Books I read in August!: The Yellow Room, What's a Girl Gotta Do?, Lady Susan, Nina is Not OK, Blame.

After a prolific July full of reading, August was always going to struggle to keep up. But I did manage to read from crrrrackers! I was really looking forward to delving into Jess Vallance's The Yellow Room after enjoying the super creepy Birdy last year. I also read the third in Holly Bourne's Spinster Club trilogy, What's a Girl Gotta Do?, which did not disappoint. I greatly enjoyed a Jane Austen novella, Lady Susan, and my audiobook of the month was Shappi Khorsandi's Nina is Not OK. I can confirm Nina is definitely not OK, and neither am I after listening to her story! Lastly I read Blame by Simon Mayo, which has its very own review here!

The Yellow Room

I read Jess Vallance's Birdy last year, which was a great book and very creepy, so I was very much looking forward to reading The Yellow Room to see how sinister its plot would be. The story follows Anna, a sixteen-year-old, who receives a letter one day from her estranged father's girlfriend, informing her of his death. After meeting Edie, the girlfriend, to discuss her father's death Anna is soon spending more time with Edie than with her school friends, confiding in her secrets that she has not told anyone else. Anna's relationship with the creepy, blackmailing Leon is at the heart of her greatest secret and their fraught encounters are chilling. Anna is struggling to solve her problems by herself and turns to Edie for help, the answers in the end however seem to lie with the mothers. Definitely dark, creepy, and chilling, but with an awareness and respect for mental health and illness. Definite must read. Can't wait to see what Jess Vallance writes next!

What's Girl Gotta Do?

Part three in the Spinster Club series, this time from Lottie's point of view as she embarks on a major feminist project, calling out every instance of sexism she sees in daily life. Lottie documents the project with the help of film student Will, who does not identify as a feminist and who soon becomes the object of a very confusing crush for Lottie. Evie and Amber are there helping Lottie out of course, but as the project gains traction online and the trolls start getting under her skin, Lottie struggles with motives for putting herself through such a draining experience. Is it keeping quiet and following the rules that will get Lottie into Cambridge, as her parents are insisting, or is it being unapologetically herself and committing to the project. A brilliant conclusion to the Spinster Club series. I'm in denial that this is the last we'll hear of the Spinster Club and hoping and praying they'll be back for more soon! Tip top stuff from Holly Bourne once again.

Lady Susan

This little Jane Austen novella is part of the Penguin Little Black Classics and a very fun read. A short epistolary novel documenting a colourful cast of characters mostly concerning themselves with the behaviour of a one Lady Susan Vernon, a young widow looking to secure husbands for both herself and her 16-year-old daughter Frederica. It was recently adapted for film by Whit Stillman, starring Kate Beckinsale as Lady Susan and Chloe Sevigny as Mrs Johnson, and definitely captures the fun and humour of the book. I might have to read some more of Jane Austen's juvenilia (new favourite word) as this was a very enjoyable read.




Nina is Not OK

I listened to Nina is Not Ok on audiobook, read by the author Shappi Khorsandi and wow it was an intense experience. 17-year-old Nina is in denial about her drinking problem, but her drunken exploits are becoming more and more dangerous. After her boyfriend Jamie goes off on his gap year and immediately gets a new girlfriend, Nina finds herself struggling to get through a day of college without having a drink. The wrong guys 'help' Nina home after she is thrown out of a club one night and the gap in her memory between leaving the club and finding herself in a cab home with her knickers in her hand soon weighs seriously heavy on her mind. There is this really unsettling mix of funny and light escapades with dark and harrowing trauma as Nina continues to make terrible decisions and spiral out of control, with her mum and step dad really helpfully deciding to move to Germany and leave her in London in the middle of her A Levels year. Poor Nina! Shappi Khorsandi's narration on audiobook was brilliant, and I'd definitely recommend experiencing the book this way, although I think it does up the intense and harrowing factor up by 100.

Don't forget to click through to my review of Simon Mayo's Blame here!

