This was such a fun book to read. Not my usual genre, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel starting this but as soon as I read the first page I couldn't put it down until I knew everything that had happened. 

It was a great combination of The Hunger Games, Legendborn and the film Ready Or Not. It definitely doesn't shy away from the horror or thriller element and the tension is written fantastically, with the reader never being able to take anything at face value for the confusion and weaving of truth and lies throughout.

The ending was brutal and messy and desperate in all the best ways and wrapped up the story in a way that felt truthful and satisfying for the characters. 

I think this will be the start to a great children's fantasy series, but the pacing was a bit off for me and lead me to struggle slightly. It seemed simultaneously very fast but also like it was taking too long for things to happen. I liked the characters and I think getting to know them better in the later books and learning more of their backstory will be really interesting. 

The animals were also a great addition to the story and really made it - Nara and the wolves were fantastic and their personalities were very enjoyable. I'm also looking forward to the dynamic between the Wolf Queen and her daughter when they come face to face again, and learning more about what happened between them too. 

An enjoyable story that sets up the rest of the series well and promises to be full of adventure and magic. 

With every new book I read from Olivie Blake I'm falling more and more in love with her writing. I love the poetic quality to it and the chaotic nature her dialogue is always written is messy and real and beautiful. I loved all the different mythologies that were used in this for the Creatures and adored having Death itself as a character and having it's own narrative viewpoint at the beginning of the book. 

I was sceptical about the cast of characters going in because I think that's what I struggled with in the Atlas books but I think they're all equally well-developed and you get to know each of them well. The way they all interact with each other as a group is written immaculately, but this is true for the individual pairings and smaller groups too - I would love to read short stories/novellas about all the characters after the novel ended. 

I thought the romance subplots all worked really well too - they were present enough to have a pay-off in adding to the characters themselves and the stories without feeling shoved-in, but they definitely weren't the focus of the book either (possibly excluding Fox and Brandt) which worked really well. 

I absolutely loved the Game sequence and watching the characters move through the Game and best each other. The way it jumped between (manipulated) memories and the present added so much to the story and really made the reader feel immersed in the Game.

Another great hit from Olivie Blake!

Another hit from Lauren Asher. Absolutely adored the relationship between Jax and Elena and I loved how it also went a lot deeper and how there was a lot more to this than just the romance. I understand the reasoning behind the ending but it took the enjoyment out for me a little bit, and I wish we saw some more of the side characters but I still really loved it!

I wasn't sure what to expect from this retelling but I ended up really enjoying it. The entire book was filled with an eerie sense, and that spine-tingling feeling that something is wrong, and the dread when you begin to realise Romeo's behaviours before Rosaline does. 

I think using Rosaline to expose Romeo's character and having this as the focus rather than the traditional star-crossed-lovers tragic ending was so much more well-suited to the modern age and made for a really interesting story, and Rosaline as a character was the perfect protagonist. She's naive but quickly learns the harsh reality of the world, and experiences so much of what women still go through today that even in this historical setting you felt like you could really understand and relate to her and know what she was going through. 

A fantastic retelling of a classic which both manages to capture the original whilst completely being its own story too.