Tag: books

October 2019 Wrap Up

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment

This month seems to have been really busy. I went on my first trip abroad with friends which was great. We went to Amsterdam, which is a really beautiful and interesting city. I also ordered my first Fairyloot box – the October ‘Love at First Bite’ box. More on that to come in my unboxing post soon.

Reading

This month I read The Beautiful by Reneé Ahdieh (an eARC received through NetGalley) and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Both are authors I have read and enjoyed before. I loved both books and gave them solid 4 stars, although I’d say Six of Crows is stronger in terms of the writing quality. The Beautiful is an alluring and mysterious historical novel set in 1800s New Orleans with vampires! Meanwhile Six of Crows is a heist novel set in Bardugo’s Grishaverse. I’m super excited to see her characters brought to life on TV (Netflix are adapting her books!). I’ve also started reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell which I’m about halfway through so far.

Book Haul

I bought four books this month, all from Sarah J Maas’s Throne of Glass series. I read the first two on Kindle but I loved them so much I really wanted to read the rest as physical copies. When I love a book, I like to be able to see it on my shelf!

Writing

I’ve continued working on my current WIP which is a YA fantasy. I’m now about halfway through the book and enjoying immersing myself in this new world. As it’s a first draft I’m trying not to dwell too much on getting in perfect and just get some words down on paper. I can always go back and edit it later.

This month has been pretty busy but I still managed to get some reading and writing done so I can be pretty happy with that.

Top 5 Wednesday: Recent Additions to My TBR List

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the Left2 Comments

I had trouble deciding what to write about for this week’s freebie, and as I have added so many awesome looking books to my TBR (to be read) list on Goodreads lately, I decided to do a top 5 of my most recent additions. I do have a bad habit of happily clicking away at books I think look great, so have a rather large ‘Want to Read’ list on Goodreads that I probably need to sort out so it actually has books on it I have some chance of reading.

T5W is a group hosted on Goodreads, if you’d like to participate check it out here.

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Book Review: Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment
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Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne  

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Publishing Info: August 2015 by Usbourne Publishing

Pages: 434

Star Rating: 4/5

Back Cover Summary:

All Evie wants is to be normal. She’s almost off her meds and at a new college where no one knows her as the girl-who-went-crazy. She’s even going to parties and making friends. There’s only one thing left to tick off her list…

But relationships are messy – especially relationships with teenage guys. They can make any girl feel like they’re going mad. And if Evie can’t even tell her new friends Amber and Lottie the truth about herself, how will she cope when she falls in love?

I met Holly Bourne a couple of years ago at a talk and got this book signed. She wrote ‘Normal = overrated’ and I am so thankful to her for that message. I have only just got round to reading this book. I’ve been catching up on all the books I didn’t have time to read during my degree, and I wish I’d read this one sooner. A few times I picked it up, read the first page, and put it back on the shelf because I wasn’t sure it would be for me. I don’t very often read contemporary books, I’m more of a fantasy person, and I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy the writing style. But here we are, and I finally read it, and I’m so so glad I did.

The writing style is quite conversational, which is what put me off reading it, as I’m not always a fan of this style. However, I ended up very much enjoying the style of writing. Holly Bourne captures the voice of the main character brilliantly and the style works well for the book. At time the writing got a bit rambling but I didn’t mind too much.

What Bourne did so well is show Evie’s thought processes. Evie has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which has sadly been very stereotyped in our society and a lot of people have misconceptions about this condition. Bourne didn’t fall into clichés and it was clear she had done a lot of research. It was eye opening to see the thoughts that might go through the mind of someone with OCD, and also how that can spiral into relapse.

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Top 10 Tuesday: Cover Redesigns I Loved/Hated

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the Left14 Comments

I have to admit I can be really picky when it comes to my covers. I like to have a matching set for a series, so if get redesigned when I’m in the middle of the series and I end up with a mismatched set, it does irritate me!

Top 10 Tuesday was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish, but has now moved to That Artsy Reader Girl. If you’re interested in taking part click here.

