All-Hallows-Eve

I love halloween. I love the fun of it. The chance to dress up and no-one takes any notice of you. I like how slowly the nights start to get darker earlier and that the weather starts to change.

I figured, I would try to do a halloween bookish post. I love thriller, crime, gore and the likes. I'm not sure if I've read many books that are classed as horror. I'm not sure if my imagination will allow me to do so. But here are a list of books, i think may fit with halloween...

• Funnybones - Janet Ahlberg 
• Through the Woods - Emily Carroll 
• Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
• The Teacher - Katerina Diamond
• In A Dark, Dark Room - Alvin Schwartz
• Room on the Broom - Julia Donaldson
• Miss Peregrines Home for Perculiar Children - Ransom Riggs
• The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
• IT - Stephen King

I've read all with the exception of the very last book. I've recently brought it but both the sheer size of it and also the fact i'm scared of clowns doesn't bode well. I also think this will be worse than the movie and i hated that years ago. So that is a work in progress!

Also, this is the best halloween movie, right?

Christmas in St Ives

Title: Christmas In St Ives
Author: Miranda Dickinson
Type: Paperback (arc)
Read: 13th October 2017 - 17th October 2017
Rating: 5/5
Published: 19th October 2017 by Pan Macmillan

Heartbroken Cerrie Austin is doing her best to hold it together in the run up to Christmas. Not easy when her cheating ex works in the same school and everyone’s eyes are on her. The last thing she needs is a new teacher meddling in her beloved nativity play, even if he is charming, handsome and a talented musician. The Christmas performance is her pride and joy, and she won’t be undermined.
Seren McArthur has recently returned to her Cornish hometown and is enjoying being close to her family and her oldest friends again. St Ives is at its most magical at Christmas, with fairy lights and tinsel in every shop window, tempting locals and holidaymakers alike as they pick up gifts. But an exciting opportunity is just around the corner: will she stay or will she go?
Meanwhile, the St Ives Christmas celebrations are in crisis: plans for a giant lantern parade through the starlit streets have ground to a halt. As the snow starts to fall, can Cerrie, Seren and their friends Kieran and Aggie rally around in time to save the big day? 

When Miranda wanted people to join #TeamSparkly for a big exciting reveal-y thing, I had to be a part of it. I was very lucky that there was room. I was even more lucky that I recieved an advance copy.

I love christmas books. Theres just something so cosy and magical about them. This book is no exception. Set in cornwall over the festive season, it draws you in instantly. The characters were just amazing and I loved Cerrie so so much. I really enjoyed her sense of wonder with christmas. Setting up the children for their big production, how finally she could enjoy christmas her way.

I've never been to Cornwall before, but Mirandas attention to detail and description of the place, really makes the reader want to go there. It is being added to my holiday places must see. The story is a real feel good. It's also the prequal to Mirandas next book 'Somewhere Beyond The Sea'.

If you love a good festive read. Then get this now. You won't be disappointed.

Go Get it From: Amazon UK | Kobo
Follow @wurdsmyth

The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

Title: The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Author: Lindsey Lee Johnson
Type: Paperback
Read: 4th October 2017 - 11th October 2017
Rating: 4/5
Published: 24th August 2017 by Hodder & Stauton

In an idyllic community of wealthy California families, new teacher Molly Nicoll becomes intrigued by the hidden lives of her privileged students. Unknown to Molly, a middle school tragedy in which they were all complicit continues to reverberate for her kids: Nick, the brilliant scam artist; Emma, the gifted dancer and party girl; Dave, the B student who strives to meet his parents' expectations; Calista, the hippie outcast who hides her intelligence for reasons of her own. Theirs is a world in which every action may become public: postable, shareable, indelible. With the rare talent that transforms teenage dramas into compelling and urgent fiction, Lindsey Lee Johnson makes vivid a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with the sorrow, passion, and beauty of life in any time, and at any age.

So i went from reading one book about high school to another. This one i found much more darker and edgier. It screamed attention. It screamed help. The book changes from one character to another and then also a teacher, who is new at the school and wants everyone to like her.

It's a fasinating look into school. It's like the teacher really wanted to please her students and the employees but often got too involved in their lives to realise what was best. I did like Molly and i felt for her at times. A new teacher, moved to a new area and not knowing the past of the school and its students. I thought some of the other members of staff were just horrible. It's like they were just hoping she'd fail from the get-go.

