Review: Two Girls Staring at the Ceiling by Lucy Frank

Goodreads summary: 

This novel-in-verse—at once literary and emotionally gripping—follows the unfolding friendship between two very different teenage girls who share a hospital room and an illness.

Chess, the narrator, is sick, but with what exactly, she isn’t sure. And to make matters worse, she must share a hospital room with Shannon, her polar opposite. Where Chess is polite, Shannon is rude. Where Chess tolerates pain silently, Shannon screams bloody murder. Where Chess seems to be getting slowly better, Shannon seems to be getting worse. How these teenagers become friends, helping each other come to terms with their illness, makes for a dramatic and deeply moving read. 

Library Spies in Venice: The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman

Goodreads summary:

Librarian-spy Irene is working undercover in an alternative London when her assistant Kai goes missing. She discovers he’s been kidnapped by the Fae faction and the repercussions could be fatal. Not just for Kai, but for whole worlds.

Kai’s dragon heritage means he has powerful allies, but also powerful enemies in the form of the Fae. With this act of aggression, the Fae  are determined to trigger a war between their people – and the forces of order and chaos themselves.

Irene’s mission to save Kai and avert Armageddon will take her to a dark, alternate Venice where it’s always Carnival. Here Irene will be forced to blackmail, fast talk, and fight. Or face death.

Review: Strange Medicine by Mike Russell

Summary:

A man stalked by connection puzzles… A love story about a telephone… A violent hatred – or love? – of the universe… A precious childhood stone… A man who ties himself together with string and bulldog clips…

London Bookshop Crawl 2017

The London Bookshop Crawl was this past Saturday. My mum and I planned out a route that took in 10 bookshops, from Central to North London. We never thought we’d make them all! In the end, we did 12 bookshops in 13 hours. I bought 14 books, and my mum bought 10. I meant to take photos of them all, but clearly I didn’t manage it, so apologies to those I didn’t grab snaps of! So, where did we go?

Friday 5 @ 5: Mythological Creatures You Want As A Pet

Friday 5@5 is a weekly feature hosted on NovelKnight to wrap up the week with a fun (and short) list because we know y’all want to get on with your weekends!

This is my first time doing the Friday 5 @5 feature, and I’m excited to give it a go! This week’s theme is mythological creatures you want as a pet. So without further ado, let’s get started!

Inter-Dimensional Library Spies: The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Goodreads summary:

The first installment of an adventure featuring stolen books, secret agents and forbidden societies – think Doctor Who with librarian spies!

Irene is a professional spy for the mysterious Library, which harvests fiction from different realities. And along with her enigmatic assistant Kai, she’s posted to an alternative London. Their mission – to retrieve a dangerous book. But when they arrive, it’s already been stolen. London’s underground factions seem prepared to fight to the very death to find her book.

Adding to the jeopardy, this world is chaos-infested – the laws of nature bent to allow supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic. Irene’s new assistant is also hiding secrets of his own.

Soon, she’s up to her eyebrows in a heady mix of danger, clues and secret societies. Yet failure is not an option – the nature of reality itself is at stake.

The Valentines Series: Recap

The Valentines Series, as it stands currently, is now all up on my blog. I want to say thank you to everyone who responded, whether here or on Twitter, to this series. I really wanted this to go well, and I’m so happy that people have found new recs because of this series. I’m kind of repeating myself now (and I’m sure you guys are sick of the sound of my ‘voice’ by now!), but if you would like me to expand this series to include further orientations/types of family etc, then I would absolutely love to. I already have some ideas for next year!

This post is a plain and simple recap, to link the whole series in one place for ease of reference.

Day 1: Aromantic Characters in Fiction
Featuring internet worship, pirates, artists and fairytales.

Day 2: Asexual Characters in Fiction
Featuring dream magic, fire, vlogging, robots and angels.

Day 3: Demiromantic/Demisexual Characters in Fiction
Featuring Mars, podcasts, florists and spies.

