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

It’s the last moments of 1999 and Liv and Nate have decided after several years of marriage to separate. Despite caring for each other, things aren’t working but when Nate at the last minute asks for another chance Liv has to decide - stay or leave? In two alternate timelines, readers see what happens with each decision.

I really love alternate timeline stories and any kind of what if storyline so was excited to read this - particularly after reading Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Maybe in Another Life which follows the same alternate timeline depending on one decision.

This was definitely my least favourite out of the two unfortunately as it felt a little bit simple at times, and also repetitive. I found the main character Liv a bit bland and despite being just a general good person, I really didn’t feel like I got to know more of her personality and therefore couldn’t quite understand the appeal of her to the men who keep falling in love with her. I also found that Liv repeated phrases and descriptions a lot and it grew really irritating! For example, every time Janet appeared, Liv would mention her ‘inner bitch’.

I did appreciate the look at alcoholism and addition in this book through one of Liv and Nate’s friends though i can’t say I actually liked that storyline (especially as I felt like both timelines felt repetitive and there was nothing particularly new about the second one).

One of the things you don’t want to happen with an alternate timeline storyline happened to me with this book which is when I finished the ‘Without’ timeline, I was not interested at all in finishing the second half which was the ‘With’ storyline. I ended up finding the With timeline a bit boring and so many of the same things still happened and there wasn’t that much of a difference with some things. I prefer the ‘being happy with different outcomes’ rather than the ‘fate will always give you only one person.’

I also, for some reason, found it a bit creepy and unrealistic that they had the same kids in the timelines despite them being conceived at different times. Weird.

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

When Stephanie and Jamie meet at an art retreat, there’s an instant connection. There’s one problem though - the both of them are in committed relationships. The pair decide to meet up once a year to continue their friendship/romance but how long can their relationship last without destroying everything else they care about?

Where do I start with this one? The good bits first of course! The writing in this book is really good, Roxie Cooper definitely has the ability to plot a really good story and pace it well. I definitely appreciated the writing skill.

Another good thing in this book is that one of the main characters Stephanie goes to therapy for a long time in this book to help with her mental health and continue a normal life and this was always seen as a good, healthy thing to do which I appreciate. Good mental health awareness/care!

Now, I am surprised I haven’t seen more people be turned off from this book considering its main plot is infidelity. I’ve seen lots of people hate books because of cheating and I have never had major problems with it before but this one for some reason rubbed me up the wrong way.

Stephanie and Jamie are both great characters in their own right, and they are also great together. I just really hated they continued emotionally, and sometimes, physically cheating on their partners. For years. Even after children came into the equation. I think there’s a point in such relationships where a selfishness takes control and this definitely happened here. The characters (particularly Jamie) were just cowardly and did not act in the right way. I also think the author made it a bit too easy by having the other halves act a bit difficult (or just a downright ass in Matt’s case) but in real life that’s not always the case. I just can’t help but think how smashed my heart would be if someone I was married to had such a relationship for years and wasted my life in a marriage I thought was for life.

I also do think some of the technology in this book could have been a bit off? There was a point when Stephanie and Jamie were texting each other YouTube videos to watch and I really felt like those years may have been before the time of YouTube links been text to people and being watched on phones.

Also MASSIVE cliche ending that I actually couldn’t believe (even though it did still make me cry a bit, have to be honest. I was mad and sad at the same time). I saw what was coming, I really hoped it wouldn’t happen because COME ON. But nope, it happened.

One for fans of One Day by David Nicholls.

3.5 stars

I received a copy of this book from Harper Collins in exchange for an honest review.

Sore and exhausted, Lauren is attempting to rest after a hard labour during which she gave birth to twin boys, when during the night she is visited by a sinister stranger who appears to be trying to take her newborns. Others convince Lauren she was seeing things, and eventually she returns home to care for her babies but she can't shake the feeling that somewhere out there someone is waiting, and her sons are in terrible danger.

This book was a fantastic, creepy read that left me a bit shake in all the best ways and a little bit scared to sleep with the lights off, From the very first chapter, this book had me hooked as we immediately met Lauren recovering from her labour and already she was a character we wanted to look after and root for. There was something really powerful for me in the image of an exhausted new mother alone in a hospital bed trying to figure out how to be a mother and then having to activate her protective stance almost immediately. I felt cold and uncomfortable picturing Lauren alone in the room, seemingly without much help or comfort from the nurses in the hospital.

My emotions quickly turned into anger and frustration as Lauren moved from the hospital to home and had to not only deal with her fussy twins but also an inept and selfish husband - which I'm sure is a feeling a lot of new mothers have to deal with and someone how swallow down! The way this was written and how Melanie Golding was able to really get all the emotions needed out of the reader was genius.

