Distortion by Victor Dixen

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Publisher: Hot Key Books
Released: 18th of October 2018 

Six girls, six boys: looking for glory and romance on Mars 

They thought they were masters of their destiny.

They are the twelve pioneers of the Genesis programme. 

They thought they were taking part in the most extraordinary of missions.

In fact, they are the victims of the cruellest of plots.

Leonor was looking for glory - and love - on Mars.

She thought she would be able to open her heart there. 

But what she has done is open up a Pandora's box of her past ...

What I Have to Say 

I've never had such a different reaction to a sequel as the first book before, but as much as I loved Ascension, I really hated Distortion. It was a massive disappointment. Sometimes I read a book and get caught up in the action and the mystery of it all and I don't notice that actually, the writing itself isn't so great. I think that's the case with Ascension. I'm not withdrawing my recommendation. I still loved Ascension. It's worth reading for all the secrets and lies and mystery. But having a book like Distortion, where most of the mystery is already revealed and there's not the big build up of the first book? It becomes clear that the actual writing is very lacking. I don't know whether this is a translation issue or the original text, but it's really off-putting 

I like the main 12 characters a lot. Their dialogue may be really stilted and formal, but their actions and their motivations shine through. I think this is what will keep me reading this series. Because even though Serena is turning into more and more of a comic book villain, even though I find the way that they've paired up nice and neatly with each six couples being madly in love completely and utterly ridiculous and unbelievable, I want to see what comes next for them. I want them to survive and win out against all the odds stacked against them. 

So this is a very mixed review. There are some really good things about the series, but it's not one that I want to shout about and push on my friends anymore. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with this copy for review. 

The Truth and Lies of Ella Black by Emily Barr

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 288

Publisher: Penguin

Released: 11th of January 2018

Ella Black seems to live the life most other seventeen-year-olds would kill for . . .

Until one day, telling her nothing, her parents whisk her off to Rio de Janeiro. Determined to find out why, Ella takes her chance and searches through their things.

And realises her life has been a lie.

Her mother and father aren't hers at all. Unable to comprehend the truth, Ella runs away, to the one place they'll never think to look - the favelas.

But there she learns a terrible secret - the truth about her real parents and their past. And the truth about a mother, desperate for a daughter taken from her seventeen years ago . . . 

What I Have to Say 

I didn't like this book that much. I didn't like the The One Memory of Flora Banks either, but that was written so much with that character's voice and her memory problems in mind that I wanted to give the author another chance. And I warmed to her writing style a lot more, but she still had this habit of going through everything that the character knows about the situation every few chapters. It may be fairly realistic when you're in this type of situation to stop and take stock of what you know, but in a book it makes it repetitive and annoying. 

I also felt the multiple personality/ dissociative disorder stuff was kind of harmful to people who suffer from that kind of thing. Whenever you see an alter personality in a book or a film or anything really it's always a bad one. And sure maybe that helps your story seem more dramatic if your character is pushing her to kill people all the time, but there are real people out there living in a world where that's what people think their condition means. If the market was more saturated with positive books or films then it wouldn't be so big of a deal, but everything out there just makes people more scared of the condition. 

I don't know how much research Barr did, but the whole thing felt clumsy and like she hadn't thought about the people suffering through this sort of thing.

As happens so much of the time, this book uses mental health issues as a form of entertainment for those not living through it and I'm getting pretty sick of it. 

My thanks go to Penguin and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review. 

The Art of Hiding by Amanda Prowse

Synopsis (Goodreads)

Pages: 290

Publisher:  Lake Union Publishing

Released: 18th of July 2017 

What would you do if you learned that the life you lived was a lie?

Nina McCarrick lives the perfect life, until her husband, Finn, is killed in a car accident and everything Nina thought she could rely on unravels.

Alone, bereft and faced with a mountain of debt, Nina quickly loses her life of luxury and she begins to question whether she ever really knew the man she married. Forced to move out of her family home, Nina returns to the rundown Southampton council estate—and the sister—she thought she had left far behind.

But Nina can’t let herself be overwhelmed—her boys need her. To save them, and herself, she will have to do what her husband discouraged for so long: pursue a career of her own. Torn between the life she thought she knew and the reality she now faces, Nina finally must learn what it means to take control of her life.

