Suzy Button is still feeling like an outcast in the seaside town that she and her father recently moved to, after the passing of her mother. She’s strSuzy Button is still feeling like an outcast in the seaside town that she and her father recently moved to, after the passing of her mother. She’s struggling with the dark, friendships, and her body is still feeling the after affects of stress and grief. So, on the first anniversary of her mother’s death, she decides to go out and make a wish on the moon, as a way of marking the day, as her mum was into mystical rituals like that. She wishes to no longer be afraid of the dark, for her period to return, and for friendships to come into her life.
A few days later, a new girl shows up at school, called Rihannon. She’s a little odd, knows a lot about brilliant poets, has never had cheddar cheese, and claims to be from France. She also very quickly becomes Suzy’s best friend, and the world seems to open its doors for Suzy once again. But is she really from France? And how come Suzy is never invited back to her house?
I thought this book was lovely. It handles grief, friendships, and the turmoil of being a teenager, all with a little sprinkling of magic dusted throughout. It also shows Suzy grappling with her inner self quite a lot. A stand out chapter, for me, shows her stream of consciousness while attending a beach party, and the utter whirlwind of her thoughts as the night progresses. It really encapsulated the inner turmoil that is the mind of a young teenager, and how it feels when you’re trying to find your way.
The book is very engaging, and it’s so nice to see Suzy slowly re-emerge from the fog she’s been in, and grow and flourish alongside her new friends. I felt like it was wonderfully balanced alongside the more magical elements of the book, which I also loved. A very heartwarming YA read.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review. ...more
If you’re looking for a spooky YA read this autumn, that’ll send a chill down your spine, then here it is!
After an incident at the end of the GreyscoIf you’re looking for a spooky YA read this autumn, that’ll send a chill down your spine, then here it is!
After an incident at the end of the Greyscott school year, Meg is facing suspension. She’s a scholarship art student, and desperate to not lose out on her place at the prestigious school. She wants to try and express her apologies to her friend group, so she can hopefully remain at the school, but she’s mostly being blanked. When one of her closest friends finally reaches out to invite her to spend the week with them, at her Irish ancestral home, she agrees hoping that this is her chance to set things right.
However, things feel off from the get-go, however, when the taxi driver, who’s taking her from the airport, almost hits a sobbing woman, who disappears as quickly as she appeared, the large manor-house seems to be falling into disrepair (and filled with covered up mirrors and cornered off bathrooms), plus, most of the friend group aren’t best pleased to see Meg….
This is such an atmospheric book. Set in a crumbling gothic house, surrounded by a flooded lake full of statues, a deep forest with a towering folly, all in the deep depths of autumn. It plays around with its setting wonderfully, cutting the characters off, and turning the story into an almost ghostly game of cluedo.
There’s so much suspense, and unease. It builds up beautifully, the story unfolding one creepy revelation at a time. It deftly mixes Irish history and folklore together, creating a perfectly ominous springboard for the story as a whole.
The dynamics of the friend group can be strained, especially as Meg is from a poorer background. Some of the group don’t manage to hide their classism and disdain towards Meg, which adds another dimension to the story, alongside their distrust of her after the ball, and how they all interact with each other.
Occasionally I felt like the flashbacks did detract from the atmospheric build up, especially as this would usually place us back in a stereotypical English private school, but they did provide vital plot information, and it all did still flow well overall.
This book builds, and builds, and builds into such a satisfying ending, and I throughly enjoyed my time reading it. Also, I have to shout out the cover - it’s wonderful, and perfectly conveys what to expect from this eerie, paranormal, tale. Highly recommend!
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review....more
Prefacing this by saying that I haven’t read Dracula, nor watched any adaptations, so I was venturing into this book with pretty little knowledge of tPrefacing this by saying that I haven’t read Dracula, nor watched any adaptations, so I was venturing into this book with pretty little knowledge of the story outside of just…media osmosis, and the average vampire ‘facts’. I was fully drawn in by THAT cover, what can I say.
