Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper

Buy the book: Amazon US ; Amazon UK ; Barnes & Noble ; Book Depository

This book caught my attention during my most recent visit to the bookstore. I’ve seen the author’s books stocked before but hadn’t paid them much attention before now – there is, after all, always far too many titles to browse to actually take in all of them. The idea behind it – a poor Victorian girl having given birth and lost the baby – caught my interest and I decided to give it a shot.

Information:

Title: Fallen Grace

Author: Mary Hoffman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Target Audience: Teen / YA

Genre: Historical

Length: 320

Story: Grace Parkes has just had to do a terrible thing. Having given birth to an illegitimate child, she has travelled to the famed Brookwood Cemetery to place her small infant's body in a rich lady's coffin. Following the advice of a kindly midwife, this is the only way that Grace can think of to give something at least to the little baby who died at birth, and to avoid the ignominy of a pauper's grave. Distraught and weeping, Grace meets two people at the cemetery: Mrs Emmeline Unwin and Mr James Solent. These two characters will have a profound affect upon Grace's life. But Grace doesn't know that yet. For now, she has to suppress her grief and get on with the business of living: scraping together enough pennies selling watercress for rent and food; looking after her older sister, who is incapable of caring for herself; thwarting the manipulative and conscience-free Unwin family, who are as capable of running a lucrative funeral business as they are of defrauding a young woman of her fortune. A stunning evocation of life in Victorian London, with vivid and accurate depictions, ranging from the deprivation that the truly poor suffered to the unthinking luxuries enjoyed by the rich: all bound up with a pacy and thrilling plot, as Grace races to unravel the fraud about to be perpetrated against her and her sister.

Thoughts and impressions: Though this was shelved in the A section, I think it would have been better in the younger readers’ area. It’s true that the book deals with themes of rape, childbirth, death and the evil that swarmed the Victorian London streets, but I don’t feel that any part of it would have been inappropriate for 12+ readers if parents are willing to sit with them and answer any questions they have. In fact, had I read the book when I was 12-16 I think that I would have appreciated it a lot more than I did now.

The author goes to considerable lengths to bring the lives of the poor – and how hardened they are towards anyone that they can swindle, even their fellow poor – to life for the reader in a simple but powerful way and she does a very good job of it. The presentation of the “death trade” is also very intricate and obviously well-researched. I did learn a few new things about death in the Victorian period that I hadn’t been fully aware of.

The story itself follows two sisters – Grace and Lily – and the money-grubbing family who want to claim the sisters’ inherited fortune for themselves. Of course, Grace and Lily are unaware that they stand to gain a fortune if they can prove themselves to be their father’s daughters as they are too poor to be able to afford copies of the newspapers where advertisements asking for news of their whereabouts are placed. For a long time they’ve been living the life of the poor, trying to scrounge a living from what they have at their disposal but coming ever-closer to having to go to one of the workhouses.

Grace, the younger of the two, has to look after her older sister as Lily is on the simple side. She means well with her actions but her mental state makes her an easy target for anyone who does not have her best interests at heart and she often makes their situation worse rather than better. I enjoyed observing Grace’s interactions with her sister and how she’d get Lily to admit to the truth in degrees whenever she lied, but also how fiercely protective of her she was. There was a very pure and dynamic sisterly bond between the two of them that made them something special to read about.

The Unwins were the archetypical villains and were a tad too much on the stereotypical side for me to really buy their characters. Of course, there are people out there motivated by greed just as much as these characters are. I think I wanted more layering to their characters rather than greed being their sole motivator for every single action.

As for James, I would have liked to have been given the chance to get to know him better. He had the potential to be an interesting character that could have opened the doors to another side of Victorian life but in the end he wasn’t really developed enough.

I would consider this a very good historical read for younger teen readers but it didn’t really have the power to completely captivate me as an adult reader.

Style: On the simpler side, which is part of why I feel this book would appeal to younger readers more.

Final verdict: A very good tale, but a tad too black and white for me as an adult reader. 3.5 stars.