I received a copy of The Yellow Room from Hot Key Books in return for an honest review. All real opinions, promise!

Books I read in February: The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School, How Hard Can Love Be?, The Marvels, The Sleeping Prince

These be the novels I read in February! I also read some real nice graphic novels, which I reckon I'll talk about in a separate post! Yippee! Kim Newman's The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School was lent to me and then I bought my own copy because I liked it so much! How Hard Can Love Be? by Holly Bourne was so much fun, definitely lived up to her previous work which I have loved. She just really does teenage voices well. The Marvels by Brian Selznick is a beautiful big heavy shiny book full of illustrations and I really enjoyed the format. And Melinda Salisbury's The Sleeping Prince, a much anticipated sequel, did not disappoint!

The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

Ooh I right enjoyed this! Set in a boarding school for students with special gifts, the daughters of criminal masterminds and outlaws, and famous bug scientists. Amy Thomsett is sent by her mother after her gift for floating has become too strange for her to deal with. With her new friends Amy sets up The Moth Club after the mysterious Hooded Conspiracy abducts a girl from their dormitory. The mystery deepens as a serious case of mass-hysteria, mass-hypnoses completely overtakes the school. I was hooked pretty quickly and loved the way this novel unfolded. I found there to be some weird pace-slowing exposition of characters in a few key places. Also there were SO MANY NAMES to remember, with each student at any time being referred to by their first, second, or nickname, or by their house. This problem probably could've been solved if I had found the big list of students listed by year and house in the back... None of this dampened my enjoyment though. If you enjoy dreary coastal boarding schools, beating up bullies, moth species, female friendships, and superheroes in wartime, then this book is for you. 

How Hard Can Love Be?

The much anticipated second book in the Normal Series. I loved Am I Normal Yet? and Holly Bourne's previous book The Manifesto on How to be Interesting. This one follows Amber, as she leaves the Spinster Club for the summer to spend a few months in California with her mum and her mum's husband, at their summer camp. There's the usual strong feminist discussion throughout, with Amber skyping back home to Evie and Lottie, and with her new camp friends. Amber navigates the summer with said fellow camp councillor friends, trying to figure out her relationship with her emotionally distant and recovering alcoholic mother. There's also a very handsome prom king boy called Kyle who is showing a lot of interest in Amber, much to her befuddlement. So a whole load of issues to tackle all with Holly Bourne's signature humour and wit. Loved it! Not sure what ground the third in the Normal Series will cover, I mean surely that's everything now? Maybe pubes? Not enough Spinster Club pube chat yet for sure. 

The Marvels

On a very different note, I got this beautiful shiny gold book for Christmas and was super intrigued to see how the balance between illustration and text would read. A story of shipwrecked theatrical sailors in 1766 leads in pictures to a story of several generations of sons working and performing in a London theatre. The illustrated story stops with a fire at the theatre and we pick up in 1990s London, with a schoolboy named Joseph who runs away from boarding school to his uncle's bizarre historical townhouse, where he slowly begins to unravel the mysteries of Billy Marvel and his theatrical descendants. The unfolding of the mystery was very enjoyable and seeing the relationship between uncle and nephew grow was rather lovely. It got me right in the heart. And the real stories it's based on were very interesting too. This beautiful book is definitely not style over substance. 

The Sleeping Prince

The Sleeping Prince is the sequel to The Sin Eater's Daughter, which I read in March last year actually. I've been very organised and gone back to have a look at that review, in which I say it felt very much like the first act in a bigger story. The Sleeping Prince certainly proves this, really widening out understanding of the kingdom. I also was hoping for more movement in the form of travel, and um, TICK, so much of this story takes place on the road, exploring different towns, and it definitely fulfils my wish of more depth of understanding of the rest of the kingdom, after seeing it through Twylla's very insular world. The sequel in fact takes place from the perspective of an entirely different female protagonist. Errin, an apothecary, who is the sister of the guard Lief from book one, is living in poverty with her ailing mother in a rundown town. Mysteries and mythologies are all getting untangled from real history in this book, as a war is beginning following the waking of the titular sleeping prince. Errin seeks help from the mysterious Silas to find a cure for her mother and after a lengthy period of suffering in the horrible run down town, takes to the road to take matters in to her own hands. A strong sequel I think! And I am verrrrry much looking forward to the next book where I'm hoping we'll see more of Errin and Twylla's worlds colliding.

