Hey everyone I know I havent posted in a considerable amount of time but I have been battling with illness for a while. I want to be completely transparent on here so here goes.
I have been suffering with a nuerological disorder for ten years, a disorder that has come to completely change me as a person and take away who I really am, after several tests I have now been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It has taken so much from me that I refuse to let it take my books away as well.
We have also had a house guest that was unwanted and refused to leave – the rona or as I like to think of it the virus that shall not be named. Nearly 14 days in and still positive – but on the plus side ive got to read loads of books so I cant complain.
This page will soon be completely active again with lots of reviews and other bookish topics coming your way.
Conspiracies abound in this surreal and yet all-too-real technothriller in which a deadly underground alternate reality game might just be altering reality itself, set in the same world as the popular Rabbits podcast.
It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air–4:44 pm. You go to check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize it is April 4th–4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole?
Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses our global reality as its canvas. Since the game first started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. Their identities are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more deadly the game becomes. Players have died in the past–and the body count is rising.
And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K–a Rabbit’s obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, the alleged winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts or the whole world will pay the price.
Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline and Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake. If I didn’t have such an affinity with wolves, I would absolutely be wanting my spirit animal to be a rabbit right now, and not just any rabbit oh no, no cuddly bugs bunny for me
I want a badass rabbit that wants me to follow it down a rabbit hole into some crazed wonderland that I may never return from.
So why the tangent on rabbits and not talking about the novel? Well buckle up.
This is a dark nerd gamers paradise think DBD meets D and D with masterful twists and turns that makes you feel more than any computer game ever did or could – yeah it is that good. If you love your games on the obsessive, intellectualy and highly playable side then you will love this book.
Imagine playing a game where the it is the world but more than that it takes over everything you have and becomes so much more than just a game.
I refuse to spoil it for people but OMG what a rollercoaster ride and I never wanted to get off, I was adoringly satisfied from opening page to finishing page and I just wanted it to keep going. 5 stars really isn’t enough.
In an alternative present-day Lisbon, a small percentage of the population have been diagnosed as Gifted – having telepathic or telekinetic powers. Along with the power comes a stigma and suspicion that Gifted Inspector Isabel Reis with the Lisbon Police Force knows only too well.
When Isabel is called to investigate a mysterious and violent death which hints at Gifted involvement, she knows it’s more than just her personal reputation on the line. In a society where Gifted individuals are already viewed with mistrust; Isabel is hiding her own secret and knows she has to tread carefully as a conspiracy emerges and the body count rises.
The first thing that I loved about this novel was that it was set in Lisbon – a setting that I have not encountered in many books so that was a refreshing aspect and the author gave so many vivid descriptions of both the setting and the food in the novel, that I genuinely felt like I was reading this sat on the streets of Lisbon. Some of the translation was slightly off but that did not bother me in the slightest and took nothing from the reading of the novel.
This sci-fi crime thriller – even just those words feel me with pleasure than I can say – is set in a present day yet alternate Portugal where a political party is leading the agenda to rid those of the gifted with telepathic or telekinetic abilities. It really is so refreshing to read crime fiction that has a fresh new twist. The characters are well written and I enjoyed getting to know them and see them develop as the story developed.
This was a thrilling, highly inventive and incredibly gripping novel and I really don’t want to give anything away by going into more detail but you really need to read this book whether you like thrillers, crime, sci-fi, dystopian or just something new then this book really needs to be in your TBR pile. 5 stars.
Faking a love story is a whole lot easier than being in love . . .
The world can see that international A-list actress Whitman (“Win”) Tagore and jet-setting playboy Leo Milanowski are made for each other. Their kisses start Twitter trends and their fights break the internet. From red carpet appearances to Met Gala mishaps, their on-again, off-again romance has titillated the public and the press for almost a decade. But it’s all a lie.
As a woman of colour, Win knows the Hollywood deck is stacked against her, so she’s perfected the art of controlling her public persona. Whenever she nears scandal, she calls in Leo, with his endearingly reckless attitude, for a staged date. Each public display of affection shifts the headlines back in Win’s favour, and Leo uses the good press to draw attention away from his dysfunctional family.
