Strong women in media

 

Matt Killeen is an author I love from his Orphan Monster Spy WWII YA series, so when I saw that he had a small (like 45 pages small), free, eBook I knew that I needed to pick it up! It’s a collection of short essays about the strong, powerful women portrayed in media and how it shaped his childhood to end up in him becoming a feminist.

I will be honest and say that I hadn’t heard of all of these women. I don’t watch many movies, so that was part of it, but also just from exposure to different media. I did, however, really enjoy learning about them and I can see how this would be a great book for teenagers to delve into and find more women to admire.

This is a short review for a short book, but overall I believe you should pick this up. It’s free and quick to read so there’s no loss to you if you don’t like it, and it mentions some fantastic women who should be praised more often.

Delving into a different aspect of WWII

We’ve all heard the same sort of stories from WWII, fighting on the front lines, the fighter pilots and the blitz in London. What I haven’t read anything about before, which is my own fault, is what was happening in Africa. Despite this being a World War, most literature, both fiction and non, is based within Europe. That is understandable to an extent, this is where things kicked off. But to have read nothing from Africa? Well that changed after I read Devil Darling Spy by Matt Killeen. The sequel to Orphan Monster Spy, this book follows our protagonists from the first book into Egypt and beyond as they attempt to track down a lethal disease that seems to be man made.

(this post is spoiler free for both books)

I think the way that Matt Killeen portrayed racism within this book was well done, it explored the white saviour trope and how our main character Sarah has implicit bias. I also enjoyed the “letters” that Sarah wrote in her head when things were getting too much. This book was a great progression on from the first book, whilst still taking things in a completely different direction. I adore Matt Killeen’s writing, he is able to evoke powerful images in my minds eye as well as allowing you to empathise will all of the characters and their emotions.

I really do recommend picking both of these books up. Orphan Monster Spy delves into the life of young German girls, and Devil Darling Spy explores the less talked about aspects of the war and of white colonialism. Important topics to learn about and remember. I can’t wait to read more from him.

My best books of 2019!

 

I read a lot less 5* reads in 2019 compared to 2018, but I still had a decent selection to pick from for this list and I love all of these books!

I’m going to start off with my absolute favourite of the year, which seems backwards, but I can’t rank all of my other favourites so I may as well get the #1 spot up first!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Trousselot, is an absolutely gorgeous book.

There’s a small coffee shop in a basement which has a secret, people know about it but they can’t believe that it’s true. The staff in the shop will only tell the customers who they believe need the experience. And it’s not as positive as many believe before they sit down. But their lives are forever changed, big impacts are made. This book is beautifully written and I only picked it up randomly for NetGalley, I’m so so glad that I did. I recommend this above everything else on this list, which is a big statement seeing as these are all 5* reads for me. However, I feel like this book will appeal to many different audiences and so I really do encourage you to at least look at the GoodReads page and read the synopsis (link here) and consider picking it up. If you’re interested, then you can find my full review here.

Now onto the rest of my favourite books! There are 10 books for the rest of this list and they are in the order which I read them throughout 2019 (to avoid putting them in any other sort of order, because I really can’t decide).

The Mime Order by Samantha Shannon (The Bone Season #2) 

I read this on the train going back down to Portsmouth for my heart operation after my Christmas break, it’s around 8 hours of travelling so I had a lot of time to sit with the book and I really enjoyed it. Although the ending annoyed me so much and I had to stay composed because I was on a train!! Another amazing book from Samantha Shannon. Read my full review of the book here.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid’s Tale #1)

I’m massively late to this party, of course, but I finally picked up this book in a secondhand shop and read it early on in 2019. It was amazing. I loved the commentary on female autonomy and sadly it did really hit a chord with me, despite being written “so many” years ago. If you’re interested my full review is here.

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen (Orphan Monster Spy #1)

I got this the day before I started by BookTube channel, and it took me until now to read it. There’s a bit of a theme here but if I’m getting through my backlog I won’t complain! This YA WWII based book follows a young Jewish girl who can pass as an Aryan and becomes a spy in a Nazi girls school. Check out my full review here.

Book of Lies by Teri Terry

I really love everything I’ve read so far from Teri Terry, she is truly one of my favourite authors. This book follows a girl who isn’t loved by her family, they don’t care about her at all. But then she finds out a bit secret, something that she wasn’t supposed to know. Magical and mystical, this is such an interesting book. My review is here.

The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman (The Devouring Gray #1)

This is the first book that I ever requested from a publisher and it’s the first one that was sent to me! So of course this book will always have a special place for me, but on top of that it’s a fantastic YA book with sprinkles of magic and just enough weirdness to keep you completely hooked. I can’t wait to read book #2! Check out my full review here.

