Sunday Summary: 5th April 2020

Hi All!

Weekly Highlights is a feature that I used to do a few years ago that I have deicded to revive and revamp! So on Sunday’s (hopefully every one but it may be every other!) I plan to do a Sunday Summary, detailing what books I have read or am reading, what posts I posted, what books I received or bought and what posts/books are upcoming next week.

It is inspired by The Story Sirens In My Mailbox, Books, Biscuit and Tea’s Showcase Sunday, Kimba Caffeinated’s Sunday Post, and the British Letterbox Love, and Kris’ Wednesday Weekly.

Posts From The Week

I am finally getting back into blogging – here’s hoping it keeps going!

On Monday, I was on the blog tour for Starting Over at Acorn Cottage – you can find my post here.

On Wednesday, I was on the blog tour for The Russian Lieutenant with an author interview. You can read that over here.

Also on Wednesday, I was on the blog tour for For Better, For Worse and shared with you all an extract from the book. You can read that here.

On Thursday, I posted my April TBR. You can see what I plan to read this month over here.

On Friday, I finally got back to my Book Lover Spotlight feature. Meet Alex over here.

And lastly, on Saturday, I shared with you all what books I managed to read in March. It wasn’t a lot but I certainly tried! Find out what books I read in this post.

Books I Read

Physical Books

Title: A Girl Called Shameless
Author: Laura Steven
Publisher: Egmont
Published: 7th March 2019
Format: Physical Book
Source:: Bought Copy
Add It: Waterstones. Goodreads.
Summary:It’s been two months since a leaked explicit photo got Izzy involved in a political sex scandal – and the aftershock is far from over. The Bitches Bite Back movement is gathering momentum as a forum for teenage feminists, and when a girl at another school has a sex tape shared online, once again Izzy leads the charge against the slut-shamer. This time she wants to change the state law on revenge porn.
Izzy and her best friend Ajita are as hilarious as ever, using comedy to fight back against whatever the world throws at them, but Izzy is still reeling from her slut-shaming ordeal, feeling angry beyond belief and wondering – can they really make a change?

Title: A Bad Day For Jayden
Author: Tony Bradman
Publisher: Barrington Stoke
Published: 15th March 2020
Format: Physical Book
Source:: Review Copy from Publisher
Add It: Waterstones. Goodreads.
Summary: Mum won’t get out of bed. His best friend has dumped him. And school work is just too difficult. Jayden wants to do the right thing – but how can he when it feels like the world is conspiring against him? Everything is going wrong, and when a supply teacher turns up to take his class, Jayden’s sure things will keep on getting worse. But Mrs Wilson is not quite the teacher Jayden expected … can she help turn his bad day around? A touching and sensitively told story of life as a young carer from beloved author Tony Bradman.

Title: When Life Gives You Lemons
Author: Fiona Gibson
Publisher: Avon
Published: 5th March 2020
Format: Paperback
Source:: Review copy from Publisher
Add It: Waterstones. Goodreads.
Summary: Sometimes life can be bittersweet . . .

Between tending to the whims of her seven-year-old and the demands of her boss, Viv barely gets a moment to herself. It’s not quite the life she wanted, but she hasn’t run screaming for the hills yet.

But then Viv’s husband Andy makes his mid-life crisis her problem. He’s having an affair with his (infuriatingly age-appropriate) colleague, a woman who – unlike Viv – doesn’t put on weight when she so much as glances at a cream cake.

Viv suddenly finds herself single, with zero desire to mingle. Should she be mourning the end of life as she knows it, or could this be the perfect chance to put herself first?

When life gives you lemons, lemonade just won’t cut it. Bring on the gin!

Books I'm Reading

Physical Books

The Bradley family are constantly escaping from a centuries old curse which means that every home they ever live in is destroyed by a typhoon or flash flood that affects no other houses on the street, or they are chased out of town by a flock of persistent birds. They have just moved to their thirteenth house and Noah wants this one to work out – he’s got some good friends at school and desperately wants himself and his deaf brother Billy to put down roots. But the curse returns – so he must find a way to break it.

eBooks

Ursula, Gareth and Alice have never met before.

Ursula thinks she killed the love of her life.
Gareth’s been receiving strange postcards.
And Alice is being stalked.

None of them are used to relying on others – but when the three strangers’ lives unexpectedly collide, there’s only one thing for it: they have to stick together. Otherwise, one of them will die.

Three strangers, two secrets, one terrifying evening.

The million-copy bestseller returns with a gripping new novel that will keep you guessing until the end.

Audiobooks

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

Letterbox Love

Here are the books I’ve received this week!

Physical Books

I am Cal Adams – what does that mean?

Sixteen years old.
Black hair.
Blue eyes.
Short.
Gay.

For Cal, coming out is explosive, but that is nothing compared to the fallout from his family, friends and foes. When events in Cal’s life reach critical, he is shaken to his core. Can he rely on his loved ones to help avoid meltdown?

Having been following the author of this book for a while, I’ve been waiting for his book to be ready and now not only is it nearly out but I have a beautiful copy to read! It is one that I am dying to read and will get to very soon! Thank you to C. G. Moore and UCLAN for this review copy.

Life of Riley by Simon James Green (Cover not revealed yet)

Riley is cursed. No, really! After a fairground incident – TOTALLY not his fault – bad luck follows Riley everywhere, causing disaster after disaster. It’s got so bad that no one wants to go near Riley, including his teachers! But when new student Brad Chicago shows up, Riley quickly realizes that Brad is the human equivalent of a good luck charm. Can Brad’s good luck cancel out Riley’s bad luck? Or is this yet another recipe for disaster?

