Waking
in a hospital bed with her leg in a cast, the last six weeks of Jill’s life are
a complete blank…
All
she knows is what she's been told: while in Italy on a school trip she was
involved in a fatal accident and had to be jetted home to receive intensive
care. Care that involves a lawyer. And a press team.
Because
maybe the accident…wasn’t just an accident.
I was really excited about With Malice – it sounded like a fun,
fast-paced read. And it was, but I was also pretty disappointed.
With
Malice is pretty
much a rehash of Abigail Haas’s Dangerous
Girls which I read and completely loved a few years back. The unreliable
narrator, mixed media evidence, a horrible crime and twisty motives should have
been perfect and yet I just felt like I'd read it before, but better. I didn’t
get fully sucked into the drama and the tension because of the trajectory of
the plot and Jill’s characterisation just felt obvious. I was really hoping for
something that I could hardly bear to put down, but I just ended up being a bit
‘meh’ about it.
I really wish that the Italian
setting had been made more of. I know that Jill didn’t remember the trip, but
there were dreams and visions and so many transcripts from interview and blogs
that I’m sure there was a way to get some more Italy in there. It feels a
little wasted.
On the positive side, it is a
quick and easy read, and if this plot is a new one to you then you’ll probably
be swept right up in it.
I used to finish every book I
started, whether I was enjoying it or not. But life is short. I’ve realised
that I don’t have time for books I’m not full involved in any longer so if I
don’t like something or don’t connect with it as much as I want to, I’ll put it
aside. It still makes me feel guilty though, especially if I received them for
review so I still want to talk about them, explain why I didn’t like them. Here
are the most recent books I DNF-ed.
Perfume, Patrick
Suskind
I've wanted to read this one for
years and I’m kind of gutted I didn’t like it. Set in mid-18th
Century Paris, the novel vividly sets the scene, mostly using descriptions of
scent, of course. I loved this element but there was so little about
Grenouille’s descent into becoming a serial killer that it all just felt like
filler. Waffle about the people who brought him up and others that seemed to be
completely irrelevant to the story – it got rather frustrating and as I seem to
have very little patience with audiobooks I’m not enjoying, I DNFed it at 23%.
What We Left
Behind, Robin Talley
I was so
looking forward to this. Talley’s debut, Lies
We Tell Ourselves, was a beautiful tale of sexuality, race and the fight
for equality in the 60s and I was really looking forward to seeing a
genderqueer character in YA. I couldn’t do it. Everything felt like an agenda;
Toni sexual identity was mentioned constantly and I felt like a message and
explanations about what being genderqueer is were being forced down my throat.
Everything was delivered in such a strange tone and it was clearly
message/subject matter over story and characters and I could just envisage
myself getting very angry at it so I had to put it down. DNF at page 86.
Girl Hearts
Girl, Lucy Sutcliffe
I went into Girl Hearts Girl with serious excitement, but I ended up DNFing it
at page 38. I was expecting to be swept away by a tough, romantic and important
story, and maybe it still is, I just couldn’t get back the infodump of Lucy’s
childhood. Of the 40 pages I read, only about 10 of them felt even slightly relevant
to the story I was promised. I also struggled with the writing – it was
unremarkable, but also managed to be irritating. It felt very unpolished and
young. Such a disappointment.
Originally published in 1928 by Tipographia Giuntina
My edition: The rather lovely Penguin
Clothbound Classics hardback
WHEN
I Discovered This Classic
Like with a lot of classics, I
can’t recall a distinct moment of discovering Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It's just one of those canonical texts
that has always been there.
WHY
I Chose to Read It
I watched the new BBC adaptation
when they ran a short series of adaptations earlier this year and while I
enjoyed it, it felt a bit lacking. Twitter seemed to agree and suddenly floods
of praise came in for the novel, people strongly recommending everyone not to
be put off a wonderful book by a lacklustre adaptation. I was sold.
WHAT
Makes It a Classic
DH Lawrence was writing about and
during a time that will continue to fascinate for years and years to come: in
between the wars. A time when modernity and tradition clashed, when women were
still only beginning to fight the restrictions of society, when the leftovers
from before the war feel old and stifling. And on top of that, he throws in
lots of sex, scandal and high romance – he was paving the way for a new
generation of writers.