What I Have to Say 

I have to say that this book was not for me. It was interesting to see Nina slowly thinking more and more about her relationship with her husband and realising how little control she had; how little she knew about what was going on in her life. 

The portrayal of the children I found a bit off. Obviously they were upset by all the changes in their life and sometimes they rallied around their mother, but a lot of the time when they were being nice to the mum, it felt a bit false and unlike something a teenager would actually do or say. And when they weren't being nice to their mother it felt a bit like a cliché teenage getting upset about moving house/ losing their father. 

To be honest I was a bit bored. A lot happened, but there wasn't much to interest me. After everything was uncovered about the Finn and their finances, there just wasn't much of a hook to keep me reading. 

My thanks go to Lake Union Publishing and Netgalley for providing me with this copy for review

Her Last Breath by Tracy Buchanan

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 394

Publisher: Avon Books UK

Released: 12th of June 2017

A fifteen-year-old girl has gone missing. They say Poppy O’Farrell has run away from her celebrity parents, and the media is in a frenzy. But none of this has anything to do with successful lifestyle blogger Estelle Forster . . . So why would someone send her a picture of the missing girl – and a note, claiming to know Estelle’s secrets?

One small photograph will push Estelle’s pristine life to the brink of disaster. To find out who is threatening her, Estelle must return to her coastal hometown and the shameful past she thought was long behind her.

Estelle knows there’s more to Poppy’s disappearance than teenage rebellion. A dangerous game is being played, and the answers lie in the impenetrable community she once called her own.

But how will anyone believe her, if she can’t tell them the truth?

What I Have to Say 

This book was a struggle to read. I enjoyed parts of it, but it dragged a lot. I didn't really like the character at all. I get what the author was doing with her and how everything about her past added up to create who she is, but I just didn't like her at all. 

The mystery didn't really grab me at all either. I don't really know why. I think because Estelle didn't really know Poppy there was none of the drama that books about missing children often have. I don't know. I just didn't get into it. 

I hated the ending as well. It was screwed up and I felt like the stuff that was revealed about Estelle at the end just came out of the blue. I think maybe this type of reveal doesn't really work with a third person narrator or at least they should have had more hints and foreshadowing. 

My thank go to Netgalley and Avon Books UK for providing me with this copy for review. 

Like Other Girls by Claire Hennessy

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 288

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 25th of May 2017 

Here's what Lauren knows: she's not like other girls. She also knows it's problematic to say that - what's wrong with girls? She's even fancied some in the past. But if you were stuck in St Agnes's, her posh all-girls school, you'd feel like that too. Here everyone's expected to be Perfect Young Ladies, it's even a song in the painfully awful musical they're putting on this year. And obviously said musical is directed by Lauren's arch nemesis.

Under it all though, Lauren's heart is bruised. Her boyfriend thinks she's crazy and her best friend's going through something Lauren can't understand... so when Lauren realises she's facing every teenage girl's worst nightmare, she has nowhere to turn. Maybe she should just give in to everything. Be like other girls. That's all so much easier ... right?

Trigger warnings: Transphobia, Sexual Harassment. Abortion 

What I Have to Say 

Claire Hennessy likes to take on important issues, as she comes at it from a way that walks on a knife edge between being problematic and really showing how the issues work. In Nothing Tastes as good, this worked quite well. It would be very triggering for someone reading with an eating disorder, but as a book written to show readers what it feels like to have a eating disorder, it did it really well. 

Like Other Girls though, I think goes across the line on some issues. The transphobia really put me off. It horrified me completely and made me dislike Lauren as a character. Considering the ending, I kind of understand what Hennessy was going for, especially as Lauren and Evan have a lot of their own issues which somewhat explained the transphobic comments that Lauren was making and how much she didn't understand what Evan was going through. But I'm not sure it really made it any better. I don't think it was really addressed enough. 

The main plotline was obviously very important and I found it very emotional and interesting. It gave me the connection to Lauren as a character that I hadn't managed to find due to her transphobia, If the book had just been this storyline and there hadn't been the transphobic plotline then I think I really could have enjoyed it. 

