My Favourite Reads In The Last Year

So, I haven’t written a post like this for awhile. In fact, I haven’t written many posts at all…there is a good reason for that and I will talk about in another post shortly (a post that will probably be my last in a long time).

I wanted to write a list-type post because there are just so many amazing books I’ve read in the last year or so that I haven’t talked about on my blog at all. I have been too lazy to write book reviews except for the few ARCs I have read and I’ve honestly just been enjoying the whole reading experience without having to pen down my thoughts about the books I’ve read. Sometimes it’s nice to just finish a really good book, think about it for awhile and tuck the experience away for safe keeping. That being said, I do think it’s time for me to gush about some of the books on here as I want everyone who hasn’t read them to read them! Note, I wrote about all my favourites LGBTQAI+ reads in my Pride Month Celebration Post so check it out!

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The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

Yes, I finally read The Book Thief! If you’re crazy like I was and still haven’t read it, start reading now! It is such a moving and strange book. A story that really reflects on life and death, morality and violence, love and family. And it’s told from Death’s perspective, which I just found fascinating!

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

If I had to choose a favourite book I’ve read this year, it would be The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. I just can’t even with this book. It is so magical and perfect, the writing utterly breathtaking and the characters unforgettable. I had a proper book hangover after reading this that’s for sure.

A Cuban Girl’s Guide To Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey

This is the perfect book to get cosy with, but trust me when I say this…make sure you have plenty of snacks on hand when you do (even if they aren’t cuban cuisine) as it will make you hungry. I adored the characters and the relationships in this book, it was just such a fluffy romance that also explored identity and taking chances.

Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter

Better Than The Movies is a YA romcom that would make a fantastic movie! It was a lot of fun and super, super swoony and cute.

Amelia Unabridged by Ashley Schumacher

Amelia Unabridged is quite an unusual book, which I loved. I loved how it explored so many themes like depression, death and grief, but also had a really hopeful side to it in the way it spoke about love, identity and writing. A great read for us aspiring writers!

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

A female-cantered fantasy novel with dragons? Well, there’s been a lot of hype about this book and I certainly feel like that is for a good reason. I don’t read a lot of adult fantasy so this was a challenging and rewarding reading experience for me. I loved the feminist angles in the story, it was so great to read a story led by so many powerful female characters! If you’re put off by the length of this book, don’t be. Just give it a go, it’s truly a unique and engaging fantasy adventure!

A Sky Beyond The Storm by Sabaa Tahir

Of course the finale to An Ember in the Ashes has to be on my list. It was a fantastic ending to a series I’ve really, really enjoyed and I just had such a great time reading this one over a few days in bed :).

Today, Tonight, Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon

I actually didn’t expect this book to be as good as it was. I thought it would just be YA romcom I enjoyed and then forgot about. But no, Today Tonight Tomorrow is one of the best YA enemies-to-lovers books I’ve ever read. I loved both of the main characters and the whole concept of the senior’s game of Howl was so much fun! The romance plot has stayed with me since the last page and I think this is a book I’ll turn to when I need something fun and adorable to read.

A Darker Shade of Magic Trilogy by V.E. Schwab

Hells yeah, I absolutely loved this trilogy! The magic is something else, the story is fantastic and the characters even better. I will never get enough of Kell and Lila, not to mention Rhy, Holland and Alucard! The series was just an absolute rollercoaster adventure and I was right there for it on the edge of my seat, heart pumping. The perfect fantasy trilogy to escape into!!!

Chain of Gold and Chain of Iron by Cassandra Clare

I love Cassandra Clare’s books and the first two books in The Last Hours were no exception! I honestly don’t know how I can wait for the last one in the trilogy! Cordelia is my favourite and I just want to see her get everything she deserves.

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Well, that’s it for my favourite reads this year! I hope you enjoyed my post and I especially hope you enjoy reading these books if I’ve inspired you to do so! Happy reading as always everyone ❤😊.

