Incoming!

AKA Showcase Sunday

After last week's splurge, I'm kinda happy to have a small pile of paper books this week. Both were ones I'd decided not to ask for because I was trying to be restrained...and then they turned up anyway. I thought The River of No Return was going to be a bit long but, whilst the book is large, the font size is also large so I might be OK with it...I like the sound of it anyway. Pretty cover AND time travel FTW.

Very sadly, the author of The Silent Wife died recently. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a huge book this summer though, the time is definitely right for psychological thrillers.

For review:
The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison (Headline)
The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (Penguin)
Acid by Emma Pass (Random House)
Tumble & Fall by Alexandra Coutts (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
True Blood Volume 1: All Together Now (Diamond Comics)

Bought:
Seoul Survivors by Naomi Foyle

Freebies:
How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman


Showcase Sunday is hosted by Books, Biscuits & Tea.

What's gone on the wishlist?

It's been a while since I did a wishlist post...possibly because I've been sneakily buying books instead of saving them for later. Bad hands! But I have been adding books here and there. First up is Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. The fact its title has my name in it caught my eye at first and then it's about a girl with "mad red hair" and "mismatched clothes". It could be me! Actually it sounds really sweet and is set in the 80s. I like these pre-internet age YA novels. I can't remember where I heard about Far From the Tree but it sounds like an interesting piece on children with differences and how families adapt. Some Quiet Place is on there pretty much for that cover (don't think there's any plans for a UK release). I've seen Night Film land in a few postboxes lately and it sounds like a thriller I'd be interested in.


I really enjoyed Doppler last year and I think it was Kit who brought my attention to Naive. Super. Sister Spooky's enthusiasm for the sequel to Geekhood: Close Encounters of the Girl Kind was catching and these books sound so cute. To combat that cuteness there's The Locked Ward: Memoirs of a Psychiatric Orderly which I think I can blame the other Ellie for. Now I've got back into the Kitty series, I also popped the next book Kitty in the Underworld on the list.


I spotted The Golem and the Djinni in The Bookseller and knew straight away it was something I wanted to read. Sister-Sister is a South African book and I don't think there are any plans for a UK release. Dream London has a Joey HiFi cover; nuff said. Charlaine Harris will have a what-happens-next Sookie book out in October, so we know what happens to our favourite characters in the future and it's meant to be full of artwork too. Yay for After Dead!


Sometimes I pay attention to what Scott is raving about; Central Reservation is a ghost story set against the backdrop of foot and mouth. Joanna Kavenna was speaking on one of the Write the Future panels and I thought her book, The Birth of Love is one that's going to be either brilliant or horrendously hard to read. Stung is doing the blog rounds at the moment; love the cover and, well, deadly children! I always knew they were pests. ;) I was pawing the cover of Red Moon in Tesco the other day. It is lovely in person...am really tempted to grab it.


Sadly The Program is has only been published in the UK as an ebook, which is a shame as I really like that cover. The idea of depression as an epidemic has me intrigued. Who can resist an invisible girl story? Invisible sounds like so much fun. I cannot resist an end of the world story either, so Tumble & Fall has been added too. After finishing Stray Souls, I definitely want to read more of Kate Griffin's books and The Glass God is the next one in the Magicals Anonymous series.


So the last two additions are a bit random (I bet you're thinking my whole reading taste is random by now). The Bookseller finally wrote up the panel discussion from London Book Fair on New Adult fiction and had a selection of titles in the week's edition. I haven't really been convinced by this genre/marketing ploy yet but I promised when something came along that sounded interesting, I would give it a try. I admit, both these titles caught my eye by flashing their non NA style covers at me. The Lost Boys started out on Wattpad and seems to be a sexy ghost story. Crash is about a girl with her sights set on Juilliard and might actually be properly passionate about it (oh and I imagine there will be some sexy stuff). Actually, the current covers are the kind that are a bit off-putting (all kissy-kissy black and white) but S&S have a new edition coming out later this year.


Have you read any of these? Anything I should bump up the list or re-consider? Feel free to leave a link to your reviews in the comments if you have them!

Stray Souls

It started with a Facebook group; Weird Shit Keeps Happening to Me And I Don’t Know Why But Figure I Need Help. When Sharon Li starts to find herself turning invisible as she walks the streets of London, she has no one to turn to for help. So she starts a support group, with tea and biscuits. But there is something missing in the city and as a shaman, it’s up to Sharon to do something about it. Sharon would just like to keep her crappy job serving coffee, but the Midnight Mayor and the goblin Sammy have different ideas.

It was raining when Sharon Li became one with the city.

