City of Heavenly Fire Review

Hola! So today I will be reviewing a book from a series very close to my heart- and that is of course
Cassandra Clare's City of Heavenly Fire. Of course, if you haven't read the series, firstly- WHERE THE HECK HAVE YOU BEEN OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS?! Secondly, do not I repeat do not read any further. Grab the first book, City of Bones, and get ready to enter the world of the Shadowhunters and sell your soul to gorgeous demon hunters :)

Moving on to the rest of you, who have read the series- City of Heavenly Fire is definitely worth the read. It's hella long, this I know, almost 750 pages, but seriously, it's fantastic and well worth the read. If you stopped reading after City of Glass, stop, grab City of Fallen Angels, and just keep going. For me. Please.

Anyways, synopsis time. City of Heavenly Fire picks up where City of Lost Souls left off- Jace is no longer connected to Sebastian, but he now possesses heavenly fire. It flows through his veins and he cannot touch anyone. He has to be extremely careful with the fire, but it has one benefit- potential to kill Sebastian. And everyone needs Sebastian dead. Meanwhile, Sebastian is creating more "Endarkened" with the Infernal Cup, and his growing army will take out their wrath on Idris and the Shadowhunters if Sebastian isn't stopped. And he won't stop until he gets the one thing he wants- Clary and Jace, his sister and brother.

You must, must, read it, and once you do, come back here and discuss with me and our other Shadowhunters about the book!

See you back here soon!

***SPOILERS***
Ahh, welcome to the review, those who have read COHF. Did you cry? Did you laugh? Are you emotionally destroyed forever at the thought of never having another book about Clary, Jace, Simon, Isabelle and Alec? Me too.

Okay so in this book, much like the other books in the series, we had several storylines going at once. Mainly, there were the Clary/Jace/Simon/Izzy/Alec scenes, because they are the original characters of the series and they were definitely the most dominant. Then there was the Maia scenes, where we occasionally flicked over to her to see how she was coping with the whole Downworlders when-the-cat's-away-the-mice-will-play attitude. There was also the Emma scenes, where we saw Emma and Julian and the rest of the Blackthorns, who were just a heartbreaking bunch to watch as they struggled through everything. There was also the Jocelyn/Luke/Magnus/Raphael scenes, after they were kidnapped, where we occasionally flicked back to just ensure that they were still alive.

My favourite scenes were of course the ones we spent with the big five (Clary, Jace, Simon, Izzy, Alec, occasionally Magnus but for the purposes of this book I'll leave him out). They were and forever will be my favourite characters in this whole series. Jace particularly, because he was my first "book boyfriend", and still holds my heart quite firmly. And I'll never be over my obsessive love of these characters because everything about them makes my heart swell with pride and I just wanted them to be okay and they were and just... Okay I'll stop before I get too emotional.

Anyways, the book starts with Emma and the Blackthorns at the Los Angeles Institute. They are being attacked and they are left parentless and scared. This chapter didn't really work on me because after waiting two years for this book, I wanted to tear into the storyline of my perfect Big Five and not read about poor little Shadowhunter children, even if Emma is a Carstairs.

Can I just side track for a sec and talk about Emma. I ended up really quite liking Emma. I felt sorry for her when she and Julian decided to become parabatai, because she clearly likes him and this feeling she has might not her requited. I'm super excited to see how she will develop and how her story will unfurl in The Dark Artifices, and how Cassie will deal with another potentially cheesy love story (she hasn't let me down so far, let's keep our fingers crossed!) Anyways, moving onto my main point. Emma was incredibly like Jace. And during the story, I didn't pay much attention to this. Until I realised- technically, Emma is not blood related to Jace whatsoever. I even consulted my Clockwork Princess family tree. So this got me thinking- maybe Emma has somehow, through scandal or secrecy or whatever else, acquired Herondale blood. And then I realised, on the family tree, there are records missing around Emma's grandparent's time. To me, this just seems like the perfect idea for a plot bomb later on- I would bargain that Emma Carstairs has Herondale blood in her somehow.

Moving on, let's discuss the first important character death- Jordan's. I absolutely called it.

I knew he had to die, and when he did, it was so early on and expected that it didn't exactly profoundly injure me emotionally. Of course, when I thought it through, this was the character who helped Jace meditate and who played x-box with Simon, and that made me miss him, but I definitely was not crying at this stage.

So we move on to the first major battle. I love the battles in these books because they just aren't boring. They're interesting and inthralling whereas some books can be like, "She took her sword and plunged it in the beast. The beast screamed out in pain as it died. Other people were fighting things around her. Wow." Now although that may or may not be coated in a little bit of my sass, it's very true, and I'm glad these books aren't like that. The first major battle was the attack Sebastian led on the Adamant Citadel. Now, Clary and Jace, being Clary and Jace, run through the portal when they aren't meant to and some super-weird heavenly fire crud goes down.

Firstly, Jace manages to seriously injure Sebastian with his bleeding fire thingo, and Brother Zachariah comes along, accidentally gets licked by a flame of heavenly fire, and all of a sudden, Jem comes back, Brother Zachariah is pretty much no more. Then, Clary, in an effort to heal dear Jace, puts her all into an iratze, and gets seriously hurt.

