shadow of What Was Lost has eclipsed it so far as my favourite book of 2019 so far.

I've been reading A LOT of fantasy this year, full on epic fantasies that are often really lengthy and in-depth and after finishing the mammoth that is The Priory of the Orange Tree I felt the need for a little break, a little bit of contemporary and so I picked up Beartown by Fredrik Backman.

I have heard nothing but amazing things about Backman's books and have been promising myself to get to them but when I saw this on the library shelf I couldn't stop myself from picking it up. I knew a little about its plot, that it was about a hockey-mad small town in the middle of nowhere where a young girl accuses the town's hockey star of rape and the fall out around the events as the town takes sides.

This book was hiding something much more between its pages though, I quickly fell in love with this book because what I found Backman did so well was to be able to introduce a whole myriad of characters from Beartown and make us care about all of them, whether they were a central character or one of those on the periphery. Each and every person lets us into their world and tells us about their world in Beartown and what it means to them and this makes for a powerfully emotional story that feels multi-dimensional and full of amazing relationships.

Through lots of hockey analogies and coaching techniques, we delve into whether or not the town and the hockey team might be to blame for what has happened, whether they have raised the team in the town to believe they are untouchable. We also explore the divide between how boys are treated by the community versus the girls. It's a highly volatile story and one that will prick at the conscience.

I haven't read much contemporary at all over the past year or so, I could count on one hand the number of books of this genre as often I haven't enjoyed them as much but I loved Beartown. I really enjoyed the beautiful writing of Backman and I am now desperately awaiting arrival at my library of the second Beartown book in the series, Us Against You which will allow me a chance to spend more time with all the wonderful residents of this small town.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough and it stands out as one of my favourite books of 2019 so far.

I picked up this book knowing only a very little about it and with having read none of the author's previous work so I really had no real expectations from this book. I know other reviewers have commented on the hype this book seems to have been getting but in my small area of Scotland I have to say I've not been aware of this and so I truly didn't have any preformed opinions.

I loved the premise of this book whereby people who have done or experienced traumatic or difficult things can go to a ‘binder' who will take those memories from them and put them into a book, therefore, allowing the person to return to their life with no knowledge of their difficult past and that the book will forever be the only remaining evidence of their memories. This makes for a wonderful opportunity within a fantasy setting to really push the boundaries of our characters as they struggle to remember clearly their past and the ability to discover through books the past of other's and how people could manipulate this to stop others from remembering things they have done to them.

Collins kicks off this book with plenty of mystery as we follow Emmett Farmer, a young boy who receives a letter telling him he is to be apprenticed to a ‘binder' where he will learn the trade of being a ‘bookbinder'. Bookbinders are viewed with suspicion by people in the countryside, seen as trading in the occult and leaving those whose memories they take as only shell's of the people they once were. Books are objects of evil and rarely touched. For Emmett this life is one he's unprepared for and when he finds himself living in the middle of the marshes with an elderly woman ‘binder' after having only just recovered from a mysterious illness which he is sure is linked to his new trade it offers us as the reader plenty of unanswered questions and mystery to keep us glued.

Yes, this book is packed with potential, from the mystery of what's happened to Emmett and why he is sick through the mysteries of ‘binding' and how it works to the mysterious Lucian Darnay who comes to be bound and then seems to fall into Emmett's life. There is a darkness to this book, the evil reasons why certain characters have been bound and the hidden secrets they've been made to forget offer us huge potential. And this for me was the problem. This book ultimately failed to take advantage of the darkness that it could have offered and instead became almost a love story alone.

As we move through Part Two and Three of the book we become less involved in the whole ‘binding' process and instead focus on the background of Emmett's life and his family and his first love. It's a controversial relationship for it's time to be sure but essentially this part of the book is fully dedicated to it and whilst I loved the two characters together I just felt that we lost certain magic in this section of the book as it became a romance. This meant that in Part Three of the book we are really just resolving the situation created in Part Two of the book to allow our romantic leads to resolve everything.

So whilst I enjoyed this book I was left somewhat disappointed, there are lots of characters we meet along the journey whose stories are never quite fleshed out, characters whose darkness and manipulation of binding would have made for fascinating and dark storytelling which is what I was hoping for from the beginning of this book. Instead, we have essentially a star-crossed lovers scenario that seems tame in comparison to where the book could have gone. And the ending, all just a bit too sudden for me. We resolved the outstanding reason the lovers couldn't be together and bang it was done. No further discussions at all. Literally one page it's resolved and next page ‘The End'. This left me feeling unfulfilled and disappointed.

If I reflect on this book it's with a sense of missed opportunities from the author. The concept for the story is excellent, it has lots of potential but it was squandered a little to tell a story of forbidden love. The characters who really grabbed my attention and made me want to see them brought to justice were never addressed or their stories explored more. I had to give this one a 3 out of 5 stars because all the groundwork was there, the foundations were solid but just not built upon into an exciting storyline.

This book has been such a phenomenon in the last year but strangely it has been mostly on the shores of the USA, in the UK I've heard fewer people talking about it and as a result as much as I waited and waited for my local library to get a copy it still remains elusive on the shelves. Finally, I decided I couldn't wait any longer and decided to go ebook on this one and I am so glad I did. It's one of those wonderful times when a books hype totally lives up to and exceeds your expectations.

