Waiting on Wednesday: The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The Girl in the Tower

Author: Katherine Arden
Series: The Bear and the Nightingale #2
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Fairytales
Release Date: January 25th 2018
Book Length: 384

Publisher: Del Rey

The magical adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as brave Vasya, now a young woman, is forced to choose between marriage or life in a convent and instead flees her home—but soon finds herself called upon to help defend the city of Moscow when it comes under siege.

Orphaned and cast out as a witch by her village, Vasya’s options are few: resign herself to life in a convent, or allow her older sister to make her a match with a Moscovite prince. Both doom her to life in a tower, cut off from the vast world she longs to explore. So instead she chooses adventure, disguising herself as a boy and riding her horse into the woods. When a battle with some bandits who have been terrorizing the countryside earns her the admiration of the Grand Prince of Moscow, she must carefully guard the secret of her gender to remain in his good graces—even as she realizes his kingdom is under threat from mysterious forces only she will be able to stop.

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US  

Top Ten Tuesday: Not So Hidden Gems

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday was 'Hidden Gems' but I recently wrote a post on Underrated YA Book/Series so I didn't want to repeat or have a pretty similar post. So I decided to write mine on Not So Hidden Gems, which is basically me just writing about the books I've read recently!

ARC Review: Autoboyography by Christina Lauren

Autoboyography
Author: Christina Lauren
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA, Contemporary, Romance, LGBT
Release Date: September 12th 2017
Book Length: 288

Publisher: Simon & Schuster 

Fangirl meets Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda in this funny and poignant coming-of-age novel from New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren about two boys who fall in love in a writing class—one from a progressive family and the other from a conservative religious community.

Three years ago, Tanner Scott’s family relocated from California to Utah, a move that nudged the bisexual teen temporarily back into the closet. Now, with one semester of high school to go, and no obstacles between him and out-of-state college freedom, Tanner plans to coast through his remaining classes and clear out of Utah.

But when his best friend Autumn dares him to take Provo High’s prestigious Seminar—where honor roll students diligently toil to draft a book in a semester—Tanner can’t resist going against his better judgment and having a go, if only to prove to Autumn how silly the whole thing is. Writing a book in four months sounds simple. Four months is an eternity.

It turns out, Tanner is only partly right: four months is a long time. After all, it takes only one second for him to notice Sebastian Brother, the Mormon prodigy who sold his own Seminar novel the year before and who now mentors the class. And it takes less than a month for Tanner to fall completely in love with him.

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US / YA Books Central

Waiting on Wednesday: The Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo

The Language of Thorns
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Series: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Release Date: September 26th 2017
Book Length: 224

Publisher: Macmillan Imprint

Love speaks in flowers. Truth requires thorns.

Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid's voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy's bidding but only for a terrible price.

Inspired by myth, fairy tale, and folklore, #1 New York Times–bestselling author Leigh Bardugo has crafted a deliciously atmospheric collection of short stories filled with betrayals, revenge, sacrifice, and love.

Perfect for new readers and dedicated fans, these tales will transport you to lands both familiar and strange—to a fully realized world of dangerous magic that millions have visited through the novels of the Grishaverse.

This collection of six stories includes three brand-new tales, all of them lavishly illustrated with art that changes with each turn of the page, culminating in six stunning full-spread illustrations as rich in detail as the stories themselves.

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US  

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I read in School

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's Top Ten Tuesday was a 'Back to School Freebie' so I decided to post the books/series that I was reading at school. This was such a fun post to write, I got all nostalgic remembering how fun it was reading them for the first time!

Cover Reveal: The Night Realm by Annette Marie

  

The Night Realm
Author: Annette Maire
Series: Spell Weaver #1
Genre: Adult, Urban Fantasy
Release Date: October 20th 2017

Publisher: Dark Owl Fantasy Inc

Clio would love nothing more than to go home. But as the illegitimate daughter of the nymph king, she's stuck in the human world, exiled until she can earn a place in the royal family. Then her half-bother offers her a chance to prove herself. All she has to do is acquire some magic … by stealing it from the most dangerous spell weavers in the Underworld.

Lyre prefers to go unnoticed, which is a tricky objective for an incubus. He can’t hide his looks or his coveted spell weaving skills, but he's learned to mask his true intentions. As an unwilling pawn of the tyrannical Hades family, he stays alive by keeping one step ahead of his masters.

Now he's been assigned to watch over a visitor from the Overworld—one who's definitely hiding something. And with her unholy talent for triggering chaos and catastrophe, his job just keeps getting more perilous. Clearly, she'll never survive this world.

The thing is, he's no longer sure he can survive it either.

Spell Weaver is a standalone trilogy that takes place a few years before the start of the Steel & Stone series.

Goodreads 

Author Bio:
Annette Marie is the author of the Amazon best-selling Steel & Stone series, which includes Goodreads Choice Award nominee Yield the Night, and fantasy trilogy Red Winter. Her first love is fantasy, but fast- paced urban fantasy and tantalizing forbidden romances are her guilty pleasures. She lives in the frozen winter wasteland of Alberta, Canada (okay, it's not quite that bad) with her comparatively sensible husband and their furry minion of darkness—sorry, cat—Caesar. When not writing, she can be found elbow-deep in one art project or another while blissfully ignoring all adult responsibilities.

Website / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter / Amazon

I am soo excited for this book it's unreal. I'm already a huge Annette Marie fan and I'm so excited Lyre is finally getting his own book. Bring on October 20th!