And to think, this was one of the less violent battles.

At this time, Simon is being held captive by Maureen, crazy vampire fangirl who is now the leader of the New York clan. And this remained one of my most favourite scenes until more exciting stuff started happening, because Maureen dressed Simon up and held him captive like a doll. It was hilarious, and despite Simon actually being in quite a bit of danger, he was still making me laugh.

Then, eventually, the message gets to the Shadowhunters that Sebastian is in Edom, and he wants Clary and Jace. He offers for the Clave to hand them over, however, before they can refuse, Clary and Jace leave for Edom with Simon, Izzy and Alec. The scenes in the demon realm were some of my favourite scenes. Scratch that- they were my favourite scenes. It was my Big Five wandering around a foreign place and trying to stay positive. There was so much sass and humour in those scenes that they definitely became my favourites.

I would also like to mention that it was these scenes where I started to hate Alec a lot less. Originally, he'd just sort of been there, and I'd not cared much for him. And it was during this book where I realised that I love Alec Lightwood. He was hilarious, but at the same time, so, so sad, and I wanted to sweep him up and say, "it's okay, little Alec. You'll be okay." I officially love him and I need to go back and reread the series in this newfound Alec-loving light. Also, the whole making a pie scene was hilarious and I laughed and laughed at Alec's sass.

Most of my favourite scenes were the ones in the demon realm, Edom. I loved watching them explore and fight, whilst still managing to be the Big Five we all know and love. It was while I was reading these scenes where the sadness of the end really set in for me. There were some demon battles, none of them were super significant, but then we got to Jace's heavenly fire "fireworks show". Initially, I wasn't quite sure whether this meant he'd totally gotten rid of the heavenly fire, or whether it was still in him but just less of it, but slowly I came to the conclusion that it was the latter. I'm still not positive, so if anyone knows, let me know in the comments or with a tweet :)

Anyways, besides the Edom scenes, my other favourite thing in this book was how much wonderful shippy nonsense we got! In the first, like, four chapters, we'd already had a kiss from all the big ships (and by that I mean Clace, Malec and Sizzy). Not to mention the whole Lord-Montgomery-Sizzy-inside joke (which made a fantastic reappearance in the scenes after Izzy was saved by Simon). It was all very cute and everything stayed okay… nothing was too painful.

Which brings me to the most painful part of the whole book- where Simon loses his memories. This whole almost in tears, but that's probably because I don't cry during books very much. I didn't want Magnus to die, but the thought of Simon not remembering Clary, his best friend, or Izzy, or anything he's been through, was super-duper painful. And of course, because nothing can end perfectly happy in YA, Simon did have to lose his memories, to say goodbye. At this point, the tears flooded my bedroom and I'm still airing out my clothes and books. Anyways, I think the point where I really started to feel the pain was when Clary made contact with him. The less painful one was when she asked him who his best friend was, and he replied with, more or less, "Eric". The one that made me cry even harder was when she met up with him outside the school, and he handed her the flyer for his band and his band, which has had so many different names over the series, was called The Mortal Instruments. At that point I could no longer contain my feelings and I started choking and crying everywhere.
scene had me

I also was made very emotional when Alec and Magnus were reunited, when Magnus said, "Oh, my Alec. You've been so sad. I didn't know." That line injured me on the inside and I am still trying to recover. It was so sweet and emotional and I just want to curl up and cry okay…

Moving on to a more significant thought other than my pained feelings toward Simon and Malec, I would like to discuss Sebastian. We knew he was going to die, he really did have to. What I did not expect was the sword cutting out all of the evil in him and that we would get to see Sebastian as he would have been, as Jonathan. And I think this was a really hard scene for me, because I didn't want this Jonathan to die, and it wasn't his fault. It was Valentine's. And I wished that things had been different, much like Clary did at the time. It was sad, but I knew he had to die, had to go. Because I still don't trust him, really.

Coming off that point, I am super worried about how Clary threw Sebastian's ashes into Lake Lyn. I mean, I don't actually think that the Lake can do anything in the area of piecing together ashes of a dead super-demon-Shadowhunter, but I don't know, that Lake is one of the shiftiest Instruments, I don't really trust it… What are your thoughts? I mean, if we get nice-Sebastian back, I'll be pretty okay with that, however, if we get evil-Sebastian, I think I'll scream. Then again, maybe this will never be addressed in The Dark Artifices I don't know.

I was also thrilled to see Jem and Tessa in the end scenes, and when they talked about Will, you could hear my heart shattering just a little. It was so cute to hear him talking about their ancestors and oh my goodness I never made the correlation between fRAY and gRAY. How did I miss that? Anyways, I'm super up for Clary/Tessa brotp, they would be so great together as best friends. Shopping trips with Tessa and Clary! With wives (pretty much) of Herondales oh my gosh can you imagine coffee dates?!