Extra notes: I don’t think there was any bad language present. No sex.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I bought this book a long time ago – well, it can only have been four years ago at most but it feels like I made the purchase a long time ago. A friend recommended Gaiman to me, this book in particular. I listened to them in so much as I bought the book but whenever I sat in front of my bookcase looking for my next read it just never caught my eye until now.

Well, as they say, better late than never!

Information:

Title: The Graveyard Book

Author: Neil Gaiman

Publisher: HarperCollins

Target Audience: Children’s / YA / Adult???

Pages: 307

Chapters: 8

PoV: 3^rd person

Tense : Past tense

Story: After the grisly murder of his entire family, a toddler wanders into a graveyard where the ghosts and other supernatural residents agree to raise him as one of their own. 

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead. There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family . . . 

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic Coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, The Graveyard Book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

(from Goodreads)

Thoughts and impressions: My first thought upon starting this book was that the style was very singular. The opening scene is of a man wiping blood from the knife he’s just used to kill three people but the language used almost makes it sound as though the story is aimed at a younger readership.

The style continues in this same manner but the events described are sometimes quite complex. The reader is only given part of the information and left to draw their own conclusions. I’m not sure that some of what’s going on wouldn’t just go over the heads of much younger readers. That said, the content is not particularly scary – I’ve read scarier books aimed at ten-year-olds – as you might imagine from the title, the synopsis, the knowledge that a man wants to kill the main character and the fact that it all takes place in a graveyard. I found it difficult to place the target audience with this one. Whenever I see the book in the shops, it’s always in the adult section but I think the story would appeal to younger readers too.

Each chapter follows a certain even in Bod’s life and each time these events take place two years apart. For the most part, the stories aren’t particularly interconnected but they show Bod’s evolution from a toddler to a young man. In each the reader is invited to explore an area of a reality that exists alongside ours – whether this be a trip along a plane where the “ghouls” live or an encounter with a millennia-old power.

I enjoyed each and every one of the short stories from Bod’s life, though at 80+ pages the 7^th was a bit of a push (I like to read chapter by chapter and not stop in the middle of one if at all possible). My favourite story was when Bod meets the ghost of a young woman who was burnt as a witch and buried on unconsecrated ground. She, Liza, has no headstones and this makes her sad so a young Bod decides to go out into the big wide world and buy one for her. I found this really sweet, especially as he’s only eight at the time.

Of course, the recurring theme across the novel is Bod’s existence in the graveyard living with the dead in a world apart from the living. Sometimes this is hard for him as he fights the urge to socialise with others like him – especially as he gets older. His struggles were always worthy of a child at whatever age he is in the chapter, though his speech did seem a bit formal. This could be put down to his having effectively been brought up by people who died anything between a hundred and just under two thousand years ago.

At one point, I thought it might turn out that “the man Jack” was some form of Jack the Ripper, what with his blade and all that. I’ve read a few novels over the past few months that incorporated Jack the Ripper in some way and I have to say that I’m glad that this book did not go down that same road. The idea of the Jacks of all trades really intrigued me; it was certainly something very different though I would have liked to have learnt more about them.

In all, this is a fairly short book. I read it in an afternoon. Dave McKean’s illustrations really serve to set it apart from the norm and I’m sure that they will make the book appeal all the more to certain readers. I have to admit that once or twice I couldn’t work out just what was being illustrated, though!

Style: The style was fairly simple, which was what led me to speculate about just what age of reader this book is aimed at. It’s one that a ten-year-old could likely tackle on their own, but it also hides more advanced hidden ideas.

Final verdict: As mentioned, this was my first Gaiman read. While I enjoyed it, I’m not chomping at the bit to go and read more by him. At times I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue reading or take a short break from the book. I might have enjoyed it more had I taken my time with it but instead I pushed through it all. This meant that I did occasionally feel worn down by the book. I’d advise other readers to not do as I did and to go at the pace their minds dictate. Maybe the book will earn a full 5 stars from these people but it gets a still good 4 stars from me.

Extra notes: I don’t think there was any bad language. No sex.

Shayla Witherwood: A Half-Faerie Tale by Tamra Torero

I received this book courtsey of the publisher from NetGalley.