Taylor Jenkins Reid gives us a sizzling tale of old Hollywood glamour as we follow ageing Hollywood movie star Evelyn Hugo as she approaches the age of 80, finally ready to share all on her life and seven marriages she asks for a young and unknown journalist to come and interview her in a tell-all exclusive. Through their time together Evelyn lifts the lid on her journey from Hell's Kitchen to Los Angeles and the things she did to climb the ladder of success in the movie business. From the days of the old studios who ruled the world to the modern world of movie making.

The character writing by Taylor Jenkins Reid in this book is exceptional. Her lead character of Evelyn Hugo itself is a complex one as she paints her as a woman happy to do whatever is needed to reach the top, even sleeping her way there but yet she is also a character for whom we feel immense compassion and respect and by the end of the novel it takes a while to remember that she is only a character in a book and not go running off to Wiki her online. The different marriages we are taken through in her own voice are each complex and fascinating to read about but it is the things that we don't expect about this book and that I won't disclose her for spoiler reasons that make it something truly magnificent.

I have been reading all fantasy all the time for some months now and this was a badly needed break and I devoured it. I flew through it because I simply could not put it down. We know that Evelyn's story is wrapped up in that of Monique her interviewer but we aren't sure how and we are teased throughout about how and why she asked the unknown Monique to write her story. It's a twist that when it comes is surprising and yet Taylor Jenkins Reid handles it beautifully and with compassion.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It was a beautiful, evocative and atmospheric story and didn't just make me understand why everyone else loved it but could very well be a book that stays with me for some time to come. A strong and early 2019 read that could very well be a top read of this year.

I am utterly in love with this series! If I wasn't hooked after reading Traitor's Blade late last year Knight's Shadow has stolen my heart completely. I am in awe of the wonderful storytelling in these books and right about now I'm wishing that I could do nothing more in this world than become a Greatcoat.

Yes, less than a month after I finished Traitor's Blade I delved back into Sebastien de Castell's wonderful Greatcoats series about the adventures of musketeer-esque friends Falcio, Kest and Brasti as they travel their country trying to put into action the promises gained from them by their now dead King. Picking up immediately after the ending of Book 1 we are immediately back into the story of the 3 brave soldiers trying to now put the dead King's daughter on the throne and save their country and put an end to the inequalities in their land. They know they will need to try and overcome the scheming and dangerous Duke's in their land and fight to do so whilst still being regarded as traitors.

Initially, it took me a few chapters to get back into the swing of things, to refresh my memory of what had happened in the explosive exploits of Book 1 but once I had cleared things up it and the action started to pick up this book was absolutely non-stop. If we thought there was political intrigue in Traitor's Blade well Knight's Shadow takes it to a whole new level. Someone is murdering the Duke's of Tristia and their families and Falcio, Kest and Brasti find themselves with the finger pointing at them. Who is trying to start a civil war and why? We travel Tristia with our Greatcoats as they try to stop the assassinations before they occur and find out just who is behind it.

Our circle of Greatcoats grows in this book, we add more allies to the little band of 3 giving us more context in which to view our heroes and the way they interact. The other thing I loved about Castell's writing in this book is the way in which he brings smaller characters from Book 1 and enhances their story for us. He doesn't simply say that the villain is all bad, he gives us more context and light and shade so we can see the complexities of their situation and how they can be redeemable. Also how he can take a small character and allow them to shine and be the hero, meaning someone who has perhaps been featured a small amount across both books leaves you feeling welled up and emotional when their story plays out.

Castell makes no compromises when it comes to outlining the more gruesome parts of this book, he doesn't shy away from violence and yet he never makes you feel uncomfortable with the amount or nature of it. There's lots of swordfights and battles in this book to give us plenty of departures and moments for our heroes to shine but for me, the star part is the wonderful political manoeuvring that Falcio manages throughout. This is my all time favourite thing to read, the careful managing of the different players on the board, the tiny moves that are made to move everyone to the position in which you want them. Castell's series is proving a master at this and for that reason, I am one of it's biggest fans.

I absolutely cannot wait to read the last 2 books in this quartet and already have them on my shelf ready to pick up in the weeks ahead and it says something that already I'm worried I'm going to miss my 3 Greatcoats when I'm done and am wishing that maybe he might release a fifth?

When I saw the new Cassandra Clare book the first thing I thought was “Wow, it's massive”, it would appear that Clare is trying to outdo herself with each subsequent installment in The Dark Artifices series and at nearly 900 pages this one is a hefty undertaking for any reader. Following up from Books 1 and 2 in this series, Lady Midnight and Lord of Shadows this book picks up immediately after the end of Book 2 and the impact of the ending of that book which left many readers shocked and heartbroken.

