Burning Impossibly Bright

Hello! March has been a sort of okay month for me reading wise, but not particularly great. I did get to go to the Hot Key Books blogger brunch with Piccadilly Press and Templar books also taking part, and got to meet/see a lot of bloggers again, which was lovely. Books read: The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes Young Avengers Volume 2 by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie We Were Liars by E Lockhart Say Her Name by James Dawson Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira Total: 7  Books reviewed: Spy Society by Robin Benway Banished by Liz de Jager Cress by Marissa Meyer The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes We Were Liars by E Lockhart Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith Book of the Month: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith. I luuuurved this book. But We Were Liars and Say Her Name were both excellent reads, too. And I adore Young Avengers. At Hot Key I got to see a bunch of lovely bloggers (which I am going to try and n...

Title:  The Blood List Author: Sarah Naughton Series:  Standalone Pages:  304 Publisher: Simon and Schuster Children's Books Date of Publication: 27th February, 2014 Source: Publisher* Synopsis from Goodreads: The year is 1646, tales of witches, murder and changelings are rife and a dark era is about to begin… Barnaby Nightingale is the perfect son; Strong, handsome, daring, everything his father wants him to be, and yet for his mother, Frances, he will never be the son she desires. Frances believes that her real son was taken from her as a baby by the local village folk who believed him to be a changeling, and Barnaby left in his place. Constantly disappointing his mother, Barnaby is spoiled by his father and despised by his younger brother, Abel. But when the beautiful and mysterious Naomi catches Barnaby's attention his world is thrown into chaos as superstition and dark folklore take hold of the small village and Naomi is accused of being a witch. Fear and susp...

Grasshopper Jungle Andrew Smith February 27th 2014 Electric Monkey In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend Robby have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. Funny, intense, complex and brave,  Grasshopper Jungle  is a groundbreaking, genre-bending, coming-of-age stunner. This book was just wild from start to finish. It is so weird and so gross and so great I don't even have the words to describe my feelings about this book. Though that's probably more because I still do not really know how I feel about it... This is starting to look like a recurring theme with my reviews. I did definitely like it a whole bloody lot though. But I'm still not sure why, so I should probably think on that. One thing I know I definitely loved about it was Austin, and specifically...

Okay, so that title sounds really pretentious. But I've just been thinking a lot about blogging and the impact it's had on my life over the past couple of years and I kind of just wanted to write about it? Well actually I talk about blogging quite a lot, so I guess it's not really anything too different. I have a turbulent relationship with blogging, as I think most bloggers do, really. I love it a lot, but it's hard to love it all the time, and I go through a cycle of being really happy about blogging regardless of things like comments and views and I just do it for the reason that I started doing it - because I love talking about books and various other shit and now I can do that in real life AND on the internet. But other times I go through that annoying thing where you feel like you aren't getting any where and that your output just doesn't matter and that there's no growth and you feel stifled, and think that your content is boring because you're no...

We Were Liars E. Lockhart May 15th 2014 Hot Key Books A beautiful and distinguished family. A private island. A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy. A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive. A revolution. An accident. A secret. Lies upon lies. True love. The truth.   We Were Liars  is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from National Book Award finalist and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart.  Read it. And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE. *****SPOILER FREE***** I finished We Were Liars about a week or so ago, and I still don't know how I feel about it. I'm going to try and talk about it without spoiling anything or without hyping anything up, because I know the hype about it has let a lot of people down, but I think that it's a book that, whether you love it or hate it, you still want to talk about it. It's a book that I think a lot of people should read, just because I think it is special regardless of whether I lo...

