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Red Queen – Victoria Aveyard

red queen

Take all the future society, dystopian fiction books you have read and you will see a piece of them in this book. Strong heroine living a crappy life in a crappy town who is plucked from obscurity after meeting a mysterious person (she may or may not find him attractive!). She discovers she has this amazing power/ ability and this makes her dangerous/ awesome. Sound like anything you have read? Well, yes.
Mare Barrow has a collection of brothers who are fighting in the Silver army. They are Red foot soldiers, expendable cannon fodder for the powerful elite. Silvers have silver blood running through their veins, and super powers. There are super strong ones, one that can read and control your mind and a variety of other powers which mean that they can control the Red working classes. She meets a woman who tells her there will be a rebellion, a Red army (the Scarlet Guard) is working to overthrow the Silver Elite and her brother has joined. She must too. Her father is crippled after his stint in the army and life is pretty hard in the Stilt village where they live. Then she meets the mysterious stranger and he offers her a job working at the palace. She needs the money so she says yes; that’s where it all starts to go wrong. She is forced to show that she has a power as well. It is unheard of for a Red to have a power, it shifts societies thinking and the Silvers cannot afford to let that happen. So, they pretend that Mare is a Silver and get her engaged to the second prince, Maven. Even though she is in love with the first prince and future King, Cal.
There are some clichés in this; love triangle with brothers, annoying girl tormentor who likes bashing things, helpful adults who try and sort things out. It was well written and goes along at a pace. I likes Mare although I felt she could be expanded a little, maybe this will happen in the second book. The twist at the end was pretty shocking, I was expecting things to not be as they seemed but the scene in the throne room was really out there.
In short, if you like books like The Hunger Games and Divergent you will like this; it does have a good plot and some twists and turns that will keep you guessing and I am looking forward to the next book to see what happens – I can guess though!

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All the Bright Places – Jennifer Niven

all the bright places

Theodore Finch is one of those characters that you become fond of. Reading about him and the way that he sees the world gave me an insight into mental health issues and what it is like to be a teenager in todays instant world. When I was a teenager we didn’t have 24 hour contact with our friends – if I was on the house phone for longer than half an hour my Dad would shout at me for blocking the line! It worries me that teenagers these days (how old am I?!) never switch off; their brains must be a constantly revolving door of information and gossip.
Theodore is depressed ( I think) and obsessed with suicide – namely his. He is constantly thinking of ways to kill himself. To this end he finds himself on the roof of the tower at his school with the aim of jumping off. There he meets Violet Markey. Her sister has recently died in a car crash and Violet is in the grip of a profound grief. Before this she was a popular and well known student at the school and as soon as students start to notice the two people on the top of the tower Theodore gives her an option. Jump or, tell everyone that she was up there to save him – the well known crazy kid who is obsessed with suicide. She chooses life – her reputation is saved and his is just where he left it, in the crazy box.
They spend more time together; Theodore is trying to help guide Violet out of her haze of grief and get on with her life and it seems to be working. She is slowly recovering and the more they see of each other the more they start to feel for each other. The end of the book then, comes as a shock. I won’t spoil it for you but it brought home to me the fact that you never know what another person is thinking, no matter how close you are. No matter how good you think someone’s life is, there is always something going on which you may not be aware of.
Read this book. Think about Theodore and Violet and the mark they leave on the lives of all the people they meet. Then think about the mark you are leaving on all the people in your life and how important you are to them all. This book is moving and profound and although it made me sad, it was also life affirming.

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A Little in Love – Susan Fletcher

a little in love

So, if you’ve seen Les Miserables on stage or screen you will know who the main character in this book is; if you haven’t let me introduce you to Eponine. Eponine lives in post-revolutionary France. The book begins with the end – a glimpse into what happens to Eponine at the end of the novel before introducing her as a child in 1815. She lives with her mother and father in a small village just outside Paris where they run a pub. Life is hard and she helps the family out by stealing. She doesn’t like doing this but her mother and father give her no option. She has a sweet face and the customers trust her, then she steals from them. One day a woman comes to the village and asks her parents to take in a child – Cossette – in exchange for money. They readily agree but treat the child with cruelty and neglect. she is their slave, collecting water from the well, cleaning the floors etc. Eponine likes her but is not allowed to – her parents forbid her to be kind. Cossette is rescued by Jean Valjean and her life takes a different turn but not for Eponine. They meet again in Paris a few years later and the change in both girls is striking.

