Christmas Book Haul!!

I was treated by my friends to so many books this Christmas! I’m so so grateful for them! For those who have a bookish social media I’ll leave a link so you can find them online and give them some love! Now, onto the books!

First up is the amazing Kari, who went overboard as always and bought me three books!! Check out her channel here!!! Thank you so much Kari, I can’t wait to delve into more steampunk books and you know how excited I am for the Nevernight series!! (she gifted me the first book in the series too, see! Overboard!!)

Caitlyn knows my weakness for pretty covers, and she knew that was exactly why I added this book to my wishlist, so she bought me That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston! (also it came as a floppy US paperback which was unexpected, we don’t get those here in the UK!) Here’s her channel for you to check out!

The marvellous Abi (who spells her name so beautifully lol, same as me!) gifted me Warcross by Marie Lu! I’m so excited about this beautiful book and I’m so grateful too! Here’s Abi’s instagram for you to check out!

The lovely Dom, her channel is here for your perusal, gifted me An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. I read The Deep by them earlier this year and fell in love (which reminds me, I need to grab a copy of that) which is why this was on my wishlist and I’m so excited to read more from them and I’m so grateful Dom!

The amazing Sam from Griff Reads, who’s BookTube is honestly what I wish mine was! She gifted me Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid which is one I am so grateful to have it on my shelves, thank you so much Sam!

And last but by no means least is my non-bookish friend Anny, who doesn’t have a social media presence but who saw English editions of Swedish classics (she’s Swedish) and knew not only that I would love them but that she’d be able to post them from Sweden! I’m so excited to delve into these mini books!!! Thanks Anny!!!

Thank you so much to everybody on this list! I’m so excited to get around to all these books and I hope that I love them all, and I hope for those who I sent gifts to that you guys enjoy them as well!! How was your Christmas? Did you get any bookish gifts? My family doesn’t buy me bookish gifts on strict orders of my mum, she’s not happy with how many books I own hahaha, so getting these was really lovely!!!

I always love Shusterman…

A book about water running dry, and you’re giving it to an often dehydrated chronic migraine sufferer with a degree in Geography? Yes please!

God this book was realistic. Creepily so. This is so close to what could actually happen if the taps ran dry, and California is an incredibly likely place for this to happen with its weather and the population density being so high.

This is a ya book, and our protagonists reflect that. We have a variety of view points, from around 13 to somewhere in the late teens (as a Brit I don’t know the US grade system so I can only approximate their ages without doing more research than I can be bothered to!) and this allows Neal and Jarrod to bounce around to different people’s priorities and how various personalities would react in this scenario.

Usually with Neal Shusterman’s writing I just fall into it and everything he writes gets 5* from me. I don’t know if it’s because he was writing with his son or if it’s just this book, but this “only” got a 4* from me. I found the middle to be a bit of a slog, and too much time was spent faffing around with “solutions” which we either already knew they were aiming for or knew they wouldn’t do. However, I still did enjoy the character development within these pages and also loved the beginning and the end of the story.

I’ve heard, on the grapevine, that this has been snapped up to be made as a movie, and I think it could do really well in this format. The slower stuff almost always has to be cut for a filmed adaptation so this should hopefully remove those parts that I was struggling through and focus on the drama and the action. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out on this one!

All in all this was actually a bit of a disappointment. Yes a 4* read was a disappointment. Because I know Neal Shusterman can make me fall in love with a world much more than he did here, and I went in expecting a 5* book and came out with an enjoyable story. But not with a new favourite.

I don’t know. I’ve not had this happen to me before so it’s a rather odd feeling. Have you ever had this experience? Let me know.