If I’m honest, I couldn’t say what exactly it is that drew me to this book. It’s not a book that I’d heard of before, but then I’m always one to try anything that comes my way! I liked the sound of the blurb and that was enough in this case. I didn’t even go and read any other reviews to see if it might be for me. Whatever it was that drew me to the book, the prospect of it appealed to me.

Information:

Title: Shayla Witherwood: A Half-Faerie Tale

Author: Tamra Torero

Publisher: Cedar Fort

Target Audience: YA

Pages: 312

Chapters: 29

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: A brief moment of disappointment washed over me as I approached Jace’s lifeless body. Here I was, about to kiss a boy on the lips for the very first time, and he was completely comatose—possibly paralyzed—and would never even know or remember the experience. This was not how I’d envisioned my first kiss—me invisible, him unconscious. 

Shayla Witherwood is not exactly normal. First of all, she’s spent her entire life being homeschooled, traveling in an RV around the country with her grandparents. And second, there’s the kind of inescapable fact that her mom was a genuine faerie. 

But now that she’s starting a real life in a regular high school, Shayla desperately needs to stay out of trouble in both worlds because even her faerie powers might not be enough to protect her from what’s coming. 

In her latest novel, Tamra Torero spins a magical tale filled with laugh-out-loud sarcasm, surprising twists, and spell-binding romance. Perfect for fairytale fans of all ages, this is one story you won’t want to miss!

(from Goodreads)

Thoughts and impressions: First of all, because I feel this is important, I’m going to point out that this story isn’t in any way bad. It’s very reminiscent of the stories I would read on FictionPress back in the day (the good ones, that is as anyone who’s been on FictionPress will know that it has a very wide range of quality). It’s enjoyable from start to finish. It’s a high school tale with a paranormal (half-)faerie twist. The only problem is that there is very little by way of danger.

It stays in the fairly safe zone of the cliché high school story: new girl (albeit with a half-faerie twist); geeky guy best friend; unpopular girl best friend; popular cheerleader who’s nasty to everyone and looks down on her ‘followers’; good looking jock who takes an interest in the new girl; posse who surrounds evil cheerleader and romantic interest jock.

For a long time, the focus is on Shayla fitting in at public school after having spent her whole life moving around the country with her grandparents in their mobile home. Obviously, public school is very different to the home-schooling that she’s used to. Not to mention that the faerie half of her can make things difficult – such as turning invisible or having to find a way to deal with her pointed ears when she’s required to tie her hair back in science class.

I really didn’t understand where the romantic interest came from. For Shayla, sure, he was good looking and she felt some form of attraction. For Jace, I am completely clueless. As of the very first day he shows interest in her and there’s no explanation as to why he would. What was with him inviting her to be part of the student council or committee or whatever it was? It gets mentioned when he invites her to be a part of it and then it gets dropped. They never have a meeting or anything like that. In that way, the romance didn’t really work for me. It was sweet, but it didn’t have a foundation. I might have overlooked this a few years ago but as it is, I found I wasn’t particularly interested in whether or not Shayla and Jace had a future together.

The other thing is that only one lesson is ever shown: first period science class. There are also plenty of scenes in the cafeteria, but we never see Shayla in any other class. Why not? Well, possibly to keep from boring the reader with passages where little happens, but it got to the point where it felt like science class was the only one that existed.

Eventually some sort of threat is introduced, but it doesn’t actually becoming very threatening until the very end of the book. I think I just wanted more of a sense of danger from the book. As it was, it was mostly about day to day life in high school. I’ve done that once and it’s not something I’m in a rush to get back to (though of course my lycée experience was very different to the typical American high school experience).

As for the ending itself, there were a lot of new, different ideas introduced very quickly that were never expanded on. Had they been introduced earlier on in the story, I might have cared about them, but as it was they only garnered some form of mild interest from me. The author had stuck me in a situation where (I think) she expected me to get caught up in the action but because all of this had had no lead up, I didn’t really manage to get beyond a mild interest.

Mister Digby was an interesting character – possibly the most interesting. He was one of the few where the author managed to leave me unsure of where I stood with him. I went through phases with him. At first I thought he was another faerie, then I thought he was some form of troll, and then I just couldn’t figure him out at all. The descriptions of him were good, though. I kept imagining something similar to Professor Flitwick form the Harry Potter books.