The rain may have had nothing to do with her moment of profound spiritual revelation but is worth mentioning just in case. The kebab she was eating definitely had nothing to do with it but will prove relevant in the sense that if she hadn’t dropped it onto her trousers, she might have stood in the rain a little longer marvelling at the majesty of the universe, which could have had long-term medical impact and thus affected the course of events yet to come.

I didn’t realise the Magicals Anonymous series was a spin-off from the Matthew Swift one but I don’t think it matters; this is the first of her books I’ve read and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love the idea of the support group and the fact that these mythical creatures embrace the modern world. How often do we read in fantasy that something about their very nature stops them from using mod-cons? It’s refreshing that Sharon googles stuff to find out her answers (even if it’s not always that helpful).

There’s a vampire with a rare condition who can only drink group O blood, a situation only made worse by his obsession with hygiene and screening his victims first. There’s a wonderful banshee who loves modern art and, in order to be polite, writes everything down on a whiteboard instead of wailing like a banshee. A girl who turns into a flock of pigeons and a druid who is allergic to magic. A troll with a taste for human food. And the fate of London in in the hands of this motley crew.

“Might I have another cup of tea?” Rhys was at the kettle before Mrs Rafaat had completed her request. This was something he did know how to accomplish. In the confusion of recent hours, replete with human sacrifice, blood-soaked monsters and a CEO with an ambitious and unusual business model, tea was a lighthouse in a stormy sea.

The dialogue is fantastically real. People don’t talk in complete, grammatically correct sentences all the time. The speech is broken, punctuated by uhs and ums. Little snippets of the city filter through to Sharon, presented in incomplete sentences but somehow completely capturing the mood of a city; all the secrets it contains and tableaus of everyday life. The city itself is a character and I love these sorts of fantasy books that are creeping out of the UK recently. Even down to the rubbish; I just adored the scene where they are attacked by plastic bags. Not to mention the evil bankers. Brilliant!

I did find Sharon overly negative. She has a real attitude problem and the tone is a bit snarky in places, but as her tribe rallies around her, she starts to become more likeable. Her anger is her shield. I don’t think it helped that Sammy had a similar personality, so when it was just them it was a bit much to take. When interacting with the other characters, things picked up.

I will definitely be keeping an eye out for book two this summer, The Glass God, and I might well be tempted to check out her other books for adults. Kate Griffin is the pen-name of children's writer Catherine Webb.

Goodreads | Amazon | Waterstones | Hive

Across the Universe

Amy and her parents are embarking on a voyage of a lifetime. Several lifetimes. Cryogenically frozen in order to survive the 300 year journey, they are heading toward a new planet, with the hopes to colonise it for humankind. But Amy awakes 50 years early. Separated from her parents, she must learn to acclimatise to her new life on-board Godspeed. As she finds out more about the community keeping the ship running, she comes to learn her awakening wasn’t a simple malfunction.

Across the Universe starts off with an amazing scene featuring the cryogenic freezing process. It’s not pleasant or full of hi-tech sleekness. It’s such an uncomfortable scene, first watching her parents and then as the goo envelopes Amy, it’s incredibly claustrophobic. So I was all set for an intense, outer space story awaking on an empty ship. This probably flags the fact that I didn’t really read any descriptions of the book beforehand, just on the recommendations of it being a good YA sci-fi read. When it turned out the ship was populated by a rather dystopian society, I was a bit disappointed. I thought “oh no, no another one” but once I got into it, the community made some sort of warped sense. Hang on, this was a dystopia that had been thought out (and was on a space ship).

There’s a suitable amount of clues along the way to give you a chance to work out how they got that way. It touches on topics such as segregation and how communities can fear the different; how their normal can become so different to ours, for no reason other than environment. There are plenty of harsh truths in this world and it’s not sugar coated for a younger audience.

I did think Orion’s identity was a bit obvious. The ending also felt a bit rushed, especially after such care was taken building up the world. However there were two sorts of endings and the very end was just so emotional. A simple act that breaks your heart. I will be interested to see how it continues in the next book.

Goodreads | Amazon | Waterstones | Hive

Also reviewed @ Jess Hearts Books | Gone with the Words | Winged Reviews

Incoming!

AKA Showcase Sunday

The gravitational forces of The Works pulled me inside yesterday. They have lots of new stock and have changed the 3 for £5 offer to 2 for £3! So I carefully selected two books only instead of leaving with armfuls of series I'll never get round to reading... I also spied The Great British Tuck Shop and an audiobook of Grimm Tales. I have been half way through the hardback for months now and I was enjoying it but novels seem to be taking over. I like the idea of them being read to me, so hopefully I'll pick up where I left off and finish aurally.