Pretending to be in a passionate romance is one thing, but Win knows that a real relationship would lead to nothing but trouble. So instead, they settle for friendship, with a side of sky-rocketing chemistry. Except this time, on the French Riviera, something is off. A shocking secret in Leo’s past sets Win’s personal and professional lives on a catastrophic collision course. Behind the scenes of their yacht-trips and PDA, the world’s favourite couple is at each other’s throats. Now they must finally confront the many truths and lies of their relationship, and Win is forced to consider what is more important: a rising career, or a risky shot at real love?
If you’re looking for a bit of escapism, this could be the book for you. It’s a bright and sassy novel about celebrity and social networking and it will certainly transport you from your day-to-day life, that is, unless you happen to be a rich and famous film star, or one of those celebs who’s just famous for simply being rich and famous – think Paris Hilton.
You’ll have fun trying to work out who Win Whitman Tagore and Leo Milanowski are based on. I was certainly reminded of a few celebrity stories.
Win is a young British Asian film star who has to deal with the casual racism and prejudice that comes her way on a daily basis from people in the film industry in which she works. Her mum is being treated for cancer, her father died before she became famous, and she relies on her assistant and her publicist for support, as well as her best friend Shift, who’s a musician who’s written a top 40 hit.
Leo is a rich and famous young man who has a vast trust fund to fall back on, and who is basically looking for an easy path through life. He gets drawn into a pretend relationship with Win which is purely for the benefit of the media, so that Win can maintain a screen presence that will make people want to see her films and make her studios rich.
So, Win and Leo embark on a seven year long carefully choreographed “relationship” that will keep everyone wanting to see her in films. And it works. She’s nominated for an Oscar.
I suppose you might have guessed that surely the twist will be that one of the two falls genuinely in love with the other. It doesn’t happen the way you expect. Win and Leo spend a lot of time fighting and hating each other. If you want to know if they finally get together, you’ll have to read the book!
There’s a lot of name dropping in here of sites like TMZ, Buzzfeed, the Daily Mail, and so on. It’s right up to date with contemporary references, so it feels very modern and spicy. There are some sex scenes.
There are also some literary references including Jane Austen, Infinite Jest and Middlemarch.
The racism strand of the story is what I found most engaging. Win’s struggles to be seen as an actor who can be successful as well as British Asian feels very accurate, and very timely. I found it so frustrating that Win had to put up with seemingly innocent remarks – for example the use of the adjective “exotic” to describe her. She doesn’t tell Leo about this, because she’s trying to find her own way through, and in spite of the fact she is a bit spoilt and selfish, she’s also a strong character who I wanted to succeed. Leo’s character felt less rounded to me, but I liked the characters of his mums, and of Win’s mum too. They felt real.
I completely loved this. So much tension, angst, humour, and atmosphere, and stellar writing. So, all in all, this struck me as a great read for when you’ve had a busy day and you want to escape to the bright lights of Saint Tropez and Hollywood.
On the eve of her twelfth birthday, Beatrice Crosse runs away from her adoptive home only to encounter the ghost of England’s most famous prophetess. The witch offers her treasure, but can she be trusted?
Bea must wrestle her past to discover the witch’s secret and find her way home.
The book is full of excitement, pathos and magic. The descriptive and colourful writing vividly evokes each scene in the reader’s mind. The reader is carried alongside Bea feeling her emotions, fears, anger and sadness and hoping and praying that she will be able to work through and come to terms with her young problematic life. I love the idea that everything and everyone, good or bad, past and present are connected, influential and important. Themes very poignant in these present times.
I have had a lot of experience with both adopters and adoptees and so I am more aware than most of the difficulties that these young people have been through previous to their adoption, most of which would seem impossible to many people. Therefore, this novel plays a very important part in literature in the fact that it brings attention to the struggles that these young people go through.
The novel is a stunning read which beautifully weaves reality with story, myth and magic. Fully transportive, it sensitively approaches themes such as identity through the eyes of an adopted child. It provides a valued, reflective and positive nudge towards recognising inner resolve, power and strength, while painting a vivid landscape surrounded in empathy.
It is an immersive and powerful book which highlights struggles with identity, time and place, and is an important read for young people today. As well as adults! I would therefore recommend this book to young people and adults alike. A fantastic story with a vital message.
For centuries, residents have foretold the return of the Dreamwalker—an ominous figure from local folklore said to lure young women into the woods and possess them. Yet the boundary between fact and fable is blurred by a troubling statistic: occasionally, women do go missing. And after they return, they almost always end up dead.
