Tag Archives: 4-stars

Review: Jenny McLachlan – Star Struck

Posted on by
Reply

Star Struck
Jenny McLachlan

Pearl is the bad girl. Rough, swearing, in trouble at school. It turns out that she has some really good explanations for why that’s the case – you’ll have to read on and find out.

9781408856130Oh yeah, who’s going to cheer for that entirely surprising ending? Uh, that would be me. I didn’t see that coming at all. Should I have? Were the signs there? I can’t remember.

This is the 4th book in the ‘series’. Four friends, four books. There is absolutely no need to read the first three though. I have a feeling that they all centre very firmly on the main girl, and so I think I could go back and read them even having read this novel without having had too many spoilers.

No no no. This is not the right book cover! Well it is… But it’s so much more vibrant in real life. Part of the reason I reviewed it was because I was sick of seeing the fluro pink on my bookshelf… No honestly, it’s BRIGHT.

Look, I wanted to give this 4 stars, but then again I thought I wasn’t quite absorbed enough by it to justify a strong reaction. Good teenage storyline and characters, just not enough real depth for me.

3star

Review: Kathleen Duhamel – Deeper

Posted on by
Reply

Deeper
Kathleen Duhamel

Claire Martin has married the lead singer of Deep Blue. There’s things in his past that are yet to be faced though, and it could all come tumbling down even as Claire’s bestie falls for the other man of Deep Blue.

deeper-cover-200x300I really enjoyed the first novel in this series. I don’t think I’m the target audience, but it’s refreshing to see some good new fiction aimed at older women – I don’t think there is enough there. Too much comes under the heading of romance or literature to me – how about a novel with some body to it? This novel is it.

We get to see some more sides to the band, and the lives of the famous! Claire is constantly fighting off groupies, old flames and a complete mess. Not to mention that she wants to maintain her own career, and yet not be absorbed by it.

I couldn’t believe Claire being ordered to turn herself in. Seriously, it was a single allegation, and since there was another person there who would have vouched for Claire, I think she should have and could have gotten away with it.

Sex scenes? Yes. Are they slightly awkward for a queer reader? Yes again. But really, they are well written, add something to the characters and make a difference to how the reader thinks about the characters.

Therapy! Ah, you good thing. Promoting people to go to therapy is one of the more helpful (but annoying) things someone can do.

Now, if I was the true target audience, I’d be a rereader of this one, and the first novel in this trilogy. As it is, I’m giving it a really solid 4 stars – go and hunt this book from Amazon.

4star

Review: Emery Lord – When We Collided

Posted on by
Reply

When We Collided
Emery Lord

Vivi is off her medication and determined to feel the whole summer in her body. Jonah has lived his whole life in that one place, yet now he is going to discover that strangers can help in the strangest of ways.

27235365I think it is more that their lives have already fallen apart, and that the collision is going to bring only good things. A big mess can only start to clear up right? Vivi is a disaster some of the time, but she at least has a good grasp of life (to an extent). Vivi are so different in what they know about the world, and together they can conquer anything.

The cover you see to the left is way, WAY more brilliant and bright in real life. I wanted to read this the moment I received it, even without knowing that Vivi had a mental illness. Drool. I jumped in, and then I was stuck. Stayed up past my bedtime and it followed me to work.

I’m not sure I can agree with the ending. OK, summer is over. But why, why, why? That’s all I can say about that. Ugh. Rationally I might know it is for the best, but it’s also really sad. Why shouldn’t things work out for everyone?

I couldn’t be any happier with this book. It has a bit of everything, it didn’t give away too much at any time, and the story kept progressing quickly. You can see Vivi and Jonah both changing in ‘real time’, and it feels like you are just a stroll away from them in Verona Cove, California.

4star

Review: Kylie Formasier – The Things I Didn’t Say

Posted on by
Reply

The Things I Didn’t Say
Kylie Formasier

Piper is a selective mutist. No, not a selective Muslim, like I originally thought when I looked at the blurb. A mutist. Someone who finds it impossible to speak to people outside their own family environment, or a friend they are very close too. Piper would like to speak, but her anxiety is so strong that she cannot overcome it. After having a major fight with a friend, Piper has transferred schools to try have a new start…

26891896I cannot be thankful enough for the novels that are normalising uncomfortable issues at the moment, such as bipolar disorder, dementia, depression, anxiety. These are the novels that should have always been out there. It is not that the number of people with mental illnesses has gone up (although this is true for the adult population), but our rates of diagnosing it are improving.

I loved this novel. Piper is plucky and yet shy at the same time. She does things in her own way, and makes dents in the world just by being herself. For one so quiet, she has a very strong voice. As you go along with her to school and through her life, you notice how she gradually speaks more inside her head, and then outside.