Tessa: Yeah, literally he was so angsty. All he did was push me away. And all that time he loved me!
Clary: We went through so many issues… We thought we were siblings for a while, then he was possessed and tried to kill me… Not to mention the fact he has a death wish the size of England!
Tessa: I guess they see it as "heroic"…
Clary: I just think he's a bit dumb.
Tessa: Yet we love them anyways…
Clary: Yeah. Remind me why again?

Anyways, I thoroughly enjoyed this book even if it does mean that The Mortal Instruments is over. The series means a lot to me. I started this series during 2012, right on the release of City of Lost Souls, and ever since, I've read over one hundred and fifty YA books. It was the series that started it all for me, and I cannot imagine what I'd be without the series, and I'm seriously going to miss Clary, Jace and the other Big Five characters. But of course, that is the beauty of books, you can throw yourself back into their world, their stories, any time you want.

So leave a comment with your thoughts or opinions on some of my theories and also your twitter name as I will follow you and or shout you out :)

Have a lovely day,
Lily xoxo

House of Silk Review

Hai! So today I'm going to be reviewing a bit of a different book… It's a Sherlock Holmes story, but not by
Conan Doyle. It is called The House of Silk, and it's by the author of Alex Rider, Anthony Horowitz.

As a major fan of the Conan Doyle canon, and most adaptations of my favourite Consulting Detective, I was super-excited to start this book, and I was certainly not disappointed.

This story is set in 1890, and it is written as Watson's last story in the Sherlock Holmes adventures. It follows two very different crimes, which seem completely different, stretching over two countries and lots of different characters. These cases can't be connected, although there continues to be parallels between the two… As the world's most celebrated detective duo fall deeper into the case of 'The House of Silk' they realise that this is no simple ordeal, and things quickly turn dark and sinister…

I most definitely recommend it to other Holmes fans or maybe even new Holmes fans with a basic knowledge…

So go and read it then come back and we can discuss!

***SPOILERS***

Okay! Let's get started!

Firstly, the differences between this novel and the original canon. I know little things would bug the heck out of most traditional Holmes fans, however, when it comes to retellings like this, small differences don't irritate me. To me, I feel like these little differences are what the new author does to put their own spin on the story, to make it their own. It's a lot like fanfiction- if every Harry Potter fic was written in the exact image of JK's prose, I think I might go mad. So in my opinion, the little differences are totally acceptable, if not encouraged. I'd love to know other opinions on this, however, so leave a comment if you agree or don't!

One of the main differences for me was the way Watson wrote. In this retelling, Watson's prose was very much more descriptive, detailed and arguably more beautiful than Conan Doyle's Watson. In a crime fiction, particularly in Sherlock stories, there is a lot of dialogue, and I feel like this novel balanced the masses of dialogue out nicely with very pretty prose and description, where the originals did not.

I also feel like in this novel, a lot more of the emotional side of the case was shown. In the originals, Watson is very much all about the crime and the actual facts of the case, whereas in this, I felt that we were much more inside Watson's head, and less so Sherlock's incredible mind. Although I loved seeing more of the relationship between Sherlock and John develop, I did feel like we missed out on a lot of Sherlock's thought process and how he thinks things through. In the originals, you are constantly in awe of Sherlock and his intellectual ability, as Conan Coyle intended. Although I loved this book very much, I did feel like this was excluded just a bit.

One of the main complaints I have noticed in multiple other reviews I've read was the slight modernisation of Horowitz's prose. My thoughts on this claim can be summed up quite accurate by- "eh." Yes, there was definitely some modernisation of the prose, however, as I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a Conan Doyle novel, and nor should it be, therefore why should it be an exact replica of the way he writes? The fact little things (such as the classic "the game is afoot" being changed to "the game's afoot") have been changed does not bother me one bit, and just shows that this is NOT an ACD novel.

Despite everything that I have said here, I still think this book is a great novel, and I still love the original Conan Doyle stories. There is no Sherlock story that could ever be better than the originals. Okay glad that's cleared up.

So this mystery was extremely intricate, and was not exactly foreseeable from the start, as with any good Holmes novel. There were some things that were easily guessed, such as the body of Keegan O'Donohague not being Keegan O'Donohague, and the involvement of Mr and Mrs Carstairs in criminal activity.

But majority of the plot twists were exactly as a plot twist should be. I did not expect Sherlock to end up in prison, and during the time he was, I was just as sad and downcast as John was. It is clear that without Sherlock Holmes, the books simply are not as fun. However, this was used to advantage the story, because the happiness I was filled with when the doctor's assistant was in fact Sherlock was almost immeasurable. That I also did not see coming.

Staying on the scene of Sherlock's escape, this was where I was pulled briefly out of this beautiful fictional world, because I couldn't help but feel some areas of this mystery were manufactured around the ultimate result, and that things almost feel too neatly into place. It's one of my few complaints about this novel, but I managed to get over it and immerse myself back into the story. This is where I feel that ACD always does a fabulous job- his mysteries and stories never felt forced or fake, and he always made them obscure but not so obscure they were unbelievable. This was part of his genius that I will forever be in awe of.