From there we follow Julian and Emma, our main protagonists for this series as they cope with the resulting chaos and try to help all the different children of the Blackthorn family to cope. Alongside this we have their ongoing concern about the growing love for each other and how this is going to drive them to evil as they are sworn parabatai and how it is forbidden for parabatai to fall in love. What is great about this book is that right from the outset we have much more than just the Blackthorn family on the pages, we have Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane, Gwyn and Diana, Kieran the son of the Unseelie King and all the characters we have come to know and love through this and the other Shadowhunters series'. It's a very collective book featuring everyone we've met so far and with the result a couple of times I had to go and google what exactly had happened in each characters storyarc up to this point just to make sure I had everyone straight.

Initially I was really enjoying this book, I flew through the first few hundred pages and was pretty invested but then I began to tire a little. Why? Because, I really began to get frustrated with the number of pages that were dedicated to the same ongoing dramas. If we talked about Julian and Emma's love for each other and how they shouldn't be doing it and their parabatai bond once we did it a million times. Each chapter seemed to feature a segment where this was front and centre. Alongside this we had the Mark, Christina, Kieran love triangle/threesome where if we heard it from one of their perspectives we had to hear it from all, Mark talked to Christina, Christina talked to Kieran, Kieran talked to Mark and on and on and on it went going round in circles. Again this was featured so often my eyes began to glaze over. This repeating of plot points throughout the book added at least 400 pages and the further I read the more it annoyed me.

As if this was not bad enough we then featured a section of the book where we reintroduced characters we thought had died books and books ago. Sebastian was back, I mean really did we need to revisit that old chestnut again? Mortal Instruments is most people's least favourite series and that's because Clare is meant to have grown since then and I was not the biggest lover of this storyline first time around so why did I need to live it again? And mean Jace was back, from the time Sebastian had him under his control, again this was from books and books ago and now I felt we were just recycling plot points.

And then we had the ending, the great showdown between the Unseelie army, the Cohort and our heroes. I was really into it and was quite engaged and then that thing happened with Emma and Julian, I'm not going to spoil but it just infuriated me. It was so much a recycling of how Clare always resolves complex battles. It's been done in Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices could we please not have found a slightly different way of winning the day? I hated it. Why can we not just have the Shadowhunters win through the wits, their friendships, politics and their alliance with the Downworlders instead of some cataclysmic thing happening to save their skin? And then the twist at the end, don't even make me go there, the ending of the Epilogue was not a “OMG” moment just a “Please not again!” one.

All this said there were bits of this I loved. I loved the Kit storyline, I wanted so much more of that. We kept getting hints of it all the way through but we'd touch on it and we'd move on so fast. I wanted to really delve in there and find out more. We've been teased about this through all 3 books in this series so I felt a little cheated not to explore it more. I also loved the time we spent in the Unseelie court this felt like we could have explored it more, the politics, the fact of how Kieran was loved by his father's people whilst his brother was useless. This was another aspect I really enjoyed but it felt undersold.

And then we come to Magnus. I love him so much. He is the only reason I am still reading these books. Each and every single time he's on the page it sparkles, he is vibrant and he's funny and he's honest and real and his story arc could be massive. He is the one factor that joins everyone together and he holds all the cards from the past and present. What kept me reading through all the mush in these books was Magnus. I cannot wait for The Red Scrolls of Magic and a book dedicated to Magnus and Alec. The ending of this book was so beautiful for Magnus and I really felt happy with where we went.

I wanted so badly to love this book but of the series it felt the weakest link. I pray we are going to be taking a little break from Emma and Julian for now. Not sure I could face them again for another novel. I pray we focus moving forward on Magnus through the new trilogy dedicated to him and Alec and I am excited for the new historical Shadowhunter novel Chain of Gold which is due for release in late 2019 as surely if we go back in time we won't be able to feature some of the newer characters we have become so stuck with and can explore some new aspects of the world.

Only a 3 out of 5 stars for me, I didn't love this one.

There are 3 well-known stories with which I've always been fascinated since childhood, Robin Hood, King Arthur and the knights of Camelot and The Three Musketeers. When I came across someone recommending Sebastian de Castell's Greatcoats series and likening it to Dumas' The Three Musketeers I was immediately on board because let's face it anything that can bring us close to the joy of the tales of adventure of Athos, Porthos & Aramis is worth a try.

Castell's story tells us of a band of justices who worked for the King traveling his land meting out justice and ensuring fair treatment of its citizens, the Greatcoats. Unfortunately, however, the King has been overthrown by the Duke's of his Kingdom and executed and the Greatcoats have been disbanded and because they did nothing to save their King are branded traitors. They now travel the country taking work where they can find it, providing security to rich patrons who sometimes don't pay them. We follow 3 Greatcoats in this story Falcio, Brasti and Kest who find themselves blamed for the death of their employer and follow their journey to try and fulfil the dying wishes of their King Paelis who has entrusted them all with quests upon his death.

From Page 2 of this book it is evident that the camaraderie and wit that I wanted between my three heroes was going to be there in abundance as they discuss whether or not their employer is engaging in carnal activities beyond the door they wait for him outside. From there we just fall in love with their relationship with each other and the three different personalities they bring to the story. Falcio leads the book as the Greatcoat known as First Cantor and the one who leads us through his backstory and his journey to becoming a Greatcoat but we have Kest his childhood friend on hand with words of wisdom and a calming influence and Brasti is the lighter-hearted comic relief with an eye for the ladies.

Part of a now 4 book series Traitors Blade is clearly laying out the ground for the books that will follow and therefore Falcio's outlining of his journey to becoming a Greatcoat and how he met Paelis, the boy who became his King and founded the Greatcoats with him helps us to understand the political landscape on which we stand and the characters around us. We learn about the plot by the Duke's to try and place a new person on the throne, one who they can control and we meet this contender in Book 1 and this is again where this book is pulling us in and committing us to the series as a whole. This book, therefore, has lots of information to impart and scene setting to do but this is not at the expense of action and plenty of sword fights.

Yes, like our beloved 3 Musketeers this book is full of duels and battles that are magnificent to read about. We have Falcio and Kest who are both masters of swordplay and Brasti who is a legend with the bow and the way in which they fight tactically with each other makes for amazing scenes in the book and keeps you gripped from start to finish. It is joyful and so reflective of Dumas' classic and it has been some time since we've had a book that really encapsulates that atmosphere.

I devoured this book in a few days, it kept me glued because there was so much going on throughout. I fell in love with Falcio, Kest and Brasti but strangely came away with my favourite character being the strange and mysterious Tailor who kept popping up in all kinds of strange places with information from the past and a quirky personality that brought such joy and light relief. I really cannot recommend this book enough, I am so excited I still have 3 books to read in this series and am absolutley on board for more of the adventures that Sebastian De Castell gave us in this book.

“Is that a children's book you are reading?” was the comment my mum made when she saw this sitting on the front seat of my car last week, there was a slight hint of mocking in her tone. My response was a resounding “yes” and in the back of my mind I was also thinking that yes it was the same series as my 7 year old daughter was reading the first book from. Was there any shame in my response, absolutely not. You see I believe firmly that just because a book is written for children does not mean it should not be read and enjoyed by adults alike because sometimes it's absolutely okay to read something just for the sheer magic of it and to relive the joy of childhood. And as a mum of 4 it also regularly allows me to sound of new and exciting authors and series that they might also enjoy.

Nevermoor was one of my favourite books of this year, I read is way back in January now and it's stayed with me ever since. It was a refreshing story of cursed child Morrigan Crow who is blamed for every single bad thing that befalls the people she knows and on top of that she is told her curse will cause her to die on her eleventh birthday and so on the eve of said birthday she is whisked away to a magical land called Nevermoor by an unusual man called Jupiter North where she is offered the chance to compete in a series of trials to allow her to join the coveted Wondorus society and gain the one thing she's always wanted, a family. I fell in love with Nevermoor, it was so whimsical and unusual and full of great characters and settings that I couldn't wait to get my hands on Wundersmith and was first in line at the library for this book when it hit the shelves.

Wundersmith was just as special as Book 1 and we are right back with all those magical characters we met in the first installment as Morrigan begins her training at Wunsoc, the magical school where members of the Wondrous Society are sent to learn all they need to know to use their magical talents. The only problem is that the only other Wundersmith alive who shares Morrigan's talent is the most evil man alive, Ezra Squall, and people are not keen for Morrigan to learn to use her talent in case she also turns bad. So with the help of her friends, her patron Jupiter and all the quirky and unusual guests who share her home at the magical Hotel Deucallion Morrigan has to find her way alone but people are disappearing in Nevermoor and suddenly she is being looked at as a suspect.

This book is another winning installment in what looks, and I hope will be, a long series following Morrigan's journey through Wunsoc. It was brilliant to get to meet all the great characters from Book 1 again like Fen the Magnificat and Morrigan's best friend Hawthorn. The magical setting is mesmerising and we can see a building story with Ezra Squall which we are unwinding book by book which suggests that perhaps he is not the only dark element in Nevermoor. I unashamedly encouraged my bookworm 7 year old to pick up Book 1 this month afte buying it for her and she is loving this series and we share our love of it together which let's be honest it's what makes children really engage with books when they can share their experiences with someone else.

An absolutely deserved 5 out of 5 for this book and I'd be very surprised if both of installments of this series do not show up on my top books of 2018 list in a week or so.

Kingdom of Brass is a book I've heard only good things about this year and I've really enjoyed books based in the more Arabian style settings since I was young. There is something really exotic and magical about the Egyptian feel and desert sands that make you feel you are truly escaping to a mystical land and City of Brass brings all of these elements together to give us a book filled with magic, folk tales, tribal histories and politics.

It took me ages to read City of Brass but this was absolutely not a reflection on the book, I had to put it down for a while in order to read some short loan new release books that had arrived at my local library but even taking a few weeks break I was still able to pick right back up about 30% of the way through and immerse myself back in the beautiful writing of S. A. Chakraborty because the story is utterly engaging and full of so many different threads.

Starting out in Cairo we follow Nahri, a thief and con artist who is trying to survive on her wits and a gift of healing. Unintentionally she summons a Djinn called Dara who arrives to save her from the magical Ifrit who magically appear and try to kill her. Before she knows it she is off on a flying carpet with the strangely attractive and mysterious Dara who tells her to escape the Ifrit she must go with him He tells her she is part of the Daeva tribe known as the Nahid tribe who used to rule over the Daeva people in the city of Daevebad, her people are now extinct having been hunted to extinction by the current ruling family and that he plans to take her there so she can give hope to her people and hopefully lay claim to her home.