The Naturals Jennifer Lynn Barnes November 7th 2013 Cassie Hobbes is not like most teenagers. Most teenagers don’t lose their mother in a bloody, unsolved kidnapping. Most teenagers can’t tell who you are, where you’re from and how you’re likely to behave within moments of meeting you. And most teenagers don’t get chosen to join The Naturals. Identified by the FBI as uniquely gifted, Cassie is recruited to an elite school where a small number of teens are trained to hone their exceptional abilites. For Cassie, trying to make friends with the girls, and to figure out the two very different, very hot boys, is challenging enough. But when a serial killer begins recreating the details of her mother’s horrific crime scene, she realises just how dangerous life in The Naturals could be... I really enjoyed The Naturals. It was like reading a YA version of Criminal Minds, and I love Criminal Minds, so, there's really no way to go wrong there. Plus it was a nice sort of twist to have on the ...

Cress (The Lunar Chronicles #3) Marissa Meyer February 6th 2014 Puffin Cress is the third book in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles series, following Cinder and Scarlet. Incarcerated in a satellite, an expert hacker and out to save the world - Cress isn't your usual damsel in distress. CRESS grew-up as a prisoner. With only netscreens for company she's forced to do the bidding of the evil Queen Levana. Now that means tracking down Cinder and her handsome accomplice Emperor Kai. But little does Levana know that those she seeks, and the man she loves, are plotting her downfall . . . As paths cross and the price of freedom rises, happily ever after has never seemed further away for Cress, Scarlet and Cinder. This is not the fairy tale you remember. But it's one you won't forget. I love this series. Like, properly, properly love it. And each book just gets better and better. I always knew that Cress would probably be one of my favourites because it's based on Rapunzel, w...

Banished Liz de Jager February 27th 2014 Tor UK Sworn to protect, honour and slay. Because chaos won’t banish itself… Kit is proud to be a Blackhart, now she’s encountered her unorthodox cousins and their strange lives. And her home-schooling now includes spells, fighting enemy fae and using ancient weapons. But it’s not until she rescues a rather handsome fae prince, fighting for his life on the edge of Blackhart Manor, that her training really kicks in. With her family away on various missions, Kit must protect Prince Thorn, rely on new friends and use her own unfamiliar magic to stay ahead of Thorn’s enemies. As things go from bad to apocalyptic, fae battle fae in a war that threatens to spill into the human world. Then Kit pits herself against the Elder Gods themselves – it’s that or lose everyone she’s learnt to love. Banished had a lot of things in it which I love. An awesome heroine, blonde fae boys, werewolves, dragons! (well, a dragon, but that's more dragon than most book...

Spy Society (Also know as Also Known As) Robin Benway June 18th (UK) Simon & Schuster Being a 16-year-old safecracker and active-duty daughter of international spies has its moments, good and bad. Pros: Seeing the world one crime-solving adventure at a time. Having parents with super cool jobs. Cons: Never staying in one place long enough to have friends or a boyfriend. But for Maggie Silver, the biggest perk of all has been avoiding high school and the accompanying cliques, bad lunches, and frustratingly simple locker combinations. Then Maggie and her parents are sent to New York for her first solo assignment, and all of that changes. She'll need to attend a private school, avoid the temptation to hack the school's security system, and befriend one aggravatingly cute Jesse Oliver to gain the essential information she needs to crack the case . . . all while trying not to blow her cover. Ever since the Gallagher Girls series finished, I've been eager to find some other b...

Another month is over - this year is going so quickly already! I've managed to read lots of books this month, however the reviewing has slowed down significantly... Ahh well, it seems you cannot have everything! Now, onto the books!       1. Top Girls by Caryl Churchill 2. The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith 3. Double Crossed by Ally Carter 4. Uncommon Criminals by Ally Carter 5. Echo Boy by Matt Haig 6. Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter 7. Fangirl   by Rainbow Rowell 8. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 9. The Blood List by Sarah Naughton Top Girls and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were read for school, and while I absolutely despise  Top Girls and loathe it with every sense of my being, it's for coursework so I have to suffer through it. I was pleasantly surprised by Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde though, it's actually a good read. As you can probably tell I've read a lot of Ally Carter - I've caught up with the H...