Jellyfish Reads

Friday, 4 July 2014

Review: Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor

Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor (#2 in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy)
Format: eBook
Published by Hodder & Stoughton on 8th November 2012
Pages: 528
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Rating:

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Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love and dared to imagine a new way of living - one without massacres and torn throats and bonfires of the fallen, without revenants or bastard armies or children ripped from their mothers' arms to take their turn in the killing and dying.

Once, the lovers lay entwined in the moon's secret temple and dreamed of a world that was a like a jewel-box without a jewel - a paradise waiting for them to find it and fill it with their happiness.

This was not that world.

This started out kind of slow (all the jumping around many different POVs took some getting used to), and then it just sort of... exploded.

It took a while for me to adjust to how much more... expansive this feels in comparison to Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and how much darker and more harrowing it is. Daughter of Smoke and Bone was about love. And this series will surely always be about love, and the things that love can achieve. But where Daughter of Smoke and Bone showed the brighter side of things, and was filled with sweetness and joy and happiness and hope, Days of Blood and Starlight introduces the reader to despair, and grief. The landscape of the book is bleak. There is so much death, and pain, and horror. This book shows us how complicated everything really is. It lays bare the realities of war. The despicable lengths that both sides, chimaera and angel, will descend to.

Monthly Wrap-Up: June 2014

On the blog last month

June wasn't a great blogging month for me. It's taken me until 2 July to even put this wrap-up post together... I haven't replied to comments in forever, I haven't read nearly as many books as I would like, I've been failing to keep up with other blogs for the most part, I haven't managed to do Sunday Posts for the past two weeks... ): But hopefully July will be a better month!

I reviewed 10 books in June. Of these, 5 were for Mental Health Awareness Month (I've put an asterisk by those).

Best of the bunch? That would be Crazy by Amy Reed, which I loved for its interesting format (the story is told mostly through emails between the two MCs) and its heartfelt emotion and gut-wrenchingly beautiful writing. A dizzyingly captivating story about a girl with bipolar disorder and the boy who falls in love with her.

I enjoyed Mental Health Awareness Month, though I was planning to read at least 6 books for it and I only managed to read 5.

Even though June was Pride Month, I failed to read any books with a real focus on LGBTQ content. This makes me sad. The Snake Charm is a short story set in the universe of the Micah Grey series though, which is a wonderful LGBTQ series, and the MC of The Snake Charm is Drystan, who as we know from the series is not straight, though this is not brought up in The Snake Charm. Crazy featured an unusually high number of side characters who were LGBTQ (four!) for a book whose MCs were not queer. But other than that, none of the books I read even featured any minor LGBTQ characters.

I bought Otherbound by Corinne Duyvis thinking I would manage to read it in June, but that did not happen. I will try to read this month or next.

(Cayce @ Fighting Dreamer made an absolutely awesome rainbow of YA LGBTQ books for Pride Month though! :D Go check it out!)

What have I been doing the past two weeks? Uh, I watched The Fault in Our Stars, which made me weep starting from about halfway through the film till the very end. Strange experience, watching half the film through such blurry vision. I went to Scotland. The Isle of Skye is so pretty! What with all the long car journeys I had, I finally managed to catch up with Welcome to Night Vale, which is ABSOLUTELY GLORIOUS. Then I went to a ball which lasted from about 8pm till 6am, which was fun. After that I flew home to Hong Kong. And now here I am in Hong Kong. Until 27 July, when I will fly back to England again to start my summer internship.

I don't really have any special plans for July, only the hope that I'll at least read one LGBTQ book. Plus I've been meaning to do a Strange Chemistry giveaway ever since I heard the sad news about them closing, so hopefully I will get around to that soon!

How are you all? Sorry I've been so terrible at replying to comments! I WILL CATCH UP SOON, I PROMISE.

Monday, 30 June 2014

Review: Amy & Matthew by Cammie McGovern

Amy & Matthew by Cammie McGovern (also known as Say What You Will in the US)
Format: Paperback
Published by Macmillan Children's Books on 27th March 2014
Pages: 336
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Rating:

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This is the story of Amy and Matthew. It's about being different. It's about feeling alone. It's about finding each other. It's about falling in love.

I don't know whether I just read this book at the wrong time or what, but I feel like any thoughts I have about the book are sort of swamped in a haze. I just can't seem to figure out how I feel about it.

I was really drawn to this book at first because Matthew has OCD and the whole premise of this story made it seem like it was the closest I was going to get to reading a book about a girl who falls in love with a guy who suffers from anxiety. (As I've said before, my boyfriend suffers from anxiety.) In the end, I figure the world kind of still needs another story like that, because this one didn't quite work out for me.

Review: Dr Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos

Dr Bird's Advice for Sad Poets by Evan Roskos
Format: Hardcover
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on 5th March 2013
Pages: 310
Genre: YA, Contemporary
Rating:

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“I hate myself but I love Walt Whitman, the kook. Always positive. I need to be more positive, so I wake myself up every morning with a song of myself.”

Sixteen-year-old James Whitman has been yawping (à la Whitman) at his abusive father ever since he kicked his beloved older sister, Jorie, out of the house. James’s painful struggle with anxiety and depression—along with his ongoing quest to understand what led to his self-destructive sister’s exile—make for a heart-rending read, but his wild, exuberant Whitmanization of the world and keen sense of humor keep this emotionally charged debut novel buoyant.

James Whitman is a teenage boy who loves Walt Whitman. He loves poetry and photography and trees and birds. He hugs trees to make himself feel better. He suffers from anxiety and depression and has an imaginary pigeon as his therapist. His parents are abusive, and his sister no longer lives in the house with them, ever since she got into a fight at school and was expelled and subsequently kicked out of the house. He wants his sister back.

This book is about James trying to get his sister back. Trying to figure out what exactly happened that led to her getting expelled. Trying to understand her more, and realising they have more in common than he'd thought. And that everything is more complicated than it seems.

It's about James dealing with his anxiety and depression, confronting the problems in his life, learning to stand up for himself and for his sister.

Review: Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige (#1 in the Dorothy Must Die series)
Format: Paperback
To be published by HarperCollins on 3rd July 2014 (first published on 1st April 2014)
Pages: 464
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Rating:

Purchase from: Amazon (UK)
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I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't ask to be some kind of hero.

But when your whole life gets swept up by a tornado—taking you with it—you have no choice but to go along, you know?

Sure, I've read the books. I've seen the movies. But I never expected Oz to look like this. A place where Good Witches can't be trusted and Wicked Witches may just be the good guys. A place where even the yellow brick road is crumbling.

What happened? Dorothy.

My name is Amy Gumm—and I'm the other girl from Kansas.

I've been recruited by the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, and I've been given a mission:

Remove the Tin Woodman's heart.

Steal the Scarecrow's brain.

Take the Lion's courage.

And then—Dorothy must die.

**Thanks HarperCollins for sending me a free review copy!**

I thought this book was fantastic and so much fun to read.

I have to say though, the blurb is a tad misleading. You know all that stuff down there with the mission and all those parts to it? "Remove the Tin Woodman's heart, steal the Scarecrow's brain, take the Lion's courage"? That's not really a big part of this book. I'm thinking it more generally describes the series as a whole rather than this book in particular. But, that said, this is still an eminently enjoyable book in its own right, and as long as you don't go into this book expecting everything in the blurb to happen, you're going to be fine.