Running alongside Nahri's story we have that of Prince Alizyad, the second son of the current King of Daevabad. He is struggling with the inequalities he sees around him and how the pureblooded Daeva people treat those of mixed blood, known as the Shafit. The Shafit are treated as second class citizens and have children stolen from the or women sold into prostitution. He is determined to try and help change things in his homeland but to do so he must go against the laws of his father and betray his family.

This story is one rich with political intrigue. There are lots of times when we are treated to information about the origins of our current political state in Daevabad, the wars that were fought that brought an end to the rule of the Nahid family and how the Shafit people have come to exist and how our current King has begun with good intentions to help them but now is reneging on those promises. I found this made it a really immersive book, I loved building this exotic and complex world in my mind and liked having the detail about how we got to where we are. It built slowly and even at the end of City of Brass there are still unanswered questions about aspects of the past we know we need to uncover that this gives us a real hunger for book 2, Kingdom of Copper which is due for release in 2019. I did get a little confused at points with Daeva v's Djinn and some of the different tribal alliances but I'd keep reading a little more and most times things would iron themselves out.

This was also a book where we have wonderful alliances forming and reforming throughout. We begin with Nahri's blossoming friendship with Dara and then as the book progresses we watch as she meets Prince Ali and gets to spend time with him and learn more about Daevebad and his family, despite knowing that his family overthrew her own Nahid tribe years before. There is lots going on and we have a really good triangle between these 3 and I loved both Dara and Ali and couldn't decide which one I wanted to cheer for as both gave a different perspective to the world in which Nahri finds herself and with this book you are never quite sure of the evil lurking from the past which is greater.

An amazing ending with this book, there's so much for us to explore when we get Kingdom of Copper next year. We get a cliffhanger ending with real mystery as to who a particular character might be and whether Nahri might actually be the last surviving member of her family. I am really excited to get the second installment in this series.

Absolutely deserving of a 5 out of 5 stars from me and definitely a contender for one of my best books of 2018.

At long last we have the conclusion to Throne of Glass, a series that has taken us on such a crazy wild and emotional journey over the course of the past 6 books and finally, we have the concluding book which needs to wrap up so many character arcs and delivery a fitting conclusion to Aelin's story.

Throne of Glass has been a series that seems to be falling out of favour a little, I've come across a few people who over the past 2 or 3 books have given up on the series feeling that it has failed to deliver. I think if we as readers are all honest there has been at least one point over the past 6 books where we've questioned if we were ever going to stop having new characters introduced and how on earth all the threads of this world were going to become interlinked. There have been some lows along the way but for me the gripping emotional highs of Sarah J. Maas' writing have always kept me invested in her characters enough that I had to keep going.

Kingdom of Ash is not a book for the faint-hearted, at nearly 1000 pages it is hefty and you have to really invest yourself in this for the long haul. It took me around a week to get through it as you can't rush through, there is so much going on and so many different perspectives to follow that you want to savour them all. Also, because we know as the book progresses that all the threads of the story will come together in what we hope is an epic ending we want to make sure we don't miss any important clues along the way. So it's not a quick read but we get lots of time with all of the characters Maas has built over the series and who her readers have invested their heart and souls into, Manon, Dorian, Elide, Lorcan, Gavriel, Aeidon, Lysandra, Abraxos, Chaol, Yrene, Rowan and of course the magnificent Aelin.

This book is not just an intricate journey it's a highly emotional one too. Being the concluding book in the series and with a huge epic battle on the horizon, we know that not all of our characters are going to be left standing on the final pages. We are sure to lose people along the way as our group battle to save Terrasen from Erawan and Maeve. With this in mind, Maas builds the tension admirably again and again throughout the book. We think everyone is safe, we have a high and a step forward only to have our hopes crushed and danger to glimmer on the horizon. It's a brutal book, there's chapter after chapter of battles against Erawan's dark forces and it's bloody and dark and leaves you with your hopes dashed and praying for miracles.

When the moments come when we say goodbye to characters we've fallen in love with it hits so hard. I don't cry often reading books but Kingdom of Ash had me sobbing, like proper ugly crying. I was heartbroken. It crept up on me not because of the deaths themselves but because of the beautiful way Maas handles the reactions of the remaining characters to their loss. It was beautiful. Emotionally this book left me drained emotionally and yet highly fulfilled.

When I started the book I thought there was no way Maas could possibly bring all of the stories to their conclusion and yet Kingdom of Ash is a triumph, it is everything I wanted from the final book. It has some really touching moments that take us all the way back to book 1 and remind us as readers of the journey some of these characters have been on together, journeys that perhaps over the past few books have diverged from each other but Maas takes time to pull it back to the very beginning and gives lovely nods to the origins of the story. It leaves you feeling that the path we've all trod together through the seven Throne of Glass books was one that will stay with you, that has been something very special and has left these characters imprinted on our hearts.