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Top 10 Tuesday: Books I Loved But Never Reviewed

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the Left8 Comments

This week’s Top 10 is a freebie, and I came across this topic a while ago, so am excited for the opportunity to finally write this blog post. The books I love most, I actually often don’t review, because I’m not sure what to say beyond a paragraph of gushing. Some of the books in this list I also read before I started my blog, hence they didn’t get a review.

Top 10 Tuesday was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish, but has now moved to That Artsy Reader Girl. If you’re interested in taking part click here.

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YALC 2019 Roundup

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment
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I went to YALC for the first time this year! The Young Adult Literature Convention takes place annually for three days from Friday to Sunday in July, as part of London Film and Comic Con. This year I attended with two friends on the Sunday. I was really excited to finally go as I had been looking forward to it all year. Not only was it my first time attending YALC, it was my first time attending any kind of event like that. Following the advice of various bloggers, I brought a small, wheeled suitcase with me, which worked really well.

The day could have started better, as my train was cancelled and the next was delayed, but I still managed to make it in time for the first panel at 10am, which I really wanted to attend. So I headed straight for the stage when I arrived. The panel was called ‘New voices of YA fantasy’ and the authors on the panel were Adrienne Young, Bex Hogan, Christine Lynn Herman, Kesia Lupo, P. M. Freestone and Rachel Burge. It was really interesting to hear about how they found becoming a debut author and about the worlds they created for their books.

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Mid-year Reading Round Up 2019

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment

12406320I can’t believe we’re halfway through 2019 already! Where have the days gone? So far this year I have only read 8 books, which isn’t as many as I was hoping to get through. Though I did spend a while reading George R. R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings, which is a behemoth of a book.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone is my favourite book of the year so far. It absolutely blew me away! It was so imaginative and intriguing, and totally pulled me in. Another highlight was Clockwork Princess, the final book in Cassandra Clare’s The Infernal Devices trilogy. Having read so many of her Shadowhunters books, I thought my interest might wane, but that hasn’t been the case so far. I can’t get enough of her world and her writing.

Other highlights so far are Frostbite by Richelle Mead and The Rose Society by Marie Lu. Having been surprised how much I enjoyed Vampire Academy, I was glad Frostbite was a great sequel, and I’m looking forward to continuing that series.

Ringer, the second book in Lauren Oliver’s duology, was a little disappointing. It didn’t quite live up to expectations, and I enjoyed the first book much more. Although it started well, Everything Everything also didn’t quite hit the right notes for me, and I had concerns about the way serious illness was represented in the book. Internment by Samira Ahmed was one of my most 19258492anticipated reads of the year, and although it is a highly significant and important book, it wasn’t executed as well as it could have been.

I’m currently reading The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge and loving it so far. It’s so dark and creepy. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that’s actually creeped me out.

Next on my to-read list is The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli. I haven’t read any of her books before so I’m looking forward to discovering a new author!

May Book Haul!

M.T.Wilson @ The Last Book on the LeftLeave a comment

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I ended up having a bit of a book buying month in May. Having just finished the second book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series (review coming soon), I went out and bought the third book, A Storm of Swords. It’s published in two volumes here in the UK because it’s so long! I’m quite glad they did it that way, as it would be rather heavy to hold!

I’m planning to go to the Young Adult Literature Convention (YALC) in London this July, so decided to do some reading in preparation. When I was looking through the list of authors attending, Rachel Burge’s The Twisted Tree really caught my attention. It sounds dark, mysterious and unique so I’m looking forward to reading that.

I’ve read a few verse novels and enjoyed reading a story told in a different form, so when I spotted The Poet X I made a bit of an impulse purchase. Verse can be a really effective way to tell a story when done well.

Having heard a lot about Internment, I just had to go out and buy it. I’m reading it right now, and so far it’s really good. It’s so relevant to current issues in our society and is actually a terrifying near-future dystopia. I’ll be posting a review when I’ve finished it!