WHAT
I Thought of This Classic
When Lady Constance Chatterley’s
marriage to Sir Clifford turns stale, boring and unsatisfying due to Clifford’s
paralysing war injuries, Connie turns her affections to the gamekeeper that
maintains the ground of Wragby house.
Lady
Chatterley’s Lover is
one of the most accessible classic classics I've read this year and I really
enjoyed it. If I hadn’t have been reading Middlemarch
alongside it (which is a lot tougher to get through!) then I would have
sped through this book.
A photo
posted by Sophie (@solittletimeforbooks) on
I knew very little about the plot
or themes of this book outside of the vagaries of the BBC adaptation so I was
really interested to see Lawrence exploring the clash between post-war
modernity and the leftovers from the old-fashioned Edwardian era. Seeing this
reflected both in Clifford and in Mellors in such different ways was
fascinating. We learn a lot about the wars in the UK education system, but we
rarely look at the non-war related effects on the years between them. Set around
1920, the shock of the war is still evident and it shows up in the disparities between
Connie and Clifford and Mellors.
The clash between the times also
showed up in the war between the classes and it was really interesting how
Connie went back and forth between caring about her status to disregarding it
and back again. It is expected for her and Clifford to care, and that’s what
they’ve been taught since birth, but for Mellors and his own experiences in the
war, his social position is no longer of consequence to him.
Connie and Mellors’ relationship
is up and down from the outset, and I wasn’t always 100% on board with it. The
first few times they were together, Connie wasn’t really a participant – it almost
felt as if she wasn’t really sure she wanted to do anything. But as they got
closer and closer, she warmed up and he cooled down. By the end of the book I felt
that Connie had forced Mellors into a relationship that he didn’t really want.
This weirdness meant I didn’t really connect with the passion and ‘love’ that
was continually professed. I was also surprised by how explicit it was!
This was a perfect introduction
to Lawrence and I’m really looking forward to reading more of his work, I only
wish I hadn’t stretched it out for so long! I think this is the kind of novel
best read in a binge or as quickly as you can – I think Connie’s passion and intensity
will be served better that way.
WILL
It Stay a Classic
Definitely. It’s accessible and
fun, and the legacy of the scandal that this book caused for Lawrence will live
on.
WHO
I’d Recommend it To
- Lovers of scandal fiction and those
not put off by graphic content.
- Readers interested in the
period between the wars and the effect on society.
- If you’re curious about early 20th
Century exploration of women’s freedom and sexuality.
Bo
Dickinson is a girl with a wild reputation, a deadbeat dad, and an alcoholic
mom. Everyone in town knows the Dickinsons are a bad lot, but Bo doesn’t care
what anyone thinks.
Agnes
Atwood has never stayed out past 10pm, never gone on a date and never broken
any of her parents’ overbearing rules. Rules that are meant to protect their
legally-blind daughter, but Agnes isn’t quite sure what they are protecting her
from.
Despite
everything, Bo and Agnes become best friends. And it’s the sort of friendship
that runs more deeply than anything else. But when Bo shows up in the middle of
the night, police sirens wailing in the distance, Agnes is faced with the
biggest choice she’s ever had to make. Run, or stay?
I’m a huge fan of Kody Keplinger’s
books, and while Run was as easy and
enjoyable to read as her previous novels, it just wasn’t as immediately
engaging as I was expecting.
Run
is set in rural
Kentucky and has an immediately different feel to Keplinger’s other novels. Mersey
is a small, poor, religious town and the Southern accents are clear even
through the narration. We don’t really have an English version of the
small-town American South so I find this setting endlessly fascinating. The judgements
and strictness of it baffle me. I really felt for Bo and Agnes suffocating
under the pressure of their home town.
I loved the intensity of Bo and
Agnes’s friendship. It’s that heady best-friendship you develop in your teens
that hurts even more than a romantic break up when it fractures. Keplinger
writes the agonies of it perfectly. I often found myself not especially
motivated to pick this back up and it was only wanting to see Bo and Agnes
learning from each other and teaching each other that kept me going.
