3.25 stars (because I can't decide whether it's a 3 or a 3.5)

Mare Barrow lives in a world ruled by Silvers. Silvers have special powers and silver blood while the Reds are just normal people like you and me and treated pretty terribly by the ruling Silver class. Through a series of events, Mare finds herself in the front of the royal family and ends up realising that she is something different. Not quite Red but not quite Silver either. Something in between. Now Mare has a foot in the door of the palace, while also lending a helping hand to the rebel cause.

I actually ended up liking this book a lot more than I thought I would. I have seen and read so many mediocre reviews I wasn’t really sure exactly what I would be reading and the bad reviews did end up with me putting this book off for so long so I was glad to hop on the chance of buddy reading it with Cherrie (YouTube/ Cherrie Walker).

To start off with yes, this book is very similar to The Hunger Games in several way from poor girl doing illegal things to help her family survive, a prim and perfect sister who is so much better than she is and a childhood friend who may or may not be in love with her. To be honest, everything about Kilorn screamed Gale, Gale, Gale to me. I actually really enjoy Lainey from GingerReadsLainey’s review on this book and she has a few well-spotted comparisons to other series like Cinder and The Selection which I didn’t pick up on but she’s totally right.

I don’t think the author helped herself in some parts with so many THG similarities, a small rewrite could have hopefully saved them all. Also the line "and even sparks burn” made me cringe so bad because it is basically “if we burn, you burn with us.” The Girl on Fire = Little Lightning Girl.

I did have some problems with Mare as a main character. She didn’t across as particularly anything to me besides being quite whiny and bland. There were a lot of obvious things that screamed out at me that she didn't get and tbh, I don't feel like she actually DID anything for a lot of the book except moan and be like 'Silvers get everything, Reds get nothing, boohoo.' The ‘romance’ was a bit much and seemed too easy. It seemed to happy very quickly. It almost seemed more like a strong friendship, and I would have been okay with that.

BUT with all that said, I actually enjoyed this book. I liked Mare’s introduction to the world of Silvers, I’m a sucker for any story with people with special abilities so I loved learning about them (though the names could have been more original - telkys and greenies, please). The pacing of the story was great and all in all, the whole book has made me want to read the next one, so job done.

Alexia Tarabotti is a spinster leaving in a supernatural-filled stemapunk regency-era London and has a lot to deal with with chaperoning her younger sisters places, as well as being what is known as a pretenatural. Basically, Alexia has no soul and when she touches a supernatural being she can revert them back to their human form. After some strange events, Alexia ends up working with the BUR agency and the handsome werewolf alpha Lord Maccon to figure out some supernatural disappearances.

I really enjoyed this book. We instantly fell into Alexia's world and got a really good look at what kind of character she was. Feisty yet an utter lady - what's not to love! It took me a while to get used to the way Gail Carriger really got into detail with everything from Alexia's dresses to the vampire's stately home but I did enjoy it. I won't lie, my favourite part of this book was the bubbling chemistry between Maccon and Alexia. It was just so delicious and enjoyable from the way she learned unknown things about the male body to them just giving in to the urges. I just wanted them to fall into bed together from the very first moment they had any kind of interaction. There was some moments in the book where I felt the blossoming relationship seemed to overtake the actual plot of the story - which was the missing roves - and the reader could almost forget it as well with the way their relationship was so addicting and all-consuming. I really liked the end result and how everything came to a head eventually. I can't wait for more adventures with Alexia.

Victor and Eli are both extremely smart and extremely deadly in their own way. They met as college roommates and ended up as enemies and now their final battle is on the way and one of them won't survive.

So I feel like this whole thing was kind of a willy-waving competition between Victor and Eli as they both tried to decided who was the biggest and baddest of each other? I though the story was told really well between the flashbacks and present time and all the different relationships formed between Eli and Serena, and Victor, Sydney and Mitch were great. This was definitely an interesting one as neither Eli or Victor are flawless - they are both incredibly flawed and while Eli definitely has a bigger body count (and is kind of crazy, let's face it), Victor is a pretty evil guy too. The whole thing definitely has an X-Men vibe but I think because the main characters were more and than good, I was reminded more of the Channel 4 show Misfits. I'd definitely love more in this world - or even more just following Sydney and Dol's adventures as they were the cutest. And in mentioning Sydney, Serena was fantastic. I loved her character and how she thought and manipulated everyone. She was brilliant!

The King of Khorasan marries a new bride every day, and every dawn he kills them. When Shazi’s best friend is killed by the king, she vows to gets revenge and becomes his next wife to find out his weakness and kill him before he can kill her. But soon Shazi begins to realise there’s more to the monster of her nightmares than she thinks.

I think overall I was left feeling a little bit disappointed by this one. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the story or the characters, I did, I think I was just expecting more. I’m not sure what it was about most of the characters, maybe it was their dialogue, but they all felt very wooden and one-dimensional to me. I just didn’t really care about them. Shari was certainly plucky and brave but I feel like a lot of her talk was on empty air. I didn’t feel really connected to her, or Khalid, or even their relationship. I did prefer Khalid to Tariq who I felt was a bit possessive and at times didn’t even seem to let Shazi speak.

I feel like The Wrath and the Dawn only gave me the tip of the iceberg and I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see more. I feel like there’s a lot more to come, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book. I just hope it ends better than this one, which wasn’t even really a cliff-hanger, it was just a bit abrupt. Basically, during this whole book I kept waiting for something to ‘happen’ and then it just didn’t happen.

I received a free digital copy of this book from the publishers/author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A woman by no name has a baby she calls Z. The world appears to be falling apart. Her husband leaves and she is left to find safety for herself and her little one.