As I said at the start of the review, the book isn’t bad. It’s just slow and it should be taken as such. This is not the sort of story where the action keeps you on the edge of your seat. It’s one to be enjoyed in a moment of calm. I think it’d appeal to younger female readers (maybe 12 or 13+) more than it will to older readers. There are loose ends and things that could have been improved but overall I enjoyed the story.

Style: I received an ARC of this book so some of the things I noticed that stuck out will likely have been fixed prior to publication. Two of the big ones, though, were that the term ‘faerie’ was sometimes spelt ‘fairie’ and their mobile home was sometimes called Brutus and other times Brutis. Other than these things, the style was actually polished so it surprised me that I found such mistakes.

Final verdict: I wish I’d read this book as a young teen. I think that had I read it then, I would have really loved it. As an adult, I felt it kept me at a distance and I missed having some form of threat hanging heavily over the characters. I enjoyed it but it didn’t really grab my attention – I didn’t feel compelled to go back to the book, I chose to do so. In other words, I was interested but I wasn’t addicted. 3 stars

Extra notes: I didn’t notice any bad language. No sex.

Beyond (The Academy) by T.P. Boje

I received this book as part of the ARR (authors requesting reviews) programme in the Basically Books group on Goodreads. Many thanks to the author for providing me with a review copy of her book!

Information:

Title: Beyond (The Academy)

Series: The Afterlife #1

Author: T.P. Boje

Publisher: self-published

Target Audience: Younger readers

Pages: ebook

PoV: 1^st person

Tense: Past tense

Story: Have you ever wondered where you go when you die? 

Meghan is 16 when it happens to her. She wakes up on a flying steamboat on her way to a school run by Angels in a white marble castle. It is a school everybody has to go to before they are let into Heaven. On the boat she meets Mick who has been dead for more than a hundred years but still looks like a teenager. He helps her past the difficult beginning at the new school in a new world. One day some of Meghan's roommates find a mirror in the cellar of the school and they persuade her to go through it with them - well knowing it is strictly against the rules of the school. Meghan ends up back on earth where she meets Jason. But Jason is in danger and Meghan knows something important. Something that is a matter of life and death. Soon she is forced to choose between the two worlds. The one she belongs to now and the one she left. 

Beyond is the first novel in T. P. Boje's Afterlife series and is great for children and teenagers ages 9 and up.

Thoughts and impressions: I suppose first and foremost, the similarities between this book and Harry Potter should be mentioned at least in passing. I don’t want to focus on them too much but they’re certainly there in various forms. T.P. Boje did go to lengths to change the things borrowed from the Potterverse and adapt them to her creation. Honestly, their presence didn’t fuss me all that much but I know that some readers didn’t appreciate the ties to one of their favourite series.

The way that the story starts, the narrator, Meghan, is addressing the reader and explaining the world of spirits: what a spirit is, how they appear, etc. I’m not sure that this was necessary. I understand why the author did this as it was her way of setting the scene for her world, but the downside is that in doing so she’s laid the whole of her universe before the reader before anything even happens. I think I would have preferred it if the book opened with Meghan waking up on the steamboat with no memory of how she got there and then all these concepts from the first few pages be introduced slowly throughout the book. For the most part, these things are actually rehashed at various points in the narrative so it wouldn’t have harmed the book if the first few pages had been removed.

One of the things mentioned in that part, though, is that a spirit appears in the clothes that they were wearing at the time of their death. All I could think was what would happen if the person died, say, in the bath? Would that spirit be forced to spend eternity in their birthday suit? Maybe I’m thinking too much, I know I have a tendency to do that at times.