ARC Review: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

The City of Brass
Author: S. A. Chakraborty
Series: The Daevabad Trilogy #1
Genre: YA, Fantasy, Historical
Release Date: March 8th 2018
Book Length: 525

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty—an imaginative alchemy of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and One Thousand and One Nights, in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts

Nahri has never believed in magic. Certainly, she has power; on the streets of 18th century Cairo, she’s a con woman of unsurpassed talent. But she knows better than anyone that the trade she uses to get by—palm readings, zars, healings—are all tricks, sleights of hand, learned skills; a means to the delightful end of swindling Ottoman nobles.

But when Nahri accidentally summons an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior to her side during one of her cons, she’s forced to accept that the magical world she thought only existed in childhood stories is real. For the warrior tells her a new tale: across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire, and rivers where the mythical marid sleep; past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises, and mountains where the circling hawks are not what they seem, lies Daevabad, the legendary city of brass? A city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound.

In that city, behind gilded brass walls laced with enchantments, behind the six gates of the six djinn tribes, old resentments are simmering. And when Nahri decides to enter this world, she learns that true power is fierce and brutal. That magic cannot shield her from the dangerous web of court politics. That even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

After all, there is a reason they say be careful what you wish for . . .

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US / YA Books Central

Waiting on Wednesday: A Reaper at the Gates by Sabaa Tahir

A Reaper at the Gates
Author: Sabaa Tahir
Series: An Ember in the Ashes #3
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Release Date: April 10th 2018
Book Length: 464

Publisher: Razorbill

Beyond the Empire and within it, the threat of war looms ever larger. The Blood Shrike, Helene Aquilla, is assailed on all sides. Emperor Marcus, haunted by his past, grows increasingly unstable, while the Commandant capitalizes on his madness to bolster her own power. As Helene searches for a way to hold back the approaching darkness, her sister’s life and the lives of all those in the Empire hang in the balance.

Far to the east, Laia of Serra knows the fate of the world lies not in the machinations of the Martial court, but in stopping the Nightbringer. But while hunting for a way to bring him down, Laia faces unexpected threats from those she hoped would aid her, and is drawn into a battle she never thought she’d have to fight.

And in the land between the living and the dead, Elias Veturius has given up his freedom to serve as Soul Catcher. But in doing so, he has vowed himself to an ancient power that will stop at nothing to ensure Elias’s devotion—even at the cost of his humanity.

Goodreads 

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Top Ten Underrated YA Books/Series

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Underrated YA Books/Series

Hello!

So I've never taken part in Top Ten Tuesday before but I thought why not? I'm trying to get back into blogging and one of my main reasons for taking breaks is the pressure of posts and content/per week. 

It's impossible to have reviews posted every couple of days if I'm not actually reading anything, so I'm going to take part of Top Ten Tuesday and Waiting on Wednesday, plus what better week to start than by choosing my own subject!! *prepares for fangirling*

Waiting on Wednesday: An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

An Enchantment of Ravens
Author: Margaret Rogerson
Series: Standalone
Genre: YA, Fantasy
Release Date: September 26th 2017
Book Length: 304

Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books

Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread, weave cloth, or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized among them. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes – a weakness that could cost him his life.

Furious and devastated, Rook spirits her away to the autumnlands to stand trial for her crime. Waylaid by the Wild Hunt’s ghostly hounds, the tainted influence of the Alder King, and hideous monsters risen from barrow mounds, Isobel and Rook depend on one another for survival. Their alliance blossoms into trust, then love, violating the fair folks’ ruthless Good Law. There's only one way to save both their lives, Isobel must drink from the Green Well, whose water will transform her into a fair one—at the cost of her Craft, for immortality is as stagnant as it is timeless.

Isobel has a choice: she can sacrifice her art for a future, or arm herself with paint and canvas against the ancient power of the fairy courts. Because secretly, her Craft represents a threat the fair folk have never faced in all the millennia of their unchanging lives: for the first time, her portraits have the power to make them feel.

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US 

Review: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Defy the Stars
Author: Claudia Gray
Series: Constellation #1
Genre: YA, Science-Fiction, Romance
Release Date: April 6th 2017
Book Length: 425

Publisher: Hot Key Books

Noemi is a young and fearless soldier of Genesis, a colony planet of a dying Earth. But the citizens of Genesis are rising up - they know that Earth's settlers will only destroy this planet the way they destroyed their own. And so a terrible war has begun.

When Noemi meets Abel, one of Earth's robotic mech warriors, she realizes that Abel himself may provide the key to Genesis' salvation. Abel is bound by his programming to obey her - even though her plan could result in his destruction. But Abel is no ordinary mech. He's a unique prototype, one with greater intelligence, skill and strength than any other. More than that, he has begun to develop emotions, a personality and even dreams. Noemi begins to realise that if Abel is less than human, he is more than a machine. If she destroys him, is it murder? And can a cold-blooded murder be redeemed by the protection of a world?

Stranded together in space, they go on a whirlwind adventure through Earth's various colony worlds, alongside the countless Vagabonds who have given up planetary life altogether and sail forever between the stars. Each step brings them closer - both to each other and to the terrible decision Noemi will have to make about her world's fate, and Abel's.

Goodreads / Amazon UK / Amazon US / YA Books Central

10 Books/Series I Still Haven't Read Yet...

10 Books/Series I Still Haven't Read Yet

Hi Everyone!

Sorry it's been a while but I had so much stuff going on that I had to take a little break but I'm back for good. Anyway I thought I'd write a post about all the books I've been meaning to read but still haven't gotten around too... prepare your Game of Throne shame bell!

I'm hoping this post will finally force me to read some if not all of them but if there one or more I simply must read right away or even better never ever read then do let me know.