Love story alert! But I’m totally buying it. The thing is that Piper has never spoken a word to West, but she has written notes. It’s not like they don’t talk at all! It is more of Piper’s fear that she will never be able to talk out loud to express love that is the problem.

I didn’t understand why the coma was Piper’s fault. You play sport, you get hurt. It just happens, no big deal. my explanation is that when your child is hurt, it has to be anyone else’s fault but yours. Fear makes everyone act strangely.

I felt a little unsure about how things magically worked out for Piper at school, but good on her for getting up there and facing the bullies. I can imagine how impossibly hard it was for her, and I’d like to think it made a big difference outside just the community of her school.

I’ll be giving this one 4 stars. Well worth a summer read.

4star

Review: Harriet Reuter Hapgood – The Square Root of Summer

Posted on by
Reply

The Square Root of Summer
Harriet Reuter Hapgood

Gottie is still grieving for her grandfather Grey’s death, while a boy she broke up with and a boy who moved away come back into her life. Her life is increasingly confusing as she drops into the past, and loses hours of her present days as a cost for revisiting last Summer.

imagesThe premise of this book is so cool. Gottie is studying physics at school, and is interested in how time-travel might occur. Underlying her enjoyment of school is her fear of moving on to university. In order to motivate her, her physics teacher asks her to come up with a theory of time-travel, and then she will write a bright recommendation letter to get her into any college.

It was fascinating to eventually find out what was going on with everyone. Damn, so people can be so insensitive! I could have killed Jason. You view everything from Gottie’s perspective, so you don’t realise what she looks like on the outside to others. Is she selfish? Is she self-absorbed? Does she mean to be? Since I was already aligned to Gottie from the beginning, I thought she was wonderful.

You can suspend your disbelief in time travel, or you can be as critical as you like. Either way, you’re going to enjoy this romance that isn’t really a romance, again it’s exploring how different people deal with grief and loss. Who is to say that these things didn’t really happen?

4 stars for a teenage romance with a bit of a twist and some science.

4star

Review: Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski – Nightfall

Posted on by
Reply

Nightfall
Jake Halpern and Peter Kujawinski

On the island, there are 14 years of light followed by 14 years of night. When the night years come, the villagers leave the island as quickly as they can – but leave everything behind as if there are unknown people returning to their homes. Marin doesn’t understand – but she knows that when Line goes missing she and Kana will have to be the ones to save him from the dark.

23846037Marin! You great idiot. What were you thinking? You caused alllllllll of those issues. And then you wonder why people are mad. I guess you do sort of redeem yourself.

Ooohh, I didn’t see one of the big twists coming. Eeei! I get so excited just remembering back to it. I guess that was the turning point of the novel, and after that the surprises sort of ended, but there was still some movement. Just not as much as I might have desired.

The blurb on this book is great (in comparison to some others I have read lately). It doesn’t give too much away, and it lets the authors build suspense naturally. You really don’t know what is coming next. Honestly, the blurb didn’t make me excited to read it, but then I got stuck in it…

I totally understood the side of the woods’ monsters. And I couldn’t understand why the villagers wanted to come back for the days of light. What’s wrong with living in the desert? It can’t be that bad if you survive 14 years there.

The ending left me lonely and sad, and not knowing what would happen next. What will Kana do? Line and Marin have their lives all good to go (you know, since they are in love and there’s a whole bunch of other things in the way that will be fine), but Kana has nothing.

I’m giving this 4 stars. I found myself unable to put it down. It called to me. It’s not 5 stars though, because now that I know the ending, there is nothing left for me.

4star

Review: Yeonmi Park – In Order to Live

Posted on by
Reply

In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
Yeonmi Park

Born and raised in North Korea, Yeonmi was brainwashed to believe the Benevolent Dictator Family could read her mind and that poverty was normal. As a woman, she needed to escape North Korea in order to survive, which included passing through China as a human slave and a number of other atrocities.

24611623Some lines were truly funny, and required sharing with my partner, my workmates, the wider world! But others were thought-provoking and hard to take in. It reminded me in some way of Max – dictators being able to brainwash people into believing anything, including that they are immortal and that they can see inside sinners’ heads. This is a wholly true story though, and that makes it both harder and easier to accept that some people actually are evil.

I am not surprised about the human trafficking aspect, and that Park wanted to hide it from others even as she was being the poster child of successful escape. It’s something that creates shame, even if it is not the woman’s fault. Human trafficking is still slavery, and it’s something that has been around for too long before it started. The Purveyor was my first foray into this, and In Order to Live won’t be my last.