I am going to miss so many characters from this series. I want to know more, I want to know what all their future stories look like and yet, on the other hand, I don't, sometimes it's nice to have that internal picture as a reader of what you see them doing beyond the close of this book. All I know is that I can see me thinking of the often and fondly and with great love.

Gradually over the past year and a half I've been reading more and more fantasy books, gradually working my way through some new releases and some old classics but one name and author kept cropping up as the most recommended and highly regarded of the fantasy genre and that was Brandon Sanderson. It became apparent quickly that as master of the genre he was someone I needed to read.

Upon recommendation, I started off with Warbreaker, the story of the two Idrian princesses one of whom is sent away to the neighbouring Hallandren to marry their God King whilst her sister follows after her to try and save her sister from the fate she believes awaits her at the hands of her future husband.

I was worried initially that I'd find the book quite dense and difficult to delve into, being one of my first experiences of high fantasy I hoped it would be accessible to me. Instead of a difficult book to read I found one full of humour, relatable characters it is easy to fall in love with and vivid settings with histories that you discover as the book goes along. I could not stop reading this book, I loved the way that his characters are not always what they appear to be. Just as we are developing feelings for them Sanderson flips them and suddenly they are not all that they appeared to be. We can be cheering them one moment then praying for their demise the next.

The beautiful blossoming relationships between Siri and her God King husband was so beautiful to rea and they were two of my favourite characters in the novel. However, the real prize must go to Lightsong the Bold, the god who struggles with his godliness and his role as a deity and who develops a conscience about what is going on around him and so sets out to discover who is controlling the scheming in Hallandren, he is a beautiful and witty character to read from the perspective of and his journey of self-discovery and his endearing sense of right. I get it now, I'd heard people talk about the amazing characters Sanderson writes and I now sense the potential and hidden joys his other books have waiting for me and I cannot wait to savour them all.

When I initially started this book I had been led to believe that it was a standalone but I now believe that there will be more stories set around the characters of Warbreaker and I am totally invested, I cannot wait to learn more about the history of the Manywars and the players involved and to find out how things will resolve from Warbreaker.

A well deserved 5 out of 5 stars.

Traitor to the Throne is a book I've had sitting on my TBR shelf for a little while now. I read Rebel of the Sands, the first book in the trilogy, earlier this year and whilst it was okay it hadn't left a lasting impression and I wasn't feeling pulled back to the series as quickly as I had expected to be. Having renewed and renewed this book with my local library I only had a week left to read it before I had to return it so with that pressure upon me I eventually picked it up.

Boy was this a different book from Rebel of the Sands, whilst Rebel of the Sands was quite a short read focusing mainly on Amani the desert girl running away from an arranged marriage and Jin the prince who is helping his brother to lead a rebellion against his father the Sultan. It was a book focused very much on setting up the world and didn't give us as much action as perhaps I'd been expecting. Traitor to the Throne is a much meatier book in all possible ways. It's a good 200 pages longer than Rebel of the Sands and each of those 200 pages are used to their full potential as we develop the world building of Book 1 into a more politically charged and high stakes story.

We pick up just after Rebel of the Sands with Amani and Jin working with the Rebellion to try and overthrow the Sultan. Soon we find Amani captured and taken to the Sultan's palace where she is imprisoned in the harem. From within the palace, she uses her position to find out important political information that she can use to help the rebellion. As a result of this shift in the setting we are introduced to a whole host of new characters, the sultan, his sons and wives in the harem, we see the return of some underused characters from book one like Tamid. This gives the book more depth as we get to know more about what the Rebellion are fighting against and the political situation across the country and the history of how we got there.

That is one of the main reasons I fell in love with this book so much, those deep political conversations between Amani and the Sultan, the context we gain about the history of the country and the role of the Demdji and how they can be used for political gain. The life within the Harem makes for fascinating reading as well as we see how the women use every advantage they can scrape to ensure they don't become usurped by a new potential wife.

The book is my favourite type of fantasy, it was driven by changing alliances and character actions rather than big battles and fighting. The endings twists and turns leave us with a really good draw to pull us back into the final book of the series with a really good OMG reveal in the last pages. We have all the players on the board now, we know them all and we really are set for the closing rounds to play out in the last book.

Really really good book, if you didn't love Rebel of the Sands and like me aren't sure of returning for book 2 please please do, it pays you back dividends with a more mature, developed and engaging book.

I always look forward with great joy to the release of a new Kate Morton book and even though my most frequently read genre at the moment is fantasy I still was waiting with bated breath for the release of The Clockmakers daughter last month. Promising the story of a mysterious event in the summer of 1862 as an artist and his friends stay at his house in the country it promised more of Kate's normal and much-enjoyed format of a historical story intertwining with the modern day as we seek to untangle the mysteries of the past.

This story did initially start out with the normal format with chapters flitting between a mysterious female narrator who we learn is the ghost of someone from the past mixed alongside the story of Elodie Winslow an art archivist in present day who finds a mysterious notebook and photograph during the course of her work that make her think of a place she remembers being told about in childhood. In the first few chapters we learn that something terrible has happened at a place called Birchwood Manor in 1862 and that it led to the loss of a valuable family heirloom. We know that it's all linked to the mysterious voice we are hearing from the past, that of a girl we know as Lily Millington, whose story is one of a childhood lived trying to survive in the harsh world of London when abandoned by her father. So far at about a quarter of the way through I was quite enjoying this book, it was very Kate Morton and I was beginning to hope for learning more about Lily and Elodie in the remaining pages.