This was….okay? Not as good as I was expecting. The main problem for me was not knowing exactly what was going on. There were talks of flooding and fire, and Noah. That made me think that maybe it was a climate change but then there were borders and guns and people being killed so maybe it was some kind of civil ar too? I honestly didn’t know and I would have liked a bit more of an explanation.

This book is very short, at just over 150 pages and it could certainly have been branched out a little bit more. The reader is left with tidbits of information we need to try and string together and i wasn’t overly fond of. Also the use of using just the first letters of names to identify someone was a strange styling tactic and while I didn’t find it too bad, there were times that I found myself trying figure out who was who again.

I would definitely like some kind of longer novel in this strange post-apocalyptic world.

I need a minute. This is the type of book that needs to be put in the freezer for a while.

This has probably been one of my favourites in the Shadowhunter world since I read Clockwork Princess a few years ago. This book had so much going for it, and it just kept me hooked and thrilled the entire time!

I feel like this book is the pinnacle of Cassandra Clare’s writing so far. Her writing and storytelling has improved with each book and Lord of Shadows definitely showcases how far she has come. The descriptions, the way the plot and sub-plots all weaved and intermingled was fantastic.

This book left me with so many questions still about so many characters which means I’m dying to read the next book. Who is Kit really? What kind of special power is he going to have in the next book if he turns out to be special? And Ash? We saw him for a second but i was left thinking about him for the rest of the book. And what’s the deal with Cortana?

I hate Julian and Emma, and it’s the only thing about Lord of Shadows that irks me. The way they go on about each other seriously does my head in and I don’t understand why they can’t be like normal people and just control themselves. I did feel like there was a lot of repetition of feelings and emotions whenever either were around each other and it just got SO BORING. On the other hand, I’m living for Mark, Cristina and Kieran’s strange three-way relationship. They all just fit together really, really well and I loved every single scene where they interacted with each other.

I found the scenes with the Cohort in Idris, and all their signs EXTREMELY relatable to some of the going-ons in America at the moment with the alt-right and white supremacists. I’m not sure if Cassandra Clare based some of her ideas on the Cohort on the current state of affairs in her country but it was interesting to read for sure (the day after I finished this book, the terrible Charlottesville car ramming incident happened and it just made me think even more about the Cohort’s similarities to the neo-nazis.)

The end of this book was terribly sad, and I did see it coming a few pages before but DAMN, my heart.

The Light Between Oceans

When Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel suffer the devastating loss of their stillborn son, after two miscarriages before, while isolated on their lighthouse island, things seem bleak. But two weeks later, a boat is washed ashore carrying a dead man and a baby in need of looking after. Against his own judgement and in a bid to keep Isabel happy, Tom agrees to keep the boat a secret and they pretend the baby is the one they actually lost. Years later, Tom and Isabel find out more about the baby’s origins and struggle with the ramifications of their decision.

This was a beautiful, moving story about a couple who loved each other desperately and the children they were unable to give life to. I was engrossed in this story and the characters struggles, both their physical ones and the ones on the grounds of their own morality. I found myself, at times, wanting Tom and Isabel to stay away from the mainland as long as they could so no-one would ever have to know the ‘terrible’ thing they had done in a moment of grief and loss.

I definitely loved Tom as a character more than Isabel. He had more interesting of a background, suffering from his own memories of WW1, and the friends and comrades who had died there and leaving him wondering why he had survived. This all seemed to play into decisions he made in the later stage of the book and reading about him going through all of this really endeared me to him and want to comfort him.

I did like the ending of this, though I would have liked to have seen Tom and Isabel somehow have a child. I think I just hated the fact that Tom was left alone (even though I know Lucy-Grace and her son would be visiting).

4.5 stars

This was a really fun graphic novel I picked up in the library without knowing anything about it (which is odd for me as I normally only read graphic novels that are quite popular or from publishers that I’ve requested as I’m not a huge GN reader).

This is about a Captain called Captain Twain who sails on a boat on the Hudson River in the 1800s. There’s a mystery about the disappearance of the original owner of the boar, and his brother is now running it but seems more interested in bedding women. Than Twain comes across an injured mermaid, whom he helps but ends up becoming obsessed with.

The drawings in this were beautiful. I particularly liked many of the drawings of the different women as they were just stunning. I really liked the story around the mystery of the mermaid and how she captured people’s souls with her song. I was a bit confused around the ending of the story and wasn’t 100% sure what actually happened, or what was the end result so I left off a .5 star.

I would really recommend this graphic novel though for an evening’s entertainment.

3.5 stars

Edie is a body at The Elysium Society, which means she takes on spirits of the dead so they can talk to their loved ones. When Edie meets a man called Patrick and takes on his wife Sylvia, she begins to fall in love with him but Sylvia is strong and appears to be taking over more of Edie everyday. Edie is also suspicious of Syvia’s death and doesn’t know if it was as accidental as everyone says.

This was really, really interesting book and concept. The idea of the bodies and the way The Elysium Society is run was fascinating. The mystery behind Edie and her past was also something I really wanted to delve into and uncover. The side plot of Hopeful Doe and who killed her, and her possible connection to The Elysium Society was also captivating.

I had some small issues with this book. One was how little the reader got about the history of The Elysium Society and how the whole idea of the bodies was founded. I would have liked more on that and how it became an accepted part of society, how people realised this was even possible and how they discovered the lotus that gave them the ability. As well as if everyone could be a Body or if it was a gift only few possessed.

I think Edie’s relationship with Patrick happened a bit too quickly. I ended getting a little bit bored in the middle of the book and I don’t think I would have felt that way if there was more build up to her relationship with Patrick.