Welcome to The Island.
Where your worst fears are about to come true…
It was supposed to be the perfect holiday: a week-long trip for six teenage friends on a remote tropical island.
But when their guide dies of a stroke leaving them stranded, the trip of a lifetime turns into a nightmare.
Because someone on the island knows each of the group’s worst fears. And one by one, they’re becoming a reality.
Seven days in paradise. A deadly secret.
Who will make it off the island alive?
Thank you to @lovebookstours for my gifted copy for the tour!
This little book is filled with little things to do every day and encourages you to think about kindness – what you think it is and how you pass it on – what are your expectations in regards to kindness?
Obviously there is an importance in being kind to others but you also need to be kind to yourself and Thurston really breaks it down with tips on what to change in your daily life so you can do both!
My favourite tip included in the book has been thinking about my screen time. I’ve got back on the forest app and I’m really trying to reduce my time on my phone and laptop which really helps me focus – I actually read a whole book in a day which I haven’t done for a long time.
My favourite quote from the book is “Comparison is the Thief of Joy” – so true! I think this is especially important for users of social media, comparing yourself to someone else is a guaranteed way of putting you in a down mood (and it’s hard to stop, but you can do it!).
I’d recommend you get this book to cultivate your own kindness habits and see how it improves your physical and mental health and also check out the charity 52 Lives!
Her destiny was death. The shadows brought her back.
Wrongly accused of her brother’s murder, Sonara’s destiny was to die, sentenced to execution by her own mother. Punished and left for dead, the shadows have cursed her with a second life as a Shadowblood, cast out and hunted by society for her demon-like powers.
Now known as the Devil of the Deadlands, Sonara survives as a thief on the edge of society, fighting for survival on a quest to uncover what really happened to her brother and whether he is even dead at all…
Thank you so much to Love Books Tours for including me on this campaign!
I’m sure you can tell from my photo above that this book is absolutely stunning! The illustrations are beautiful and so detailed!
An informative and entertaining look at why plants have been used in magic and what that tells us about people and plants in a post-magic world.
With chapters on subjects as diverse as Witchcraft, Curses and Blessings, Divination, the Plants of Faery, Hallucinogens, Divine Plants in the Christian and Pagan traditions and a Plant Bestiary, Greg Kenicer’s book is an erudite and informative look at how and why various plants have had a role in Europe’s supernatural and magical traditions.
Individual entries look at particular plants combining botanical analysis with historical examples and anecdote to explain exactly why each plant came to be used in this way. Considerations of dangers and actual efficacy cast light on how modern science is now re-examining the uses of many of the plants and how the evolution of the plants themselves has been influenced by our use of them.
Whether Foxglove or Mandrake, Hawthorn or Aspen, Rowan or Oak, St. John’s Wort or Bird Cherry, Plant Magic shines a bright and fascinating new light on dozens of familiar plants.
I haven’t read this book cover to cover, it’s definitely one for me to dip in and out of but I have looked at all the pretty pictures!
Considering I’m very much not green fingered, I really have enjoyed the bits I’ve read! It’s an informative and genuinely interesting read. I recognised a lot of names from books that I’ve read (fantasy mainly as they often have magic and spells etc) I wish my physical copy had arrived as I would absolutely love to have this on my shelves – it is definitely one to add to your gifting lists this year at Christmas as it would make a lovely present!
Gregory J. Kenicer writes with a smooth and easy language making this reference text a nice easy read and actually, I quite fancy getting some more plants now!
Agora Books kindly sent me a review copy of All Your Little Lies so that I could take part in the Book Tour!
Annie lives a quiet, contained, content life. She goes to work. She meets her friend. She’s kind of in a relationship. She’s happy. Not lonely at all.
If only more people could see how friendly she is — how eager to help and please. Then she could tick “Full Happy Life” off her list. But no one sees that side of Annie, and she can’t understand why.
That all changes the night Chloe Hills disappears. And Annie is the last person to see her.
This is her chance to prove to everybody that she’s worth something. That is, until she becomes a suspect.
**My tour stop day was Sunday the 18th of October but I was having technical difficulties – I’m hoping this posts okay today!**
I really enjoyed this book! Marianne Holmes’ writing style is pretty to the point – no flowery descriptions here which means she has words to spare to really get into the mindset of Annie in All Your Little Lies – the journey was really fascinating for me as I could see Annie’s logical conclusions but also I found her very unreliable as a narrator – I was so conflicted!
Annie lives alone and doesn’t have a lot of friends – from the start I could see Annie was insecure and didn’t fit in too well, probably due to some anxiety from her past – this made me question everything she did and said. Also the title of the book – All Your Little Lies – I loved how this made me view Annie, she constantly told little fibs – like children do to make themselves look better and when she got involved with the policy after a child goes missing I could see her getting into soo much trouble!
Alongside the current story there is a backstory which gives you an insight into how Annie’s mind works and events from her past – this was a really good tool for Holmes to use and I’m glad it was included!
My only drawback was I found myself dropping out of concentration – Annie goes round in circles a lot which I just found didn’t hold my attention that well!
I’d recommend this one for fans of thrillers and psychological dramas – the writing style is easy to follow and the characters are realistic. Holmes uses dramatic events to bring Annie’s psyche out to be analysed although it did make me worry how much this happens in real life – so I’m going to be doing some research!
Thanks to Agora Books for the review copy – the book is out on kindle on 22nd October and is currently available to preorder for 99p here! The paperback is out on November 19th!
Thea Hope longs to be an alchemist out of the shadow of her famous mother. The two of them are close to creating the legendary Philosopher’s Stone—whose properties include immortality and can turn any metal into gold—but just when the promise of the Stone’s riches is in their grasp, Thea’s mother destroys the Stone in a sudden fit of violent madness.
While combing through her mother’s notes, Thea learns that there’s a curse on the Stone that causes anyone who tries to make it to lose their sanity. With the threat of the French Revolution looming, Thea is sent to Oxford for her safety, to live with the father who doesn’t know she exists.
But in Oxford, there are alchemists after the Stone who don’t believe Thea’s warning about the curse—instead, they’ll stop at nothing to steal Thea’s knowledge of how to create the Stone. But Thea can only run for so long, and soon she will have to choose: create the Stone and sacrifice her sanity, or let the people she loves die.
Okay I really enjoyed this one! Thank you so much to Wednesday Books for the early e-arc provided for me to review!
A Golden Fury is Samantha Cohoe’s debut and it’s a good one! I am super impressed by this books story and characters. Thea was a strong lead who I definitely got behind right from the beginning. I also really liked Valentin (but I’m not sure if I was supposed to or not- ha!) He has hidden depths I think!
This was a really easy read for me, I read it quickly because the story was fast paced but smooth. I think the only downside for me was how short it was! I think Cohoe could have made the book twice as long, included more detail and I would have loved it a lot more! The story demands detail and unfortunately Cohoe just misses the mark because of their simpler writing style.
I would recommend this for anyone looking for a devourable and different YA novel, the genre overlaps Historical with a little Fantasy which was great 🙂
A Golden Fury is released in the US next week and the UK on November 1st!
I was gifted a copy of this book in exchange for a review as part of Love Books Tours 🙂
“For crying out loud! I can’t even cast on now.”
Claire has never unravelled anything before, being a confident knitter. But now, to her dismay, everything she creates is a disaster, riddled with dropped stitches and glaring holes. It’s almost as if her hands have a mind of their own. Maybe it’s because her longest relationship to date has just ended, or perhaps it has something to do with the fact her career is on the ropes.
“Don’t get frustrated with your needles! The problem lies with the knitter, not the knitting,” said Adrian, owner of Oddballs wool shop. Following his advice, in the desperate hope it will cure her woolly woes, Claire begins to turn her life around. Her grand plan involves FishTank, the online dating site. She convinces Adrian that if they sign up and find love, their problems will be solved (and she’ll have at least one area of her life sorted!). The trouble starts when he has far more luck in the romance department than she does.
But it’s little wonder Claire can’t throw herself into dating. She’s already found her perfect match.
A must-read for avid knitters and those with a passion for crafting, this comical yarn will melt any reader’s heart.
Will they? Won’t they? Romance enthusiasts will be rooting for the pair to be knitted together, forever!
Published 2020 by Mercier Press
Hola!
Today is my stop on the tour for World’s Apart by Ronan Brady, organised by the lovely Kelly at Love Books Group. I want to thank everyone for letting me join in on this one – as a budding aerialist, it was great to read about Ronan’s experiences becoming an aerialist in Ireland even though he does at one point claim that meat hooks are ‘the most basic aerial manoeuvre you can imagine’ … hmm I’ll have to disagree there!
‘Ronan is emblematic of how Ireland has changed.’ – Panti Bliss
At just under six foot in his socks and weighing in at fourteen stone, Ronan Brady is a solid slab of rarest Roscommon meat. He has a natural tendency to throw himself about – some would say recklessly, others would say enthusiastically – into whatever he sets himself to. Ronan had a ‘normal’ childhood in Roscommon and knew by the time he was a teenager that when he grew up he wanted to play football for his county and become a teacher. Ronan had achieved his life ambition when he took up ‘Flying’ as a hobby. A hobby that transformed his life and took him to heights he never dreamed of, performing in the smash hit show Riot alongside Panti Bliss, and going on to tour the world. Worlds Apart is an open, humorous account of Ronan’s life journey.
There was a house there for him. All he needed to do was show up, reconnect the heating and reconnect the electricity and he could live in his own way, but he could do it near us.
When we did see him, it was hard not to sense a pride emanating from him for having gone this far, for having taken himself so firmly off the grid, for having successfully managed to fall between the cracks and evade the attention of whoever was supposed to be watching him; be that the state, or us, or his own demons chasing him from the past lives he’d lived.
And then he died. And that was the end of all of that. It happened when I was abroad. It shouldn’t have come as such a shock, he’d so obviously fallen so far from anything that could be termed as healthy, but it did. Death is always a shock, and after all, Justin was
only fifty. It didn’t matter that he’d slowly turned into a faintly sighted ghost over the last ten years of his life. He was my dad. I couldn’t believe that he was really dead.
I’d been out on a six-week performance gig in the summer of 2017 for the Islamic Games in Azerbaijan. We’d just done the closing ceremony and were having a wrap party when Michelle rang me. Mammy had been trying to get through to me for hours, but my network reception was faulty, so Michelle had eventually gotten me on a web call instead. I was glad it was her who told me. I don’t know why, but I was glad Mammy hadn’t gotten through first.
The only person that I really knew in Azerbaijan was Aisling, my performing partner.
I really enjoyed reading about Ronan’s life and how he managed to turn around his prejudices and really learn about following dreams and achieving those dreams way outside of his comfort zones. Ronan’s words slide of the page with ease, I could hear the Irish accent in my head while I was reading and often his sarcasm made me smile and laugh.
I would definitely recommend this to anyone, it’s only short – about 160 pages but there is so much content that is relevant in society today – how performers are perceived and the fluidity of gender. It really makes for insightful reading – you don’t even need to be interested in the circus!
The kindle edition is only £3.33 and you can find that here.
You can find other tour participants on Twitter and Instagram 🙂
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