Jasmine @Thesepaperwords

ARC Review: The Summer of Broken Rules by K.L. Walther

~ I received an ARC of this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Big thanks from the publishers for the opportunity!~

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The Summer of Broken Rules is just the YA book you’ll want to read if you’re after something fun and romantic with a touch of comedy and a lot of heart. The story follows Meredith during a summer at hers and her family’s favourite vacation spot Martha’s Vineyard. This summer, the whole extended family will be there for a cousin’s wedding and it’s the first time she and her family have been back there since Meredith’s sister died. When a surprise game of Assassin, the family’s traditional summer activity, is announced, Meredith finds herself determined to play and win like her sister would have before – and it certainly distracts her from thinking about her ex who broke up with her a couple weeks ago. She doesn’t expect to become close to one of the groomsmen who becomes her target, nor to feel herself (reluctantly) fall for him.

I really enjoyed this book because it gave me all those fun, tingling summer feels I love in a romantic comedy. The game of Assassin is thoroughly entertaining and I really loved seeing how it played out. Some of Meredith’s family are certainly competitive, which made for some really funny moments and interesting family dynamics. The way the game develops the relationship between Meredith and Wit, the groomsman, was exciting and often pretty dramatic. The whole summer vibe with the game in play was just a lot of fun and made for a really good character development and plot, which meant I was super keen to keep reading.

I also really enjoyed the characters. Meredith is a wonderful lead female character. I loved how she wanted to be known for everything she was, not just for her pretty face. There was a real depth to her character that I feel like a lot of people will relate to. The way the book explored her relationships with her ex, her sister, her friends and how she dealt with her grief was moving and true to life. I really engaged with Meredith as a character as she developed herself and came to terms with her past, what she wants and who she wants to be throughout the summer. Wit is a fantastic character, both as Meredith’s new love interest and as his own person. He is gives the story a really brightness and is just honestly adorable in every way and will definitely make you swoon right alongside Meredith. I loved seeing how the relationship developed between them throughout the story, it was lovely and everything I want in a romance. Meredith’s sister Claire, though we only meet her in flashbacks, was an integral part of the story and I really enjoyed how her character and her death was explored in the book.

This was a really fun read for me and it also had its heart-wrenching/warming moments too. I would definitely recommend picking it up when it hits the shelves next week in May. If you’ve enjoyed books like Today, Tonight, Tomorrow by Rachel Lynn Solomon, Tweet Cute by Emma Lord, and A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey, this is the book for you.

Thanks for reading! Love @ Thesepaperwords

Update: Hello, I’m back!

Hello again to all my followers,

I have been away from my blog due to my fiance and I moving into our new home (so happy!) and having to wait a month for our internet to activate! It really was strange disconnecting from the Internet world for so long, but I used the time to read a lot and also to start writing another book I’m really excited about, so all is not lost 🙂

In the next week, you will see a lot of Book Reviews from me as I have pre-written many of them and have read some absolutely amazing books (and some not so good). I will also finish my ABC Book Challenge (finally!) and get involved in some Book Tags, TTT’s and maybe something else a bit different. If you have any ideas at all what kind of posts I should try doing, something you enjoy yourself perhaps, please let me know as I think my blog needs a bit of a refresher!

Thanks for reading. Watch this space :).

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

 

ARC Review: How To Be Luminous by Harriet Reuter Hapgood

~ I received an ARC of this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review~

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I should have absolutely loved How To Be Luminous, but I didn’t. I liked it, I just didn’t love it. In saying that, there were some elements I did love about it, but overall, I just liked it. Yeah, so I’m throwing love and like around a whole lot so let’s just get to my actual review before I keep going.

How To Be Luminous centres around Minnie, the middle Sloe sister and our narrator, as she and her sisters grieve their mother’s disappearance/suicide. Her body was never found, so apart from the letter their mum left in a specific place for Minnie to find, they don’t really know what happened to her. In the wake of the loss of her mum, Minnie loses her sight of colour, which is a terrible thing when you are trying to find your groove as an artist and follow in your mum’s footsteps. Minnie begins to realise she may be more like her mum than she ever knew, as her loss of colour, her disconnection to her own self, her mum, her sisters and her boyfriend fall apart in an array of chaos. Meanwhile, her sisters Niko and Emmy-Kate are grieving in different ways alone and all three of them forget they are all sharing the same pain.