I soon found that I was actually very interested in this afterlife that T.P. Boje had created with the idea that spirits train to later go back and interact with the living in order to try to sway them towards doing good things in life and joining them on the good side of the afterlife upon their death. And then God and Satan were introduced. I was really upset and frustrated at this point (obviously I didn’t pay much attention to the synopsis mentioning angels and heaven). I’d been really eating up this concept of the afterlife and then it was all reduced to a Christian concept. Christian because Satan is a Christian concept, not Jewish, and he is much more recent than the concept of God. There’s a scene where it’s mentioned that Satan is leading Adam and Eve somewhere, I forget where, but that’s not possible because he didn’t exist for several thousand years after the idea of Adam and Eve. The snake in the Garden of Eden is actually a representation of the god of the religion that had been popular in that area prior to Judaism and it was fairly normal standard at that time to take the imagery of the previous religion and vilify it. Enough religious side-tracking there, but yes, I was so disappointed when this world was made to revolve around God as I’d been hoping for a really interesting afterlife concept that didn’t hinge on religion. Really I suppose that I should have seen it coming as of the Hebrew terms introduced right at the beginning.

I’m not sure whether this book is aimed at teens or YA. Meghan herself is about 16 but the narration is fairly simple, which would be better for younger readers. It also leant heavily on believing what Meghan told you. I’ve got two examples for this:

1)  Meghan is shown to go cloud surfing with Abhik, a young Indian boy who died of cancer. After that one scene together, Meghan suddenly considers him a good friend whom she has to protect - I suppose from himself - when he is coerced into going to visit the humans (something against school rules at this point in their education). I didn’t see enough interaction between the two characters to warrant Meghan feeling this way about Abhik. Had they had more scenes together to show the growing friendship between them, then I would have been more willing to accept this premise. Instead, I found myself having to just accept Meghan’s word for it.

2) When Meghan first arrives in the afterlife, she is sorted into a group of teens around her age. There are six girls who are all introduced when they’re together in the dorm. One, Portia, is soon presented as a spiteful persona and a ringleader with two cronies, Mai and Acacia. Later on, we get this quote: “Everyone who started to hang out too much with Portia seemed to be affected by that [poisoned heart]. I had seen it in Mai and later in Acacia, how they slowly turned more and more vicious every day.” Maybe Meghan had seen it, but I didn’t. Mai and Acacia were never presented as being nice. As of the very introduction of their characters, they were Portia’s cronies and they were not particularly kind, preferring to kick those who are already down. To back up this quote, there should have been scenes earlier in the book where Meghan is interacting with Mai and Acacia and those two girls are slowly changing from being nice girls who could have been her friend to being Portia clones.

There were a few other times when the reader was asked to just accept things on Meghan’s say so. A little bit of tell is ok but this book was occasionally heavily tell. There was show too, but I did find it to rely on tell a tad too much.

There were also certain things that didn’t make sense, such as Mr Grangé, the spirit who will teach the new students how to fly, was guillotined during the French Revolution and he carries his head around under this arm… yet he compares flying to being “the best roller-coaster ride you have ever tried”. How would Mr Grangé have had the experience of a roller-coaster to compare the two thus? I know that in the first few pages Meghan mentions that the spirits can choose to be visible and move around amongst the living, but it’s not expanded on in this first book and, anyway, Mr Grangé was decapitated – he’d stick out like a sore thumb in a crowd! Also, they don’t seem to get enough new comers. I know there are supposedly around 400 of these schools for spirits, but Meghan is there for approx. three human years and we only see one new intake of students. An awful lot of people die around the world in a span of three years. I know some of these will become bad spirits, but surely there’d still be a fair number of good spirits to contend with. Just little things like these left me scratching my head on occasion.

The last thing that I want to mention is that Meghan makes friends with a human boy, Jason, despite this being against the rules. This is fun and I enjoyed reading about the friendship blossoming between the two of them and the subtle hints that Jason was growing up as Meghan stayed the same age. I thought it was well done and I liked the concept of friendship and even romance between a living person and a ghost. Hell, I’ve liked that concept ever since I was convinced that Casper the ghost and Cat the human girl should totally have had their happily ever after! But then Meghan realises that the abuse Jason receives at his stepfather’s hands is going to go too far one day. She feels understandably powerless to do anything to change the situation but she doesn’t want Jason to die. Instead of either trying to find a way to prevent it, or coming to terms with what she can’t change, she just goes all Bella Swan on us and that is never a good thing. She just lies around in bed for a few months and mopes for the boy who’s not even dead yet but who she cannot save. I didn’t like this Meghan at all. I never like characters that choose to mope rather than be proactive, even if their proactivity does not give results. It’s better than reading about a depressed person failing classes and avoiding their friends.