Agnes has the same condition as
Kody Kepliner herself and it was fascinating to read about. I don’t think I've ever
read about a legally blind character before and it was super interesting to see
how day-to-day life worked for Agnes. It had never occurred to me before how over-protective
parents would be of their blind child, the daily struggles at school and the
idea of you being a ‘burden’ on your friends. But I loved that it wasn’t
written that way – it’s not something to be pitied, and it's not all that Agnes
is.
Run
didn’t blow me
away as much as Kody Keplinger’s previous novels have, but it was still an
easy, enjoyable read about friendship, family and the thrill of freedom.
I can’t quite believe that it’s
already nearly the end of July… But it is, so I figured it was about time I told
you about some of the best books I've read so far in 2016. I've been rather
picky about handing out five star reviews this year and that’s definitely
reflected in this list!
As ever, I've been keeping a
running list of the books that have blown me away, adding them and taking them
away as my feelings changed, but I think I've got a pretty firm decision. And here
they are in three words:
A Court of Mist and Fury, Sarah J
Maas
Sexy,
addictive, unrelenting.
Under Rose Tainted Skies, Louise
Gornall
Honest,
moving, fresh.
The Madwoman Upstairs, Catherine
Lowell
Literary,
fascinating, pacy.
Eligible, Curtis Sittenfeld
Funny, romantic, absorbing.
Mistborn: Hero of Ages, Brandon Sanderson (Read by Michael
Cramer)
Relentless,
emotional, intense.
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (Read by Rosumund Pike)
A
year has passed since Eden last spoke to Tyler. She remains furious at him for
his abrupt departure last summer but has done her best to move on with her life
at college in Chicago. As school breaks up for the summer, she's heading back
to Santa Monica, but she's not the only one who decides to come home...
Having been left behind to deal with the aftermath of their bombshell
revelation and a family torn apart, Eden has no time for Tyler when he
reappears. But where has Tyler been? And is she as over him as she likes to
think? Or can Tyler and Eden finally work things out, despite their family and
against all the odds?
My love for this series is no
secret, and I was so excited for the finale of Tyler and Eden’s story – it managed
to exceed my super high expectations.
We pick up nearly a year after
the dramatic end of DIMINY and the aftershocks are still violent: Tyler is
still gone, Eden is angry, confused and miserable, and the whole family is in
tatters. I was expecting there to be drama, but wow, I wasn’t expecting how
horrible Eden’s life had been since people started finding out. I loved how
extreme and forbidden it made everything that Tyler and Eden had felt for each
other seem again, it jumped back to the feeling of DIMILY. It didn’t think it
could get any more tense, and then Tyler came home.
I haven’t seen a character with an
arc like Tyler’s for a long while. He grew, developed and matured so much over
the trilogy that he was nearly a different person by the time I turned the
final page of DIMIMY, but he was still 100% Tyler. Though not as extreme as
Tyler’s, Eden also changed too. I love how she came to learn more about her
parents and almost began to see them as people as well as her mum and dad. The continuous
revelations and tension in Tyler and Eden’s family, and between themselves,
made DIMIMY compulsive reading. I would have read it all in one sitting if I could!
We were in Santa Monica for book
one, NYC for book two and DIMIMY takes us to Portland. I don’t really know much
about Portland, in fact, I've never really given it much thought so it was cool
to learn about a new American city outside of the typical settings in YA. I
kinda fell in love with it. It almost sounds a little like an American version
of Brighton (and I love Brighton) – I just want to go exploring! These books
always give me serious wanderlust.
Did
I Mention I Miss You? is
the perfect ending to a brilliant series. Though I’m rather gutted to see Tyler
and Eden go, I loved how their story ended. This will be a trilogy I’ll read
over and over again.
Thanks to Black and White for the
review copy.
Make sure to check out the rest
of the stops on the blog tour!
This
collection of 13 of Anais Nin’s short stories were published several years
after her death. These stories explore love, lust and women’s sexuality in 1940s
Paris, Spain and New York City.
I'd been seeing this around on
bookstagram a lot and I finally decided to give it a go. I’m so glad I did! Though
the sexytimes are seriously blush-worthy, Nin’s writing is also genuinely
beautiful. Her stories are set in the hazy summers of 1940s New York and Spain
and Paris and I was completely suckered by the atmosphere. It’s a really
gorgeous read. The only complaint I have is the sometimes outdated attitudes
towards women and marriage, though Nin’s embracing and celebration of female
sexuality has to be revelled in. I’ve already bought my next collection, Delta of Venus!
