Video review: https://bit.ly/2ALL4Si

Yeonmi Park was only 21 years old when she began writing her memoir In Order to Live which tells the tale of how she and her mother escaped from a terrible life in North Korea, to be captured by human traffickers in China and eventually travel across a desert to Mongolia to find safety in South Korea. I have just finished this book and I’m left with a throat full of tears for this wonderful, amazing girl and her courage and power to talk out about things that have happened to thousands of people.

I thought I had an idea of what life must be like in North Korea. We have seen the articles and the documentaries and the news broadcasts about Kim Jong Un but nothing prepared me for the reality Yeonmi spoke about in her book. She is only two years younger than me and to think that she was freezing cold in her house, almost starving to death while I was probably visiting the zoo with my family or snuggled in bed reading Harry Potter is just insane to me. Her story really, really touched me and I can really see the special power she has to bring this story to light and make people perk up and pay attention.

Yeonmi Park’s voice is so brutally honest in this memoir. She really tells it how it was and even though she had to relive some horrible memories, she put them down for everyone to see - she even spoke about how her father, like most North Korean men, beat her mother at times which must have been hard for her to write considering the reaction this would have in the Western world and her father was her hero.

Yeonmi managed to capture her story in an honest and beautiful way that left me speechless and emotional but I really was touched by the clarity and purity of her writing. After everything she has been through, Yeonmi can still see the beauty in life, the kindness in people and joy in simple things such as education and simply being free to choose. She is an absolute inspiration and she is definitely someone to watch as she is going to become even greater than she is today.

Read for the fifth time in May 2020,

Out of the whole Hunger Games trilogy, I think Catching Fire is my favourite. It brings us right back to where it all began - District 12. In the first book, the reader only sees a glimpse of District 12 and Katniss' life and relationships in it. With Catching Fire, we finally see more. We see interaction with Darius and Greasy Sae, her relationship with Madge and a better one with her mother. She finally has a real home, and a real sense of family and belonging. Despite most of the book taking place in District 12, I still feel there was lots of action to keep me going.

Catching Fire is also the book that really cemented my love for Peeta, and rereading it just affirms this for me. We get to see him outside of the arena and how he treats Katniss when the cameras aren't around. He is still kind, and gentle and so, so selfless. He'd really do anything for her, and in so many ways (for me), he's so much better than Gale. I also love the addition of the other victors in this book. It was so so interesting for me, and I especially loved Finnick and how quickly I went from distrusting him to loving him.

The feels!

I never realised until I read this book for the third time in November 2015, how much I dislike Gale and how much of an absolute arsehole he is in this book. Mockingjay is the first time we really get a proper glimpse of Gale. He was shadowed in the other books by the Games and by Peeta. For the first time, Gale is on his own with Katniss. But he proves himself to be bloodthirsty, ruthless and often cruel even though he knows that this is not what Katniss needs. I found Gale quite cruel and manipulative when speaking with Katniss at certain points in this book and he really plays on her emotions for him and Peeta to make Katniss feel guilty. I can't think of a time where I felt that Peeta really did this. He always accepted her, and her feelings for Gale so steadily. I feel like Gale always saw what he wanted to see, where Peeta saw Katniss for who she really was. In the end, I think that Gale and Katniss would have eventually ruined each other and those feelings would have become poisonous darts.

As I was rereading the trilogy, I also realised that Suzanne Collins is one of the very few authors that hasn't given us novellas in the male character's point of view. While I think it would be very interested to get The Hunger Games in Peeta's POV, particularly for when he joined up with the Careers and his few days with them, I also think novellas with Castor and Pollux and even Cressida would be amazing. I would even read a short story on Gale's life in District 2 after everything happens. They would be pretty amazing. I'm a sucker for novellas!

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

Simone Lyon is the daughter of a well-respected general and feels confident as German forces move closer to Belgium that war will never touch her home. However, it soon does and Simone is forced to flee Brussels with her best friend Hava, who is Jewish and therefore in terrible danger if enemy soldiers find them.

This book is well-written and seems well-researched. You can tell that the author really wanted to pay tribute to those who had fought, died and survived the war in how he wrote his story, and the story he really wanted to tell to readers. The friendship between the girls was really wonderful, and I never doubted the love and camaraderie they felt for each other. They were true sisters of the heart.

Unfortunately though, the story felt really lack-luster to me. I think it almost felt overdone in a way and everything the writer wanted us to feel and understand from the story was written plainly on the page and a lot of nuance was lost. There's absolutely nothing really wrong with the story - it just failed to light something inside of me that as a reader, I want to feel when reading a story. The start - particularly Simone's life in Brussels before the German invasion and the start of her friendship with Hava - was really dragged out, and then their fleeing from the Germans seemed to all be a blur.