Here are the things I loved about this book, in no particular order. I loved the writing style and how Harriet Reuter Hapgood incorporated creativity, colour and art into the narrative. Her writing was vivid, unique and poetic. I loved how Minnie’s loss of colour was a symptom of her grief and a way through which she had to learn to come out on the other side. I loved how each of the Sloe sisters had their own character, their own voice and role in the story. I loved the quirkiness of their mum, Rachel Sloe, who you only meet in flashbacks or Minnie’s visions. I loved the inclusion of art, the exploration of mental illness and the way loss in death was depicted. I loved the sunshine optimism of Minnie’s boyfriend Ash and the charming darkness in the new boy, Felix Waters. I loved the sections between chapters listing descriptions of the colours Minnie had lost.

Unfortunately, even though it sounds like I loved a lot of things about this book, I simply came out of it feeling letdown. The problem I have with this book is that it took me too long to really get into. I’m not sure if it’s just my reading of it, but I couldn’t connect with the  story or Minnie for the first few chapters and I don’t really know why.   I probably got into it around the halfway mark, though I couldn’t tell you at which point that was, and that meant for me it just felt like the book ended too quickly and with many things open ended. I wanted more development from the characters. I didn’t see enough of the Sloe sisters relationship with one another and with their mum. Minnie was constantly blamed for being selfish and hateful by her sisters, which frustrated me because really, they were being a bit hypocritical.  I get that the whole mess between the sisters was because of their grief, and even though I enjoyed reading their personal feelings and the outcomes of sharing, I wanted to see them come together earlier and more so.  I also felt like Ash and Felix’s roles in the book were kind of props for Minnie finding her way through her grief, or even that their characters were there just for extra drama. There were parts of their roles I really liked, but I just wish they’d added more to the story than just creating more drama in Minnie’s life as she went through her own personal breakdown.

So, to sum up, I guess I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I really wanted to love it, and sure there were parts I did, but when it comes to my overall feeling about this book, I’m simply left wishing there was more. I feel as though the depth this book went into only skimmed the potential of the characters, the sense of searching for identity and belonging, and the discussion of mental illness. Perhaps, though I adored the poetic, colourful language, I just didn’t quite understand the messages the words were giving. Like many artworks, this book is a piece of art, and some people will get more out of it than others.

How To Be Luminous comes out on the 27th of June 🙂

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Happy reading!

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

 

ARC Review: 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons

 

~ I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review~

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There are some days I really just need a light, adorable book to read and 100 Days of Sunlight is definitely one of those reads. Abbie Emmons’s writing is delicate and lovely, a style that is easy to read and conveys an important message about appreciating life with a subtle, moving touch. Plus, the cover is so beautiful.

100 Days of Sunlight opens with Tessa Dickinson, who is temporarily blind after a car crash and has been told her sight will come back within 14 weeks. She is understandably struggling with living in darkness, especially as someone who spends a lot of her time writing poetry, and is afraid her sight won’t ever come back. When her grandparents decide to help by finding her a transcriber, Tessa is horrified. Unexpectedly, a boy she doesn’t know Weston Ludovica turns up at her house offering help. Tessa can’t see that he has a disability and he wants to keep it that way, because even though Tessa yells at him a lot, she makes him feel like a normal person. Weston just might be the one person that can help Tessa find light in the darkness again, but he might vanish from her life before she ever gets her sight back.

