Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Young Adult

Publication Date: January 5th 2016 by Amulet Books

Format: eARC from Amulet Books via Netgalley

Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne. The Brontë siblings have always been inseparable. After all, nothing can bond four siblings quite like life in an isolated parsonage out on the moors. Their vivid imaginations lend them escape from their strict upbringing, actually transporting them into their created worlds: the glittering Verdopolis and the romantic and melancholy Gondal. But at what price? As Branwell begins to slip into madness and the sisters feel their real lives slipping away, they must weigh the cost of their powerful imaginations, even as their characters—the brooding Rogue and dashing Duke of Zamorna—refuse to let them go.

Gorgeously written and based on the Brontës’ juvenilia, Worlds of Ink & Shadow brings to life one of history’s most celebrated literary families

(from goodreads.com)

This book combines so many different things I don’t know where to begin. First of all, I really enjoyed it. I adore Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre (the latter being one of my all-time favourite books) but knew very little about the Brontës themselves. This book, though not a biography, incorporates many facts about their lives and it really taught me a lot about the siblings.

The plot was really intriguing as there were so many new discoveries as the story progressed. There were things that weren’t disclosed until nearly the end, but it worked (normally when things are held back I get really frustrated with the book) and because so much was happening elsewhere it didn’t really matter that some things were mentioned later on.

I feel that it’s difficult to talk about the characters in this book as after all, they were real people. However, they were exactly how I’d imagine them to be, especially Emily. I feel that the author did a great job of bringing the characters to life I feel like I understand the Brontë siblings and their lives a lot better than I did before. For example, I never knew that Lowood in Jane Eyre was based on a school that Charlotte and her sisters actually went to.

I loved the descriptions of the settings that were included in this book and they made the places seem real, even the completely fictional locations. I can imagine the moors fairly well – I’ve seen them on TV and I’ve read Wuthering Heights – but this added to the image that I have in my head of them being bleak and mysterious and strangely beautiful.

The magic included in this book was not over the top or unrealistic because the author used characters / stories that seem (I don’t know whether they actually are or not) local to the area and thus the character ‘Old Tom’ seems as though he is just a part of the local folklore. In other words, she hasn’t given the Brontës supernatural powers that they didn’t really have, instead their power came from another source that works perfectly with the setting and the context of the story.

My one problem with this book was that, at times, I got confused with the characters. There are a lot of them in this book, and whilst that makes it interesting, it was slightly confusing at times as well. It was especially a problem earlier on before I’d worked out which characters were fictional (i.e. made up by the Brontës) and which were ‘real’. A lot of the time the book just flitted between worlds and thus it took some time to register which world the Brontës were in, but after a while it was easy to tell as the world they created (Verdopolis) was extremely extravagant and different compared to the Yorkshire Moors.

I really enjoyed the combination of the real world and the fantasy world and I think that it allowed for a lot more to happen, with different characters being able to cross into the other world that they don’t live in. I like having the two worlds contrasting as sometimes I find that books set in a completely different world can be too confusing (I don’t read a huge amount of fantasy – that is changing though) and therefore with this book it was good because I was able to compare the real and the fake and work out what was going on when they came back to their normal world.

As I said, I really liked this book and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves the work of the Brontê siblings and anyone who perhaps wants to learn more about them, without reading a non-fiction article or book explaining every detail of their lives. Obviously this isn’t solid fact and it is a fictional novel (I mean there’s a fantasy world involved, realistically it’s not going to be all fact) but if, like me, you just want an idea of some of the main events of their early lives, with a fantasy twist and a good story, then this book is for you.

Rating 4 / 5.

Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Young Adult.

Publication Date: January 5th 2016 by Sourcebooks Fire.

Format: eARC from Sourcebooks Fire via Netgalley.

Bandmate, best friend or boyfriend? For Ramona, one choice could mean losing them all. 

Ramona and Sam are best friends. She fell for him the moment they met, but their friendship is just too important for her to mess up. Sam loves April, but he would never expect her to feel the same way–she’s too quirky and cool for someone like him. Together, they have a band, and put all of their feelings for each other into music.

Then Ramona and Sam meet Tom. He’s their band’s missing piece, and before Ramona knows it, she’s falling for him. But she hasn’t fallen out of love with Sam either.

How can she be true to her feelings without breaking up the band?

(from goodreads.com)

This was such a good book and I loved so much about it. Before I start with the praise, I’m going to mention the one thing that I didn’t like about it, and it’s the fact that not a lot happened. I just wish there had been a little more to the plot as a lot of events felt like they were repeated again and again and nothing new was introduced, with the exception of the development of the romance.

Talking of the romance, it was adorable. I was expecting a love triangle (*groans*) by the synopsis and the opening chapters. This was, for the most part, avoided, even when it seemed inevitable. I’m so happy about this, and it made the story much more interesting and enjoyable for me, as I’m really getting sick of love triangles (aren’t most people?!).

I loved the characters in this book as well. They were all individual and the author had given a lot of thought to their families as well, which was something that I picked up on and liked. Often characters in young adult books either have the generic loving family or broken, angry family, and nothing in between. Yet in this book I found that each set of parents was different and had their own way of acting and bringing their children up. There was a fairly strong focus on family throughout this book, in the way that the characters mention their parents a lot, whereas they are quite often ignored or rarely mentioned in a lot of YA books.

