Eve of Man by Giovanna and Tom Fletcher| A Review

Eve of Man is a book I had barely heard about, which was kind of surprising. The authors are a married couple and Tom Fletcher is one of the member of McFly so I expected more promotion for this YA book! But thankfully for me my wonderful parents sent me a package down to uni whilst I was doing my postgrad in Portsmouth and they put this book in the box for me!

Sadly, if it wasn’t obvious, I didn’t end up reading the book for quite a while after they sent it to me. In face my MSc thesis was submitted over one year ago now (it was the 4th of October, I remember it well!) and I did that from my parents place so it’s definitely been a long time. But at least I finally got around to it! Now. Onto the book itself.

Eve is the only human female who has been born in the last 50(ish) years. All the other babies were male. And humanity freaked the hell out. When they found out that there was a girl in the womb organisations did all that they could to get her out into the world safe. And once she was born she was placed into a protective bubble, high up away from the rest of the population, and given an in depth education with the only interaction she had being from older women charged with looking after her, guards, and a virtual projection of a friend.

She’s supposed to be paired with a boy who has been selected for her. She gets a choice of three. With him they will restart the human race. But then Eve meets Bram, when she never should have, and now she doesn’t want to follow blindly anymore.

This book is a lot of fun. It is most definitely a stereotypical YA dystopian, it hits all of the beats and it does skip over some complications in order to make the story run smoothly. But I do have to say, despite this. Despite immediately gaining people’s trust, despite this being the highest security building on the planet, despite lots of little niggles that I found with this… It was so enjoyable!

I was totally sucked into this book, it was so fun, I adored the concept and also it ran at a pace which kept me inside of the story and really made me wanna keep reading. I now actually want to carry on with this series and I need to pick up The Eve Illusion which was published April of 2020. I’m looking forward to it!

Have you read this book? Have you even heard of it? Let me know!!

Crown of Midnight – a review

Throne of Glass was a fun book, and I enjoyed it, but Crown of Midnight is a much better sequel and I’m glad I picked it up! Celaena Sardothien, royal assassin, is the King of Adarlan’s deadliest weapon. She must win her freedom through his enemies’ blood – but she cannot bear to kill for the crown. And every death Celaena fakes, every lie she tells, put those she loves at risk.

Sarah J Maas does so much better with Celaena in this book. All the way through the first book we are told that she is an insanely talented assassin, but this doesn’t come across in any way, shape, nor form throughout the book. In other words we’re told not shown. Thankfully, in this book we actually get shown her skills various times and it makes it a lot more believable that she would win the original contest and be known and feared across the city.

One issue that I’ve had with both books so far is that the pacing at the beginning is SO SLOW. I find myself bored so much at the beginning of both books and then by the end I’m enamoured and wanting more! This kinda scares me for Heir of Fire because it’s a much bigger book and I really don’t want to be going through 100/200+ pages of boredom to get to the good bits.

Overall this book has made me want to carry on in the series and for me was so much better than the first book! I just hope that this trend continues!!! Have you read this series? If so tell me what to expect!

City of Glass by Cassandra Clare | A Review

I did it! I read the complete first trilogy of The Mortal Instruments! This definitely wasn’t on purpose, but I read City of Ashes and just knew that I wanted to continue on with the story (and seeing as I read City of Bones in 2018 I didn’t want to lose that motivation!). It is obvious that this was intended to be the end of the series, as everything is wrapped up in a nice little bow. However, if you didn’t know by now, my opinion of this series is that it’s trash YA (and that I’m trash along with it) so the nice little bow felt right! And don’t worry, this is a spoiler free review.

In this book we finally get to see things coming together. The character development across the previous two books has left these characters actually forming relationships with one another (not always friendships!) and the way in which this then impacts the storyline is really well done.

Having them finally visiting this city that they’ve mentioned so many times was a lot of fun and I enjoy the different ways that we get to learn about the city from the various perspectives and locations that people are in.

There was a BIG shock reveal in this book, but from the rampant spoilers on the internet I had already known about it! It just made me impatient to want to get to it! But it did make the pre-reveal sections read differently in my head than they would have been. I’m kinda fine with it having been spoilt.

There does seem to be a lack of development in the female characters compared to the males. I know so much more about the boys, and that’s saying something considering that our main character Clary is a girl. She still feels a little two dimensional (I would say one but she’s at least improved a little) compared to the four dimensional Jace or Simon. I did love Izzy in this book though, vastly more than previously.

Overall, this was a fun, if not particularly well written book. But I still do intend to carry on with these series’ and will be reading the first Infernal Devices book next!! (I’ve been told that’s a good order to go in). I do still hope that the quality of the writing, and the development of the female characters, improves, but the story itself is a lot of fun.

Cruel Crown

This is a novella comprising of two short stories, Queen Song and Steal Scars, from the Red Queen world by Victoria Aveyard. Before I had read this book, it’d been a while since I had been in this world, having read Glass Sword in January 2018 and getting around to this book in January 2019. I had been worried about diving back into this world and becoming confused, and yes, at the very beginning I was a little confused as to who I was reading about and at what point in time within the story I was at, however, this was quickly resolved and I knew what was going on. I also feel like the stories work well even if you don’t fully comprehend how they link to Red Queen as you read them, Victoria Aveyard has done a really good job in making them accessible to readers at any stage within this series.

Now onto the stories themselves, the first story within this collection,  Queen Song, is set well before the events within Red Queen and follows Cal’s mother in her journey to the court and how the world ended up like it did before Mare came crashing in. It’s quite a sad story, as you may be expecting if you remember being told about Cal’s mum in the first book, however, as I didn’t remember it took me off guard and was quite emotional.

The second, and last, story in this collection is Steel Scars, this book focuses on Farley and her rise within the Scarlet Guard. These events are much closer to the time of Red Queen, with the very end of the story overlapping slightly. It was really interesting to me to read about how this organisation works more and to see it from the point of view of someone within this system rather than from Mare’s view, where she doesn’t understand how it works or why.

Both of these stories were really interesting and I feel that they added significant value to the world, they’ve also made me more excited to read book three and continue with the series! I gave it 4/5* as a novella and I really do recommend if you enjoy the main books within the Red Queen series.

Hero at the Fall by Alwyn Hamilton

I can’t believe it’s done! I finished the series and I need to read more from Alwyn Hamilton already. (Check out my review of book one here)I ADORED the writing and the characters and the world building and just everything about this series. I had to read all three of these books slowly and take my time because I just wanted to be fully engrossed within the world.

There were some amazing moments within this book, which I won’t go into specifics about to avoid spoiling you if you’re yet to read it, however, they’re awesome and well written and fit the plot so beautifully! It reminds me of the Godkissed Continent series by A.B. Endacott (review of the first book here) which is also a gorgeous fantasy world.

The relationships developed within this story, both romantic and not, are done with so much depth and investment. I really felt as though I knew each relationship intimately and therefore felt what the characters felt deep within me. I cried quite a bit at the end of this book, bittersweetly.

One of my favourite ever trilogies, five stars to all three books obviously, and I look forward to reading literally everything Alwyn Hamilton writes that I can get my hands on!

Fractured by Teri Terry

This is the second book in the Slated trilogy by Teri Terry, (check out my review of book one here) which follows a girl named Kyla after she has been through the slating process and has lost her memories.

Yes, this is the middle book in the series, but it definitely doesn’t suffer from middle-book-syndrome! This book not only keeps up the fast pace set by book one but smashed through that and ups the ante yet again, keeping you on the edge of your seat and making the book incredibly difficult to put down.

There is so much character development within this book, as well as introducing new characters and developing them well also. Kyla’s memories are becoming more clear, although still blurry, and she has a great desire to question why she was slated. Who she had been. This is done very well, and feels very realistic and it also feels that it is how a teenage girl would react to this bizarre situation.

I am incredibly invested in the relationships that have been developed throughout these two books, both those that are romantic and platonic, friendly and unfriendly. There is so much thought and attention to detail put into this book and book three can only get bigger and better! I just hope it doesn’t break my heart in the process!

Have you picked up Slated yet? Or any other books by Teri Terry? I’ve only read this series by her but I definitely need to read more from her!