Books. Cats. Nonsense.
There is a certain kind of magic that you get from books about books -- regardless of age range or genre, these kinds of stories will always warm my heart. I was absolutely thrilled to get the chance to read The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep before the UK publication date and was totally charmed by this fantastic book!
A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe is a book that caught my eye with its gorgeous cover, amazing blurbs (Nicholas Eames!), and fun premise. Despite buying it over a year ago, it sat on my shelf until January (typical) when I picked it up for a buddy read with my friend and fellow BookTuber Amber. Unfortunately, I came away from this book incredibly disappointed! The buddy read is the only thing that kept me from DNFing it early on.
Sometimes I don't have a lot to say about a given book, even if it's one I really love! Enter, the mini review. Take a look at two books I read over Christmas this year and really enjoyed!
The Arc of the Scythe series is a funny one for me, because while I really enjoyed the second book, Thunderhead, I nearly didn’t read it. Scythe had a great concept but I felt the main characters were poorly executed and Schusterman didn’t let his amazing worldbuilding and ideas shine. Therefore The Toll had a lot of expectation riding on it and I have to say, I didn't love it. What the hell happened in this book?
I read and really enjoyed Lucy's first novel, The Hunting Party, and was really excited to read more thrillers from her. There's something about her 'rich, awful people doing awful things and having awful things happen to them' plots that I absolutely love -- they're so deliciously dark and compulsively readable.
The Gutter Prayer tied for my #1 book of 2019, alongside The Bone Ships, and I was eagerly awaiting the release of The Shadow Saint. I was worried that the second book wouldn’t live up to Hanrahan’s incredible debut, however I should have had more faith! The Shadow Saint is a very different, but equally brilliant book.
Skyward was one of my favourite books of 2018 from one of my favourite authors. Brandon Sanderson never fails to write an engaging and exciting book, and his shift from adult fantasy into YA science fiction was an absolute delight. Naturally, I was beyond excited to read the sequel, Starsight. While I really enjoyed this second book, it did lack some of the charm of its predecessor.
