bookswithlydscl's Reviews (639)

Solid, and generally enjoyable. Possibly would have worked better as an audiobook - much like Daisy Jones and the Six it's purely made up of interviews, but it's a quick and fast paced read and kept it engaged.

Generally interesting. Didn't fully grab my interest but I liked taking a look at the history of Britain through its islands

Love a destination thriller, especially one with a gameshow/ reality tv gone wrong and this one had a great mix of glamour, seediness and mystery.

I've never watched Love Island and have no intention ever to but this gave me a great idea of what to expect. It was an interesting mix of characters, a couple of twists played out as if it was a twist for TV and a great final quarter where it all ramped up.

Really enjoyed this overall and especially enjoyed cringing at the characters on display and their desperation to win as it took me right back to the early days of Big Brother.

Fun, thrilling, seedy, glamorous - I would expect nothing less from this type of story.

I know this is a beloved book but for me was a solid middle of the road - 2.5* 
I can totally appreciate the writing but it felt too long, and too repetitive at times with so many middle sections that just felt unnecessary. I'm enjoying watching Fitz grow even when it's so frustrating seeing him make the same mistakes over and over and I do like the world that's been built. I guess I'm a more lightweight fantasy reader  that doesn't need a story that's as long as these are when I could see it being told just as effectively in a few hundred pages less.

Still, I will complete the trilogy and I'm not going to lie, I'm daunted at the page count / hours length but let's see how it goes.

Welcome to Camp Castaway, an adults-only, digital detox retreat based at an old campground in the woods and a place teeming with secrets and ghost stories that our characters discover may have a little more truth to them than they realise.

When disgraced sitcom star, known to her fellow campers as Willow, is in need of an escape following a very public cancellation after an ill-advised tweet, her agent suggests taking some time away at the camp to let things die down. Unbeknownst to Willow she's walking into living horror movie and will face the fight of her life. If she thought being cancelled was tough now she has to keep her head (literally) to figure out who has decided the camp is a ripe hunting ground and how she's going to escape.

I loved this book from minute one and read it in one sitting. It's a dark story with plenty of action, a tone that was very Scream 3 in style and with a final quarter that upped the ante, and the gore. I had a few minor niggles (the ending stretched belief a little and sometimes Willow was a little too much in her head) but I loved the horror, and the commentary on cancel culture and the impact of social media worked well to give us connections between the characters. 

Overall it was so well executed and will really appeal to fans of 80s/90s teen horror and slasher movies. So for me this was an absolute win. After all, an isolated summer camp slasher with final girl vibes is an automatic thank you, and yes please for me and I'm looking forward to reading more from Josh Winning in the future!

4.5* rounded up

Thank you to Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House | Michael Joseph and Netgalley for inviting me to read an eArc of "Heads Will Roll" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I loved the concept and the layout but I didn't love the horror movie at the heart of the story.
I've heard the audiobook is great so perhaps I'd have a different feeling if I'd listened to it but right now I'm sitting at a solid sense that I liked it overall but didn't connect with it in the way I'd hoped I would as a horror movie fan.

A highly readable destination thriller. Has all the components you need - glamorous location with plenty of secrets and lies. I enjoyed the split timeline - 1989 and now and the short, punchy chapters that jump between character POVs.

Nina was a bit of a cartoon villain but aside from that, the cast of characters was fine (which is good for this kind of thriller) and neither so dislikeable you didn't want to read about them nor so likeable that you got attached to them.

Nothing groundbreaking but a fun and quick read which I just really enjoyed (and read in just over 8 hours) and recommend for fans of this style of thriller.

A really lovely and endearing collection of short stories.

Like When The Coffee Gets Cold this is a collection of stories that all have a central connection- in this case a dish from memory that needs to be recreated, a mysterious sounding diner with a one line advertisement meaning it can only be found by those who are most determined to find it.
It can be picked up and put down. Don't treat it like a novel but instead enjoy the brief slices of life and the bittersweet memories the food evokes. 

I thought this was just lovely overall and it being cosy we don't get the in depth details of the detective work as that's only partially important to the story. What is important are the people in the present and their reactions to the tale of the detective work to figure out the recipes.

Looking forward to book 2.

Welcome to The Undying Tower, dysoptian YA fiction at its best and getting a well deserved re-publish under a new publisher that will hopefully put it on the map and allow audiences to finally get the full trilogy.

With echoes of The Hunger Games and Divergent series, we are introduced to the Avalonia Zone, an area made up of multiple territories including what was once Great Britain. It's a society in crisis after the discovery that a small percentage of the population has stopped ageing causing massive overpopulation, and food shortages, ultimately causing the ‘Undying’ to be blamed for the state’s problems, banished to the fringes of society, and punished for every minor infraction. Following an explosion at a Correction (public execution), 16 year old Sadie Abbott has found herself being named a Terrorist and the leader of the explosion plot and has been transported to The Tower, a corrections centre for Undying youth with a mission to route out the rebel leaders. As she digs deeper into life at the centre and comes to know her fellow inmates she soon realises that everything is not as it seems and there is a far darker undercurrent running through the centre's acts and deeds.

What follows is a truly engrossing story of a small band of unlikely allies trying to uncover the secrets of the centre which ultimately go to the heart of Avalonia society and trying to figure out how on earth they can escape with their lives.

Honestly, this book had me in its grip from word one. I love dysoptian, post-apocalyptic fiction and Melissa Welliver delivers us a complete and complex world that unfolds to us as readers gradually throughout the story. The world building is thorough but not laden with bulky exposition. We're given enough throughout the story to build a rich and vivid pictures as the action develops simultaneously. We're also given characters we want to root for and come to care about quite quickly. Sadie, our main character is a initially shown as being a naïve and young teenager who is smart and caring but who can adapt and learn in order to survive and her band of allies in The Tower are also generally well realised and give you enough hooks to care about them (especially Freya).

The story itself is strong - adventurous, bleak, sad, tense and violent. It moves along at a breathless pace and you can't stop reading as you want to see how things shake out and see who survives and who doesn't. There's a little repetition in some scenes but that also works well to reflect the confusion and uncertainty our characters are facing. As the opening book of a trilogy though it's a well balanced story arc that leaves a lot of room for the remaining books to tell the whole story whilst also being pretty satisfying as a book by itself.

I for one can't wait to see how things pan out in Books 2 and 3 and hope to see more of the Undying society to explore further the more profound questions the situation brings about what it is to potentially live forever and also what it is to live in a discriminatory and inequal society where you hold so little power.

Highly recommended for fans of dystopian, science fiction and post apocalyptic fiction.

4.25*

Thank you to NetGalley and UCLan Publishing for a digital review copy of "The Undying Tower" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

I have no idea how true this is or not but I know that I enjoyed it!