The Bunker Diary - Kevin Brooks

Pages: 252

Publisher: Penguin

Release Date: 7^th March 2013

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Martyn Pig, Lucas, Kissing the Rain, Bloodline, Candy, The Road of the Dead, Being, Black Rabbit Summer, Killing God, iBoy, Naked

I can’t believe I fell for it.

It was still dark when I woke up this morning. As soon as my eyes opened I knew where I was.

A low-ceilinged rectangular building of whitewashed concrete. There are six little rooms along the main corridor.

There are no windows. No doors. The lift is the only way in or out. What’s he going to do to me? What am I going to do?

If I’m right, the lift will come down in five minutes.

It did.

Only his time it wasn’t empty...

This is going to be an extremely vague and very likely short review as there is so much in this book that I don't want to give away. I definitely don’t want to ruin one of my favourite books this year for you.

Within only a few pages of starting The Bunker Diary I was drowning in questions: why Linus? What is the kidnapper doing? Why is he doing it? Will he let them go? I really think the almost stream of consciousness diary format of the novel made these questions even more poignant and prominent. This is the type of novel that could only be truly successful when written in one particular format and Kevin Brooks nailed it.

The Bunker Diary contains a vivid and conflicting cast of fantastically drawn characters, of which only a few are actually likable in any way. Each of them handled their imprisonment so differently and I began to wonder how I would react in that situation and I realised that it’s one of those things you can never know until the situation presents itself. Hopefully I never find out! Kevin brooks opens up questions about a person’s true nature and the extremes it forces you to.

As with all of Kevin Brooks’ novels, The Bunker Diary is challenging and thought-provoking and it certainly made me question some things. At some point I even began to wonder if the kidnapper had taken on the role of a metaphorical god or a higher power with complete control. Maybe I was way off or maybe it is a metaphor for something, but I’m not quite sure yet. It was also interesting to see how the media presented the kidnappings and how they treated different members of society in different ways. I’d honestly never really thought about it before.

The Bunker Diary is Kevin Brooks at his best; back to his Lucas and Candy glory. An incredibly powerful novel that’s hands down one of the best I’ve read in a while.

For my 2013 YA Contemporary Reading Challenge and 2013 British Books Challenge

Thanks to Penguin for sending me a copy for review.

Sophie 

Finding Cherokee Brown - Siobhan Curham

Pages: 331

Publisher: Electric Monkey (Egmont)

Release Date: 7^th March 2013

Edition: UK paperback, review copy

Other Titles by this Author: Dear Dylan

His lips touched mine and for one split second the whole world stopped. Then every cell in my body fizzed into life...

When I decided to write a book about my life I thought I’d have to make loads of stuff up. I mean, who wants to read about someone like me?

But as soon as I started writing, the weirdest thing happened. I found out I wasn’t who I thought I was. And I stopped being scared. Then everything went crazy!

Best of all, I discovered that when you finally decide to be brave it’s like waving a wand over your life – the most magical things can  happen...

I loved Dear Dylan so I had high hopes for Siobhan’s second novel. Luckily Finding Cherokee Brown is just as special.

Cherokee is a fantastic heroine and I alternated between wanting to wander around Spitalfields Market with her and giving her a big old hug so no one could hurt her! She really is my kind of girl: loves rock and metal, detests tidying up, has piles of books everywhere and wants to write a novel. The excerpts of the second-hand book on writing she lives by at the beginning of each chapter was really cool and I loved seeing how they subtly related to what went on with Cherokee in the chapter.

I think that the development and growth of Cherokee’s character over the novel was really nicely done. Having it stem from her dad, and even Harrison to a degree, come in to her life and allow her to feel brave enough to take back control and fight back was so refreshing. It’s usually a shock circumstance where the heroine has to save the world, a family member or it just completely disappears with the introduction of The Boy. They gave her the understanding of her that she needed.