I have seen the film of Les Miserables and vaguely knew the story so it was nice to see some familiar characters. I liked the tough Eponine, she made me think that anyone can survive anything if they put their mind to it. I wanted her to have a happy ending but the author tells us from the beginning that she does not. Cossette was destined to succeed because she is beautiful and sometimes in life that’s the way it goes – no one said life was fair! It is well written, interesting and gives you some idea of what life was like at that time. Eponine is a strong character and you will be rooting for her to survive and succeed. The most shocking thing is what happens to her brother Gavroche – wait for that!

The book also looks nice – not that that should influence you at all!

http://www.lesmis.com/

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We All Looked Up – Tommy Wallach

we all looked up

So, imagine that you bumbling along at school, you are the brainy high achiever, or the star sportsman, or the outcast girl who is having some problems at home – and then one day you hear on the news that there is an asteroid destined to hit earth in a couple of months and the entire human race will be wiped out, or maybe just North America. Pretty mind blowing right? Well, this is the premise of this book. It takes a group of students who are all playing their identifying roles at school and throws an asteroid at them – literally!
The clever thing about this book is that it makes you question – what would you do if you only had two months to live? Who would you want to be close too? Is life too short to worry about what other people think of you? It tells you that you shouldn’t just settle into your stereotype and sit there – shake it up a bit! All they way through the book the tension is heightened by the fact that no one makes allowances for what will happen if it doesn’t actually hit earth and destroy everything, they all just make the decision to live each day at a time.
My favourite character was Anita – the brainy high achiever whose parents are expecting her to work really hard and they get in to a top notch university. She just goes feral – life’s too short to spend it trying to fulfil your parents expectations of you, what about your expectations for yourself? The way in which the book is written really gives you a sense of impending doom but also of not wasting life’s opportunities. Peter is still in love with a girl that he was friends with at primary school, but because he is the school’s star sportsman he feels that he needs to date the shallow cheerleader, even though she seems to be dating him for status as well. You’ll be cheering (do you see what I did there?!) him on when he finally decides to do something about it.
Read this book, you will enjoy it. But also really think about how it makes you feel. Are you playing at being someone or are you being yourself – in the end that is what this book is asking you. Are you making yourself happy or are you living to make other people happy. Find your role in life – everyone’s got one…

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A Little Something Different – Sandy Hall

a little something different

This book is so clever! It follows two characters (Lea and Gabe) who ‘secretly’ really like each other – each chapter is written from a different characters perspective; including a bench and a squirrel. They think that no one else has noticed how much they like each other, but everybody has. It follows the story of how they get together. They eat the same Chinese food, like the same bands, hang out at the same coffee shop and all the characters notice how much they like each other and should be together – except them.
The clever bit is that this probably happens to lots of people – speaking as someone that has worked in a coffee shop and a bar, you get to do a lot of people watching. It’s a fun game to pass the time with your colleagues – pairing people off. The ladies that work in the coffee shop observe them every time they come in, the bench remembers them when they sit on him, the squirrel observes them when collecting his winter nuts! I think that you could write this novel about anyone, using a whole host of different characters. Either way, it’s a good twist on a romantic novel – a little something different!

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Revolution – Jennifer Donnelly

Meet Andi Alpers in modern day America. Her parents are divorcing and her beloved brother, Truman has just died. She is angry and grief stricken and not really coping with life. She is about to be expelled from her school when her father suggests that she accompany him on a business trip to Paris. Seeing that she has no other option, she goes.

Then, meet Alexandrine Paradis in revolutionary France. A turbulent and dangerous time for anyone, but when you are friends with a prince then even more so.

Andi finds Alexandrine’s diaries in a violin case and gets swept up in the past. She soon learns that the past can sometimes be all too present when she sets out to discover the truth about what happened to Alexandrine.

This book is so well written I was disappointed to finish it. The narration jumps between the two main characters and both are engaging and interesting. Andi is difficult to like at first but once you delve in to her past a bit and see why then you warm to her. Alexandrine is ambitious and living in a dangerous time, which she finds out to her cost. Paris has an amazing system of catacombs underneath it where all the bones of the cemeteries were placed when they needed to make space for housing during the 18th century. A really interesting book about this is Pure by Andrew Miller (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10116927-pure?ac=1).