I think this is an important book, especially being set in Ireland, but Hennessy just stepped over the line with what she was trying to show with the transphobia. I think it's good that she tried but it just didn't turn out well. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Hot Key Books for providing me with this copy for review. 

The Witch's Kiss and The Witch's Tears by Katherine and Elizabeth Korr

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 424

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Released: 30th June 2016 

Sixteeen-year-old Meredith is fed-up with her feuding family and feeling invisible at school – not to mention the witch magic that shoots out of her fingernails when she’s stressed. Then sweet, sensitive Jack comes into her life and she falls for him hard. The only problem is that he is periodically possessed by a destructive centuries-old curse. Meredith has lost her heart, but will she also lose her life? Or in true fairytale tradition, can true love’s kiss save the day?

Pages: 320

Publisher: Harper Collins 

Released: 2nd of February 2017 

It's not easy being a teenage witch. Just ask Merry. She's drowning in textbooks and rules set by the coven; drowning in heartbreak after the loss of Jack. But Merry's not the only one whose fairy tale is over. Big brother Leo is falling apart and everything Merry does seems to push him further to the brink. And everything that happens to Leo makes her ache for revenge. So when strangers offering friendship show them a different path they'd be mad not to take it...Some rules were made to be broken, right?

What I Have to Say 

I wasn't keen on these books. The Witch's Kiss just didn't feel like anything different than all the books I've read before. I didn't really feel much for Merry, who seemed to just wait around for more instructions. The end was better and I liked how it linked up, but it didn't change how I thought about the book as a whole. 

The second book was better, there was more going on in general and the storyline was much more interesting. But it still felt like most of the action was going on while Merry was just sitting back not doing much. This time it wasn't because of her own decision at least, but I still felt that by confining her and not letting her be part of the action, it just made the story dull and frustrating. 

I probably won't be reading any more of this series. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Harper Collins for providing me with this copy to review. 

Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield

Synopsis (From Goodreads) 

Pages: 352 

Publisher: Simon and Schuster 

Released: 30th of August 2016 

At seventeen, Jacklin Bates is all grown up. She’s dropped out of school. She’s living with her runaway sister, Trudy, and she’s in secret, obsessive love with Luke, who doesn’t love her back. She’s stuck in Mobius—a dying town with the macabre suicide forest its only attraction—stuck working in the roadhouse and babysitting her boss’s demented father.

A stranger sets up camp in the forest and the boy next door returns; Jack’s father moves into the shed and her mother steps up her campaign to punish Jack for leaving, too. Trudy’s brilliant façade is cracking and Jack’s only friend, Astrid, has done something unforgivable.

Jack is losing everything, including her mind. As she struggles to hold onto the life she thought she wanted, Jack learns that growing up is complicated—and love might be the biggest mystery of all.

What I Have to Say 

I'm not going to hold anything back. I was bored through most of this book. It's just not the kind of story I'm interested in. It doesn't have to all be action and adventure, but a lot of this book, nothing really happened. There was so much set up that we were really far through the book before a lot of the stuff that's referenced in the blurb even happen. 

Looking as this book purely as art, I can see how it kind of resembles the pace of the small town that Jack lives in and the way that the days blur together with not much happening when you are a new adult who's just making your way in the world, be that at 16, 18 or older. The title Inbetween Days even reflects that. So I think that the thing that put me off the book could be a real draw for someone who likes that kind of thing. 

It just wasn't my kind of book. 

My thanks go to the FMCM for providing me with this copy to review. 

The Outliers by Kimberly McCreight

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 480

Publisher: Harper Collins Children's Books 

Released: 3rd of May 2016 

They’ll get inside your head…

Imagine if you could see inside the minds of everyone around you – your best friend, your boyfriend, your enemies…?

Imagine how valuable you’d be…

Imagine how much danger you’d be in…

Imagine being an Outlier.

It all starts with a text:

Please Wylie, I need your help.

Wylie hasn't heard from her one time best friend, Cassie, in over a week. Not since their last fight. But that doesn't matter. Cassie's in trouble, and it’s up to Wylie to do what she does best, save her best friend from herself.

