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Jandy Nelson meets Friday Night Lights: a sweeping story about love and family from an exceptional new voice in YA. With a grandmother from China and another from Ghana, fifteen-year-old Wing Jones is often caught between worlds. But when tragedy strikes, Wing discovers a talent for running she never knew she had. Wing’s speed could bring her family everything it needs. It could also stop Wing getting the one thing she wants.

Wow. What an incredible debut! I would never have guessed this book was a debut – the writing is simply beautiful.

This book is like no other. The writing was beautiful in a simple kind of way, and it helped the pages turn so quickly.

I honestly didn’t know how I’d find this book – the synopsis is quite brief and it left me pretty clueless about the book apart from the racial diversity. It really was a pleasant surprise!

“I feel like it might take over, like I might drown in my wanting.”

The characters had real depth to them. The culture flowed and shone throughout the novel, giving the story a kind of magic I don’t often see in YA. The contemporary style didn’t feel like contemporary – it felt like more. Contemporary is simple…this book was more.

Talking about the characters, Wing made for an amazing MC. She was relatable, honest and well, real. She made mistakes, she didn’t know what she wanted and she didn’t try to cover up her feelings to make herself more likable. I also found her incredibly inspirational, brave and heroic. She is my new bookish hero!

But it wasn’t just Wing that I adored. I loved the dynamic in her family and friends. I love how much they were included in the novel. Sometimes, you can read a romance novel without even meeting side-characters. In fact, it’s rare to have real depth to everyone in a story. This book beat all of those sterotypes.

“Like I’ll be nothing but want.”

The plot flowed magically for a book set over a period of months. I lost myself in the time and I couldn’t have told you how long the book lasted. We obviously skipped days and maybe even weeks at times but just like with Windfall, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

Let’s also mention that magical realism! I won’t talk about it too much, but this book features some great little side animals that I thought would find weird and childish but I honestly didn’t. It was lovely.

“Like I won’t be able to think about anything or do anything but just want him.”

Let’s talk a little about the diversity in this book. This book includes people of so many different nationalities and backgrounds – and I loved that about it! But it doesn’t just stop at race, this book also featured an lesbian side-character who I think was represented really well.

Along with diversity, this book also tackled some really important topics – love, friendship, grief, growing up, family, and bullying.

Okay, so I’m sure you’ve gathered there are a LOT of things I loved about this book. I could literally go on and on. So I’ll wrap up with one last thing – go and read this. Please.

★★★★★

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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Alice doesn’t believe in luck—at least, not the good kind. But she does believe in love, and for some time now, she’s been pining for her best friend, Teddy. On his eighteenth birthday—just when it seems they might be on the brink of something—she buys him a lottery ticket on a lark. To their astonishment, he wins $140 million, and in an instant, everything changes.
At first, it seems like a dream come true, especially since the two of them are no strangers to misfortune. As a kid, Alice won the worst kind of lottery possible when her parents died just over a year apart from each other. And Teddy’s father abandoned his family not long after that, leaving them to grapple with his gambling debts. Through it all, Teddy and Alice have leaned on each other. But now, as they negotiate the ripple effects of Teddy’s newfound wealth, a gulf opens between them. And soon, the money starts to feel like more of a curse than a windfall.
As they try to find their way back to each other, Alice learns more about herself than she ever could have imagined . . . and about the unexpected ways in which luck and love sometimes intersect.

Considering the length of this book (over 400 pages!), I’m surprised how it sped by for me. I read it in around a day, and read around half of it during a 3 hour flight.

I loved a lot of things about this book, but I also had a few annoyances. As contemporaries are, it was pretty middle of the road, I guess. It wasn’t over-the-top with incredible writing and pieces. But it wasn’t underwhelming, either.

Let’s start by saying I felt mixed about the characters. I liked Alice, and I loved Leo and Max. It was great to have LGBT side-characters that didn’t feel there just to make the book politically correct. But Teddy. Ugh, Teddy. I kind of had a love-hate relationship with Alice’s love interest. For one, he turns into a bit of a douche. Yes, he’s only 18 and he’s obviously over-excited about winning so much money. But the way he spends it and strings Alice along quite a bit just got on my nerves.

“We have all sorts of words that could describe us.”

Unfortunately, Alice also annoyed me a little bit in some parts. Yes, both her and Teddy had been through a lot and she obviously was battling with demons of her own. But I felt like she also strung a certain character along because she couldn’t face that Teddy didn’t want her.

However, I loved the concept of this book. YA can be pretty restricted now with ideas and plot lines, so the lottery idea felt fresh and interesting. I also liked the pacing. Rather than go through everything in too much detail day-by-day, the book jumped whole weeks, and it worked. I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything and it made the book pass pretty quickly.

“But we get to choose which ones are most important.” 

I also like the topics discussed in this book. It made the book real and relatable, even if it was a little hard-hitting at times.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy this one. I really did, and I’d recommend it to romance/contemporary readers! I’ll definitely be reading more of Smith’s work – this one just felt a little lacking and gets a mixed review from me.

★★★

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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Steffi doesn’t talk, but she has so much to say.
Rhys can’t hear, but he can listen.
Their love isn’t a lightning strike, it’s the rumbling roll of thunder.
Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life – she’s been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He’s deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she’s assigned to look after him. To Rhys, it doesn’t matter that Steffi doesn’t talk, and as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she’s falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it. 

I knew I liked Sara Barnards writing and style. But I had no idea how much this book would blow me away.

This book astounded me on so many levels, I don’t even know where to start. I’m just going to have to go through them all.

“Here are three separate but similar things: shyness, introversion and social anxiety. You can have one, two or all three of these things simultaneously.”

I’ll start with the thing that stands out about this book the most. In A Quiet Kind of Thunder, Steffi suffers from selective mutism and her love interest, Rhys, is deaf. They communicate through BSL (British Sign Language). On a personal level, this really resonated with me. My career dream is to work as a teacher or in learning support, so I have actually considered learning BSL or ASL (American Sign Language) in the past. I know basic BSL (the alphabet/numbers etc) and I understand the complete importance and flow of it, and I love how that shone through in this novel.

But BSL isn’t just something that makes this novel unique – although I find it amazing that Barnard chose to write about it. It completely changes the lives of both Steffi and Rhys, and impacts the way they grow together. I really admire Barnard for taking such a big plunge and writing their story. I am so grateful to her.

Another of the struggles Steffi faces is anxiety. As an ex-sufferer myself of separation anxiety and a sufferer of anxiety, I was astounded by how well Barnard wrote about Steffi’s panic attacks and general anxiety. I can fortunately say I have only suffered one (serious) panic attack in my recent years, but this does mean I completely related to Steffi on a personal level.

“A lot of the time people think they’re all the same thing, but that’s just not true.”

All that aside, there were so many other things that stood out about this novel. For one – friends and family! Yes, friends and family are often mentioned in YA. But this novel was just something else. I know from Beautiful Broken Things that Barnard does a good job writing about teenage friendships, but she went above and beyond my expectations with Tem. Tem is Steffi’s best friend, and I love the dynamic between her and Steffi in this novel. It added something fresh and interesting that I really don’t often come across in YA, and I absolutely loved having that relationship in A Quiet Kind of Thunder.

It wasn’t just Rhys and Steffi’s friends that stood out to me. I love the relationship Steffi and Rhys had with their families and how they all bounced off one another beautifully. I also loved Steffi’s interest in animals and Rhys’s love for video games. It rounded out their characters and made the story not just about romance.

“Extroverts can be shy, introverts can be bold, and a condition like anxiety can strike whatever kind of social animal you are.”

So to finish up, let’s talk a bit about the romance. Was it insta? Kind of, but it felt so different. Steffi and Rhys had a lot of issues and faced many struggles. This made their relationship feel layered and somehow much more real. I loved Steffi and Rhys. I loved them falling in love and their adventures together. It was tentative, sweet and it honestly made me cry. I feel honoured to have been welcomed into their world.

Overall? This book really feels special to me. It shows anxiety in a way I haven’t seen before in YA, and showcased an incredibly important story. I fell in love with Steffi, Rhys, Rita (Steffi’s dog) and every other little thing about this novel. It’s one I will hold close to my heart for a long time.

★★★★★

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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Seventeen-year-old Flora Banks has no short-term memory. Her mind resets itself several times a day, and has since the age of ten, when the tumor that was removed from Flora’s brain took with it her ability to make new memories. That is, until she kisses Drake, her best friend’s boyfriend, the night before he leaves town. Miraculously, this one memory breaks through Flora’s fractured mind, and sticks. Flora is convinced that Drake is responsible for restoring her memory and making her whole again. So when an encouraging email from Drake suggests she meet him on the other side of the world, Flora knows with certainty that this is the first step toward reclaiming her life. With little more than the words “be brave” inked into her skin, and written reminders of who she is and why her memory is so limited, Flora sets off on an impossible journey to Svalbard, Norway, the land of the midnight sun, determined to find Drake. But from the moment she arrives in the arctic, nothing is quite as it seems, and Flora must “be brave” if she is ever to learn the truth about herself, and to make it safely home.

Note: Forgive me for not being here! I’m currently away in Madeira with my family but I’m getting a lot of reading in and here’s my review for the first book I’ve finished since I arrived.

Unfortunately I don’t have my laptop with me, so forgive this review for being a little all over the place! I’ll edit it properly once I’m back off my phone.

I’ll be back home on Saturday, but for now I’ll just be posting reviews of books I’m finishing. Other posts would be too hard without my laptop!

I think the easiest way to describe this book is unique. It’s possibly the most unique YA book I’ve ever read.

This book made me reconsider the boundaries of YA itself. It pushed everything I know about YA aside and created something entirely new and wonderful.

I won’t lie – I found this book a little mixed up. The narrative is some of the strangest I’ve come across. Due to Flora’s amnesia, a lot of the book is deeply repetitive (especially in the first ~100 pages). This kind of annoyed me a little for a while, but I did get used to it and understand how it was vital to the story.

“I am really here. Yet I know I am not.”

I obviously can’t speak for the accuracy of how Flora’s illness was portrayed, but I have to say it felt real. The complex plot really reflected the wild randomness of Flora’s mind, and I really admire Barr for being able to create that.

“I am inside something that must be buried in my head.”

The main thing I loved about this book is it’s complexity and cleverness. I won’t say I didn’t see the plot twists coming – I did guess some – but I also enjoyed the discovery.

However, there were parts of this book I didn’t enjoy. Specifically, Flora’s narrative. Yes, the repetitiveness of her story is vital. It is also incredibly, incredibly tedious. I found her incredibly childish at times and found the writing suitable for middle-grade. Therefore, the “emails” seemed very out-of-place and weird compared to the narrative.

“I am layers deep in my own brain.”

So overall, I didn’t love or hate this book. It was intriguing, involving and I found myself completely absorbed in the story from after around 100 pages. I liked the setting(s), numerous characters and complex plot. I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone, but it’s certainly very intriguing and I’d still say give it a go if you like the sound of the synopsis!

★★★

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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Sixty years after a virus has wiped out almost all the men on the planet, things are pretty much just as you would imagine a world run by women might be: war has ended; greed is not tolerated; the ecological needs of the planet are always put first. In two generations, the female population has grieved, pulled together and moved on, and life really is pretty good – if you’re a girl. It’s not so great if you’re a boy, but fourteen-year-old River wouldn’t know that. Until she met Mason, she thought they were extinct.

Doesn’t this sound like such an interesting read? Unfortunately, I was disappointed once again. Part of me thinks I may be getting a little critical of books as I’m reading more, but this one actually doesn’t have good reviews – and for good reason.

I had a lot of issues with this book. Some of them were just writing, language and plot holes. Some are deeper than that.

I honestly don’t even know where to start with this one. I guess with the simple things. This book just felt lacking – and I think that might be in plot. I believe dystopia should be interesting and fast-paced…and Who Runs the World? just wasn’t. I felt bored, and I didn’t feel motivated to read. I felt disconnected from the characters and the story. The writing was incredibly simple, and I honestly felt like River was treated like a child, acted as a child and thought as a child.

Another thing I found confusing was the tense. River constantly referred to the Granmumma speak as ‘text talk’, which I think meant it was 2 generations in front of the present day? But similar to how I found Ink by Alice Broadway, the town felt really behind. Yes, we had trains and hotels and (I think) phones. But then the only news we heard was through word-of-mouth, and TV’s and video games were all seen as old fashioned. It just seemed weird to me.

But unfortunately my issues with this book also grew deeper. In my viewpoint, this book was sexist. It basically said that men are directly connected to rape and murder. It told the main character to cover up so she could avoid being raped. It portrayed men in a very negative light and really didn’t show much progress throughout the story. Yes, the final few chapters started to turn things around…but it wasn’t really enough. The views of men in this book were just inexcusable.

★★

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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