The Raven Boys - Review

Book Review:
Title: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic

“She wasn't interested in telling other people's futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own.”

Truthfully speaking, I have no idea on how to summarise The Raven Boys. The complexity and bizarreness of the book, makes it so hard to put the premise into words. But I'm going to try anyways...
The Raven Boys follows a group of young boys as well as a young girl and their journey to discovery. The group of boys, who include: Gansey, Adam, Ronan and Noah, are all on a mission to find a Welsh King named Glendower who was supposedly buried alive. It is said that the person who finds Glendower will have a favour of their choosing granted. The young girl, who is named Blue, happens to become a part of their search crew after she has a weird ghost sighting of Gansey in the churchyard.
Oh, and also, it has been foretold that if Blue were to kiss her true love, he would die.

I am normally the type of person who enjoys reading fast paced books, where something is always happening and there is non-stop action, so for that reason, I found it quite difficult to immerse myself into this book at first. The Raven Boys is extremely slow-paced, especially for the first 100 or so pages and I constantly found myself slipping out of the story and kind of just glossing over the words. There was point where I was ready to put it down and try again maybe in a couple of months. It just wasn't working. But then my friend threatened to kill me if I didn't continue, so I fought through it and carried on (because I'm clearly too young to die.) Let me just say how happy I am that I carried on. As the story progresses, things get a little bit faster, a little more complex and so much more beautiful. After those 100 or so pages, I found myself absolutely loving the story and all of the characters.

The characters are all complete opposites, yet they have the most wonderful, close relationship that is honestly heartwarming. The way they cared and looked after each other, as though they weren't just friends, but Family. Their bond is unbreakable and that it's probably the thing I loved most about this story. Not the plot and the search for Glendower, but the connection they all shared.

I think my favourite character would have to be Ronan, which I myself am quite shocked about, since going into this story, I thought my favourite would be Gansey. But there was something about Ronan that drew me in; maybe it was the way he looked after and protected Chainsaw. Nevertheless, although Ronan was my favourite, I absolutely adored all of the characters, and I cannot wait to see how the story progresses in the sequel, The Dream Thieves

Overall, though quite snail-paced at first, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

4 Stars
Goodreads 

That Time I Won 21 Books

Truthfully, I've never had much luck when it comes to giveaways and competitions. I can count on one hand the amount of times I have ever won something, yet I still continue to enter them in the hopes that maybe this time will be my time.
So, when I saw that Walker Books were holding a competition to win a load of books on Instagram, I knew I just had to enter it even if my chances were slim.
I entered the giveaway, then went on with my life as normal.
A couple of weeks later, I received a notification and message from Walker Books stating that I was the lucky individual who had won the wreath of books. It was safe to say that I was Happy. Ecstatic. Over the moon.

Since that day I have been anxiously waiting for the postman to knock on my door and deliver me my goodies.
And today it finally happened.
I came home from a tiring day at college and found a package waiting for me.

I dropped everything. My bag. My books. My coat. And I ran to open up the package.

At this point my mind is going crazy. As a lover of books, I can honestly say that getting book mail is one of the best feelings in the world. So, receiving a box filled to the brim with books is one hell of an amazing feeling.

I proceeded to remove each book from the box, admiring the range of stunning covers. After laying them all out, I called my family into the room to show them all the books I had won. Honestly, I just wanted to gloat.

I sat there admiring each book for quite some time, reading the titles and blurbs and just getting a feel of what each book is about. There is such a diverse range that I know that for whatever mood I am in, there will be a book to fit that mood.

After appreciating the beauty of the books, I decided to give them a new home on my second bookshelf. Personally, I believe they fit right in.

Some of the books received have been on my TBR for quite some time, such as Patrick Ness - A Monster Calls, but I never got round to buying or reading them. Now I have no excuse and I cannot wait to dive in and read these amazing books.

So here's a HUGE thank you to Walker Books for my brilliant prize!

