Books I read in July!: The Hate U Give, The End We Start From, The Good Immigrant, The Island at the End of Everything, The Dreamsnatcher, The Faraway Nearby

No you're behind on your blogging! No you're only getting round to your July reads post in September!.... I've been busy ok! July was a very good month of reading. I read the incredible and much hyped and not disappointing The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. I saw Leena Norms recommend Megan Hunter's The End We Start From in this video and went to buy it and read it in about two days. In audiobooks in July I listened to The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shukla, which is a brilliant collection of essays by British Immigrants. I got my middle grade fix this month with The Island at the End of Everything by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and The Dreamsnatcher by Abi Elphinstone. To cap it all off I finally finished reading The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit, and I wrote a blog post about it and Hayley Long's The Nearest Faraway Place which you can read here!

The Hate U Give- Angie Thomas

The End We Start From- Megan Hunter

The Good Immigrant- Nikesh Shukla

The Island at the End of Everything- Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Dreamsnatcher- Abi Elphinstone

The Faraway Nearby- Rebecca Solnit 

I'll prob review a couple of these properly soon so keep your eyes peeled! You should go read this post on The Faraway Nearby/The Nearest Faraway Place though. Also all these books start with 'The" so thats fun! 

Review! The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit and The Nearest Faraway Place by Hayley Long

I recently finished Rebecca Solnit's The Faraway Nearby, after dipping in and out of it for about 6 months, before reading The Nearest Faraway Place by Hayley Long, which I was sent a review copy of from the publisher.  I didn't notice until much later the mirroring in their titles.

The Faraway Nearby is part memoir, part cultural history book, in which Solnit examines her relationship to her mother, who is deteriorating with dementia. She looks at how stories are told, how humans connect and how monsters are depicted. There is a quote on the back of the edition I have from the Finical Times calling it "an exhilarating form of literary cartography." It's a beautiful, and complicated book. 

The Nearest Faraway Place is a young adult novel telling the story of love between two brothers. After a car crash in Manhattan kills their parents, Dylan finds himself in the role of protector over his younger brother. Griff navigates his life as an orphan, who is moved from New York to Wales to live with their mum's cousin, with Dylan there being as supportive as he can be while his brother seems unable to speak about the tragedy. This too is a beautiful, but heartbreaking book.

The title of The Faraway Nearby is inspired by artist Georgia O'Keefe. After moving from New York to New Mexico, she would sign off letters to friends with "from the faraway nearby." The Nearest Faraway Place is an instrumental Beach Boys track from the album 20/20, which the characters in Long's book seek comfort from. 

Solnit writes on p.108,

"It was a way to measure physical and psychic geography together. Emotion has its geography, affection is what is nearby, within the boundaries of the self. You can be a thousand miles from the person next to you in bed or deeply invested in the survival of a stranger on the other side of the world." 

 Long's character Dylan says to his brother on p.305, 

"'As long as I'm in there,' I said, gently touching Griff's forehead, 'I'm always, always here. That's how close I am. It's not like getting on the train and going to Shrewsbury or Birmingham or anything. You only have to think about me to cover the distance.'"

These are two entirely different books for entirely different demographics but they're speaking to the same themes; of closeness to other humans, of the nearness of death, of the distance from those living nearest to us, of the nearness of those no longer living, or facing death. 

I've suddenly realised the value in reading broadly- I'm feeling pretty smug that I'm adult who reads both young adult fiction and literary memoir, among other things. There is a lot to be gained, which is something I'll need to remember when it's taking months to read a Rebecca Solnit book and only a few days to read a Hayley Long book- there is value in both experiences and sometimes those values align perfectly. 

The Nearest Faraway Place came out on July 13th from Hot Key Books- I received a review copy of this book. The Faraway Nearby is out from Granta Books- I just plain bought this one.