The whole resolution was rather unexpected. I never would've guessed that Mrs Carstairs was Keegan O'Donohague, not even with the subtle hints. And The House of Silk was also something I could never have guessed; a thought so horrific would never have even crossed my mind. I was more thinking it would be an underground criminal network, or a cult, and I must say, would have preferred if it was.

Moving away from the actual story and into characters, I loved the interactions between Holmes and Watson. Because of the slightly more modern approach to the story, their relationship reminded me very much of Sherlock BBC, the TV series which is undoubtedly my favourite Sherlock adaptation of all. If you are unfamiliar with it, it is extremely popular and stars Benedict Cumberbatch. If you don't know who he is, google him. You're welcome.

Anyways, the way they interacted and spoke to each other was just so adorable, you could really see just how close they were, and whether ACD intended it to be that way in the canon, I don't really know, because this high level of clear friendship was never present in his stories. (even more respect for John/Sherlock brotp)

I loved the way Watson blindly believed Sherlock when piles of evidence stacked up against him, and I think one of the saddest things in this book for me was when Watson would flick back to the present, and talk about Sherlock being dead. He would write things about Sherlock's obituaries, and suddenly I'd see Sherlock dead and John left alone. And the last line almost brought tears to my eyes, in fact, the whole afterword was extremely sad. "It is Sherlock Holmes who is playing. It must be. I hope with all my heart that he is playing for me…".

These parts brought back painful memories of the Reichenbach episode of Sherlock BBC. (Go watch it. The whole show. NOW.)

One of my favourite things in this book was Moriarty's brief scene. When John was sitting at that dinner table, and when the man started talking about being a criminal and sending Sherlock a message, or a hint, I was sure it was Moriarty. I was sure that I had just witnessed an appearance of my favourite Consulting Criminal. I was so glad in the end when John cleared it up and confirmed that it probably was Moriarty, because it was a loose end I was waiting to see tied.

However I was sad that John never mentioned it to Sherlock, I would've loved to see his reaction, or what he thought of it.

All in all, this was a fantastic novel, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It was a tribute to Conan Doyle that will probably sit on my list of favourites, but I would love to know your opinion also. What did you think about The House of Silk? Leave a comment and your twitter name and I'll shout you out and or follow you. :)

Have a lovely day,
lily xoxo

Legend- Recommendation

Hola! It's that time again- time to tell you about a book I really enjoyed so that you can enjoy it too!

So this time, I have a dystopian that I read only recently, called Legend by Marie Lu. Not only did my favourite booktuber, polandbananas20, recommend this through her review, many of my other bookish friends, both online and not, also suggested I read it. So naturally, I bought it. Except, I bought it sometime last year, and it got lost in the pile of books I had to read and I only got one hundred pages in. I really loved it, but I just kept picking up other books and it sort of got pushed to the side.

However, with some extra time on my hands, I picked the book up again and made it all the way through. This is a story about a wanted criminal, called Day, and a high ranking prodigy of the military, June. What was once the United States of America is now divided into the Colonies and the Republic. But when Day's family are threatened and everything goes wrong in an attempt to help them, June and Day are suddenly thrown into each other's universes. But slowly, they begin to realise just why fate has brought them together, and they must uncover sinister and dangerous secrets that threaten their lives. Just how far will the Republic go to protect its dark secrets?

I really loved the characters in this, particularly Day. He had a spark about him that I loved, and some things he said were absolutely wonderful, and I got to put down the book and just chuckle to myself for a bit. Not only did I love the characters, I also loved the world and the way everything was set up. The whole idea was just spectacularly executed, and I am excited to see where this series is going.

I highly recommend this to anyone who loves a good dystopian adventure, particularly one where you can solve crimes and add up clues given to you throughout the story. It was a fantastic book and I suggest you go and pick it up right away :)

If you have read Legend, leave a comment telling me your thoughts (no spoilers for the next books please) along with your twitter name and I will follow you and give you a shout out.

Have a spectacular day,
lily xoxo

Anna and the French Kiss Review

Hello fellow earthbooklings! Today I will be reviewing a book called Anna And The French Kiss. Now I
know what people who have similar tastes to me will be thinking. What?! Yes. I actually read this book.

Some advice for people when picking up the book: don't read the blurb! It's awful and horrendous and you certainly shouldn't judge the book on it. Also, don't judge this book by its cover! The cover is also terrible, and the content inside is just so good in comparison. And one last thing- PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE TITLE. Just read it, it's a super cutesy, laid back, easy read and I definitely recommend it if you've just read a fantasy epic and feel like a bit of a break.

This book is about a girl, who's unbelievably called Anna, who is sent to a boarding school in Paris. The story revolves around her and the way she develops new relationships and copes with the ones back at home that she's been severed from. There is obviously a quite important love story and it's pretty cute I gotta say...

Anyways go and read and come back here to discuss!

***SPOILERS***
Okie dokie! Let's get started. This book was not something I would have picked up without being basically forced to by several of my book friends and real life friends. It is certainly something I've been putting off reading forever! And if you follow my goodreads, you'll know that I attempted to start Scarlet, the second book in the Lunar Chronicles, but I was struggling with it and thought I might just need something easy and cute. So I finally relented. And I'm kinda glad I did.

