Review: 180 Seconds by Jessica Park

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When I picked up ‘180 Seconds’ it had been a while since I’d read a contemporary, so I’d completely forgotten what t expect plot wise. It was obvious reading this book that Jessica Park had collected a few viral news stories and decided they would make unique backstories for her characters, which was quirky but didn’t build to one cohesive story.

We follow Allison during her second year of college where she takes part in a social experiment to keep eye contact with a boy, Esben, for 180 seconds and something magical happens and they end up having this deep connection.

This wouldn’t been the perfect opportunity for some Hilary Duff Cinderella Story realness, but no. The pair find each other and start a relationship quickly after this event. Conveniently, Allison doesn’t have any social media accounts so she has no idea that Esben is a famous personality online who does a lot of these social experiments, so she’s in the limelight unexpectedly. This is a novel idea in itself, and I would’ve been trash for this story if it had been just this, but instead it tried to cram in too much.

Allison was in the care system for 16 years of her life, and her anxiety and distress about this is eclipsed by the love story. There are a few lucid passages where Allison works through her feelings, but it really wasn’t the central focus I was hoping it could be. On the other hand, I think the line where Esben stresses she could get through tough situations with him (the love interest), she just ‘doesn’t have to’ was a powerful way of explaining that having a significant other to lean on in times of need isn’t a crime.

Then there was Esben’s sister Kerry was was gang raped at a house party, and I’m sure we’ve all ready horrifying news stories about the sickening reality of this kind of event, but again, it became something that was just there rather than something that was explored. There’s some dialogue about how ‘Kerry didn’t make them rape her, they were always rapists’ that did something to get rid of victim’s guilt, but it was a throw away conversation that felt more perfunctory than having any impact in the way the character’s thought. ‘180 Seconds’ had some really important conversations they just could have been the basis of an entire book not five pages of another.

The only time I had any emotional reaction was with the Steffi storyline, which I won’t go into because of spoilers, but the scene at the end really did have me tearing up even though I’d previously not cared about the characters, so that’s a real testament to how well that scene was written. It was emotional, gritty and really packed a punch. Could the whole book have been like this?

So, I had a couple of problems with ‘180 Seconds’ – maybe more than a couple. Don’t even get me started on the contrived text message fiasco at the end of the book. Sometimes a scene really doesn’t need more conflict. It had some really excellent idea gems, but they hadn’t been left to grow into their true beauteous form. (Weird metaphor, but we’re going with it.) Unfortunately, this was a contemporary that could’ve benefit from dropping one of the balls, so I can only give it 2 stars.

Review: Purple Hearts by Michael Grant

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Note: We received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

FRONT LINES review | SILVER STARS review | Michael Grant Interview

I’ve been a huge fan of this series from day one, and Purple Hearts did not disappoint. In fact, it’s probably the best ending to a trilogy I’ve ever read. THE CLOSURE WAS REAL. We got to see what the characters got up to post-war AND their obituaries so we know what they did with their lives as a whole. Thank you, Michael Grant, I’ve never been more satisfied with an ending. Not to mention, we finally learn who’s been writing these stories! (And I guessed right!)

I feel like in each book, the girls have an identity breakthrough, and I’m glad that I’ve loved a different girl most strongly in each book. In Front Lines it was Frangie, in Silver Stars is was Rainy, and in this book, I’ve rolled round to loving Rio. She’s arguably been through the most, because her character is almost unrecognisable to the girl who stepped into training. In Purple Hearts, Rio got a particularly wonderful scene about femininity and I cheered her on the whole way through. I really love the hardened person she became. She might have lost her innocent view of the world, but in the end she’s better for it.