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman (Arc of the Scythe #2)

Have you read this series yet? Why not? If you like dystopian or just a great YA directed book then this is 100% a series you should pick up! There is no more natural death in the world, it’s been cured. So scythes must kull the population in order to prevent it getting out of control. But of course there are a lot of issues with this plan, it was never going to work. Check out my full review of Scythe here(which is book #1) and my review for Thunderhead here.

Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (Illuminae Files #1)

Another book I’ve finally read! This multi-media sci-fi YA is gripping and so interesting and I finally understand why people raved about it so much for years! I definitely need to get my hands on the rest of the trilogy and I can’t wait to carry on with this story and see where it goes. See my full review here.

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

I actually DNF’d this at my first attempted reading this year, but at a push from so many people online I picked it up to give it another go. I’m so rediculously glad that I did as this book is magical and wonderous and such a great read! If you’ve seen the film you’ll still love the book as there were only a few changes and I’m very glad I listened to everyone who told me to pick this back up! My full review is here.

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

I read this all in one day, sat by a paddling pool my aunt had set up on the hottest day of the year in the UK at 40 Celsius, that’s 104 Fahrenheit for those of you in the US. I was dying! Yet despite that, I was glued to my seat, gripped within this story. A fictional tale inspired by the suffering of so many from slavery in the US. My full review of this novel can be found here.

The Aliens are Coming by Ben Miller

This was the first book I read after finishing my MSc dissertation. I’m so glad I picked up a science-y non-fiction as this was perfect for me in the mindset that I was in and it was also really fun (Ben Miller is a UK comedian if you didn’t know) as well as teaching me more about the search for other life forms. Check out my review here.

And that’s it! Those are all of my favourite books of 2019! I did read a few more books which I gave 5*s throughout the year (Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein and Night by Elie Wiesel). I would have ranked them lower than these books, however, and given that there are already 11 books on this list I decided to cut them out. What was your favourite (or your favourites) of 2019? Have you read any of the books that are on my list? Let me know!!

 

Who’s really the monster?

This is one of the few books that I have impulse purchased at full price… and then I took almost a year to read it. Yup, that’s me! I learnt about this book at the NYALitFest 2018, where I saw Matt Killeen on some panels at the con and found myself intrigued. Then I learnt that his book was about WWII and I was sold, hook line and sinker. So I bought it! And I got it signed! And it’s pretty! But it took me a while to read the damn thing. Eventually, though I have, in the space of two days, and I gave it 5/5*!

There are so many different nuances within this book, there is, of course, the main plotline of a young Jewish girl, with no parents to look after her, attempting to escape the Nazi’s clutches. Somehow (I won’t say how here as I enjoyed finding out within the plot of the book) she ends up in a Nazi boarding school for girls, as a spy. I had expected this school to be nice, I was so incredibly wrong and I found it fascinating.

Along with this main plot, however, there are also various subplots behind it that carry on throughout the book. I also would like to give a trigger warning (if you don’t want to see it, don’t read the inset below, I’ve made it a very faint grey).

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Paedophilic rape 

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These subplots really add an extra dimension to this book, without taking away from the main story, and I was so completely engrossed throughout this whole book. If you are at all interested in WWII or just a dramatic and intense historical fiction that draws you right into the MC’s world, then give this beauty a go! I honestly have no bad words to say and I look forward to reading so much more from Matt in the future!

FEBRUARY TBR!! | 2019

It’s time for us bookworms (well, a decent number of us) to decide what we want to read for the next month! February is a short one, and I also have 2 exams and a 5000 word assignment this month (and I have to do work on my thesis too) so this isn’t going to be a huge tbr. A little spoiler into my January wrap up, I didn’t read Fall of Giants. It was too much for me in my surgery month and it’ll be too much in this hectic time at uni so I’m not adding it to my tbr again this February. Instead, I have three smaller books!

All the Walls of Belfast by Sarah J Carlson -> RELEASE DATE: 12th March 19

This is an arc copy of a book set in the capital of Northern Ireland, as a woman who is half-Irish, and grew up in America, comes back to meet her father and explore his world. If all goes well there’ll be some cool stuff up on the blog closer to March for this one. Fingers crossed!!

The Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

I couldn’t resist picking this up from the charity shop (thrift shop for non-Brits) and I know that if I don’t read it soon it’ll collect dust on my shelves for a while. So I’m intending to read this sooner rather than later so I can actually get the enjoyment out of it that I wanted when I bought it!

Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen

Simply put I’ve owned this for far too long and I really need to read it!! As it’s YA and a topic I love to read I’m really hoping that this’ll be a speedy one and I’ll be completely sucked in and absorbed.

 

And that’s it! Again, another short tbr. But I never stick to this small number of books and always end up reading something else (my smallest reading month since tracking was 4 books) so fingers crossed I’ll get to some more books as well, but I’ll only stick to these three for now so I don’t overwhelm myself.

What are you wanting to read in the coming month?