booksare42's Reviews (608)

 

 Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing and inviting me to join this tour. Thank you to Tiny Tree Books for providing me with a digital copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Pax and the Missing Head is a dystopian middle-grade adventure. This book takes place in New London, a country plagued by civil war. This is a book with a memorable main character, great friendships, cool technology, and some tense moments that make you want to keep reading.

I found Pax to be an immediately likable main character. He’s an orphan and an underdog. The odds are stacked against him, but he has determination to succeed. He’s the kind of character that you want to succeed. I also found him to be very clever, especially with technology, and I appreciated his problem solving skills.

My favourite thing about Pax and the Missing Head was the friendships between the characters. At the beginning of the book, before Pax makes it to the Scholastic Parliament, he really doesn’t have any friends. While at the Scholastic Parliament, he makes friends and learns all about friendship. I liked that Pax, Meghan, and Samuel all brought different things to their friendship group and I thought that Briony was a good edition to their group.

The technology in this book was very neat and I liked how it played a part in the story. I loved the two robots that Pax built and that they had a bit of personality that made them like family to Pax. Some of the other technology in this book that I thought was neat were the watches that mapped out the best way to class, the hover cars, and the drones.

Pax and the Missing Head takes place in a futuristic London, a country divided and plagued by civil war. I liked how the author twisted this familiar setting to turn it into something new and unique. This book had tidbits of information throughout the story that explain the politics and world-building in an easy to process manner. While politics do play a role in this story, as they do in most dystopian settings, they didn’t bog the story down. There were some dark bits in this book though, which might be tough for some young readers to process.

I thought that Pax and the Missing Head had some decent action scenes. There were some moments that felt very tense and I wasn’t sure who was going to come out on top. These scenes added a lot of excitement to the story and they made me want to keep reading.

One thing I wasn’t a fan of was the bullying in this book. Pax is a victim of bullying. His superiors and fellow workers at the workhouse bully him. Some of the students at the Scholastic Parliament bully him. Bullying is something that I find difficult to read and this book had a lot of it.

The other thing I didn’t love about Pax and the Missing Head is how familiar it felt. This book had a lot of familiar tropes in it; a chosen one type character, a boarding school with a point system, a friendship group, and a nefarious plot going on behind the scenes. There isn’t anything wrong with these tropes, but at times the story felt a bit too predictable.

If you’re a fan of dystopian settings and futuristic technology, you should check out Pax and the Missing Head and add it to your TBR. 

 

 Thank you to The Write Reads for organizing this blog tour and to the publisher, Silver Thistle Press, for providing me with a copy of this novella. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

The Haunting Scent of Poppies is a haunting novella that takes place in the days leading up to the first Christmas after World War One. This novella follows Charlie, a petty criminal on the run, whose most recent theft might be more than it seems.

In this novella, Charlie steals a rare book that should set him up for life. Unfortunately for Charlie, this book is haunting him and it causes him to experience the horrors of war that it’s previous owner experienced. Suddenly he’s surrounded by the stench of mustard gas and the haunting scent of poppies is following him everywhere he goes.

The Haunting Scent of Poppies does an excellent job weaving the flashbacks of the horrors of trenches with the post-war setting that the story takes place in. The reader is seamlessly transported from a quiet English town to the front lines and back again, in a way that makes them feel unsettled and looking over their shoulder. The novella also left me wondering what was real and what was just a hallucination, which added another haunting layer to the story.

While I didn’t like Charlie, I did appreciate how complex of a character he was. It’s difficult to figure out who Charlie is because he’s constantly changing his story to blend in and take advantage of the person he’s talking to. His sins are catching up with him and I was on the edge of my seat wondering if he’d be able to get away from them.

Overall, The Haunting Scent of Poppies is a very haunting and mysterious read. It’s the perfect story to reach for if you’re looking for something spooky to read on a long winter night.