Summer Reads – I Will Not Be Erased

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

“I Will Not Be Erased” Our stories about growing-up as people of colour by gal-den

Recommended for Older Teens/YA and above! 

 

Here’s the synopsis:

Fourteen joyous, funny and life-affirming essays about growing up from gal-dem’s talented writers.

gal-dem, the award-winning online and print magazine, is created by women and non-binary people of colour. In this thought-provoking and moving collection of fourteen essays, gal-dem’s writers use raw material from their teenage years – diaries, poems and chat histories – to give advice to their younger selves and those growing up today. gal-dem have been praised by the Guardian for being “the agents of change we need”, and these essays tackle important subjects including race, gender, mental health and activism, making this essential reading for any young person.

*

“I Will Not Be Erased” was published by Walker Books back in early July 2019. You can find more information on where to buy it here (also your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.). It’s also available on Kindle.  

Paperback ISBN: 9781406386370

Find out more about the fabulous gal-dem here.

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

Advertisements

Summer Reads – The Loneliest Girl in the Universe

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James

Recommended for Older Teens/YA and above! 

 

Here’s the synopsis:

Can you fall in love with someone you’ve never met, never even spoken to – someone who is light years away?

Romy Silvers is the only surviving crew-member of a spaceship travelling to a new planet, on a mission to establish a second home for humanity. Alone in space, she is the loneliest girl in the universe until she hears about a new ship which has launched from Earth with a single passenger on board. A boy called J.

Their only communication is via email and due to the distance between them, their messages take months to transmit. And yet Romy finds herself falling in love. But what does Romy really know about J? And what do the mysterious messages which have started arriving from Earth really mean? Sometimes, there’s something worse than being alone…

*

The Loneliest Girl in the Universe was published by Walker Books back in 2017 but I only read it this year and oh my how I have fallen in love with Lauren and her stories. You can find more information on where to buy it here (also your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.). It’s also available on Kindle.  This year has seen the publication of her latest novel The Quiet at the End of the World  which I adored just as much and have also featured on my Tales.  You can find details of that here.   Review for Loneliest Girl will follow but just so you know, it’s rather fabulous.

Loneliest Girl ISBN: 9781406375473

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

Summer Reads – The Cold is in her Bones

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

The Cold is in her Bones by Peternelle Van Arsdale

Recommended for Older Teens/YA and above…

Here’s the synopsis:

One girl must uncover secrets of the past to save her friend from a terrible curse in this dark and mesmerizing story of love, revenge, and redemption inspired by the myth of Medusa.

Milla knows two things to be true: Demons are real, and fear will keep her safe.

Milla’s whole world is her family’s farm. She is never allowed to travel to the village and her only friend is her beloved older brother, Niklas. When a bright-eyed girl named Iris comes to stay, Milla hopes her loneliness might finally be coming to an end. But Iris has a secret she’s forbidden to share: The village is cursed by a demon who possesses girls at random, and the townspeople live in terror of who it will come for next.

Now, it seems, the demon has come for Iris. When Iris is captured and imprisoned with other possessed girls, Milla leaves home to rescue her and break the curse forever. Her only company on the journey is a terrible new secret of her own: Milla is changing, too, and may soon be a demon herself.

Suspenseful and vividly imagined, The Cold Is in Her Bones is a novel about the dark, reverberating power of pain, the yearning to be seen and understood, and the fragile optimism of love.

*

The Cold Is in Her Bones was published by Simon & Schuster in March and you can find where to buy it here (also your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.) It’s available in paperback, eBook & on audio CD.

ISBN: 9781471160882

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

 

Summer Reads – Heartstream

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

HeartStream by Tom Pollock

Recommended for Older Teens/YA and above! 

 

Here’s the synopsis:

I just wanted to see you. Before the end.

A taut psychological thriller about obsession, fame and betrayal, for fans of Black Mirror.

Cat is in love. Always the sensible one, she can’t believe that she’s actually dating, not to mention dating a star. But the fandom can’t know. They would eat her alive. And first at the buffet would definitely be her best friend, Evie.

Amy uses HeartString, a social media app that allows others to feel your emotions. She broadcasted every moment of her mother’s degenerative illness, and her grief following her death. It’s the realest, rawest reality TV imaginable.

But on the day of Amy’s mother’s funeral, Amy finds a strange woman in her kitchen. She’s rigged herself and the house with explosives – and she’s been waiting to talk to Amy for a long time. Who is she? A crazed fan? What does she want?

Amy and Cat are about to discover how far true obsession can go.

*

Heartstream was published by Walker Books at the beginning of July and you can find where to buy it here (also your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.). It’s available in paperback, Audiobook and Kindle. This is one that is definitely on my summer reading pile and I can’t wait to get stuck in.  Review to follow…

ISBN: 99781406378184

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

Summer Reading – Serious Moonlight

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

Serious Moonlight by Jenn Bennett

Recommended for Teen/Ya and above! 