Look out for a post on the graphic novels In Real Life, Skim, and Embroideries!

Review!: Books I read in August: Did I Mention I Love You? The Manifesto on How to be Interesting, Church of Marvels, Am I Normal Yet? The Big Lie, Trouble is a Friend of Mine

August was a busy blogging month, but I still managed to do lots of reading too! I finished six excellent books. Here they are reviewed!:

Did I Mention I Love You?

Estelle Maskame's Did I Mention I Love You series is super famous on the internet as she posted her chapters on Wattpad as she wrote them. A teenager from Peterhead in Scotland, she started writing when she was just 13 and now her massive online following has earned her a publishing deal, which is just so impressive! I had to see what all the hype was about, and of course I was extra interested as she is Scottish! The book is the first in a trilogy and takes place in the states, where 16-year-old Eden is spending the summer away from her Portland, Oregan home in Santa Monica, California with her dad and his wife and step children. Eden very quickly becomes part of the gang of the eldest step brother, with a built in group of girls and guys to hang out with. The brother, Tyler, is a total asshole, so that shows some convincing writing skills, as the reader follows Eden's journey to figure out just why he is such an asshole and whether she can make him stop being such an asshole. There's romance, too many house parties to count, high school drama, a rubbish dad, and underlying body image issues. All written by an actual teenager, hats off to you Estelle!

The Manifesto on How to be Interesting

This was my first Holly Bourne book and I was so impressed with her writing. The main character Bree, is pretty much a loser at school, too keen in class, and actively trying not to fit in with greasy hair and poor fashion choices. She fancies her English teacher and hates her parents and is desperately trying, and failing, to become a published author. She decides, as an experiment to make herself more 'interesting' which I guess translates more as likeable. She get a makeover and whole new wardrobe with the help of her mum and insanely quickly becomes a member of the inner circle of popular kids. I found myself liking Bree much more post-makeover, I think because she was focussed and nice to people and showing off her cleverness with witty comebacks, instead of the snarky, abrasive person she had become pre-interesting. Drawing influence from classic teen dramas, Bree project to infiltrate the populars, which see writes all about on a blog she sets up, inevitably leads to some less than ideal consequences. The book deals with issues of self-harm, identity, teacher-student romance, and being true to yourself, once you've figured out who you are. I think the point is Bree wasn't really being her true self pre-interesting either and she learns that through a bunch of lessons along the way. 

Church of Marvels

I was expecting this book to be more circus-y than it ended up being, but I still really enjoyed reading it. Set in a very grubby and grimy turn-of-the-century New York City, the book follows intertwining stories from Coney Island, to Manhattan, to the lunatic asylum, as Odile Church sets out to look for her sister Belle, with whom she was raised at the Church of Marvels circus, who has disappeared into the city. The story is compelling, and I enjoyed the thrill of seeing where each thread would link up. The writing is very evocative, the asylum scenes were particularly gruesome. I had a real sense of the smokey, bustling, grimy city of Manhattan. There is great representation across the lead characters too, with representation of disability, mixed race, transgender,  and mental illness. I can really picture it as a film, all gloomy and gritty, but bright  and warm and human in places.

Am I Normal Yet?