Day 4: Panromantic/Pansexual Characters in Fiction
Featuring demons, cyborgs, high school and a bookshop.

Day 5: Polyamorous Characters in Fiction
Featuring spaceships, fire, softball and alien DNA.

The Valentines Series: Polyamorous Characters in Fiction

Valentine’s Day has come again. And with it comes all the predictable, but no less hurtful, erasure of experiences outside the cultural ‘norm’. So I wanted to do a short series of posts recommending stories that feature identities which don’t usually register on the cultural landscape.

Really, this series could be endless. But I wanted to focus particularly on some of the less ‘mainstream’ identities of the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m aware that all of the identities included under the umbrella acronym suffer marginalisation, but I know that lists such as in this series do already exist for the, if you like, ‘headline’ identities. I want to do something for those people who receive even less acknowledgement and validity, who can’t just google ‘______’ characters in fiction’ and get an easy-to-reference result.

So in the week of Valentine’s Day, I’ll be posting rec lists for aromanticism, asexuality, demisexuality/demiromanticism, pansexuality/panromanticism and polyamory. I could do plenty more – and I have ideas for several more – but I want to keep this series short in order to make sure that all these lists are researched and resourced to the best of my ability. If you feel there’s an identity that I’ve overlooked, please do let me know! I’d love to expand this series if that’s something people would be interested in.

Once the whole series is posted, I’ll do a summary post linking them all together, which you will be able to click through to here.

The Valentines Series: Pansexual/Panromantic Characters in Fiction

Valentine’s Day has come again. And with it comes all the predictable, but no less hurtful, erasure of experiences outside the cultural ‘norm’. So I wanted to do a short series of posts recommending stories that feature identities which don’t usually register on the cultural landscape.

Really, this series could be endless. But I wanted to focus particularly on some of the less ‘mainstream’ identities of the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m aware that all of the identities included under the umbrella acronym suffer marginalisation, but I know that lists such as in this series do already exist for the, if you like, ‘headline’ identities. I want to do something for those people who receive even less acknowledgement and validity, who can’t just google ‘______’ characters in fiction’ and get an easy-to-reference result.

So in the week of Valentine’s Day, I’ll be posting rec lists for aromanticism, asexuality, demisexuality/demiromanticism, pansexuality/panromanticism and polyamory. I could do plenty more – and I have ideas for several more – but I want to keep this series short in order to make sure that all these lists are researched and resourced to the best of my ability. If you feel there’s an identity that I’ve overlooked, please do let me know! I’d love to expand this series if that’s something people would be interested in.

Once the whole series is posted, I’ll do a summary post linking them all together, which you will be able to click through to here.

The Valentines Series: Demisexual/Demiromantic Characters in Fiction

Valentine’s Day has come again. And with it comes all the predictable, but no less hurtful, erasure of experiences outside the cultural ‘norm’. So I wanted to do a short series of posts recommending stories that feature identities which don’t usually register on the cultural landscape.

Really, this series could be endless. But I wanted to focus particularly on some of the less ‘mainstream’ identities of the LGBTQIA+ community. I’m aware that all of the identities included under the umbrella acronym suffer marginalisation, but I know that lists such as in this series do already exist for the, if you like, ‘headline’ identities. I want to do something for those people who receive even less acknowledgement and validity, who can’t just google ‘______’ characters in fiction’ and get an easy-to-reference result.

So in the week of Valentine’s Day, I’ll be posting rec lists for aromanticism, asexuality, demisexuality/demiromanticism, pansexuality/panromanticism and polyamory. I could do plenty more – and I have ideas for several more – but I want to keep this series short in order to make sure that all these lists are researched and resourced to the best of my ability. If you feel there’s an identity that I’ve overlooked, please do let me know! I’d love to expand this series if that’s something people would be interested in.

Once the whole series is posted, I’ll do a summary post linking them all together, which you will be able to click through to here.