April Reading Wrap-Up

This is the month in which I finished my dissertation and in the first few days of May, I finished my degree altogether! So, all things considered, I did pretty decently reading-wise this month.

 The first book I finished this month was The Gladiators from Capua by Caroline Lawrence ****. As always, with this series, I really enjoyed the book as it took me on an emotional and educational rollercoaster. This is 100% one of my favourite children’s book series’ and I’ll be preaching that for many years to come! I definitely plan on reading the whole series once I am able to find them in the right covers in paperback and I know I’ll love them.

The next book I finished in April was The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert ****, which I had as an eARC from NetGalley (yes I was behind, it is distressing and I’m working on it!). I have a full review of this book on my blog which you can find here but as a short overview, I really enjoyed this read and am looking forward to the sequel.

 

The third book I got to was Magnus and the Jewelled Book of the Universe by S.L. Browne **, which was another eARC thanks to NetGalley. I also have a full review of this book up on the blog, find it here, but the essence of it was that I was disappointed. This book could have been so much more.

 

Book number four for the month was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas *****, which I was reading as part of a little travelling book club. My review of this book is up on my YouTube channel, and the link to the video is here. This was a very hard-hitting book which made me very angry, very emotional and I recommend it to anyone.

 

One book which was a big surprise to me was The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespear ****. I like Shakespear. I really didn’t expect to. I bought three mass market paperbacks of his plays as I thought they looked pretty and I decided I should attempt to “make my way” through some of his work. It turns out that both of the two I have read so far have been funny, entertaining, interesting… I really like Shakespear! I was expecting the climax of this to come a little sooner to allow for more time for resolution, however, as a play the timing works well as it is so I just need to get used to reading plays. A fun, quick little play which I didn’t expect to enjoy!

This month was the month I finally finished Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith ****! I haven’t read non-fiction in a very long while, despite it being one of my main genres to read as a child, so I had forgotten that they take me a lot longer to read than fiction books. This was a really interesting book, and the only reason it lost a star was that there were some sections which focused too much on humans. I understand bringing them in for comparison but at certain points, I had forgotten it was an octopus centred book until it mentioned them again. Other than that, this was informative, interesting and something that was very much outside of my comfort zone but that I enjoyed reading!

The last book I finished in April was Davenant’s Egg & Other Tales by Jemahl Evans, *****. If you’ve been following me on this blog for a little bit, you’ll know that I am a huge fan of Jemahl Evans’ work and have been ever since I got his first book. So it’ll be no surprise to any of you that I loved this set of short stories which tie in with the Blandford Candy universe! If you want to see more of my thoughts on this book then click here! If you want to see my thoughts on The Last Roundhead (book 1) then click here, and This Deceitful Light (book 2) then click here!

I wasn’t able to get to Ink or Rebel in the Sands this month. Mainly because I was so focused on my University work, it meant I didn’t want to spend too much time reading and also I wasn’t out and about much, meaning the Kindle (where Rebel in the Sands is) wasn’t used as much. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get to them in May, fingers crossed!

Considering that I have had one of the most important months of my educational life, I think I’ve done pretty well reading 7 books in April along with getting all of my assignments done. Now I have finished my degree I’m hoping I’ll be able to read some more in May and catch up a bit with some books I should have gotten to!

Stay tuned for my May tbr, which will go up soon!!

Magnus and the Book that has Potential

First things first, thank you to NetGalley for providing a free eARC of this book in return for an unbiased review.

I picked this book up as the concept sounded cute and interesting, and as a Geography student, the environmental viewpoint was really inviting. Sadly, I was disappointed by this book. Although I went into this book knowing that it was intended for children aged 7-9, I still felt that it was too childish for this audience. The writing was also sub-par in quality, and I hate when this happens in children’s literature as it feels like the author believed their full efforts weren’t needed for “just” a kids book.

There were sections of this book which should have been great emotional moments, with the characters feeling confused, shocked, worried, excited or more. However, this never seemed to happen and emotions were very muted. One such example of this: ‘”Oh.” Magnus was very excited.’ … was he? Was he really? With various sectors like this, I feel like this book could have really benefited from further input from editors and the writer having more experience with writing, both in general and for children.

I feel like this book is more aimed at 4-6 year-olds, as there is almost no emotional depth and the language used (with an exception being dinosaur species)  being very simple. There were plot setups for future books which older children would likely be able to spot with ease and the character of Em has what feels like no development.

Moving onto the good points of this short read. The concept of this book is actually really good! As mentioned above, I love the environmental aspect of the book which pushes the use of renewable energy and challenges the consumer-driven world we live in. The concept of the series is also really good, with multiple (seemingly parallel) universes and a well fleshed-out villain who is perfect for a kids book. There were a few really interesting scenes, one involving the Jewelled Book of the Universe and Em, and another involving a clever deception of the bad guys at the end!

I feel like this book could have been so much better and had so much potential. Possibly the book was rushed, or it was the authors first work and the editorial team didn’t analyse the writing as well as they could. The plot line is there, and with a little more development the characters are also. Fingers crossed that as this series continues on the author will develop and improve and make this an interesting kids series that I would happily recommend to my friends with children. I hope S. L. Browne manages to pull this off and end up with a really unique, fun and interesting children’s series with a brilliant environmental message behind it.