Tag: 2.5 stars

Review: Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh

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After hearing so much hype about Renee Ahdieh’s The Wrath & The Dawn duology on booktube (plus, I’m obsessed with the new UK covers!) I decided it was about time that I read something by her! Flame in the Mist is her latest release which Goodreads calls ‘Mulan meets Throne of Glass.’ I’ve also heard a few people say that it’s a mash-up retelling of Mulan and 47 Ronin, and on both occasions, ‘Mulan’ is the only thing I’m interested in, so I was looking forward to some cross-dressing shenanigans. However, as you’ll already noticed by my star-rating, I found myself a little disappointed. I think this was mostly because I’d read another ‘Mulan’ mash-up retelling recently – though this time it’s ‘Mulan meets Pitch Perfect’ – in Riley Redgate’s Noteworthy, which was A++

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Review: Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith

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34373364Windfall by Jennifer E. Smith
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Published: Macmillan
Pages: 320
Format: ARC e-book
Rating: ★★.5

When you write about someone winning the lottery, there are certain places that your mind goes. The winner spends frivolously on a yacht and a robot butler, runs into trouble with credit card companies, and after losing a significant chunk of cash, realises that they should channel their inner Ellen and pay it forward to the deserving public.

That’s pretty much what happens to Teddy. ‘Windfall’ does nothing new with the plot of rags to riches. More dramatic things could have happened in regards to his big spends, but in the end, it works out fine for him. He’s got tons of cash. The end.

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Review: Scarlett by Cathy Cassidy

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1239697Scarlett by Cathy Cassidy
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, Family
Published by: Puffin
Pages: 240
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5

Maddie and I have wanted to start reading more Middle Grade recently, so we decided to start with some of our favourite books from when we were tweens! Cathy Cassidy was a complete staple in my reading life when I was 11-14. I loved her(!) and Scarlett was the first of her books that I read, so I decided to start here.

Scarlett follows an angry girl who is misunderstood. She’s been booted from one school to the next and lives with her single mother who’s a little tired of Scarlett’s antics, so she sends her to live with her dad. But Scarlett’s dad started a new family…in Ireland.

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Series Review: Night School by C. J. Daugherty

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https://heartfullofbooks.com/2016/09/16/series-review-night-school-by-c-j-daugherty/

Night School, Legacy, Fracture, Resistance, and Endgame by C.J. Daugherty
Published by: Atom | Genre: Mystery, Romance | Format: Paperback | ★★.5

I have an individual review for the first book in this series, and if you’ve read that, you’ll know that I struggled to get through it. HOWEVER, I decided to continue reading for a few reasons:

  1. To support a UKYA author!
  2. To support my library (since I sources all 5 books from local libraries!)
  3. Because the author admitted her mistake in letting main character Ally get rescued by boys in the first book and said it got better in a Feminism in YA panel I attended earlier in the year.
  4. I believed there was a good story to tell underneath some of the sillier elements.

In the end I’m pleased that I gave this series a second chance, because much to my relief it did get better. Night School even turned into something I would recommend to fans of Ally Carter and Jennifer Lynne Barnes. It has it’s issues, and I think some of the general concept for the series is confused and completely unrealistic, but taken with a pinch of salt it’s pretty fun.

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Review: The It Girl by Katy Birchall

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The It Girl by Katy Birchall23201793
Genre: Contemporary, Comedy, UKYA
Published by: Egmont
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5

This is another book that follows the geeky/awkward girl struggles through secondary school trope made popular by Holly Smale’s Geek Girl series. Any regular reader or watcher of Heart Full of Books will know that Maddie and I adore Geek Girl, and The It Girl is supposed to have a good sense of humour, so we both thought we’d give it a go! If nothing else, at least we’ll be supporting another UKYA author, right?

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Review: Hexed by Michelle Krys

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21417354Hexed by Michelle Krys
Genre: Paranormal, Romance
Published by: Corgi Children’s
Pages: 369
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon 

Another witchy read, this time Hexed, which had a bit of hype on booktube when it was first released. I decided to finally pick it up after months of it being on my shelves because the sequel came out quite recently. Again, the characters were pretty typical for the genre, all that was missing was a southern belle. However, there were some curve balls that made this story different to what else you might’ve read.

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Review: Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

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5287473Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Mystery
Published by: Simon and Schuster
Pages: 323
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5
Where to find: Goodreads | Amazon

You would not believe the amount of time that this book has just been sat on my TBR gathering dust. The cover that I own is not great, so I can’t say I was particularly looking forward to reading it to begin with. Then I read Rebel Belle, which was super fun, so I thought, why not give Hex Hall a try?

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Review: Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare

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7171637Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
Genre: Supernatural, Historical (*scoff*), Romance
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 479
Format: E-Book
Rating: ★★.5
Series: Clockwork Prince (#2) | Clockwork Princess (#3)
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I already know I love the Shadowhunter world, and Cassandra Clare is great at writing diverse characters and making them mesh together. Henry and Charlotte are so far my favourite characters of the series. More of them please. And I could go on at great length about these things, but, chances are, you’ve already read this series anyway – I know I’m a little late to the game – so I’ll jump straight to my issues instead. Everyone likes a little controversy, right?

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Review: Hello, Goodbye, And Everything In Between by Jennifer E. Smith

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23369370Hello, Goodbye, And Everything In Between by Jennifer E. Smith
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Published by: Headline
Pages: 248
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★.5
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

So, I picked up Hello, Goodbye, And Everything In Between, because all I’ve been doing recently is watching Pretty Little Liars (we’re on season 3, if you’re interested and Spoby is life.) At 248 pages I was confident I could finish it in one sitting, and I did! Which hopefully makes up for the fact I haven’t finished a book in over a week. The basic premise is that Aidan and Clare are just about to go off to university (literally they’re one day away) and they’re trying to decide whether or not to break up. And although it had a few gems, overall the story was pretty generic and much like the million teen rom-coms I’ve seen before.

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Review: Birdy by Jess Vallance

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25948719Birdy by Jess Vallance
Genre: Contemporary
Published by: Hot Key Books
Pages: 263
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★
Where to Find: Goodreads | Amazon

I received this Birdy from Hot Key Books in exchange for an honest review.
Okay, so this book is one of those unsuspecting stories where you start and think, ‘okay, yeah, I could get into this!’ and as you go things become more and more unsettling and you curse the fact that it’s slow paced because what is even happening?!

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