I also loved that in the book, more than ever, it felt like the girls were interconnected. We’d often see Frangie talking with Rainy or Rio, and I love it best when they’re all aware of each other because, well…it’s just nice, isn’t it? Their moments take you out of the action, (in welcome reprieve) even though there was more explosions and death than ever before! Purple Hearts is gritty and harrowing in all the right places, perfectly capturing the terrors of war. There was also a bigger discussion on deserters and loyalty, which I don’t think has been touched on, but I’m sure if you’d asked the girls in Front Lines what they thought of deserting they’d be giving very different answers to now!

Overall, Rainy’s in top from being a bad-ass spy character, Rio has more responsibility and she handles the weight on her shoulders admirably, and Frangie’s still following close behind, patching everyone up. They all make me so proud, and I’m so pleased I picked up Front Lines, and have followed these girls on this truly epic journey.

I can’t recommend this series more, it’s got sustained action, lush, well developed characters, and brilliant narrative architecture. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pick up Front Lines again.

Favourite Book Covers of 2017!

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After reading over 200 books each this year, we’ve seen our fair amount of pretty covers. *Round of applause to cover designers* We’ve recognised trends (a lot of pink, purple and blue, some silhouettes, gold lettering) and picked our favourites, so in no particular order:

 The Girl of Ink and Stars by Kiran Millwood Hargave

Orange is my favourite colour and it’s not one you see often on books, so I was really happy that such a well loved book is forcing everyone to have more of it on their shelves! The silhouette could be pretty standard on other covers, but the fact that this one is so detailed, giving you a real fairy-tale-island vibe makes it a perfect fit for this book. The one thing that throws me off is the ampersand in the title, rather than ‘and’, but it just adds to this cover’s unusual charm!

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

To us, there’s no competition between the UK and US edition of this book. The UK, with it’s gorgeously rich blue and gold detailing wins hands down. There’s something really elegant about the single moth image and the fact that’s it’s facing down fits to the slightly weird and wonderful atmosphere of the book.

Caraval by Stephanie Garber

We absolutely love the curled font chosen and the tiny star and teardrop details! Black covers are difficult to make stand out and the firework burst in the background makes this hard to ignore. The colour palette is delicious and the way the subtitle is curved is such a nice detail.

https://heartfullofbooks.com/2017/05/07/review-the-names-they-gave-us-by-emery-lord/

Wing Jones by Katherine Webber

This book came out at the very beginning of the year and I’m still not over the way Wing’s name is written in shoe laces. Shoe laces. This is a cover that perfectly speaks to the book and the colours all complement each other so well. I need more books to embrace the ombre fade! (Also, bonus points for the unbelievable pink-and-purple sprayed edges of the physical copy!) The only thing that would make this colour even better is if it were completely white in the background.

The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord

G o r g e o u s.   S t u n n i n g.   B e a u t i f u l.   G l i t t e r.  That’s all.

lets-chat

Let us know if you agree with our picks and what some of your favourite covers of the year were. They don’t all have to be books published in 2017, either, just ones you had the joy of discovering this year!

Review: The Fandom by Anna Day

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The Fandom was a strange mix of dystopian satire, Inkheart, and a convention book. While I was relieved to find that the characters get transported into the world of their favourite book within the first 50 pages, I knew from the very beginning that this wasn’t going to be for me.

The premise sounded amazing. I wouldn’t have picked it up otherwise. But the opening chapter featured Violet reciting the plot of ‘The Gallow’s Dance’ to her English class as a presentation on plots. First of all, I had to suspend my disbelief that this class would actually happen and I was surprised no one in the audience shouted SPOILERS! This should have been a dead giveaway that the world building wasn’t going to work how I expected.

But nothing quite compares to how deeply I despised the quote-unquote friendship between Violet and Alice. For one, Violet and Katie are straight up bitchy towards her. They literally laugh when someone makes fun of her all ‘she deserved it, about time someone shot her down!’ and that kind of rivalry and competition between friends is not what I’m about. This kind of behaviour does not warrant the term ‘friendship.’ They break friends and make up so many times in this book, I couldn’t keep track.