I’ve been enjoying non-fiction biographies/autobiographies quite a lot lately. I had just read a fantastic book before this one, and I couldn’t think about jumping into another fantasy book. This hit the spot for something a bit different to refresh me. I couldn’t put it down.

4star

 

Review: Kit Alloway – Dreamfever

Posted on by
Reply

Dreamfever
Kit Alloway

Josh knows, in an intellectual kind of way, that she is the True Dream Walker. Haunted by Feodor’s knowledge, Josh longs to create stability in the Dream that will help her to recapture the power she felt in the first times she walked. Instead, things are complicated by the reappearance of the Royal Princess who hasn’t been around for 19 years…

25663775There’s little bit of swapping between perspectives when they are all fighting in the Dream, which is not highlighted by different chapter breaks. This still works though because it feels like you distinctly stepped between each character in different places.

What I loved about this novel was that although the first book had been a fantastic stand-alone, this book follows on perfectly from where it left off. There isn’t anything that feels out of place, it’s perfect. I’d really like to know what happened to Josh’s original scroll though. Why don’t they keep multiple copies of these things?!?

Josh and Will are finally together! And then they aren’t.  And those stupid scrolls shouldn’t have existed in the first place. Seriously. Prophesies hardly ever go well. Even ones about Death.

Staging is where Dream Walkers can enter someone else’s dreams, and make it seem real – to influence them in a particular direction. There’s people who think this is a fabulous idea (even though it hasn’t worked out very well in the past) and those who want to protect against it. There’s a bit of science brought in here too.

It feels like it is a complete reality, a complete universe. There’s the World is where people live and then there’s the Dream which is where everyone goes when they’re sleeping. I can’t work out whether it’s only nightmares or all dreaming that occurs there. Then there is Death, and that’s where this novel comes into play with different little pockets of reality.

This is 5 stars. I went back and read Dreamfire first, and I couldn’t put it down the second time around either. I can’t wait for the third novel.

5star

Review: Antonio Simon, Jr – The Gullwing Odyssey

Posted on by
Reply

The Gullwing Odyssey
Antonio Simon, Jr

Marco the messenger boy really tries to stay out of trouble. When he is instead swept up into impersonating an ambassador, things in his life get far, far more troublesome than he could have ever imagined.

18310045This novel had some fantastic laugh out loud parts that I couldn’t help sharing with my partner. And then she laughed as well. I really enjoyed it for those moments, and the language twists and the sheer absurdity of the fights that take place.

Light fiction that I just couldn’t put down. I’m not going to profess that it has no ‘deeper issues’, but sometimes you just want to read something to chill and enjoy. This novel is it.

Did I mention that it has dragons? And that they are personified just like humans? And that I love dragons? I felt like I could have done with more from their perspective, but you know what? I was too busy laughing to pay too much attention.

Some of the text just seemed a bit clunky (I feel like this is my favourite way of describing a novel at the moment). The main thing was that some of the storyline elements weren’t wrapped up nicely throughout the novel. For example the contents of the package. I can’t say more without giving anything away… Perhaps this is something that will be explored in the other novels of the Gullwing Series.

I’m giving this 3 stars. Or 4 stars. I can’t decide. It’s not ‘average’, but it’s not ‘outstanding’ either. Undecided.

4star

Review: Iain Reading – the Dragon of the Month Club

Posted on by
Reply

the Dragon of the Month Club
Iain Reading

Ayana and Tyler meet as unlikely friends in a library. Together they stumble upon a book to summon dragons – with the only catch that you have to have specific materials in order to summon some kinds. After an experiment goes slightly awry, Ayana and Tyler will have to use their individual twirks to get things back to normal.

25033448The synopsis might not set you on fire, but I’d advise jumping right in anyway. The front cover might make you feel like it’s just for cutsie little kiddies, but really it isn’t. There are real issues being explored, it’s just that the backdrop is of fantastic dragons!

This novel manages to inform the reader about a range of other novels, which might whet the reader’s appetite for other novels. I was certainly interested to go check some other ones out! This is a novel written by someone who just loves books.

Some of the dialogue and imagery were a bit clunky, but I think that is just the formula of a middle-grade novel to an extent, to help support beginning imaginations. Certainly the others I have read in this area are heavy on the details. This one (rather than the one I am reading right now) gets the balance almost perfect.

Oh no. Ooooh no. I just went to GoodReads to get my hands on a copy of this cover, and found out that the next novel in the series isn’t even written yet! And that the author has a bunch of other things to write instead (which I already knew from the interview with him I did awhile back). I finished reading this one and immediately wanted the next one.

This is a 4 stars from me, and for the right audience (ie. younger than me), I would give it a 5. There’s enough magic and some literature and some friendship, and a little bit of everything actually so that something will appeal to everyone.

4star