I wasn’t as gripped as I hoped I would be in the opening chapters of this book. It wasn’t really until we started learning more about Weston that I found myself invested in the characters and the plot. I felt as though there was something lacking in Tessa’s character. I would have liked a little more backstory on who she was before the accident, besides her blogging/poetry writing (which was an element of her character I really liked).  Though I could completely understand Tessa’s negative outlooks at the beginning of the novel as she struggled with PTSD and being blind, I felt as though I got to know her most through Weston’s perspective. The more time Weston spent with Tessa, the more I felt I knew and liked her. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, as the way her character was written and her lack of interaction with anyone but Weston and her grandparents depicted how isolated she felt. It just meant I didn’t develop a deeper connection with Tessa until halfway through the novel.

For the most part, Weston was the stronger character. The way Weston’s past was written had more depth and gave me a deeper understanding of his character even before he started spending more time with Tessa. I felt more for Weston’s personal struggles than Tessa’s, and perhaps that was the point. I loved knowing Weston’s brothers and his best friend Rudy, who all played integral roles in his story. I thought Weston’s character development was more established and understood what kind of person he was. The only things I was unsure about with Weston’s character were his motivations in seeking out Tessa and the medical history behind his disability. Both just felt to me like they needed a little more detail to back them up. But, because I  enjoyed the book so much, those missing details don’t really bother me at all.

What is most definitely excellent about this book is the way it explores how important it is to value the life you have, to find happiness even in the smallest of things like the sound of a ukulele or the smell of lillies. Abbie Emmons’s writing was beautiful to read, and I really liked how her insights about looking on the bright side of life seamlessly flowed with the story and the character’s personal struggles. And of course, the relationship that develops between Tessa and Weston is absolutely adorable, their little moments made me smile so big.

While I wanted a little more substance from Tessa’s character and thought some details in the plot could have been hashed out a bit more, I really loved reading this book. It’s poetic and well-written, delving into the darkness in life and reminding us of all the sunlight we can find when we focus in all our senses and remember the things that are really important, the things that give us happiness. This book reminded me how lucky I am to be where I am in my life and that’s a really nice feeling to get from a book.

Get your copy 7th of August, I will be!

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Let me know if you’re planning on reading this book 🙂

Happy reading and keep loving the life you have,

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

 

ARC Review: Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman

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~ I received the ARC of this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review~

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I read Akemi Dawn Bowman’s beautiful debut Starfish last year and completely fell in love with her writing style and thoughtful perspectives about life. Not long after I finished it, I discovered her second book, Summer Bird Blue, would be released later in the year and I was ecstatic because I needed more of her stories, more of her writing in my life. Despite feeling pretty desperate to read Summer Bird Blue, I could never find a copy of it anywhere so you can imagine my surprise when the ARC turned up on Netgalley one day. When my request was accepted, I was so thrilled! And now that I’ve read this amazing book, I honestly can’t wait to buy a hard copy of it and read it again and again when it’s released in a couple of months.

Summer Bird Blue is about Rumi, a girl who worries she’s running out of time to make the decisions everyone else she knows is already making for themselves. Decisions about their futures and who they love and what they want to do with their whole lives. She’s confused about a lot of things and has no idea why she doesn’t know herself as well she thinks she should at this time in her teenage life. All she really knows is that she just wants to spend all of her time making music with her sister and best friend, Lea. To live her dream of songwriting and creating music with the one person who accepts and knows her for everything she is. But, when Lea dies in a car accident and her Mum sends her away to Hawaii with her aunt for the summer so she can deal with her own grief, Rumi is overtaken by anger and the loss of everything she knows and loves. She spends the summer struggling through her thoughts and feelings. With the guidance of her aunt and her neighbours, a carefree teenager named Kai and eighty-year old Mr. Watanabe, Rumi tries to find her way and to honour her sister’s last wish: to finish the song they started and never got to finish.

I really have no idea how to talk about how incredible this book is. It’s heartbreaking and intricate. An engaging, honest portrayal of dealing with loss in death and finding a new path in the life that remains. It’s angry and sorrowful, but also hopeful and bright with the beauty of the world. There’s so much darkness and light and the balance of both is dealt with in a way that is so realistic to the ups and downs of life. The writing is simply beautiful and inspiring,  capturing so many struggles in life with a thoughtfulness that amazed me.