This time it's different though – Cassie's texts are increasingly cryptic and scary. And instead of having Wylie come by herself, Jasper shows up saying Cassie asked him to help. Trusting the super-hot boy who sent Cassie off the rails doesn't feel right, but Wylie has no choice.

But as Wylie and Jasper follow Cassie’s bizarre trail, Wylie has a growing sense that something is REALLY wrong. What isn’t Cassie telling them? Who is she with and what do they want from her? And could finding her be just the beginning…?

What I Have to Say 

Although this book was okay, it didn't catch me. I think part of it was the same reason that a lot of books like this don't catch me, it's because they seem the same as a lot of other things that I've read recently. Of course, if I'd read this first then maybe I would like it better, but in the end, this is how it is. 

The other reason I didn't really get into this was that pretty much everything could have been solved if they'd just stopped lying to each other. Cassie lied to her dad and her dad lied to Cassie and if they'd just stopped then everything would have gone smoother for everyone. 

I might continue reading these if I have the opportunity. I was interested in the powers that they showed and would like to see how that is developed, but if not for that, I probably wouldn't bother. 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Harper Collins for providing me with this copy for review. 

The Bombs That Brought Us Together by Brian Conaghan

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 320

Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's Books 

Released: 21st of April 2016 

Fourteen-year-old Hamish Law has lived in Little Town, on the border with Old Country, all his life. He knows the rules: no going out after dark; no drinking; no litter; no fighting. You don't want to get on the wrong side of the people who run Little Town. When he meets Pavel Duda, a refugee from Old Country, the rules start to get broken. Then the bombs come, and the soldiers from Old Country, and Little Town changes for ever.

Sometimes, to keep the people you love safe, you have to do bad things. As Little Town's rules crumble, Hamish is sucked into a dangerous game. There's a gun, and a bad man, and his closest friend, and his dearest enemy.

Hamish Law wants to keep everyone happy, even if it kills him. And maybe it will ... But he's got to kill someone else first. 

What I Have to Say 

I really didn't take to this book. At all. I don't know why originally, but I just couldn't connect to the characters at all or really get much interest in the plot. It got better as I went on, especially after the sister was brought into the action, but it wasn't enough to get me very invested in the story. 

I also found the characters just so stupid at the start. I mean, I know they're young, but the way they get involved with the Big Man just for a few chairs even though they know that he's a bad person to let get a hold over them, it just took away any pity I had for the characters. 

This was just not the book for me.

The November Criminals by Sam Munson

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 258

Publisher: Atom

Released: 5th of November 2015

For a high school senior, Addison Schacht has a lot of preoccupations. Like getting into college. Selling drugs to his classmates. His complicated relationship with his best friend (NOT his girlfriend) Digger. And he's just added another to the list: the murder of his classmate Kevin Broadus, and his own absurd, obsessive plan to investigate the death. When presented with an essay question on his application to the University of Chicago—What are your best and worst qualities?—Addison finds himself provoked into giving his final, unapologetic say about all of the above and more.

What I Have to Say 

This book wasn't really for me. It was a good story and I did like some of the philosophical musings that Addison went into, despite the fact that they were a little unnecessary. It was the voice, I think that I really liked. The educated feel of it, despite the way that he talked about things. Although, I don't normally like people who look down on people who aren't as educated as them, I just found it an easy voice to get into. It was easy to get into the character's head. 

It was one of those books that just went too far to be crass. It's like the author wants us to hate the character, which is fine... but in this case, what they were doing felt a bit obvious. 

If you like this kind of book, then that's okay, it just wasn't my kind of thing. 

The Rise and Rise of Tabitha Baird by Arabella Weir

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 213

Publisher: Picadilly Press Ltd

Released: 2nd of October 2015 

When 13-year-old Tab Baird starts at a new school, she's determined to be the coolest, most popular girl there - whatever it takes. She adjusts her school skirt so it's just the right length. She has enough attitude to make it into the in-crowd. She even gets the attention of the hottest guys. But it's not easy being uber-cool. No one must find out that her mum, brother and her have moved into her gran's house, so she tries to persuade Gran to pose as a house-keeper. And if anyone discovers her mum's blog - about her teenage daughter - it'll be the ultimate in social death. 