One of my favourite things in this book was the cafeteria, and the food. Gosh that sounds bad but every time they went out for lunch or even just had a school meal, I think I died from the descriptions of the food. GIVE ME THE DELICIOUS FOOD!

Now that's out of the way, let's start with the main part of the story- the relationship between Étienne and Anna. It was clear from the start where this book was going. We all knew that Étienne and Anna would end up together. But the way their relationship was dealt with was really quite sweet... It was clear they liked one another, but where there was opportunities for scandal and angsty love triangles, the author didn't take them. Their relationship was mainly "just friends" during this book, until towards the end, and I think that was a really good thing, although I was maybe yelling "JUST KISS!" through some of the more frustrating chapters.

Their relationship was always going to be problematic, with Anna's new best friend, Mer, liking Étienne. I wondered how this issue was going to be solved, and I was a little iffy about the solution. In my mind, Bridgette hooking up with Toph after Anna had kissed him was much worse than Anna kissing Étienne when all Mer had done was like him. Yes, Anna probably should have talked it through with Mer and been a bit more careful, but there was really no problem of cheating. However, Anna had kissed Toph, and there was clearly something going on between them. But then Anna leaves, Bridge steals Toph and they get together behind Anna's back. Although what Anna did probably wasn't fair on her friend, what Bridgette did was just plain sneaky and mean.

Whilst reading other reviews about this book, I came across a common trend- people hated that Anna thought moving to Paris was bad. Now, I do think this is a little unfair. Anna was forced to move to a foreign country she'd never been to without her family and attend a school with new people and face it all completely alone. If I was in her situation, I would be crying too. I would be furious, I would want to go home and I would resent the fact I was in Paris. Lots of people were complaining, "this girl gets sent to Paris and complains… first world problems much?", however I don't think it would've mattered where she was being sent… New York or Tokyo, Rome or Sydney, she still would've felt alone and unloved. Can you imagine being sent away, against your will, to somewhere unknown, alone, by the people who are meant to love you? Yeah, think that over for a second and imagine being a confused sixteen year old girl as well.

I think Anna and I are very similar, which is why I felt I had to speak up for her in the above paragraph. I felt that the ways she approached situations and the way she reacted reflected the ways I would also act, and I don't know about you guys, but this is why I really liked her character. Not to mention the fact that she loved movies. Normally, it's poetry or books that a main female character is obsessed with, but I found Anna really unique in her obsession with old (and new) movies and thought it was really cool how she ran a blog to help her with her future career… sounds like someone else I know.

I can't say I didn't like Étienne. I very much liked Étienne. Maybe it was the accent and the way he was ABSOLUTELY PERFECT, I'm not exactly sure. He was a little too perfect, and I didn't love him as much as I loved Kai, from Cinder, the book I read before this. But I loved him because Anna loved him, and when I saw him, I saw him through her eyes, and I have to say, that was pretty cute.

The scenes where they were doing the wishes, it was clear what Étienne was wishing, you could see his infatuation with Anna from the very start. I found it interesting how this time, there was a girlfriend thrown into the mix. Normally, in angsty teen romance novels, it starts off with the boy and girl being rivals, almost hating each other. Then they slowly fall in love and have to battle through their conflicting emotions until at the end everything falls apart and they end up together. That was interesting the first three times, but the five hundred thousand million after that were less impressive. That's why I found it so much more realistic that not only did Étienne have a girlfriend, Anna had a major crush. I was so much more excited to see how they would work around their current relationships to end up together.

I found that Étienne was using Ellie as a safety blanket very early on, which was definitely explored later on in the book. The way he knew he wasn't in love with her, but he kept her there for fear of change really annoyed me, however I am probably a lot like him in that respect. I hate change. But I don't know if I would be able to stay with someone who I know I didn't love. Anyways, I wasn't sure that he was no longer in love with her until a little further on, but once I did, I was waiting for the moment to strike where Ellie would be out of the picture. And I couldn't wait.

I also couldn't wait for Toph to run off with Bridge. That was one of the many things that was oh so predictable in this book, and everyone knew it was going to happen. What better way to kick Toph out of the scene to free up Anna for Étienne than to have her best friend hook up with him? It was perfect, and as I predicted, it came true.

During Anna's stay back in Atlanta, I loved her email conversations with Étienne. After there had been such coldness between them before (and the new coldness that was to come after), these emails brought me hope and were absolutely gorgeously cute. When they talked about wanting to visit one another I was just begging the universe to stop trying to pull this perfect couple apart. I loved that Anna could talk to him, and convince him out of his room when they were staying at school over Thanksgiving. Étienne's mother's cancer was something that confused me a bit. Maybe it was a plot device to draw Anna and Étienne closer through demonstration that Anna could help him when no one else can, or maybe it was there for some deep, metaphorical meaning that I missed, but it just kind of confused me… If anyone has any insight, please leave a comment I'd love to discuss!

