A cover love impulse buy, The Hunting Party turned out well above my expectations. I do love thrillers but I tend to read YA thriller more so it took me a little while to get into this one - but once I was into it though, I was hooked. I loved the way this story was told with two timelines, before and after the body was found so that for most of the book I didn't even know who'd been murdered let alone who the killer was. I didn't guess any of the plot twists (this book made me feel a fool) and so I was creating wild theories with each piece of uncovered evidence. The Hunting Party is a smart and well written book that has be me eager to try more of Foley's books.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

Was there any chance I wouldn't buy a Shuri book written by Nic Stone? Absolutely not. This is a middle grade aged novel focused on our beloved tech princess trying to save the magical plant that gives the Black Panther their powers. I really liked the way Shuri was developed. She wasn't the hugely confident Shuri that we usually see, but that personality shone through in a way that was very authentically teenage. The potential was there, she just needed to grow into it. I loved that. The adventure was fun, with cameos from characters I was excited to see, and was a great development of a beloved character. Which is no less than I expected from the incredible Nic Stone.

I was honestly a bit skeptical of Caraval because of the masses of hype around it but picked up the ebook to buddy read with a friend. We finished it in four days. Once we'd started we just couldn't put it down. I haven't read the sequels yet (though epilogue aside it honestly works as a standalone) but will certainly continue. The magical world of Caraval is unlike anything I've read about recently and I'm a sucker for 'games that might kill you'. I would totally play along, get lost in the magic and die. Honestly.

The characters really made this book. They were interesting and developed and I love a book full of Can't Be Trusted types. While reading it I had approximately 200 theories of what was going on and I was miles off. Which made the end reveals more powerful. My only criticism is that the end was a bit convenient and rushed. I would have preferred it a bit darker to suit the tone of the book - but maybe I just like to see characters suffer!

4.5 stars rounded up bc fuck it i loved this

Rating: 2.5 stars

Full review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/the-rules-by-tracy-darnton-review/

Thanks to Stripes Publishing for the review copy of this book, it hasn't affected my honest review.

This book was coasting at a steady 2.5 stars for me for most of it, to be honest, but for some reason I just couldn't put it down. I bumped it up to a 3 stars on Goodreads for the ending though, which I really liked. I liked the premise of the book and I've always enjoyed books with a split timeline, in this case split between the current timeline where Amber is on the run from her father and the past where she is trying to escape him. It kept me reading, because there were little hints dropped throughout of stress-tests and Amber's other secrets, and I was keen to find out exactly how they unravelled. I wasn't totally blown away by the secrets that were revealed. I guess I kind of expected something more intense or for it to be covered in a more detailed memory section, but that might be my own preference for dark and horrible books showing through!

The plot was interesting, with Amber's estranged father finally finding her after she'd run away to safety with her mother, a well-intended but ultimately unhelpful attempt by local foster services to reconnect them - with no idea of the truth about her father. I actually really enjoyed the 'prepper' aspects of this book, because I love watching tv shows about preppers and while I'm not an expert it felt like Tracy Darnton put in the research on this book. It was also easy to see how Amber's father fell from regular prepper to a little too far. It was especially on the nose in the current climate!

I think my only real issue was a problem with connecting to the characters. I liked Amber just fine, but felt like she was constantly going against her own rules and thought processes. For someone who 'trusts no one', she sure did trust a lot of people! And Josh was kind of, the worst? He tricked her into going to see the father she was running away from. Which like, don't do that? But I concede that it probably would have been much less interesting if Amber had been sprinting around completely alone in the Brecon Beacons for the entire book or something. And I'm glad that it wasn't a romance between Amber and Josh. The ending was excellent, and the kind of resolution I was hoping for for Amber, with twists that I didn't predict. So overall, a shaky three stars for a fairly quick read.