What I Have to Say

I really hated this book. I don't like saying that, but it's true. The character was the most annoying type of teenager that exists, which is realistic but just not something I want to read about. You know the type, the sort that overuses words like "Mankenstein" and thinks they're so clever for finding ways to mess with teachers.

I found some of the stuff about her mother and the dog funny, but a lot of it was repetitive and overused. The issues looked at in the book were good though. I feel it was a realistic portrayal of how someone would feel having her family go to live with her gran after her parents split up. I did feel sorry for Tabitha in parts.

Some people might find this book enjoyable, but I just didn't.

Sophie Someone by Hayley Long

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 256

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 3rd of September 2015

'Some stories are hard to tell.

Even to your very best friend.

And some words are hard to get out of your mouth. Because they spell out secrets that are too huge to be spoken out loud.

But if you bottle them up, you might burst.

So here's my story. Told the only way I dare tell it.'

Sophie Nieuwenleven is sort of English and sort of Belgian. Sophie and her family came to live in Belgium when she was only four or five years old, but she's fourteen now and has never been quite sure why they left England in the first place. Then, one day, Sophie makes a startling discovery. Finally Sophie can unlock the mystery of who she really is. This is a story about identity and confusion - and feeling so utterly freaked out that you just can't put it into words. But it's also about hope. And the belief that, somehow, everything will work out OK.

What I Have To Say 

This book didn't work for me. It was a really good story, but the style it was written in put me off. I get what the author was trying to do, but I don't see how replacing certain words makes something easier to tell. If it was just the words that were traumatic for her that were replaced, I think it would have been easier to understand. It's just that I don't see how replacing words like "fingers" and "head" makes it easier to tell a story. 

It was a very interesting book about language and bi-lingual children. It looks a lot at language and how things can be hard to talk about. It goes a lot into identity. When Sophie finds out what her parents have been hiding from her, she loses her entire identity. I liked how the different parts of the story were named to show how Sophie lost and then found her identity.

I did enjoy this story, it really only was the style of writing that put me off. It's a shame because I think without that it could have been a book I really would have loved.

A History of Glitter and Blood by Hannah Moskowitz

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

My thanks go to Netgalley and Chronicle Books for providing me with this e-copy

Pages: 280

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Released: 4th of August 2015

Sixteen-year-old Beckan and her friends are the only fairies brave enough to stay in Ferrum when war breaks out. Now there is tension between the immortal fairies, the subterranean gnomes, and the mysterious tightropers who arrived to liberate the fairies.

But when Beckan's clan is forced to venture into the gnome underworld to survive, they find themselves tentatively forming unlikely friendships and making sacrifices they couldn't have imagined. As danger mounts, Beckan finds herself caught between her loyalty to her friends, her desire for peace, and a love she never expected. 

This stunning, lyrical fantasy is a powerful exploration of what makes a family, what justifies a war, and what it means to truly love.

What I Have to Say 

I didn't get on with this book at all. I had a major issue with the fact that they were glorifying prostitution a bit too much. The author did seem to make an attempt to show the trauma that working in a profession such as that can create. I'm fairly open, I don't think I'd have minded so much if it was an adult book where someone who chooses to go into prostitution, but this was a book for teenagers. A book where characters are pressured into the profession due to hard circumstances. This sort of thing has to be written sensitively, which I don't think it was. 

It was a really interesting setting, but the author didn't really spend a lot of time on it. I would have liked it a lot more if there had been more detail about the fairy culture and the friction between them and the trolls. But it just wasn't set up enough. 

It wasn't badly written and the characters were fairly interesting at times, but I really just didn't like it. 

Almost Grace by Rosie Rowell

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 224
Publisher: Hot Key Books
Released:  4th of June 2015

For the first time in my life I feel like there is a chink of light, another way. Spook's world is raw, cut down to what matters. He is the first person I've met who seems free.

Grace and her Cape Town friends are renting a house on the coast - after exams it's their rite of passage into adulthood. Yet 'maturity' means different things to each of them. Brett and Louisa have plans - university, travelling - but Grace is uncertain of her future. Anxiety drives her to take control of whatever she can, starting with her own body, and it is starting to worry those around her.

When Grace meets Spook - an older, nomadic surfer - their attraction is instant and his relaxed familiarity and assured confidence catch her off-guard. Can she allow herself to lose control, and fall in love?

What I Have to Say 

This book really wasn't for me. The story was entertaining enough and I liked the character enough as the dreamer traveller type. But that seemed like all she was really. And insecure person who was worried by her lack of purpose in life and trying to control things through an eating disorder. It just felt a bit like a stereotype. 

It got better as they found out more about Spook and things started to happen. But it wasn't really my sort of book. It wasn't what I was expecting. Although I did really like the South African setting because I don't really read many books like that. 

All in all, this might be a good book for people who like these gritty coming of age contemparies where a girl meets a strange man on the beach, but not for me. 

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 240

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Released: 9th of June 2015 

When nearly killing a classmate gets seventeen-year-old Sadie Su kicked out of her third boarding school in four years, she returns to her family’s California vineyard estate. Here, she’s meant to stay out of trouble. Here, she’s meant to do a lot of things. But it’s hard. She’s bored. And when Sadie’s bored, the only thing she likes is trouble.

Emerson Tate’s a poor boy living in a rich town, with his widowed mother and strange, haunted little brother. All he wants his senior year is to play basketball and make something happen with the girl of his dreams. That’s why Emerson’s not happy Sadie’s back. An old childhood friend, she knows his worst secrets. The things he longs to forget. The things she won’t ever let him.

Haunted is a good word for fifteen-year-old Miles Tate. Miles can see the future, after all. And he knows his vision of tragic violence at his school will come true, because his visions always do. That’s what he tells the new girl in town. The one who listens to him. The one who recognizes the darkness in his past. 

But can Miles stop the violence? Or has the future already been written? Maybe tragedy is his destiny. Maybe it’s all of theirs. 

What I Have To Say 

This book was definitely not my kind of book. I don't really like this. Books where they seem to intend to be graphic or shocking. Books where they have random masturbation for no apparent reason other than the fact that they want to shock the readers. Although in this particular instance I can forgive the masturbation because it was a fairly big plot point. But I never in any instance care about the fact that a character doesn't want to wipe themselves after going to the toilet because she likes the feeling of warmth between her legs. That was unnecessary and completely un-needed and I never want to read a sentence like that in a book again. 

Honestly I think that's all that needs to be said about this book. The writing was good and I had no objections to the plot other than the fact that it wasn't really for me. 

Rebel Wing by Tracy Banghart

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 372 

Publisher: Alloy Entertainment

Released: 29th of July 2014

The Dominion of Atalanta is at war. But for eighteen-year-old Aris, the fighting is nothing more than a distant nightmare, something she watches on news vids from the safety of her idyllic seaside town. Then her boyfriend, Calix, is drafted into the Military, and the nightmare becomes a dangerous reality. 

Left behind, Aris has nothing to fill her days. Even flying her wingjet—the thing she loves most, aside from Calix—feels meaningless without him by her side. So when she’s recruited to be a pilot for an elite search-and-rescue unit, she leaps at the chance, hoping she’ll be stationed near Calix. But there’s a catch: She must disguise herself as a man named Aristos. There are no women in the Atalantan Military, and there never will be.

Aris gives up everything to find Calix: her home. Her family. Even her identity. But as the war rages on, Aris discovers she’s fighting for much more than her relationship. With each injured person she rescues and each violent battle she survives, Aris is becoming a true soldier—and the best flyer in the Atalantan Military. She’s determined to save her Dominion . . . or die trying.

What I Have to Say 

This book was actually better than I expected after reading the first few chapters. The character development of Aris was good. At first it seemed like it would be a really sappy love story of how a girl goes to war because she just can't live without the boy her entire life revolves around (and who she has no personality without). It turned out to be a whole different story about how she comes into herself and learns to stand on her own two feet. 

The writing was fairly good, except for one thing that bugged me. The pronouns for the females in the army. It jolted me out of the story quite a bit because when you are a woman sneaking into the army, surrounded by other women sneaking into the army, I feel in your head you would try to think of them as male even if you knew the truth. Because it lessens the chances of slipping up when speaking to other people. I don't know, that's just how I feel. 