One of my favourite things was Anna's father. Of course, I hated him, and he reminded me of several real life authors, but his character in the story was something I was so thankful for. He was something other than the typical YA dad stereotypes- either dead, divorced, not there, horrible or a complete push-over. He had a character, and I always find that parents in YA get overlooked easily. It makes things for a writer so much easier if the parents aren't around; there's less rules on your character and reason for hurt and angst. So even though he was a mean person, he was still a part of the story, and the way he was created, with the obnoxious books and the sweaters and fake tan, was just a really interesting side of it.

So you may just see this as another teen angst romance novel. And in some ways, from the outset, it is. From the outset, everything looks a lot vaguer. Hunger Games may look like an angsty love triangle set in a bad alternate future. BBC Sherlock may look like a bunch of normal people dealing with a crime-solving sociopath. But when you delve deeper, you realise that Hunger Games is actually about the problems in our society, and how the world could turn if we don't take control and think our actions through. We see that BBC Sherlock is about adrenaline addicted ex-army doctors, ex-CIA agents trying to cover their pasts, super smart landladies, sweet pathologists who can convince criminals to watch Glee and a broken man who shuts his feelings away to stop himself from being hurt.

So yeah, you may see AATFK as an angsty teen romance novel. You may think it's too "low-brow" for you. But please stop, think, pick up the book and think about it critically before you judge it. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a cute read.

Sorry for that life lesson in books there but I felt it was necessary to say that just because a book hasn't been released in a gold-embossed classics cover by Dymocks or Barnes and Noble doesn't mean it's not worth reading.

Anyways, I definitely recommend this book, and I really did like this, but I'm super happy to discuss in the comments! If you're leaving a comment, put your twitter name there as well and I can follow/shout you out :)

Have a lovely day,
lily xoxo

Cinder- Recommendation

Hello internet peeps! So today I am going to recommend a book called Cinder, by Marissa Meyer, which I
loved. If you haven't heard of this or read this, you must have been living under a rock, because I feel like everyone's been saying lately, "READ CINDER ITS GREAT ASDFGHJKL!". And because I can be a little, well, picky, I'd been avoiding it purely on the basis that the cover wasn't very pretty. YES I KNOW I JUDGED A BOOK BY ITS COVER AND YES I KNOW I WAS PROVED WRONG LET'S MOVE ON NOW, SHALL WE?

So if you hadn't already worked this out, Cinder is the retelling of Cinderella in a future society. It's set in New Beijing, and Cinder is a cyborg. Cyborgs aren't uncommon in this society, however they are sort of outcasts. With a plague breaking out and killing lots of humans, an evil moon race trying to attack and the Emporor dying, New Beijing and Earth are in no shortage of problems, and Cinder tries to keep out of it, working hard as a mechanic for her awful stepmother and family. But Cinder gets caught up in gorgeous Prince Kai's problems, and suddenly, everything is dependent on her.

There's no dilly-dallying with boring, angsty descriptions of this dystopian universe, we get straight into the action and all of a sudden BOOM you're sucked into the story. I loved all the main characters, they were really great and I loved the way they interacted…

I highly recommend picking this novel up, even if you're not a sci-fi fan, because it really did feel like more of a contemporary, like Sisters Red (see review here) and Beastly (see review here).

If you want, I can do a review of it and post it soon, but you've got to let me know in the comments! Yay okay so as always, leave a comment with your twitter name and I shall shout you out and or follow you!

Have a lovely day,
love,

lily xoxo

Jet Black and the Ninja Wind Review

Okay so this week I shall be reviewing a book I read called Jet Black and the Ninja Wind. I will start off
being brutally honest- I really didn't like this book. Though it seems I may be the only one, according to good reads. So if ninjas are something that interests you, go check out other reviews because apparently I am the only person in the world to dislike this book…

That's the end of the non-spoilery section because I really don't want to skew you away from this book if you might like it. So go do some more research, read it and come back to discuss!

***SPOILERS***
When I picked this book up, I was giddy with excitement. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, assassins, all so over used. But ninjas, ninjas is something I've never seen in YA before. So I bought it, and I immediately texted my book friend Renee, she immediately told me it was going to be rubbish. Now, to be fair, the name is pretty cheesy, but since I was so looking forward to reading it, I made excuses for it, like the Harry potter titles. So I take it home and hurriedly finish Hallowed by Cynthia Hand, the sequel to Unearthy by Cynthia Hand, so I can read my wonderful book about ninjas. I start reading the book, get two chapters in and stop reading for the night. I think this is why ninjas aren't in YA a lot.

I had three major complaints that I will rant on about first, and then I will talk about scenes and characters and everything else.

Complaint Number 1-
It was so inconsistent. All the content was spent info dumping Japanese history and cultural history in huge chunks, and everything else was just slotted in sideways, squished so hopefully it sort of fitted in somewhere. I did enjoy the Japanese culture and all the history, I mean, I love history, but info dumping just doesn't engross a reader, and certainly not someone who is tired after a long day, and wanting to wind down. And it was made even worse by the characters never understanding things that they'd been told, to which the other characters had even more paragraphs of explanation.

