Book Review (Blog Tour) | Sometime in Summer by Katrina Leno

 

Publication Date: 28th June 2022 by Little, Brown

Format: Netgalley ARC

Target Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary

→ Author's Site

 

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• IndieBound

Synopsis

Anna Lucia Bell believes in luck: bad luck. Bad luck made her best friend stop talking to her. Bad luck caused her parents’ divorce. Bad luck is forcing her mother, Miriam, to sell the family’s beloved bookstore. And it is definitely bad luck that Anna seems to be the only person in the world Miriam is unable to recommend a life-changing book.

When Anna finds out that she and her mom are spending two months in a New England seaside town called Rockport, she expects a summer plagued with bad luck too. But Rockport has surprises in store for Anna, including a comet making its first appearance in over twenty years and two new—but familiar—friends.

In what will prove to be the most important summer of her life so far, Anna learns about love, herself, and the magic that an ordinary summer can bring.

 

  

Rating

My Thoughts

Book Review | Hope Nicely's Lessons for Life by Caroline Day

Publication Date: 22nd July 2021 (UK) by Zaffre

Format: Physical ARC

Target Audience: Adult

Genre: Contemporary  

→ Author's Site

 

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

 

Content warnings: References to suicide & sexual assualt.

Representation: MC with Foetal Alochol Spectrum Disorder, SC with autism, gay SC, queer SC. 

 

Synopsis

Hope Nicely hasn't had an easy life.

But she's happy enough living at 23 Station Close with her mum, Jenny Nicely, and she loves her job, walking other people's dogs. She's a bit different, but as Jenny always tells her, she's a rainbow person, a special drop of light.

It's just...there's something she needs to know. Why did her birth mother abandon her in a cardboard box on a church step twenty-five years ago? And did she know that drinking while pregnant could lead to Hope being born with Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder?

In a bid to find her birth mother and the answers to these questions, Hope decides to write her autobiography. Despite having been bullied throughout school, Hope bravely joins an evening class where she will not only learn the lessons of writing (including the number one golden rule of 'show don't tell'), but may also begin to discover more about the world around her, about herself and even make some (human) friends.

But when Jenny suddenly falls ill, Hope realises there are many more lessons to come...

 

Rating

My Thoughts

 

Book Review | Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

 

Publication Date: May 4th 2021 by Quill Tree Books

Format: Library Ebook (400 pages)

Target Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary, Romance   

→ Author's Site

 

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WARNING! This review contains spoilers!

Synopsis

Noah Ramirez thinks he’s an expert on romance.

He has to be for his popular blog, the Meet Cute Diary, a perfect collection of trans meet cutes and happily ever afters. There’s just one problem: all the stories are fake. What started as idealized fantasies of a trans boy afraid to step out of the closet has grown into a beacon of hope for trans readers across the globe.

When a troll exposes the Meet Cute Diary as fiction, Noah’s world unravels. The only way to save the Diary is to convince his fans that the stories are true, but how can he spin fiction into fact without any proof? Then Drew walks into Noah’s life, and the pieces fall into place: Drew is willing to fake-date Noah in order to save the Diary.

But as Noah’s feelings for Drew transcend their staged romance, Noah quickly realizes that dating in real life isn’t quite the same as finding love on the page. With the Meet Cute Diary and Noah’s heart hanging in the balance, Noah will have to choose between following his own expertise or discovering that some of the most romantic endings are the ones that go off script.

 

Rating

 

 

My Thoughts

 

Book Review | Junk by Melvin Burgess

Publication Date: July 1st 2021 by Anderson Press (25th Anniversary Edition)

Format: Netgalley ARC

Target Audience: Young Adult

Genre: Contemporary,  

→ Author's Site

 

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

 

Content warnings: substance abuse, strong language, strong violence, sexual assault, references to prostitution, teenage pregnancy

 

Synopsis

Two teens fall in love with each other and heroin. Tar has reasons for running away from home that run deep and sour, whereas Gemma, with her middle-class roots firmly on show, has a deep-rooted lust for adventure. Their first hit brings bliss, the next despair.