It’s somewhere I would like to go and have a look at one day (bit creepy I know!) so a book about what it’s like is awesome! I love anything about the French Revolution, it was a scary time in French history and a  this book is a really interesting take on it. Donnelly writes so well and with such description that sometimes you feel like you could almost be there with them.

I found the historical narration more interesting then the modern day one but that’s just my inner history geek coming out! Try it though, you might like it.

Further reading includes The Red Necklace The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner or for ambitious readers A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens or A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel.

http://www.catacombes.paris.fr/en/homepage-catacombs-official-website

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A Gathering Light – Jennifer Donnelly

Sixteen-year-old Mattie Gokey has big dreams. Desperate for money, she takes a job at the Glenmore Hotel, where guest Grace Brown entrusts her with the task of burning a secret bundle of letters. But when Grace’s drowned body is fished from the lake, Mattie discovers that the letters could reveal the grim truth behind a murder. The book is based on the real murder of Grace Brown by her lover Chester Gillette. Some of the characters are fictional but the main players are real.


This is the debut novel by Jennifer Donnelly and was written in 2003. She has since gone on to write some amazing novels, not least of which is Revolution (see review). This one is outstanding. The book is set in 1906, a time in America where anything was possible. People like Mattie went to work at places like the Glenmore and succeeded. Earned money, met new people, changed their lives – the class system in America was not as stringent as it was in Britain. So when she meets Grace Brown she is fascinated, and a little overwhelmed.

The opens with the staff watching as the lake is dragged for a body. When she is brought in Mattie assumes that she isn’t dead, just faint. The description in this book is amazing. The cold foreboding of the lake, the dripping of the dress as the body is brought in, the naivety of Mattie – it’s so clever. The present is juxtaposed with stories of Mattie’s upbringing. There are lots of mouths to feed and not much money to go round, but Mattie is obviously trying to better herself and her siblings. She gives them all a word of the day and is trying to teach them all to read. She spends all their grocery money on a notebook because it looks so pretty and she wants to write in it. It is a constant throughout the novel that she worries for them and their future.

The book is part mystery novel, part thriller and part social commentary. Life was tough, there is no doubt; but not if you had money. The difference between the staff who eek out a living at the Glenmore and the guests is obvious. Mattie holds the key to mystery and it becomes obvious that Grace Brown gave her the letters because she assumed she couldn’t read, so there would be no danger of her discovering the truth. Grace in turn is not as wealthy as her lover, not a great catch, and this is ultimately the reason that she has to go.

A really well written and clever book. Donnelly is so good at describing the world that she creates, it makes you feel as though you can reach out and touch it. You empathise with Mattie, but also with Grace and her predicament. Well worth a read if you want to immerse yourself in something on a rainy day.

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Monkey Wars – Richard Kurti

Well – what can I say about this book? It’s essentially a West Side Story set in Kolkata – with monkeys! A group of monkeys live in a cemetery and are attacked one night but another group of monkeys who are basically evil. They end up meeting another group of monkeys and the evil group take over the cemetery. they then attack another group of monkeys and kill them all, and take over their home as well – with me so far?

The main character is a naïve monkey called Mico who’s family are Langur monkeys – they are power crazy. He is a clever monkey but not physically strong, unlike his brother Breri who is indoctrinated by the General Pogo and his evil sidekick Lord Gospodar. on the other side is Papina, a rhesus monkey who’s father has been brutally murdered by the Langur monkeys in the cemetery takeover. She knows a secret way into the cemetery and meets Mico one night – cue love affair. The humans do make an appearance as gullible idiots who have made a pact with the Langur monkeys to rid the city of rhesus monkeys after they killed a politician.

It’s silly. I couldn’t get over the fact that all the characters were monkeys, the fight scenes were well written, in fact the whole book is well written and it’s a shame that the content is all a bit far fetched. I didn’t really care when Papina found out that in order to fit in Mico had been forced to take a mate (that’s men for you!) and felt cheated by him. So many of the character are killed off or driven mad and when the final reckoning takes place between Mico and Lord Gospodar you just want the book to finish. Granted the plan was pretty clever but it’s a long book. Sorry, for a debut novel this could have been so much better if the story was about actual humans – which I suppose is the point!