Besides Akemi Dawn Bowman’s exquisite writing, this book is most alive with its characters. Following Rumi throughout the whole book, I felt her anger and sadness and her moments of happiness like they could’ve been my own. She was painted with so many different shades and every step of her journey was so complicated by her dark tunnels of thoughts about Lea’s death, feeling abandoned by her mum, her desire to find music again, her feeling like she didn’t deserve to be alive. Sometimes her thoughts were a little repetitive, but I thought that worked as part of the story as it represented how we all can go over the same things many times before we ever reach any kind of understanding. Some of Rumi’s feelings, especially in relation to making the most of life and feeling anxious about choices for the future, were things I could really relate to. Her struggles with Lea’s death and her mum were absolutely heartbreaking and made me really remind myself to love the life I have and not take anyone I love for granted. Rumi is a wonderfully intricate and unique character. I loved the journey she went on throughout the book and I loved her personality, too. There were times she made my heart hurt but there were other times she made me laugh out loud. Seriously, she has some incredibly funny lines at times.

Rumi’s relationships with the other characters is most definitely the highlight of this book, so much so that I have no idea which set of relationships I loved the most. Lea and Rumi are most definitely one of the best sister/best friend relationships I’ve ever read. There are many beautiful snippets in the book of memories between them, and they really gave an incredible insight into how they’d been together when Lea was alive and how Rumi got through everything with Lea’s spirit in her heart. The relationship between Rumi and her mum is very different, as Rumi spends most of the novel only feeling anger towards her mum, but the way it develops was perfect and a realistic depiction of a family trying do deal with the loss of one of their own. I loved Aunt Ani and her constant presence in Rumi’s life for the summer, even when Rumi wanted to be left alone or was hitting her with so much anger. She was strength and wisdom and one of the people Rumi needed by her side to get through everything.

I absolutely loved Kai, and in connection, his other friends that Rumi eventually connects with, too. Kai and Rumi’s friendship was complicated at times, but Kai was such a forgiving and understanding soul, so kind to Rumi and there was something in him that she really needed to find her way again. I loved every single scene with them together and how they ended up being so important to the other. It really was a delight to read. Rumi’s friendship with Mr. Watanabe, and also his dog Poi, was another incredible part of the story. Honestly, Mr. Watanabe’s dialogue might just be my favourite thing about this novel. He was a funny, angry old man who sometimes said things with a lot of feeling that gave Rumi the perspective she needed. I loved how they connected and helped each other. I’d read a side-story about Mr. Watanabe today if I could. Also one about Kai. They were both such great characters and it warmed my heart to see how they connected with Rumi and put some light in her life again.

I really can’t say enough how much I loved this book. I wanted to keep living in it forever. I can’t wait to own it and put it on my shelf next to my other favourites. In fact, my fiance just pre-ordered me a copy so in April I will have it! I absolutely recommend it to every reader out there, it’s a book you shouldn’t miss.

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Would love to know if you’ve read this book and loved it as much as I did 🙂

Hope you enjoyed the review and happy reading.

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

 

 

 

ARC Review: The Year After You by Nina de Pass

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~ I received the ARC of this book on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review~

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The Year After You by Nina de Pass portrays a story of grief, guilt and forgiveness. The story follows the main character Cara, as she struggles through the days, weeks and months after her best friend, G,  is killed in a car accident. After several months of seeing her daughter in pain, Cara’s mother decides Cara might find her way through her pain at a boarding school in Switzerland, a new place where Cara can start over. But when she arrives at Hope Hall in the Swiss Alps, Cara still struggles to move past her grief and overbearing guilt. However, the possibility of new found friendships with three students in her year might be enough to help her finally move on. In particular, she connects with Hector, who understands where she comes from more than anyone. First, she has to decide if she is strong enough to let him into her life.

I was really happy to receive the ARC of this book, especially after falling in love with the cover and the glowing reviews I’d read. However, now that I have finished this book, I feel that the expectations bought on by the gorgeous cover and other reader’s reviews has were too high and I have ended up feeling underwhelmed by the plot and the characters. I’m going to try and explain why, but to be honest, I’m not entirely sure why this book just didn’t grab me.