Despite the fact that I’ve mentioned a number of things that didn’t work for me with the novel, it does have redeeming features as well and I did enjoy it. One of these redeeming features is the on-going plot of how Meghan died. We do not yet know what happened to her, but there are hints that maybe her parents never discovered her body and they’re still looking for her. This is actually heart-breaking. Can you imagine how horrible it would be if your child did not come home one day and then you never even had the closure of knowing whether or not they lived or died? That is one of the hardest realities I can imagine. The author also deals with child soldiers in Africa and I think she treated the subject admirably, even if it was only in passing.

As I said before, it was an interesting concept of what happens to us upon our deaths, and I did like the world that was presented even if I also harboured reservations about the religious side of it. I would have preferred it without the religious undertones, especially as the book brings together people of all sorts of different cultures who are not all Christian yet does not address this issue. But then, there is a large market for Christian fiction out there.

The book also ends at a point where Meghan’s next steps will define her as a person (or spirit as the case may be) and I’d like to see just how she’ll go about rectifying the negative impact she has had on events.

Style: As mentioned, it’s fairly simple. There are also repetitions at times, such as the first conversation between Meghan and Jason where the word “well” appeared what felt like twenty million times in a short space. Occasionally there are odd things that stand out, such as incorrect prepositions, but this could be due to the author being Danish and writing in English.

Final verdict: I think that this book will appeal to younger readers, maybe 12+, or those who are not too overzealous about Harry Potter. I had my reservations about certain things, but in the long run I did enjoy the book. 3 stars

Extra notes: A couple of occasions where bad language is used. No sex.

Lord Sunday by Garth Nix

***WARNING***

Before we start, Lord Sunday is the seventh and final book in Garth Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series. Obviously I cannot talk about the events in this book without alluding to spoilers in the previous books. I will also be referring to concepts from previous books that will not make sense to anyone who has not read at least part of the series.

***WARNING***

I started reading The Keys to the Kingdom probably about six years ago. I adored the ideas presented in the book. Suzy quickly became my favourite character of the year! The fourth book was out already but I had to wait for the publication of the fifth… which then lead to waiting on the sixth… and finally a two year wait for the final book. Considering the fact that Superior Saturday ends on the mother of all cliffhangers, I was at first anxiously awaiting the arrival of Lord Sunday. Publication got pushed back, though, and by the time it was actually released, I was no longer quite so excited about getting the conclusion to this series. I bought it, of course, as soon as I found it in the shop, but it just got put on a shelf. I realised that, really, I ought to read the other six books first to refresh my memory but never had neither the time nor the inclination, so in the end I just decided to go ahead and read it and hope that Mr Nix provides enough clues to jog my memory where necessary.

Presentation:  I have the British edition of this book. It has by far the prettiest cover (in my opinion). I’m going to term it a “squat” book – it’s wider than you would expect to see given the vertical proportions. The font is quite large and well-spaced. There are 376 pages broken down into 30 chapters and an epilogue.

Story: Arthur Penhaligon is nearing the end of the quest set him by the Will of the Architect. He has defeated six of the seven trustees, taken the keys that give them their power, and freed the first six parts of the Will. Both Saturday and the Piper have launched attacks on the highest level of the house. Now he must go to the Incomparable Gardens and take on Lord Sunday.

While Arthur makes his final stand against Sunday, Suzy is dealing with the results of Nothing eating at all the lower areas of the House while Leaf is dealing with the aftermath of the actions Saturday set in motion on Earth.

Thoughts and impressions: This book picks up exactly where Superior Saturday left off: when Arthur fell through a hole in the ceiling of the upper house, potentially falling to his death thousands of feet below. Throughout the book there were enough clues to past events to allow me to piece together the more important parts of the series that I’d forgotten about.

Lord Sunday has always been a bit of a mysterious figure in the previous books. His name was bandied about a bit but he always seemed to keep to himself, unlike the penultimate villain, Saturday, who was always sticking her nose in Arthur’s business as of the very first book (if memory serves – and considering it’s probably been 4 or 5 years, memory might not serve).  I’m not sure whether this leads me to consider Saturday the real villain of the piece. Even in his own book, Lord Sunday doesn’t receive any real fleshing out of his character and even his appearance is never described. I always got the feeling that he was on the verge of revealing some big secret to Arthur, but never quite managed to get there.

