Book Review – You by Austin Grossman

books, reviews

Rating: 2 out of 5.

What’s the longest that you’ve had a book on your shelves for? I’m not sure of the exact number but I’ve had You by Austin Grossman since 2015. I’d also bought his book Soon I Will Be Invincible because it sounded really fun. I did try and read that book but I couldn’t get to the end of it. It just spent too long going round the houses and not getting to the point. I guess it didn’t exactly get me in the mood to keep going with him. It also didn’t help that I’d recently read Ready Player One and not enjoyed myself at all. I really wasn’t ready to get into another video game book. I picked it up in May because I was in need of a book starting with “Y” for my Spell the Month challenge. I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t needed this book for that challenge, I definitely wouldn’t have finished it.

Book Review – Girls in Love by Jacqueline Wilson

books, reviews

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Yep, another review and another Jacqueline Wilson book. If you’ve been paying attention to my Sunday Rundowns lately, you’ll remember that I  recently bought this series of books after I discovered that there was a mystery fourth book. Okay, not a mystery book but a book that I hadn’t read. I also found out that the books had been republished with some absolutely beautiful covers. Of course, these two bits of news meant that I had to buy them all. I started reading the first in the series as soon as I’d finished The Lottie Project because I wanted to keep the nostalgic vibe going. I’ve already talked about one of the books in this series for my 30 Books For My 30th series because they genuinely meant a lot to me. They almost perfectly captured what I felt as a teenager. I was awkward, chubby, and a bit quiet. I’d never identified with a fictional character as much as that before. Okay, when I was little I thought I was Alice from Alice in Wonderland but that was only because my middle name is Alice. It’s not the same. So, I was a bit worried about revisiting these books. What if they didn’t live up? What if they were actually shit and I was just an idiot for loving them? I had to find out.

Book Review – Beach House by R.L. Stine

books, reviews

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So, this week may seem like something of a departure for someone who, only a couple of weeks ago, was ranting about how simplistic YA fiction is. And I realise that it is slightly hypocritical of me to then go on to read and review a teen horror novel from the 90s. However, I’ve been obsessing over this book for so long that I needed to reread it. I first read this book hen I was a teenager myself. I loved R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books when I was a kid so, once I started to get a bit more mature with regards to my reading, I started to “borrow” my older sister’s Point Horror books. Most of them were forgettable but this one stayed with me. I don’t know of it’s because it was the first one I read or whether it was just the story itself but I’ve never forgotten it. Well, I didn’t remember the name of it. Which didn’t really matter until last year when I got an urge to find it again. So I went through every beach related title in the set and finally found it. I started reading it night after I’d finished Long Way Down and turned the final page the next day. What a blast from the past.