While they were transported into the world of ‘the book’ there was an awful lot of movie references. Violet kept referring to a script, which made me wonder why it wasn’t just a film franchise to begin with. I really liked the moments where the script format was used – it was very cleverly done – and I wish there had been a bit more like it too.

I also wished that the book had leant more into the dystopian satire aspect, as all the characters were self-aware in the fictional world that the love interest had a silly name, and there was always a rebel group fighting against the government. It could’ve done something really interesting with setting up expectations, but the plot ended up being a pretty conventional for urban fantasy/dystopian fiction.

There’s not great consistency when it comes to the dramatic irony. Basically, Violet has to live out the life of the main female character in ‘The Gallow’s Dance’ so she knows exactly what she has to do, but there’s not really any sense of foreboding. (Apart from the whole ‘I will hang in four days’ line, which I swear was repeated OVER and OVER again to NO effect.) The whole magic system was underdeveloped too. And I had a lot of questions. Not only in the fictional world turned reality, but about how they ended up in the fictional world to begin with.

As for the writing, it was very repetitive. Day kept stressing that even though Nate was 14 he was more like a 5 year old, and I couldn’t help thinking, why not just make him five years old then?? It was supposed to add emotional impact, but I just kept getting annoyed that Violet was infantilising her brother.

The ending was far too twee, and I’m not sure whether to expect a sequel. I’m not sure how the stakes would change, but I feel like there’s still more of the fictional world to explore. Since we the reader were told the plot of the book in the very first chapter, nothing really came as a surprise…I’m disappointed that I wasn’t more impressed with this book, as it seemed like an absolute dream.

Review: Phantom Limbs by Paula Garner

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From the first few chapters I thought I was going to fall in love with this book. There was intrigue, beautiful writing, and a really interesting cast of characters. It’s the story of Otis, whose best friend and next door neighbour, Meg, moved away suddenly after an unforeseen incident. Otis is left devastated and in mourning for his little brother, and the girl he used to love. In the three years Meg is gone, Otis takes up swimming, coached by Dara the Scandinavian swimming goddess who lost an arm and had to give up her Olympic dreams.

I liked Otis’ voice…until he started describing every girl’s breasts whenever he met them. The male gaze is disgusting, and those moments made me realise why I often steer clear of hetero male protagonists. Otherwise, Otis fits in with the heroes in the writing of John Green, Robyn Snyder, and Jeff Zentner.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only reason I didn’t click with Phantom Limbs . I felt like the emotional tone was one note. It was the same level of sadness, trepidation and guilt the whole way through. There weren’t enough, I don’t know, light hearted, happy moments to encourage me to keep reading. The whole thing was a bit depressing, if I’m honest. There’s supposed to be this slow build up to reveal the exact details of Mason’s death and why Meg moved away but I’d vaguely put things together way before they were confirmed, so I’d lost the hook of the story.

As for character development, I was frustrated with both Meg and Otis as they were both consumed by the past. Obviously coming together again stirred up old emotions, but it didn’t feel like they were good for one another. Meg brought out Otis’ jealous, self-conscious side and it was difficult to read about characters who regressed instead.

Phantom Limbs is pretty romance heavy, even though Meg has a boyfriend already. Those kind of blurred moral lines always make me feel a bit uncomfortable but it added to the general teen angst Otis was feeling, and that was the only change of pace in the story, but the trivial glimpses into his hometown life didn’t always match well with the nostalgic tone. It’s like Otis couldn’t progress with two feelings at once.

I also can’t help but mention the LGBT+ aspect of the story. I’m not sure what Dara identifies as, even though Otis and Meg (who’d only met her a couple of times throughout the story) were OBSESSED with trying to label her as a lesbian. You know what, guys? It doesn’t matter. (Louder now for the ones at the back) IT DOESN’T MATTER. Why the heck these two were talking about Dara’s sexuality behind her back in their own free time, I couldn’t tell you. And don’t get me started on Meg’s ‘I knew she was a lesbian!’ at the end. Like, well done? Do you want a prize? I would kindly like to ask for this trope to die in 2018.

