This week’s topic is in honour of Mental Health Awareness Month. Awareness about mental health is something that is really important to me, and I’ve read many books about mental illness. Here are five that particularly stood out to me. T5W is a group hosted on Goodreads, if you’d like to participate check it out here.
This topic was actually trickier than I thought it would be. Looking back at release dates, I realised I haven’t actually yet read any books from 2018 or 2019! I need to catch up! So my list spans the 10 years from 2008-2017.
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.
I used to have a feature on my blog called Quote Mondays that I uploaded quite regularly, but tailed off a year or so ago. So I’ve decided to throwback and look through my old posts to find 10 inspiring book quotes.
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.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Paranormal, Romance
Publishing Info: Kindle edition September 2011 by Hodder (first published 2011)
Pages: 448
Star Rating: 5/5
Back Cover Summary:
Errand requiring immediate attention. Come.
The note was on vellum, pierced by the talons of the almost-crow that delivered it. Karou read the message. ‘He never says please’, she sighed, but she gathered up her things. When Brimstone called, she always came.
In general, Karou has managed to keep her two lives in balance. On the one hand, she’s a seventeen-year-old art student in Prague; on the other, errand-girl to a monstrous creature who is the closest thing she has to family. Raised half in our world, half in ‘Elsewhere’, she has never understood Brimstone’s dark work – buying teeth from hunters and murderers – nor how she came into his keeping. She is a secret even to herself, plagued by the sensation that she isn’t whole.
Now the doors to Elsewhere are closing, and Karou must choose between the safety of her human life and the dangers of a war-ravaged world that may hold the answers she has always sought.
The first in a trilogy, Daughter of Smoke and Bone is a phenomenal book. The world is so imaginative and captivating, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with it. I very rarely give 5 star ratings, because I usually have something to criticise, even something small, or it just doesn’t blow me away enough to warrant 5 stars. I had no hesitation giving that accolade to Daughter of Smoke and Bone.
I didn’t know what to expect from this book from the rather mysterious summary. It certainly piqued my curiosity. I don’t want to say too much about the plot, because it’s not knowing what’s really going on that kept me hooked, so I don’t want to spoil that for anyone who hasn’t read it yet. Karou lives in the human world, but the only family she has known seem to occupy an ‘Elsewhere’ place that they won’t explain to her, leaving her in the dark as to why Brimstone, her guardian, sends her on missions to buy teeth. Karou is so curious about what he uses these teeth for, and I was compelled to keep reading to find out why too. What’s great is that it wasn’t predictable.
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday is a pretty fun topic! There’s a lot of different factors that go into me picking up a book. Sometimes it’s an impulse buy because of a pretty cover and awesome back cover description, other times its because I’ve read lots of really good reviews of it.
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.
You can read part 1 of my writing journey here, or dive straight in with part 2.
In my last post, I told you about my early writings and how my writing developed over my teenage years. Finishing the novella was a significant moment and gave me so much more confidence. In 2013 I started work on a new book for the Extended Project Qualification. The project was alongside my second year of A-levels, so it was a very busy time. Most other people wrote essays, I could have written a short story. For some reason I decided to write a whole novel for a qualification I’d get an actual mark for, when I’d not yet finished a whole novel. Perhaps it was over-ambitious, but I had the belief that I could do it.
This was the first novel I planned out chapter by chapter, in the hopes it would keep me on track. And it worked. I finished it in three months. At the age of 17 I finished my first novel. Inspired by studying psychology, the book was about a girl who develops schizophrenia and her journey. It was more serious than anything I’d written before, although it was still in the young adult genre. I wrote it almost in a trance. The words just poured out of me. I’d never had a feeling quite like it before. It all came together, and somehow it just felt right. That book will always have a special place in my heart, and I would like to see it published some day. I haven’t touched it since then, because I knew I would need to develop my writing skills more and come back to it to be able to make it the best it could be.
It’s Valentine’s Day! And it’s got me thinking about romance in fiction, so I’ve decided to write a fun little post about how romance and relationships are portrayed in YA literature. In this ranking system, Snog is something I like to see in books, Marry is something I love or think works really well, and Avoid is the kind of thing that I dread finding in books.
While I read a lot of sequels and books by authors I know and love, I also ended up reading a lot of books by new-to-me authors last year. There are some I loved and am excited to read more of their works, but there are sadly others who I’m not sure if I’ll be returning to.
Top 10 Tuesday was originally created by The Broke and the Bookish, but as of January has now moved to That Artsy Reader Girl. If you’re interested in taking part click here.
This post comes to you a little later than planned as I started off the new year with a horrendous cold. There are so many books I want to read this year, I know I won’t get round to reading them all. My Goodreads reading goal for 2019 is 20 books, as I decided to set it to something more realistic. If I read more, that’s great, but I would like to read at least 20. I don’t have as much time for reading as I would like unfortunately. So, here are some of the books I particularly want to read this year.
I started re-reading all of the Harry Potter books over the last couple of years and would like to continue that by reading the next one – Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I’m looking forward to re-reading this one as I remember when I first saw the film, not long after reading it the first time, that they had left a lot out.
There are a couple of series I have been reading for a while that I want to continue making some progress with. It feels like I’ve been reading Michael Grant’s Gone series for ages. I’m up to the fifth book, Fear, so I want to read that this year. I’m also trying to catch up on Cassandra Clare’s books. She’s released so many I’m really far behind! I only have one book left in the Infernal Devices series to read, Clockwork Princess. A book that’s been sitting on my shelf for a while is Four by Veronica Roth, a collection of short stories about the character Four from the Divergent series. I bought this book ages ago but as Allegiant was such a disappointment Four has been collecting dust at the back of my bookshelf for a little too long.
There are four series I started reading last year that I want to continue. Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray was my favourite book of the year, so I’m excited to read the sequel, Defy the Worlds. Marie Lu’s The Young Elites was also a highlight and I have the sequel, The Rose Society, waiting on my shelf. Last year I read the first two books in Sarah J. Mass’s Throne of Glass series, and I’m totally sucked in, so I need to get my hands on book three, Heir of Fire.
Having finally read A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin last year, I also want to read the next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Clash of Kings. It’s pretty massive though so I need to psych myself up for reading it.
As well as all these series I’d also like to discover some new authors and read some standalone novels as I seem to end up reading a lot of series.
What books are you looking forward to reading this year? Let me know in the comments!
This year was my first year of reading freedom for quite some time! Having finished my literature degree last year, I was free to read whatever I wanted this year. I ended up being quite in the mood for fantasy and all of my top five books are either science fiction or fantasy. Without further ado, here are the books I enjoyed most in 2018.
The Last Book On The Left 