matmatmatty's Reviews (128)

This is the children's version on a previously written non fiction book on black history in the UK.

I found this a very good primer into the vast history of black people within this country and even with the younger target audience this didn't seem too easy


If you are wanting to learn more about black history (and especially if you think the original Black and British is a bit daunting) please pick this up!

I'm really looking forward to reading the full book!

Not the right headspace - might try the audiobook but will try it again!

Not in the right headspace for this - will come back to it!

Found the writing quite confusing. Honestly I don't think I'm in the right head space for this but maybe will try again at a later date.
Will say if you're reading Zadie Smith for the first time, don't start with this one!

This wasn't exactly what I was expecting it to be. It seemed like it was a story about self acceptance within summer and probably a friendship story along the way.

I did enjoy the story but I think that some elements were not explored that well. I really liked the contemporary fantasy setting, and I liked how some real world issues were thrown in (the idea of American exceptionalism, colonialism, racism and rejection of "other"/non-conformity), but it could've been explored more.

Slightly controversial potentially, but I did like how the story ended with a potentially unhappy ending. Like we don't know what the consequences will be and potentially things will get worse. I think this could have been explored, but I think this could be a ploy to get a sequel - Fat Witch Fall maybe?

Overall, cute story that had a deeper world building than I thought, but could have had more exploration of it's topics.

I love Astrid, I love this story. I'm so glad I got more Delilah (because I also love her).

This story ticked all my boxes.

If I could give this more than 5 stars, I absolutely would.

This was an incredible story, told from 4 different perspectives, all across this incredible world built by Samantha Shannon.

The world building was so good and clearly had so much thought put into it, I genuinely will read this again to make notes on it.

I loved Ead, Sabran, Loth and Tané. Niclays grew on me after time but his characterisation was still incredible.

Cannot recommend this book enough!

A collection of short stories, sci-fi and fantasy.

I really enjoyed these stories - I cannot think of a single one that was meh and some of them I was almost sad when the story ended. Would love to have read more about those characters.

Favourites have to include The Narcomancer, The Brides of Heaven and Red Dirt Witch.

I loved this! A great story about family, belonging and love.

Other TWs: capital punishment/death penalty 

So I enjoyed this as a mystery - I was pretty invested and really wanted to find out who actually attacked Tiffany. The romance wasn't terrible, but it did feel like a mystery novel that stopped being a mystery novel to do some romance. 

I like my regency romance to be a slow burn and this was a little too fast for me, but if this was written as solely a romance, I don't think I would have hated it.

Not terrible but a bit jarring with the romance randomly coming in. I also felt the epilogue came out of nowhere and could have been hinted at a bit more during the story (felt like it was put there just to set up sequels).