A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan
Doyle
234|Penguin
English Library|1887
When
Dr John Watson takes a room at 221b Baker Street with amateur detective Sherlock
Holmes, he has no idea about the world he’s entering. When they visit a crime
scene to find a dead man with no visible wounds but a word written in blood on
the wall, Watson is baffled, but Holmes soon uncovers the truth.
This was my first foray into
Sherlock Holmes – I haven’t even seen Sherlock…
But it was a lot of fun! Seeing Holmes and Watson meet for the first time
was really funny, especially as Watson became completely baffled by the way
Holmes’ brain works. I loved how punchy the mystery was and everything was a
genuine surprise. And then part two started and I was confused. We jump to
Mormons in Salt Lake City and although it eventually made sense and tied back
into the original story, it was a bit disorientating and I definitely didn’t
enjoy that as much as the first part of the novel.
Me Before You, Jojo Moyes
385|Penguin|2012
When
Lou loses her job, she takes a six-month contract looking after Will Traynor, a
paraplegic who was severely injured in a motorcycle accident. Everything in his
life feels dull and joyless, but Lou is determined to change his mind. She just
doesn’t expect to be changed forever, too…
The hype for Me Before You, and the nagging of one of my friends who wants me to
see the movie with her, meant I finally had to read this. And I’m really glad I
did. I hadn’t expected to become so involved so quickly! The characters in this
book, particularly Lou and Will’s family, did err into stereotypical every now
and then, but they were the perfect vehicle to tell the story and it didn’t
bother me at all. The only thing that disappointed me about Me Before You is that I didn’t get
nearly as emotional as I was expected – I was fully anticipating being
destroyed by this novel but I only got a bit teary. Oh well. I’m looking
forward to catching up with Lou in After
You!
Lucy Sutcliffe’s ‘Girl Hearts Girl’ is finally here,
and this is what it’s all about:
An inspiring, uplifting and sympathetic story about
sexuality and self-acceptance, Lucy Sutcliffe's debut memoir is a personal and
moving coming out story. In 2010, at seventeen, Lucy Sutcliffe began an online
friendship with Kaelyn, from Michigan. They began a long distance relationship,
finally meeting in 2011. Lucy's video montage of their first week spent
together was the first in a series of vlogs documenting their long-distance
relationship. Now, for the first time, Lucy's writing about the incredible
personal journey she's been on.
Want to know a little more about Lucy?
Co-star of the popular YouTube channel Kaelyn and
Lucy which documented the long distance relationship she had with Kaelyn
Petras. She and Kaelyn finally came together in August of 2014, ending the
long distance element of their relationship.
She graduated from Plymouth College of Art and
Design in 2014 with a degree in Film Arts
She works as a freelance film editor and author. Her and Kaelyn's channel mainly focuses on advice videos for LGBT youth.
Now that you’re dying to read Girl Hearts Girl, enter this amazing comp to win yourself 1 of 3
copies if you live in the UK or Ireland!
Agoraphobia
confines Norah to the house she shares with her mother. For her, the outside is
sky glimpsed through glass, or a gauntlet to run between home and car. But a
chance encounter on the doorstep changes everything: Luke, her new neighbour.
Norah
is determined to be the girl she thinks Luke deserves: a ‘normal’ girl, her
skies unfiltered by the lens of mental illness, instead, her love and bravery
opens a window to unexpected truths…
I knew I was going to enjoy
Louise Gornall’s debut, but I didn’t expect to love it as whole-heartedly as I did.
Under Rose Tainted Skies is my
favourite contemporary YA read of the year so far. Hands down.
Norah is the kind of character you
fall in love with pretty much immediately. She’s sharp, funny and bitey. She
also suffers from OCD, anxiety and agoraphobia, but she’s working on it. Norah’s
frustration and anger with her illnesses is vivid and tangible; it was heartbreakingly
honest. I’ve never suffered from either OCD or agoraphobia but I now feel like I
understand them a bit better, the thought processes and the day-to-day limitations
as well as what they really are.