I did like the police officer in this book, though I wasn't expecting the chapters from her POV. And I could have done without the tope of the 'detective having personal history with the subject matter in the care' and that's why they care so much but I do think it was done fairly well here too. We did also have the stereotype of the immoral journalist who would do anything for her story which as a former journo I'm not and never a fan of but could deal with here.

Little Darlings perfectly tiptoes on the line between thriller and horror and you never really know when things are going to get a bit dark and grisly and a face might appear at the window. I loved the fact the reader had to decide what they thought was really going on - supernatural or post partum psychosis. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of tension.

HELLO BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019!!!

For these were not ordinary books the libraries kept. They were knowledge, given life. Wisdom, given voice. They sang when starlight streamed through the library's windows. They felt pain and suffered heartbreak. Sometimes they were sinister, grotesque -- but so was the world outside. And that made the world no less worth fighting for, because wherever there was darkness, there was also so much light."

Elizabeth has grown up in a library, and has known for a long time that she wants to be a Warden - a special job that entails protecting the world from magical books, brought alive through magic given to sorcerers by demons. When Elizabeth ends up being accused of a terrible crime she didn't commit, she ends up unwittingly teaming up with sorcerer Nathaniel and his servant Silas (who is a lot more than he appears) and the trio may end up having to save humanity from one of the biggest threats it's ever faced.

You know when you find that book that you feel has been written just for you? The one that you feel like every time you start reading it, you've hiked up your skirts (or trousers) and stepped straight through the page and into the world. You see, you hear, you feel everything the characters are seeing and hearing and feeling. It's so magical, and it doesn't happen very often. Which is what makes it special. And Sorcery of Thorns gave me that. Thank you Margaret Rogerson.

This is a book that was written for book lovers. Not the people who pick up a book only now and again on holiday or people trying out reading just to see. But for people whose everyday life has something to do with reading - people who are always thinking of the next book they'll buy, read or get from the library. People who find the tiniest inch of space on an overflowing book to fit their latest purchase. People...readers whose books are not just entertainment - they're comfort, they're friends, they're as far as we're all concerned alive.

"Knowledge always has the potential to be dangerous. It is a more powerful weapon than any sword spell."

In Sorcery of Thorns, certain books called grimoires are for all intents and purposes alive. They seem to feel emotion, are attached to certain people who handle them, can be petty and rude and sometimes downright violent. A lot of them are also a little bit evil due to the magic that created them (demon magic) and are very, very dangerous.

I loved the magic in this, and how so much of it wasn't centred on the sorcerers' and how they learned their magic or honed it in any particular way, but how the magic was used to create such grimoires and why libraries such as Elizabeth's home are much needed in this land.

Elizabeth is a fantastic character. She's impulsive, and insecure sometimes, she's very tall but she's also smart, and strong, and brave, as well as containing a good sense of humour and a has a bit of a talent for swinging a sword around. Elizabeth's growth in this book from orphan of the library to warden of the people (not just the books) by the end was fascinating to watch and I loved the battles she had to go through in her own head about rethinking the plans she'd always had for her future, her feelings about Nathaniel, her trust in Silas. It was fascinating, I couldn't pull away.

The setting in this book was also really good for me. This book is set in a fantastical land but for me, the city a lot of this book is set in felt really like London which I loved. There were all the elements of Victorian society in it - the lords and ladies, and the balls and eligible bachelors but some of those attending could charm butterflies into appearing in thin air, and bring the statues to life with a flourish.

There was the perfect amount of chemistry in this book too, and it was perfectly drawn out for me. There was also a great nod at a character's bisexuality. It was stated and it was accepted, and sometimes that's all there needs to be.

"Her heart stopped. His eyes were as dark and turbulent as a river in midwinter, and very close. She felt as though she stood on a precipice, and that if she leaned forward, she would fall. She would fall, and drown with him; she would never resurface for air."

And SILAS. Oh Silas. What a fantastic character - such a tumble of non-emotion and cool cat judgement and selfless acts and you knew what he would do but also you weren't totally comfortable with that assumption because there was the chance he could do the terrible thing.

I really liked the ending of this. We didn't have just one massive battle in this book, there were a few which I appreciated. It wasn't all super clean cut. I really got the right amount of action, and sacrifice and emotional moments. Perfection.

Side note: Also really enjoyed the friendship between Elizabeth and Katrien and how they liked to team up to bring down the patriarchy, basically.

"She now understood that the world wasn't kind to young women, especially when they behaved in ways men didn't like, and spoke truths that men weren't ready to hear."