There are a lot of mythological references in the whole of the series (ex: Arthur Penhaligon = the chosen one = (King) Arthur Pendragon?), including many biblical references. Each of the seven trustees represents one of the seven deadly sins: Mister Monday = sloth; Grim Tuesday = greed; Drowned Wednesday = gluttony; Sir Thursday = anger; Lady Friday = lust; Superior Saturday = envy; Lord Sunday = pride. And I felt that Sunday’s pride kept him from really bringing Arthur into the fold of his plans, thus making him an obstacle because, even though he may be privy to information that Arthur (and the reader) is not aware of, he is unwilling to actually share this information.

By this time in the series, Arthur has lost all of his humanity from wielding the magic of the house, and watching him dealing with his sudden rages was interesting from the point of view of the evolution of his character. Even the affection he still feels for Elephant, a stuffed toy from his childhood, is very well portrayed, especially when circumstances lead him to accidentally bring Elephant to life as a Nithling.

Nothing, a mythical substance that pretty much deletes anything it touches from existence, is encroaching on all of the remaining areas of the House at a phenomenal rate, and while Arthur is facing Lord Sunday, Suzy has to make her way back to Dame Primus and her other allies. Suzy has always been my favourite character in this series! She’s so spunky and bossy and just fun! She makes new allies and meets up with old friends. One of these eventually includes Leaf, who had been trying to look after Friday’s victims but was forced to seek professional help to look after them after Saturday’s Noon ordered the bombing on the hospital (I never expected that to actually go through!) before being kidnapped by Sunday’s Dusk. Poor Leaf. Leaf also brings Daisy, a creature from the Incomparable Gardens, into the fold and Daisy is quite possibly the best newly introduced character in this book! The chapters alternate between Arthur, Suzy and Leaf until Suzy and Leaf join up with each other and then the point of view will often change within their shared chapter.

To say this book was pretty long – at 376 pages, I’m pretty sure it’s the longest book in the series – I didn’t get the feeling that all that much actually happened. There was very little action until it all happened at once towards the end and some of the shock things concerning the Will and the trustees had been obvious for a few books now. That said, the ending was a very interesting twist and not one that I saw coming – this is always good!

Style: Relatively simple but appropriate for the intended audience.

Final verdict: Maybe not what I was expecting in the long run, but definitely a fun – not to mention pretty open – ending. Very enjoyable final book in the series. 4 stars.

Extra notes: Aimed at and appropriate for younger readers. I would highly recommend this series for boys!

Truth or Dare by Celia Rees

With its broken spine and yellowed, sometimes fragile, pages, this book has seen a lot of love from me. It was first released in 2000 and I know that I read it at least once before we moved to France so I suspect that I read it for the first time when I was 11 or 12 years old. It underwent multiple subsequent re-readings, which was not something I did very often even at that age, so it must have struck a chord with me.

During my most recent shelf clean up session, I found Truth or Dare tucked away behind some other books. This surprised me as I’d thought it was still in France. After so many years I couldn’t remember very much about the plot and so, for reasons I won’t pretend to understand, I decided to revisit my childhood.

Presentation: Average-sized YA paperback with large, well-spaced type. My copy has 227 pages broken down into 27 chapters, but I believe that more recent editions have 30 or 40 pages fewer than mine.

Story: Joshua’s gran has just had a second stroke. Rather than putting her in a nursing home, his mother, Joanna, decides to go and live with her to take care of her. Josh is given no choice but to join her. Far from impressed with this situation, Josh retreats to his Uncle Patrick’s old room in the attic. There he finds a box of items that connect his interest in space and UFOs to Patrick’s interest in these same things. But Patrick is a taboo subject in this household. Gran, no longer quite fully there, drop some hints that maybe there’s more to Patrick’s story than Josh knows and Joanna finds herself revisiting the last year of Patrick’s life, the last year of her childhood.

