First Class Post - August 2021

Ad: Titles with an asterisk (*) were gifted to me by the publisher for the purposes of providing an honest review.

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Quick Fire Review: The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

The Half Life of Molly Pierce by Katrina Leno

Published: 2nd August 2016 | Publisher: HarperTeen | Source: Bought
Katrina Leno's Website

For all of her seventeen years, Molly feels like she's missed bits and pieces of her life. Her memory is perforated with holes and gaps. But then a horrible accident changes everything.

Now she's starting to remember her own disturbing secrets. And bit by bit, Molly uncovers the separate life she seems to have led--and the love that she can't let go. From The StoryGraph.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features descriptions of blood, mention of animal cruelty, a motorbike accident, death, depression, suicide ideation, and dissociative personality disorder.

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Review: Cool For the Summer by Dahlia Adler

Cool For the Summer by Dahlia Adler

Published: 11th May 2021 | Publisher: Wednesday Books | Source: Bought
Dahlia Adler’s Website

Dahlia Adler's Cool for the Summer is a story of self-discovery and new love. It's about the things we want and the things we need. And it's about the people who will let us be who we are.

Lara's had eyes for exactly one person throughout her three years of high school: Chase Harding. He's tall, strong, sweet, a football star, and frankly, stupid hot. Oh, and he's talking to her now. On purpose and everything. Maybe...flirting, even? No, wait, he's definitely flirting, which is pretty much the sum of everything Lara's wanted out of life.

Except she's haunted by a memory. A memory of a confusing, romantic, strangely perfect summer spent with a girl named Jasmine. A memory that becomes a confusing, disorienting present when Jasmine herself walks through the front doors of the school to see Lara and Chase chatting it up in front of the lockers.

Lara has everything she ever wanted: a tight-knit group of friends, a job that borders on cool, and Chase, the boy of her literal dreams. But if she's finally got the guy, why can't she stop thinking about the girl? From The StoryGraph

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features

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Magical Readathon: Orilium - The Novice Path TBR

I've decided to take part in a readathon! I learnt about the Magical Readathon in a Discord group I belong to, and it sounds amazing! It's not just a straight readathon; a fantasy world has been created G of Book Roast, and participants create characters to take part, and reading books completes challenges the characters face within the story. Aeldia is a fully fleshed out fantasy world with various fantasy races with magical powers, and you start off making your way to Orilium, where there's a magical university we will be studying at, and it sounds amazing! It's not quite as complicated as it sounds; The Novice Path, happening throughout September, is a lead in to the bigger readathons that will take place next year, starting in April, and it's an easy introduction. If you're interested, check out the video linked to.

I thought I'd share my TBR here of what I'm hoping to read for The Novice Path!

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Quick Fire Review: Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno

Published: 9th June 2020 | Publisher: HarperTeen | Source: Bought
Katrina Leno's Website

A magic passed down through generations...

Georgina Fernweh waits with growing impatience for the tingle of magic in her fingers—magic that has been passed down through every woman in her family. Her twin sister, Mary, already shows an ability to defy gravity. But with their eighteenth birthday looming at the end of this summer, Georgina fears her gift will never come.

An island where strange things happen...

No one on the island of By-the-Sea would ever call the Fernwehs what they really are, but if you need the odd bit of help—say, a sleeping aid concocted by moonlight—they are the ones to ask.

No one questions the weather, as moody and erratic as a summer storm.

No one questions the (allegedly) three-hundred-year-old bird who comes to roost on the island every year.

A summer that will become legend...

When tragedy strikes, what made the Fernweh women special suddenly casts them in suspicion. Over the course of her last summer on the island—a summer of storms, of love, of salt—Georgina will learn the truth about magic, in all its many forms. From Goodreads.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features drug use, animal cruelty/death, and rape.

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Review: The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert

Published: 8th February 2018 | Publisher: Penguin | Source: Bought
Melissa Albert on Instagram

Seventeen-year-old Alice and her mother have spent most of Alice’s life on the road, always a step ahead of the uncanny bad luck biting at their heels. But when Alice’s grandmother, the reclusive author of a cult-classic book of pitch-dark fairy tales, dies alone on her estate, the Hazel Wood, Alice learns how bad her luck can really get: her mother is stolen away―by a figure who claims to come from the Hinterland, the cruel supernatural world where her grandmother's stories are set. Alice's only lead is the message her mother left behind: “Stay away from the Hazel Wood.”