The other thing that bothered me was the fact that a society that was happy to have women in charge of the government just couldn't stand to have them in the army. That just didn't make sense for me. The fact that a society could have that level of development and still have that kind of exclusion rang false to me. 

On the whole, this book wasn't that great. But as I said, it grew better as I continued reading it. 

The Gatekeeper's Son by C.R Fladmark

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 348

Publisher: Shokunin Publishing Company

Released: 1st of October 2014

Junya’s grandfather is a billionaire who keeps the secret to his success hidden in a heavily guarded safe.

His mother is a martial artist who wields a razor-sharp katana—and seems to read his mind. 

And a mysterious girl in a Japanese school uniform can knock him over—literally—with just a look.

What do they know that he doesn’t?

Junya’s life takes a dangerous turn on his sixteenth birthday, when someone sets out to destroy not only the family’s business empire—the one that he’s set to inherit—but Junya himself. He’s fighting for his life, and doesn’t know who to trust. 

What has his family been keeping from him?

Junya’s journey takes him from the narrow streets of San Francisco to Japan, and through hidden portals to the top of the ancient Japanese Izumo Shinto shrine, to places where death and violence are a way of life. And in a mystical world he’s never imagined, he finds his true destiny.

What I Have To Say 

 This book got better as I got into it, but I had a lot of issues with it. I liked Junya's computer skills and how they were utilized in the plot and I quite liked Shoko's character in general. But I don't really think that the Japanese culture fitted into the story. It didn't seem to have a reason to be there except for the big shrine in Japan where all of it is supposed to have started.

Shoko had no reason at all to be wearing a Japanese school uniform in the middle of San Francisco except for possibly the fact that it gave her an excuse to were a tennis racket case to put her katana in (though why not have a proper case for it, since it isn't uncommon in Japan for students to carry cases to put their Bokken in for Kendo practice, they've already got her in a school uniform?). Since her people are supposed to come from another world where they don't wear modern clothing, there was no reason to have her in a Japanese school uniform. It would have made more sense to have her in regular clothes.

Also, I didn't like the way that Junya came into his powers, automatically knew how to use them and was amazing at it. I get that he had loads of training in martial arts from his mother throughout his childhood, but that doesn't really make someone good at magic... just at martial arts. He might have the mindset already... but surely he'd still need some sort of training to apply it to magic and learn to direct it?

This book just wasn't for me.

The Bear by Claire Cameron

My thanks go to Random House for providing me with this review copy.

Synopsis (from official press release + Goodreads)

Pages: 280

Publisher: Vintage (Random House)  

Released: 6th of November 2014

Mummy never yells. Mostly not ever. Except sometimes.

Anna is five. Her little brother, Stick, is almost three. They are camping with their parents in Algonquin Park, in three thousand square miles of wilderness. It's the perfect family trip. But then Anna awakes in the night to the sound of something moving in the shadows. Her father is terrified. Her mother is screaming. Then, silence.

Alone in the woods, it is Anna who has to look after Stick, battling hunger and the elements to stay alive. Narrated by Anna, this is white-knuckle storytelling that captures the fear, wonder and bewilderment of our worst nightmares – and the power of one girl’s enduring love for her family.

What I Have to Say 

This book read like it was trying far to hard to be My Sister Lives on the Mantelpiece. What the author was trying to do was fair enough, but I don't think it worked. I'm not convinced that a five-year-old wouldn't know what pins and needles felt like. I'm sure she would have experienced that before and her mother would have told her what it was. But no. Apparently not. 

Also, it was really, really annoying when she went off on a tangent, more accurate for a five year old, but not so much fun for the reader who is having to read through a story that's already been told a few times. Maybe five is too young to be a 1st person narrator. It would at least have to be better written than this to work. 

The only good thing I can really say about this book was the way it portrayed Anna's trauma. It's only in the final bit of the book, but it really shows how trauma, especially in one so young can be hidden beyond the knowledge of the person and only show in outside signs. 

I don't really recommend this book, but if you are interested in trauma in children then it might be interesting in that respect.