This was another book with multiple narratives, but it allowed me to understand what was going through the mind of each person, which is quite important to this storyline, as it would have been difficult to understand if you didn’t know how each character felt. I really enjoyed Nowlin’s writing style and thus it was a fun and easy read and I read it really quickly (I think it took me a day to read – maximum of two).

The outcome of this book is unlike anything I’ve read and I greatly appreciated this unique (and adorable) twist. I know that the outcome won’t be for everyone and some people may be uncomfortable with it, but if I’m honest I loved it as it highlighted something that people and society merely judge without understanding. The characters are allowed to sort themselves out without judgement and so it was good to see how they genuinely felt without the pressure of society, and none of them particularly care what others think anyway. I like discovering new things in books, and learning about things that I know very little about, and this book allowed me to learn a little more about the relationship featured (I’m not mentioning it because it’s kind of a spoiler).

This was such a cute read and I would recommend it as some light relief after a difficult book or in the summer especially. I can really see this being a great summer read for some reason – probably because I like light-hearted, fun books that I can read really quickly and easily without having to think too much! I know not much happens, which drags down its rating for me, but I loved the characters and I think that the characters are the most important part of a story and they make this story great.

Rating: 4 / 5 stars.

I’m hoping to make a good start into my reading goal of 75 books this year (with the aim to exceed it, hopefully!) and so I have a long TBR this month. A lot of these are ebooks that are published this month and therefore I need to read them asap. I already started some of them in December – January is a good month for book publications obviously! I’m going to start by listing the ebooks that I have to read first and then any physical books that I’d like to get to if I can.

Ebooks

1. Firsts – Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
2. Worlds of Ink and Shadow – Lena Coakley
3. My Life Next Door – Huntley Fitzpatrick
4. Beside Myself – Ann Morgan
5. This Raging Light – Estelle Laure
6. Under the Dusty Moon – Suzanne Sutherland
7. All The Rage – Courtney Summers

Physical Books

1. Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
2. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
3. Soundless – Richelle Mead
4. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing – Eimear McBride
5. The Great Winglebury Duel – Charles Dickens

I know this is ambitious, but why not start the year with a challenge?

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Realistic Fiction.

Publication Date: 5th January 2016 by Sourcebooks Fire.

Format: eARC from Sourcebooks Fire via Netgalley.

10:00 a.m.

The principal of Opportunity, Alabama’s high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.

The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03

The auditorium doors won’t open.

10:05

Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student’s calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival.

From goodreads.com 

This book was fantastic. I stayed up until 2:30am finishing it because I couldn’t put it down I loved it. That, and I couldn’t leave it hanging. I had to find out what happened next.

I was unsure about the format at first, as it is split up into chapters which cover two minutes of the event at a time. It then alternated between four narrators, who told what happened in those two minutes. However I got into this book and it worked so well, because I never lost track of what was going on at the time and it kept it simple.

Multiple narrators are becoming increasingly common in YA now, I mean a few years ago I read a book with multiple viewpoints and thought how different it was. Not anymore. In some books the multiple narrators just make it confusing and don’t actually add anything to the story. It definitely worked with this plot though, as the characters were all in different places and so you get the stories not only from those in the auditorium but also those outside.

All of the narrators have, in some way, interacted with the gunman (Tyler). For example, one of the narrators is his sister. Because they have this personal insight into the gunman’s character I was able to understand him more, and learn more about the events that drove him to the point where he felt the only option was to attack his schoolmates. With narrators that didn’t have such personal ties, it would have been a lot more difficult to comprehend Tyler’s character and make some sense of his point of view.

The characters were very individual and diverse, in that there were LGBT themes and characters from a range of backgrounds and with different ethnicities. However, (this isn’t necessarily against this book and I’ll probably do a later post talking about this) but I do feel like YA authors may try too hard to get all of these characters into a book where they don’t actually add anything. Something was made of the LGBT themes in this novel, but it wouldn’t have taken anything away if they weren’t there. I do kind of feel as though a lot of these characters were made the way they are to fit in with the current norms of YA, rather than for the story itself. But that’s just me. All I mean by that is that I feel sometimes as though YA authors are trying to tick boxes with their characters, rather than creating them as individuals. LGBT characters are fantastic if they add something to the story; I have nothing against LGBT characters, it just happens to be that theme that I picked to mention, there are others.

I really liked the author’s writing style too. I felt that it was fairly matter of fact, and it doesn’t have all the frills that many authors use but it worked so well with this story and I actually like to read books that are quite blunt (I’m not sure that’s how I’d describe this book, but I enjoy books that get to the point).

The plot was well thought out and everything linked extremely well. None of the narrators lacked plot at any point in the book, which tells me that the author spent a lot of time planning the story for each of the narrators, and she did this well.

I do have to question the time it took for it all to be over though. 54 minutes seems like an extremely long time and the police barely seemed to act, which just seems strange. I may be wrong – I haven’t researched the length of time it would take for a shooting to be dealt with – but 54 minutes does seem like an incredibly long time, especially as the police got the call almost straight away.

I feel that this book is so important due to recent events in the world, and it’s scary that shootings are not uncommon in this day and age. This could potentially be anywhere, and that makes it even more real and even more scary. I’d definitely recommend this novel to people as I think it’s a worthy, fast-paced and interesting read and it definitely shows (though not directly) the effect that seemingly small actions can have on someone you wouldn’t even think they would affect. A definite recommendation, though don’t start reading it in the evening unless you want to lose sleep as you won’t be able to put it down.

Rating: 4.5 / 5 stars.