Cherokee’s dad did worry me though. I was so worried that he’d get scared and run off again and break her heart. She was in such a fragile place that the bullies would have got on top of her and goodness knows what would have happened! Her relationship with her dad and the change in her confidence really illuminated how stifled she felt by her mum and stepdad’s complete obliviousness to her feelings and school life. The secrets that were kept from her only made it even worse for me. I couldn’t believe what Cherokee’s mum had kept from her!

Finding Cherokee Brown is heart-warming and empowering and I think that Siobhan Curham is becoming a staple read for teenagers with her tackling of tough issues with heart and sensitivity.

For my 2013 British Books Challenge and 2013 YA Contemporary Reading Challenge

Thanks to Electric Monkey for sending me a copy for review.

Sophie 

Meeting Stephenie Meyer

On the morning of March 28^th Twitter exploded with the news that Stephenie Meyer would be doing a single London signing in the Piccadilly Waterstone’s for the movie release of The Host on Tuesday March 5^th. I immediately texted my little sister, Amy, asking if she fancied a trip to London the following Tuesday, I believe her exact response was ‘Hells yeah!’ – couldn’t have put it better myself!

I headed straight over the Waterstone’s events page and waited (im)patiently for details to appear. When they did, I became confused. No tickets? A free for all? They was no way in hell we’d get to see her if I had to wait for Amy to get out of school and then treck up to the city to queue! There would be so many people there! After a brief discussion we decided to give it a shot. She would meet me straight from school at the train station (it’s only five minutes away) and then we’d head straight there.

Amy made the train with a mere three minutes to spare and we were on our way! We arrived in Piccadilly at around twenty past four and followed the long line down the side of the shop and around a corner where we were given our tickets: numbers 86 and 87. I nervously asked the lovely bookseller if it was likely we would get to meet her or if the queue would be cut off before us. She assured us that we’d definitely get our books signed and that they were going to cut off at 200. Amy and I gave a massive sigh of relief and settled in for a long wait.

Photos courtesy of Waterstones Facebook page

The signing wasn’t going to start until six and I assumed that we’d be waiting for quite a while after it began so at around half five, we were ravenous by this point, I ran off to get us a McDonald’s. Naturally, about thirty seconds after I left, the queue started moving, piling everybody inside to get us all ready to meet Stephenie. I got back to find Amy at the front of the queue, phone in her hand and looking extremely panicked. She’d called me twice and sent me several texts – whoops.

We smoothly filed in to the shop (one of my favourite bookshops ever, by the way) and up the stairs to the sci-fi and crime department on the first floor where a marked off queue section, bouncers and a signing table were set out. At six o’clock, Stephenie Meyer stepped out of the lift to thunderous applause. We tried to join in but we were trying to subtly and quickly stuff down our dinner...

At about twenty to seven, we reached the front of the queue. We were allowed to have The Host dedicated and one other book signed so I took along my battered paperback of Twilight, obviously.

Once I reached her, I told her it was lovely to meet her (I’m so lame...) and as she signed my books I told her that I’d never read sci-fi before The Host as I didn't think I’d like it, but I’d loved The Host. She immediately told me to read Orson Scott Card’s Enders Game and told me that she’d love to read that for the first time again. I thanked her, had my picture taken with her and moved on so Amy could have her turn. She ended up looking like a demon in her photo - bright white eyes and slightly open mouth; it’s hilarious - so she won’t let me have a copy.

Stephenie was sweet and charming and I’m so glad you lived up to the lofty heights I’d after devouring Twilight when I was fourteen/fifteen. 

Although I now have my doubts about The Twilight Saga and I don’t respect them as much as I used to, I did love them. They swallowed me up and I’ve rarely felt about a book how I felt about Twilight when I read it for the first time and they broke open YA as a genre. I will always love the books and Stephenie for that. I’m so, so glad I got to meet her; it’s not an opportunity you get very often.

Sophie 

Blog Tour: Kevin Brooks on William Bird (The Bunker Diary)

Today I am extremely excited to welcome the incredible Kevin Brooks to the blog for the final stop on the tour for The Bunker Diary, published by Penguin on Thursday (7^th). Kevin has written a little something about William Bird who features in The Bunker Diary, my least favourite character actually... Enjoy!

Monday, 18 February

William Bird. Commuter man. Suit man. Business man. Always moaning and whinging about something, never satisfied. The train's late, it's too cold, I'm so tired. They're all the same, people like Bird. Like full-grown babies in suits. Toys in their briefcases, trains instead of school buses, wives instead of mothers, bosses instead of teachers, beer instead of milk ... you know what I mean? It's like they've grown up into nothing more than twisted children. They've taken their childhood, taken all the nice stuff, and turned it into crap. It really annoys me. I don't know why, it just does.

          People like Bird, I used to be one of them. When I was a commuter. Colchester to London and back every day, every week, every month, for years and years and years and years and years ...

          It's hell.

          Insane.

          A day-by-day descent into lunacy.

          Guaranteed.

          But unnoticed. If everyone around you is mad, how can you judge your own sanity? How can you realise the absurdity of your life when this is your life? Sitting in a metal box for three hours a day with a hundred demented strangers.

          What we need, William Bird, is a way out of here.

I’d like to say a huge thank you Kevin for a very intriguing post and to Penguin for arranging the tour and asking me to be a part of it. Make sure to check back next week to read my review of The Bunker Diary. 

Sophie

Geek Girl - Holly Smale

Pages: 378

Publisher: HarperCollins

Release Date: 28^th February 2013

Edition: UK proof, review copy

Harriet Manners know a cat has 32 muscles in each ear, a “jiffy” lasts exactly 1/100^th of a second and the average person laughs 15 times per day. She knows that bats always turn left when exiting a cave and that peanuts are one of the ingredients in dynamite.

But she doesn’t know why nobody at school seems to like her.

So when she is spotted by a top model agency, she grabs the chance to reinvent herself. Even if it means stealing her best friend’s dream, incurring the wrath of her arch enemy Alexa, and repeatedly humiliating herself in front of the impossibly handsome model Nick.

Veering from one couture disaster to the next with the help of her overly enthusiastic father and her uber-geeky stalker, Toby, Harriet begins to realise that the world of fashion doesn’t seem to like her any more than the real world did. Can Harriet go from geek to chic before she ruins everything?

I’ve been hearing amazing things about Geek Girl for months and now, now I finally understand. It’s brilliant.

Harriet is a fantastic heroine. She immediately endeared herself to me with her spouting random facts and using them to fill the gaps in awkward conversations along with hiding under tables. Sometimes Harriet could be a little arrogant and condescending, but not on purpose and it just made me love her even more for some strange reason!

She also took a brilliant journey throughout Geek Girl and the message that it delivered was perfect. It’s really something that girls need to learn, especially me sometimes: be yourself and embrace it. You may be a geek, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because there are people that love a good geek every now and then. That sounded slightly wrong but you know what I mean... I was also so refreshing to not have a romance at the centre of the novel. Harriet discovering herself and negotiating her relationship with her family was at the heart of the novel and I loved it.

You can definitely tell that Harriet is from her dad’s gene pool: he is hilarious. He was the child while Harriet was swanning around being a model and fending off vicious girls. His strops and pouting really made me laugh. I also really came to like Annabel. She was the perfect antidote to Harriet and her dad and was clearly the glue that held their family together. I didn’t think I’d like her at all, but I really did.

There were also plenty of brilliant secondary characters that came in with Harriet being thrown in to the scary world of modelling. Alexa is a cruel, cruel person and she was so horrible to Harriet seemingly for no reason and I just couldn’t understand why. Then you have my favourite: Wilbur. He of the outfit that looked like he’d plucked random items out of a dressing up box and his wacky pet names – love him. I also developed a strange affection for the highly intimidating Queen of Fashion, Yuka. I have no idea why, but she’s awesome and very interesting.

Geek Girl is a funny, heart-warming and endlessly cool novel and I can’t wait to read more from Holly Smale.

For my 2013 Debut Author Reading Challenge, 2013 YA Contemporary Reading Challenge and 2013 British Books Challenge.

Thank to HarperCollins for sending me a copy to review.

Sophie