Alice has long steered clear of her grandmother’s cultish fans. But now she has no choice but to ally with classmate Ellery Finch, a Hinterland superfan who may have his own reasons for wanting to help her. To retrieve her mother, Alice must venture first to the Hazel Wood, then into the world where her grandmother's tales began―and where she might find out how her own story went so wrong. From The StoryGraph

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Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features blood, abduction, being held at gun point, insidious threat of sexual violence, violence against women, and murder.

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Support JKR OR Trans & NB People - You Cannot Do Both

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Support JKR OR Trans & NB People

- You Cannot Do Both 

I am mad. I am furious. OwlCrate, a book subscription box service, has decided to start selling products inspired by the Harry Potter series again. They stopped doing so last year when JKR started spouting her transphobic diatribe, but has now decided to do so again, because "it's too much a part of [them] to let go."

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Review: Everything All at Once by Katrina Leno

Links with an asterisk (*) are Ad: Affiliate Links, which means if you make a purchase through them, I'll make a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Everything All at Once by Katrina Leno

Published: 25th July 2017 | Publisher: HarperTeen | Source: Bought
Katrina Leno's Website

Lottie Reeves has always struggled with anxiety, and when her beloved Aunt Helen dies, Lottie begins to fear that her own unexpected death might be waiting around every corner.

Aunt Helen wasn’t a typical aunt. She was the author of the best–selling Alvin Hatter series, about siblings who discover the elixir of immortality. Her writing inspired a generation of readers.

In her will, she leaves one last writing project—just for Lottie. It’s a series of letters, each containing mysterious instructions designed to push Lottie out of her comfort zone. Soon, Lottie’s trying some writing of her own, leaping off cliffs, and even falling for a boy she’s only just met. Then the letters reveal an extraordinary secret about the inspiration for the Alvin Hatter series. Lottie finds herself faced with an impossible choice, one that will force her to confront her greatest fear once and for all. From The StoryGraph.

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Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features panic attacks, breast cancer, death of a family member, and discussion about suicide.

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Quick Fire Review: Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

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Harrow Lake by Kat Ellis

Published: 9th July 2020 | Publisher: Penguin | Source: Bought
Kat Ellis' Website

There's something bad in the water...

Lola Nox is the daughter of a celebrated horror filmmaker, and thinks she knows all about Harrow Lake, the setting of his most famous movie.

But when her father is brutally attacked and she's sent there to stay with her reclusive grandmother, she realizes the town is harbouring secrets more horrifying than she could ever have imagined. Not only is this the place where her mother disappeared without a trace, it's a town holding on to a dark past that's even more frightening than her father's movies. As Lola is drawn deeper into the town's grip, she starts to question what's real, what happened to her mother, and whether she'll ever get out of Harrow Lake alive. From The StoryGraph

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Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features child abuse, domestic abuse, and discussion of suicide.

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Quick Fire Review: House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

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House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland

Published: 6th April 2021 | Publisher: Hot Key Books | Source: Bought
Krystal Sutherland's Website

A dark, twisty modern fairytale where three sisters discover they are not exactly all that they seem and evil things really do go bump in the night.

Iris Hollow and her two older sisters are unquestionably strange. Ever since they disappeared on a suburban street in Scotland as children only to return a month a later with no memory of what happened to them, odd, eerie occurrences seem to follow in their wake. And they're changing. First, their dark hair turned white. Then, their blue eyes slowly turned black. They have insatiable appetites yet never gain weight. People find them disturbingly intoxicating, unbearably beautiful, and inexplicably dangerous.

But now, ten years later, seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow is doing all she can to fit in and graduate high school on time--something her two famously glamourous globe-trotting older sisters, Grey and Vivi, never managed to do. But when Grey goes missing without a trace, leaving behind bizarre clues as to what might have happened, Iris and Vivi are left to trace her last few days. They aren't the only ones looking for her though. As they brush against the supernatural they realize that the story they've been told about their past is unraveling and the world that returned them seemingly unharmed ten years ago, might just be calling them home. From The StoryGraph

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Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, blood, alcoholism, suicide, missing children, and body horror.

Continue reading Quick Fire Review: House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland