I met an adorable alpaca friend at the weekend. The owners had put a poem on the gate to ask not to feed them rather than the usual angry looking signs (which are fair enough, someone fed a pony a roast dinner a few months ago). The poem drew us in, and then this adorable face appeared.

I read and reviewed Holly Jackson’s As Good as Dead last week. I’m sort of in two minds about it, it was good, but I also wish she’d not made Pip do what she did. Will be interesting to see what direction she goes in with future books now that Pip’s story is over. *sob*

Keeping to the young adult crime fiction theme, I also reviewed The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson, inching closer to my 20 Books of Summer goal.

I just finished listening to The Secret Barrister’s second book, Fake Law, which was just as enlightening and educational as the first. I think they are doing a great service making people aware of what a mess the government and media have made of our justice system. This was my anonymous book for Popsugar.

Last week’s five star read was The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (received for review) which surprised me with all its warm and fuzzies. I do wonder if last year shaped the way this series went as it was quite a dark concept to start with. Anyway, I loved it, review coming soonish!

And I also read The Black God’s Drums by P. Djèlí Clark which had potential but its short format didn’t really work, it needed more time to do worldbuilding and character development. I feel he is just better at the longer formats because he has interesting ideas that need a bit of space to take shape. This was my “DNF on TBR” book for Popsugar’s most ridiculous prompt. I had previously started it but was having trouble grasping what was going on so put it aside for when I had more mental capacity.

 

No new books this week…at least I don’t remember any! However the summer bookshop crawl is coming up so I’m sure that will change. I don’t have any locations near me so I’ll be participating virtually, and that just means I won’t be limited by what I can carry.