Becky's Book Reviews

As part of the Shadowplay blog tour, I’m excited to, once again welcome Laura Lam to my blog today. For those who don’t know, or haven’t heard about Laura Lam’s books before, Shadowplay is the sequel to her debut YA fantasy novel, Pantomime. I’ve been fortunate enough to be part of her blog tour for the first book ( you can check out my review here ), and am super thrilled to be part of the tour for Shadowplay. During the Pantomime blog tour , Laura stopped by an introduced us to the world within her book, complete with complete picture tour. If you’ve checked out her books on Goodreads, you’ll see that not only has she’s posted a visual representation of what the world within Pantomime is like (a similar post was featured on my blog), but she’s also done one for Shadowplay. I’d suggest you visit Goodreads and check out them out and add it to your TBR pile: Pantomime Shadowplay In the meantime, before I hand over to Laura, here’s some info on Shadowplay: ( Note: If you haven’t read Pa...

A genre-defying novel that combines elements of science fiction and gas lamp fantasy to create a world filled with auras, dreamscapes, humans with supernatural abilities and a whole realm of otherworldly creatures.  Disclaimer: This review also appears on Women24.com , a South African women's lifestyle website where I manage, amongst other things, an online books section. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon  (Bloomsbury) I’ve been reading and reviewing books for a good number of years now. In this time, I’ve come across books that have had me a) shaking my fists (for wasting my time), b) being stricken with grief (at the sheer beauty and tragedy of it all) and c), marvelling in wonder (while losing myself in a world filled with sheer phantasmagorical splendour). I’ve found the words to express how deeply I loved the book, and I’ve been able to give constructive views on why certain books just didn’t work for me. What I’ve never found, until now, is a book that is so good, it...

On the blog today, I’m fortunate enough to be featuring a spotlight on Forsaken, a just-released YA paranormal novel by Sophia Sharp. About the book: Nora Colburn was perfectly content in life. A junior in high school, she had good friends, a great family, and did well in school.  Nothing particularly exciting ever happened where she lived, and everything was stable. But that all drastically changes when a new student arrives at Nora’s school. Wild rumors swirl about his past, and Nora becomes determined to find out the truth. As she gets to know the mysterious student, he shares with her an ancient secret... one that may yet put both of them in grave danger. And for the first time in her life, Nora is exposed to a completely unfamiliar world. She is swept away on an exhilarating journey that takes her to a place where romance and great destiny may yet await... and where supernatural powers run wild. Add it on Goodreads. Read an extract below: Hunter cut off with a strangled sound...

Today I’ve got a kick-ass post from debut YA author Jennifer Ridyard. Now Jennifer, who has co-written the novel Conquest with partner John Connolly - best-selling author of The Book of Lost Things and even more known for his phenomenal crime thrillers - chats about a topic that’s quite close to my heart today – that of science fiction. When I first received her post, I was decidedly amused because I could relate so well to it.  Back when I first heard the term science fiction – my immediate thought was, alien thingies, extra appendages and lots and lots of green gunk and slimy goo. My next immediate thought was, “ew”. Yes, yes. Go ahead and laugh. I’ll wait until you all pick yourselves up from the floor, shall I? I was about 12 years old then. As you can tell, my view of the genre used to be incredibly skewed and limited. But then, along came books like The Hunger Games, Never Let Me Go, Divergent and Wither.  Without going into too much explanation here, because Jennifer do...