Scookie Reviews

A GATHERING OF SHADOWS by V.E. Schwab 4 Stars Verdict: A great bridge to book 3. #1 - A Darker Shade of Magic The consequences of book one have set in. Lila has set off in the new world with a sink or swim attitude, and closes in on her dream of owning a ship. Kell struggles with Rhy’s life tethered to his, unable to live freely, fearing that they’ll share the consequences. Lila and Kell are drawn together once more, this time by the call of a tournament that pits magicians against each other in one on one battle, the Essen Tasch. Lila is one of my favourite characters of all time. She's reckless, and smart, and a darker shade of hero, and it always surprises me how boldly she challenges the world to seize her dreams. I also liked the newest character, Alucard, the likable pirate slash privateer who gives Lila a chance in the world she doesn't belong in. This book is easier to slip into, easier to enjoy from page one than the prequel. With less jumping around, the w...

THE ASK AND THE ANSWER by Patrick Ness (#2 Chaos Walking) 4 Stars Verdict: Tough to get into, killer cliff hanger. Review of book 1 This book is like climbing a very steep cliff. It starts slow, building up new characters, a new world, a new system to climb through. When you're at the top, it's amazing. And then you slip right off it, your hand gripping the edge, hanging on for that sequel. If I'm honest, the ramble style of voice isn't my type of thing. I can appreciate the feeling of really getting inside the character's head in the moment, and the way the action scenes unravel at a frighteningly fast pace, but it's the slower in-between sections which don't work as well for me in this style. The general pacing of the story reminded me of book one. In my opinion, it lacked momentum until something tripped me up and then I couldn't put it down, and this book took longer to stick its foot out. Perhaps after book one being about running, escap...

THE DAZZLING HEIGHTS by  Katharine McGee  (The Thousandth Floor #2) 5 Stars Verdict: Imaginative, readable, and scandalous. Review of Book 1 It's impossible for me to write this review without spoilers or hints about book one, so make sure you've read that first. The pages will fly by - trust me on that one - and if you liked book one, book two is the same style with new ideas. So it begins with another mysterious death. Mariel is angry with Eris's 'accident' and knows there's more to it than meets the eye. Watt decides to play Leda against herself in order to shake free from her blackmail, while Avery and Atlas try to make their relationship work in secret. And a new girl has arrived in the tower, a con artist who has chosen Atlas as her next mark. I found it entertaining from page to page, just like book one. The multiple point of views allows the reader to skip to the next important scene, the next juicy moment, meaning the pace never drops. B...

THE THOUSANDTH FLOOR by Katharine McGee 5 Stars Verdict: A futuristic teen drama beginning and ending in murder It’s a high school drama set in a futuristic tower that’s more like a world inside itself. Think of Pretty Little Liars or Gossip Girl, except 100 years into the future. Same problems - boyfriends, cheating, drugs, illegitimate children - with a different flavour. Avery lives at the top of the tower, beauty and wealth gifted to her from birth. The one thing she can't have is the only thing she wants - her adopted brother, Atlas. Leda is Avery’s best friend, but things have been weird between them since she started dating Atlas - she hires Watt, a hacker who seems too good at his job, to find out more about him. A family secret sends Eris's social status down the tower, while Rylan ends up higher than expected. Their lives become tangled, tripping over each other until one of them falls from the thousandth floor. There five point of views: Avery, Leda, Ry...

GRACELING by Kristin Cashore 5 Stars Verdict: Enthralling from start to finish Katsa is born to kill, 'Graced' with special skills that make her a deadly weapon. From a young age, her uncle, King of Middlun, has trained her to carry out his dirty work by doing what she's good at - hurting others. Kasta resents her uncle, but struggles to stand up to him. Only when she meets Po, another Graced fighter, does she start to realise that she has a choice, and that her Grace can be a blessing too. I love a good book about individuals with abilities, and a traditional fantasy realm is as good a place as any to host these characters. The writing had an old fashion feel to it, and a few well done tropes - seven kingdoms ruled by a mix of tyrannical kings, as per standard - but GRACELING still stood out to me as an original story. Katsa's ability to survive that kept me enthralled. One challenge layered on to the next, and although the ending climaxed pretty suddenly w...