 

Here’s the synopsis:

Sometimes the best adventures 

happen under the moonlight

Eighteen-year-old Birdie hasn’t seen anything of the world. Raised and hone-schooled by her grandparents, she experiences life through her favourite mystery novels.

Then she takes a summer job working the night shift at a historic Seattle hotel and everything changes.  There she meets Daniel Aoki, the hotel’s distractingly good-looking driver, and soon they find themselves caught up in a real-life mystery of their own.  A reclusive writer is secretly meeting someone at the hotel, and Birdie is determined to get to the bottom of it.

But before she can uncover the writer’s puzzling identity, Birdie must confront the most confounding mystery of all – her growing feelings for Daniel…

*

I first fell in love with Jenn Bennett’s writing with Alex, Approximately.  Her novels are wonderfully uplifting and perfect escapism during your summer break.

Serious Moonlight was published by Simon and Schuster in May and you can find where to buy it here (also your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.)

ISBN: 9781471180729

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

 

Summer Reading – Five Feet Apart

Books to be swept away with this summer…

There are SO MANY great books around at the moment and so I’d like to share a few that I think are particularly exciting.  I’m not going to plop them all together in one post but give each the opportunity to shine in it’s own right…

Hold on to your hats… here are my summer 2019 recommendations.

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott

with Mikki Daughtry and Tobias Laconis

Recommended for Teen/YA & above…

Here’s the synopsis:

CAN YOU LOVE SOMEONE

YOU CAN NEVER TOUCH?

Stella Grant lives to be in control – even though her totally out-of-control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life.  What Stella needs to control most is her distance from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardise the possibility of a lung transplant.

Six feet apart. No exceptions.

The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of hospital.  In one week he’ll turn eighteen, and then he’ll be able to unplug himself from all these machines and actually go see the world.

Will’s exactly what Stella meeds to stay away from.  But now six feet doesn’t feel like safety.  It feels like punishment.  What if they could steal back juts a little bit of the space their broken lungs have stolen from them? Would five feet apart really be so dangerous if it stops their hearts from breaking too?

*

Tissues are most definitely required for this heart wrenching tale.  It has also been adapted into film which is now also available on DVD.  Please read the book first though! 🙂

Five Feet Apart has been published by Simon & Schuster and you can find more about it and where to buy it here (your local indie will be able to get hold of it too if they don’t already have a copy.

*

Read it already?  Please feel free to let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Happy reading and I hope you have a fabulous summer!

 

The Stranger’s Guide To Talliston by John Tarrow

So today’s blog tour is filled with fantasy, magic and other realms… what more could you ask for?

Abandoned and alone, thirteen-year-old Joe’s world is shattered when he enters a deserted council house and becomes trapped within a labyrinth protecting the last magical places on earth. There, Joe discovers a book charting this immense no-man’s land, without time or place, its thirteen doors each leading to a different realm. Hunted by sinister foes, the boy is forced ever deeper into both the maze and the mystery of his missing parents. What will he find at the labyrinth’s centre, and can it reunite him with the family he so desperately needs?

Crossing through diverse landscapes from Victorian Britain to fifties New Orleans, The
Stranger’s Guide to Talliston is inspired by the internationally famous house and gardens
dubbed ‘Britain’s Most Extraordinary Home’ by the Sunday Times. It is a classic YA tale of
adventure that introduces readers to an otherworld hiding in plain sight, cloaked in magic and steeped in imagined history. Yet beyond its fearsome huntsmen and battling magicians dwells the secret that lies within all of us – the power to live extraordinary lives.

A fascinating concept and with an extremely intriguing opening sentence…

THE BOY LIVED ALL ALONE in an abandoned school bus in the middle of a wooded roundabout.

A stunning cover and package holds an adventure filled 364 pages which is said to appeal to a YA readership.  It does almost feel as though it is written for younger readers though so any teen who enjoys fantasy and is not put off by the length may well enjoy it.  It’s fascinating to read about the author’s own connection with the house that inspired the story, showing that, as often is the case, a house can be the most marvellous of muses for writers.

Thank so much to Anne cater for inviting me to be a part of this Random Things Blog Tour.

The Stranger’s Guide To Talliston by John Tarrow is published by Unbound on the 11th of July 2019.

About the author

John Tarrow

John Tarrow is a novelist, poet, storyteller and award-winning writer. His fascination with folk and faerie tales has taken him around the world, gathering threads of story and legend to weave into his own mythologies: his extensive studies in Lakota Sioux and Druidic traditions offer readers stories resonant with magic, folklore and the wonders of the natural world. He spent twenty-five years transforming a three-bedroom, semi-detached, ex-council house in Essex into the world-famous Talliston House and Gardens.