Thoughts and impressions: The problem with revisiting books from your childhood more than ten years later is that they no longer hold that sense of awe that your memory insists was present all those years ago. It took me about fifty pages to remember what the “shocking twist” at the end was and after that it was all just refreshing my memory.

One of the problems was that, though I may have liked Josh ten years ago (maybe even sympathised with him), this time around his behaviour was at times irritating and voyeuristic (spying on the girl next door sunbathing using your dead uncle’s star gazing binoculars? Just no.) And what was with Katherine’s sudden change of heart? She rightly shows him up at the party but then she apologises for her actions and becomes a permanent fixture in the second half of the book. I didn’t buy that. There were better ways that that could have been handled.

The best bit by far was Joanna’s story of the events of the summer of space madness. This story was more engaging than Joshua’s and gave an interesting look at autism in a time before it was really understood. Any readers of this book should pay attention to the sometimes very subtle parallels between Patrick’s behaviour and his father’s. The grandfather is never portrayed as a sympathetic character but he does have layers that are sometimes only hinted at but expertly portrayed to show a link between him and Patrick.

And finally, the game. It comes in so far into the story that explaining it would mean delving into a whole bunch of spoilers so I’m not going to do that. But it is worth mentioning because at times I just could not follow what was supposed to be happening on the computer screen!

Style: Relatively simple but appropriate for the target audience. The narrative weaves between mostly Josh in the present day but sometimes also Joanna and Joanna in the past. This works well and neither story ever fails to be engaging.

Final verdict: So apparently this book appeals more to the younger reader in my experience. I still enjoyed the read but not as much as I remember having enjoyed it in the past. 3 stars

Extra notes: Aimed at and appropriate for a younger audience.

Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

This is the first book in the Georgia Nicholson series. I’ve had the book for about ten years now and have reread it multiple times. It is a favourite of mine. I am now embarking on a reread of the whole series as a buddy read with Charmaine Elaine over at From the Shadows I Review.

Author: Louise Rennison is a British author. She uses a lot a fabulous British slang in her books. Apparently her research consisted of hanging out with teenage girls so she could represent their language correctly. Cool research!

Presentation: The book is presented as a diary. It is broken down into months – this book in particular spans over just under a year – and the months are broken down into days and times. Sometimes there will be entries that are set only minutes apart. My copy was 201 pages long, but it is an old version and I believe the new editions are longer.

Story: Georgia’s summer is coming to an end. She’s preparing to go back to Stalag 14 (school) and she and her friends are determined to make the most of the year. As she is 14 and on the brink of womanhood (she wears a bra!), she’s also fishing for a boy. The world of boys is confusing, though. There are whelks, big gobs and sex gods abound. It doesn’t help that her nose is too big and whenever she smiles it spreads all over her face. Georgia and her friends, the Ace Gang, go through many short, but hilarious, adventures. They all have a natural talent for making fools of themselves, which leads to many laughs.

Thoughts and impressions: It took me a little while to get back into the book this time around. I first read it when I was 13, and that was the perfect age for it. Georgia is 14 so I could relate to all her thoughts and actions, which is a bit harder now that I’m 23. I didn’t laugh quite so much as I did when I was younger, but I still found myself gigglesnorting a dime a dozen. There was even the odd occasion when I had to stop reading to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes!

That’s not really that much else that I can say about it. I love Georgia, even though she’s pretty narcissistic, occasionally treats her friends (especially bestie Jas) like dirt, and has a hard time seeing past the end of her nose. My favourite character is definitely Angus, the half Scottish wildcat cat. He’s always there to traumatise the neighbours and their poodles.

A film version of this and the second book does exist, but I didn't really like it. Lots of things were wrong (the actor who played Robbie, Dave the Laugh's lack of screen time, the cat that plays Angus looks like an expensive indoor breed and not a Scottish wildcat, as well as various changes to the storyline, not to mention the title.) I recommend the book(s) over the film.

Style: Extremely colloquial, but considering the format this is to be expected. I love the random foreign words that get inserted from time to time.

Final verdict: I love the humour in this book! Very British! It is certainly aimed at a female teenage market. My book even claims it to be rated ‘T for Teens’. I certainly recommend the whole series for young girls! 4 stars