The most downtrodden member of an influential family, Casiopea Tun dreams of a life far from her bullying cousin and endless chores but she doesn’t imagine that her much anticipated escape will be in the company of a Mayan death god or that her continued existence will rely on them completing a dangerous quest.

I am so here for the spate of fantasy fiction dabbling in less familiar mythology. Ideal for the many among you who love Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy, the prose perhaps lacks some of Arden’s lyrical grace but is more than made up for by the seamless integration of 1920s Mexico and Mayan myth. A compelling, female and decidedly no-nonsense protagonist, a dark and twisty plot and an array of beautiful settings, each vividly brought to life.

I will admit that it does feel a little formulaic. It is essentially a series of increasingly challenging boss fights sandwiched between various modes of transport and brief (but highly enjoyable) bursts of character development but I thoroughly enjoyed it regardless. Highly recommend and very deserving of all the praise it’s received thus far.

This was actually my second of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s book (which I actually didn’t realise until just now) and definitely won’t be my last! This book’s official publication date is the 23rd of July.

Big thank you to @quercusbooks and @netgalley for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I find it so hard to review books that I very much admired but didn’t really love. This is a very ambitious book that mixes media and relies heavily on intertextuality to create a story that is (and isn’t) focused on displacement, migration and voicelessness. I know that ‘timely’ is a bit of a book marketing buzz word but it’s a very accurate summary of a book framed by the current migration crisis in the USA.

A mother, father and their two children undergo a journey from New York to Arizona, understanding that their end destination will also mark the end of their cobbled together family unit. Overlaying this main narrative are the tales of ‘lost’ Apache tribes (one of the main critiques of the book appears to be the treatment of Native American voices as ‘lost’) and of children crossing the border from Central and Southern America seeking reunion with family or simply a better life.

There is a lot to admire here and it’s certainly very intelligently written but, for me personally, the abstract nature of the story got a little in the way of the overall impact. There were moments when I felt the full force of her brilliance but also moments that just fell a little bit flat and overall, it felt like a little bit of a chore to muddle through (I suppose a little like the monotony of a very long, motel littered road trip). Regardless, still very glad I read it and think that it’s inclusion on the Man Booker long-list is well deserved.

The Grace Year is a great piece of dystopian fiction with a real focus on the suppression (and power) of female voices and a very strong, quite bluntly wielded feminist message.

I’m not going to say too much because I thoroughly enjoyed going into this one mostly blind but there was a lot to enjoy about this book. It’s compelling and immersive, it doesn’t pull its punches and at its core there is a message of female strength, empowerment and solidarity in the face of insurmountable odds. Grim yet hopeful.

I did have a few issues. Despite a fairly wide female cast, there was very little character development for the vast majority of them. There were scenes that I think would have had significantly more emotional clout if the characters involved had felt like more than just one name in a list and sometimes they seemed to exist solely for their moment of shock factor. I think overall, and this isn’t something I say very often, The Grace Year could really have benefited from being a little bit longer! I enjoyed the vagueness of the setting (lots of room to make parallels with our own world, for our imaginations to fill in gaps) but I’d have loved a bit more character depth.

This is also very much a ‘chosen one’ narrative and as much as the trope generally doesn’t annoy me too much (I’d be an awful fantasy fan if it did), there were elements of the ‘MC has inexplicable, incredibly useful but kind of ridiculous skills’ that made me roll my eyes. There is a very general, blanket explanation put in place but it is stretched to the point of ridiculous at certain points.

A comparison to The Handmaid’s Tale and The Lord of the Flies is sure to set a very high bar but this is definitely my favourite, recent addition to feminist dystopia. I’m really hoping for a sequel and I think it’d make a great film!

A big thank you to Penguin for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

January is the ward of the powerful Mr. Locke and remains largely his responsibility as her father travels around the world collecting (by whatever means necessary) exclusive items for their benefactor’s collection of artefacts and curiosities. She remains the well behaved, crown jewel of his collection until she discovers something that turns her world on its head.

This is a beautifully written, languidly paced story within a story. It is a slow burn, it isn’t a rapid page turner but it is a story that I sank into like a warm bath (with less sweat, dizzy spells, boredom and wet-book-anxiety). The characters are well realised, the magic and adventure feeds on that enduring, childlike desire to unearth some secret magic that’s all too common among us bookworms, there’s strong POC representation and it doesn’t shy away from the topics of race and colonialism (all too familiar in turn-of-the-century settings of this kind). There’s also a dog which earns any book immediate bonus points.

I loved it and if you, like me, still quietly (or not so quietly) long to receive that letter from Hogwarts, to slip unintentionally into another world or discover some secret magic to the universe... I think you might just love it too.

You could almost call my mid/late teens my ‘Cecelia Ahern’ years. I was obsessed. I shouted at Alex and Rosie in ‘Where Rainbows End’, fell in love with an imaginary friend in ‘If You Could See Me Now’ and sobbed behind my sunglasses while I read ‘P.S. I Love You’ poolside.

My tastes have changed quite dramatically since then but when I saw that the infamous tear jerker was getting a sequel, I just couldn’t help myself. A HUGE thank you to @netgalley and @harpercollins for selecting me as one of five lucky humans to receive an e-ARC of ‘Postscript’ this month!

It’s been seven years since Gerry’s death, six since Holly read the final letter asking her to have the courage to move on with her life and she’s proud of the ways in which she’s grown and evolved. When she reluctantly agrees to talk about the letters on her sister’s podcast, she has no idea how many people it’ll inspire or the difficult journey that a group calling themselves the P.S. I Love You Club have in store for her.

I devoured this in one, tissue littered, snot soaked and salty-cheeked sitting. I didn’t find it quite as heart breaking as its predecessor BUT I challenge you to get through this book without shedding a tear or ten. Honestly, I’m still not really convinced that we needed a sequel but I did thoroughly enjoy Postscript, an intimate look at the long term effects of grief and what it means to embrace the future when it can feel like betraying the past. Just make sure you’re prepared with tissues.

When a book is compared to Nevermoor, How to Train Your Dragon and Frozen, three things that make me happy, it’s hard not to be dubious.

Ash is an unlikely hero. Feared by the villagers in the small, isolated stronghold his parents left him in, the only person who can be found to raise the troublesome lad is a similarly outcast, very gruff yeti by the name of Tobu. Ash longs for friendship, family and adventure and clings to the lullaby his parents left for him despite the villagers’ fear of music. Just as things become particularly grim for Ash, a chance of escape is offered by the arrival of the Frostheart, a Pathfinder sleigh captained by the fierce Tuk and her colourful crew. The Frostheart turns Ash’s life upside down, plunging him into a death defying adventure as he starts to unravel the mystery of his missing parents.

This is Jamie Littler’s first project as writer as well as illustrator and he has absolutely smashed it. I loved this book. The unforgiving, icy landscape is both bleak and intriguing, there are characters to love, to fear and to gradually warm to, there is humour and heart, suspense and heart ache and a narrative that has left me so desperate for book two.

Frostheart is everything I love about middle-grade. It’s a celebration of friendship, an exploration of difference and acceptance with a heavy dose of adventure and more than a dash of whimsy. The illustrations are just absolutely stunning, I can’t wait to see the completed artwork in the finished book!