Rating

My Thoughts

Book Review | How to Be Brave by Daisy May Johnson

 

Publication Date: July 1st 2021 by Pushkin Press

Format: Netgalley ARC

Target Audience: Middle Grade

Genre: Contemporary,  

→ Author's Site

 

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

Synopsis

Calla’s mum has never been normal. She’s been known to go out in a lab coat and slippers and often forgets to perform basic tasks because she’s been thinking about ducks. When a job offer arrives to study her beloved birds in the Amazon rainforest, Calla knows her mum has to go. Nervously, she agrees to go to boarding school.

She quickly learns that trouble is afoot in this odd convent school. A mean new headmistress is imposing horrible rules and making everyone eat Brussels sprout cake, and the students are itching to revolt. As Calla makes new friends and gets drawn into their rebellious plot, she keeps waiting for her mum to call. She will, won’t she?

 

Rating

My Thoughts

 

Book Review | Things to Do Before the End of the World by Emily Barr

Publication Date: May 6th 2021 by Penguin

Format: Netgalley ARC

Target Audience: Young Adult 

Genre: Contemporary, Science-Fiction, Thriller, 

→ Author's Site

 

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

Synopsis

One minute you're walking in the park, hiding from a party. Then you discover that the next nine months will probably be your last. Everyone's last. You realise that you happen to be alive at the time when your species becomes extinct.
You have to decide whether to go with it meekly like you usually do, or to do something brave, to live your last months with all the energy and bravery you can muster, to rage against the dying of the light.

Olivia struggles to live her real life as fully as she wants to. She plans out conversations and events in her head but actually doing them and interacting with other people is hard. When the news breaks that humans have done such damage to the earth that there's only nine months of safe air left everybody makes bucket lists and starts living their best lives - everyone, that is, but Olivia who is still struggling to figure out who she wants to be.

Then out of the blue comes contact from a long-lost cousin Olivia didn't even know exsisted. Natasha is everything Olivia wants to be and more. And as the girls meet up for their last summer on earth Olivia finds Natasha's ease and self-confidence having a effect on her. But what if Natasha isn't everything she first appears to be...?

 

Rating

 

My Thoughts

"I never worked out how to be myself in a way that I could bear. I never knew how to trust the world when it was outside my control."

 

I really quite enjoyed another of Emily Barr's books, The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods, which was released in 2019 and one I was approved for on Netgalley (you can check out my review for that book here) so when I spotted her new release on there I knew I had to request it.  

 

Things to Do Before the End of the World is a mash-up of genres. The kind of overlying theme is that the world is essentially ending pretty soon. Like in 9 months soon. Our main character Libby is a shy teenager who is struggling with her feelings for another girl at school and now has to deal with the fact that everything could be over in a matter of months. Adding to this her long lost cousin appears suddenly in her life and takes her under her wing, giving her a list of things to do before the world ends in the hopes of boosting her confidence.

 

So we've got a sci-fi/dystopian kind of set up, with some contemporary themes regarding the characters but with a few thriller elements thrown in for good fun as well. Somehow it does manage to work though and whilst for the majority of the story it mainly feels like a contemporary, those other elements ramp up the stakes and intrigue of the plot. The world ending debacle is definitely a background portion of this as a way to set up other parts sort of like a chain reaction but I kind of liked that it wasn't the main focus as it allowed for the plot to move forward but not overshadow anything else. I also liked the settings too, the way the story moved from Winchester to Madrid to Paris, Barr did a great job of bringing those cities to life on the page. 

 

Libby is an interesting character, one that I can see some people being frustrated with due to her naivete and her trusting nature. I found a lot of my teenage self in her though, her struggle to show herself to the world and her natural instinct to retreat from any kind of social scene. We also both did school plays! I wasn't overly sold on her character as I felt she was maybe a bit too subservient but by the end I was really attached and fairly protective over her. It's difficult to talk about her cousin Natasha's character without giving away spoilers so I'll just say that she definitely brought the entertainment factor to this book. It was fun to read about the two of them running around Madrid and Paris performing magic tricks for money, if only it could've stayed that way!

 

My main issues were with the pacing. In the first half we jump forward in time a fair bit. We go from December to July within about 100 pages, everything happening in those months goes by so quickly. Whereas in the second half we're pretty much solely in the month of August and the time period is over two or three weeks. I also felt that nothing much happens in the first three quarters of this book whilst it's setting up the characters and the relationship between Libby and Natasha, it was just dragging so much. It does redeem itself in the last quarter though as that's where things really get going and suddenly I was racing through in order to find out how it ends. It also targeted my anxiety so much, my heart was racing at the situation Libby found herself in. 

 

I could be persuaded to up my rating by half a star but I just didn't find myself invested in the storyline or the characters up until that last section. Barr is a great YA writer though who does a terrific job of blending contemporary with different genres and I'd be up for reading more of her work in the future as well as one of her previous books that I already own. 

* I received an ARC copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes included in this review are subject to change. Massive thank you to Penguin for providing me with a copy.

Book Review | Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Title: Clap When You Land 
Author: Elizabeth Acevedo • Author's Site 
Publication Date: May 5th 2020 by Hot Key Books
Format: Library ebook
Target Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary  

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

 

 Trigger Warnings:

• Depictions of rape & sexual assault
• Sexual harassment
• Stalking
• Cheating mentioned
• Pregnancy, childbirth (labour) & premature birth
• Grief depiction
• Death of a father
• Plane crash (off-page)

 

Camino Rios lives for the summers when her father visits her in the Dominican Republic. But this time, on the day when his plane is supposed to land, Camino arrives at the airport to see crowds of crying people...

In New York City, Yahaira Rios is called to the principal's office, where her mother is waiting to tell her that her father, her hero, has died in a plane crash.

Separated by distance-and Papi's secrets-the two girls are forced to face a new reality in which their father is dead and their lives are forever altered. And then, when it seems like they've lost everything of their father, they learn of each other.

Papi's death uncovers all the painful truths he kept hidden, and the love he divided across an ocean. And now, Yahaira and Camino are both left to grapple with what this new sister means to them, and what it will now take to keep their dreams alive.

Rating

My Thoughts

 

"A queen offers her hand to be kissed, & can form it into a fist while smiling the whole damn time."

Oof, was this book an incredible piece of art or what? I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of books written in verse as I tend to have trouble following the flow of the narration and understanding certain aspects of the characters and such. Elizabeth Acevedo has crafted a remarkable story though and has placed herself firmly at the top of authors that I want to read more from. 

This, as I've said, is a book written in verse and follows two sisters who discover the other exists after their father's plane crashes. Whilst dealing with their father's death they come to find that they share a much deeper bond then either expected and their lives unexpectedly collide. 

Written in dual perspective we get to see how very different Camino's and Yahaira's lives are with Camino living in the Dominican Republic and Yahaira residing in New York City. Although they both share the same blood, the different ways that they grew up and the cultural differences are evident. Both have such strong, distinct voices and I loved them both equally. 

Whilst both have to learn to deal with their grief, they also have personal struggles of their own. Camino is fighting to make a better life for herself away from her stifling town where she feels she has no prospects and dreams of making a better life for herself. Yahaira has been struggling with keeping a secret for the past year which ultimately ending with her giving up her hobby of chess and finds herself regretting how she left things with her dead before his death. Both of their journeys throughout this novel are well constructed and felt genuine and real. 

"A woman should be able to sell whatever she wants to sell. But not if it's at the insistence of a man."

Acevedo's writing is beautiful and I found that I kept having to pause in order to highlight quotes and passages. Her verse is so lyrical and fast paced that before I knew it I'd read almost the whole book in a short amount of time. She is able to weave in themes of feminism, race, grief and sisterhood so effortlessly and there are so many relevent quotes that relate to real life situations and emotions throughout. It's a powerful look at how a tragic accident such as the one in the book can have such a massive impact on a community. The events were inspired by the crash of American Airlines Flight 587 that occured on November 12th 2001. Being so soon after 9/11, it was largely overlooked in the media but Acevedo sheds light on the effects it had on the families and friends of the victims especially with many of the victims being of Dominican descent.      

This was a really powerful read and one that i'd urge everyone to pick up. It's a gorgeous story of the bond between sisters and how there is always life beyond significant loss. It has wonderful diversity with both MC being Dominican, Yahaira is a lesbian and her girlfriend is black. I own another of Acevedo's books, With the Fire on High, and I'm very excited to read more from the mind of this author.   

Please check out these Own Voices reviews as well:

Feminist Book Club

Book Review | Spin by Colleen Nelson

Title: Spin 
Author: Colleen Nelson • Author's Site 
Publication Date: August 10th 2019 by Dundurn
Format: Netgalley ARC
Target Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary  

Goodreads • Waterstones • Blackwells

 

Fifteen-year-old Delilah “Dizzy” Doucette lives with her dad and brother above their vintage record store, The Vinyl Trap. She’s learning how to spin records from her brother’s best friend, and she’s getting pretty good. But behind her bohemian life, Dizzy and her family have a secret: her mom is the megafamous singer Georgia Waters. When this secret is revealed to the world, Dizzy’s life spins out of control. She must decide what is most important to her — the family she has or the family she wants.

 

Rating

My Thoughts

"Slipping from my fingers, you leave / we'll meet again, I have to believe."

 

I'm slowly making my way through all of my Netgalley ARC's from last year and this one was up next on my list. I'm not sure why I requested this one, maybe I was just in the mood for some contemporary with music as a big part of the storyline. If that's what I wanted then I definitely got it.

Spin is mainly Dizzy's story. She's a fifteen year old who dreams of becoming a DJ star but has always felt a hole in her life due the fact that her mother abandoned the family when Dizzy was very young. Now, her mother is a worldwide singing superstar and her latest tour has brought her to the city Dizzy lives in and she's determined to get some answers whatever it takes. 

 

There were a lot of components that I really liked about this book. Firstly, we do actually get three POV's; Dizzy, her older brother Lou and their dad Ray, which I wasn't expecting. It worked really well as we got to see how Georgia's departure affected the whole family and how they're dealing with their own problems. It meant the story had a few layers to it but they came together to make a whole picture. I think all three perspectives were all really strong as well. There wasn't a time where I just wanted to get back to another POV because I was interested in each of the characters individually. 

 

Another element I really liked was the relationship between Dizzy and her best friend Maya. It really spoke through the pages how much Maya cared for Dizzy and the lengths she would go through to help her friend. She was a really selfless and kind character and she's someone I wished appeared more in the book. I also really liked Ray's group of friends, they were like a group of fun uncles that gather at the family's record store to jam out all the time. 

 

Music obviously plays a big part in this story. Dizzy's mum Georgia is a singer, her day Ray always has his saxaphone ready to play a tune and Dizzy is beginning to find her rhythm with spinning records. The way music flows through this family is pretty special and it really spoke of how much they live and breathe music and use it to tell stories and create messages. I enjoyed seeing how music had a different meaning for each of them whether it's an escape, a way of life or a way of expressing themself.  

 

Dizzy was an interesting character too. It's her story and she was an incredibly determined and passionate individual that really wanted to find her roots and discover who she really is. She refused to give up on what she wanted and could be a little sneaky in getting it too. I think her age definitely showed through at times though. She could be very rash and naive with her actions, she often didn't think through what she was doing or the consequences for her dad and brother. Whilst these scenes did frustrate me, I think it also made her pretty realistic. As a teenager your emotions are definitely overwhelming and can lead to some pretty bad decisions at times!        

 

"She had that spark that made her special. Maybe it was guts, or just being ballsy, but failure was not an option for Dizzy."  

 

I think teenagers will really connect with the characters in this book, it's got a lot of heart and emotion at it's core with really strong writing. It's fun to see three characters at different stages of life and their family bond. It has really strong themes of family, frienship and of course, music, that will speak to a lot of people.

Mini Book Reviews | The Five, The Art of Taxidermy & Kids Like Us

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of
these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that ‘the Ripper’ preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

                                                                       Rating

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold is a really engrossing non-fiction read. I have a big interest in true crime and of course the case of Jack the Ripper is infamous but I confess I hardly knew anything about the victims. This tends to be the case with widely known murder cases, the media often focuses on the murderer instead of the victims. Serial killers such as Jack the Ripper get all the attention and it's easy to forget that the women he killed were human beings with stories of their own which is why I'm so glad that this author decided to bring attention to them.

The writing style of this book is superb, it's so detailed but also manages to remain readable. It's also well researched with a lot of history of the era weaved into these womens lives in order for the reader to really grasp what life was like back then. I really enjoyed getting to know each of the five canonical victims and learning about their lives. It's also an incredibly sad read at times as you read about how these women came to be out on the streets of Whitechapel at the wrong moment in time. 

 

Lottie collects dead creatures and lovingly cares for them, hoping to preserve them, to save them from disintegration. Her father understands—Lottie has a scientific mind, he thinks. Her aunt wants it to stop, and she goes to cruel lengths to make sure it does.

And her mother? Lottie’s mother died long ago. And Lottie is searching for a way to be close to her.

                   Rating            

I'll admit when I requested The Art of Taxidermy by Sharon Kernet on Netgalley I didn't realise it was a book written in verse. I did fall quite easily into the flow of the writing though and it was an exceptionally quick read. This novel follows Lottie, who at 12 years old is still struggling with her mothers death and develops a scientific interest in taxidermy and the preservation of dead animals.

 

It's a beautifully written book which closely examines how children handle grief and how they often interpret death as a whole. I think it does something that a lot of books about grief aimed towards children don't often do, which is to not sugarcoat anything but also to portray grieving in many different ways at different stages in life. It's quite a morbid topic and it does contain some scenes that describe dead animals quite descriptively, but it does handle it very well and would still be suitable for a middle grade audience.

My only drawbacks were the fact that I couldn't quite work out when this book was supposed to be set. There's a lot of mentions of wars and family member being imprisoned but I still couldn't quite figure out which era they were in. This book was also set in Australia and I was disappointed by the lack of descriptions of the country but maybe that's because it's written in verse rather than a traditional narrative. It also tended to become a tad repetitive and this meant that I was bored at times when reading. 

Martin is an American teen on the autism spectrum living in France with his mom and sister for the summer. He falls for a French girl who he thinks is a real-life incarnation of a character in his favorite book. Over time Martin comes to realize she is a real person and not a character in a novel while at the same time learning that love is not out of his reach just because he is autistic.            

Rating

I think Kids Like Us by Hilary Reyl was one of the first books I ever requested on Netgalley back in 2017 but I obviously never got round to reading it. I've mentioned before how I'm trying to get my ratio back up before I start requesting again and I knew this needed to be read. I'm still in two minds about how I feel about this book as there was nothing particularly wrong with it but I still wasn't invested or wowed by it. 

This book follows Martin, an austistic teenager, as he spends the summer in France with his family. He translates the world around him through his favourite book, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, and consequently believes a girl at his new school is the love interest from the book. I obviously can't speak personally about how well the autism rep in this book is done. However, my younger brother is on the autism spectrum and I could recognise certain behaviour and language in Martin's character so I would say I was able to make connections between his character and my brother. 

 

Whilst the writing was good, the events that occur in this book are pretty slow moving. It is essentially a story about Martin's outlook on life and how he handles his austism, making new friends and other situations. I will say it had a unique approach and I quite enjoyed Martin's perspective on everything. I'll also mention that the mother in this story can be quite anti-autism at times as well, it's not a problem that's addressed very well either, it's just sort of there.    

 

  

Book Review | 100 Days of Sunlight by Abbie Emmons

Title: 100 Days of Sunlight
Author: Abbie Emmons
Publication Date: 7th August 2019
Format: Ebook via Netgalley
Target Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary

Goodreads | Amazon.co.uk | Waterstones

Synopsis  

When 16-year-old poetry blogger Tessa Dickinson is involved in a car accident and loses her eyesight for 100 days, she feels like her whole world has been turned upside-down.

Terrified that her vision might never return, Tessa feels like she has nothing left to be happy about. But when her grandparents place an ad in the local newspaper looking for a typist to help Tessa continue writing and blogging, an unlikely answer knocks at their door: Weston Ludovico, a boy her age with bright eyes, an optimistic smile…and no legs.

Knowing how angry and afraid Tessa is feeling, Weston thinks he can help her. But he has one condition — no one can tell Tessa about his disability. And because she can’t see him, she treats him with contempt: screaming at him to get out of her house and never come back. But for Weston, it’s the most amazing feeling: to be treated like a normal person, not just a sob story. So he comes back. Again and again and again.

Tessa spurns Weston’s “obnoxious optimism”, convinced that he has no idea what she’s going through. But Weston knows exactly how she feels and reaches into her darkness to show her that there is more than one way to experience the world. As Tessa grows closer to Weston, she finds it harder and harder to imagine life without him — and Weston can’t imagine life without her. But he still hasn’t told her the truth, and when Tessa’s sight returns he’ll have to make the hardest decision of his life: vanish from Tessa’s world…or overcome his fear of being seen.

Rating

 

ARC Review | Beau and Bett by Kathryn Berla

Title: Beau and Bett
Author: Kathryn Berla
Publication Date: 16th July 2019 by Amberjack Publishing
Format: ARC via Netgalley
Target Audience: Young Adult
Genre: Contemporary, Romance
Goodreads


 Trigger and content warnings: Mentions of sexual assualt.

Synopsis

After Beau LeFrancois's mother wrecks Bett Diaz’s luxury SUV, his family faces an impossibly large bill—with no car insurance to help pay it. To pay off the debt, Beau spends his weekends working at the Diaz Ranch.

Beau’s prepared to work, but he’s definitely not prepared for the infamous temper of Bett Diaz, also known as "The Beast" at school. As Beau learns the secrets behind Bett’s tough exterior, he finds himself falling for her . . . until he catches Bett in a lie.

Rating

 

 

My Thoughts

"And in every beast, there's a human heart with a story of how it got to that place. A story waiting to be changed with understanding. A story waiting to be changed with just a kiss." 

I'm gonna start off by saying that I really didn't enjoy this book. I was expecting a really fluffy and cute Beauty and the Beast retelling but there was just no substance to any of the elements to this story.

The fairytale is modernised so it's now set in California and we follow two teenagers, Beau, who comes from a Cajun family and Bett, who is the daughter of a wealthy ranch owner. The main plotline is that after Beau's mother damages Bett's car, Beau has to work off the debt on the ranch and whilst there he develops feelings for this girl that everyone has told him to stay away from. And that's it. That's all that happens.

There was just zero development in this novel. I felt like the story was happening so quickly but nothing was actually happening that had any purpose. There was literally a sentence explaining to us how he rinsed out a soapy bucket; "I emptied the soapy water out of the bucket and rinsed the sponge and bucket, then squeezed the water from the sponge and set it on top of the wall to dry". Do we really need a step by step of this?

Both characters were infuriating and just so boring. Beau has slightly more characterization but that's mostly because we're seeing everything from his point of view but he's just so obsessive and kind of creepy. He has a big crush on this girl at his school, who's name I can't even remember, but all that he likes about her is her hair and her 'sexiness' and he keeps on asking about whether they'll fall in love and break up within a week like she did with her last boyfriend. Beau just really needs to get a grip.

Bett is just the absolute worst. She's spoiled and entitled and so incredibly rude to everyone. When she first meets Beau she tries to trick him into doing the dishes for her when she promised her grandmother that she'd do them herself. I get that she's supposed to be the beast character but my god she didn't possess any manners whatsoever. She explains her behaviour away by saying that she's an introvert and she doesn't trust people easily but I'm an introvert and I definitely don't treat people like crap until I get to know them better like she does. There is a further reason why she is the way she is but I also felt that wasn't developed well, it was only revealed within the last few pages so we weren't really able to get any further understanding about the situation.    

As for the writing style, I didn't like how short the chapters were. They felt very jarring and very stop and start, they also ended in really odd places so the pacing of the entire book wasn't great. I also felt that the dialogue was a little too cheesy and a lot of the times just did not make sense within the context.    

If I had to say I liked anything about this book it's probably the fact that it's a gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast which is what intrigued me about the book in the first place. I liked the idea of the boy being the sweet and innocent character whilst the girl is more standoffish and icy. Unfortunately this book just didn't deliver for me and was just an overall massive disappointment.

·       * I received an ARC copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes included in this review are subject to change.