And anyone else have to swallow a lump of emotion when the books sacrificed themselves for the library or just me

A must read for anyone who loved Sky in the Deep!

I received this book from Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

Tova, a child of the Kyrr, washes up on Svell shores with no memory of how she got there and the marks of her people on her body - including one identifying her as a Truthtongue, someone who can cast stones about fate and receive the truth from the gods. When her power ends up causing a devastating effect between two clans, Tova finds herself connected to Halvard, a future chieftain of the enemy clan. Tova may be able to save Halvard and his people, if she's brave enough to break free of the Svell.

As a fan of Sky in the Deep, I really enjoyed The Girl the Sea Gave Back as an expansion to the world I first met with Eelyn. Tova is a very different character - and while she is well used to the barbarity of a viking world, and has known a lot of fear and cruelty, she is also very sensitive and downtrodden in a way. I really liked meeting Halvard as a man, having seen him as a boy in Sky in the Deep. It was weird to see some characters again, a whole ten years older, and also sad to see the clans we met in the first book fighting for their lives again when peace had come at a great cost the first time.

The book is very fast-paced and action packed and takes place over the course of a few days. There is a bit of a rush of information about the Svell and not really enough about the Kyrr. The end did feel a tiny bit rushed and I feel like the book could have been broadened out a bit - and a bit more could have been put into Tova and Halvard's relationship as well as it was very much a 'connection' without a lot of actual conversation and getting to know one another (unlike Fiske and Eelyn).

I would definitely recommend reading Sky in the Deep first as there are characters in this from that book, and also a lot of background information could be a bit confusing without knowing what happened in Sky in the Deep.

TW: Violence, violence against children.

I received an e-copy of this book from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Twenty years ago, five boys went missing. The killer, known as 'The Whisper Man' was caught but the fifth boy's body was never found. Now,  two decades later another boy has gone missing and his time is running out. In the meantime, Tom and his son Jake have moved to a new village for a fresh start but quickly get caught up with the old murders, and the new. And someone has their eye on Jake, and has been whispering to him in the night...

I loved the creepiness of this book from the get go. There's something a bit unnerving about this book - from the rhyme about The Whisper Man, Jake's 'imaginary' friends and what they tell him to just the thought of someone out there stalking little boys and ending their lives in a horrible, cruel way.

There's a few different perspectives in this book which I really enjoyed, and I found it gave a really well-rounded story and as a reader, we were able to see into everything - from the current police investigation, the past, through the killer's eyes, and through a potential victims. This thriller definitely suffered from some cliches such as the old-time detective with ties to the past case and a troubled background and there a few too many connections at some points

such as DI Pete Willis being Tom's dad

There was an emphasis on the relationship between father and son in this novel as well from both estranged, trouble and tight knit - yet none of them perfect. I liked the relationship between Tom and Jake. It felt real and there was a vulnerable rawness there between the two characters that was really lovely to read sometimes. I'm not always a massive fan of how children are written in books but Jake was great for me. I found him just a real cutie and I wanted to bundle him up and protect him from the world.

I wasn't very surprised by the reveals in this book. It didn't take me too long to figure out who the killer could be and then as everything fell together, who that person was in the novel and where'd we seen them before. That didn't take away any enjoyment of the story for me though.

This is exactly what it says on the tin - a fictional diary of an 83-year-old man called Hendrik Groen who is living in a retirement village in the Netherlands, and documenting all the ups and downs of his daily life from which retiree has died each days to the internal battles between residents and administration. And also updates about his 'dribble' problem and if he needs to start wearing adult nappies.

I really thought I would love this book, as I find older 'OAP' characters fascinating and endearing when they are written right, and even though this book had everything I should have loved, I just didn't.

A majority of the things Hendrik jotted down in his diary were just a bit dull and boring, particularly the emphasis on Dutch politics (which may obviously have impact on Dutch readers but not so much on international ones), and the most exciting thing to ever really happen was Hendrik killing the village's fish with cake.

The relationships Hendrik had with some of the other retirees were very sweet, particularly one that turned romantic in a subtle way but in terms of his life before the retirement village, we got very information and the information we did get was dispassionately told to us in one diary entry and then not really mentioned again.

There were also some moments in this book that made me uncomfortable as I found them to be racist. The way Hendrik mentioned Muslims, Moroccans and Syria in this diary entries just rang a bit racist to me and the way he made some jokes about Syria was distasteful in my eyes. I'm not sure if the racist tone was suppose to be intentional because Hendrik is racist and sure aren't all old people a bit racist? Well actually, they're not. It wouldn't be revolutionary to write elderly man accepting of all races, religions and sexualities.

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend this one at all. Give it a miss.