So, this book immediately grabbed my attention when I saw it in Asda, on the same shelf as A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. I bought it a few weeks later and started reading it and….

If I’m completely honest, this book didn’t really meet my expectations. I thought it had a lot of potential…and it was a book that was easy to read. I did like Monica’s character, and I felt bad for her that her mom was so traumatised by her oldest daughter’s death, it had a huge impact on her relationship with Monica. It broke my heart when Monica thought about how low she sat on her mother’s list of priorities, given that it was her younger brother’s birthday her mom used for her passwords.

I didn’t think that it was necessary to have the chapters from five years ago, written from Jen’s perspective. Honestly, those really threw me out of the story…and seemed wholly unnecessary, since anything that was revealed in Jen’s chapters was very quickly uncovered by Monica. And switching between first and third person is very jarring.

I was disappointed that, despite there being chemistry between them, nothing happened between Monica and Ginny. For a lot of the book, it felt like there was a buildup to them getting together…and I’m extremely disappointed this was ignored in favour of pushing Monica together with a guy who she barely seemed to know exist.

I did think there were too many threads in this book. They weren’t really woven together seamlessly; which makes sense, I guess. The tagline on the front of the book doesn’t really fit with anything that happened, though. ‘Five girls lied and five girls died’. The five girls dying is obvious. Those lying…well, I might be able to think of about three, maybe four, who were lying throughout the book. But there was too much going on for those dots to connect. I didn’t have the, ‘That makes sense’ moment when the truth was revealed. And honestly, the whole thing about Jen felt like it was just tacked on to explain what had happened.

This book had so much potential, but unfortunately for me, it just fell completely short. There was too much pushed into this book…and the ending really spoiled the whole thing for me. I might check out other books by this author in the future, but unfortunately, this one isn’t on my ‘read again’ list.

Compared to the previous two books in this series, I found this one took me more time to get through. I’m not sure why; maybe the events of book two had traumatised me in the same way they had Pip? That was one of the really good things about this book, I felt. It was really good, if heartbreaking, to see how badly Pip was affected by everything that happened…to the point of her having to go to a drug dealer just to get medication in order to be able to sleep.

I really liked the scenes of Pip and Ravi together. I honestly truly love their relationship; they’re so incredibly sweet together, and it’s really obvious that Ravi accepts Pip no matter what…and there’s no time more clear with that than reading towards the end of the book.

I found it interesting how Pip’s idea of ‘saving’ herself was to find a case that was more black and white, with no shades of grey. The previous two books did a really good job of showing the shades of grey in the cases in the previous books…and I liked the fact that this book not only came full circle with Andie’s involvement, but also allowed a deeper glimpse into her character and motivations. In this book, Andie was actually a character who I regretted not being able to learn more about in the first book.

It was a bit disappointing not to see as many of Pip’s notes and interview transcripts, which I thought worked so well in the previous two books. I did really like seeing Pip interacting with Nat, thogh, and them actually being friends by the time the third book came along. Nat was a character who really suffered in book one, only to have it all dredged up in the second book…and part of me felt that she got some closure in this third book. Plus, I liked seeing Cara appear more in this book, along with her sister…though I absolutely hated seeing Lauren and Anthony, who were almost worse than the killer in this book. After all, they accused Pip of making everything up about Jamie in book two…something that could have been extremely damaging to the whole case.

While this book was harder to read than the previous two, I still did find it good to read, although I ended the book with some very mixed feelings. Still, I’d say that it’s definitely worth reading. I love Pip and Ravi, and I’d love to read more books with them in. Plus, my understanding is that there will be a TV series of the books soon…and I definitely intend to watch that when it comes out.

(I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review).

There was a lot of potential in this book. The front cover, along with the blurb, immediately caught my attention.

There were some good parts of this book. It was fairly easy to read, and the way the events were told worked really well, despite the constant jumping around between the past and the present. The scenes set before the events of the book could have felt really jarring, but they seemed to work really well, and gave more of an insight into some of the characters.

However, the book lacked any real sense of urgency. Elle spends a lot of the book going between her husband, Bill, and her husband’s best friend, Charlie…who very obviously has a crush on her and is doing his best to seduce her, despite the fact that her son has gone missing and might well be dead.

Despite the title of the book, there’s not really that much detail about the screaming Elle hears constantly. She seems convinced that it’s her missing son and yet…despite this certainty…she wastes so much time of the book doing other things. Like the aforementioned love triangle. And she’s working constantly on her book, which is about an explorer who went to the place Elle ultimately believes her son is in…and yet Elle drags her feet. People grieve in different ways, it’s true…but Elle doesn’t come across as a grieving mother. I honestly don’t understand why she didn’t go to into the timberland as soon as she thought she was hearing her son from there. I don’t have any children myself, but I have four niblings who I absolutely adore…and I can say with 100% certainty that nothing would hold me back from tracking them down if they were lost and I believed I knew where they were.

Most of the book was slow, without much happening…which meant that the last act, the final part of the book, felt really rushed. There was too much buildup and not enough payoff and honestly…I would have liked to see more of the timberland. For a while in the book, I thought it was meant to be another dimension, almost as if it wasn’t quite a real place…but although it was indicated to be a completely different society, it was still a real place. Which, again, meant it made even less sense for Elle not to try and get there back when she first thought the sound belonged to her son.

I would have liked this book better if the focus had been more on Bill. I felt that his grief process was more understandable…and even though I was seeing him through a murky lens, through Elle’s own eyes (and she clearly resented him, if not outright disliked him), there was enough there that I would have been more interested in seeing him as the main character of this book…not Elle.

On the whole, there was a lot of potential in this book…but I was disappointed in the execution. I would read a book more focused on the timberland, though…because the idea of the explorer who visited there, and the war going on, were both intriguing aspects of the book. Sadly, though, neither was enough to make up for what didn’t work here.

Thanks to my sister and her two children, I read the first book in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and when my sister lent me the next two books in the series, I was immediately happy to be able to continue reading.

I particularly liked that this book didn’t shy away from the problems caused by Pip’s investigations in the previous books. While they obviously had a negative impact on Pip’s family, there were also a lot of conflicts that were caused between Pip and other members of the town…such as Nat da Silva. While she was definitely hostile to Pip, I could thoroughly understand why she felt the way she did…and empathise with how everything Pip had done previously brought up old, emotional wounds. To be honest, though, I didn’t like her brother. From what little I saw of him, he seemed to let personal bias get in the way of doing his job and…well, he just wasn’t a nice person.

I liked the inclusion of Sal in this book and the fact there was a memorial to both him and Andie, even though the memorial was what set off the events of this book.

It was good to see that Pip had a wider reach in this book, due to the site that she’d created. I also thought it was good to see that, for as many people who were willing to actually help out (one commenter actually giving an idea for further investigation), it was obvious that there were trolls; people who said things that were deliberately hurtful, or who made threats because of the public attention everything was gaining.

I really didn’t like Ant and Lauren in this book. Pip kind of describes them as a single entity…and I can’t really say that she’s wrong. I’m not sure I can describe them as friends of Pip, Connor and Cara…honestly, if I was any of them, I would have cut off the two the moment they proved they didn’t care about their friend’s brother having gone missing.

I thought it was really good that, like the first book, this one contained transcripts of the interviews Pip conducted, along with the details of her notes. Both of those helped to add more to the story, as well as to gain a little more insight…not only to Pip, but to other characters as well. And I thought the inclusion of the photos worked really well too.

I found this book really easy to read and I got quite emotional towards the end. I would completely recommend reading this book if you like reading young adult thrillers. I’m not even sure you need to have read the first book in this series, as I think this one stands well on its own, but I would highly recommend reading the first one too.

Just like the previous book I read, this book immediately grabbed my attention when I saw it in the book shop. The blurb sounded very interesting and I was immediately curious to see how such a society worked, where the only death came at the hands of the scythes…people just the same as those who they glean.

I found it interesting to get glimpses into how different scythes made their choices on who to glean. While it seemed like Faraday was one of those who did his best to be as fair as possible (using statistics from the Age of Mortality, treating each person like an individual and picking different, unique ways to glean each of them), I also felt that there was a fundamental element of unfairness to it. For instance, he picked someone based on the possibility that this person might have gone out drinking and driving, despite there being no evidence to indicate that person would do so. But then, I guess it’s hard to make a choice like that, to take someone’s life, no matter what kind of spin you put on it. Still. Since natural death was entirely eradicated, it felt grossly unfair to glean someone who hadn’t even reached their majority yet. I preferred Scythe Curie’s way of gleaning, even though it wasn’t the perfect way of doing so.

I really liked both Rowan and Citra as individual characters, and I really enjoyed their separate storylines. However, I didn’t think the romance between them worked. I didn’t feel that the two of them had really interacted enough for their feelings to be realistic. To be quite honest, I would have been more interested in a book exploring a potential relationship between Rowan and Volta. In comparison to Citra, Rowan spent a lot more time with Volta…and seemed to actually get to know him more.

I liked the inclusion of the writings from the different scythes. Those allowed me glimpses into more of their personalities…and although I absolutely hated Goddard, his writings gave me more of a glimpse into his mindset and personality than I really wanted. And while I agree that the scythes shouldn’t actually enjoy their work…I can’t help but think how scarring it would be to someone’s soul to be in charge of mass gleanings like he was. It’s clearly bad enough for the ‘good’ scythes to glean one person at a time (Citra’s observation of Faraday after gleaning a child springs to mind)…I feel like someone having to mass glean like that would quickly self-glean after only a very short period of time.

All in all, this book was a really interesting, unique idea. While reading, I had a lot of thoughts of, ‘What would I do in this situation?’ And even though I’m not interested in reading about the romance between Rowan and Citra, I am interested in seeing more of both of them as individual characters…as well as more of the world itself…so I do intend to read the next book in this series in the future.

This book definitely ‘stood out’ for me among the crowd. I’d just been to the doctor’s and as a reward to myself, I decided to get a new book. (I actually walked out with two, but that’s another story).

As you can probably tell from the above picture, this book stood out mostly because of the colours. In a sea of black and white spines, the fiery orange/red was different enough to spark my interest. And when I looked at the cover and read the blurb, I very quickly made the decision to buy this book.

While the blurb itself didn’t suggest a book that was entirely unique (pilots able to transform mechanical beasts into warriors; women seen as lesser than men), it was interesting enough to immediately catch my attention. And I read the entire book in two days, so I can 100% say that the book far exceeded my expectations.

Zetian was a character who I was immediately able to connect with. There is a warning about domestic violence and abuse at the beginning of this book and that warning is definitely well-deserved. To give you an example, without going into too much detail, Zetian is subject to her feet being bound. There is some graphic detail, but it does fit a lot of her character, so I think the detail was necessary to understand her character better.

Most of this book completely subverted my expectations. The setup was basically that Zetian planned to kill the pilot who had supposedly murdered her sister, Yang Guang. And their first meeting seemed to follow the basic formula of a young adult romance: where it starts with the main female character hating the main male character, but eventually, they fall in love and the conflicts are resolved and….

And then Zetian kills Yang Guang.

I was honestly shocked. But it made sense, since the book was more about Zetian and her journey. There was actually romance included and even a love triangle, and even though I did find the scenes between Zetian and Yizhi a bit boring, I did like the way the love triangle was handled. Again, my expectations were subverted and it was nice to see the romance handled in a different way.

All in all, this book was one I really enjoyed reading. It was dark and intense to read, though there were some bits of humour that startled a laugh out of me when they came. The characters of Zetian and Shimin were the strongest part of this book and were the ones I cared the most about.

The book did end on a cliffhanger and I’m really hoping a sequel will be written soon. I want to know more about this world, about the characters and what was revealed at the end of the book. There’s so much more to the world that I would love to explore.

Brandon Sanderson is definitely a great fantasy author. Warbreaker remains one of my favourite fantasy books of all time and I really enjoyed reading Elantris too. So when I read the blurb for this novella, I was immediately intrigued. Even though it wasn’t really a fantasy book, there were some science fiction elements, which is another of my favourite genres.

The premise of this book was a really interesting one, with two detectives entering a ‘snapshot’ of their world. A snapshot is pretty much a recreation of a day, that law enforcement use to find information for cases they need to solve. While a snapshot could be seen as similar to a video or a tape recording, it’s actually so much more detailed than that, being an exact recreation of the day…down to everyone in the snapshot believing they’re real. However, because of this, it’s also possible for deviations to be introduced, since real world people’s counterparts can be influenced within the world of the snapshot.

