As I Descended by Robin Talley

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 384

Publisher: Mira Ink 

Released: 6th of September 2016 

Maria Lyon and Lily Boiten are their school’s ultimate power couple—even if no one knows it but them.

Only one thing stands between them and their perfect future: campus superstar Delilah Dufrey.

Golden child Delilah is a legend at the exclusive Acheron Academy, and the presumptive winner of the distinguished Cawdor Kingsley Prize. She runs the school, and if she chose, she could blow up Maria and Lily’s whole world with a pointed look, or a carefully placed word.

But what Delilah doesn’t know is that Lily and Maria are willing to do anything—absolutely anything—to make their dreams come true. And the first step is unseating Delilah for the Kingsley Prize. The full scholarship, awarded to Maria, will lock in her attendance at Stanford―and four more years in a shared dorm room with Lily.

Maria and Lily will stop at nothing to ensure their victory—including harnessing the dark power long rumored to be present on the former plantation that houses their school.

But when feuds turn to fatalities, and madness begins to blur the distinction between what’s real and what is imagined, the girls must decide where they draw the line.

What I Have to Say 

I think Robin Talley is one of my new favourite authors. I was gripped completely by Lies We Tell Ourselves and adored it completely. As I Descended was just as good. I was interested to see the interpretation of Macbeth, to see what take Talley would use. I think her beautiful writing combined with the spooky atmosphere of the book, made something wonderful. 

I wasn't sure at first whether I would like the switch that Talley made, from the three witches of Macbeth to Ouija boards and haunted lakes, but I found it really helped to make the atmosphere of the book. 

As perfect as it was and as beautiful  Lily and Maria were in the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, I wasn't as keen on the ending. I felt it didn't follow as closely to the play as it did. I may be biased, because Talley didn't reference the part I was most interested to see, the descent into madness of Lady Macbeth (although don't worry, there is plenty other madness in this book). I understand that it didn't fit so well into the book though, so I forgive it. I just would have liked more parallels. 

Despite that tiny point against it, I really did love this book. I would recommend it to everyone, it was fantastic. 

Saint Death by Marcus Sedgwick

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 272

Publisher: Orion Children's Books 

Released: 6th of October 2016 

Anapra is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the Mexican city of Juarez - twenty metres outside town lies a fence, and beyond it, America - the dangerous goal of many a migrant. Faustino is one such trying to escape from the gang he's been working for. He's dipped into a pile of dollars he was supposed to be hiding and now he's on the run. He and his friend, Arturo, have only 36 hours to replace the missing money, or they're as good as dead.

Watching over them is Saint Death. Saint Death (or Santissima Muerte) - she of pure bone and charcoal-black eye, she of absolute loyalty and neutral morality, holy patron to rich and poor, to prostitute and narco-lord, criminal and police-chief. A folk saint, a rebel angel, a sinister guardian. 

What I Have to Say 

This wasn't a book for me. Sedgwick lately has been getting very arty in his books, which in this book,  I didn't find too bad. It's the grimness in this book that I think put me off. I'm not that interested in drugs and gangs anyway, but there was just no optimism in this book. Even before Arturo turned up and the plot started there was no hope there at all. 

Once the plot started it got a little better, because there was something happening other than people being miserable, but there was just something that held me back and stopped me from getting into it fully. 

This just really wasn't the book for me, but it could really easily be a great book for someone else. 

Dear Charlie by N.D Gomes

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 222

Publisher: Mira Ink 

Released: 20th of October 2016 

Death should never meet the young. But it did. Thanks to my brother, death made fourteen new friends that day. Maybe even fifteen, if you count Charlie.

At sixteen, Sam Macmillan is supposed to be thinking about girls, homework and his upcoming application to music college, not picking up the pieces after the school shooting that his brother Charlie committed.

Yet as Sam desperately tries to hang on to the memories he has of his brother, the media storm surrounding their family threatens to destroy everything. And Sam has to question all he thought he knew about life, death, right and wrong. 

What I Have to Say 

This is another book that I've found a bit too depressing for me. I don't really want to put down the book as bad because of it. It's about grief and grief is not a happy subject. But the books that I like are the ones that touch you. The emotions reach into you and elicit a response from the reader. This book just didn't do that. 

That's not to say I didn't emphasise with the characters. Sam's journey to understand his brother's death and find a way to grieve when the town around him won't let him was something that I could really understand. It really shows well the aftermath of such an event from an angle that hasn't been looked at before, with the family having to cope with the death of the son alongside the guilt of the terrible thing he did. 

It was a good book, I think. It just fell flat for me. 

A Whisper of Horse by Zillah Bethell

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 368

Publisher: Piccadilly Press

Released: 11th of August 2016 

Serendipity loves horses. No-one in Lahn Dan has ever seen one, apparently they died out before the Gases - but there are statues of them around the city, paintings and drawings too if you know where to look. And there's the little lost wooden horse Mama gave Serendipity when she was little. 

When Mama dies, Seren is taken under the wing of Professor Nimbus, a storyteller. Nimbus is kind and knowledgable, but Seren has started to question the Minister's rule and life beyond the high, impenetrable Emm Twenty-Five wall. Hidden among Mama's few possessions was a map which suggests there is life outside of Lahn Dahn, and a place where horses live and roam freely - out beyond the wall and the Minister's grip. So, with the help of a trader boy called Tab and his little dog Mouse, Serendipity heads into the unknown, searching for the beautiful creatures she's always dreamed of. But the Minister is behind them, determined to hunt her down. . . 

What I Have to Say 

I kind of wanted to see more of this world than we did. I loved Seren's journey to find the horses and how she had to travel through places with people surviving in different ways, but through it all, I was so interesting in Lahn Dahn. I wanted to know more about how things changed from our world to this so controlled society being told lies about how there's no one left outside and they can't leave the city. 

The society was so interesting, how it was divided into these three castes that were vastly different from a financial standpoint. But again, I wanted to know why they were given the names they did. How exactly did it get to the point where the very rich started hoarding all the technology and hoarding themselves away. 

The language both annoyed me and fascinated me. One of my biggest pet peeves in books is when they change names to things like Lahn Dahn to make it such an obvious future setting. But again, I found myself wondering how they got distorted, what process the names went through to be changed in this way. 

So all in all, this book was rather frustrating. It was a lovely story about a girl's search for horses and trying to escape the people trying to track her down and drag her back to Lahn Dahn, but I just wanted so much more information than there was on offer. 

Haunt Me by Liz Kessler

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 400 

Publisher: Orion Children's Books 

Released: 6th of October 2016 

Joe wakes up from a deep sleep to see his family leave in a removals van. Where they've gone, he has no idea. Erin moves house and instantly feels at home in her new room. Even if it appears she isn't the only one living in it. Bit by bit, Erin and Joe discover that they have somehow found a way across the ultimate divide - life and death. Bound by their backgrounds, a love of poetry and their growing feelings for each other, they are determined to find a way to be together.

Joe's brother, Olly, never cared much for poetry. He was always too busy being king of the school - but that all changed when Joe died. And when an encounter in the school corridor brings him face to face with Erin, he realises how different things really are - including the kind of girl he falls for.

Two brothers. Two choices. Will Erin's decision destroy her completely, or can she save herself before she is lost forever?

What I Have to Say 

This was such a great read. I've read a fair amount of paranormal romance, but I've never read one like this. I'm not sure whether that's because there was a gap in the market or if I just hadn't read the right books, but I have to say that I needed this book in my life even if I didn't know it yet. 

Not only was it a really interesting concept, but the writing was beautiful. It was easy to fall into the voices of the three characters and sympathize with each of them. Erin especially was a joy to read. She had a personality that felt familiar and very real. 

The story was beautiful, a touching story of two damaged people trying to recover and heal and one dead boy, finding love amongst the living. It was dramatic, heartbreaking and just beautiful, especially the ending. 

I recommend this to anyone who likes a little bit of paranormal fiction. 

Our Chemical Hearts by Krystal Sutherland

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 320

Publisher: Hot Key Books 

Released: 4th of October 2016 

Henry Page has never been in love. He fancies himself a hopeless romantic, but the slo-mo, heart palpitating, can't-eat-can't-sleep kind of love that he's been hoping for just hasn't been in the cards for him—at least not yet. Instead, he's been happy to focus on his grades, on getting into a semi-decent college and finally becoming editor of his school newspaper. Then Grace Town walks into his first period class on the third Tuesday of senior year and he knows everything's about to change.

 

Grace isn't who Henry pictured as his dream girl—she walks with a cane, wears oversized boys' clothes, and rarely seems to shower. But when Grace and Henry are both chosen to edit the school paper, he quickly finds himself falling for her. It's obvious there's something broken about Grace, but it seems to make her even more beautiful to Henry, and he wants nothing more than to help her put the pieces back together again. And yet, this isn't your average story of boy meets girl. Krystal Sutherland's brilliant debut is equal parts wit and heartbreak, a potent reminder of the bittersweet bliss that is first love.

  

What I Have to Say 

I like this new thing of taking the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope and turning it into a very sick girl who a boy has over-romaticised, leading to a relationship that inevitably crumbles leaving a disaster zone in it's wake. 

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (MPDG) trope and the mentally ill girl who is magically made better by a boys love, have always been tropes that are problematic in YA. Having a boyfriend has never healed a girls health problems and girls aren't just mysterious, quirky toys for boys to date. So naturally having these books written in response to these tropes is fantastic. I especially like the use of Kintsugi, the Japanese art form of repairing things with gold as a metaphor for Henry's fascination with broken things and idolization of Grace. 

Alongside being an excellent response to these issues, Our Chemical Hearts was also a really great story. The characters, especially Henry's two friends, felt real and easy to relate to. They had great humour and it was fun to read. 

 

Stealing Snow by Danielle Paige

Synopsis (from Goodreads)

Pages: 384
Publisher: Bloomsbury Children's
Released: 6th of October 2016 

Seventeen-year-old Snow lives within the walls of the Whittaker Institute, a high security mental hospital in upstate New York. Deep down, she knows she doesn't belong there, but she has no memory of life outside, except for the strangest dreams. And then a mysterious, handsome man, an orderly in the hospital, opens a door – and Snow knows that she has to leave …

She finds herself in icy Algid, her true home, with witches, thieves, and a strangely alluring boy named Kai. As secret after secret is revealed, Snow discovers that she is on the run from a royal lineage she's destined to inherit, a father more powerful and ruthless than she could have imagined, and choices of the heart that could change everything. Heroine or villain, queen or broken girl, frozen heart or true love, Snow must choose her fate

What I Have to Say 

I don't like hating books. I don't like talking about hating books, I just don't like it. Over the years of doing this blog, I've slowly been better about doing reviews for books I don't like. But I still come to them feeling nervous and upset about writing these reviews. So you know I really mean it when I say I just did not like this book at all. It was hard to read and I put it down a couple of times. 

The first thing that bugged me was the institute that Snow was in. They called it an Asylum. Which isn't a term used any more outside the disused and abandoned asylums found in horror films. That was strike one. 

Strike two was the way Snow was put into the "asylum". Now I've been through my fair share of therapy appointments. I know something about the way the system works even if I haven't been in a mental health hospital myself and I just find it impossible to believe that they were dump a six-year-old girl into a hospital just for trying to walk through a mirror. They'd give her a lot of therapy and make sure there are no mirrors in reach, but putting her straight into a mental hospital!? And even if they had, Snow is clearly very recovered from her mirror walking through incident. She doesn't believe that people can walk through mirrors and all the issues that she has now seem to be from growing up in a mental hospital. Even with certain things being revealed at the end of the book and the fantasy elements, I just can't get over how much this put me off the book. 

And finally my last complaint about the book. There are a grand total of 3 boys in this book. All three are in love with Snow. And to all three, Snow shows some sort of interest in back. I have been sick of love triangles for a long time. Adding a third boy to the mix does not improve this. 

I wish I could say some about this book that wasn't negative. I really do. And I honestly hope that the author never reads this review. But this is the way I feel. 

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