When Kai wakes up next to the lifeless body of a recently missing girl, his memory blank, he struggles to clear his already threadbare conscience.
Miya, a floundering university student, experiences signs that she may be the Dreamwalker’s next victim. Can she trust Kai as their paths collide, or does he herald her demise?
And after losing a young patient, crestfallen oncologist, Mason, embarks on a quest to debunk the town’s superstitions, only to find his sanity tested.
A maelstrom of ancient grudges, forgotten traumas, and deadly secrets loom in the foggy forests of Black Hollow. Can three unlikely heroes put aside their fears and unite to confront a centuries-old evil? Will they uncover the truth behind the fable, or will the cycle repeat?
This debut novel is filled to the brim with folklore and analysis of the characters is masterfully subtle yet effective in that the reader believes they are reading a story about a crazed and demonic woman that is terrorizing a town but in actuality it is an examination of anxiety, grief, loss, identity crisis and everything else you go through in fantasy realms.
The writing is beautiful and the author develops a beautiful visual scene in an extraordinary way. She has developed scenes that are so real it is almost overwhelming and can almost play with your emotions and mind.
The narrative is the point of view of three different characters and each one had a different tone/voice which really gave the impression of different characters talking and was an aspect that I love but is often rare in fantasy books.
As well as the characterisation and the narrative I also like the romance aspect. It was only a small aspect of the novel but an important part because it allowed the reader a moment of desire and a break from the darkness.
Overall, I loved the book and would give it a solid 4 stars due to the pace at the beginning being a bit slow for me.
It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mother’s house, setting her life on a startling new path.
Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tíve, Yolanda’s uncle and keeper of the family’s history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesn’t think he can live up to.
The Five Wounds – which refer to the five wounds of Christ – takes place during Holy Week in New Mexico, where a religious brotherhood called the Hermanos Penitentes recreate the crucifixion. Amadeo Padilla is a most unlikely Jesus, who has experienced the five wounds of the soul, including rejection, betrayal, and humiliation. His young and immensely pregnant teenage daughter, Angel, whom he deserted as a child, arrives at his door as he prepares feverishly for the role.
The story is beautifully powerful and the author has really filled out her story with wonderful narrative and introduced us to characters so raw and real that they stayed with me long after I finished the book.
The theme is love both as a wonderful thing and an intense challenge and this is evident in the presentation on Angel’s baby who is both a happy baby who brings joy but also presents with a fair share of challenges in more ways than one.
I adored this book, I adored the writing, I adored the characters and their gritty authenticity tried to slow down but I just could not stop reading. 5 stars
A wonderful timeless story aimed to younger readers, that would nevertheless, fully appeal to adult readers, will be instantly reconnect with her own inner teenager. This is Lily Jennings story, sixteen-years-old Torontonian, open, modern, blogger and ready for adventure and escape her helicopter parents. And Lily has a great plan: She is going to Japan in year-study-abroad program with the WorldFriends organization, something both her parents can come on board, it’s education after all. To be honest, Lily is more interesting in strolling through Shinjuku, enjoy Tokyo’s street life and wear the total stylish uniform of the Koen Gakuin, the elite school where she will be filling in for her “exchange sister” Moemi Tanaka who is currently in her own study-abroad year in Italy. Lily has all planned out, living her best life for a year, blogging for her fans, in a dead-ringer for her favourite manga ‘Shinjuku Days and Nights’ version. Only a couple of days before the Japanese school years begins (April 1st) Lily arrives in Osaka, full of plans, dreams, and expectations. Just two days orientation and she will be on her way to the Koen Gakuin and her ‘Shinjuku’-dream. However, Lily begins to realize that the program might be harder than she expected, but even so, she could never be prepared for the series of unfortunate events surrounding her journey, it begins with her ‘exchange sister’ deciding to come back early, following by the school denying her a study-place, now that the class is already complete. WorldFriends finds a solution, sending her to Ajimu, a far cry from what she expected. Mr. & Mrs Fujino are nice enough, but don’t understand anything she does or says, their daughter Fuyumi seems to openly despise Lily while fully ignore her, the only silver lining is Ryohei, who is in fact adorable, speaks a passable English and is eleven! years old. The new school not only doesn’t have any fashionable uniform, it doesn’t in fact have one that fits her, and the other students don’t seem to give a yen about her. But Lily is resilient and tries, for week on weeks, to get WorldFriends to find a solution, that brings back to her dream, to Tokyo, the Tanakas, the Koen Gakuin. As time passes, and Lily’s expectations get constantly challenged, she slowly finds that fate usually don’t give you want but frequently in the end exactly what you need. The narrative is told by Lily herself and Lily and the reader bond immediately, embarking together into the journey into an unknown culture, contrasting our own preconceived opinions with subjective perceptions and the factual reality, until we (aka Lily) are able to gain a full tridimensional picture. An amazing story, captivating and enticing, real-life at its best. Regardless whether you have any experience with cultural exchange travel, this is a story that will mean different things to different readers, but will never be meaningless. Loren Green succeeds in bring to life characters, settings, and situations, offering accurate depictions of Japan, in general and its cultural nuances in particular, which is a very welcomed added bonus, instantly recognizable for any Japanophile and incredible interesting and immensely valuable for those who aren’t.