The students were a mixed bag. From the early part of the book when a tragedy occured to when Molly joins the school, then kids go from being probably friends in a round-about way to distancing themselves from each other. Making their own marks on the world/school without trying to get over the past, how what happened was a part of each student. How even changing who you are, who you are friends with and how hard yuo try at school can't make you forget or have the past catch up with you.

I can only say im glad i'm no longer in school. i think if this was happening, id' go crazier. 

Go Get it From: Amazon UK | Book Depository | Waterstones | Wordery
Follow @lindseyleej

 

One of us is Lying

Title: One of Us is Lying 
Author: Karen M. McManus
Type: Paperback
Read: 26th September - 29th September 2017
Rating: 5/5
Published: 1st June 2017 by Penguin

Yale hopeful Bronwyn has never publicly broken a rule.
Sports star Cooper only knows what he's doing in the baseball diamond.
Bad body Nate is one misstep away from a life of crime.
Prom queen Addy is holding together the cracks in her perfect life.

And outsider Simon, creator of the notorious gossip app at Bayview High, won't ever talk about any of them again. He dies 24 hours before he could post their deepest secrets online. Investigators conclude it's no accident. All of them are suspects.
Everyone has secrets, right?
What really matters is how far you'll go to protect them.

I'll confess. I only got this book because the page edges were a pink colour and i'm a sucker for books with coloured edges. This book is so fast paced. I really enjoyed it and felt like i was caught up with all the drama that these characters were going through.

It shows you the effects of high school. How no-one is to be trusted but yet not everything is as it seems. That no-one can truely bury secrets. Everything eventually gets found out. But never in the ways you'd expected or wanted. We meet five very different characters who end up in detention together. They're the unlikeliest bunch ever, but when one of the students dies in detention, the other four are the suspects. Each has something they don't want to be found out. Who really killed Simon?

I loved this book. I think the characters were great and I liked the unlikely friendship they had to form to understand what was going on. To work out why they were being viewed as suspects when they all knew it wasn't them, was it?

I must say my favourite characters were Nate and Bronwyn who together were like, the best ever. I was routing for them and then thinking they needed to chill out. I liked Addy and how through being true to herself found out who she really was and in the end managed to help everyone including someone who would never have classed her as a friend before.

Really recommend this book. 

Go Get it From: Amazon UK | Book Depository | Waterstones | Wordery
Follow @writerkmc

 

The Great Catsby

Title: The Great Catsby
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Type: Hardback
Read: 24th September 2017
Rating: 4/5
Published: 21st September 2017 by Wildfire

• Millionaire Jay Catsby is a mystery. All alone in his moggy mansion, he throws extravagant parties attended by all the great and the good of the feline world. What nobody knows is that this is a kitty haunted by love - the love of a beautiful pussycat called Daisy, whom he lost to another long ago - and Catsby's great wish is that one day she, too, might be drawn to join the festivities.
  
  When Daisy's cousin Nick moves in next door, it seems like Catsby is a whisker away from winning back his beloved. But Daisy's husband Tomcat has other ideas...

I loved 'The Great Gatsby' and when I seen this take on bookbridgr i knew i had to request a copy. It's such a lovely book. Kind of like the ladybird ones. There are stunning pictures throughout. It's a cute take on the story. Cat lovers will really appreciate it.  

Go Get it From: Amazon UK | Book Depository | Waterstones | Wordery 

 

Giveaway - Harry Potter Edition.

Fancing winning a buch of amazing Harry Potter things? Are you in Gryffindor?? Then this is for you. I'm a Hufflepuff by nature and I've recieved a few Gryffindor things over the last couple of months.. So what better way that to give them to a fellow book or Harry Potter fan.

All you have to do to win everything in the picture is go to my Instagram page & check out the post! 

Competition runs until 29th October 2017.

So what you waiting for..

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Then Books on my Fall TBR List

I really need to get back into reading. And I usually do come autumn/ winter time. Nothing better than a good book, cup of tea all sunngled up in a blanket! Books I'm aiming to get through during Autumn are: 

1. The Hygge Holiday - Rosie Blake

2. I Found You - Lisa Jewell

3. One of Us is Lying - Karen M. McManus

4. The Secret - Katrina Diamond

5. The Chalkpit - Elly Griffiths

6. The Most Dangerous Place on Earth - Lindsey Lee Johnson

7. Fellside - M.R. Carey

8. Am I Normal Yet? - Holly Bourne

9. Searching for a Silver Lining - Miranda Dickinson

10. The Graces - Laure Eve

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by broke and bookish.