I really enjoyed Lucy Undying. It jumps between timelines and story telling devices - we have Iris in the present day, trying to escape from her family’s blood obsessed cult, a journal from the late 1800’s detailing Lucy’s life before she’s turned by Dracula (and her love for her school teacher, Mina), and a transcript with a therapist where Lucy opens up about her long vampire life.
There’s so many different levels to this story, and I loved seeing how they all ended up tying together. There was almost a mystery element to the book, in that way, trying to fit together all the different moving pieces of the story.
This novel really looks into what it meant to be a women over the past 150 years, albeit it through a fantasy lens - how little agency most women were allowed, and the different dangers they were subjected to (although a lot of that sadly persists even to this day and age). Lucy’s story is quite heartbreaking, and it’s beyond powerful to see her slowly reclaim it as the novel progresses.
Iris is also such a great character. She takes no nonsense, and truly cares for the people around her who show her kindness (but her dead mum, and the cult that she led, can get stuffed). Her story was fascinating, especially as she’ll just throw out a line that makes you go ‘wait, WHAT?!’ as we discover more about the MLM cult that she grew up in, and the strange condition that she has.
This book has a great balance between the horrors of Dracula, people in general, and the controlling nature of the world when it comes to women, alongside just…very sexy sapphic vampires. Like this book is filled with lust, longing, and it’s genuinely quite enticing. Like people can be awful! Cults are terrifying! Being hunted by vampires is also terrifying! But love, romance, and longing still exist, even in times of strife. It was really well balanced, and I’m here for it.
Delving into Lucy’s past was so interesting too - her time spent as a vampire crosses many decades, continents, and world events, and it was fascinating (and quite devastating) to see how she spent that time, and her various relationships with fellow vampires over the years, and how they each dealt with being turned, and their own immortal life, differently.
I loved the writing style, the unfolding romance, the quest for knowledge (and revenge) on both Lucy and Iris’s parts. I just loved this book a lot overall, and the way it was all laid out kept me gripped throughout. Highly recommend if you’re craving a gothic sapphic vampire tale this autumn/winter, with quite a lot of depth and bite to it.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review. ...more
‘The Coin’ is a fascinating debut novel, and packs a lot into a relatively short book. It doesn’t conform into what you’d perhaps expect it to, and it‘The Coin’ is a fascinating debut novel, and packs a lot into a relatively short book. It doesn’t conform into what you’d perhaps expect it to, and it’s all the better for it.
Frankly, I read this book last month, and have struggled to sit down and write this review, simply because I didn’t know how to sum up the book, and my feelings towards it. Yet, for all my inability to construct a review for this book, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. During this time, I even attended a local bookstore event with the author, which was so interesting, and gave me even more to chew over.
In a nutshell, this book is set in New York City, where our unnamed Palestinian protagonist takes on a job at an all boys school, finds herself embroiled in birkin bag pyramids schemes, fixates on the idea of being ‘clean’, and wrestles with the complexities of her heritage and diaspora.
It veers all over the place, yet still leaves us with a fully constructed narrative. It takes us to places we mightn’t be expecting. It’s been likened to Ottessa Moshfegh, and while I’ve only read one book by her, I’m inclined to agree that it would appeal to the same kind of audience.
It’s incredibly well written, occasionally expertly dipping into the surreal, with a protagonist who is sometimes down right unlikeable, yet in a way that always remains understandable. It’s a book I’ve found myself recommending to people, even while still questioning things about it - but I think that’s a large part of the makings of an interesting book. Sometimes things shouldn’t be morally straight forward and spoon fed to us. Sometimes things need to be a little weird, cutting, and down right strange.
It’s a book I see myself rereading in the near future, and a story that has firmly slotted itself into my mind.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review....more
Oooh, this was a tantalising good YA horror. It’s tense, mysterious, and it held me deeply in its grasp until its last page.
After years of struggling Oooh, this was a tantalising good YA horror. It’s tense, mysterious, and it held me deeply in its grasp until its last page.
