Tag: fiction

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Blog Tour – Orange City by Lee Matthew Goldberg

Welcome to my stop on the Orange City blog tour! Huge thanks to Blackthorn Book Tours for giving me the opportunity to take part in this! I was provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Publication Date: 16/03/2021
Length: 231 pages
Genre: Dystopian | Sci-Fi

CW: Drug use, dubious sexual consent

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Imagine a secret, hidden City that gives a second chance at life for those selected to come: felons, deformed outcasts, those on the fringe of the Outside World. Everyone gets a job, a place to live; but you are bound to the City forever. You can never leave.

Its citizens are ruled by a monstrous figure called the Man who resembles a giant demented spider from the lifelike robotic limbs attached to his body. Everyone follows the Man blindly, working hard to make their Promised Land stronger, too scared to defy him and be discarded to the Empty Zones.

After ten years as an advertising executive, Graham Weatherend receives an order to test a new client, Pow! Sodas. After one sip of the orange flavor, he becomes addicted, the sodas causing wild mood swings that finally wake him up to the prison he calls reality.

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Blog Tour – The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

Welcome to my stop on The Lamplighters blog tour! Huge thanks to Pan Macmillan and Midas PR for giving me the opportunity to take part in this! I was provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication Date: 04/03/2021
Length: 368 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction | Mystery

CW: n/a

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They say we’ll never know what happened to those men.
They say the sea keeps its secrets…

Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week.

What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?

Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . .

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

Blog Tour – The Shadow in the Glass

Welcome to my stop on the The Shadow in the Glass blog tour! Huge thanks to Random Things Tours for giving me the opportunity to take part in this! I was provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Harper Voyager UK
Publication Date: 18/03/2021
Length: 414 pages
Genre: Gothic | Historical Fiction

CW: sexual assault, murder

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Once upon a time Ella had wished for more than her life as a lowly maid.

Now forced to work hard under the unforgiving, lecherous gaze of the man she once called stepfather, Ella’s only refuge is in the books she reads by candlelight, secreted away in the library she isn’t permitted to enter.

One night, among her beloved books of far-off lands, Ella’s wishes are answered. At the stroke of midnight, a fairy godmother makes her an offer that will change her life: seven wishes, hers to make as she pleases. But each wish comes at a price and Ella must to decide whether it’s one she’s willing to pay it.

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Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: 12/05/2020
Length: 430 pages
Genre: Translated Fiction | Japanese Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

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An earlier novella published in Japan with the same title focused on the female body, telling the story of three women: the thirty-year-old unmarried narrator, her older sister Makiko, and Makiko’s daughter Midoriko. Unable to come to terms with her changed body after giving birth, Makiko becomes obsessed with the prospect of getting breast enhancement surgery. Meanwhile, her twelve-year-old daughter Midoriko is paralyzed by the fear of her oncoming puberty and finds herself unable to voice the vague, yet overwhelming anxieties associated with growing up. The narrator, who remains unnamed for most of the story, struggles with her own indeterminable identity of being neither a “daughter” nor a “mother.” Set over three stiflingly hot days in Tokyo, the book tells of a reunion of sorts, between two sisters, and the passage into womanhood of young Midoriko.

In this greatly expanded version, a second chapter in the story of the same women opens on another hot summer’s day ten years later. The narrator, single and childless, having reconciled herself with the idea of never marrying, nonetheless feels increasing anxiety about growing old alone and about never being a mother. In episodes that are as comical as they are revealing of deep yearning, she seeks direction from other women in her life—her mother, her grandmother, friends, as well as her sister—and only after dramatic and frequent changes of heart, decides in favor of artificial insemination. But this decision in a deeply conservative country in which women’s reproductive rights are under constant threat is not one that can be acted upon without great drama.

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Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication Date: 02/03/2021
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Dystopian | Literary Fiction

CW: n/a

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‘The Sun always has ways to reach us.’

From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.

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Monthly Wrap Up – February 2021

By popular demand on Twitter, I started reading The Priory of the Orange Tree, which means I didn’t get round to reading much else when it came to my physical TBR! However, I did continue on my goal to get through my entire NetGalley shelf (which would be going a lot better, if I stopped requesting books even before I finish the one I’m reading!).

Books read this month

This month I read a total of 7 books (3 physical and 4 ebooks)

  1. My Brother by Karin Smirnoff (ARC)
  2. The Swimmers by Marian Womack (ARC)
  3. Little Gods by Meng Jin (ARC)
  4. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon 
  5. Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica 
  6. Dear Child by Romy Hausmann (ARC)
  7. Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami

Favourite books read this month

Little Gods by Meng Jin
This February release is a wonderful novel about identity and motherhood which I adored. Jin has a wonderful way of being able to craft realistic characters with a real depth, not just through the character’s perspective but through using the perspectives of other characters too. A perfect way to illustrate the layers of a single person and how easy it is to have many faces.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
This 800 page beast of a novel is an absolute delight to read and the perfect fantasy escape from the world. Shannon has created a new classic of the genre with a whole cast of very different characters and a world that has so much history and lore that it felt very, very real. Also this novel has dragons, need I say more?

Tender is the Flesh by Augstina Bazterrica
Bazterrica offers a whole new way of looking at dystopian fiction with this short, but brutal, novel. This deliciously dark and addictive read is definitely not one for the faint of heart, but if you have the stomach for a special kind of slaughterhouse then this is definitely not a novel that you want to sleep on!

Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami
Kawakami presents a very interesting perspective on what it is like to be a woman in modern Japan. From the extremes that some women go to in order to meet their impossibly high expectations of beauty (I had no idea bleaching nipples was a thing until I read this book) to the perception of women without a family (a husband or child). It was such a refreshing, and eye-opening, read.

How did your February shape up? Did you make a good dent in your TBR or would you rather forget February happened?

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