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Echo Boy – Matt Haig

This is the third book I have read by Matt Haig and after The Radleys and The Humans I had high hopes. The idea of the book is a good one; it’s set in the future and a robot has been developed that looks like a human but is not. They’re made of flesh and blood but have a chip implanted in their brain which switches off emotion and makes them able to process information at an amazing rate. Most Echoes are modern day slaves; people use them in their homes to cook and clean, educate their children and do all the menial tasks that they don’t want to do.

The main character is called Audrey Castle. Her father is a journalist who writes articles and books about the dangers of the Echoes. If they are able to develop and gain control of their own minds then they could be dangerous. Her uncle is Alex Castle, a multi millionaire who has developed the echoes and controls a huge proportion of them. He is in direct competition with a Japanese company who are also making and developing the ‘echo’ technology. Her father and her uncle don’t get on.

After a car accident that has badly effected her fathers health, Audrey’s mother decides that they should buy an echo to help them round the house – her father is against this and gives Audrey the deciding vote. She agrees that it would be useful to have one and, instead of buying a Castle Echo they purchase one of the Japanese ones. Within weeks, while Audrey is having a lesson in her pod, the Echo brutally murders both of her parents and then tries to kill her. She manages to escape and is fleeing the house in her parents’ ‘magcar’ when her uncle coincidentally rings her and directs the car to his house. Chaos ensues.

At her uncle’s house she meets an echo called Daniel, he is a prototype that her uncle has had developed by his main developer, a Spanish lady called Rosella. Rosella has lost a child in infancy and decides to implant Daniel with a tiny speck of his DNA to see whether he will be any different. Daniel, although able to do all the things that an Echo can do (like count how many hairs you have on your head) can also feel emotion and empathy, and immediately tries to tell Audrey that something sinister is going on.

I enjoyed this book, it was fast paced. I liked the characters and the intrigue. Although it wasn’t difficult to figure out what had happened I liked the way in which it was drawn out.  Daniel was a sympathetic robot and although you did wonder how it was all going to end you still want them to have a happy ending. The section in the zoo is well written and quite harrowing, and the description of the colony on the moon really felt like it could happen. The end is also left hanging so you could write a sequel, and the film would definitely be a hit. Haig writes books that really make you think about what the future could be like, they are believable and although a little scary, almost make you want to get there and experience it!

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The Maze Runner – James Dashner

I really, really wanted to like this book. Everyone is reading it or has seen the film; it’s all over the internet and everyone is talking about it. In fact it’s been so popular that I haven’t been able to get a copy from the library and downloaded it on my kindle instead! So, as you can see, I had high hopes.

It really irks me then, when I read a book that is not brilliantly written but that is so hyped and whose author has made so much money. It’s so badly put together that I could have written it myself. The premise is good: a boy pitches up in a world where there are loads of other boys who all have jobs to do in order to help their community to survive. He has no memory of where he has come from but knows his name is Thomas. He doesn’t have any memories of his previous life but he knows how to do things. He doesn’t know how old he is but he knows what a cow is – you get the idea. At the start of the book he hears terrible screaming and is told that the boy has been attacked by something called a Griever; he is then shown a Griever, a hideous mutated creature with robotic appendages which can kill or spike the boys causing them to have hideous hallucinations and flashbacks of their previous lives. Then he nearly gets attacked by a crazy boy and sees another boy who is a runner; a job he wants to do but doesn’t understand. The runners are trying to solve ‘The Maze’, an elaborate construction that they explore every day, hoping to find the way out.  He’s just got his head round all this when a girl arrives in the box and tells them all that their world is ending and they need to get a move on solving The Maze. And he can talk to her telepathically!

It is so badly written that I wanted to get a red pen out and start correcting it! The last quarter of the book was so rushed I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened. The epilogue set the sequel up nicely (for the author to make more money and another film to be made!) It is exciting, it’s fast paced (sometimes a little too fast paced!) some good characters that are fleshed out and you start to like – it has a lot going for it, it’s just the quality of the writing that let’s it down. But I guess if you like this kind of genre then you will love it!

I may or may not read the next one…