2016: Cried on the train over this one

At the end of One of Us is Lying (my review: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/review-one-of-us-is-lying-by-karen-mcmanus/ !), we left the Bayview Four cleared of all suspicion in Simon's suicide, despite his and Jake's best efforts to implicate Bronwyn, Nate, Cooper and Addy. We found out that the entire thing was orchestrated by Simon, a suicide attempt with a manifesto, and that Jake had known about Addy sleeping with TJ from the start and had been working with Simon to implicate Addy for his murder, intending to get her arrested. We also saw everyone trying to find a new normal, and Bronwyn and Nate on shaky ground (writing this before OOUIN, I'm praying they worked this out).

I was beyond excited for this book, and I'm glad it lived up to my personal hype. I've been talking about this with a friend constantly, and we were actually talking about it when my email came through telling me to collect my order. I've never left work so fast in my life.

Comparing this to One of Us is Lying is pretty inevitable. One of Us is Lying is a book that turned me onto a whole new genre, so to me at least it's pretty iconic. One of Us is Next totally stands up to its predecessor. I found the beginning of the book to be a little bit slower than OOUIL, but I liked that about it. If Karen McManus had just recycled the template for OOUIL, it would have felt like a cop-out. In the beginning of this book, we get to revisit old characters while we meet our new POV cast, and I imagine most people, like me, were desperate to find out what had happened with our Bayview Four, Bronwyn, Nate, Addy and Cooper, in the year between the two books events. I loved our new POV characters just as much as I loved the Bayview Four. Maeve, as we already knew, is Bronwyn's bad-ass, computer hacking, leukaemia surviving younger sister. Knox is her best friend, an intern at Until Proven and reluctant theatre kid. Phoebe works in Maeve's favourite haunt, Cafe Contigo, and her mum is wedding planner to everyone's dream Bayview wedding - Ashton and Eli.

Once the truth or dares start up, they go hard, and Phoebe and Maeve's truths pretty much ensure that everyone will want to choose dare. From then on, the book starts to pick up the pace, and by the time Unknown claimed their first casualty, I was racing to the finish. I actually ended up throwing the brakes on during some of the final twists, putting the book down to chase my best friend's dog around because I was starting to guess what was going on and honestly? I didn't want the book to be over yet. If anything, the mystery aspect of One of Us is Next felt even stronger to me than One of Us is Lying, because I spent a lot of the book really, really uncertain on who was involved, and I love that. I recently read A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (review for that will be up in a few days) and had the same experience. I love it when a mystery book can pull off a rug pull that makes me go "well shit" because the evidence was there the whole damn time.

I really love the way that Karen McManus writes her characters and the relationships between them, and I love the diversity in the types of relationships they have. Being a teenager is super messy, and in One of Us is Next we have endgame relationships, on-and-off relationships, disastrous ending relationships and better-off-friends relationships. That last one? That's one I really love to see, because I think if more of the teenagers I went to school with had better examples of better-off-friends relationships then half the dramatic break ups could have been avoided. There's also a scene where a character acknowledges another character's heightened emotional state as a reason not to be intimate, and I love that too. Maybe I'm over-sensitive to some things but I'm tired of seeing characters getting together when one is in extreme emotional distress and acting like there isn't a power imbalance there.

Full post: https://inkandplasma.wordpress.com/2020/03/05/alex-rider-undercover,-by-anthony-horowitz-(world-book-day-bonus-review!)/

World Book Day 2020 is happening on March 5th! It's the 23rd annual World Book Day, and the aim is to promote reading for pleasure in children and young people in the UK and Ireland and to give them a book of their own! Around 15 million National Book Tokens are sent out to under-18s, and they can swap those tokens for either one of fifteen exclusive World Book Day books or get £1 off a full price book or ebook. There's lots of information about World Book Day and ways to get involved at their website here: https://www.worldbookday.com/about-us/what-is-world-book-day/

When I saw that one of the World Book Day 2020 books was an Alex Rider book, I obviously had to have it. I had a ten minute panic thinking I wouldn't be able to get hold of it, before Waterstones saved the day. I ordered it for the absolute bargain of £1, and I definitely didn't shriek like an idiot when it showed up. Onto the review!