Top 6 Reads for a Rainy Summer

This summer has not being very good at sun shining and warmness and general summeryness, but it has got the whole raining business down. Rain rain rain and storms too. Also cold, so cold. I live in Glasgow, Scotland so I suppose it's to be expected, however I thought I'd gather a list of good rainy summer reading. These books set the perfect mood for rainy reading in the long daylight hours. Perfectly suitable for reading on that *one* sunny day too! In fact on Monday it was a scorching 25 degrees and I read in the park with actual bare legs. And today, Wednesday, has brought the heaviest, most movie like rain I've seen. So I know what I'm talking about when it comes to rainy summers. Without further ado, here are 6 (ok 7 because I added a bonus one and didn't want to make it a top 7 for some reason!) of my reading recommendations for a rainy summer:

Wild Song- Janis Mackay

Wild Song by Janis Mackay, is a beautiful novel set in Finland. Niilo is a 13-year-old boy who is sent off to live at a young offenders centre on a little island due to his thievery and general bad behaviour. Niilo has to overcome his fear of the sea, with the help of a kind councillor and a seal friend. Perfect rainy summer reading, where you can imagine yourself swimming off with the seals and learning to find your own wild song. You can find my original review here.

Pond- Claire-Louise Bennett

Pond is a collection of short stories and essays by Claire-Louise Bennett. Beauty, wisdom, whim, and humour are found in the mundanity of a quiet life in an old cottage in a small town. Claire-Louise Bennett's writing is beautiful and full of much better words than I could possibly muster. Here are some beautiful words about watching a storm from the bath, which makes for perfect rainy summer reading:

"And then, from there, it was possible, unavoidable really, to listen to the storm going around and around, and I knew it was an old one that had come back- it seemed to know exactly where it was and there was such intimacy in its movement and in the sound it made as it went along and around and around. Yes, I thought, you know these mountains and the mountains are familiar with you also."

Maybe read Pond in the bath while it rains outside- especially if your bath is next to a window! My full review of Pond is here. 

I Capture the Castle- Dodie Smith

From the iconic opening sentence, "I write this sitting in the kitchen sink" right through to the end, this wonderful novel is evocative and charming and is the perfect rainy summer read. Cassandra is seventeen and lives in a tumbledown castle with her family, who is living in poverty due to her father's inability to write a follow up to his first successful novel. She writes about family, falling in love for the first time, and the rich potential suitors who come into their lives and shake things up. I suggest perhaps reading this book sitting in the kitchen sink, especially if that sink is by a window with a view to the summer rain outside. 

Spellbook of the Lost and Found- Moira Fowley-Doyle

Spellbook of the Lost and Found is a wonderful and magical book about the havoc wreaked by the titular spellbook, found in an old oak tree. The setting is wonderfully evocative, with all the closeness and tension of the small town, the dark and magical nooks and crannies of the old forest, and the eeriness of the abandoned housing estate. There is a real sense of stormy summer weather, and in fact I read this book by the fire in a little cottage by the sea in June, while the wind and rain battered the windows. I reviewed Spellbook last month, you can read the full review here.

Aurabel- Laura Dockrill

Aurabel by Laura Dockrill is the follow up to Lorali, a fish out of water mermaid tale from 2015. We're back in the sea two years after the events of Lorali. The politics of the underwater world, the Whirl, are becoming complicated and complex after Princess Lorali's departure to live on land. This book is set under the sea and it doesn't get much more rainy than that! Crack open a window and you'll really feel like you're under water.

Riverkeep- Martin Stewart

Should I stop going on about this book? Am I really putting it in another Top 5 post? You betcha! The story follows fifteen-year-old Wulliam, who is about to inherit his father's role as Riverkeep, which involves tending to the river's ice in winter and a lot of fishing out corpses too. A dark spirit possesses his father one night, which sets Wulliam on a journey away from his one know corner of the river, to row down the river's mouth and hopefully find a cure in the belly of a giant sea creature called the mormorach. I recommend getting yourself a hot drink, curling up in a blanket with a view of the pouring rain, maybe light a candle, and pretend it's winter already! Full review from last year here.

Bonus: Our Dark Duet- V.E. Schwab

The second and final in the Monsters of Verity series, Our Dark Duet picks up almost half a year after Kate Harker's departure from Verity in This Savage Song. She is now living in Prosperity, hunting monsters there, where the monster epidemic is still very much underground and mostly unknown by the population. Kate witnesses the aftermath of a an attack by a new kind of monster, and after an encounter with this strange creature, she finds herself leaving her new friends and heading back to Verity to warn them of this new danger. There is a very urban, gritty, city vibe to this series and I can attest to its suitability to rainy summer reading as I read This Savage Song during last year's rainy cottage holiday and Our Dark Duet on this year's rainy cottage holiday!

Review! Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Spellbook of the Lost and Found is a wonderful and magical book about the havoc wreaked by the titular spellbook, found in an old oak tree. We follow the stories of Olive and her best friend Rose, who begin to lose their things following the summer party in their little Irish town; Hazel, her brother Rowan and their friend Ivy, who are running away from terrible parents; and friends Laurel, Holly, and Ash, who first find the spellbook and cast the spell within to return their lost diaries to them. 

As belongings begin to go missing all over town, the characters' paths cross leading them to discover more about the spellbook as items and loved ones of their own seem to be disappearing from right under their noses. The setting is wonderfully evocative, with all the closeness and tension of the small town, the dark and magical nooks and crannies of the old forest, and the eeriness of the abandoned housing estate. 

Spellbook has a similar feel to Laure Eve's The Graces, with some characters believing there is magic taking place and others questioning and refusing to believe. There's a real sense of the heightened emotion and stakes of a teenage summer with stormy weather, new friendships being formed, and romances being sparked much like in The Graces. 

There's a big cast of characters, but once you've got your head around which tree-named characters belong together it soon makes sense. There are twists and turns and magic and kissing and storms and hangovers and families and friendships and I had such a great time being immersed in this world. If you enjoy a bit of magical realism I'd definitely pick this book up. Bonus points for bisexual characters and same sex love making. 

I received a copy of Spellbook of the Lost and Found from Penguin Random House in return for an honest review:

which this is! 

Review! Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Well what have we here- a robot human love story set in space? Don't mind if I do!

Noemi is the human- she's a solider for Genesis, an Earth colony planet. Genesis has been at war with Earth for years. Basically Earth has continued to die under the strain of its human population and Genesis doesn't want the people of Earth to use it as a back up planet they can destroy too. Abel is the robot- a super intelligent and humanlike robot designed to be the most intelligent, strong, and advanced robot out of all the models designed by Burton Mansfield, a fancy old man Earth engineer guy. Genesis is way behind Earth in its technology. On Earth there are robots for everything from soldiers and nurses to sex workers and cleaners. The people of Genesis are very wary of robots and Noemi is no exception. 

Noemi and Abel's paths cross during a battle and they end up on a mission through space to save the fate of Noemi's planet despite their differences and mistrust of each other. They make their way around the other Earth colony planets and along the way learn they maybe don't want to kill each other and maybe actually like each other. Noemi realises that Abel is maybe more human than robot and begins to question what really makes her more human than Abel, if anything. 

A compelling story, with a satisfying plot, working in a circle around the planets. Claudia Gray builds a really visceral sense of both space and Space, two really convincing internally conflicted characters, and an impressive supporting cast of vagabonds and vagrants. 

I received a copy of Defy the Stars from Hot Key Books in return for an honest review, which this is! 

Books I read in June! Girl Walks into a Bar, Aurabel, Our Dark Duet, Spellbook of the Lost and Found, The Huntress: Sea

Well hello there, it's July how on earth did that happen?? I guess I better sort out my June reads then! I started the month with the audiobook of Rachel Dratch's Girl walks into a Bar, which was pretty funny and stuff. I went off to the seaside for a week with the sequel to mermaid novel Lorali- Aurabel by Laura Dockrill and Our Dark Duet V.E. Schwab, the sequel to This Savage Song. I've already reviewed Our Dark Duet over here. My sunny seaside break turned into a rainy sit by the fire kind of hoilday with Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle, which was so magical and reminiscent of The Graces, which I read in the seaside cottage last year! I finished off the month of reading with The Huntress: Sea by Sarah Driver, and wow what a magical, lyrical, thrilling adventure! I'll get reviews of Spellbook and Aurable up soon and maybe The Huntress: Sea too!

Girl Walks into a Bar by Rachel Dratch

Aurabel by Laura Dockrill

Our Dark Duet by V.E. Schwab

(review here)

The Huntress: Sea by Sarah Driver

Spellbook of the Lost and Found by Moira Fowley-Doyle

Review! Our Dark Duet by V.E. Schwab

The second and final in the Monsters of Verity series, Our Dark Duet picks up almost half a year after Kate Harker's departure from Verity. She is now living in Prosperity, hunting monsters there, where the monster epidemic is still very much underground and mostly unknown by the population. Kate witnesses the aftermath of a an attack by a new kind of monster, and after an encounter with this strange creature, she finds herself leaving her new friends and heading back to Verity to warn them of this new danger.

August Flynn is still in Verity playing his role as a leader in the army of the divided city, after half has been completely overtaken by monsters. He is tasked with 'reaping' humans who have committed sins, sending them to their deaths and spends the book grappling with the human and monster parts of himself. He is reluctant leader, but commits to the role, forming strong bonds with his team, who respect him deeply.

I enjoyed being back in this dark, gritty, urban world. It was good to see a little of the world outside of Verity and see how the physical-monsters-born-of-bad-deeds concept could spread in different cities (I smell a spin of series?) Monsters Sloan and Alice make great baddies and there were numerous really well choreographed fights scenes. The ideas of what really makes a person fundamentally 'bad' and monstrous and what actions deserve death were really well explored and mirrored in August's conflict over whether to more human or more monster.

As ever, V.E. Schwab has created a compelling, clever, and very well paced book. Um, read it!

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review, which this was :)

Books I read in May!: Margot & Me, The Cows, Becoming Unbecoming, Defy the Stars

Here be the books I read in May! I went on holiday to Italy at the beginning of May and had such a whirlwind time that I didn't finish any of the books I took with me. I'll come back to them for sure- Nasty Women and The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit. I came back to Margot and Me by Juno Dawson after having started it earlier in the year. It definitely grew on me after a shaky start- I've already reviewed it here! I listened to The Cows by Dawn O'Porter on audiobook, which was fun and summery, I actually started that one on holiday and managed to finish it during the month. I got round to reading Becoming Unbecoming by Una, which I got at an Aye Write book festival event in March. It was an enjoyable but also v dark read. I spent the rest of the month reading Defy the Stars- a space based robot/human romance!

Margot and Me by Juno Dawson
(review here)

The Cows by Dawn O'Porter

Becoming Unbecoming by Una

Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Review! Margot & Me by Juno Dawson

Hellooo there! I'm going to tell you a little story about the journey my thoughts and feelings went through when reading Juno Dawson's Margot and Me. Don't worry, this story has a happy ending!

So I got a copy of Margot and Me by Juno Dawson from its publisher Hot Key Books at the beginning of the year. I had heard absolutely loads and loads of praise for the book so I was pretty keen to get my paws on it. I'll be honest: I didn't like it as first. I found Fliss's narrative voice SO annoying. I thought she sounded a bit sort of stupid or vapid and not anything like how teenagers really talk. She kept talking about wearing her Mary Janes and for some reason I found that particularly annoying! 

Then I read a tweet (oh god searching for a specific tweet is so hard but I'll try) basically saying to adult reviewers, don't give bad reviews to YA books because you don't like the teenage voice, maybe just accept that YA isn't for you (UPDATE: ohemgee I found the tweet: it's this:)

Hey, fellow adult YA reviewers? You lose all your credibility to review YA when you critique teen characters for acting like teens. Stop it.

— Mary (@knoxdiver) April 20, 2017

So I had that idea in the back of my mind and then when I went back to Margot and Me after a break of a couple of weeks I found I was much more patient with Fliss's narration. Fliss grows so much as a character if you actually get over yourself enough to read the whole book, which thankfully I did! I found Fliss to be engaging and compassionate and I really enjoyed seeing her figure out her new friendships with the new gang, in a totally new environment, far away from her London home, in rural Wales living on her grandmother's farm, to help her mum in her cancer recovery.

The dual narration, with Fliss in the 90s and Margot's diary from wartime, worked really well to tell the story of a complex grandmother/granddaughter relationship. I particularly enjoyed the 90s setting for references to things like Tammy Girl and snap on phone cases. 

So in the end I realised I was being a bit like Margot and unfairly judging Fliss before I had really gotten to know her and her story. This book is moving and compelling and touching and heartbreaking. And I'm glad I went back to finish it. 

Margot and Me is out now from Hot Key Books.

Books I read in April!: Not That Kind of Girl, Traitor to the Throne, The Ship Beyond Time

Another month of essay marking meant another month of hardly reading anything! I did squeeze in three good books though. I listened to Lena Dunham's Not That Kind of Girl on audiobook, which was enjoyable whilst I was catching up on Girls. I think I spent quite a long time reading Alwyn Hamilton's Traitor to the Throne, the sequel to Rebel of the Sands, but it was soooo good. And on kindle I read The Ship Beyond Time, follow up to The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig. Reviews for Traitor to the Throne and The Ship Beyond Time are in this nice post which includes a review of The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury too! 

Not That Kind of Girl- Lena Dunham

Traitor to the Throne- Alwyn Hamilton

The Ship Beyond Time- Heidi Heilig

Review! Three Excellent Sequels: The Scarecrow Queen, Traitor to the Throne, The Ship Beyond Time // ruthlilywrites

Welllll what do we have here! Only a three reviews squeezed into one post! I have read three much anticipated sequels in the last month and I wanna gush about all three of them basically. The Scarecrow Queen is part three of The Sin Eater's Daughter trilogy by Melinda Salisbury, Traitor to the Throne is part two in the Rebel of the Sands series by Alwyn Hamilton, and The Ship Beyond Time is the sequel to The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig. I also recently read A Conjuring of Light, part three in V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic trilogy, my thoughts on which you can read over here in a different post.

The Scarecrow Queen picks up in the midst of war. We get to spend time with both lead characters this time: Twylla and Errin are in their own separate struggles in the aftermath of the attacks on the secret conclave at the end of book two. Aurek is being the full evil King he wants to be, with Errin held captive. She has to figure out all she can do from within the castle while under the control of Aurek's magic. Twylla meanwhile has to find it within herself to become a leader and a symbol for the rebellion. She learns to fight and lead and strategise. Lief is there being an evil or possible-not-evil-after-all solider man, Merek is in hiding within the castle, and Silas is a prisoner but alive at least. There was a lot to wrap up and I can't quite believe how the gang managed to pull everything off and (SPOILER) survive and win! I thought it was a brilliant conclusion to the trilogy- I found it gripping and well paced and so full of action. It was a good mix of the intense castle prisoner pacing of the first book, and the war brewing, dark magic, run away pacing of the second. I keep remembering scenes I'd forgotten about and being taken right back into that world again. I think I could probably do with a reread of the whole trilogy so I can properly pay attention to all the detail in the lore and everything. I can't wait to see what's coming next from Melinda Salisbury (and I should probably get my hands on The Heart Collector short companion stories to this series!)

Traitor to the Throne takes us back to the middle of the Rebel Prince's rebellion in the desert almost a year after the events of Rebel of the Sands. Amani's reputation is spreading as the Blue-Eyed Bandit, with rumours swirling about the battles she's fought in along with the rebellion, using her sand shifting powers and super gun skills. The pacing of this sequel is a little different from the first in the series, with a lot of time spent in the harem of the Sultan's palace. I think this was a problem for some readers but I found the politics and dynamics of the harem fascinating. Amani has to deal with the loss of her powers, isolation from the rest of her friends in the rebellion and has to face up to characters from her life before the rebellion. There is action, tense political manoeuvring, the summoning of the gods, betrayal, deceit, and an amazing twist in the end. I keep thinking about this book; Alwyn Hamilton has created such a strong sense of place. I want to be back in that world asap and I can't wait for part three.

The Ship Beyond Time is a little different in that it brings many of the issues of book one back in to play, but with a totally new storyline and setting. Nix's dad is sobering up and dealing with the aftermath of the events of book one. Nix takes charge and follows an invitation and map to the mythical island of Ker-Ys, which should be set for a flooding disaster as its story goes. The idea of fate and the telling of fortunes continues to be the main theme, with another rival Navigator messing with the rules of time travel. Most of the book is set in Ker-Ys as Nix, Kashmir, and Blake try to unravel the mystery and figure out what purpose has brought them to the island, and how they can change its doomed fate. This book definitely got my head in a tangle a few times over timelines and time travelling concepts but I really enjoyed being back on the Temptation with its crew. In fact it felt like a really good stand alone episode of Doctor Who, with a time based mystery to solve all set in one really cool location, great guest characters, and the fates of our lead time traveller and her companions brought into question. Now I want to see it on screen a lot. Does Heidi Heilig want to take over from Moffat?


There you have it! Three awesome sequels continuing stories or ending trilogies, each totally enthralling to me. If you haven't read these series, forget everything I just said spoiler-wise and start from the beginning. Well worth your time. There's something for everyone: a fairytale kingdom where old lore is becoming true; a dusty desert, with magic handed down by gods, in the midst of a rebellion; and a ship that can sail through time to lands real and mythical.