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Title: The Short KnifeAuthor: Elen CaldecottEdition: Paperback (ARC)Rating: 4/5 This is a fascinating book. The story is set in AD454-455. Britain has been deserted by the Roman Empire, and invaded by Saxons. Mai’s father tells stories about the Roman soldiers who kept the British people safe, and about the towns they left behind, but Mai’s …
Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and SnakesAuthor: Suzanne CollinsEdition: HardbackRating: 5/5 A new Hunger Games book was always going to be high on my list, and I pre-ordered this from Waterstones to make sure I had it on publication day! I didn’t know much about it in advance, and I jumped into the story of …
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Title: A Good Girl’s Guide to MurderAuthor: Holly JacksonEdition: PaperbackRating: 4/5 This was a fun read! A Cambridge-bound A-grade student chooses a local news story as the subject of her final school project. For five years, the residents of her small town have believed that a missing local girl was murdered by one of her …
Title: VenomAuthor: Bex HoganEdition: PaperbackRating: 4/5 Marianne, the Viper, is married to Prince Torin, but after the wedding, nothing goes according to plan. Marianne finds herself on the run, finding enemies she didn’t know she had, and discovering which of her friends she can trust. The sequel to ‘Viper’ begins with a beautiful wedding, but …
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Title: InternmentAuthor: Samira AhmedEdition: PaperbackRating: 4/5 Layla is a typical American teenager, sneaking out of the house to meet her boyfriend, and finding time to complete her homework. But Layla is a Muslim, and in her America, the President didn’t stop at banning people from certain Muslim-majority countries from entering the USA. Her father has …
Title: A Heart So Fierce and BrokenAuthor: Brigid KemmererEdition: PaperbackRating: 5/5 I enjoyed A Curse So Dark and Lonely, the first book in the Cursebreakers trilogy, but I loved A Heart So Fierce and Broken. This is the middle book of a trilogy – a notoriously difficult book to write – and it is more …
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Title: ErinsmoreAuthor: Julia BlakeEdition: KindleRating: 5/5 A Narnia-inspired Portal Fantasy, Erinsmore follows two sisters as they unwittingly cross into the land of Erinsmore on their way home from a family holiday in Cornwall. Arthurian legends and modern-day teenagers clash as the sisters uncover the history of the world they stumbled into – and the one …
Title: ViperAuthor: Bex HoganEdition: PaperbackRating: 5/5 Right from the start, I loved this book. The first chapter wastes no time, throwing the reader into the blood-soaked life of the protagonist from page one, and building a strong character in a very few pages. There are no wasted words, no unnecessary descriptions, and no unimportant events. …
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Title: Rose, InterruptedAuthor: Patrice LawrenceEdition: PaperbackRating: 5/5 Seventeen-year-old Rose is not at home in London. She’s used to the unbending, patriarchal rules of her tight-knit religious community, but when her family is excluded from the sect, she has to figure out the new rules by herself. Rose embraces life outside the sect. She can finally …
Title: The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and PiracyAuthor: Mackenzi LeeEdition: HardbackRating: 5/5 At last – the sequel to ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue’! Monty and Percy are back, but this time the narrator is Monty’s sister, Felicity. Readers first met Felicity in ‘The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue’, where she provided the …
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