Dara as a whole was a very interesting sub-plot. It did what all great sub plots are meant to do, distract you from the main plot at convenient times but still be interlinked enough that it doesn’t seem obvious that that’s what’s happening. Still, at times I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be Otis’ or Dara’s story. And I have to admit, that at some points, I hoped it was the latter. Is it wrong to say that I probably cared about Dara the most over all? I’m not sure how, but I had a much stronger emotional connection to her. Dara and Otis had both lost a part of themselves, but from reading this books, I’ve realised I’d much prefer to read about the lesbian amputee sticking it to the man.

I didn’t particularly like what the ending suggested, but I still can’t bring myself to give it less than three stars because the opening showed so much promise. If you liked any of the comp authors I mentioned earlier, then I’d definitely give this one a go.

Review: Goodbye, Perfect by Sara Barnard

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*Note: We received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
(First posted on Goodreads on 4th November, having read the book on October 29th)

I’ve been really delayed in writing my review for this seeing as I finished it at the end of last week, but I was hoping that if I left in for long enough and I mulled over ‘Goodbye, Perfect’ I’d love it as much as I did Sara Barnard’s other books. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. (Hence why the rating in the featured image and the actual review are different – I had to be more honest with how I felt about the book, and not just be lenient with my rating because I loved Sara’s previous two books.)

I knew nothing about the plot before I started reading, which was definitely a good thing because if I’d have known it was about a student-teacher relationship, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up – not matter who wrote it. That relationship is one of my most hated buzzwords. Luckily, it’s from the perspective of the girl who’s best friend is groomed, delusional and ‘in love’ with her music teacher, which made it more manageable and definitely had me questioning the strength of loyalty in the face of a criminal offence.

My opinion was very firm. Even if Bonnie is Eden’s best friend, she doesn’t know how much danger she’s in so Eden needed to tell the police everything. And while I was sympathetic to the difficult situation Eden was in for the first fifty pages, I couldn’t deal with the same thought processes throughout the whole book. How this book managed to feel so long winded (slow paced and – dare I say it? – dull) at just over 300 pages is beyond me.

The saving grace of the book for me was Eden’s relationship with Valerie, her older sister that she struggled to bond with when she was first adopted, and Eden’s boyfriend Connor who was just an all around great guy. (Having a character in YA be in a committed relationship before the book began and NOT have any drama surrounding that relationship during the narrative was so refreshing!) These characters were both most prominent in the last fifty pages of the book where things started to get interesting for the first time.

Another thing that kept me reading despite feeling like I wasn’t getting enough out of the story was the newspaper inserts and text message exchanges. I was just waiting for what ridiculously warped thing Bonnie was going to say about how happy she was to be with Jack (ugh.) I love that multi-media is becoming more and more prominent in YA, at least!

There were also a lot of things happening in the background of this story that were super interesting but not developed enough for me. For example, Eden’s little sister Daisy and her descent into being a young troublemaker/following the path of Eden from years ago. Or the fact that Connor was a young carer for his mother. Or the relationship Eden had with her birth mother. Or Eden’s identity as biracial (with a Brazilian father). All of these things could have added a little zest to a story that was too consumed by Bonnie running away.

Also, (rant incoming) I’m never a fan of narratives that make a straight-A student/generally ‘good’ girl feel like she’s missing out on the ‘teenage experience’ (which doesn’t exist!) Being a teenager isn’t a check list of underage drinking and disrespecting your authority figures. I was told this way too much by people in secondary school that made fun of me thinking a nice evening consisted of watching Call the Midwife and knitting. Just because Bonnie cared about her exam results, that doesn’t make her boring or not worthy of her story being told.

Overall, this book gets 2.5 stars from me and I’m beyond disappointed that I can’t call this Sara Barnard’s best book yet. But she’s still one of my all-time favourite YA authors and I’ll just keep my fingers crossed that her next book is more my thing.