In the blurb, it talks a lot about a love story between Jet and the boy who's meant to kill her. And yes, it's in there, but there's like five scenes where he's present and only three scenes where he'd be mentioned by her. It was really just squished into the plot and I think that they really could've done something with it, covered it better and gotten it more involved in the storyline. At least with something as interesting as that tied in with the info dumping, it might have made it a little less squished. But even at the end, he just sort of… disappeared. It was really not addressed, and he got given a bad case of Gale syndrome (that was a Hunger Games reference).

There were also a number of scenes that were sort of just… put in there and not addressed. Like the scene where Hiro goes and attends the illegal punk rock concert. I know it was meant to be inspirational and such, but… why was it in there? It wasn't like Hiro ever sort of thought back to it and went "Oh yeah I see that what they were doing was right/wrong/influenced me in this way". And also the scene where Jet says she has a massive fear of caves… Hiro just says that she needs to accept her fear, she steps in the cave, Ojiisan shows up and suddenly she has no problem with it? I know it was vaguely addressed at the end with a line about her being no longer afraid and such, but I just think things were inconsistent in general.

Complaint Number 2-
The dialogue was so cheesy. I read things in my mind and almost compared them to a soap opera. This was how most things sounded in my head-
"Jet. Your mother was a ninja."
"Gasp! No!"
"Yes. And so was your father and your uncle and your grandpa."
"How can this be true?!"
Yeah, I'm not sure if that was just me, but the characters just conversed so awkwardly and unrealistically. And when a book is pretty much 35% dialogue, well… yeah.

Complaint Number 3-
Jet was such an annoying character. I also found her a little dumb… Her mum's been teaching her Japanese fighting techniques and telling her stories of warriors in their family all her life, and she never even once thought it through? Never even once questioned whether she was like them? It was just kind of annoying. She also had an obsession with giving detailed descriptions of what she was wearing… when she basically wore the same thing every time. "Mini-skirt, black tank top and thigh-high boots". It was also from her perspective for majority of the story, and when she narrated, in addition to her inability to piece together facts, her thoughts were also very messy. They felt like they were scattered everywhere, floating over the pages.

I was immediately judging her in the first chapter or so, when her mother died, and very little time was spent explaining her grief. When a girl's mother dies, you're going to be upset, and especially in this case, where we are given no reason for Jet to actually resent her mother in any way, shape or form. In fact, it actually says that she loves her mother a lot. So I think that there needed to be a bit more emotion when her mother died, because Jet sort of cried in the moment and then moved on, flew to Japan and casually became a ninja. I think the same for when Ojiisan died; both she and Hiro got over it emotionally quite quickly.

Okay, now that my major complaints are over, let's talk characters and scenes.

Hiro- Hiro was exactly what the book makes him out to be- a strong little boy. However, for someone so young, I think the things he did and said were a bit above his age, to be perfectly honest. I mean, he was allowed to go out by himself to a pretty dodgy part of town. I wasn't even allowed out of the house alone at his age!

Takumi- As I said, we didn't see a lot of Takumi in this book, but for an angsty love interest, he was incredibly boring. He was just sort of… there. He didn't make me hate the book, or like it more, he was just a character and I didn't really care about him, which was really sad because I'd love to have thought he was great.

J-Bird- At first, J-Bird creeped me out. I didn't trust him, but after a while, I just realised he was another character, just like all the others. Not overly interesting, not completely annoying, just there.

My favourite scene was where Hiro and Jet are eating porridge, and Jet puts brown sugar on hers and Hiro puts raw egg and soy sauce on his and they both think what the other is eating is disgusting...  I just thought that was quite funny and it was a cool contrast in cultures, and I also learned about the raw-egg-soy-sauce-porridge thing, because in all my study of Japanese culture, I never found that out until now.

Speaking of that scene, what I did like in this book was the culture... I love Japanese as a language and I love Japanese things as a general rule. So that was another reason why I bought this book. And I was really pleased that there wasn't any stereotypical Japanese things, like they didn't sit down and eat sushi for every meal. I loved seeing Japan through Jet's eyes (when she wasn't being annoying), and exploring it through this book. It was exciting to see other cities than Tokyo, and to see a lot of aspects of the country and culture. That was probably the most enjoyable thing about this book.

So yes, if you loved this book, and you want to have a friendly debate (emphasis on the friendly) or discussion, leave a comment below and I will reply to you. Also leave your twitter name and I will follow you/shout you out :)

Have a lovely day,
lily xo

Update of Updateyness

Hiya friends! So I thought I was probably a good idea to do a post just explaining how things are going at the moment. So, my posting has been super irregular at the moment, and trust me, it's annoying me as well. I wish I wasn't so busy and that I could just sit down and type things for you all day, because honestly, I feel so guilty not giving you guys the posts you want to see, seeing as though you're supporting my blog. Speaking of support, I am now getting 50 pageviews on average for one of my weekly posts, and I'm coming up to 1000 page views in total. That is absolutely mental and I am completely speechless at how great all you regulars are.

