Category: Reading

  • Girl in Trouble blog splash

    Something a bit different today, readers. A good friend of mine, Rhoda Baxter, has a new book out, Girl in Trouble. As well as being a friend, she’s also a fabulous writer and I jumped at the chance to be part of her blog splash. For the splash, Rhoda asked me to blog on an…

  • Shattered Worlds Challenge: Curse Breaker

    My blog is late this week, because I only finished Curse Breaker last night (not a slow reader, I’ve been taken up with lots of non-fiction reading this week, all about marketing, social media and advertising, yawn). Curse Breaker is just as lovely as I hoped it might be: a beautifully-realised fantasy world with some fabulous…

  • Shattered Worlds challenge: black-eyed horrors and more boys

    Well, my learn from my reading this week was to GIVE IT A CHANCE, FOR GOODNESS SAKE! This week I picked Death Knocks from Shattered Worlds. It starts with two boys playing console games while they babysit one of their little sisters. I’m sorry to have to admit I’d probably have put it down right there…

  • Shattered Worlds Challenge – a surprising Scourge

    This week I read A G Henley’s The Scourge. This took me by surprise in a lot of very good ways. What seemed at first to be a pre-industrial fantasy world turned out to be set in a post-apocalyptic future. There were other twists like that, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers.…

  • Shattered Worlds challenge – star-crossed lovers

    I’m on a roll, readers. This week I read and reviewed Slayer by JA Armitage and JA Culican with time to spare. When a trainee dragon-slayer and a dragon shifter come face to face there are bound to be sparks. I loved this Romeo-and-Juliet story about Julianna and Ash discovering the truth about their villages’…

  • Shattered Worlds challenge – that sunny Caribbean sky

    I travelled in time and space this week, with Kristy Tate’s The Pirate Episode. It’s a time travel romance which took me to the sunny Caribbean during the American revolutionary war. I loved it! The sense of place was gorgeous – I could feel the sun on my face. Kristy’s writing is light and deft…

  • Shattered Worlds reading challenge – a book about a boy???

    Well, this week’s story taught me not to be so prejudiced, frankly. There are 21 books in Shattered Worlds (minus my own) and my target is to read twelve in twelve weeks, so I need to cut them down a little. I only glanced at Richard’s Story, thinking I’d have a quick look and knock it right off…

  • Life is full of challenges

    … And I’ve found a new one. Having enjoyed my Alphabet Challenge tremendously, I’ve found myself a new challenge to keep me focused on my reading for the next twelve weeks. Today marks the start of my Shattered Worlds challenge. My new book, The Clockwork War, is one of the YA novels in Shattered Worlds,…

  • Hooray for holiday reading!

    Oh my goodness, I thought I might slacken off when I didn’t have my Alphabet Reading Challenge to keep my nose in a book. I’m delighted to say that hasn’t happened at all! Since blogging last I’ve had a lovely week off, taking a holiday by the seaside. I also caught up on some of…

  • My Reading Alphabet Challenge – sum up

    I had terrific fun with my alphabet challenge. It made me look beyond the books and authors I always choose, with the result that I’ve found some absolute treasures that I’ll be looking out for more from. Having to (mostly) stick to a particular letter of the alphabet provided some structure and there was a…