The characters felt slightly wooden as well and lacked real personality that made them feel real - Simone was very much a Mary-Sue character and everything seemed to come very easily to her, while Hava was a manic pixie dream girl of some sort. The only real thing I felt from the girls was their teenage obsession with Hollywood actors and singers.

I just felt a bit bored of this book and I feel like there are ways the story may have been better. Just not one for me I think!

3.5 stars

I received a copy of this book from O'Brien Press in exchange for an honest review.

Princess Aurelia is now a Queen and she employs lesser noblewoman Xania to be her new spymaster after witnessing the younger woman's bravery and stealth. As Xania fits into her new role, Lia must learn how to rule her kingdom whilst also keeping all sides happy - as well as avoiding assassination attempts and choosing a husband despite her eye constantly being drawn to her new Mistress of Whispers, Xania.

This is a really well-written YA fantasy novel, that follows two women as they try and shape their own future and the future of their beloved country for the better, while also tip-toeing around each other because of their beating feelings. Lia and Xania are both very different but also seem to fit perfectly into each other, and their romance was a joy to read about, and one that made me squeal with mutual embarrassment when they tripped up over each other as well as sigh lovingly when they eventually took the right steps.

There are a lot of great female characters in this book too with a majority of Lia's court being full of powerful women, and a few interesting men. The women are definitely the main players in this royal courtroom/chessboard though!

There's a lot of political intrigue in this book with Lia having a Parliament of nobles to placate while also trying to feed her people who face starvation because of failing grain fields. She also needs to figure out alliances with her neighbouring countries that include royal visits, and possible engagements. And her awful cousin Rassa who has a claim to her throne, and could step in neatly if she was conveniently taken out of his way. I thought this was all really well written and I loved that Lia's country felt very fully realised and detailed - there was a history, a history of a royal family and parliament, as well as trade agreements already in place.

I definitely think I enjoyed Lia more than Xania. I think her journey as Queen just intrigued me more - especially because I feel we lost a lot of Xania's own journey as it all seemed to happen off page which was disappointing. If you're looking for the evolution of a spy master, you don't really get it as for some reason Xania already seems to know what she's doing, and I don't know how.

I loved that Lia stepped into the novel on the first page already a queen - there was no moments of confusion and being led in baby steps around her own palace like you see in a lot of other YA fantasy when a character suddenly becomes royal (for example Queen of the Tearling). It felt believable that Lia could step into her palace and onto her throne with confidence because it's what she had been trained to do for her whole life.

One of my gripes about this book is that so much happened off page, and I really wanted to see everything! I couldn't understand how Xania just fit into her role as Whispers so easily when she hadn't been trained to do so. I also failed to see her as a threat - she didn't appear to have much fighting skills (though she did, of course, have stealth skills already). She knew how to wield a knife and that was about it - I would have liked to have seen her do more training. I also would have liked to have seen her initial struggle as Whispers before she became used to the role - we saw none of that. Only found out months later about the agents and spies she had employed and bribed.

The ending of this book also felt a bit rushed and I really strongly feel this book could have been split into two. The moment Lia

abdicated her throne and was drugged by Rassa

, the first book could have ended on a really good cliff hanger. And Book 2 could have been Matthias and Xania's journey following that to help Lia. That journey took two months, and longer on the way back - yet it was all conveniently wrapped up in a couple of pages and I felt really dissatisfied with that. We also saw none of Lia's perspective in those months either which was a real shame. I loved this world enough that I wasn't ready to leave it there, and I feel like there was a huge missed opportunity not splitting Lia and Xania's adventure into two. It also meant we missed EVERYTHING going on in court

during Rassa's two-month reign. Another book could have meant getting a POV from someone like Zola or Isra in Rassa's court and it could have been sooo good

.

I really enjoyed this book but I also feel sad at some of the things I feel like I missed out on. I do hope there are other books written in this world because I think it's great and I just want more!

Reading Vlog & Review: https://bit.ly/3gKPd9E

The Capitol is slowly rebuilding itself ten years on from a war that almost killed them all, and now 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is helping to redeem his family name by becoming one of the first mentors to the Hunger Games tributes. When Snow receives the District 12-female tribute, he's disappointed but soon realises that Lucy Gray Baird has many tricks up her sleeves, and she may be his answer to glory.

This book is a fascinating character study into the person we know as President Snow, and what exactly makes him tick - and why he believes in The Hunger Games, and that the games are so very important to Capitol morale and to squash any ideas/hopes for a rebellion.

I loved learning about the history of The Hunger Games and what they were like at the start - very much a non-event for the Capitol and for the districts. And how Katniss's games were HEAVENLY compared to the first decade of games. I loved seeing the thoughts and discussions in class that would eventually end up being integral parts of the Games (sponsors/mentors/interviews). In a weird way, Snow helped make the tributes' lives better for a short while before they ended up dead or a true slave to the Capitol for the rest of their life. The two-week respite of glamour and plentiful food/drink to ensure true entertainment for the crowd might be the cruelest thing of all.

Snow isn't necessarily a bad person in this but he's a person with a greedy ambition, and a family name to protect which makes him dangerous, and ready to do what he takes. In a weird way, I found a lot of parallels to him and Katniss - both helping their families to survive, both living in poverty and they are both survivalists. But while Katniss is a survivor and will do what it takes for others and those she loves, Snow is doing it for himself and his own eventual glory. We know Snow has his Grandma'am and Tigris but we also know from Mockingjay that Snow eventually cast Tigris out and forgot about her (there has to be a novella in that somewhere. I'd love to know more!).

While there is some romance in this, I never really bought into it. I think Snow liked the idea of being in love with someone, and someone being in love with him, more than the girl. There's several times he refers to Lucy as something that belongs to him and I don't think he ever really, truly loved her

which is obvious when how quickly he is able to leave her and possibly kill her at the end

.

The first two thirds of this book were stronger than the last third for me, and when we returned to District 12, I found myself not as intrigued in the story setting as we already know this place so well from Katniss. It was a bit interesting seeing life in summer rather than autumn/winter as seen in the original trilogy.

There are also little easter eggs for real fans of the trilogy in here to pick up on - family names of characters in the original/possible ancestors, a real look at jabberjays and mockingjays and then the origin of the Hob and the makings of the songs that Katniss brought back into the arena (ooh wouldn't you just LOVE to see Snow's face when she sang both of them!).

I received a free copy of this book from Abrams&Chronicle/Amulet in exchange for an honest review.

Genie Lo is a normal Asian-American teenager. She’s dealing with school, best friends and parents who want her to exceed in everything, all the while worrying about what else she needs to do to get into a great college. Then Quentin Sun arrives and tells her he is the Monkey King, she is his famous weapon and they need to defeat a horde of demons that’s about to descend upon them.

This book was amazing, and everything I didn’t know I needed. It managed to bring a kick-ass female character, Chinese folklore and a whole lot of great laugh-out-loud funny. Genie Lo is such a refreshing character to have in a book - she’s smart, sassy, diverse, strong and just amazing at everything okay! But she works at everything too - it doesn’t come easy to her, except extending her arms like Stretch Armstrong but that’s a whole other thing.

I genuinely feel like I learned a lot more about Chinese folklore from this book. I know of Greek myths, and Celtic folklore (obviously) but I knew nothing about Chinese folklore until reading this. I am vaguely heard the term “Monkey King’ before but never knew what it actually was about. I am a lot more interested in Chinese folklore now and would love to read more books based around it.

The actions scenes in this book were great - I throughly enjoyed all of them. Some of them were a bit fast or they would start, and then the next chapter would have a time jump and i would be disappointed because I wanted more of a fight.

I really loved Genie’s friendship with Yunie. I would love to see more of it in the next book though, and maybe more of Yunie in the know if Genie eventually tells her what’s going on. I loved Quentin as well, what wasn’t to love about him.

I had a right LOL at the end though, with the doubles and their feelings for each other.

KNOWLEDGE!!

What a fantastic book that is so eye-opening and captivating, and so, so well put together. The way Emma Dabiri has managed to write a book that is themed around hair -specifically hair of a black woman - and connect it to so many issues today such as racism of old, systematic racism now, European fetishization of black bodies, hair and culture while black woman are punished.

I honestly know so much more than I did before - not only about what hair truly means for a black person but how it signifies a bigger community, and a wealth of women in family and friendship - and how this was taken away from the black woman when she was forced into slavery. How people were made to feel ashamed of their hair - how the ideal hair for a woman with natural 'kinky', tight curly hair is still this European ideal of soft silky hair. How that all comes back to when Europeans initially colonized parts of African and brought their weird ideas of what hair was suppose to be, what beauty was suppose to be, what gender actually meant and how they even forced the European idea of time on African communities who used to measure time in a completely different way than we do now.

Natural black hair can even be connected to science and mathematics in the most amazing ways - and I'm saying this as someone who hated maths in school and still freezes up if I'm expected to do any kind of calculation in my head.

Hair in this book is so much more than something to brush (or not brush) every day. It's a whole history. I can't recommend this book enough!

"Through African hairstyles, we can observe beauty standards and aesthetics, spiritual devotion, values and ethics, and even, quite literally, maps from slavery to freedom."