Six Of Crows - Review

Book Review:
Title: Six of Crows
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Publisher: Orion Children's Book

“The easiest way to steal a man’s wallet is to tell him you’re going to steal his watch. You take his attention and direct it where you want it to go.”

Six Of Crows in a nutshell is about a group of individuals going on a heist together to earn a hell of a lot of money. Within this group we have Kaz (a thief), Inej (a spy), Nina (a heartrender), Wylan (a runaway), Matthias (a convict) and Jesper (a sharpshooter.) To earn the money, they have to complete said heist without getting themselves killed by the enemy...or even by each other.

This book was so freaking awesome! I put off reading it for a couple of months because I was scared that it wasn't going to live up to the hype surrounding it; oh, how I was wrong! This book deserves all of hype received and then some. Everything about this book was brilliant. Everything! The plot was brilliant. The writing flowed right from start to finish. And the Characters were the icing on top of the cake.

The characters definitely were my favourite thing about this book. I thought it would be quite hard to read from so many POVs but once again I was proven wrong. I loved each character and getting to read things from their own perspective. If I had to choose a favourite, I would probably say Inej. I loved how she was given all of the difficult tasks, but she never once complained and she was always up for doing them. After Inej, it would have be Kaz, followed by Nina and then Jesper, Matthias and Wylan all together.

During my read of Six of Crows, I established three core ships which I hope to see more of in Crooked Kingdom. Those three ships were Kaz&Inej, Nina&Matthias and Jesper&Wylan. You could clearly see that both Kaz&Inej and Nina&Matthias had a connection with each other, and Jesper&Wylan were having so much flirty banter that you can't not ship them.

Honestly, this was a great read and if you haven't read it yet or are weary to read it, I really recommend you do pick it up. You will not be disappointed. The only part that disappointed me was the end because I realised that I would have to wait about a year before I could get my hands on the sequel.

5 Stars
Goodreads

Everything, Everything - Review

 

Book Review:
Title: Everything, Everything
Author: Nicola Yoon
Publisher:Corgi Children's

“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”

Everything, Everything follows a girl called Maddy who is essentially allergic to the whole world. She has a really rare disease which can cause the littlest of things like a piece of dust to kill her. Due to this, she has to stay inside her sterile house, which is air locked, 24/7. She hasn't left her house since she was a young girl and hasn't ever really been tempted to leave until a boy called Olly and his family move next door.

This book was such a quick read. I picked it up at about 3pm and then by 6/7pm, I was finished. I didn't realise that I had been reading non-stop for 3/4 hours. Time literally just flew past. From the very first page I was hooked and I wanted to know more. More about Maddy's rare disease. More about her new friendship with Olly. More about everything.

Her relationship with Olly is what really made this book for me. Their relationship did seem to move quite fast but I didn't really care because I thought they were extremely cute together. I loved their late night conversations and how they were constantly joking and flirting with each other.

(M):What colour are your eyes?
(O): blue 
(M): Be more specific please
(O): Jesus. girls. ocean blue
(M): Atlantic or Pacific
(O): atlantic. What colour are yours?
(M): Chocolate brown.
(O): More specific please
(M): 75% cacao butter, dark chocolate brown
(O): hehe. nice”

How can you not smile at that?

Another thing I loved about this book was the diversity of it. Our main protagonist is Afro-Asian, which I was extremely happy to see. It's 2016, I think it's time we start seeing more diversity in our characters whether it be race, weight or even disability. So I praise Nicola Yoon for not sticking to the norm and branching out.

I'm not going to lie, it was hard to wrap my head around some things, especially near the end. I'm not going elaborate and say what those things were because I don't want to spoil anyone, but if you've read the book you'll probably know what I'm talking about. I also would have liked about 20 more pages at the end with Olly, I feel like it would have tied everything up more nicely for me. But, other than that, I found myself really enjoying this book and really connecting with Maddy and Olly.

Three words to sum up; Funny, Adorable, Heartfelt

4 Stars
Goodreads