Tag: teen fiction

Review: The Midnight Star by Marie Lu

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28588345The Midnight Star by Marie Lu
Genre: Fantasy
Published by: Penguin Books
Pages: 313
Format: ebook
Rating: ★★★
Series: The Young Elites (#1) | The Rose Society (#2)

I honestly don’t think I was ready for this series to end. It was one of my most anticipated releases for this half of the year! The Young Elites was one of the first books that I read this year, and I was immediately drawn in by the delicious cast of characters. I’m pretty sure everyone knows by now that one of this series’ USPs is that Adelina is a bit of a villainous protagonist, but not in a fantastical super villain way, more in a ‘this girl’s had a hard life that has forced her to make tricky decisions in sticky situations’. Some people will probably say that’s mellow, but I’ve always loved Adelina, and the bond she has with her sister. And, for me, book two was even better, so I was going in with HIGH expectations, let me tell you.

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Review: The Form of Thing Unknown by Robin Bridges

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cover93174-mediumThe Form of Things Unknown by Robin Bridges
Genre: Contemporary, Romance, (Re-telling)
Published by: Kensington Books
Pages: 304
Format: e-book
Rating: ★★.5
Note: I received this book from the publishers in exchange for an honest review!

Natalie is suffering from some strange hallucinations while on the set for her school’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. With questions of ‘who’s dating who’ and ‘we’re all crazy here’ the characters’ lives somewhat mimic those in the story they’re retelling. It’s an interesting concept, similar to Robin Bridges’ other novel Dreaming of Antigone where the protagonists are both aware of the text they’re retelling whilst retelling it. I’m not sure if it’s a style that completely works for me, but I’ve never been a fan of really meta fiction. But I think The Form of Things Unknown does a good job of blurring the lines between the original text and the new characters’ lives.

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Review:The Edge of Everything by Jeff Giles

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31170713The Edge of Everything by Jeff Giles
Genre: Supernatural, Contemporary, Romance
Published by: Bloomsbury Children’s
Pages: 400
Format: ARC e-book
Rating: ★★★
Note: I received a copy of this book from the publishers in exchange for an honest review. 

Okay, so this book has a lot of hype. And by a lot, I mean A LOT. Seriously, scroll down the Goodreads page and all you’ll see is five star reviews! People are getting excited about this, so why didn’t I feel the magic? Maybe partly because I was switching from reading an e-book copy and listening to it on the text-to-speech function, but that doesn’t sound quite right. The Edge of Everything covers a great deal of things. If you didn’t think that a supernatural boyfriend was enough, then you have a girl’s quest to recover her father’s body, a boy’s struggle to get out of a binding service, and a family dealing with a shady past. And the best bit is they all link together!

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Review: And I Darken by Kiersten White

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cover86746-mediumAnd I Darken by Kiersten White
Genre: Fantasy, Re-telling (Alternate History?), Romance
Published by: Corgi Children’s
Pages: 484
Format: ARC e-book
Rating: ★★★
Note: We received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

So far my experience of Kiersten White’s writing has been the Mind Games duology, which I enjoyed but didn’t think it did a very good job of explaining itself, but she’s a pretty prolific writer and there had been a bit of hype going around about this Vlad the Impaler-as-a-girl retelling and I admit, I got swept along with it too. And I Darken, if you didn’t already know, is the story of Lada (who I guess will grow up to become Lada the Impaler?) and her brother Radu moving from their home town to become part of the Ottoman empire. It’s a fantasy story with a strong emphasis or politics, religion and sexuality, all of which are seamlessly weaved into this bad-ass girl’s life story.

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Review: Front Lines by Michael Grant

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27412440Front Lines by Michael Grant
Genre: Alternate History, War
Published by: Electric Monkey
Pages: 480
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★★★★
Series: Silver Stars (#2)

Historical reimagining of what it would’ve been like if women had been allowed to fight in World War II? Where do I sign up? Not for the war (that would be my worst nightmare and this book pretty much solidified that!) but for this sweet piece of fiction. I picked up Front Lines from my local library, and, my goodness, am I glad I did. (It also came highly recommended from my friend Amy who is a HUGE Michael Grant fan.) I had zero expectations because I’ve never read anything by this author but the concept made me think of one of my fave movies ‘A League of Their Own’, a true story about women’s baseball during the war.

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Review: Marly’s Ghost by David Levithan

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23898966Marly’s Ghost by David Levithan
Genre: Contemporary, Retelling, Romance
Published by: Electric Monkey
Pages: 166
Format: Paperback
Rating: ★★
Other: Two Boys Kissing | Every Day

Marly’s Ghost is what David Levithan calls a ‘remix’ of Charles’ Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol’, except at Valentine’s Day instead of Christmas. The basic premise is that Ben’s girlfriend Marly died and now he can’t connect to the celebrations and feels he’ll never love again. So Marly’s ghost visits him in the middle of the night, and tells him he’ll be visited by three ghosts. Can you guess who? That’s right! The ghosts of Valentine’s Past, Present and Future.

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Review: Cell 7 by Kerry Drewery

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29864658Cell 7 by Kerry Drewery
Genre: Dystopian
Published by: Hot Key Books
Pages: 400
Format: ARC e-book
Rating: ★★★

I absolutely adore the tagline, ‘Behind bars. For your entertainment.’ It’s such an exciting premise! (Here’s a plot summary: Martha has killed a high profile celebrity, and she will be tried in the Cells, where the public will vote over seven days whether or not they think she’s ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent.’ But there’s something she isn’t mentioning and the people that love her and getting increasingly more concerned as it looks like the vote isn’t going to save Martha. It’s going to kill her.) This book has received quite a lot of hype already and it comes highly recommended by a few blogger friends. So, let’s get onto what I made of it!

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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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Series Review: The Chocolate Box Girls by Cathy Cassidy

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Cherry Crush, Marshmallow Skye, Summer’s Dream, Coco Caramel, Sweet Honey, Fortune Cookie
Genre: Middle Grade, Contemporary, Romance | Published by: Puffin
Pages: 272, 304, 288, 304, 304, 288 | Format: Hardback | Rating: ★★★★

The Chocolate Box series is one of my favourite middle grade series. I remember when Cherry Crush was being teased on Cathy Cassidy’s website and getting so excited at the idea that she was going to be writing a series about sisters! I also remember in 2010 (when I was 12-13) thinking, ‘oh my goodness, I’m going to be 18 by the time I finish this series!’ (Though I was 19 in the end because she added a half-brother to the mix which bumped the series up to six.) I stopped reading when Summer’s Dream came out…I’m not entirely sure why… but it felt like finally the right time to complete my Cathy Cassidy reading experience! I’m so glad I did, because it’s chocolatey and beautiful.

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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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