At first, the plot of this book seemed quite simple. Davis and Chaz were looking for the location of a gun used to commit a crime in the real world…and then they were stuck there, waiting around for the next case they were supposed to be investigating.

As the book went on, there was a nice thread of tension in Davis’ reactions with his partner. It was pretty clear that Davis was building up to something that was going to happen…and while it wasn’t clear exactly what it was, it was obvious that it was something that would change things entirely.

One thing I found quite interesting was the concept of the badges that showed people in the snapshot they weren’t real. Chaz seems to take an almost perverse pleasure in it, while Davis does feel guilty when he accidentally uses that badge instead of the law enforcement one. I did like that and the other contrasts between the two of them.

The other big plot of this book was the Photographer, whose victims added a deeper element of tension and suspense to the book. While the snapshot wasn’t real in and of itself, what it was showing was real…and it was pretty unsettling to think about that happening in the real world, underneath all of the people going around their normal routine.

All in all, I really enjoyed reading this novella. The world was a really intriguing one and one I would like to see further explored. I’d also like to see more of the characters introduced in this novella and the contrast between the world of the snapshot and the real world. It definitely felt like an introduction to a much wider world.

So. This book was one that immediately caught my attention when I was in Waterstones some weeks ago. The cover is very pretty and immediately caught my eye and the blurb sounded intriguing. And I did read some of the start of the book, just to make sure it was one that I would enjoy reading. It took me a couple of weeks after finding this book to get my hands on it, but when I finally did, I was really happy to read it.

I found the main character, Teo, to be really engaging and relatable. It was really easy to care about him and I could immediately see the divide between the Jades and the Golds in the world of this book.

I really liked the obvious references and uses of Aztec mythology. It was really interesting to see those kinds of sacrifices carried through to the modern day, where the characters had cell phones and used Instagram and TikTok. While it clearly wasn’t a case of people getting their hearts ripped out every day, the Sunbearer Trials clearly linked in to that…and the legend about Sol at the beginning of the book, and the sacrifice they made to keep the Obsidians away from people, was such an integral part of the world, I felt like I was a part of it as well while I was reading it.

I was really happy to see that Teo’s wings finally caught up to what his true gender was…although I found myself getting really irritated on his behalf at reading how so many people around him just touched his wings without asking for permission. I mean, that should be a normal action! Ask for consent! (Of course, I say that, but as I type this, I’m reminded that some people seem to consider a pregnant woman’s body as something they have every right to touch, so….) Anyway, it was really sad to read that Teo had got so used to being touched without his consent, it didn’t even occur to him that Aurelio was holding back because he hadn’t received permission.

Speaking of Aurelio, I didn’t much like him (or his sister) at first during the book, but it was hard to hold onto that dislike the more I read of his and Teo’s interactions. By the end of the book, I was kind of wishing that they would end up together. I could feel the chemistry between them every time they interacted.

My other favourite character was, 100%, Niya. She was such a down to earth character who brought some needed levity to the book, even while she came across as more of a hero, a true hero, than many of the other so-called Golds. Plus, I loved the way Niya and Teo worked together to try and keep Xio alive, even though Niya could have easily pulled ahead of the two Jades. She didn’t even consider it, which made her rise a lot in my estimation.

The book didn’t end the way I thought it would, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It did end on a cliffhanger, which I hadn’t actually realised was going to occur…and now I’m annoyed, because I have to wait for the next book in the series and who knows when that will come out?

Ahem. Anyway. I really enjoyed this book. Yes, it had Hunger Games vibes, but it definitely stood away from that series. I enjoyed it a lot and I want to read the next book in the series. A solid four out of five stars. If you’re on the fence about reading it, give it a try!

After receiving this book as a birthday present from my sister and two of my niblings, I was really interested in reading it. The cover looked absolutely beautiful and the blurb immediately caught my attention.

I really liked the setting of this book. It felt like there was a lot of Chinese culture used (at least, I assume it’s Chinese, as that’s the sense I get reading the book), which sort of made me think of Firefly, where people used Chinese as easily as they used English. But I found it particularly interesting to see how important the hospitality/tea ceremony was, even in interactions that were fraught with tension…such as Rice Fish’s interactions with her son, Hồ.

Speaking of Hồ, I had some very mixed feelings about him. On the one hand, I thought that his actions were causing him to cross the line into being a truly villainous character. His alliance with one of the main antagnoists only served to make me see him even more as one of the bad guys, especially when it was clear some of the pirates weren’t willing to honour the deal they’d made to offer protection to those who’d paid for it. However, as the book went on, Hồ seemed less like a villain and more like someone who’d seen a relationship between his mothers that was, for all intents and purposes, only a marriage in name.

Speaking of the Red Scholar, while she didn’t actually appear in the book, having been killed before the events of it, her shadow seemed to fall over everything. And what I saw of her, I really disliked. It didn’t truly seem like she’d ever cared for Rice Fish, just using the mindship for her own ends and caring little for the fact that their actions and lack of relationship had a negative impact on Hồ.

I really liked the concept of the mindships, although I would have liked a bit more information about them. For instance, how did they have siblings? I would have liked to see more of Crow’s Words in this book. Compared to a lot of the other characters like Tám, Cám and even Tiên), he was very much more of an enigma and that only made me more interested in him.

Some of the politics in this book were very confusing, but I really appreciated the fact that Rice Fish did have dreams and ideals. They might not have been entirely realistic, but they did add an extra layer to her character and made her feel more real as I was reading the book.

On the whole, I did enjoy this book a lot. There was a great slow burn with the romance and the visuals of the characters, particularly Rice Fish, were really well-written. I’m definitely interested in reading more books by this author, and from the same world as this one, in the future.

The story of Peter Pan is one I’m more than familiar with, having seen the mythos and the character appear in many different forms (Disney’s Peter Pan, Hook, Once Upon a Time….) The blurb of this book was extremely intriguing, especially since the focus was more on the so-called villain of the story of Peter Pan: Captain James Hook, the fearsome pirate captain and Pan’s nemesis. Or, in this case, a man who found himself washed up on the shores of Neverland and was forced into playing a deadly game with an immortal child…or whatever Pan actually is.

I haven’t read the prequel to this book, but I found this to be easy to follow even so. It was so interesting to see the different characters reacting to the time they’d spent in Neverland. I was very intrigued seeing Wendy and her relationship with her daughter. It was really strained and it was really good to see that there conflicts between them that needed to be dealt with. It was also great to see the outside conflicts with Jane training to be a doctor and how she’s had to deal with that, considering this book is set in a time where women were seen as less than men.

The glimpses I had of Neverland were intriguing, especially when it came to James’ interactions with Pan and the role he was forced to play for the amusement of something that is clearly not just an immortal child…though I would have liked some more detail about what exactly Peter Pan was. I also wasn’t enirely sure what had happened to Pan, other than his shadow being sewn back on. It didn’t seem like it had killed him, but whatever he was seemed to be completely removed from any type of reality.

I did find the concept of Neverland existing in so many different times all at once to be really interesting, although it did get confusing at times. And the idea of the characters existing at once in the real world and their ‘shadows’ in Neverland was a pretty intriguing one as well. I really liked seeing the flashbacks between James and Samuel, even though the beginning of the book made it clear that Samuel was no longer in the picture. It lent the flashbacks between James and Samuel a more bittersweet feeling, knowing how things would inevitably turn out.

I liked that this book was just as much, if not more, about the family relationships as it was about Neverland and that shared history. Pan’s beast manifesting itself in their world was a really good way of having more tension in the book itself.

I really liked that, despite his best efforts, James couldn’t get past the shadow of Captain Hook. Even despite his best attempts to remain civilised, it was obvious that Hook was lurking not even that far below the surface, even before it was made clear that James let his darker side out during his time living with the man he loved. That made me incredibly sad, as even if that violent part of him had been there before he was trapped in Neverland, Pan clearly did something to bring that side of him to the surface, making it impossible for James to live a normal life, or even be happy, with Samuel.

The flashback scenes with Timothy and seeing what happened with him were heartbreaking, but I couldn’t really blame Wendy for the actions she took. And just like everything else that happened in Neverland, the past clearly had a lot of negative effects on the characters in the present.

All in all, this book was really good to read and I enjoyed being able to see Captain Hook as, while not exactly a hero, definitely more than just a villain. I would really like to read Wendy Darling at some point in the future and see more of just what Peter Pan actually was.