The Man with the Wrong Shoes

Set just after Point Blanc (my review here) The Man with the Wrong Shoes is a short story about Alex causing chaos at Brooklands (what else is new) when he sees someone behaving suspiciously at the construction site that used to be the science block before Alex accidentally blew it up. With a government official and a shady individual on site, it must be time for Alex to cause trouble and nearly die!

This was a really lovely short adventure. A bit of excitement, a bit of danger and a few death-defying stunts wrapped up in a small package. I can't believe Alex's teachers ever believed for one second that he was ill with the way he behaves. He's not even sorry! MI-6 don't even put effort into covering things up! These teachers do not have enough suspicious paranoia, I swear.

Double Agent

Double Agent is a prequel, and reading it the same day I finished Snakehead is giving me chills, seeing John and Helen Rider, and Ash all in the same place? It's too much. I never thought I'd actually see that fateful day with the plane 'crash' and I'm 110% sadder for it. It's interesting to see John Rider in the 'flesh' though. I've not read Russian Roulette yet (I have literally been avoiding it since 2013, don't @ me) and it's weird to see him as a whole developed character but interesting. Maybe I'll survive Russian Roulette after all.

Metal Head

Watch me get soft about Yassen Gregorovich, paid assassin and baby-El's first weird crush. I've been avoiding Russian Roulette for seven years (as tragically mentioned above) because I knew Yassen's background would wreck me. I was not expecting to find a short story about how Yassen became an assassin. I absolutely love this character, so this story was very welcome. It didn't hurt that there's a kill in this short story that is unbelievably cool, and only Yassen could ever have pulled that off.

The White Carnation

This short story side-swiped me, wow. This was beautiful and powerful. I was already on my 'Yassen as an anti-hero' high horse before. I'm not going to go into detail, because this short story was powerful because of its ending, but this story shows Yassen as a character more three-dimensional than the generic 'assassin' he could have been left to be. He has a genuine respect for life, and to him work really is just work. That was exceedingly clear in The White Carnation, and I can't believe I've had this story in the back of my copy of Russian Roulette for years and I've never bloody read it.

This was a brilliant collection, and I'm so excited about having found it. Make sure to check out what your local bookstore is doing for World Book Day and get involved in the fun!

Rating: 2.5 rounded up to a 3.

“If adventure comes my way, I will run to greet it. I will grab the world by its leash and make it heel.”

I feel pretty conflicted about this one. The prose was intoxicating. It was honestly poetic and beautiful, which is something I loved about Boneless Mercies. And I liked Torvi, the main character. She’s obsessed with fairytales and stories, and models herself off the characters that she loves. I think a lot of readers feel like that about their favourite characters, and it made her super-relatable. The side characters were a lot of fun too. Ink, Madoc and Sven and her arrows were all lovable, and I adored the relationship between Torvi and Gyda.

Unfortunately, the plot of this book didn’t land with me at all. I read the entire thing because of how beautiful the prose itself is, Tucholke has a way with words that means I’ll still go out of my way to pick up anything she writes, but Seven Endless Forests just didn’t work for me. I loved the breadth and variety of the lore being included, but there was just too much crammed into every page. It felt to me like a series of RPG side-quests all crammed into each chapter to cover as much ground as possible. I liked the idea of every character having their own quest, and the implication that everybody’s a hero, but when we saw every single one crammed into 368 pages, it felt like nothing had enough time to get any depth. And because the quests had to be resolved so quickly to move onto the next character’s quest, everything just felt a bit convenient. Deus ex machina’s everywhere. It really was beautifully written, but I wasn’t invested in anyone’s story and if the writing wasn’t so gorgeous, I probably would have DNF’d it.