Unfortunately, this is where it all went a bit awry for me. As I began to work my way through the rest of the book I began to lose track of all the different characters and timelines we began to encounter. Overall there are at least 7 in this book along with all their associated side characters that pertain to their story. Each is linked to the house at Birchwood but they all have very different stories to tell and we don't always follow them in chronological order so we jump backward and forwards quite a bit throughout this book. Being a reader of Fantasy I am used to following lots of different people throughout the course of a book but on this occasion, I was left a little disappointed as we don't get resolution or expansion on many of the stories Kate starts in this novel. We flit from person to person and often just as we are engaging with that character and their story we are off somewhere and sometime else. We don't ever really return to the characters we leave we just move on. I can see what she was trying to achieve writing about all the lives that the house had touched throughout the years but it just left me struggling to engage with any characters in particular.

And as for the ending, I really really did not like it. It was a huge book at nearly 600 pages and we are building throughout the mystery of what happened in the summer of 1862 and how this mysterious voice from the past was killed and when we get there it was a bit of an anti-climax for me. I struggled with it. Reading the last few chapters I was getting quite frustrated because there is a character who holds all the knowledge as to what happened and has from immediately after it happened and knowing what they do I cannot believe they didn't share it. That they essentially left for years the knowledge that they had. It didn't sit well with me as a reader. Also, the speed with which it all wrapped up in the last few chapters was compared to the rest of the book just lightning quick. We leave many stories unresolved and with more questions than answers.

I can only give this one 3 out of 5 stars this time, which with Kate Morton is highly unusual for me. I wanted to love this book very much but it was too unweildy for me. I am behind not simply having the back and forth between a historical character and present day one in her novels but on this ocassion maybe there was a case of biting off a little more than one could chew.

Spinning Silver has been exploding in the book scene over the past months since its release, it seems everyone has been reading it and falling in love with the characters within this Russian inspired fairy tale retelling of Rumplestiltskin.

I am a huge fan of fairy tale retellings and so I had high hopes for this book and spotting it on my libraries new releases bookshelf I immediately picked it up. I hoped that it would be perfect for this autumn time of year as we head into the Halloween season and having just DNF'd a thriller I was desperate to find something to sink my teeth into.

This book is set in historic Russia and much of it is based around old Russian folktales along with the theme of turning silver into gold as in Rumplestiltskin. For those who have read and enjoyed Katherine Arden's The Bear and the Nightingale, this will be absolutely up your street as it has a very similar vibe to the setting and many of the same folk tales are mentioned such as Baba Yaga and the theme of Winter King's. We follow 3 different young female protagonists in this book. The first is the daughter of a Jewish moneylender who finding her father is better at lending money than reclaiming debts he is due takes over his business in order to save her family from poverty. As a result of her success, she attracts the attention of the Staryk king who challenges her to turn his silver into gold. The second is a poor girl from the same village who lives with her two brothers under the tyranny of her violent father and who goes to work for the moneylender as a way of paying off his debt and the way in which these first two stories intertwine are one of the highlights of the book. Their building friendship and the lessons they share make really good reading. The third and final character we follow is the daughter of a duke who aims to make her a marriage with the Tsar but she has little to recommend her as Tsarina and little does she know the darkness that her future husband hides within and the danger she will be placed in through the marriage.

This was an up and down reading experience for me with this book. There were chapters where I would be sucked into the story and would really be enjoying the characterisations that Novik outlayed and I would be really enjoying the story but then I'd come across chapters where I was getting a little bit bored. Things would become a little bit too wandered and steeped in the myths and I'd lose the will to keep reading and hence would be tempted to skip just a little to get back to the good bits. I think for me I found the bits where our heroines came together were really powerful and their growth as women was brilliant to read as was the building relationships between all the different families. Where it was character centered I was all in. I could have read all day but then when we became more steeped in the mystical and magical side of things I didn't love it. I found it all a bit too mixed up and confusing.

For me I have to give this one a 3 out of 5 star rating because it didn't grip me enough. About 200 pages in I did stop and think maybe it wasn't for me, then I flew through 8 chapters and thought I was back on track only to find that it dipped again and the last few chapters left me feeling a little unfulfilled. Because of my bumpy ride I can only give the 3 stars.

Book lovers will know that feeling you get when you read a very special book, that breathlessness as it leaves you just fulfilled and emotional and often a little heartbroken that it is over. It has been a little while since I've had a book that has touched me quite as much as The Last Namsara did.

I am such a lover of Fantasy as a genre and this book had it all for me, dragons, royal and political intrigue, people fighting for their right to rise and be free, romance and intense friendships. The blurb on the book hinted at what was inside but it couldn't even scratch the surface of the amazing story that would unfold within its pages.