I don't know why I went into WH Smith...I had been doing the charity shop rounds looking for Point Horror (no luck). Maybe I didn't want it to feel left out. I did a little squee when I saw one of their half price books was The 5th Wave Also picked up Going Vintage and a fab Star Wars activity book (why yes, it is for me and not a small child).

So, the supporting of my local high street done, I also had a few purchases arrive by post. The pesky Book People had free delivery last weekend so bought Scarlet, which I may hold off reading until the final book is out, and A Hunger Like No Other. I keep picking up Kresley Cole books here and there and thought it was about time I got the first book in the series so I can work out if I like them or not. (UPDATE: I went to add this to my TBR on Goodreads and it was already there, so maybe I have 2 copies now...) Everyone seemed to think Angelmaker should have won the Clarke Award this year and it has clockwork bees, so it was about time I got a copy...

The Sea Sisters

When Katie Greene is woken in the night, she is convinced her sister Mia has just got the time difference wrong. Six months earlier, Mia had announced she was off travelling, taking her best friend Finn with her. But it is not Mia on the phone; it is the police at her doorstep. Mia is dead. Suspected suicide. Katie refuses to believe that her vivacious, impulsive and undoubtedly alive sister would take her own life. In her belongings is a travel journal. Katie makes the decision to follow her Mia’s footsteps, saving each entry to read in the location it was written. This is her last lifeline to her and her last chance to find out what really happened in Bali. A place Mia was never meant to be.

"Me and my sister used to do it when we were younger - just float and listen to the sea." But that had been years ago, before Katie had become afriad of the sea, before they had drifted apart. Mia missed the summer afternoons they used to spend at the beach dive-bombing from the rocks or searching the shoreline for shells. The Sea Sisters, they had been nicknamed as children.

I get the feeling Lucy Clarke wanted to write about her travels and her love of the sea and built up the story around that. The first half of the story has the feeling of travel writing but without the informal quality of a first person narrator retelling their experiences. Saying that, there are some wonderful descriptions of the sea. Mia’s travels kept to the shoreline, echoing her childhood in Cornwall and bridging the past to the present. Both sisters fondly remember growing up together on the beaches of home, only growing up removed them both from their love and into the big city. Mia’s travels seem to be trying to recapture the times when she was happy and carefree.

I took an instant dislike to Katie’s fiancé, Ed. Perhaps this is what made me struggle to get into the book until half-way, when something is revealed that backs up his standoffishness. He wants Katie to be her bland, safe self. The Katie that doesn’t inspire empathy as you read. But Katie does start to transform as she follows in her sister’s footsteps.

It’s Mia’s story that really grabbed me, around the point she meets Noah, a surfer who instantly captures her attention. I did feel sorry for Finn, a loyal and lifelong friend to both women. This marks Mia’s spiralling emotions, ups and downs, and finally I cared about what really happened to her. By the end, my eyes were tearing up and I was genuinely moved by her final moments.

As she listened to the fierce drumming of his heart, she realized that they were no longer hugging: she was holding on.

Whilst the main theme of the book deals with the turbulent relationships of two sisters who both love and hate each other at points in their lives, I liked the way she wrote about guilt. Katie is fortunate to have a journal to tell her what happened but after a suicide, those closest to the victim will constantly be picking at their actions. Is there something they did that tipped them over the edge? It’s so easy for every individual to blame themselves and sometimes sharing those fears is the best way to realise you can’t lay the blame on one single thing.

The Sea Sisters, published by HarperCollins, is Lucy Clarke's debut novel and is now available in paperback and ebook formats (the Kindle edition is currently only £2.99). Thanks go to the publisher for providing a copy for review.

Goodreads | Amazon | Waterstones | Hive

Also reviewed @ Reading in the Sunshine



Disclosure: I received a copy of this book free of charge for review purposes only. Receipt of a book does not guarantee a review or endorsement. My reviews are my honest opinion and are not biased for the purpose of personal gain.

Bout of Books 7.0

Goals + Updates

Time devoted to reading:
We're back on track with Bout of Books starting on book group day again. So I probably won't be contributing much on the Monday and then I'll have to write up my notes which seems to take me much longer than writing a review for me. So Wednesday to Sunday I will be reading as much as possible (evenings only during the week) to make up for lost time.

Goals:
De-stress
Do not waste hours clicking around on the internet without purpose
Comment on as many participating blogs as I can
Read at least one personal read
Read lots of digital shorts to make myself look productive
Join in two Twitter chats.

Books to read: