Birthday Wrap Up

My birthday fell on the 27th of November and I received three hardback books that I am very excited about! Here is the wrap up of the books I got:



The first one I got is Endgame: Sky Key by James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton. It is the second book in the Endgame series. Two of the players of Endgame found Earth Key in the first book and now the 9 remaining players are on the hunt for Sky Key. I've been waiting for this book to come out for so long now and I'm very excited to read it.







The second book I received is The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh.
It's about a girl named Shahrzad who lives in a land where the eighteen year old king takes a new bride every day and kills her in the morning. Our main character decides to volunteer so she can get revenge on the prince, Khalid, for murdering her best friend along with all the other women. Through a devious plan she survives the night and the story evolves from there.
I have had this book on my wishlist for a good while now and I am so delighted I finally got it. Not to mention, the cover is absolutely beautiful and the pages have deckle edges!!






The last book I got was Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins.
The main character, Harper Price, is a southern belle who finds out she has incredible abilities after a homecoming dance! She has developed super strength and lethal fighting instincts. She then is given someone she has to protect, David Stark, who is probably her least favourite person in the world and also has the fate to destroy earth. I love the cover of this book too. The pearls suggest a frivolous, light read but then you notice the knife and it's not so frivolous anymore!! I love the shade of pink on the cover as well. 





I was very happy with all the books I received for my birthday and I can't wait to read them all and I'll make sure to post reviews when I do as I know I've only put a very brief description of each above.

If you have read any of these books I'd love to hear what you thought of them.

Leah.

Book Review - The Rest Of Us Just Live Here By Patrick Ness

As far as I know this is a stand alone novel by Patrick Ness.

This book is about the people in a novel that are... just there. They're not the "chosen ones" or particularly special they just live there, like Mikey. Mikey just wants to finish school and go to prom, but things aren't that easy where he comes from. What they call the "indie kids" (chosen ones) seem to have a weekly schedule of trying to destroy the world and are dying left, right and centre and never care for the likes of Mikey and his friends. Caught up in these events Mikey has to try to find the extraordinary part of his life along with his best friend, Jared, who is worshiped by mountain lions!!

It was such an easy read. I read it in one sitting and just loved it. It's nice to read about how the ordinary/side characters feel in books. I never would have thought about them before but now I think I always will. Mikey and his group of friends were so close, especially him and Jared, who I loved. A god of mountain lions he was a bit of a random addition to the book but he was so funny throughout. The opening chapter drew me into their little group and I found each of the characters very individual and equally interesting. This book gets a 4/5 stars. 

If you read this book be sure to tell me what you thought of it.

Leah.

Book Review - Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children By Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is the first book in Ransom Riggs trilogy.

It follows a sixteen year old boy named Jacob who, after a family tragedy, is journeying off to a remote island near Whales. There, he finds the dilapidated Miss Peregrine's home for Peculiar Children. As a child Jacob's grandfather had told him stories of the home where he spent a lot of his childhood living. He showed Jacob pictures of the people that used to live there and now Jacob realizes these people are much more than peculiar and he soon discovers the house is not as abandoned as he thought it was.

This book was a wonderful mix of photography and fantasy. The photographs helped to create an image in my mind of the different characters and they often added to the suspense of the story as well. All the character were very unique and I loved hearing the stories from Jacob's grandfather at the beginning of the novel. I would rate this book a 4.5/5 stars. My only problem was at times I found Jacob a bit boring and annoying but other than that it was brilliant! The ending was great too and really made me excited for the next book.

I cannot wait to finish this series very soon. Thanks for reading.

Leah.

Epic Reads

This is yet another website I commonly use for book recommendations.

This website gives you a large variety of book recommendations from the genres of your choice. It also gives you a book description and a reader rating of each book, which is very useful. Along with this you can find a list of authors you can click into and each author is given their own page including a biography and a list of books written by them. This is very handy if you are looking for a particular author.

In addition to this the website includes a 'fun' page which includes giveaways, quizzes on books and polls. The giveaways are often just for members of the US but sometimes they do international ones which I always keep an eye out for. 

Epic Reads has a YouTube channel as well which is great. They do facts about authors, quotes from specific books, they explain books and every Monday they put up these funny, short videos called 'Book Nerd Problems' which are hilarious and very relatable might I add!

If anything look up the YouTube channel and subscribe to it if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Leah.  

Book Depository

Another website I love to use is Book Depository. This website allows you to buy books at a reasonable price.

The Book Depository is a brilliant site for anyone who loves buying physical books. It sells most of the latest, most popular books that young people are interested in, in both paperback and hardback editions. The books are sold for an amazing price with no added VAT and free postage and packaging internationally. Another bonus with this website is that it often has great sales on. Sometimes up to 35% off and can go up to 50% off with some novels! It also doesn't take very long to deliver the books you order to your address once they are dispatched and they always arrive in perfect condition I think this is another great aspect with this website.  

You can sign up with your email address and you will get email notifications when any sale is on. It allows you to keep a wishlist, in which I love to keep track of the books I'm dying to read.  

I much prefer this website to the likes of Amazon for price reasons. I hope this post was useful to you.

Leah.

Book Review - Queen of Shadows By Sarah J. Maas

This book is the fourth in Sarah J. Maas' Throne Of Glass series. 

It follows Celaena Sardothien who is now Aelin Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen. She is back in Rifthold and now everyone she loves has been taken from her. She has to fight to get her cousin, her friend and her people back but Aelin has to get past the king first. He has joined forces with the witches and their army is getting bigger. 

This book was fantastic. This series is one of my favourites and I've been waiting for this book for ages and it definitely did not disappoint. Although it was a slow start, once the action kicked in it was there to stay. Aelin is a woinderful character and I love her personality. Another thing I liked was that it was told from a lot of different perspectives, each just as interesting as the others. I cannot recommend this book and series enough, 5/5 stars!!!  

If you decide to read this series, please read them in order otherwise you can't appreciate the story enough. I also have book reviews up for the other books in this series which I posted in July, if you want to check out what I thought of those too.

Thanks,
Leah.

Book Review - Invaded By Melissa Landers

Invaded is the second book in the Alienated series by Melissa Landers.

This book follows both Aelyx and Cara once again. But they are now separated. Cara is on the planet L'eihr and Aelyx is down on earth. The two characters have planned to live on L'eihr once they can get back together but Cara hates L'eihr and as she continues to get to know the planet's cultures, she wonders if she'd ever be able to create a life there. 

That is all I can tell you considering that this is a second book in a series. It was a brilliant sequel, following up where the first left off. The two main characters were as charming as ever and a couple of other new, interesting characters were introduced as well. Another aspect of this book that I loved was that it went deeper into Cara's relationship with her brother. I would definitely give this book a 5/5 stars. 

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a romance, science fiction book. 

Leah.

Book Review - Crystal Magic By Madeline Freeman

This is the first book in the Clearwater Witches series.

It follows a strange sixteen year old girl named Kristyl Barnette. When Kristyl is around things happen. Windows break, lights flicker and things are throw across the room without being touched. Because of this, Kristyl is an outcast and is constantly getting in trouble for these things even though she claims she doesn't do anything. Then a tragedy happens and Kristyl has to move in with her aunt, Jodi and is forced to move school. Now, Kristyl is determined to change things and she even manages to makes some friends. But after a short encounter with Crystal Jamison, the schools mean girl, Kristyl finds that Crystal is always watching her. Because Crystal knows what she is, a witch. Jodi has told Kristyl she doesn't want her using magic but as Jodi falls extremely ill from a mysterious illness, Kristyl is forced to enlist the witches in order to save her aunt.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Straight away as it opened I was engrossed and the writing flowed so well. Kristyl was a lovely character and I really knew her well by the time the book ended. The whole story surrounding the witches was brilliant and they were some slight twists to do with that part that I loved. Overall this book is worthy of a 4/5 stars.....

And if we were talking about the cover a definite 10/10 for that too!!! For once, they did people on covers right. I just absolutely love it. Sadly I read this on kindle so I don't get to appreciate the cover fully but it's pretty amazing if you ask me.

Thanks for reading and I hope you give this book a try.

Leah.

Book Bub

I recently found this new website called Book Bub. All you need to do is sign up and it will send you emails recommending books you can get on your e-reader.

After you sign up it will ask you what kind of device you have so if you do not own an amazon kindle but another type of e-reader that will probably work too. It then lets you choose your favourite genres so that your emails are specific to what you like.

Once that is done you will start to receive daily emails giving you books, from the genres you have chosen, that are reduced on your e-reader and sometimes even available for free!

I find this website very useful as sometimes kindle books can be very expensive and it shortens the whole process of finding a book to read. I usually download most of the recommendations I get by email on the day I get it as the prices can often increase very quickly and it's good to have a good few books lined up to read whenever I need one.

This website is very handy for anyone who uses an e-reader and can save a lot of money you'd be spending on books otherwise. 

  

Book Review - Alienated By Melissa Landers

This is the first book in Melissa Lander's Alienated series.

It is about a girl named Cara, who is hosting the first ever intergalactic student exchange program from the planet L'eihr. We hear from her perspective along with Alex's, who is Cara's exchange student. The humans aren't happy about this exchange program and as a result they will  not stop threatening Alex and Cara until Alex goes back to where he came from. But it's not that easy. Cara doesn't know the real reason why the exchange program was established or about Alex's real purpose on Earth but as the two get closer Alex begins to feel guilty about the L'eihrs plan with Earth.  

I loved this book a lot. Cara was a great character who I just loved from the word go. I loved hearing about the planet L'eihr as well and I though the author did an amazing job with describing the planet and including little stories about the planets culture as well as showing the differences between the humans and the L'eihrs. I also loved the fact that we got to hear from both perspectives which showed how the relationship between the two characters built up. I flew through this book and I cannot wait to get to the next one! I rate this book 4.5/5 stars.

Thanks for reading.

Leah.