Last Chance TBR: Read Before 2018!

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HAPPY BLOGMAS, EVERYONE!

We’re so happy to be working on lots of blog posts again, after a few inconsistent months of posting…(we were doing so well at the beginning of the year *sigh*) But we’re back on the blogging bandwagon and continuing with one of our favourite traditions!

Bee and I have set ourselves a few TBRs over the year that we’ve been very proud to have mostly stuck too. Over the summer, we picked a rainbow of books to read from our shelves (prioritising physical books we own rather than library books/e-books/uni reading/books for review for what felt like the first time in eons.) And it was a success. We read books that have been on our TBRs for over two years (sorry, Magnus Chase, no hard feelings).

So with a few successes under our belts, why not set ourselves a final challenge to get some books read before 2018 is upon us? It’s not like we have two 4,000 word essays to write and a dissertation to get on with. *distant screeching* To make it manageable, we’ve each picked TWO BOOKS, so what are they?

MADDIE’S CHOICE

Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch
I bought this for myself in June and read the first chapter in a Try a Chapter video, which I absolutely loved. But, I picked up If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo instead and have completely forgotten about how much I loved the start of this one. In might be completely out of season, but ice cream in winter is fine by me!

Ash by Malinda Lo
It’s been donkeys years since I read a fairy tale retelling, it feels like, so I picked the first one that caught my eye. It’s based on Cinderella (ah, my favourite!) and it’s an f/f romance (am I dreaming about how good this sounds? this can’t be a real thing!) So, fingers crossed I love this as much as I love the concept.

BEE’S CHOICE

The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian 
This book almost was going to be in my Top 5 to read in 2018, but why wait? I haven’t heard anything about it, but I picked it up when it was still a new release because Morgan Matson has blurbed it! It feel like it’s going to be something I really love, and I’m looking for another five star read to close out the year, so we’ll see!

Truth or Dare by Non Pratt
I’ve read all of her other books this year, so I need to close out this year by completing the set! I don’t think it’ll be as good as Unboxed which is one of the best books I read this year, and Maddie read it before YALC so I have her reading experience to adjust my expectations.

 

Winning NaNoWriMo!

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Although it’s the first day of Blogmas, and we’ll be getting Christmas-y tomorrow, don’t you worry, the start of December also means the end of NaNoWriMo. In thirty days, writers are challenged to get 50,000 words down of their book. That’s 1667 words a day. Bee and I definitely had it easier than most, halving the word count between us, but we thought writing 800 words a day was going to be a stretch after not writing consistently since July.

We’re so proud to say that with a lot of hard work and motivational hurdles, WE WROTE 50K! WE WON!! Throughout NaNo, we kept a chart of our word counts and we thought we’d run through some stats, because who doesn’t love some numbers?

Screen Shot 2017-11-29 at 10.17.15Highest Daily Word Count: 5,000 words (27th)
Lowest Daily Word Count: 300 words (6th)

Most Consecutive Writing Days: 7
Average Consecutive Days: 3
Total of Days Off Writing: 7

Weekly Writing Stats
1: 12.7K | 2: 11.7K | 3: 10K | 4: 13.3K | 5: 2.5K

Looking at the numbers, it’s really interesting to see which days were the hardest and when we thrived the most. Week 3 was definitely a kicker, but the sprint to the finish line made it entirely worth it! We’re so happy that we took part this year and finally prioritised writing after months of saying it was what we wanted to focus on. We wouldn’t have finished our first draft (sitting at 64K) without NaNoWriMo, and now we get the even more exciting task of editing…yay(?)

Congratulations to anyone else that won NaNo, and well done to anyone that took part because however many words you wrote, you’re that much closer to finishing a book!

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NaNoWriMo: Mid Month Check In!