My second Holly Bourne book ever, and my second this month! I thought this was a brilliant book. The main character Evie just wants to be 'normal' and starting out at her new sixth form college is a real challenge for her. She is recovering from a bad case of OCD and is almost off her meds, but of course college involves boys, parties, booze, new friends, and lots of entirely new situations. My understanding of OCD has been completely topped up by this book, as Evie honestly shares her experiences with the reader, although not with her new friends. She struggles with symptoms returning, ignores the signs, or acknowledges the signs and then ignores them as she tries desperately to 'normal'. Her two new best friends are great characters, and their Spinsters Club where they create space fro themselves to talk about feminism is brilliant. Desperately trying to get a boyfriend and needing to talk al their feeling out, but also wanting their conversations to pass the Bechdel test. All the boys are pretty terrible, but they are well fleshed out and well written terrible characters at least. I was thrilled to see this is book one of a trilogy, which will follow one of the girls as the lead in each book, I think Amber is next. If you do (or want to) understand teenage girls, mental health, feminism, and dating then this book is most certainly for you. 

The Big Lie

Set in contemporary Nazi England, Julie Mayhew offers a vision of alternate reality, where the Nazis won the war. Jess is the main character, and she is very well behaved, a talented figure skater, and a proud member of the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Jess slowly starts to see through her own naivety that there are those who are less submissive around her and that there are consequences for those who speak out against the regime. She deals with sexuality, sexism, censorship, authority, punishment, in this strange version of reality where the Holocaust is a rumour, sterilisation is a punishment for crime, and death by hanging in public from a lamppost is a valid form of execution. Her next-door neighbour Clem and her family are outspoken and radical, getting caught with CD players and computers that can access the internet (technology seems stuck in the 1940s for everyone else). It is Clem who gives Julie clues to their oppression and helps open her eyes to the existence of the rest of the world.  Reading Julie Mayhew's notes at the end on her research process where really fascinating, learning how she drew on specific stories and events to create certain characters and scenes. It's a really great book. Read it!

Trouble is a Friend of Mine

Set in upstate New York, this story follow Zoe, who has recently moved from Brooklyn with her newly divorced Mum, and is attending a school she is hoping only to attend for a little while before she gets into a prestigious Princeton feeder school. She is befriended by an eccentric guy called Philip Digby, who gets her into various dangerous and bizarre situations as he attempts to solve the case of a missing, potentially kidnapped, teenage girl. His own infant sister had been kidnapped years ago, and so with the cases potentially linked, he is determined to find out the truth. Having been obsessed with the Serial podcast at the time of reading this, I was very much into the crime solving elements of the story. There is a touch of romance, and a group prom date situation, but mostly the book is about new friendships, terrible parents, a bunch of misfits, and a whole lot of creepy crimes exposed. 

A couple of these books pop up in other blog posts of mine, including Am I Normal Yet? and The Big Lie in Top 5 Feminist YA and The Manifesto on How to be Interesting in Top 6 High School YA. Go have a read please! 

I received a couple of these books for review. All views are entirely my own and not influenced by the freeness of the book!

August Wrap Up

We made it! I blogged everyday in August! Thanks everyone who has read along and shared my posts throughout the month. It's been fun! I've had over a thousand views this month, which is exciting. The most popular posts were Best Harry Potter Food and Feasts and Top 6 High School Young Adult Fiction. And you can have a scroll through all of the August posts here. I still have plenty of ideas so stay tuned for upcoming posts, including more Harry Potter ones. Look at this pretty graph of all those views:

August Wrap Up:

I have read six books this month in between all that blogging and also started reading Frankenstein as part of my mission to make my way through more classics. They were all gooduns! Plenty of YA fiction, with Church of Marvels thrown in there too. I'll get my reviews up next week, but I got right into Holly Bourne's books, and was hugely impressed by Julie Mayhew's The Big Lie. 

Did I Mention I Love You?- Estelle Maskame

The Manifesto On How To Be Interesting- Holly Bourne

Church of Marvels- Leslie Parry

Am I Normal Yet?- Holly Bourne

The Big Lie- Julie Mayhew

Trouble is a Friend of Mine- Stephanie Tromly

Top 5 Feminist Young Adult Fiction

There have been some really really great feminist offerings in the YA scene recently. Exposing young people to feminist ideas through fiction is an awesome way to spread further understanding of the topic, as so much of the media we consume filters into our everyday conversations and reactions. These are some of my favourite recent feminist young adult fiction offerings, and I know there are plenty I have still yet to read. After writing this post I realised Holly Bourne, author of Am I Normal Yet?, featured below, has written a guest post of Queen of Contemporary with her Top 5 Feminist YA, thankfully the whole list isn't the same! It's a great list, check it out too! Also, all these book are by female authors!

Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

A feminist commentary set in a dystopian future, which is an unsettling reflection on out current reality. Body image issues, living for the pleasure of men, female friendship and rivalry, queerness and breeding boys, this book covers a lot of bases. Louise O'Neill's second book Asking For It, is out soon, and tackles the issue of consent. Review here!

Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

The focus of this story is on Evie's OCD recovery process at a new college, but the backdrop of figuring out feminism with her new best friends is great. The Spinster Club is an inspired idea, and while not all their ideas are spot on (here's a little bit of a trans-exclusive chat) the point is that they create themselves a space to talk it all through and figure it all out.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart

Frankie attempts to take down the patriarchal old-boys-network of her prestigious boarding school from within, by anonymously taking over an elite secret society. Her chats with her older sister on the phone, who has gone to university and discovered women's studies and feminism, are brilliant and provide a chance for Frankie to sound out her own thoughts on the topic. There is no doubt in the readers' mind by the end of the book, that Frankie is going to continue trying to question everything, and tear down to patriarchy. Review here!

Lorali by Laura Dockrill

Not an overt feminist young adult offering, Lorali is a story of a mermaid who comes to land, of  the pirates on her trail, and her new friends on land. The feminist undertones lie in the matriarchy of the mermaid community, deep in the sea, the male pirates who are meticulous in their beauty regimes and tailoring (stereotypically feminine concerns), and large part of the narrative narrator by the female voice of the sea. Little twists like Lorali feeling confident to make the first move, because that's how it's done down in The Deep, are perfect. Review here!

The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew

Set in 2012 in contemporary Nazi England, lead character Jessika Keller leads a life a total submission, just as she and all her peers have been taught. Through her outspoken and rebellious friends Jessika begins be more aware of the constraints on her freedom as a women in the setting of The Greater German Reich. Power, sexuality, patriarchy, and censorship are al explored in this great feminist YA offering.

Top 5 (6) Books: High School Young Adult Fiction

So, obviously a lot of YA contemporary novels have High School as their main setting, but there are plenty that take place over the summer holidays, or at parties, or at college, or on a road trip. High School is a strange and unique place. It needs to navigated. You need to survive it. You're meant to figure out what you want to do and who you want to be. While you're in it, it feels like the most important time in your life, it feels like your whole world. I've picked 6 of what I think are the best High School based YA novels. They each get to the essence of the High School experience for each of their characters. It would've probably been good if I had actually read them when I was in High School (I mostly read Harry Potter and Confessions of Georgia Nicolson, which are both set mostly in High Schools so I guess I got some of the experience). Here they are:

The Perks of Being a Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky

Possibly the ultimate High School misfits story. Charlie is dealing with a whole lot of repressed-childhood-memory issues, and on top of that has to deal with being a shy, intelligent, wallflower of a teenage boy. The friends he makes (fellow wallflowers), and the experiences they give him (parties, drugs, mix tapes, girlfriends, The Rocky Horror Picture Show) paint the ultimate picture of being carefree and non-conforming. Not caring about popularity in High School must be the best super power there is.

The Manifesto on How to be Interesting- Holly Bourne

Bree starts out the story as very unpopular at her High School. She doesn't care about popularity, or being pretty, or make up, or getting invites to parties. She in cleverer than everyone she knows and is trying to become a published author. When she begins her project on becoming more 'interesting', she ends up playing the system and manipulating the social hierarchy to end up on top. With a new hair cut, stylish clothes, sought after make up brands, and no more sticking her hand up in class, Bree very quickly becomes part of the 'perfects' clique. Bringing the system down from within, and herself with it, there is a definite 'being yourself is important' message. Not caring about popularity is great, but you need to care about yourself. 