It took me quite a long time to get into the narrative and to connect with Cara as a character. It wasn’t until about halfway through the book that I really thought I could see who Cara was as a person, but in the first half and even in the second, I still couldn’t quite connect with her. If I don’t feel like a main character is really speaking to me, it makes it much harder for me to fall into a story. I felt that I really wanted to know Cara more, but I think because she herself was so out-of-touch with most things expect her own internal grief, I was unable to know who she was outside of what she was dealing with. Her connections with the other characters and her own self felt lost to me in comparison to what she was going through from her past with G. And, honestly, I sometimes struggled with actually liking her up until near the end of the book.

I felt the same about many of the other characters, too. With Hector, I wish there’d been a little more characterisation. To me, he felt like a bit of an enigma and I would’ve liked to know more about him, rather than him being that person to help Cara get through everything because they shared difficult pasts. I wish there’d been more of Ren and Fred, but their backgrounds, problems and relationships with each other and the other characters were more backstory in comparison to Cara’s narrative and Hector’s as well. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with that, but I just felt like I wanted to really, step into these four characters lives and the book just didn’t quite get me there.

While I liked the themes of grief, guilt and forgiveness that were explored and enjoyed Cara reaching a point where she felt better in her own skin again, I found the portrayal of these themes when they weren’t connected to Cara sometimes shallow, that they could’ve gone a lot deeper. While I liked the inclusion of certain issues, I felt that there were sometimes too many things being explored that meant there was less time dedicated to the main story line, and this meant that some plot lines felt forced or out of place in the scheme of things.

While on the whole this book didn’t work for me, I do want to say that Nina de Pass’s writing was easy to read and often whimsical in style. There were times that I was really wowed by her portrayal of the issues and Cara’s internal feelings. One particular description, which I can’t say more on because it’s a spoiler, really did make my heart skip with the beauty in the words. These moments of particularly good writing and the exploration of mental health and guilt, among others, were definitely the highlights of this book. It’s a shame that everything else didn’t click with me as I’d expected and hoped.

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The Year After You is now in stores! Grab yourself a copy. Even if I didn’t fall in love with this book, you might and it’s definitely worth trying out for yourself.

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

The ABC Book Challenge: *M*

Since getting back to blogging over the last couple months, I’ve really wanted to add something new to my weekly posts. And lo and behold, I’ve been inspired by fellow blogger Soffi @A Book. A Thought. (Follow her!) Soffi’s ABC Book Challenge posts were so fun, I decided I just had to do my own!  So, every week I’ll be posting my favourite, most memorable books and books from my TBR, moving from A-Z.

Previous ABC posts: A + B + C + D + E + F+ G+ H+ I+ J+ K + L

(PS. Whoever came up with this challenge, I don’t know who you are but thank you!)

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*M*

Memorable Titles

It’s very cool to see my most memorable M titles are all from different genres. The first is children’s fiction, with The Magic Faraway Tree and Matilda, which I have very fond memories of reading when I was young and are by authors I used to imagine myself becoming like when I grew up. Second, an contemporary modern classic Middlesex, one of my favourites by Jeffrey Eugenides, about inter-sexuality and the clash of cultures across the generations of one family. Thirdly, a YA fantasy that contains some of the most unique and weird stories I’ve read, Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children. Lastly, four of my favourite YA contemporaries that are so captivating in different ways: Made You Up, an absolutely brilliant story about a girl who suffers from schizophrenia and a book that convinced me, as did her second novel, that Francesca Zappia is one of best YA authors I’ve ever read; The Miseducation of Cameron Post, an in-depth and heartbreaking telling of one girl’s sexual discovery and her experiences in a gay conversion camp; Moonrise, Sarah Crossan’s best (in my opinion) verse novel about two brothers, one of whom is on death row despite his innocence; and More Happy Than Not, one of Adam Silvera’s character-centred masterpieces and the first I read of his.