The story of Asha, daughter of the dragon queen, she has always been known as the Iskari the King's dragon slayer. Since dragons turned against her people it has been her job to lure them and kill them. She uses the forbidden old stories that are outlawed to lure them and no one must find out that she still tells the old stories. She is betrothed to her father's commandant of his armies a cruel and vicious man who everyone lives in fear of, she has only days till her wedding and no sign of escape until her father tells her that the oldest dragon of all has returned and if she can kill him it will break the promise of betrothal and give her freedom from her fiance.

As Asha fights to gain her freedom she meets a slave boy who will change her world. He will help her to learn things about herself and her destiny she never thought possible. He will lead her into an uprising by the slave people and show her a world she never could have imagined.

This book truly gripped me from the outset. The characters are incredible. Asha is wonderful to read from the perspective of, she is fierce and loyal and at the start of the book very driven by the rules and status she follows in her home. Throughout though she takes all of the twists and turns that are thrown at her and grows so much and rises to meet those challenges in a strong, brave and intelligent manner. The book itself is full of amazing characters, some of which we get only small glimpses of in this novel but which I'm sure we are going to get to see much more of in the second book in this series The Caged Queen.

The format of this book really worked for me, you'd get a few chapters of the action of the story then it would break away to tell one of the old forbidden stories of Asha's people and through these we learn a huge amount about the history of the world and the political landscape and how we arrived at the current state of play. It helps to outline Asha's history and relatives and helps to build the world immensely for the reader. These were some of my favourite parts of the book.

This book has a setting which to me felt reminiscent of Arabian Nights. It was full of Eastern culture and references and I love that setting so it also helped me to fall in love with this book. The thing that got me most of all though was the dragons. Oh my, those dragons. They were incredible. I loved them so much. The way that they are used to help Asha's character to develop and grow and the way they communicated with her and became part of her story was beautiful to read. There is a bit at the end of the book that just rips your heart out and Kristen Ciccarelli leaves you weeping as a reader. It was beautiful.

I am so blown away by this book. It has built the world that we are clearly going to split wide open in Book 2, we have many players on the board we as readers are emotionally invested in and I am so excited so see where we go next. The twist on the ending of this book was one I didn't see coming and now we know Asha's future and that she still has much to do to fulfil her destiny means this is absolutely one of the must read sequels for me and this has just become my absolute favourite book of this year so far.

This book only popped up on my radar about a week ago when browsing Amazon and immediately when I read its description I knew I had to read it. It isn't until I've completed it and had a browse at some of the reviews out there that I've realised what a divisive book this is.

This is a dystopian fiction novel set in the United States in a world where a new highly moralistic and religious government have decided that the world was a better place before women's rights and therefore women have been removed from workplaces, denied the right to anything more than basic housekeeping and mathematical education in schools and have devices fitted to their wrists that electrically shock them if they speak more than 100 words per day. They are denied the right to read, make decisions for themselves medically, financially or educationally and they are punished if found to be adulterous or to be engaging in pre-marital sex.

Our main character Jean is a highly qualified neuroscientist who was working on a cure for people who have lost the ability to speak due to illness and who one year ago had her whole world change when the new rules regarding females came into force and suddenly she has found herself a forced housewife, unable to communicate, watching her only daughter denied the right to speak or be educated and wishing she'd done something when her friend warned her that things were going to change.

I loved this book. I ate it up in just under two days, I couldn't stop reading. It was such a thought-provoking read. As a mother of two daughters and two sons, I could absolutely empathise with the emotions Jean was experiencing watching her family live in this new world. The horror at watching as her daughters retreat further and further into themselves, unable to express simple things such as their needs, emotions, daily experiences or to create friendships. I also could see how living this way would lead to the conflicts she had with her eldest son whose constant indoctrination by the new regime leads to him believing he holds higher sway than her in the household, that she has a role she must fulfil and that is to be silent and obedient and cater to his needs.

There are so many ‘what if' questions throughout this novel that it is definitely one that is going to linger with me for quite some time to come. There are lots of sciencey bits at the end and that was my less favourite part of the book and if I'm honest I did feel the last 3 chapters were a little rushed and didn't fully take the time to explore the outcomes of the actions Jean took. I would have liked a little more than a 2-page chapter set months later to wrap up the whole book. I had to go back and re-read the last 3 chapters and reflect again as things were glossed over in a sentence where if you blinked you'd miss it and the first time I did.

Now, this is clearly a marmite book, people either love it or they hate it. Many Christians are stating how concerned they are by this book as it is very much stated that this dystopian world has come about by extreme religious views and only that. There are concerns that this book promotes that Christians are all extremists and that they are intolerant of people of other sexualities, cultures, sexes. I can understand their concerns and yes I empathise with why they feel that way however as a reader I am intelligent enough to know that all Christians are not like those portrayed in this book, reading a fiction novel like this is not going to make me think that suddenly every Christian I meet is planning to gag women around the world. I think you need to suspend reality whilst reading and enter into the fictional world the author is creating and this one was captivating for me.

If you loved The Handmaid's Tale I have a feeling this one might just tickle your fancy. It is one of the standout books I've read this year and I have a feeling we might be hearing an awful lot more about this one in the months ahead.