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We’re just over the halfway point in NaNoWriMo, and today we should be at 30,000 words. That’s an insane number, and around where Bee and I both pulled out in 2015 (mostly because we hadn’t planned our novels further than that and just wanted to play Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer.)

This year, things are different.

We’re not quite at 30,000, but we’re chugging along after a couple days of not writing in favour of planning out a few more chapters (and watching the One Direction: This is Us documentary…it was research, we swear!) Our WIP overall is sitting at around 40,000 words so we’re getting into the tricky territory of The Middle, where ideas and motivation go to die.

Screen Shot 2017-11-18 at 09.45.54

To keep ourselves motivated, we created a MyWriteClub account to track our goals, and because an online version wasn’t enough in the form of the NaNo graph, we made a sticker chart to keep ourselves accountable. Different colour stars have different word count weights and an emerald star is the highest tier at 2,000 words.

Our most successful day was the 3rd, when we somehow managed to churn out 4.5K, followed by the 11th when we wrote 4K. Seeing gaps in the chart for the days we didn’t write does make me feel tragically sad, so it’s definitely working as far as encouraging us to make writing a daily practice.

Seriously, stickers are motivating as heck. Why didn’t we remember this from when we were kids? It’s a tried and tested method to success.

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So, overall, NaNoWriMo is going even better than planned because I thought we would have given up by now. I guess it just proves to me how passionate we are about telling this story together. It’s what I’d rather do than anything else, apart from a 1,000 piece piece puzzle. (That’s what another one of those days off was for. Sorry, not sorry.)

If you’re doing NaNo, keep going! Even if you’re not at the word count for hitting 50K, you’re still writing more than you would have if we weren’t doing it!

(Spoiler) Review: Follow Me by Sara Shepard

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*Note: We received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. 
This review will spoil the contents of The Amateurs so be warned if you are yet to read the first book! 

I can’t believe it’s been a year since I read The Amateurs. It was such a well paced and excitingly driven story with a plot twist that I really didn’t expect. Of course, I was pumped to read the sequel, but in comparison to the first book, it fell flat.

The main reason for this, I think, is because we knew from the very beginning who Seneca and the gang were hunting down. Brett, the guy from The Amateurs who helpfully joined their team, pointing them in all the right directions, only to be the killer himself. Since then, Brett’s changed his identity but not his MO, so we follow the group as they try and rescue Chelsea Dawson, a beautiful Instagram-obsessed teen from his dangerous clutches. Part of what made the first book so great was not knowing and so this felt like an entirely different genre: a mystery turned thriller, as we knew what Brett was capable of. But, because the book is so short, we never got to linger in the more menacing moments and so everything was a little…underwhelming.

There’s also the half-baked romance subplot between Seneca and Maddox that’s very much banking on their relationship and way they interact with one another being set up in the first book so the scenes between them lacked emotion. And romance in the middle of a thriller is just the biggest case of ‘now is not the time’ ever.

Also, whereas everyone in the group had a part to play in the first book, Aerin and Madison felt like they were just along for the ride. It was difficult to pinpoint what they were contributing to the situation. It seemed like social media was doing most of the work for them.

But then, I really did enjoy how reasonably everything was figured out, though. You could actually imagine that this is the way a bunch of teenagers would solve a crime by doing a little internet stalking and cross referencing comments on Instagram posts. The access to details the group had in the first book was a bit far fetched, but this had genuine logic to it.

I was also really interested in the way the police responded to Chelsea’s kidnapping and how they read it all as a bid for more followers on social media. I think there was some thought-provoking critique on how adults perceive teenagers’ behaviour nowadays.

The very last page about Brett kidnapping Aerin…well, it didn’t feel like there was enough groundwork to that for me to believe it would happen. And even then, because Aerin didn’t play a huge part in the narrative – being replaced by Chelsea – I don’t know if I care enough to know what happens next?

Overall, I’m giving it 3 stars. I definitely enjoyed Follow Me less than the first book, but if you’re in the mood for a quick kind of thriller read, I’d recommend it.