Sneaking Out by Chuck Vance Review

Thank you to I am a Reader for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Luke Chase a national hero, and sneaking out to the woods with his best friend to meet the new hot British girl at St Benedict's is not something he would normally do. Little did he know someone would end up dead right next to their rendezvous spot and best friend and roommate Oscar would go down for it. Using his past Luke applies he survival skills to find the real killer before its too late.

Luke and Oscar are best friends who couldn't be less alike, Luke being an average student in grades but never once breaking the rules while Oscar is one strike of expulsion. I find a dynamic like this with in friends to be rather common, as they say opposites attract.This I found to be quite relatable making this a good start to this book. Pippa moved from England to the US and has a cool girl persona that sent a wide range of mixed signals to Luke, I found Pippa's situation of moving away from everything you love to start again to be very relatable as well although I didn't move for the same reasons she did, so there being a second fairly relatable theme in this book.  The characters were all very realistic with a wide variety of people that you would except to find in a private school in North America.
The storyline - fantastic, I loved how Vance was able to get Luke to use his history in order to try and save his best friend. Although there wasn't much character development within Luke's character, there was development within the mystery itself, which in my opinion is what counts in a YA mystery novel. Luke used his history to follow the clues he discovered well, but kept underestimating himself. I understand the need to underestimate yourself believing that what ever has happened is just luck because if you didn't maybe you'd have to admit something about yourself. Mr Tadeckis saw that in Luke and although crazy, was definitely my favourite character. (But I think I relate well to crazy, but don't let me go too much into it.)
One issue I did have with this book is that since the teachers are such as big part of this book (being set in a school and all) they need to be slightly more distinguishable, I often got mixed up when Luke was talking to different teachers and I would have to stop and wrack my brain to remember why Luke went to that specific teacher and talked about those specific things. However, this may have simply been how I personally read the book.
Overall the mystery developed well and I am very excited for whenever the next book my be written.
8.5/10
xo

Book Published 6th March 2018

Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale by Molly Lazer Review

This book was given to me by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

I always find retellings to be rather enjoyable, but they don't always deliver - sometimes they are just too similar to the originals by Andersen or the Grimm's or even to the Disney remakes but other times they have enough of an original flare to make them highly enjoyable. And this one delivered.

A stunning retelling of Cinderella, Nora works in the kitchens living with her adoptive family, her parents are dead and the family she works for hates her more than anything. But her life changes when she discovers her father has lived in the main house her whole life, finding this out she begins to question everything - why was she thrown into the kitchen? Why is magic forbidden in the house? Why has she inherited only a silver-bladed knife from her mother?
When a royal ball is announced, Nora must decide what she really wants and whether she is willing to lose every thing she loves to get it.

I found this to be a very fast paced book, A LOT happened in the first 4 chapters and in a book of 18 chapters I did feel slightly swamped by everything that happened. But I also found that to be a huge positive when it came to this book, I couldn't put it down as I was constantly hoping to find out what happened next, and I wasn't disappointed.
Nora the main character, showed few signs of character development until the very end of the book, and seemed to believe she was entitled to an awful lot. This I found hard to deal with while I was reading but as it was a fairy tale, it is to be expected. But because of this, I found it hard to relate to Nora and had a hard time understanding the choices she made, However I am VERY different personality wise and not every book can relate to everyone. My favourite character was Jack, a kitchen boy who worked with Nora and her family along with his mother. Jack was very down to earth and seemed to be Nora's Jiminy Cricket at times. Also in my head he was gorgeous...
As I said previously I had been worried that this book would be too similar to other Cinderella stories but nope. The Kindred (those who could do magic) that were featured in this book were like nothing I have ever read in a Cinderella retelling and with them the whole story, although taking points from the original took a very different path from most that I have read.
I really enjoyed the description used in the chapter featuring market, very well written and reminded me a lot of the description Morganstern used in The Night Circus (another book I really enjoyed).
Molly Lazer was a former associate editor at Marvel Comics and worked on books such as Fantastic Four, Captain America and the New Avengers. These facts surprised me as I saw no parallels between Owl Eyes and the Marvel Comics.
Overall this was a classic fairy tale with Lazer's own personal twist and I enjoyed it greatly.

I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys fantasy or fairy tale retellings, or both.

8/10
xo

Book Published by Fire and Ice YA publishers 20th March 2018

More Than This by Patrick Ness Review

This review shan't be a long one but I shall begin.
I'll start by mentioning that I am taking part in a challenge on Instagram called The Unread Shelf Project, the aim of which is to read the books that have been sat on your self but haven't yet been read. Each month we are set a different challenge by the creators of the challenge and for this month the challenge was to pick an unread book from your shelf and read it by the end of the month or get rid of it (which I personally found to be a terrifying idea). I chose More Than This by Patrick Ness, I bought it from a charity shop at least a year ago, probably more because I'd heard good things about Ness and even better things about this book (should also mention this book has a 4.03/5 rating on Goodreads). The reason I decided to read this book (or face the idea of getting rid of it before I'd read it) was that Ness had been the writer of the TV show Class that was on BBC 3 two years ago, a brilliant show that unfortunately didn't get a second season.
And now for my review.

The cover of my copy of this book reminded me a great deal of a great episode of Doctor Who called the God Complex with 11, Amy and Rory. The end of that episode had a door in what appears to be pixels (see right)... Just a nice feeling for me as a slight *coughs* major Whovian.

A boy dies, drowns completely alone then he wakes up naked and still alone but alive. Unsure of what has happened he dares to believe that the could be more, more than life perhaps an afterlife.

This book took me on a roller coaster of emotions, looking into depression, survival, and the meaning of friendship. I found this book rather hard to get into, I stopped and started for the first 30 pages but after that I couldn't put it down again, so much so that I read the next 450 pages last night, unable to sleep until I was done.
Unfortunately there is very little I can say about the plot without giving much away, some books are just like that but as John Green says "Just read it". It is heart wrenching at times, creepy at others and unbelievably brilliant.
There were aspects of the Matrix in it as well but again that is as much as I can say without giving anything away...
I refuse to publish spoilers of any sort on this blog...
Genres: YA fiction, Sci-fi, LGBT+, Dystopian
I will recommend this to anyone who loves any of those genres.

10/10
xo

A post shared by El in wonderland (@book.monkey) on Mar 13, 2018 at 3:16am PDT

Book Published May 2013