Eleanor & Park- Rainbow Rowell

Another misfits novel, Eleanor and Park are both reasonably low in the social standings of their High School, particularly Eleanor, whose family is pretty poor and dysfunctional, so it's especially hard for her to be wearing the right clothes and rocking the right haircut. This is a love story of school-bus-headphone-sharing, and me-and-you-against-the-world first love. Finding refuge from life and school with each other, they are pretty determined to last forever, though they know the universe the probably against them. Eleanor & Park captures the essence of that first High School love. 

Only We Know- Simon Packham

Yet another misfit, Lauren is starting a new High School and trying to get away from the secrets of her past. Desperately hiding her secrets from her new friends, she gets involved in the school fashion show, goes to parties, goes on a date. With the added mystery and who-dun-it of someone from her past threatening to let her secrets out, Lauren attempts to navigate the already difficult waters of being a new student at a High School. The big twisteroo really makes this novel, and once we realise what Lauren has been dealing with, her High School journey becomes all the more impressive. In the end being herself does pay off, with her new classmates fully supporting her. 

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks- E. Lockhart

Frankie attends an extremely prestigious boarding school somewhere New England (I think). What makes this story unique, is that while a large portion of it centres on Frankie's rise to popularity through dating a popular guy, and her awareness of the fragility of her position at their table in the cafeteria, it mostly focusses on Frankie infiltrating an elite secret society and attempting to bring down the old-boys-network from within. Like Charlie in Perks, and Bree in Manifesto, she is way cleverer than most of the people she hangs out with, and her drive to be known and respected is about much more than popularity and security. It seems Frankie will continue being herself, and continue attempting to bring down old-boys-networks and patriarchy by any means at her disposal.

Before I Fall- Lauren Oliver

This time from the point of view of a popular High School senior, Sam, the entire book is set on one day, repeated seven times. It's February 12th, 'Cupid Day', which involves valentines and skimpy dressing for school, and a big party that night, at the end of which Sam dies in a car crash. As she lives the day over and over, Sam gets to learn more about her position in the social hierarchy of the school, and about fellow students, the lives of which she had previously deemed unimportant. She sees how her life has affected others, and how the simplest actions can change a whole day. Over the relived days Sam slowly realises, along with the reader, what she has to do to finally come to rest. While being true to yourself and living in the moment is important, being aware of your own impact on those around is equally valuable. 

Be true to yourself! Don't care about popularity! Care about yourself! Care about your friends! Be aware of your actions and their impact on other people! Fall in love, why not! Bring down the patriarchy! 

August TBR

I have lots of exciting books to read this month, so many that this list may in fact change quite a bit if I fancy reading something else! I've also been itching to finish off my Harry Potter reread, so The Deathly Hallows may end up making an appearance too. And I have some gooduns on the way from Hot Key Books and a NetGalley shelf to get through too!

So tentatively, here is my August TBR as it currently stands:


-I've heard a lot about The Ship, I think booksandquills mentioned it in a video. It sounds dystopian and fantastical, and I was very excited to find an ARC copy in Oxfam Books!

-I also found Church of Marvels in Oxfam Books, which I think will be a nice follow on from The Ship.

-I also have Marina Keegan's The Opposite of Loneliness, which I'm hoping will fill me full of hope and wisdom in my current unemployed state.

-An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield was in Fopp's 2 for £5 deal, and I vaguely remember this being recommended by a booktuber recently too. I'm hoping it won't fill me entirely with despair, and hopefully also give me hope and wisdom.

-I received a copy of Heap House from Hot Key Books in July, and it looks weird and wonderful so I'm looking forward to that. The second in the trilogy is Foulsham, which is already out, and the third, Lungdon, is out in November.


I also have Holly Bourne's Manifesto On How To Be Interesting and The Big Lie by Julie Mayhew on my kindle, and Fans of the Impossible Life by Kate Scelsa. They all look GREAT. Happy Reading!