When Luke moves in next door,
Norah suddenly has a whole host of new things to worry about and these two are
ADORABLE. I mean, seriously, it should be illegal to be that cute! Their relationship
moved beautifully, and realistically, slowly and I loved watching Luke learn
about Norah’s illness and take it in his stride while Norah adjusted to let
Luke into her world. It was incredibly sweet, but it also felt honest and
right.
Now, Imma talk about the ending
for a bit, so if you haven’t finished the book, know that I loved Under Rose Tainted Skies completely and
scamper off to finish it. Right. The ending. Lots of YA that I've read dealing
with mental illness seem to have a miraculously happy ending, with the
illnesses forgotten or just gone, or a horribly sad one, so I’m really glad
that Norah’s story didn’t end like that. I mean, it was happy and hopeful and
authentic, but it wasn’t perfectly wrapped up in a bow, and I can’t imagine
Norah’s life will ever be that easy, but it can better, and it will. I loved
the hope and positivity in it while keeping it real. This book just made me
really happy, tbh.
I completely loved this
beautiful, brave, and honest book and I’m genuinely excited to see what else
Louise Gornall has up her sleeves.
Thanks to Chicken House and Nina Douglas
PR for the review copy.
Way back in 2013, I wrote a post
about this new, burgeoning thing called booktube
and shouted about my favourites. Now booktube is well and truly at the top and I’m
back to share even more of my favourites.
Three years on (almost to the
day!), my reading has changed and expanded hugely, and so has my taste in
booktubers. Here are a few of my current faves:
Monica from ‘shemightbemonica’
Monica lives
in NYC, has crazy cool hair, even cooler dress sense and I love the way she
talks about what she reads. She mostly reads YA, is a huge fan of fantasy and Patrick
Ness and her set-ups always look amazing. I pretty much just want to be her.
Alysia from ‘Ex Libris’
Alysia was
one of the first booktubers I can across that talked exclusively about
classics. Now that I'm delving into them more, I love watching Alysia’s hauls,
reviews and tags and learning about books and authors I've never even heard of
before.
Amy from ‘shoutame’
Amy is
one of the newest additions to my favourites list as I've only been watching
her videos for a month or two, but I love the variety of the books she reads.
There’s a mixture of literary fiction, classics and YA and her discussions about
them are so intelligent and thoughtful.
Mercedes from ‘Mercy’sBookishMusings’
Mercedes
reads so widely it makes my head spin. I rarely watch one of her videos without
coming away with a list on books on my TBR that I’d never even heard of before.
She’s a huge resource of info for short story collections, magical realism and
indie publishers. Her videos are fairly long though, so make yourself comfy!
Elizabeth from ‘booksandpieces’
Elizabeth
is just so cool, and I really love her voice. It’s a really crystal, southern
English accent and it’s such a lovely change from booktube being mostly
American. This whole channel focuses on fantasy and sci-fi and it’s another
channel where I rarely know any of the titles mentioned, but I always go away
wanting LOADS of them!
Sanne from ‘BooksAndQuills’
Sanne seems
so lovely. Her videos are clean and sharp and perfectly short. Like lots of my
other new favourites, Sanne reads widely, from YA to classics, general fiction
to literary fiction. It’s also really interesting to hear from a booktuber who also
works in publishing!
Darran from ‘ShinraAlpha’
Darran was
already a badass blogger and bookseller before he started booktubing a few
months ago. I love his videos. They feel relaxed and like sitting down and
listening to a friend ramble about books. Lovely.
Tell me about your favourite
booktubers, especially if they focus on more than just YA! I’m always up for recommendations.
My edition: The 2000 red spine Vintage
Classics paperback.
WHEN
I Discovered This Classic
Though Ernest Hemingway is of
course an author whose name I've heard a lot, I’d never heard of this short
memoir of Hemingway’s time in Paris in the 1920s until Will from the Vintage
Vlog read it for this challenge earlier in the year. Happily, I won a copy!
WHY
I Chose to Read It
There’s just something about
1920s Paris that is endlessly appealing. Writers who will soon be megastars scribbling
away in shabby chic coffee shops, enjoying decadent luxuries or struggling with
the expenses of Paris as a writer – it all has such an atmosphere and I was
really curious to see how Hemingway tangled with the other famous names that
made the city home during the 20s.