After years of struggling through foster homes Liv Whitlock wants out. Unfortunately, her history isn’t the most shining example of who she is, so when an opportunity comes along to win an internship, to be on set for a movie adaptation of ‘The Tempest’, she jumps on it, sending in her written application, but using all of her sisters personal details. The application wins, and she suddenly finds herself on a yacht, heading towards Alaska, with the director, the hottest young actresses of the moment, a famous pop star, a young Olympian, and a social media influencer. However, things take a very sharp turn when their boat hits a storm, and next thing they know, they’re waking up sputtering on a beach. As they start the fight for survival, they also begin to discover that every injury they sustain on the island is healing in an inexplicably odd way…
What I loved about this book is that there’s the ‘typical’ horrors of what it would be like to be ship-wrecked, washed up on a small North Pacific island with minimal provisions and no way of calling to help, and then there’s that creeping, mysterious, unease as each injury heals in a different way, as they realise there’s some kind of otherworldly creature on the island, and they try to decipher what any of it means.
There’s quite a lot of body horror imagery in here, enough that it gave me the odd shivers up my spine, which I always find impressive in a YA horror.
The characters are all so well fleshed out. Their fears, wants, emotions, all heightened as a result of this situation they’ve found themselves in. This is a group of teenage girls, with very different back stories, who’ve all sustained some level of trauma in their past, thrown into pure survival mode, and having to adapt to that. It’s not always pretty, but they’re all always doing their best dealing with the circumstances they’ve been handed, while forming bonds along the way.
The key story here is about surviving trauma, what that means, and what that might look like, against a backdrop of ominous creeping horror, and it’s extremely well done.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review....more
This is latest addition to the children’s series Little People, Big Dreams, which details the lives of various celebrities and notable people - this tThis is latest addition to the children’s series Little People, Big Dreams, which details the lives of various celebrities and notable people - this time around it’s about singer-songwriter Taylor Swifts rise to stardom.
Obviously limited with its page count, it does take pretty big leaps through her timeline, but it still manages to give the overall arc to her story, in a bite-sized format.
It’s sweetly laid out, with lovely illustrations, and is the perfect book to read to little budding Swifties, or youngsters who also dream of becoming musicians.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review. ...more
This is a very cute light read! It’s not going to amaze you, but if you’re after an easy little romance read, this is a pretty solid choice.
Amy is theThis is a very cute light read! It’s not going to amaze you, but if you’re after an easy little romance read, this is a pretty solid choice.
Amy is the marketing manager at a floundering entertainment venue in Edinburgh, and is struggling with feeling a little bit left behind in life. Her friends seem to be hanging out without her, she spends most nights sat at home, and she’s firmly turned her back on her love for playing the violin.
One day she gets an email sent through to her about applying for a photography exhibit - an exciting prospect except for the fact that she isn’t a photographer. So, she scrolls the internet to find the photographer who has a similar email address and sends the opportunity back his way - with a cheeky little request to let her know how he gets on.
Cameron, the photographer, ends up replying - turns out he’s on a photography trip in Antarctica! They continue to communicate through email, and as he talks about all the incredible things he’s doing, Amy starts to think that surely it couldn’t hurt to…embellish her own life? Just a little bit…
I thought this book was incredibly sweet. I found myself relating to Amy in many ways, and understand how hard it can be to return to something you once loved, after moving away from it, and the urge to make yourself look better on paper.
I loved all the correspondence between her and Cameron! It was just so fun to read emails from someone who was living somewhere so remote and different. It added an extra level of dimension which I really appreciated, and I think it was the key in fleshing out the book. It was so nice to see them slowly open up to each other more via this communication, before they’d even seen a photo of each other, even if there were little white lies dotted amongst them. The penguins were also a major plus.
I also adored Amy’s neighbour, Mr. McTavish, and his cats. I found the scenes between the two to be incredibly touching, and it really warmed my heart.
I really liked the overall message of the book, and the reminder that it’s never too late to reassess what you want in life. Again - it’s nothing earth shattering, but I don’t think it’s trying to be. It’s a sweet, long-distance (mis)communication, romance book, and I did enjoy my time with it.
Thank you to the publishers, and Netgalley, for the copy to review....more
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