All 14-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Thomas wants is normalcy. But a global pandemic prevents him from having anything close to a typical teenager’s life. When Wolfgang discovers his father dead in bed from the coronavirus, his world is thrust into even more turmoil and chaos. Wolfgang and his 16-year-old brother, Van Gogh, know that they must do everything they can to stay together and avoid foster care. In a cross-country road trip, they hit the road in their father’s Pontiac to find their only hope: the mother who abandoned them a decade ago. As they journey for answers to their mother’s whereabouts, they uncover devastating mysteries about her that they never could have imagined. Just as they near their destination, tragedy strikes once more. Wolfgang is drowning in fear and pain, but he must pull it together or lose his family for good. Can this broken adolescent find the strength and courage to Breathe Deep & Swim?
Firstly, I finished this book in a day – actually a few hours – This work compels you to set other things aside and keep turning the pages as, from the beginning, you feel invested in the main characters; almost certainly seeing relatable aspects of yourself within at least one, if not both of them.
The greatest success that the author achieved with this story is that the reader can easily imagine being in the shoes of Wolfgang & Van Gogh within our time; faced with harsh realities, fears and trying to find a light at the end of the tunnel within a deepening darkness. She also doesn’t shy away from touching from topics such as covid 19 and the ripple effect that this disease has caused through believers, non-believers and the indifferent, secrets and their long-term effects, racism, the destruction that broken hearts can bring and the inner struggles that every human has.
The novel is so well written that at times I had to remind myself that this is in fact a work of YA fiction and not a memoir of a young person living through the pandemic.
I cannot recommend this book enough please pick it up and divulge in this 5 star read
I received an ARC of Feeding the Gods by Elizabeth Harrison in return for an honest review through NetGalley. Thank you so much to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
Roberta, Rosie, Sandra and Linda meet at college in the 70s and remain constant friends, despite life’s up and downs. The sudden death of one of the friends leads the others to suspect that a slimming drug she had been taking was perhaps to blame.
Was this a wonder drug or a threat to life?
The friends start to uncover long-held secrets and betrayals both personal and professional, but the pharmaceutical industry is not yet finished with them. Feeding the Gods is a thriller that addresses friendships, the different roles a woman must take on through life and the power of the drug giants.
Feeding the Gods is a novel that follows the lives of four women who meet at a university party in the mid-1970s. Then, when thirty years later, one of them dies in suspicious circumstances, the fallout that follows uncovers lies and betrayals.
As they seek out the truth, lives are put in danger as they take on the power of the drug companies who are happy to prioritise profits before safety, and the government who are desperate for ways to cut the healthcare bill.
Elizabeth Harrison along with Dee Harrison and Liz Buxton have created a wonderfully powerful thriller that spans between 1970 and 2005 and is set in Manchester and Cheshire within the United Kingdom and reflects on life long friendships, the power that the pharmaceutical companies wield, the corruption of government and the roles that women undertake throughout their lives.
I found the premise of this story fascinating and although initially attracted to the genre and the front cover I found that I could not put this book down and more than that I want to read it again and again. It is a bold storyline that is engaging, thought-provoking and witty. The authors were not shy of posing powerful and tough questions and they followed this through with a punchy narrative that was packed to the brim with character.
I would recommend this to anyone that fancied something new to try or wanted to read something hard hitting. Thank you NetGalley for another 5-star read.
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