WHAT
Makes It a Classic
It’s a glimpse into the early
life of one of the most famous, most troubled and most read American authors of
the 20th century in his own words. And the literary world at that
time was fascinating.
WHAT
I Thought of This Classic
I have to admit that I went in to
A Moveable Feast with low
expectations, albeit optimistic ones. I'd loved what I'd heard from the Vintage
Vlog and I loved the sound of everything that Hemingway writes about in his
memoir, but I'd also heard a lot about Hemingway himself that didn’t sound up
my ally. He was fascinated by fishing and wrote a lot about war (he was a war
journalist) and those topics have never, ever interested me, and I’d also heard
that he was rather mean, grouchy and misogynistic.
And he is grouchy and mean, but
it doesn’t come across as a necessarily terrible thing in A Moveable Feast. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to spend time
with him myself, but his interactions with the people around him were really
quite funny, and rather sad too. I especially loved how much he despaired over F
Scott Fizgerald. What a character! But he also spent time with TS Eliot, Ezra
Pound, Gertrude Stein, Wyndham Lewis, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford and it
just blows my mind a bit. It sounds stupid, but it made me realise that these
legends of art and literature were real, actual people and I just can’t.
Hemingway tells the stories of
how these people’s lives entwined with his own in such simple prose that when I
first started reading I thought it was too simple, even mundane. As I carried
on and got used to his style and the world he was writing about, I became
unexpectedly entranced by it. I came to see the subtle beauty in his prose and I
loved reading about his own reflections on refining his style and his attempts
to strip back his writing and stories to the core. It’s interesting to wonder
how I would have felt about his prose if I had introduced myself to it via one
of his novels.
I’m so curious that I’ve actually
ordered a copy of The Old Man and the Sea
– it won the Pulitzer and contributed to Hemingway being awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature. It was also the last big fiction work from his before his
death ten years later. It’s about a fisherman, though, so again, I have major
doubts. I’ll keep you posted!
WILL
It Stay a Classic
I think it will definitely stay
under the radar, popular with either die-hard Hemingway or Fitzgerald fans and
those fond of memoirs of Jazz Age Paris, but it’ll definitely stick around.
WHO
I’d Recommend it To
- People who want an introduction
to Hemingway but are intimidated by his novels.
- If you have any interest in Jazz
Age Paris, this is for you.
- Want a glimpse at the infamous
relationship between Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald? A Moveable Feast gives you a look from a really interesting angle.
My
dad didn’t see, or maybe he just didn’t want to.
June’s
life at home with her stepmother and stepsister is a dark one – and a secret
one. Not even her dad knows the truth. She's trapped like a butterfly in a net.
But
then June meets Blister. In him, she finds a glimmer of hope that perhaps she
can find a way to fly far, far away.
Because
every creature in this world deserves their freedom. But what price?
Paper
Butterflies is
Lisa Heathfield’s incredibly powerful second novel, and it more than lived up
to the emotional punch of her first.
For weeks and weeks before I finally
picked up Paper Butterflies I'd been
hearing how June’s story had left people in floods of tears so I went into this
book fully expecting to get my heart broken. And get my heart broken I did, but
not in the way I was expecting. June’s story is not comfortable reading. The abuse
she suffers is horribly brutal and I kept having to put it down and step away
for a while – it ended up taking me a good few days to finish this when I really
could have read it in two sittings. It's shocking and powerful.
We begin when June is 10, moving
through her story and flashing forward to After. We don’t know what has
happened, just that it’s Not Good. Everything is slowly revealed and I was
blown away by the twist in Paper
Butterflies. It took the story in a direction so unexpected and tense that I
pushed through my discomfort and raced through the final third in one sitting.
By the time I reached the end I was
too stunned to cry. My lack of tears aren’t an indication of a lock of impact
or anything though – I lay awake for ages thinking about this story. About the
moments of beauty and light in darkness, about friendship and family and love,
about hope. That’s what Paper Butterflies
is all about – love and friendship and beauty and hope.
Paper
Butterflies is
brave, bold and beautiful – I've never read anything like it. Lisa Heathfield
is an incredibly powerful writer; a real force to be reckoned with.