UNDERCOVER PRINCESS by Connie Glynn 4 Stars Verdict: A light and colourful read Lottie is a hardworking student at Rosewood boarding school, who loves tiaras, the colour pink, and fairy tales. Ellie is the rebellious princess of Maradova, who joined the school to shirk her royal duties and listen to heavy metal. When a misunderstanding has all of Rosewood believing that Lottie is the princess of Maradova, the girls use this as an opportunity to swap lives, one gaining freedom, and the other gaining her fairy tale wish. This was just what I needed after a dry spell of reading - something light and imaginative, with vivid descriptions and a fast moving plot. It's a happy book about friendship, princesses, and protecting others, and the many references to fairy tales woven into the plot make it a very charming book. Even when the princess begins receiving anonymous threats, the events never feel too dark and serious. Instead they feel more like a mystery to solve. The thr...

POISON STUDY by Maria V. Snyder 3 Stars Verdict : An addictive first taste, didn't quite last to the end. When the day comes for Yelana to meet the hangman's noose, she is offered a choice: face execution, or tempt death every day as the Commander's food taster. It's a fantastic premise, with a pacy beginning. The pages hooked me fast, with Yelena dragged from her cell and offered a chance to live a dangerous life over death in chapter one. The poison lessons start immediately, and next follows whole host of characters with motives to kill Yelena. I worried about her a lot, at first. But she learned fast and adapted to the danger, which made her compelling to read about. I liked how Yelena's past unravelled throughout the story. She's a survivor of impossible situations. In the world of Ixia, a crime is a crime, no matter the circumstances, and Yelana's story paints a moral grey over this system. There was a good mix of characters to pick apart....

FLY ON THE WALL by E. Lockhart 4 Stars Verdict: A short tale of naked truths. Contemporary usually isn’t my thing. I need life threatening stakes, magic, and twisted, villainous plans – but E. Lockhart’s books are a welcomed break from what I call ‘the norm’. They’re short, and packed full of emotion and meaning. FLY ON THE WALL in particular felt relatable, full of diversity, and got me thinking about life in the way a demon fight never could. Gretchen sees herself as ordinary, which is why she loves drawing her larger-than-life comic book muses. Her drawing style isn’t appreciated by her art teacher, and she doesn’t really like the other students. In fact, she’s a bit judgemental – until she becomes a 'fly on the wall', and learns the naked truth about the people she had previously dismissed. Just like Gretchen, the plot starts off a little ordinary, and the overall pace of the book is helped by the fact its so short. It sets the scene, twists, makes a point, and ...

SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT by Derek Landy 5 Stars Verdict : Fun, weird, and magical - what's not to like? In short, it’s a fun MG book. It has humour and a jovial spirit running through its pages, getting serious at times when it needs to, but never feeling like a heavy weight of despair and angst that comes with YA. A welcome change from my normal genre! I love how there's a quirky spin on the story. A thirteen year old girl inherits her strange uncle's house, bumps into a walking talking skeleton with magical powers, and the two team up to beat the bad guys from acquiring ultimate power. They both have a good sense of humour, which made it a fantastic read. Fun, weird, and magical sums it up the best. At times I felt the high amounts of action would be better placed in a film than a book, and the description tended to be at a minimal, but I liked this book a lot. I like how it’s different, standing out from the large heap of books I’ve swept my eyes through lately....

GATES OF THREAD AND STONE by Lori M Lee 2 stars Verdict: Not good. I always feel bad for writing two star reviews. Most of the time it's just a book that could do with more work, not a bad author. But I'm going to be bluntly honest.  I felt the writing was dull, the world building was flat, and the pace was slow. I’ve read worse, but that doesn’t make this story better. After Kia eats a sandwich, wanders around, eats another sandwich, visits the shops… eventually, her brother goes missing. He childhood crush insists on helping her, and together they leave everything behind to find him. Kia is also able to control the threads of time, a gift she must keep hidden. I think Kia stuck to this a little too tightly though, because I completely forgot she had magic for most of the book. The concepts puzzled me. There were too many ideas, but none of them were used to their best capacity. Is a sentinel the same as a hollow? What is a mahjo? How is that different from ...

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER by Stephen Chbosky 4 stars Verdict: Very 'readable'. It's my favourite type of narrator, the naive in a broken world. Charlie (if that is in fact his real name) watches, listens, and both understands more than others as well as fails to comprehend what is obvious to the reader. He's very different from others his age, more honest, possibly slightly autistic, and broken. Definitely broken. The book is written as a series of letters from our narrator Charlie to an unknown receiver, and trying to work out whom could drive you insane. It's a character we don't know, a character who could be us, unless of course you did sleep with that girl just because you could. That aside, it's left purposefully vague. There's not too much plot, just things that happen, the story bumbling along, and then a moment at the end that reveals a little more about Charlie, and then that's it. A lot of the characters were pretty nice...

RUIN AND RISING by Leigh Bardugo 2 stars Verdict: Didn't really enjoy it. #1 Shadow and Bone #3 Siege and Storm The author has all the signs of an awesome writer, but I just didn't think it was an awesome book. There’s a fantastic twist which links all three books together, and while it was amazing it doesn’t change the fact that I only enjoyed reading bits of this series. It didn’t seem so bad at the time, but I couldn’t read more than a couple of pages before deciding I needed yet another a break. There wasn't enough to get excited about, and even though there are some great sequences, they were too short and far between. A good book makes those mundane linking scene, like travelling, seem interesting, but the amount of travelling in this book was a tall order, and it ended up feeling as if a lot of irrelevant buffer material was plumped into the book’s sparse feathers. I realised at some point that I didn't really like or connect with any of the charac...

KING'S CAGE by Victoria Aveyard (Red Queen #3) 4 Stars Verdict : Good but long. #1 - Red Queen #2 - Glass Sword Or at least it felt very long to me. I almost tapped out at book two. If I'm honest, my main complaint of book 2 – that it’s overwritten – still holds true for this book, except for everything else works so much better this time around. The plot could have turned any which direction, and that made me read on eagerly. Mare has handed herself over to the king in order to spare her friends, giving Maven a powerful tool to twist against the Scarlet Guard. She isn’t whiny this time – she's utterly trapped, and does what little she can to help her cause. She stays strong in a way that shows how far she’s come, and I found myself liking her again. The writing is what made it feel long to me, yet at times it's worth it. It might be superfluous, but it’s still beautiful and vivid, full of emotion. Every word evoked a new emotion in me, although it did...

SIEGE AND STORM by Leigh Bardugo 3 Stars Verdict: Starting to lose interest. #1 Shadow and Bone #2 Rise and Rising As much as I wanted to love this series, this felt like a second book to me in every way. Battles are lost, relationships are sunk and mended, but none of the events were particularly surprising. I've read other reviews and I'm just not on the same page. I'm at a slight loss already as I hear the main appeal of this book is the Darkling, and to me he's too vague and absent to grab my attention. Learning more about his past would have been intriguing, but in this book we mainly see how power affects Alina and Mal's relationship. It opens fast as Alina and Mal face the Darkling once more, but after that the pace dwindles. The author has a beautiful way with words, but spends them on the wrong things. There's so much time inside Alina's head and teaching us about the world, and not enough actually happening in the now. As the book g...

INK AND BONE by Rachel Caine 5 Stars Verdict: For the love of books. I found this a slow burner, but once it got going I absolutely adored it. Set in the Great Library of Alexandria, this book offers a historic fantasy feel as well as speculative fiction vibe as it asks what would have happened if the Great Library grew in power and controlled the use of books. There's even a bit of steampunk and a grande adventure - this book has a lot to offer! I didn't initially connect with the way Caine writes, and often found the prose to linger on heavy description without building any substantial picture in my mind. Somehow, this didn't matter in the end as the plot, the magic, and the characters were so creative and intriguing that I adapted to the prose. Every character intrigued me, each of them complicated for very different reasons. The students each have their pasts, their desires, their secrets, and strengths, as well as different cultural backgrounds. The side ch...