Anyways, I have come up with a new, proper structure to make life easier for everyone. I will post once a week, every week (unless I'm doing a special or something) and I will post on Sunday at around either 7am or 8pm AEST. I hope this is helpful. Also, if you want to be emailed every time I post something new, there's a box where you can be put down on the list to the right of the post section right here. You can also follow either of my twitters, my personal; @lilypherondale, or my blog account; @awordisanarrow, where I tweet links to new posts.

Also, I thought I'd do a check-in of all the books I've read lately, and the ones I'm planning on reading, which you can expect reviews from soon. So over the past two months, I've read ten books, and I'll talk about them below-

The Dream Thieves, Maggie Stiefvater: I left you after my last "what I've been reading" post with The Hunt by Andrew Fukuda. Next, I picked up The Dream Thieves, which was the sequel to the Raven Boys. I rather liked it, and the review for it is here. I give it 4/5 stars.

The Prey, Andrew Fukuda: Next came The Prey, sequel to The Hunt. I liked this book a lot less than The Hunt, probably for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I hated Sissy, missed Ashley June and the heart racing adrenaline associated with Gene living in dusker society, and thought Gene's character was completely overlooked and dismissed. I give it 3/5 stars, because I desperately hoped that the next book was taking this somewhere.

Hallowed, Cynthia Hand: I decided I needed to leave the world of hepers and duskers in The Hunt Trilogy, and tried again at the Unearthly Trilogy. I actually really liked once again immersing myself in the world of angels, and it was a nice book cleanser after reading The Prey. Unfortunately, it actually wasn't very good, and neither was the plot. I had to reread it to actually properly assess it, as anything I read after The Prey was going to appear perfect… I give it 3/5 stars.

Jet Black and the Ninja Wind, Leza Lowitz: I was going through a stage of picking bad books at this point, I think, because this looked so good but was a dramatic disappointment. It is a book set in Japan, and it's about ninjas. I love Japan and ninjas, but this book was so poorly executed, and there will be a review for this probably next week. I gave it 1/5 stars on Goodreads, because it had a good premise.

Sisters Red, Jackson Pearce: This was my saving grace during this period of reading, and I still think it's the one that stands out most to me as one of the best books I've read all year. I love fairy tale adaptations, and this was so well done. It's obviously a spin on Little Red Riding Hood, and if this interests you, check out my recommendation for it here. I gave this one 5/5 stars.

Grave Mercy, Robin LaFevers: This was where everything started to pick up. Grave Mercy was incredible, and had me wishing the sequel followed the same characters. All someone had to say was assassin nuns and I was there. The main character is strong and brilliant, and it's set in the 1400s. I highly recommend it; assassin books are becoming my favourite, I think. I give it 5/5 stars.

I Hunt Killers, Barry Lyga: I read this because I decided I wanted to read some young adult crime fiction, and because this looked really good. It follows the story of Jasper Dent, whose father is the most devious serial killer the state has seen in a long time. With his dad locked up, Jasper needs to work out what sort of person he is, and what he wants to do in life. Of course, crime and murder and creepy psychological elements are very, very heavy in this book, and I don't suggest it if you get scared easily or don't cope with mind twisty criminals and psych thrillers. I gave it 3/5 stars, because I didn't love it.

Of Mice and Men, John Stienbeck: One of these does not belong, can you pick it? Yep, I read OMAM for a book club-ish type thing I was doing. It is a classic, and I love classics by authors like Dickens and Poe, but I didn't love this. I just finished it and thought, "that really didn't change me or influence me in any way." A classic should make you want to rethink your entire existence *cough cough great gastby, great expectations etc cough cough*, and this really didn't do it for me. I gave it 2/5 stars.

The Trap, Andrew Fukuda: Ah. Another The Hunt book. Joy. I read this with such hope, desperately praying and wishing it would be better than The Prey. It wasn't. It was worse. I'm not gonna spoil, but I disliked it so much it made me too sad to write a review on it, and I really don't want to talk about it because THIS SERIES CRUSHED MY DREAMS. 2/5 stars.

Cinder, Marissa Meyer: This book was so fabulous. As I mentioned in Sisters Red, I love fairy tale adaptions, and this was another one that was done very well. It was a take on Cinderella, and its set in future society where Cinderella is a cyborg… I highly recommend it! I am going to pick up the next book in the series relatively soon, I hope.

And those are the books I've read lately, and at the moment, I'm reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, which, I've been told, is "compulsory reading". So far I'm really enjoying it; I'm picking up some Simon Snow/Harry Potter parallels and I love it (winky face).

Also, it was kinda my birthday a week or so ago *bashfully looks down* and I'd love to do a sort of book birthday haul or something of the like… would anyone like that sort of thing??

I am also very very open to recommendations at the moment, please rec me stuff, because if you do, I will write up a review for it and it will be dedicated to the person who recommended it. (Free promotion of your blog/twitter/instagram is something that I am willing to do on request).

As always, follow my twitters and my goodreads account (here) to keep up with what I'm reading and or doing :)

Leave a comment and get a shout out or follow, you know the drill! Have a lovely day :)

love,
lily xo