I Read, Therefore I Blog

The Blurb On The Back:

Community. In the end, you’ll always want to help one of your own.

Taran and her twin brother Hari never wanted to move to Firestone House. But when the rent was doubled overnight and Dad’s chemo meant he couldn’t work, they had to make this tower block their home. It’s good now though; they feel part of something here.

When they start noticing boarded-up flats and glossy fliers for expensive apartments, they don’t think much of it – until Hari is caught up in a tragedy, and they are forced to go on the run.

It’s up to these teenagers to uncover the sinister truth behind what’s going on in the block, before it blows their world apart.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Nikesh Shukla’s first YA novel features authentic YA voices and focuses on working class characters while making interesting points on gentrification and who really benefits from it but the thriller elements descend into a ludicrously overblown plot with unbelievable antagonists, and a soap-opera worthy conspiracy element while the 48 hour real-time hook is undermined by necessary flashbacks to provide exposition.

RUN, RIOT was released in the United Kingdom on 14th June 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Nine-year-old James and his sisters come from a family with a proud history of never having done anything exciting or adventurous, much to James’s annoyance.

He longs for adventure but gets more than he bargained for when a ruthless pirate captures his father. James, Elizabeth and Emily find themselves stranded on the enchanted island of Tortuga – where the children of pirates live while their parents are off roaming the high seas.

The siblings must band together with a motley crew of orphan pirates-in-training to plan a dangerous rescue mission that takes them from shark-infested waters to explosive ocean battles to the brink of Davy Jones’s Locker … not to mention a sneaky search for the most legendary pirate treasure of all time.

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The Verdict:

S. L. Westgate’s debut historical fantasy novel for children aged 9+ (the first in a trilogy) shows a lot of research on historical pirates, includes a lot of action and has some nice ideas with the magical pirate school but there’s an awful lot going on here and it affects the pacing (which is very uneven in places) while also cramming in a lot of characters (some of whom I lost track of) such that I’m not sure I would rush to read on.

The Blurb On The Back:

Something’s happened.

A lot of things have happened.

If there was a way of rolling back time, she wondered how far she would go.

Twenty-six-year-old Maggie Barnes is someone you would never look at twice. Living alone in a month-to-month sublet in London, with no family except an estranged sister, no boyfriend or partner, and not much in the way of friends, Maggie is just the king of person who could vanish from the face of the earth without anyone taking notice.

Or just the kind of person MI5 needs to thwart an international plot that puts the whole of Britain at risk.

Now one young woman has the chance to be a hero – if she can think quickly enough to stay alive.

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The Verdict:

Mick Herron’s standalone psychological thriller is an interesting, if ultimately unsatisfying affair that makes excellent use of misdirection and manipulation and features a genuinely creepy antagonist but which suffers from the fact that Maggie is so passive and accepting that it becomes increasingly difficult to sympathise with her plight, coupled with an ending that I found disappointingly open-ended.

THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED was released in the United Kingdom on 7th June 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Discover the power of YES and all the amazing things it can do for you.

So often we are afraid of failure, of disappointment, of being vulnerable, and we settle for ‘no’. The practical tips and inspirational advice within these pages will help you embrace positivity and find a new sense of freedom in each area of your life, from your career, to your relationships, to your dreams and ambitions.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Abbie Headon is a writer and editor who has written this superficial, simplistic and ultimately unhelpful book that aims to give readers the ability to put the spark into life and achieve their goals but ultimately is a mix of bland checklists, empty affirmation statements and brief biographies of famous people who have a vague link to the point of the previous chapter such that I didn’t really see the point of it.

THE POWER OF YES was released in the United Kingdom on 7th June 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

How do you speak out if you have no rights?

After withdrawing from the EU, Britain is governed by The Party, and everyone born outside the country is subject to immediate arrest and deportation. Failing to report illegals is a crime.

Zara is the only one who knows how her friend Sophie died. But Zara’s an illegal.

She can’t tell anyone her secrets. Not even Ash, the boy she loves. The boy who needs to know the truth.

As the country prepared for an election, Zara must take an impossible choice.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Tracey Mathias’s stand-alone YA romantic thriller is set in a frighteningly plausible dystopian post-Brexit Britain where the country is an insular, quasi-racist state with rolling blackouts and traffic restrictions. I enjoyed the developing relationship between Ash and Zara (especially how Mathias highlights their different experiences) but the mystery element lacks tension and the ending may leave some readers disappointed.

NIGHT OF THE PARTY was released in the United Kingdom on 3rd May 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

You were lonely, that’s why you wrote me the first letter.

Knowing I was dangerous. Knowing what I’d done.

You were lonely and I was safely behind bars.

It was just a game.

Come and find me.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

The 5th in Sarah Hilary’s DI MARNIE ROME SERIES is an intricately plotted affair full of clever devices and twists and populated by believable characters with very human emotions and although I wasn’t quite sold on the resolution of the main plot (and you do need to have read the previous books to get the most out of this), the book ends with a real emotional humdinger of an ending that means I will definitely be checking out book 6.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Blogger Lizzy’s life is shiny, happy, normal. Two gorgeous children, a handsome husband, destiny under control. For her real-life alter-ego, Beth, things are unravelling. Family tensions simmer and her daughters have moved into teenage-hood, their lives – at school, home and online – increasingly mysterious.

Then a fellow student is callously bullied and the finger of blame pointed at one of Beth’s girls. As an innocent child lies suspended between life and death, two families are forced to question everything they believe about their children, and the answers are terrifying.

As unsettling as it is compelling, The Golden Child asks: how well can you know anyone in the digital age?

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Wendy James’s psychological thriller is a sharply observed affair on bullies and their victims and I enjoyed both the way James highlights the difference between the life Beth constructs for herself on her blog compared with what’s actually happening and the slow reveal of Charlotte’s borderline psychopathy but I wasn’t convinced by the twist ending (especially the set-up for it, which seemed a little undercooked).

THE GOLDEN CHILD was released in the United Kingdom on 17th May 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

One clear ice-cold January morning shortly after dawn, a wolf crosses the border between Poland and Germany. His trail leads all the way to Berlin, connecting the lives of disparate individuals whose paths intersect and diverge.

On an icy motorway eighty kilometres outside the city, a fuel tanker jack-knifes and explodes. The lone wolf is glimpsed on the hard shoulder and photographed by Tomasz, a Polish construction worker who cannot survive in Germany without his girlfriend. Elisabeth and Micha run away through the snow from their home village, crossing the wolf’s tracks on their way to the city. A woman burns her mother’s diaries on a Berlin balcony. And Elisabeth’s father, a famous sculptor, observes the vast skeleton of a whale in his studio and asks: What am I doing here? And why?

Experiences and encounters flicker past with a raw, visual power, like frames in a black and white film. Those who catch sight of the wolf see their own lives reflected, and find themselves searching for a different path in a cold time.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Roland Schimmelpfennig’s literary novel (translated from German by Jamie Bulloch) is an icy affair reminiscent of the movie CRASH in that its disparate cast are drawn together by a random event but despite its clean, cool prose the story itself left me cold as the wide cast prevented me from feeling close with any specific character and the downbeat notes left me depressed, while I didn’t know enough about Germany to comprehend the allegory.

ONE CLEAR ICE-COLD JANUARY MORNING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY was released in the United Kingdom on 5th April 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

Jamie lives on an island out west – a wild place of wind, waves, and surging tides. He loves the island, but fears the surrounding ocean.

Mara lives on the island too – she’s fearless. The only thing that worries her is being sent away to school. When that threat becomes too real, she knows it is time to plan her escape.

And that’s when Jamie, Mara and her dog Django find themselves swept away on a wild sea adventure beyond anything they have dreamed of …

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The Verdict:

Julia Green’s adventure story for children aged 8+ is an evocative and entertaining read that makes full use of its Hebridean location, conveys a real love of the sea and establishes the grudging friendship that forms between its two main characters in a sympathetic and believable way but I felt the relationship between Mara and her mother was underdeveloped and the ending was a little abrupt.

TO THE END OF THE WORLD was released in the United Kingdom on 5th April 2018. Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.

The Blurb On The Back:

On the surface, Niru leads a charmed life. Raised by two attentive parents in Washington, DC, he’s a top student and an athletics star at his prestigious private high school. Bound for Harvard, his prospects are bright. But Niru has a painful secret: he is gay – an abominable sin to his conservative Nigerian parents. No one knows except his best friend, Meredith – the one person who seems not to judge him.

When his father accidentally finds out, the fallout is brutal and swift. Coping with troubles of her own, however, Meredith finds that she has little left emotionally to offer him. As the two friends struggle to reconcile their desires against the expectations and institutions that seek to define them, they find themselves speeding towards a future more violent and senseless than they can imagine. Neither will escape unscathed.

Speak No Evil is a novel about the power of words and self-identification, about who gets to speak and who has the power to speak for other people.

( The Review (Cut For Spoilers): )

The Verdict:

Uzodinma Iweala’s literary novel has a powerful opening third with Iweala carefully constructing the pressures that Niru feels as a black student in a predominantly white school contrasted with the expectations of his religious, high-achieving parents but the story loses intensity and becomes repetitive when Niru returns to America while the final third, where the focus switches to Meredith left too many unanswered questions to be satisfying.

Thanks to the Amazon Vine Programme for the review copy of this book.