To Be Read

I like how fitting it is that A Map of Days turned up here! Really looking forward to reading it :).  Marcelo in the Real World and The Memory Book have both been on my TBR for ages, but I’ve never managed to get myself a copy. Sadness! Metro 2033 is a sci-fi my fiance wants me to read for a bit of change from my usual contemporaries. Aaannd, The Music of What Happens is a new release I am maybe the most excited about out of these five. Also, that cover! So, so pretty.

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So, there’s me done for this week. Send your thoughts my way!

Until next time,

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

ARC Review: To Best The Boys by Mary Weber

~~ I received a complimentary copy of this book from Thomas Nelson through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own ~~

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When I first saw Mary Weber’s To Best The Boys on Netgalley, I immediately requested it because the summary of the book excited me in it’s description of a fantasy world heavily crossed with social/cultural aspects of our world today.

To Best The Boys is about a Rhen, a Lower girl who lives in the small kingdom of Pinsbury Port, a place that holds the annual competition for of age males to win a place at the prestigious Stemwick University at the highest importance. Tired of the traditional gender role values and the divide between the Lower and Upper (poor and rich) that hinder her dream of becoming a scientist and desperate to find a cure to the disease that is killing many of the Lower population including her Mum, Rhen decides she finally needs to take action and enters the Labyrinth to prove that she is just as good as any of the male competitors. But the people in the city are not quite ready to change their traditional social views…

Mary Weber’s portrayal of gender roles and the heirachy of the populace in terms of its social structure and value of the wealthy is even more compelling wihin the fantasy setting of Pinsbury Port, which includes magical/supernatural creatures such as ghouls and Basilisks and a touch of other magic, particularly in regards to Mr Holm, the overseer of the competition. The balance between the fantasy aspects in the setting and the social issues that are relevant in our society is compelling and entertaining.

As is the story and it’s characters. Rhen’s narration is readable and snappy. She is a witty and engaging character to follow as she sets out to make changes to her place in the world and to understand the needs of others close to her. Her cousin Seleni and the differences between them were really great to read. I found their relationship enjoyable because it showed how despite having different values, perspective and dreams, people can work alongside each other and support each other and that’s a really important element of a working society. Rhen’s relationship with a number of male characters was also really interesting and fun parts of the story. In particular, I enjoyed the scenes between Rhen and a certain character; their relationship was certainly a highlight for me.

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I liked the slow build of the novel as Weber set up the world and introduced the characters and I really enjoyed the events of the competition and the aftermath. However, I felt that because most of the novel is only set over a couple days, there wasn’t quite enough set up and some elements of the plot felt rushed. I felt like I could’ve done with more build up, even more development of character over a longer period and perhaps even a lengthier version of the story. I just felt like I wanted more!

That said, To Best The Boys is a great read and very entertaining. I was enthralled by the story and always excited to find out what might happen next. I would definitely recommend picking up this book when it’s published and I plan to do the same.

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Until next time,

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords

Blog Update

 

Hi 😊

I’m feeling like a bit of a ghost blogger at the moment. There are plenty of books to review and plenty of other posts to write, such as my thoughts on the rather disastrous and extremely disappointing Crimes of Grindelwald, bookish Christmas Wishlists and my feelings about being a beginner Netgalley ARC reader and reviewer. Some of these posts may see the light of day! But at the moment I am struggling to find the time to read let alone blog in between a holiday, worrying about/planning for future life stuff, trying to finish writing my current WIP (a contemporary YA) and spending many hours playing ARK: Survival Evolved. I am addicted and that is very new for me because I am not a gamer! I guess more accurately, I wasn’t before. It’s so much fun taming dinosaurs, farming, exploring and building in the game. I am surprised by how much I’m into it! So, of course, my attention has been elsewhere lately. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will find more time to update my blog!

Today I will be posting another ABC Book Challenge, though, so not all is lost! 😂

You’ll be seeing me around more soon. When I’m not too busy with my dinosaurs, that is!

❤

Jasmine @ Thesepaperwords