I am super excited for this book! It’s not out until Autumn but it looks like so much fun! Thank you so much to Scholastic for this review copy.

A raucously funny middle grade adventure for fans of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman… Twig is the last surviving apprentice of the great wizard Ripplemintz, which, as a job, is just as terrifying as it sounds. Oh Ripplemintz always means well, but for a wizard of such high regard he really does make an awful lot of mistakes. And who’s always left to clear them up? That’s right – Twig. So when Ripplemitz’s most powerful spell is let loose on the world, off Twig goes to catch it. And catch it he does, except… not quite in the way that he intended. Because, instead of catching it in an enchanted jar, Twig sort of… well… catches it in… HIMSELF. Brilliantly funny, with bags and bags of heart, The Accidental Wizard is destined to leave you completely spellbound.

I do not know anything about this book, it came with the package for Life of Riley but it sounds like my kind of book! Thank you so much to Scholastic for this review copy.

Around one in one hundred people in the UK are autistic, yet there remains a fundamental misunderstanding of what autism is. It is rare that autistic people get to share their own experiences, show how creative and talented and passionate they are, how different they are from media stereotypes.

This insightful and eye-opening collection of essays, fiction and visual art showcases the immense talents of some of the UK’s most exciting writers and artists – who just happen to be on the spectrum. Here they reclaim the power to speak for themselves and redefine what it means to be autistic.

Stim invites the reader into the lives, experiences, minds of the eighteen contributors, and asks them to recognise the hurdles of being autistic in a non-autistic world and to uncover the empathy and understanding necessary to continue to champion brilliant yet unheard voices.

I backed the kickstarter for this book a long time ago and I am so glad I did. The book itself is incredibly pretty and I cannot wait to dive in and read it.

This book sounds like such a lovely read so I was very pleased to be invited onto the tour for Scholastic. Thank you so much for this review copy!

Jane McKeene was born two days before the dead began to walk the battlefields of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville—derailing the War Between the States and changing America forever. In this new nation, safety for all depends on the work of a few, and laws like the Native and Negro Reeducation Act require certain children attend combat schools to learn to put down the dead. But there are also opportunities—and Jane is studying to become an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. It’s a chance for a better life for Negro girls like Jane. After all, not even being the daughter of a wealthy white Southern woman could save her from society’s expectations.

But that’s not a life Jane wants. Almost finished with her education at Miss Preston’s School of Combat in Baltimore, Jane is set on returning to her Kentucky home and doesn’t pay much mind to the politics of the eastern cities, with their talk of returning America to the glory of its days before the dead rose. But when families around Baltimore County begin to go missing, Jane is caught in the middle of a conspiracy, one that finds her in a desperate fight for her life against some powerful enemies. And the restless dead, it would seem, are the least of her problems.

Thank you so much to Amy for sending me this book as a way to cheer me up. It really helped on Friday. I cannot wait to dive into this one!

One stormy summer night, Olive and her best friend, Rose, begin to lose things. It starts with simple items like hair clips and jewellery, but soon it’s clear that Rose has lost something bigger; something she won’t talk about.

Then Olive meets three wild, mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel and Rowan. Like Rose, they’re mourning losses – and holding tight to secrets.

When they discover the ancient spellbook, full of hand-inked charms to conjure back lost things, they realise it might be their chance to set everything right. Unless it’s leading them towards secrets that were never meant to be found . . .

Thank you to Moon for this book which was also sent to cheer me up. I’ve been wanting to read this for years so really looking forward to finally getting around to it!

Harley Milano has dreamed of being a trapeze artist for as long as she can remember. With parents who run a famous circus in Las Vegas, she spends almost every night in the big top watching their lead aerialist perform, wishing with all her soul that she could be up there herself one day.

After a huge fight with her parents, who continue to insist she go to school instead, Harley leaves home, betrays her family and joins the rival traveling circus Maison du Mystère. There, she is thrust into a world that is both brutal and beautiful, where she learns the value of hard work, passion and collaboration. But at the same time, Harley must come to terms with the truth of her family and her past—and reckon with the sacrifices she made and the people she hurt in order to follow her dreams.

I don’t actually physically have this book yet but it is in my friend’s house and I have seen it but with the lockdown, it hasn’t quite made it to my hands yet but I thought I would still add it here. Thank you so much Beth for picking this one up for me!

eBooks

He said he was looking for a ‘partner in crime’ which everyone knows is shorthand for ‘a woman who isn’t real’.

April is kind, pretty, and relatively normal – yet she can’t seem to get past date five. Every time she thinks she’s found someone to trust, they reveal themselves to be awful, leaving her heartbroken. And angry.

If only April could be more like Gretel.

Gretel is exactly what men want – she’s a Regular Everyday Manic Pixie Dream Girl Next Door With No Problems.

The problem is, Gretel isn’t real. And April is now claiming to be her.

As soon as April starts ‘being’ Gretel, dating becomes much more fun – especially once she reels in the unsuspecting Joshua.

Finally, April is the one in control, but can she control her own feelings? And as she and Joshua grow closer, how long will she be able to keep pretending?

I was incredibly happy when I got the e-mail about this Netgalley approval! I am a huge fan of Holly Bourne and I cannot wait to dive into this book. Thank you Hodder & Stoughton for this review copy!